ElliottThinks @ellthinks - Tumblr Blog

Never Convenient

There’s never a convenient time to follow Jesus. Never a perfect moment. You'll never "get settled" enough, you'll never be making enough money, you'll never have a "stable enough" job. The moment comes and goes, Jesus calls and the door is opened, but too many of us miss "waiting for the right moment." There will never be a right moment.

Saying yes to Jesus almost always involves some sort of sacrifice. From little things like giving up sleep for quiet times in the morning, to big things like leaving a relationship, moving away from home, giving up an opportunity. When we choose to obey Jesus, we are actually saying no to a lot of things, and that looks different for every person.

I sing it a lot, but only recently do I understand “he is jealous for me.” He is jealous for our yes. Jesus puts a demand on our hearts, and we must decide if we will say no, not yet, or yes. If we will give it up, If we will sacrifice things, even good things, in order to say yes to Jesus. He is worth it. He is worth it all.

-ell

Process

Walking out Life with Jesus is not a walk in the park, neither is marriage a "happily ever after." Yes it's fulfilling and worth it, but not without it's share of tension, frustration, tears, and mess. But somehow we get it in our heads that successful relationships look like smooth rides, so we get afraid of the tension, we avoid the mess, and we cover up our feelings. We can't be afraid to face all that stuff. Deep relationships only go deep when we allow ourselves to dig up our junk, when we allow ourselves to get dirty, when we face and walk out the process. The messy, scary, frustating, process. Neither is our relationship with God supposed to be this Disneyland euphoric experience. We need to allow ourselves to walk through, talk through, wrestle through our junk with The Lord. He's not afraid of our anger, he's not phased by our frustration at him, he's not shocked at our lack of faith. Walk out and lay out all of who you are before The Lord, your messy, angry, broken, and scared self, because God wants to walk with you through the process. Deep relationship with Jesus doesn't happen from happily ever afters, it's when we're not afraid to walk with him through the process. -ell

Everyone loves hearing and singing stuff like, "it's a new season! He's upgrading your life! The desert is over." We'll make our own prophetic words, We're so quick to move on when The Lord has told us to stay. We're so quick to opt out of pain, misery, and the refiners fire when God has not finished his work. We think we've gone through enough hardships when we haven't experienced squat. A dry month is not a desert season. Make it a dry two years, then we are getting somewhere. But we get sick of it, so we self proclaim our new seasons and new dreams and new visions when he says, "not yet, not yet, not yet." How long can we sit in the place of desert, the place of unknown, the crappy non euphoric, I-can't-hear-Jesus, I feel insane, broken and scared refiners fire? -ell

Stripped of Everything

I notice God has a way of bringing us to the depths in order to draw us back to the core of his heart. I don't have scriptural reference for this, but I'd say that on average, there are somewhere around 3-4 points in our lives where God allows us to be brought into a season and place where we are in the valley of valleys. Literally stripped of everything and brought to the lowest of lows. A place of complete despair, the place where we are literally dancing the line of life and death. A violent, and dark place where we are stripped of everything we hold dear, every possession, all our pride, even our own health, and we recognize:

#1: we are very very weak mortal beings

#2: I need the real Jesus right now.

Not the fairy tale, intangible, conceptual, Sunday messag-ual, bible study intellectual Jesus. Real, real manifest presence of Jesus. Right here, right now. And I'm not talking about "I just broke up with my boyfriend" moment, or a "omg I just flunked my class" moment. Not even a "omg this has been a bad month" moment. I'm talking literally, you have been brought into a season where you reach a place where feel like you are about to die and everything is taken away. You are on the brink of insanity and mental breakdown and you recognize, if I don't have Jesus, I am going to die."

I've had the bittersweet opportunity to see God break men, men who stand on the pedestals of their own name they've built from ministry positions to others. I don't even claim I've gone through such a moment. But I've seen how they reach a place where nothing else matters but Jesus. Every ounce of pride is destroyed, everything they hold of worth is burned away, and we are left with nothing but our naked hearts laid bare before the Living God.

It's in that place where we see we are really nothing, but he sets again a pure flame that burns in pure love for him. The pride to our name is laid waste, our toys are surrendered, our eyes locked on him again. And God says, "Now you are beginning to get it. Now I can use you."

