RISEN Church / Blog

We exist to make disciples of Jesus who will join God in the restoration of all things. // www.risenchurch.com

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 45: The Father's Hands

Stepping in for KC this Friday as he waits to become a father for the first time. I don't have any fancy videos to illustrate the beautiful picture George Macdonald paints, so read it and reflect on the word's of Jesus that Macdonald challenges us to use and practice more often.

Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." When he had said this, he breathed his last - Luke 23:46

"The cry, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit," meant, "It is finished." Every highest human act is just a giving back to God of that which he first gave to us."

"The last act of our Lord in thus commending his spirit at the close of his life, was only a summing up of what he had been doing all his life. He had been offering this sacrifice, the sacrifice of himself, all the years, and in thus sacrificing he had lived the divine life."

And we're invited to join in this daily practice, commending our spirits to the Father's hands for restoration, strength, comfort, keeping, growth, and new life.

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 44: It Is Done

It’s hard to receive. For me especially, I find that action and doing are often what give me a sense of wholeness or fulfillment. Being still, however, especially in the face of great suffering, is particularly hard. Like really, really hard.

But that’s exactly what Christ calls us to do, particularly in this Holy Week. We must sit before his suffering, acknowledge our part – our sins – in it, and receive the boundless gift of God’s mercy and grace.

Christ’s death is ours. And in a few days, when we shout “Alleluia, He is Risen indeed!” Christ’s new life will be ours as well.

But for now we must sit.

And receive.

It is done.

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 43: Thirsting

Drink more water. 

It's advice we need to hear, many of us have heard for a long time and the truth is, we probably need to continually be reminded of it. 

Water is exactly what our bodes need when they are dehydrated.

And yet, when I am thirsty, I drink all kinds of things that do not satisfy. There have been days when I've had coffee with breakfast, a soda with lunch, and a beer with dinner.  And then I'll wonder why it is that I don't feel like my thirst is quenched. 

Seems pretty ridiculous, and yet it is exactly what so many of us do spiritually.

We get thirsty and we drink from desires that give us a fleeting sense of satisfaction. They do not fulfill our deepest cravings, they are not the things we truly need and yet we often turn to them again and again.

Why is it you are unsatisfied?

Why is it that you're still thirsty?

Is it because you're drinking from streams that cannot by their very nature fulfill you?

How long will you continue to go before you say enough is enough and turn to the one who offers the only living water?

The God who offers himself to you in your thirst.

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 42: The Central Murder

My vision of Jesus is limited. Yes, I usually recognize him as God, Savior, all those big and powerful things, but there's another dimension of Him... of God being made flesh, funneling all of His power and divinity into a tiny human, who, oddly enough, is just like me... and you. God became flesh not only to help us see God, but to also see each other, our neighbors. While helping us to love God, He also wanted to help us learn how to love each other. So when you grasp that idea, and then walk through history like Aukerman does and place Jesus in the shadow, in the fire, the severity of what He did there on the cross - the weight of all that sin on His shoulders.

He bled and died, to take away [all of] our sin[s].

Lord God, save us from our selfish desires. Help us to see you in one another and to love our neighbors as ourselves today and always. Amen

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 41: Life in the Blood

Within these pieces addressing the beauty and complexity of blood, what struck a chord with me was the point that Kagawa made that, “Forgiveness alone is not enough to release us from our sins. Complete release only comes when we are free from the urge to sin. It is completely possible for us to receive forgiveness and still die from the consequences of our sin. The Master came not only to announce our forgiveness,but also to deliver us from the disease of our sin, from its consequences and from death - to break the relentless cycle of sin and death.”

Both men address the power of the Blood of Christ to both forgive and totally restore us. However, if we don’t know what Christ is healing us from; if we don’t know what we’re being forgiven of and why it’s even something we struggle with, we’re going to perpetually desire to sin in the same way. 

