Grace and trial

Today I feel like I have nothing together.

I just want to stay in one place by myself and breathe.

I don't want to meet anyone, write anything (even though I'm writing this), or even do something I normally enjoy doing like taking a walk or ...even read...although I'll probably read soon.  I can't pray, I can't talk, I can't read the bible, and I don't want to do any of that.

I'm not trying to get happy or make myself feel better... Although in some sense I am, but I want to be myself. Just like this.  Unmoving.  Without a care.  Except I have a million cares flying around my head like an annoying cloud of gnats. 

So what is it, what is it that You are doing now Lord? 

I pray for wisdom to understand my situation and wisdom to discern the way my heart feels, wisdom to draw from what my head knows, and self control from what my sinful nature desires all the time. 

What is it?  Please.  Just tell me what to do, but don't tell me to do nothing.  Although the nothing is all I can do. 

A grace and a trial in one.

Jmegrey. 

How to hear the Holy Spirit

Remember then how far you have fallen; 

repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you 

and remove your lampstand from its place — unless you repent.

---We never stop needing to repent. 

Because we never stop needing help.

We never become self-reliant from God to habituate us toward Him and His will.  

But how will we know how to rely on God if we do not experience what reliance looks like?  

We have one another to practice and to habituate our hearts on what it means to be reliant on another. 

Unless we first experience a heart of reliance on others in the Body of Christ, needing help, then how will we know what reliance on God actually is?  It will remain a concept, and be just as good as whatever we want it to be according to our fancy.  Reliance on another is an experience that teaches us the reality of the concept, it confronts our ideas about it because it is the actual experience of it!  This is why Jesus taught us to love one another, and to be united.  The more we experience our lives with one another the more we avail ourselves to the experience and truth of what it means to rely on God.  We must become precious to one another.---

“Anyone who has an ear 

should listen to what the Spirit says 

to the churches. 

I will give the victor 

the right to eat from the tree of life, 

which is in God’s paradise.

---Listen to the Spirit's words given for the churches.  Given to your church.  What is the Spirit saying to the church you attend?  Let Him speak truth into the areas of lies, exposing them more specifically, and leading back to life.  Every church needs to be listening so long as you have ears.----

Don’t be afraid of what you are about to suffer. Look, the Devil is about to throw some 

of you into prison to test you, 

and you will have affliction for 10 days. 

Be faithful until death, 

and I will give you the crown of life. 

---we are about to suffer, and some are already suffering.  We suffer in whatever we find is hard for us to live with.  That could be mental strains, physical pains, relational chasms, or boredom.  Suffering is anything that we find difficult, by definition.  There is no right or wrong suffering, there is just suffering, a feeling that comes with a situation.  But suffering is also the only way to practice faithfulness to God.  Suffering proves the genuineness of our faith, much like how loving others confronts our genuine reliance on God, our faith is only as good as our suffering.  That's why James exclaimed that we should consider it our joy to suffer in Christ, because it gives our faith a chance to prove itself and confront us with the truth so that we can grow.  I suffer and I also fear suffering, but what if we began to welcome suffering?  What would that look like?  No one needs to search for suffering, you will soon find that it is something of a gift by God given to everyone but not received by everyone when it happens.  So it's a matter of our view of suffering, our view of difficulty, to understand what it means to be in pain and in joy at the same time...a very curious state of understanding.  I often think in very black and white terms, so this concept is difficult for me to practice, but when I feel the fear of suffering (in forms of my doubting, worrying or anxiety) I have stop and ask the Holy Spirit to remind me what exactly I am trying to resist.  

Am I resisting suffering, which is the gift? 

Or am I resisting the sin? 

In other words, which is more difficult for me to resist?  Usually I find that it feels like the sin is more difficult to resist, but in reality it is the suffering of resisting the sin that is the real problem.

So then the two go hand in hand, meaning that I must be at the same time suffering and seeing my sin together.  The sin is the carriage that carries the gift, but it is not the gift itself to be received.  So that all my sins will be devastating for me to approach, but I must approach them in order to retrieve the gift of suffering that comes from God in the form of resisting the sin so that in every situation I have both what the devil brings and what God brings before me.  

It is this very distinction that means either life or death for us.  We are practicing our ability to walk in fire and water at the same time.  Being both dead and alive.  Suffering and joyful.  Light and dark.  Sinner and saved.  Happy and sad.  Foolish and wise.  Immature and mature. Continually searching while at the same time finding.  Weak and strong at the same time.  The way that Christ was both man and God, we too have the Holy Spirit of God in us while remaining our individual human selves.  Having both God and our humanness in us, the former acting only in contingency on the latter...not apart from one another.  But together. ---

“Anyone who has an ear 

should listen 

to what the Spirit says 

to the churches. 

The victor will never be harmed 

by the second death."

---the first death being our earthly death, literally the first time we die.  Haha.  The second death is the one that means going to hell forever, which is the culmination of absolute death.  The victor, the winner, the one who defeats death : Jesus, will never be harmed by hell.  So Jesus is our only hope of being a victor.  We have to look to Jesus to carry us, include us, choose us, bless us and affirm us as His fellow brothers and sisters.  We do never look to our ability to be a victor.  Only Jesus, our brother, is proof that we are family.  Relationship with Him is our only hope.  And this, too, is a truth that we need to practice with one another, to be confronted by what we believe it means to be a brother, to be family.  We have each other to practice this truth with, and the more we practice with each other the more we will be able to know what it is to be in His family.  A sinner brought into the family of God.  We show what we believe God shows us by being that to others.  And when that other, the sinner (like us) does his or her sinful things to us, we get the opportunity and practice to experience how it is for God to receive us in love when we receive their sinner-ness in love.---

"I will kill her children with the plague, 

Then all the churches will know 

that I am the One 

who examines minds and hearts, 

and I will give to each of you 

according to your works."

