Disclaimer... :) I am all over the place in this blog and yet I will leave it as it is.....
It is amazing the things one might try and stay away from.... not even fully conscious of the fact that I was staying away from it but yet not interested one iota in something that was captivating the attentions of oh so many......
But here is where I have been brought to in the days since my attempts to not give into the current news item that was throwing its most recent captive to the wolves.... super stars... reality tv.... news... media.... there is not much separating some of that which we call entertainment these days from the Roman Colosseum ... and truly some of the things we watch could very easily lead to death or injury..... ok I truly need to get to where I am going....
Here I go.... not sure how to get there and what it will take in the area of laying bare my soul and my life but here I go.....
What gets to determine truth.... what gets to determine what one believes or what we are willing to believe as a community..... so what if I with a sick sense of humor wanted to teach my child that blue was really green and that green was really blue.... stay with me here.... what if from the time my child was a baby I pointed to the beautiful blue sky and said "green"... What would my child believe? They would believe a lie....
Obvious right... but how about all the lies we believe about ourselves and the world... how about believing that wealth... cars... houses... position... power equate to success... or the standards of beauty that our children and ourselves grow up under and live with.... then the beliefs of less than and more than equate into how we perceive ourselves and our world... we buy into those lies and those false belief systems all the time...
Obvious lies... obvious truth.... obvious good ... obvious bad... or maybe not so much... we judge and regard others concerning that which we have known or experienced.... we attempt to sort out others lives and play god and determine their worth on some pathetic hierarchical scale that determines rank and position and whether or not so and so is worth getting to know or who the "right" person is to befriend and what can they get me... and then we throw a whole group of people under the bus because they aren't worth the time of day based on a world system full of performance oriented demands and structures and standards that even the church has bought into....
Lies... well.. I knew the world of lies really well.. and I have realized lately that I actually knew the world of lies even more than I thought I did.... I bought into all that which I just wrote and judged myself and allowed myself to be judged based on all of that... believed my worth was more determined upon the favor of man and what I could do as if I was some performing monkey... but I needed the approval of man so desperately that I wasn't willing to threaten the very system that held me captive to its stupidity.....
Listen... there isn't anything I won't share if it would result in just even one other person being able to see the truth that really sets the captives free.....
its Christ and Him bleeding and dying on the cross that gets to set the standards of what is truth and what is right... It is Jesus having been in equality with God not considering that something to be grasped but laid His life down and took on the likeness of man so that we could know His Father and call God Abba ourselves...
I know all too well that I could have been so easily guilty of murder... I used to daydream about killing those I should have loved... and I used to have to fight thoughts of harming a child..... I used to have to fight thoughts of abandoning everything and running away as an adult.... I used to have to contend for a life that I didn't even know could exist ... I held on to the faintest of hopes that life could be different while I did not know what that difference was and had not one iota of what it could look like.....
Why to expose myself like this... because I am a fool... no... I am hungry.... I don't care what I look like or what you think because I am more desperate that you realize what lies you are buying into and what it is doing to you..... you don't have to have touched the choices to live or not live or let live or commit harm... to have had lies affect your life in a debilitating way...
Is that one person's opinion matter more than anything... can you not live unless you look a certain way... are you willing to bring harm to yourself or go threw crazy situations so that you might be finally accepted....
I once thought if only those who were supposed to love me and raise me up knew the truth than all would be fine... I staked my life on it... I thought that if only they knew the truth and knew that I wasn't lying about certain things and events then I would be ok... but even when said people had to come face to face with some of those truths... their declaration wasn't of sorrow or forgiveness.. it was of only more accusation.. that I had just been a "sneaky" child and that was that.... I had been the one violated and yet I was the sneaky child....
But truth confronts and those who want to live in lies want to believe what they want to believe and those that are around people like that sometimes have their own investments in keeping up the status quo... I saw it as a child... I saw it as an adult... I've seen it in the church and in ministry....
But here is the thing... Christ brings the truth... a truth so real and vivid and vibrant and powerful... a truth that comes and sets the captives free..... a truth that says I can give you a life you never even knew to dream of .... but you have to be willing to turn and look at the lies and acknowledge them as lies and walk away from them and believe ... believe that this world doesn't get to set the standards... that those standards are lies full of chains that bind and harm... that the world doesn't get to determine success or beauty or failure... it doesn't get to... we don't have to play the world's game the world's way....
That is what it means when it says be in the world but not of it.... we aren't of it... it's rules... it's values.... it's grip.....
We are of a totally other place... where prince and pauper... king and garbage man... president and house keeper.... all will one day bow a knee and declare that Jesus Christ is Lord.... success and life and freedom aren't measurable by the structures and standards of the world...that which the world standards set up are lies.... lies we have bought into.... and yet they only have the power over us that we allow them to have.... I moved away from thinking that I needed certain people to know certain things... I moved away from thinking that who I was was based on other's opinions or ideas of me... I moved away from a past of pain and destruction and lies... and even a life of getting value and worth from ministry and I stepped into a world where but by the grace of God I would be declared guilty... guilty of everything ... but now ... now as far as the east is from the west my transgressions have been removed from me... and now because of Him I stand innocent... guiltless... no condemnation... My heart no longer condemns me and because of this I can stand boldly and confidently before the throne of my Father.... I can't go back to believing in anything less than that which Christ died for me to have.. and He has done it all.... so that truth can reign... we have to want it though... we have to want the truth over the lies... we have to want to see.. and hear.. and know... and be willing to not know where it is that we are going... but follow one who knows the way.. who is the way... the truth .. the life... That is the life I want... nothing less... His life... His way.. His truth...
No comments:
Post a Comment