When I first became a Christian, all I knew was that I had been saved. I experienced the love and mercy of God in a way that caused me to feel invincible. I was high on the grace I knew I didn’t deserve but somehow, lavishly possessed. However, I was fourteen years old and I had no idea why I was as broken as I most certainly was. 

I knew that I needed a Savior. I knew that I hated everything about myself, I knew that I felt worthless and unnecessary, that I felt like an outcast, that I felt tremendous shame for some reason almost all the time; I knew that I had a hard time apologizing for things, I knew that things were kind of messed up in my family, I knew that I got paralyzing fear and anxiety attacks in my sleep... and for a brief, 5 year moment, for me, I really believed accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior was just going to smooth that all out. 

Simply put, I knew I was wounded; I just thought that becoming a Christian meant I didn’t have to be wounded anymore nor did I ever have to pay attention to that pain. It would just go away, right? I’d been saved!

I love that Jesus refers to himself as a doctor (Mark 2:17), and that these two articles talk about medical truths in a Spiritual context. I love it because the way that Christ heals is so similar in some ways to how we get treated for illnesses in our bodies. 

When we go in to see a good doctor, they don’t listen to one symptom and jump straight to making it all better in an instant. Some doctors do, and most often, since the source of the pain isn’t found and treated, the wound recurs or worsens. 

They have to find the source of the wounding, and start working from that very place to help our bodies heal. 

It seems, for a lot of us, we’re hoping that once we let Jesus provide cosmic forgiveness for us, that we will walk around fixed and totally healed forever. 

Inviting Christ into our lives is the catalyst for complete restoration. However, that immediate, all at once healing we want wouldn’t be complete because it ignores the source of the wound, and leaves it gaping wide-open without acknowledgement. Just like a flesh wound, the wounds of our hearts need to be acknowledged, cleaned out, properly treated, and allowed to heal correctly. Otherwise, they will become infected and infect other areas of our lives.

It wasn’t until I was a bit older, realizing that no matter how much I read about Jesus’ promises, I was still wrought with anxiety and paralyzing fear, shame and hard heartedness that I started to address my own wound sources. It wasn’t until I recognized areas in my life where putting a scripture bandaid on wasn’t fixing them, that I decided to allow Christ to lead me to the epicenters of my pain. Only then did I start to experience real healing in my life. 

The problem wasn’t that Christ didn’t have the power to make it all better at once, its just that I wouldn’t know how to walk out a healed existence unless He took me through the baby step process of healing from the source, inside and then out. Without doing the painful work of heading straight to the source and history of my own brokenness and handing over my story piece by piece to be healed by Jesus; without understanding the wounds I have collected over the years and the lies that caused them, I would just keep living like they were true and had power over me. 

I once heard about a doctor that was performing re-constructive surgery on people with disfigured faces. He had the power to transform their mangled appearances all at once, but he found that when he did that, the people would re-mangle their faces by their own power because that is all that they had known. Full transformation all at once was so uncomfortable and strange for them that they would revert. When they were totally healed all at once, they couldn’t actually go on that way because it had happened too quickly. They didn’t know how to walk it out piece by piece, until the fully healed image of themselves was their new identity. 

We do the same thing without the slow, painful process of letting the Doctor treat us piece by piece, learning each renewed part as the real and new versions of ourselves. 

With Christ, the metaphor gets a bit more complex but a lot more beautiful. Christ gives us healing and victory from the start through his wounding, and then invites us to let Him diagnose the source of our pain, and take up residence there. Christ invites us to let Him live in our roots, the very start of our brokenness. 

Christ is the Great Physician and His love is the medication. His blood poured our for us is what re-forms us and heals our wounds. But don’t be fooled, just because He will heal you doesn’t mean He won’t lead you into the depth of your wounds. He knows that leading you there and letting Him heal you from those deep places is the only way you’ll be fully restored. 

For me, that journey is far from over. The longer I walk with the Great Physician, the more I recognize my need for His healing. But I have already seen that letting Him diagnose me, and have exposed my wounds to Him for cleaning and dressing, that He is faithful to be my Healer and Comforter. 