---lets realize the "THEN..." And take the killing part as a very helpful reminder and warning of what is to come: God's judgment.  It is always this judgment that matters when we consider our actions.  God's judgment is not our judgment of what we think or say is God's judgment.  It is only God's.  So we know only by relationship with Him, and we know relationship with Him by our relationship with one another.  Simple as that.  We are most confronted by what it looks like to have God and sinner meet, when we interact with one another.  Our being like Christ is not just for the sake of being like Christ!  The purpose is so that we will actually know Him in doing so.  You get to know what mercy feels like when you feel the mercy someone gives you!  You get to know what forgiveness looks like when someone forgives you!  You get to know what love looks like when someone loves you!  We must practice our lives of knowing God with one another, lest we fall into the lie that God's judgment is whatever we want it to be.---

"I will also give him the morning star.

Anyone who has an ear 

should listen 

to what the Spirit says 

to the churches."

-Revelation 2:5, 7, 10-11, 23, 28-29 

---listen.  Listen to what the Spirit says to the churches.  To you.  To your church.

The morning star:

So we have the prophetic word 

strongly confirmed. 

You will do well to pay attention to it, 

as to a lamp shining in a dismal place, 

until the day dawns 

and the morning star rises in your hearts. 

-2 Peter 1:19

A lamp.  

A dismal place.

We see the lamp in a dismal place because it's so different from where it stands.  A light in darkness, but this is what we pay attention to.  Both light and dark, joy and suffering, sin and redemption, resistance and surrender...both are together.  Pay attention to it, and God says we will do well.  

The morning star is mysteriously good.  It rises in our hearts, a star rises in our hearts.  Glorious.  I don't know what it will be like for a morning star to rise in my heart, but I know that what God says will happen...will happen for sure.  A morning star will rise in our hearts because He will give it to us.  It's quite unfathomable, but I want that star, and I have a very good feeling that when it rises in my heart I will know when it happens.  

Until then, we pay attention....what have your thoughts been about?  That is where your attention is.  

Tune your attention to the Holy Spirit 

even if just to pray "hello, Holy Spirit, You're here.  Hello."  Everyday.  Until you are attuned to Him, ready to listen with your ears to what the Spirit says."

Jmegrey

How I love

If anyone says, “I love God,” 

yet hates his brother, 

he is a liar. 

For the person

who does not 

love his brother 

he has seen 

cannot love the God 

he has not seen. 

-1 John 4:20

How do we see God?  Do you hear God?  Do you feel His love for you? Do you see Him working in your life?

Sigh. 

I am a mess.  Completely just a mess.  

Partly because of my temperament, I'm emotionally unstable, I'm deferential with people, and I'm always searching for love/validation/joy in the wrong places.  I'm so bad at this, because I'm so scared of being wrong and feeling the threats of that.  Messing up threatens so much!  It does!  People say you can mess up, and I even tell my high school students that they can and will and must be free to mess up, but I confess that I was wrong to be so insensitive about it.  I was wrong to say the words without considering my own attitude about messing up.  I don't mean slipping here or there and looking like a fool, although that could be the case for you, but messing up for me is botching up something that provides an important thing to my life: Love. 

When I mess up it is closely tied to my access to love.  

So then messing up is not just "oops, my bad, sorry," but it's a deep cut at the confidence I feel in being lovable.  Who loves someone that hurts them or wrecks their life?  Merit.  Love is earned.  You earn love by being good and not messing up.  That's how I've experienced it.  First with my parents as they did their best to raise and rear me by teaching me good from bad, then with friends who held grudges when I messed up with them or vice versa, and even with myself. If I accomplished something I got to feel good, but if I screwed up on a project or quit something I let myself feel like a failure.

It's no wonder then that when I said that I loved God I was a liar.  How could I love God when I let everyone and myself never love me by always filtering my feelings with good for good and bad for bad.  Merit.  I let love in based on merit, and so love NEVER got in.  Because love is not based on merit.  I might've called it love because I didn't know any better, but that's not love it's more like a dealing.  I do this good and I let the good feelings in, I do something bad and I let the bad feelings in.  Aside from the fact that I probably also had a delusion about what was actually "good" and "bad," I was not dabbling in matters of love.  I was more about fear.  Fear of the bad and desire for the good because of the fear.  Love as "feeling good" was great, but "feeling bad" was always worse, and I know this because eventually I sort of went about madly just trying to "do good" not really for the good itself but in order to ward off the bad.  It was never a good for the good in itself, but it was a desire to do good in order to make up for a bad or to erase the bad I knew was always down there.  The bad thoughts.  The bad judgments.  The bad feelings.  They were there and I ran away from them by chasing the good.  Always running, hiding, and trying to get love....out of fear. 

Lately I've found that I'm zeroing in on something less ambiguous, less maddening.  I don't have much, but what I do have is the fact that I'm emotionally unstable.  Haha.  It's true.  I feel like that's all I have at times, that and maybe a pretty good understanding of SOME theological doctrines like penal substitution, predestination, and sanctification....but really I don't.  I mean I know, but I don't know in that way that I'm confident to be able to write a paper on it without stressing out.  I know being emotionally unstable is not seen a positive thing. But it's what I have that I'm most sure about.  I know it and I see it active in my life.

Sigh.  But God has been using that in me and it's been bringing me true joys, real love, and an overwhelming sense of assurance that I'm His very unique and darling daughter.  He has been using my crazy emotional instability to tell me He loves me.  So even though it's not always fun to cry at the slightest tug in my heart at the sight of something good or bad, and it's especially a faucet when I get real honest with God about my life and situations, it's also been the most beautiful part about who I am and how God uses me.  I've learned a lot about love this past year because of my surrender of it to God's purposes.  I used to hate feeling things.  I would numb myself in order to not feel anything, I would keep to myself about what was hurting or bothering me.  I just didn't want my feelings to get in the way, because deep down I felt the rumbling of their unstable craziness.  I was afraid to feel. 