-ell

God has destined us to change nations. With us and the Holy Spirit, we can do anything. He has commissioned us to alter organizations and change atmospheres. But sometimes we are so inward focused, so self focused, caught up and entangled in us and me that we never look up and out at what God is doing.

-ell

Jesus always does what is good, but does not often what we want. Realize that. -ell

Success is not about results. It's not about numbers. It's not even about people. It's obedience. In God's economy obedience and partnership with him is by far a more indicative measure of success. At the end of the day, God doesn't need you to accomplish anything, he is looking for men humble enough to hear him, and in love enough to obey him in action. And he will do as he desires. -ell

Grace to do things.

Someone asked me the other day why I didn't have a girlfriend. I told them I was just enjoying my single years, but then I thought about it more, and realized it's mostly because I don't feel God is giving me the grace to go into that season of my life. What I mean by that, is that in our life, we make hundreds and hundreds of decisions. And the decision is not between something good or bad, it's not a matter of good vs. evil, black or white. And when you look in the Bible, there's not a specific answer.

For example, decisions like "God, There's two job offers on the table, which one should I take?" Or "God, how do you want me to plan out the next year of my life?" Or "God, should I send my kid to daycare or hire a house nanny?" There's a bunch decisions that are very "gray" in nature and the only way we figure it out is by going to God in prayer and asking the Holy Spirit.

As we ask the Holy Spirit, listen to his voice, and hear the bits and pieces of his heart, we start to realize there's some things he gives a grace for, and some things he does not. "Yes ell, let's focus on missions, but I want you to do inner city missions rather than the missons trip to China this year..." or "Yes ell, take this job. There's things I want to teach you through those people." or "Ell, look into this internship opportunity rather than the other one, there's key people I'm going to let you meet through this."

And so that's what I have felt towards relationships. I don't feel a "grace" to go into it. It's not a right or wrong thing; it's just that in your conversations with God, you sense and know it's not the right time. As we walk through the seasons of our life, God gives grace for certain things in our lives, and other things, not so much.

Ask the Holy Spirit.

-ell

No awkward moments with Jesus

Jesus needs to be so real in our lives that there is never an awkward moment or place to personally and internally acknowledge his presence. Where in our lives do we find it awkward to acknowledge Jesus? In what hangouts, conversations we have, parties we throw is Jesus not welcome? There in lies a disparity. Every area of our lives must welcome in the presence of God. His presence will not be divided, He will not be compartmentalized into what is convenient for us, Jesus will not merely have "some of your heart." When we sing for him to "set a fire down in our souls that we contain or control" we welcome him to be welcome in every single, breathing, moment of our day, every square inch of our mind, every beat of our heart. -ell

Reconnecting with God.

There's times where I've felt so disconnected from the heart of God. My heart has been so full of stuff, that I felt like I couldn't hear him. It's so scary when you have the love of God snuffed out of your life, and you just can't hear and feel him the same anymore. You feel truly alone.

Then I would feel like I was in this cycle: this repeating story of trying to come back to him, but failing. So trying again, but failing. Trying and failing, trying and failing. And in my failure to be faithful to him, I thought Jesus was mad me.

In those moments where I've felt so powerless in my own strength, it's been Jesus that has walked into the brokenness. It's usually in worship or whatnot, but he just walks in and his presence is overwhelming. And the first thing he usually says to me is just, "I love you." I used to get so confused, because I thought, "God, even after all my unfaithfulness, after how I've treated you, you love me?" One time God said to me, "Ell, I don't love you because you did anything, I love you because I love you, and I want you to learn how to receive that."

God is good. He comes to rescue us out of our cycles of human striving, and brings us right up into his lap. And we just sit. We sit with Abba, and we're not trying to do something. But we are just with him. For me in those moments, it's usually me crying so hard, and him just holding me saying, "I love you, I love you."

Then all those weeks and months we were trying so hard to make it right, is made right by one repentance, and by one encounter with God. God makes right the relationship with one word from the Lord, one encounter with his love.

Friends, our disconnectedness with God is nothing we can fix on our own strength. I've found I need God to even love God. It's a spirit issue. We don't need to read another Christian book, listen to another sermon. We just come before him in his presence, and confess. Simple words, "I'm sorry. I messed up. I have so much junk." And we wait. We wait for his presence, and we sit and wait.