He desires for us to both really plow through our wounds, acknowledging their source and hold on us, and to trust with our whole hearts that we will be fully restored by the power of His death and resurrection. 

“It is treatment we need, not just forgiveness...But if we turn to the Master, he freely gives us his spiritual blood so that we might be saved from death and regain life. Indeed, he came to us for this very purpose.” -Sadu Sundar Singh

Will you let Him treat you? 

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 40: The Signature of Jesus

A while back, I asked my father what he loved about my mother.  I wanted to know how he survived almost 40 years of marriage through all of their struggles, including the stresses of graduate school, tight finances, and raising children.  My dad paused, looked at me and said, “I don’t think I know how not to love your mother.”  That has stuck with me ever since.  My father does not love my mother because of any thing she does or doesn’t do at this point in their lives.  Instead, he just loves her.  After having spent almost 40 years of trying to love her more and more, all he knows how to do is love her.  The thought doesn’t occur to him to not love her.  On the one hand, that is disconcerting because it isn’t “earned” and doesn’t have a “rational basis” that can be quantified or explained.  On the other hand, it is entirely beautiful because it speaks to the mystery of love that sometimes just is.

The Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8).  It isn’t just something He chooses as if He considers the option of not loving us. No, the totality of love is found in God such that the degree to which we understand and experience love is the degree to which we understand and experience God.  Every time we experience love, we experience God’s nature and presence.  The fact that we can even conceive of love reflects something that goes beyond the ability of science to quantify, mechanistically describe and deduce, or rationally understand.  We may not always recognize love as such but that’s the funny thing about love.  Love exists and is there whether or not we recognize it and even if it is maligned, ignored, neglected, or misconstrued.

The world we live in tries to tell us that God loves us in our weaknesses just as we are, but loves us more as we get better and do better. Brennan Manning reminds us powerfully that God’s love actually has nothing to do with our performance.  It is simply who He is.  He does not know how not to love us.  Manning offers this thought from the mind of Jesus, “Just because it is fallen mankind’s nature to wound, that does not change my nature to save.”  Regardless of what we do or don’t do, Christ’s nature is still to call out to the beauty in each of us, to resonate with all that bears His image in us, to bring to life the majesty with which we were imbibed by Him.

The story of Elam Zook illustrates how each of us can be an “icon of Jesus Christ.”  Manning writes, “Why? Because his love for me did not stem from any attractiveness or lovability of mine.  It was not conditioned by any response of my part.  Elam loved me whether I was kind or unkind, pleasant or nasty, His love arose from a source outside of himself and myself.”  Today, may you think deeply about the ways in which your life is an icon of Jesus Christ.  Take a moment to show someone love “just because.”  Make it something that is rich, deep, and costs you something.  Make it something that isn’t deserved or earned.  Do it for someone who won’t pay you back.  Do it for someone who could pay you back but wouldn’t know how.  In that moment, ask God to open your eyes, to help you see all the ways in which God has done that for you, and may you find the signature of Jesus not only in what you do but all over your life.

“The crucified Christ is not an abstraction but the ultimate answer to how far love will go, what measure of rejection it will endure, how much selfishness and betrayal it will withstand.  The unconditional love of Jesus Christ nailed to the tree does not flinch before our perversity.”

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 39: Naked Pride

"It is no use our trying to cover up like Adam and Eve in the garden. Our attempts at self-justification are as ineffectual as their fig-leaves. We have to acknowledge our nakedness, see the divine substitute wearing our filthy rags instead of us, and allow him to clothe us with his own righteousness." - John Stott

There are so many human tendencies that create a barrier between us as God. We find that our pride, selfishness, greed, shame, or whatever other personal struggle does not always allow us to accept the gift of Christ. Jesus is the sacrifice that bridges the gap between us and the father, but we must let him. We must be willing to be naked and vulnerable before him in order to find freedom in him, the only one who truly loves us unconditionally.