But fear....fear is such a coercive enemy.  Fear is a feeling too!  Fear kept me from the freedom to feel and to be loved in all of who I was made to be.  I came to the point where I confronted God and said that if He was truly good and powerful then I could lift the latch off my emotions and let them run wild and He'd be able to handle it.  I told God that He had better be ready for what I was going to open up, namely my emotional instability.  I did this, no, I still do this because I believe that God can handle it.  And I needed Him to show me He would handle it otherwise it was something that blocked me from truly trusting Him.  I didn't want feel everything because I was scared.  Fear kept me bottled up, suppressing what was really there...I was there, and by not letting out all my emotions I was only who I was without them.  In other words, I was not me completely and truly.  But God kept saying He wanted and wants all of me, especially those things that I am afraid will be the death of me.

Man.  Let me say, that for the first 6 months I sobbed uncontrollably almost 3 times a day.  In the car on my way to school, at school in the prayer chapel, and then the most at night in my bed.  I cried so much I got dehydrated, my eyes would be sore and swollen, but God was with me / is with me still in every cry.  I never knew I was THAT sensitive.  Then my fear of people became more specific and apparent.  The smallest jab at my worth or beauty or ability would hurt so badly.  I let it hurt because I let myself feel without defenses.  I never realized I was THAT sensitive to people!  This was a rough stage...I felt like everyone was against me as I walked through a land mine of hurtful jokes, neglected words, and unreturned text message sentiments.  Haha.  Of course I wouldn't cry in front of them (although sometimes I wouldn't be able to wait) I would quickly find a place in secret and it would me and God at a cry fest.  I cried so much.  I was seeing myself more clearly and God was there...always handling it.  I think I even got mad at Him a couple of times, not because He wasn't handling my emotional craziness but because I was getting sick and tired of all the crying.  I wasn't dying from it, in fact they felt pretty awesome, but having sore puffy eyes makes it hard to wear make up let alone show up to public places like class.  I would get mad but then I'd even cry from that because God would just love me....that's how He handled it.  I couldn't even be mad for long! Haha 

Then came the more recent discovery.  I still cry a lot, because I'm more me than I was before in being emotionally unstable.  However, now I understand the looks on people's faces more when they are hurting, the look that burns in my own eyes when I tell God about the things in my life that hurt me.  I hear people more clearly and I even sometimes connect with their spirits as if I'm embracing that deep part of their heart that just wants to be loved, not dealt with, but just loved just as they are.  I start loving them.  

I mean, I don't know.  Love is so sacred that it feels too cheap to say it so quickly...but it's definitely something.  When I'm with people it's like my emotional instability is the vessel God uses to not only fill me with His love but to give it to others.  How could I not when I have known so well the hurt that I've looked at in myself with uncontrollable sobbing?  Hurting people are my people.  

It makes sense that if I say I love God, really love God then it means I have known what it is to feel loved by Him.   Since I could not have first loved unless God first loved me.  Loved in an unmerited way.  Love in my hurt, anger, bitterness, disappointment and sadness.  When I let the wild animal out, the super emotional Jamie....which I thought for sure no one would love, God did.  God continues to love me, and the way in which He uses me in one of my most terrifying weaknesses has changed the way I love others.  

If anyone says, “I love God,” 

yet hates his brother, he is a liar. 

For the person who does not love 

his brother he has seen 

cannot love the God he has not seen.

-1 John 4:20 

I'm not saying that everyone is emotionally unstable, hahaha!  I sure hope not, at least!  That would be too crazy haha.  But I'm saying that we each have our fears that are signs of what we are holding back from God.  And although it may not be that you are emotionally unstable it will probably mean a lot of tears for whatever it is you find is actually embraced by God.  The very thing in you that you fear is most unlovable about you, that...that's probably what God will use to love you most personally.  And I hope you surrender that to Him, because God's love is a mighty rushing wind sweeping your hair back, a snowflake flurry, a world wonder bigger than all wonders, a ravishingly passionate swell of being swept up in rapturous affection, and everything that makes it all worth whatever pain comes your way.  

Jmegrey

I need Real Love

Okay, deep breath, Holy Spirit, what are my real needs today? 

I need to be reminded: 

"Therefore I will always remind you about these things, even though you know them and are established in the truth you have. I consider it right, as long as I am in this bodily tent, to wake you up with a reminder,"

(2 Peter 1:12-13 HCSB)

I need to to know my advocate for when I sin is Jesus, I need to know that my sins committed along the way are taken care of:

"My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father — Jesus Christ the Righteous One."

- 1 John 2:1-4

I need to know Jesus again and again because it feels unbelievable that I should not feel guilty when I sin! Feels that's way, but by faith is not unbelievable.  The less guilty I feel the more loved I feel: so awesome. 

"I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven because of Jesus’ name. "(1 John 2:12 HCSB)

I need to know that what appears to be is not what will always be, because honestly I appear to be so weak and helpless and small and insignificant and poor and weird and awkward, and older: haha BUT we will be like Him one day: perfect.

"Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is."

 (1 John 3:2 HCSB)

I need to know that if I ever want to see God I can find Him in other believers, talking to them, being honest with them, breaking down my defenses before them, having a close relationship with them....is all the same as having a close relationship with God:

"No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us. This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit."

 (1 John 4:12-13 HCSB)

Again, I need to be reminded that ABOVE ALL above faith, above prayer, above reading the Word, above doing good things, above serving others, above using my gifts for God's glory, ABOVE ALL: I need to remember to maintain an INTENSE LOVE for my brothers and sisters.  I need to always keep that in mind.  Above all, love for each other is the most important.  Above all.  I need to remember that when priorities shift ....I need that simple command at the head of everything: to maintain an intense love (INTENSE LOVE, which I don't even know what that looks like but all I know is that it's not a small love or a convenient love or a comfortable love...it is intense ...passionate, crazy, consuming, big love for my brothers and sisters.) for him and her.  It's true that I'm bad at it, but it is the one thing I should be most concerned about since it is ABOVE ALL:

"Now the end of all things is near; therefore, be serious and disciplined for prayer. Above all, maintain an intense love for each other, since love covers a multitude of sins."