"More than the watchmen wait for the morning. To still and quiet our souls." God is good, he will answer.

-ell

Bring it all

Sometimes we don't come to God in worship with all of who we are. It's like 50%, and that is usually the "I exalt thee, oh how I love you, you are so good" part of heart, when the other 50% of our messy, angry, confused, frustrated, burnt out part is withheld. We get this idea that we need to withhold that from God, like somehow he doesn't want that part of us, or somehow he'd be shocked and phased if we were to bring our mess before him. God wants all of us. All of our praise, but also all of our mess. He's not phased by your weakness. He's not standing in heaven, shocked saying, "You really did that?" He's not stressing out, saying "oh no oh no he's doubting me." He knows every part of us. Every detail of our heart Bring it all. Bring it all and lay it at his feet. Sometimes we need to lay out all our mess before he can start to piece things together. Sometimes you need to barf up all your ish before The Lord before you can come to the place of, "but I will trust in you." "But you are good." -ell

I think sometimes that as we get older, we get this idea that we've "arrived" spiritually. We've figured God out, and we kind of reach this plateau of spiritual growth. So we stop focusing on spiritual growth and formation.

We still have a lot to learn.

-ell

Realize that just because you are going to church and serving, does not guarantee that you are connected to the heart of God. So many times we serve and teach and pray out of a spiritually bankrupt heart. The key is not to read another Christian book, sing another song, have another conversation with a friend about it.

It’s a spirit issue, and that can only be resolved when we come directly to the presence of God, just you and him, and you reconcile to his heart.

God longs to breathe life into your spirit again, look not to the relief of the end of the year or summer for that, come directly into his presence.

-ell

Sometimes we are looking for a fresh encounter with the Lord through someone giving us a great worship service or a message when Jesus is simply calling us to come directly to him and meet him again in the secret place.

God is still in the business of working miracles. He is still all about redemption, he is still about joy, and he is still so about you. There is more.

-ell

Whatever your paradigm of who Jesus is, there’s more. There’s more things that God desires to do in you, there’s more healing and and redemptive work in your heart that has yet to be done, there’s more of God’s presence that you have yet to experience in your life. There’s is a purpose and calling that God is desiring to take us deeper into.

But we get this idea that we have this whole Christianity and Jesus thing figured out. So what happens is we kind of just sit around. We don’t really do much. We get into this kind of mechanical mode where we go to church and hear another message. We sing another song and read another passage and we think “This is it. This is what relationship with Jesus looks like.” And while God is knocking on the door of our hearts, we sit around and never consciously progress forward into the things He has for us.

The thing is God has a knack for disrupting our paradigm. Just when We think we figured it out, Jesus comes in, and starts to do things. He starts to dismantle our ideas, he starts to kill dreams, he leads us into a fire, he asks us to let go of things, and we’re like, “Jesus no no no! What are you doing!” And somehow at the end, we realize, he is longing to take us deeper.

Jesus is longing to take you deeper. There is more. Press into that.

-ell

Holiness and Consecration

Holiness is what happens when we begin to love what God loves, and to hate what he hates. When you have a crush on someone, everything they like to do suddenly becomes your favorite thing to do. When we are so in-love with God, his standards become our standards. Consecration is to set apart ourselves for the Lord. To lay down, start doing, stop doing, sacrifice things, so that we may begin living exclusively for his purposes.

Why do I talk about Holiness and Consecration? Because in our generation, and I will venture to say even in Christian culture, Holiness and Consecration are practices that are not really valued or implemented in our walk with God.

For holiness, we will tolerate certain degrees of sin in our lives, when God is demanding a zero tolerance. It's like eating a delicious chocolate cake with a smudge of poop hidden within it, when God is saying, "ZERO poop." In our opinion, doing some sin is okay, so we think it is God is okay with it, and so we construct a god to fit within our moral paradigm. For consecration, we fit in God into our plans. We will set apart our mornings for devotions, we will set apart a weekend for a spiritual retreat, but we will not set apart our lives exclusively for his purposes.

There is a specific and unique calling of God over every one of our lives, but we will never fully walk in it until we learn to consecrate and set apart our lives exclusively for his purposes, and to begin to passionately pursue holiness; loving what he loves, and hating what he hates.

-ell

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