What in your own life do you put between you and God? What keeps you from fully accepting salvation?

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 38: The Distance

“so that the love may be as great as possible, the distance is as great as possible”

- From The Distance, by Simone Weil

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 37: The Cross and the Cellar

The cross is not a place of justice. Instead, the cross is a place of unfathomable mercy. God did not enter the world to give us what we deserve, but instead to give us what we cannot hope to fully comprehend: forgiveness.

When we hear of horrors in our world, it is so easy to separate ourselves, to draw a firm line between us and the other. Yet as we stand before the cross and reflect upon our sins and shortcomings, we are called to recognize that we, too, have crucified Christ. We, too, are capable of horrific things.

And in that realization, we are blessed to encounter God’s mercy.

May we be humble enough to share that mercy with those we would call other.

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 36: The Crucifix

Sometimes I am annoyed at how easily I can get frustrated at the actions of others. I sometimes wonder if I can go 20 minutes without passing judgement. It's not that I see myself as good, it's that I have the natural tendency to see others as worse than myself.

That is the temptation. To look on the lives and choices of others and to conclude that while I am terrible, there are others who are far worse than I am.

Even today I spent a moment being judgmental at Christians who are judgmental of other Christians.

I see the irony.

And yet I'm reminded in Howard's reading that my ability to desire a greater judgement on others comes when I take my eyes off of the cross. When I keep my eyes focused on the cross, it is there that I see myself with everyone else, in need of the same forgiveness.

Lord, forgive me, and forgive those that I am so tempted to judge. May I be an extension of your forgiveness today and may my life point the way to you, the only one who can give us what our hearts truly desire.

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 35: Our Mediator

"How you loved us, O good Father, who spared not even your only Son, but gave him up for us evildoers! ... For our sake he stood to you as both victor and victim, and victor because victim; for us he stood to you as priest and sacrifice, and priest because sacrifice, making us sons and daughters to you instead of servants by being born of you to serve us. With good reason is there solid hope for me in him, because you will heal all my infirmities through him who sits at your right hand and intercedes for us. Were it not so, I would despair. Many and grave are those infirmities, many and grave; but wider-reaching is your healing power. We might have despaired, thinking your Word remote from any conjunction with humankind, had he not become flesh and made his dwelling among us."

- From Our Mediator, by Saint Augustine

"Never could we have known the heart of the Father, never felt it possible to love Him as sons, but for Him who cast Himself into the gulf that yawned between us. In and through Him we were foreordained to the sonship: sonship, even had we never sinned, never could we reach without Him."

- George MacDonald

[risenchurch]

Crucifixion

This Bread I Break Dylan Thomas

This bread I break was once the oat This wine upon a foreign tree 
Plunged in its fruit;
 Man in the day or wind at night
 Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this wine the summer blood Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine, Once in this bread
 The oat was merry in the wind;
 Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let Make desolation in the vein,
 Were oat and grape
 Born of the sensual root and sap; 
My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 34: I Thirst For You

Mother Teresa is among the world’s all-time most admired Christians. There isn’t a person who knows of her who denies that if anyone really lived out this Jesus’ mission, it was her (except maybe a couple of haters who are, frankly, gonna hate).

I know atheists who rip on Christian beliefs and culture all day long but when Mother Teresa is brought up? Reverence.

It’s blindingly apparent that something real happened in her heart; that if anyone was really changed by the real Jesus, its this woman who devoted her whole self to the slums of Calcutta.

The thing I love about Mother Teresa is how effortless her decision to serve seemed to be. When she speaks of Jesus, she speaks with joy and ease. Photos of her are usually graced with a smile, not just on her mouth, but shining through her eyes and bunched up in the wrinkles on her face.

This woman didn’t serve because she was supposed to. There isn’t a TRACE of obligation in her story. There isn’t a drop of doubt in her heart. Its something entirely different, entirely divine, and it seems to be so potent that it made her decision to start over 610 foundations in 123 countries on all seven continents relatively simple.