-1 Peter 4:7-8 

And again...love for each other in that INTENSE DEGREE is what I need in order to know that I am going God's way.  I am God's child because of the evidence in that my love for others becomes more and more intense:

"This is how God’s children — and the Devil’s children — are made evident. Whoever does not do what is right is not of God, especially the one who does not love his brother."

(1 John 3:10 HCSB)

It's love.

At the start of the day,

Throughout the day, and

At the end of the day....

Ask yourself:  am I loved enough to love others yet?  (The day will reveal the answer)

Love is not forced and it is not laborious or burdensome.  If loving others feels burdensome check yourself!  It should be of utmost importance that you love from a pure heart.  Not from a sacred heart or a self righteous heart...but a pure love is the same love you believe God shows you.  Go for the real intense love.  Fight to know this love.  Because THAT love is God.

Jmegrey

What is a relationship?

How do you define Relationship? 

Luke 10:25-37

The Good Samaritan was about being a neighbor, and Jesus defined "neighbor" by relationship not by affiliation or status.  Being a neighbor meant you loved that person, and loving others was what God said was the greatest commandment....because we know ourselves with certainty, if we've experienced even just a small measure of real love, that it is worth fighting for to know the love God has for us.  Whether that knowing comes from our complete desperation of having lost all that means anything to us (money, looks, achievements, etc) so that we are ravenous for the hope of something so profound or if it comes some other way that I am not familiar with, however we experience the love of God one thing is for sure: it does not fail to entice us for more.

Being a neighbor is a title that is affirmed by relationship, not by proximity of one's house to another or one's ethnicity to another.

Being in relationship.

What does that mean?  How do we define "relationship?" And what are specific differences between a "relationship" and just knowing a lot of things about a person?  Because clearly I can know a lot about President Obama--what his schedule is, what his diet is, what his personality is like, what others think of him, what his likes and dislikes are, but we all know that that does not mean I KNOW president Obama, and it certainly does not mean that I have an actual personal relationship with him.  So how do you know you KNOW God and not just a lot of things about Him?

Is it possible to be in a personal relationship with an invisible God?  (By invisible I merely mean that we can not make plans to have coffee at Starbucks with God or FaceTime with Him.)

So how do we know whether we actually KNOW God and not just a lot about Him? 

Answer:  the Holy Spirit.

"But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; 

....Jesus never lied, and yet we see here that he was emphasizing that what He was about to say was the truth because it was going to sound so unbelievable!  Can you imagine if you were one of his disciples who, having walked with Jesus for 3 years, heard Him teach and heal friends of their sicknesses, being a part of Him meeting the needs of hunger in any situation by blessing the food, and witnessing him bringing loved ones who died come back to life...to be told that it was to their advantage that He ....go away.  Sometimes when loved ones we know leave us it seems that nothing good can come of it, but Jesus also left His disciples and told them it was better for them.  In other words, Jesus  is saying that it would be worse for them if He stayed with them!  Why? It sounds unbelievable!  That's why Jesus had to preface his words with "But ....(seriously) I am telling you guys the truth, just as I always do, but most emphatically right now, perk your ears up to hear Me say what I'm about to say because if you don't listen you won't think it's actually true.  Listen:  IT IS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE THAT I GO AWAY."

for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you."

-John 16:7

Right there.  Him.  The Helper. 

As awesome as Jesus was, to realize that God had come to earth in flesh and bone-- He was embodied just as we are and that means He could only be in a real relationship with only a handful of people, namely the 12 disciples.  Why only 12?  Because being in a relationship is not in the words or pictures but it is in the knowing, and knowing someone means spending time with them, sharing deep secrets them, going through trials and celebrating with them.  A real relationship means messing up and needing forgiveness, it means trusting the other person to be there for you, it means relying on the other person to meet your needs and to allow the other person to fail but to remain committed nonetheless.  That's a real relationship.  It's about loving one another.  So how was it that Jesus leaving would be better in terms of his disciples being more loved and more closer to Him if He left them?  It must have sounded so difficult to believe, to trust, that what you have always known for so long to provide you with that love that sustained you to suddenly go away....be gone.  And yet, that is exactly what Jesus did and He did so for a reason.  

The Holy Spirit isn't hindered by things like needing to sleep, travel, or eat.  Because He is Spirit He can enter our hearts and KNOW US deeply.  And understanding that because He is Spirit He does know all of what's in our hearts, even more than we might like Him to, this frees us up to be loved more powerfully by God.  The disciples knew Jesus and Jesus knew them, but He could only reach their assent of them acknowledging that He knew them based on how most humans know another: through time spent together, things spoken in conversation and visible things.  The disciples would probably not have been able to really believe how Jesus could personally know what they did not share with Him because it might have felt coercive or invasive to them, and a relationship is about mutual trust.  Jesus knew that, and that's the way God intended us to be, because He is about that relationship.  He is about us knowing we are loved by Him and then choosing to love Him in return.

The Spirit, then, is our most intimate access to the heart of God, and it is also His most intimate access to our hearts.  To have the Spirit in us is have God in us!  So we have access to God's heart and He has access to ours!  It is a relationship of mutual trust.  So when we say we have the Holy Spirit we are saying we know the heart of God!  We know God the same way we know our closest friend and confidant.  And because this saying is so unbelievable Jesus said, "it is to your advantage that I go away."  The only thing better than Jesus in the flesh with us, is God in Spirit within us!  If you had a device that could read minds it would tell you everything someone thought about you, and that sounds so crazy and invasive....but we have to know WHY that sounds crazy and invasive.  Isn't it because our inmost thoughts are pretty vulgar and there are things we just don't want people to know that we think.  Why?  Because we believe that if they did they would leave us, think badly of us, or just run screaming in the opposite direction.  No one would want someone to have that kind of device and use it on them for THAT REASON.  But...what if the person who had that device promised us that it would be used to help us overcome areas of fear, and that upon looking at the naked truth about our thoughts would love us in those dark places.  What if we understood that such a device in the hands of someone who loved us would actually only increase their love for us?  Perhaps perfect love would cast out the fears we have in the first place of such a device.  Maybe.  

The relationship, or amount of love that Godbhas for us does not change but something changes.  We change.  We change in the amount or the depth we realize of how deep He actually does love us.  We think we know how much God loves us, but we don't!  That's why so many Christians live the way they do despite the knowledge that Christ died for them.  They don't live like they are loved to the degree that they are.  They live like they are loved to the degree that they accept as true. 

Something significant changes when God's Spirit enters our hearts.  

It's like dating for 5 years, and then getting married and sleeping together for the very first time.  Two naked people joining together and being so exposed to one another, so intimate, and so vulnerable yet willing...it's different now.  You thought kissing was exciting and intimate while you were dating and then there's sex within a marriage that takes you into a whole new level of intimacy.  At least that's how we all see and know it is supposed to be.  But things aren't the way they are supposed to be, and we can deeply sense a need for them to be made right.  We sense that healing and restoration and redemption are needed.  But that's another agenda.  

That's what changes.  Two people are still in a relationship (from dating relationship to married relationship) but now the level of intimacy has significantly increased.  The pleasure of knowing your spouse more and being known by them needs to deepen for the relationship to deepen in intimacy.  This continual movement towards one another in love and trust and vulnerability is the best illustration for God's Spirit drawing near to us relationally.  However, just like in the example, if one person in the marriage retracts, hides or ignores the other than it is literally impossible for the relationship to deepen in intimacy.  In fact, it can feel annoying or intrusive.  You cannot be intimate with an un-intimate person.  It doesn't work that way.  It requires mutual assent, mutual trust, mutual adoration, mutual value and mutual responsibility.  

Hear me when I say this, our responsibility to God's Spirit in us is to be intimate with Him for intimacy to occur.  So what does it mean to be intimate with Him?  It means to be in relationship with Him, to know Him not just know about Him. It means you trust Him and you accept that He loves you, accept that He cares about your needs, accept that He knows all of you.  There are no strings attached in a real relationship built on love.  You don't do something to merit a return result...that's not a relationship that's pro-quid-pro, otherwise called a contract agreement.  

You go to Him just as you are.  You allow Him to love you.  You open your heart to His request that You assent to His knowing all of you, accepting all of you, accepting your bad ugly parts, loving you in your sins, and accepting your half ass everything.  You think you know how to love without first knowing His love?  You think you know how to give good gifts without first accepting His gift?  You think you can do something good for Him without Him first doing something good for you EVERY TIME?   You think He doesn't see that feeling of shame and guilt in you even though you claim to believe that He paid for that with His very own blood?  That guilt and shame you feel is more of the sin than the actual sin, because it is giving power to sin rather than power to Him! 

I am writing this because I am here.  I am just a broken girl with nothing to offer.  And I am realizing more and more that no one has anything to offer.  Which makes me feel good because I hate comparisons.  I hate comparisons because when I start to compare how much more I do or how much prettier I am, skinnier I am, smarter I am, right I am, liked by people I am, gifted I am, successful I am, richer I am than someone else....It's freaking exhausting to stay on top of my game, and even when I do (of course these times are a self delusion that I hold to just to make me feel better about myself) I am always in fear of losing it.  When the truth pervades this space of comparison by flattening me out with equal value and responsibility as the bum holding the "God bless you, please feed me" sign on the side of the road, I see who the bigger phony is: me.  At least the bum recognizes the reality of his state more truly because of his poverty being so apparent to him!  But before God we all fall flat on our faces.  Not one of us has a single tiny speck of something, anything to give to God.  You are the same value as the bum and president Obama.  You are the same value as your secretary and as John Piper or the apostle Paul.  Crazy!  All we have is what we accept.  All I can do is accept His forgiveness, accept His mercy, accept His grace for every rebellious act, accept His love and gifts for me ...for my empty beggar hands that have nothing.  Then when we start to accept all of Him, maybe just maybe we will begin to actually grow in knowing Him and not just about Him.

The Spirit of God doesn't need what you have if you have nothing, but He needs you to accept what He gives you so that you CAN do what His will is.  You think going on missions or planting churches, feeding the homeless, building schools, or donating millions of dollars will be in the context of being for the glory of God?  For His kingdom purposes?  It will mean nothing if you do not first have Him in you and you in Him. If Jesus could break 5 loaves and 2 fish for 5000 people to eat with leftovers, I think it makes sense to say that He doesn't need a radical game plan from you, He can use exactly what you have even if that's a short attention span and a truckload of issues.  Which describes myself.  God has given us exactly and everything we need...because ALL we need is Him.  His very heart in us and ours in His.  But our biggest obstacle is our willingness to accept Him.  

We resist and we resist and we resist, sigh.....and we resist.  We resist intimacy with the Holy Spirit.  Instead of a relationship we try to get approval from Him.  We don't let the Spirit's presence in us have much meaning ... A presence without meaning does not make much of an impact.  If your darling lover walks into the room after a long and stressful day and gives you a smile that means they love you ....in that presence there is the meaning of love that wraps around you and makes you feel safe and even ready to take on whatever was worrying you just prior to there arrival.  However, if your darling lover walks into the room but it's more like a stumble because they've been drinking all day and they stare blankly at you with annoyance and then slump down on the couch knocking out cold it is void of any good meaning.  It means something completely different. 

Presence of the Holy Spirit is all in the meaning of your relationship to Him.  What does His presence really mean to us?  For me, His presence really means ambiguity, mystery and a fickle feeling.  It's no wonder I don't trust God or submit to His will as much as I claim to want to.  I need the real Him!  I need to be intimate with Him!  No one can tell you about your relationship with God because it's that personal.  But when I share about my relationship it should reflect some of your relationship because you and I are only as good to God as we are to one another.  

Your relationship with God is also your relationship with others.  You offer them what you receive from God.  If you can love others then you know it's because God gave you that love to give.  