We find in this piece, the wood that burns in the furnace of her life; God’s extravagant love for her. The words in this letter she wrote from God’s perspective drip with over-the-top affectionate love, and she really believed them for herself.

It leads me to believe that the way someone gets to be like Mother Teresa is by really receiving Christ’s love for them.

It leads me to believe that if I am to live out the life God dreams for me, it starts by and is fueled by being totally transformed by a love so big and so wild, that in receiving it I can’t help but spill over onto the people God has around me.

In the style of our Lord, you have heard it said that it is better to give than to receive, but I tell you the truth, receiving is absolutely crucial to giving. I’m learning that it is equally important to receive Christ’s love as it is to give it. In the words of our brother Paul of Tarsus, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2)

When I read over Mother Teresa’s stats, or simply the calls of Christ on our lives, I can start to feel heavy. I can start to feel weighed down by the level of sacrifice and devotion we’re called to. When I read this love letter Momma-T wrote to us from the heart of God,  that weight starts to lift. When I look to the cross, and when I let my heart become soft to how much I’m loved, the burden of my call transforms into something different. It turns into an invitation to share this love I’ve received. It seems the only natural response to God’s excessive love for us is obedience to whatever He asks.

One cannot live out a life like this Albanian woman on their laurels alone. Lives like these don’t last when they’re built on ideals and “should”s. The kind of lives that when pointed to, shine an undeniable Divine inspiration and presence, are those built on the foundation of receiving Christ’s sacrifice and love for them.

Mother Teresa didn’t come to a decision to pour out her life for those suffering because she felt like a lot of us, dragging our feet into the right decisions because we feel like we’re supposed to. She ran full speed into it because she had genuinely been changed by God’s love for her. She knew it deep within herself. She believed it in the core of her being.

God will make Himself known through us when we accept and live into His intimate, larger-than-life love for us. The sooner we accept it, the sooner we become the people we were created to be.

Have you received it today? Have you accepted the love you couldn’t possibly deserve but have unconditionally?

Don’t put on false humility, don’t block it with walls of pride. Don’t hide from it in the caves of self-pity. Receive, and let His love change you from the inside out.

He loves you. Be Loved. Be loved and watch your life be transformed into an outpouring of that beloved-ness.

(This video is a recording from a conference where Graham Cooke and Jonathan David Helser partner up to bring a word from the Lord about His love for us. If you need a reminder of your beloved nature I recommend listening to it.)

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 34: I Thirst for You

"Come to me with your misery and your sins, with your trouble and needs, and with all your longing to be loved. I stand at the door of your heart and knock. Open to me, for I thirst for you."

- From I Thirst for You, by Mother Teresa

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 33: From Action to Passion

The Dance

Passion is a kind of waiting. Nouwen says all action ends in passion because the response to our action is out of our hands. A main passion in my life is dance. The ability to express emotions through movement is one of the most beautiful things I’ve experienced. I’ve trained for over 25 years. I have had the privilege to dance on stage for a few companies. What it took to get there was a lot of hard work. But it has not always had the outcome I wanted. Currently I’m rehearsing for a dance show. When I auditioned all of my hard work did not guarantee me a prominent role. In a 10 minute piece I am only in 30 seconds. It was out of my hands. The choreographer was in control. It wasn’t just about my hard work.

Nouwen used Jesus, the story of Gethsemane and the idea of being handed over. In the reflection Nouwen states that “handed over” is important because Judas handed Jesus over but so did God. God did not spare Jesus, but handed Him over to benefit us all. (Romans 8:32) He was arrested, crowned with thorns, and nailed to the cross.

Jesus prayed “My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39) Jesus was willing to let all of His actions be lead by His passion to serve His father. Nouwen suggests that is the mystery of work, the mystery of love, the mystery of friendship and the mystery of community - they always involve waiting. And that is the mystery of Jesus’ love. Precisely in the waiting, the intensity of God’s love is revealed to us.