So take an honest look at your relationship to God.  All you need is His Spirit, which is better than having Jesus in the flesh with you, why?  Because of the intimate relationship that allows the Spirit to reveal to you your darkest sins in order for you to acknowledge them and accept His love in deeper measures...which in turn you then have in order to offer to others.  You cannot offer love if you first do not get love for your sins.  I have so many sins!  I'm rich with sins!  They are my tokens to love.  I get love because I have sins unending, and this means no fear in letting the Spirit intimately know me and show me every one of them in exchange for love.  

Yes.  This feels true.  This validates the tears I cry almost every night.  This is worth it.  It's worth the pain I feel when acknowledging the depth of my sadness and my failures as a person and deep wounds in my soul from people I loved, to get the love that God gives me in return. 

"Be a sinner and sin boldly,

but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly."

-Martin Luther 

Luther wrote this to those who have already confessed their sins, repented of them and decided to follow Jesus.  From there on it's all about growth in the gospel.  Maturity is going into the new relationship.  It is about intimacy with God and with others.  Knowing God and being known.  No one has arrived yet, so stop comparing your spiritual life to someone else's.  God will use the bum if He so finds that the bum needs God more than you do.  All you need to get God is to accept that He loves you.  That is all you need.  

So I encourage you to join me in allowing the Holy Spirit to show you what is hindering you from letting Him love you, and break those walls down with love, truth, and a faucet of grace.  It means finding that you are desperate in an increasing measures...and that is growth.  Every level of desperation is a level to have more love to give...a place of flowing rivers that do not dry up.  Real love casts out all fear, and when you have no fear you have more room for courage and peace and joy to come in.  It's all in the relationship with God in you and you in Him.  The Spirit of God is calling you now ...he wants to get intimate.  How are you responding to Him when He shows you something you don't want to see? When He shows you the fear?  The loneliness?  The sadness?  The failures?  The dashed dreams?  The pain?  The insecurity.  

"Therefore, leaving the elementary message about the Messiah, 

let us go on to maturity, 

not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, faith in God,"

-Hebrews 6:1 

"We have this hope 

as an anchor for our lives, 

safe and secure. 

It enters the inner sanctuary 

behind the curtain. 

-Hebrews 6:19 

Jmegrey 

Fighting fear

“What you live is what you believe…

Everything else is just talk.”

-Laurie Polich

I live a very routine kind of life.  I wake up around 8am every morning, I brush my teeth, wash my face, use the bathroom, and fix myself a cup of coffee.  All the while there’s a fire inside of my soul being watered down by droughts of doubt, rains of trouble, clouds of oncoming hurt, and overall surrounded by walls of unawareness-desensitizing my view of what’s going on.  

I sometimes feel as though I’m being led down a majestic hallway (being told that it gets better if I keep going), and every now and then I’ll get a peek at the corridors I’m being shoved past, and something inside of me wants to stop and explore where they lead to.  Something inside of me wants to know.  I want to know.  I want to know the truth.  Where am I going?

I think the desire to know is something deep down inside of everyone, but the ability or the opportunity to know takes too great a risk or seems hopelessly bad for us (especially when what is shoving us down the hall is telling us we can't stop, and if we do we risk what's at the end of these majestic halls...thinking it's really going to be good...but it's such a gamble!)  To know could mean to reveal something as good to be bad, or to reveal something as bad to be good.

I just want to know the truth, because the truth …the truth is good, and as much as I may enjoy some of the lies that have protected me in some form from the big bad truth, lies always tend to erode away at our souls.  Eventually your feet will tire of passing the corridors, because it will look endless.  You start questioning things.  You cannot hide from the truth forever, because the truth never changes.  It is THE truth, not A truth.  We can work our way towards truths in our lives, one truth leads to another lie that we expose, and then that truth leads us to another lie, and so on, but eventually we will have to face the ultimate and final truth: God.  Is God at the end of this majestic hall we are being pushed down by something?  Is God a gamble?  Or could we stop and explore the corridors and know something more about the truth, about Him?

All those little truths, the deeper you go the more they hurt to expose them.  And I mean they hurt like the way someone crushes your fingers in a door hinge, or how a deep paper cut feels.  The levels of pain range, but they hurt for real.  At first it might be an obvious truth that you need to face like how your addiction to that one thing is really bad.  You have to face it, and it’s hard, but you kind of always knew it was bad.  It’s a truth that you face in order to face the deeper truth that you wanted to keep it covered because you were afraid of the way uncovering it would turn out.  Then when you face that uncovered truth, the truth that perhaps you were weak without it, that it somehow gave you fortitude to face other stresses in life, you find yourself without that particular shield in hand, still in a battle against your fears and unknowns.  Then that truth takes you further into another truth: being that you have no shield in hand, and you are left a little more vulnerable to others.  (now, there could be a number of weapons we pry from our hands—not just addictions, but our anger or our indifference, work-ethic, schedules, fashion, attention from others, busyness, etc.—all of these are false weapons we need to drop in the face of a tumultuous war.)  

The hardest part is that the more we drop our weapons and shields the more we see the devastation and the bombs being dropped around us.  We come out of hiding and we see the truth more and more, there’s a war going on and it doesn’t look hopeful from our position.  But in order to put on the armor of God we need to take ours off.

The other day I was taking the trash out and tripped on something that took a nice big chunk out of my Achilles heel.  I stammered back into the kitchen to clean it, and as I stood with the water faucet running over a paper towel, my head got really light.  I felt lightheaded in a bad way, in a heavy way.  My head was leaving but in its place something heavy was happening.  I knew something was wrong, but the fear of the truth made me fight so hard to believe otherwise.  I wanted to be okay, because the truth that I was not okay was too scary.  I started searching for a way to survive, my mind works well when I’m arguing, haha.  So I was arguing my way against the way my body was not responding, thinking: “you’re fine, this is all in your head (literally), and you can beat this.  You can beat this because you can!  You’re able to fight this because you can!  Stay alert!  Stay ready!”  It was overwhelmingly strong and I would fight it by sitting down.  So I made my way to the nearest sofa, and by that time my hearing was a heavy muffle, my vision became greyscale, and I was now fighting just to breathe.  In that moment of what felt like 15 minutes (more like 15 seconds in real time), I was stripped of my last dignity: me.  I had nothing left, this was it, and I was forced to face the truth in my last moments.  I remember my thoughts directed somewhere, maybe to God, maybe just to my defeated self, but I was facing the reality of the situation.  I faced the fact that I was slipping, that I could possibly die right then and there, and no one would know until they found my body.  More than that, I faced the reality of the way I have lived my life, it wasn’t that I started thinking of all my accomplishments or even the people who loved me, but it was this fear and sadness.  Fear that I had no clue what death would really like…to move on to a world without a body was completely unknowable, I had no way of preparing myself in the strain of the oncoming moment.  All I knew was that it felt so strange to no longer have command over my body, the way I saw or raised my feet or opened my eyes—all of that was gone.  I was just me, somewhere deeper down inside of the body that was crumpling without my consent.  I felt sadness because I saw my cheap decisions.  I make so many cheap decisions.  Quick-fix-it, microwave decisions.   The lies I tell myself to keep from facing the real hard truth.  The stubborn things I do out of convenience.  It all looked so cheap in that moment, because here I was facing the actual reality of possibly dying, and I wasn’t ready, I was so unprepared.  So I made some cliché promises to God, things like “I’ll stop doing all the bad things I do that I am aware of!”  Really what I was saying was that I would stop making cheap decisions.  I was telling God that I would face the truth.  I was desperate, and desperate people say very desperate things.

I thought I passed out on the floor, but thinking about now, I think my body sort of unhitched itself from my command and I was consciously quiet as I lay on the cold marble floor of my kitchen.  I had nothing left to think about or say. All I could do at that point was wait.  I remember my eyes closing for what seemed like 5 seconds, and then I was back.  I was back to my usual self…meaning I had control over this body of mine.  I still lay there a little dumbfounded, but it wasn’t long before relief took over my entire self. 

I didn’t die.

It’s not unlike- letting the weapons we hold against the truth about the war going on in our lives- go.  I was facing the reality of the absolutely ZERO control I had, and the oncoming death before me.  It was frightening.  But it was the most truthful moment, more true than the moments we have with the ability to raise our feet off the ground or see something in front of us.  The fact that we have control over our bodies in some way is quite deceiving, because we all know that at death these bodies will no longer be anything.  Yet we bank so much on them…what they do, what they look like, where they go, etc.  We see them as ours rather than as vessels.  They are bodies but they have a purpose too, and the truth I faced was that they actually have a really grand purpose.  My body was being slain by the cheap decisions I made, and the truth was that as I hid one truth I also hid my body’s purpose.  Hiding my body’s purpose also hid part of my courage.  I mean it all gets affected.  The more we cloak ourselves in lies, the more we veil our faces from the ugly truth, the more we distance ourselves from all that God is for us and has for us.  The farther away we are from God the closer we are to isolation.  We just let ourselves be maddeningly led down a seemingly hopeful hallway, but really we don't know much of what's really at the end.  And you don't know until you're near the end: death.  

God is not about endorsing your lies, He’s about you getting closer to the truth, to Himself.  To the reality of what’s really going on, and let me tell you, it’s the same for everyone.  We are all closing our eyes to the devastation before us because it’s painful to see, it’s heavy, and on top of all that we have no control over what we see, feel, or do.  All we have is the truth:  that we are so vulnerable and naked in the midst of bombs dropping, people killing each other and death crouching around every corner.  Doesn’t that sound terrible?  Because it is.  Once we face the truth with open eyes and take it all in with our frailty in hypersensitive mode, then maybe we will actually trust in God with all our hearts, minds and strength.  Because at this point, it’s exposed for what that is: nothing.  It’s all God.  He sees us trying to dodge bombs with blindfolds on, and we reject His voice to take off the false protections, and even then...even when we reject Him,  He takes the hit for each of us.  He is bombed and shot at, knifed, and hit where we were supposed to be.  

That is the gospel.  

That while we were still sinners Christ died for us the death we were on the way to getting.  This is the truth of everyone’s life:  we are in a battle and Christ won it for us.  So it’s okay to see how naked and vulnerable we are.  We are free to seek out the truth in our lives.  To let go of the fears that blindfold us or the anger that seems to threaten our sense of self.  My and your sense of self is the same: we are all riding into battle as naked children piggybacking on Jesus.

If this is something you can't believe at all or it just sounds completely ridiculous then that's that.  The bible doesn't promise that everyone will be saved, but if you feel the desire or the curiosity-even if just as an ember- fan that baby into flame!

It’s messy.  The part about facing the truth is messy because there are so many lies.  Things hurt us, people hurt us, we hurt ourselves, and in the process we put our feelings as truth, rather than as directors.  Feelings direct us to the next lie.  They do not define the lie, but they DIRECT us to the truth if we use them to search the root projecting them.  God created us to feel for a reason.

We can do this because of the gospel.  It is finished and our freedom is in knowing the truth by ridding ourselves of the lies.  It is for freedom that we have courage to face the truth.  

We mess up because when we expose one lie, the next lie is there already!  The battle is fierce, but underneath it all is the courage and the grace and the power we are given through the finished work of Jesus…to face it, to mess up, and to cry like a child on the back of Jesus.

And we band together in this process with everyone else…because Jesus’s back is actually a lot bigger than what we think – metaphorically.  We are more like His entire body.  He is the Head and we are all together His body, and the more we acknowledge one another, the more we acknowledge Him.  We see the value in one another.  The need for the other.  We love one another.\

Perhaps we begin this process:

Think first,

Talk less,

Listen more.