So often we look to achievement to be what defines the moment rather than seeing the beauty in the middle. Maybe God is not calling us to be the soloist in the dance. Maybe God is calling us to be His light in a broken place. Most dancers can work really hard and get the part. They know how to do that. What we often don’t know how to do is to be defined by Christ’s love for us more than the parts we get or don’t get. What I’m learning is there is beauty beyond the amount of time on stage. There is beauty in being a light for Him off stage as well as on. The interaction between myself and the dancers is Christ at work and the mystery of His love for the the world.

Nouwen points out how important that message is for people in our world. “If it is true that God in Jesus Christ is waiting for our response to divine love, then we can discover a whole new perspective on how to wait in life. We can learn to be obedient people who do not always try to go back to the action but recognize the fulfillment of our deepest humanity in passion, in waiting."

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 32: On This Gallows

There is no doubt that we are all constantly moment by moment shaping our view of who we think God to be. I especially tend to try and figure him out, maybe because I think there is something intrinsically built into our being that longs to understand our maker and his omnipotence. In our ever growing relationship to our creator we are learning him piece by piece as he so reveals and we accept. It never ceases to amaze me when God reveals an unexpected nature of his character. But as I look at him in such an external way I find that God can sometimes seem so far away, above it all, separated from us and our suffering. Yet Jesus changed everything, his sacrifice is everything. Soelle reminds us, "If there were no one who said, 'I die, but I shall live,' no one who said, 'I and the Father are one,' then there would be no hope for those who suffer, mute and devoid of hoping. All suffering would then be senseless, destructive pain that could not be worked on, all grief would be "worldly grief" and would lead to death." It is in Jesus that we find our hope for restoration to a God who is here and now, living and breathing through us and the world around. In all our experiences and most assuredly in our suffering.

"God is not in heaven; he is hanging on the cross. Love is not an otherworldly, intruding , self-asserting power - and to meditate on the cross can mean to take leave of that dream." - Dorothee Soelle

[risenchurch]

Lent Day 31: Still Bleeding

Guster - Come Downstairs and Say Hello

“Come downstairs and say hello.”  This is an extremely common command that we seem to give God all the time.  At least I do.  “Lord, come fix our problems and make things right.  Help me.  Save me.  Give me.  Etc.  Etc.”  Where is God when we really need him?  Where is he in our times of suffering?  Why didn’t he simply get down off the cross and start making things right?

Wendell Berry would say that Christ “hasn’t because from the moment he did, he would be the absolute tyrant of the world and we would be his slaves.”  While I don’t really agree with that, or at least the tyrant part, I think he raises an interesting question: why does Jesus continue to suffer alongside the world?  People are sad and lonely and poor and hurt and hungry and yet his wounds are still bleeding.  The people he set in place to care for his creation are increasingly abusing his it and yet his wounds are still bleeding.

One of my favorite moments from The Royal Tenenbaums shows Richie coming home after a suicide attempt to find his sister Margot in his “room”.  He shows her his wounds and even tells her why he did it.  He also tells her he loves her.  There are so many times when I, like Doubting Thomas, just wish Jesus would walk into my room, show me his wounds and lay everything out for me.   I just need so much damn handholding.

The scene eventually cuts to Richie walking down the stairs carrying a stuffed boar’s head, which is sort of a symbol of the family’s faded glory.  He hangs the head on the wall in its former place and continues on down the stairs.   This where I see us entering into the story.  I think Jesus continues to suffer so that we might have the absolute joy of participating in his story; so that we might actually have a part in setting the world right.  He remains upstairs (for now) and asks us to be the ones to mend the broken hearts and befriend the strangers and feed the hungry.  We join in his suffering and we join in his work and we join in his joy. 

I don’t know when Jesus plans to return, but I do know that he is glorified when his image bearers do his work.  We should feel incredibly grateful that we have the opportunity to be participants in his Kingdom, both as sufferers and as doers.  Any time we feel the urge to ask God to come downstairs and say hello, we should know that he is asking us to come with him.