(repeat)

“So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as He is so also are we in this world.  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.  WE love because he first loved us.” – 1 John 4:16-19

Do you still feel fear?  Let the Word of Truth show you that you are thinking of punishment...in some deeper root your fear has to do with punishment.  You are loved.  Fight for perfect love, fight against the fear, and open your eyes to the truth.

All I can do is open my eyes to love more,

-Jmegrey

Remember who the real enemy is

My counselor said something like this: 

"Jamie, do you think you're worth it?"

"Excuse me?" I thought to myself.

I was taken aback by her question, more than answering in simple honesty I immediately searched for the implications of what she was wanting from me.  What sort of trick psychological question was that?  Was she trying to point out something or show me something without directly just saying it?  Did she think I was incapable of handling the truth?!  She clearly does not know me, I thought.  I know way more than her about myself, so I was determined to figure out what she was trying to do.  (As you might imagine this is how exhausting I make things for myself sometimes, haha) This frustrated me, and instead of just answering the question, I tried to figure things out, giving her answers like "well, that depends...do you mean my worth in Christ or my worth as a sinner?"

I wanted her to know that I knew what she was trying to do, or if not some game then I wanted to be able to let her know I knew the right answer if she'd give me more information.  Bottom line:  I wanted to be right. 

Being wrong feels so crappy.  It's invalidating and just feels plain icky--like you need help, because you're weak and you can't get it on your own.  You're crippled.  That's why people usually hate when others feel sorry for them and lash out in anger or indifference.  They hear themselves being wrong as being crippled when clearly they are not.  It's a response to show that they are okay, they are not invalid and they can take care of themselves, thank you very much.  This is how I see myself usually responding to help from others, concern from others, and advice from others.  In the end I hardly ever consider that what you're saying is really for me than it is for you to feel good about yourself.  

And then I began to learn about the reverse perspective.  There is another response to being wrong, and that is being loved.  It sounds so counter intuitive, because the moment someone points out my wrong I am filled with instant defiance and distrust towards that person.  Eventually I become indifferent toward them.  I create a wall between that person and myself when all along I could have been creating inroads for connection and deeper love.  What I mean is this:  prior to feeling invalidated was a deeper feeling that I wasn't truly loved by that person, or that I wasn't truly lovable.  So then naturally, a negative remark, even if it was truly tough love for my own benefit, is more like an assault on my character or personality.  However, if prior to the remark I had a deep understanding that I was lovable and that people would probably want to give me love more than tear me down, then I'd give their negative remark the benefit of the doubt and view it as something hurtful but also possibly loving.  It reveals what I really feel about myself and about others.  Do I feel lovable, and do I think others are capable of meeting my needs to be loved?  Or do I feel unlovable and that people are incapable or meeting my needs to be loved.  Deep down, we all need love--"all you need is love."

However, getting to your naked soul regarding this matter of your true sense of self and sense of others is not a permanent place.  It's the necessary springboard, the only springboard, from which you can begin to work with the Holy Spirit to change and transform you--to truly and deeply renew your sense of self and sense of others. 

To continue my story with my counselor, in the end, as usual, my attempts fell short at the simplicity of being honesty and I finally admitted:

 "I don't know what you mean."

--saying this was laced with a feeling that she had won, and I would be waiting for her to lord it over me...because at this point I no longer had it in me to fight against the hope that my desperation to change brought up.  

Well lo and behold she didn't lord it over me, but only from there could we actually make any real connections in the conversation, which at its aim was for me.  

So I didn't know.  And she saw that as a fact not a problem.  And I felt safe to talk to her further. 

In The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Haymitch reminds Katniss to "remember who the real enemy is."

As I continue this journey called "life" and stumble and soar all along the way, (definitely more stumbling than soaring, haha) I can forget who my enemy is.  Is my enemy the person who hurt me with a negative remark or is my enemy the one who tries to steal my worth in Christ?  The two may seem to be the same, but they're not.  Your enemy is not the person who looks down on you, misunderstands you, or judges you.  Why?  BECAUSE EVERYONE DOES THAT eventually, and that would make everyone our potential enemy.  Being hurt, judged or misunderstood  by someone is more like an opportunity to connect.  

IMPORTANT: we connect most deeply with those we accept most unconditionally. 

God's love is unconditional and it's probably the reason we are able to be filled and satisfied by it so powerfully.  We, going to Him as filthy sinners, find His love for us is there because Christ died the death we were heading towards--motivated by joy.  His joy: us.  Why?  No reason!  Just because.  No conditions. 

So it would make sense that when someone, a fellow broken vessel and sinner comes at us with their filthiest, we respond with love like Christ does for us, then a connection begins to form--similar to the connection we have with God!  A deeply compelling and satisfying love can grow from such an opportunity!  But it's scary, because it's risky--trust is risky.  Both trust that things will work out and trust that God has your back if they don't.  But to be sure, there is only one enemy of ours out there, and He wants to steal, kill, and destroy you.

The next time someone hurts you with their words or actions, please take a second to breathe deeply and remember who the real enemy is.  Let love begin to make connections rather than walls, because walls are what divide the body of Christ, and our unity is our life source.  

Remember who the real enemy is:

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; 

I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

-John 10:10

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

 -John 13:34

As we face our relationships with one another, stumbling and doing a kind of awkward dance, wading through countless ordinary moments to get to extraordinary ones, take the time to remember that in our obedience to love one another we are on our way to have life, and have it abundantly!  It's worth it because of the life we get.  So remember who the real enemy is when you become vulnerable and take hold of the hope that a connection of love can be made.  

You are worthy of love, and that also means others are worthy of love, and if we are all worthy of love then we are all capable of loving one another.  Trust that God designed us to love one another, and that is why He commanded us to. 

I feel this so much in me, because I am so bad at loving others and broken at the capacity to truly feel loved by others.  And taking a deeper look at my naked soul reveals a hurtful truth that I can take to begin allowing God to enter in this process with me.  Only with Him can I begin to revise the core beliefs within me about myself and about others. 

Remember, who the real enemy is, 

Jmegrey