Freedom Blog

In the midst of an oracle of judgment against Judah, God reveals where true security comes from: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…” (Isaiah 30:15). But, Judah refuses to listen and ends up relying on military armaments (human strength), rather than on God (Divine strength). Needless to say, it doesn’t go well for Judah as the Southern Kingdom is eventually conquered and exiled to Babylon in 586 B.C. Over this past year, I’ve really come to value these four promises: repentance, rest, quietness and trust. Collectively, they encompass walking humbly before God. I call them promises because I believe that God grants them to me as gifts. But, what seems to consistently get in the way of me receiving these blessings is my fear and my pride.

The more I press into God’s grace and love, the more I am confronted with the reality that the only way to walk in the fullness of God’s grace and love is to walk humbly before Him. This means walking yielded to the Holy Spirit everyday, all day. But, I am proud and fearful. Proud in the sense that I want to prove to God that I can be faithful and that I can love Him unconditionally. Fearful in the sense that I am afraid of facing the hard truth that I’m not perfect and that even on my best day I still sin. What trips me up is that I’ve rationalized, even super spiritualized these pursuits thinking that I’m just trying to please God. So, I tell myself that I am capable of unconditional love and that I’m not so bad, that if I try hard enough I can have a perfect day. Who am I kidding?

But, in the midst of my struggle, the grace and love of God rises within me and reminds me that I don’t have to prove anything to God. He loves me, no matter what. What I’ve learned and am continually learning is that in order to embrace more of God’s grace, I need to embrace more of my brokenness. It is because I am imperfect that I receive God’s grace. So, letting God love on me means accepting myself and loving myself as God loves me, unconditionally. When I do this I will stop thinking I have to prove myself and I will slowly begin to accept myself just as I am. And why shouldn’t I, God does. He accepts me just as I am. That is an amazing truth. Even more, He blesses me with repentance, rest, quietness and trust. God’s desire to be in relationship with me is so much greater than mine. His desire to form Christ in me far surpasses my own. I need to remember that next time I feel like I need to be doing for God, rather than being with God.

That’s what repentance, rest, quietness and trust describe: being with God. When I am just being with God, I will be walking humbling before Him because I understand that He loves spending time with me, not because of what I can or can’t do, but because I am His beloved child. In essence, this means doing, in order to be. We turn away from temptation and sin, in order to draw near to Him (repentance). We take a break from our busyness and striving, in order to rest in His presence (rest). We tune out the noise of the world, in order to listen to His Words of grace towards us (quietness). We confess our unbelief and mistrust, in order to receive faith and healing (trust). God knows what we need in order to have a deep and vibrant relationship with Him, but we need to choose to receive His gifts of repentance, rest, quietness and trust. Help us Holy Spirit to receive more of God’s gifts and blessings into our hearts and lives. In Jesus Name, Amen.

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Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to pour into quite a few young men. Each one was unique and had their own set of hardships and memorable moments. But, the common thread that streamed through them all was God’s main purpose for bringing me into these men’s lives, which was to help further solidify their identity in Christ by speaking truth and life to them. Most of our time together was focused on untangling them from their affections for the world which was directly related to their continual addiction struggles.This affection for the world made them believe the lie that the world had something to offer them that was greater than what God could offer them.

It’s like in 1 Samuel 8, where the Israelites demand that Samuel appoint them a king because they wanted to be like all the other nations (v.5). But, the Israelites were supposed to be different from all the other nations because the Lord had chosen them to be His own treasured possession (Exodus 19:5; Leviticus 18:30; Deuteronomy 7:6; 14:2; 18:9; 26:18; Numbers 23:21). You see, what was really happening was the Israelites were rejecting God as their King. But, God is still patient with His people. He’s not reactionary, but purposeful as He tells Samuel to prophetically warn them of how this coming king will rule over them.

“So Samuel passed on the Lord’s warning to the people who were asking him for a king. “This is how a king will reign over you,” Samuel said. “The king will draft your sons and assign them as his chariots and charioteers, making them run before his chariots. Some will be generals and captains in his army. some will be forced to plow in his fields and harvest his crops, and some will make his weapons and chariot equipment. The king will take your daughters from you and force them to cook and bake and make perfumes for him. He will take away the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his own officials. He will take….” (1 Samuel 8:10-14ff).

The passage goes on, but I think you get the point. The picture these verses paint is that this coming king will basically enslave the Israelites where he will claim ownership, not only of their bodies, but also of everything they owned, to do with both as he pleased. I used to think that God was like this, a heavy-handed God who did whatever He pleased because He was God, even if it meant by force where service and worship is born out of fear, rather than love. But, the more that I experience and encounter the one and only living God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the more I realize that He is nothing like this worldly king who simply uses the people of his kingdom. God desires our unconditional love and He will never force us to love Him. His desire is that we choose Him over and above all the other loves in our lives and of the world.

Even when God warns them of this dictator king, the Israelites still want and demand a king other than God. The text is pretty clear, the Israelites wanted what they wanted and they wanted it now: “But the people refused to listen to Samuel. ‘No!’ they said. “We want a king over us” (v.19). There was no reasoning with them. There was no speaking any sense to them. Their minds were already made up. They had their hearts and minds set on becoming like all the other nations (v.20). I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all at some point in our lives wanted something so badly that there was no talking us out of it, even though deep down we knew that what we wanted probably wasn’t the best thing for us.

From my perspective, ministering to people who are struggling with drug addiction can be extremely frustrating at times because, more often than not, the addiction has become so ingrained into their identity, in how they relate to themselves and others, that it disrupts and distorts their value system. So, when that urge comes to indulge in their drug addiction, their whole thinking process gets turned upside-down. When this happens, there is no reasoning with them. The addiction takes over. Now I’m not saying that I think that the Israelites where on drugs, but I do think that they were addicted to the world.

1) How strong of a pull does the world have on your own life?

2) Do you believe that what God has to offer is better than what the world has to offer?

3) Does your life reflect that you are a citizen of Heaven or a citizen of the world?

4) What needs to change?

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Over the past couple months, one of the books I have been slowly reading through is “Radical Hospitality” by Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt (Paraclete Press, 2002). As God’s divine timing would have it, the chapter that I’m on is entitled: companionship and intimacy (the two things that my heart has been longing for in overdrive lately). Reading this has helped me gain a clearer and fuller understanding on both.

“Hospitality is not a call to unquestioning intimacy with the whole world….Hospitality is a call to revere what is sacred in every person ever born” (p.139).

The world equates sex with intimacy. But, there couldn’t be a more shallow misunderstanding of the true nature of intimacy. As the authors explain, “When we confuse intimacy with sexual relations, we imply that sex is the only means to closeness, and we devalue the growing together that two people need to do before they become sexually involved. To imply that our deepest needs are met only by sexual encounters has set up a whole generation to be disillusioned (p.141). I couldn’t agree more. In my own struggles with desiring love and pursuing intimacy that’s how I understood it. But, as I have been learning both through my relationship with Jesus (through the presence of the Person of the Holy Spirit) and through some very deeply authentic and life-giving people in my life today: I am unlearning my misguided notions of love and intimacy.

Intimacy includes so much more than just the physical, it also includes emotions (heart), thoughts (mind) and the will (spirit). I love this next statement, “When I experience genuine intimacy, I know to the bone that I am not alone. This knowing comes through relationship….Intimacy is the deep experience of knowing another human heart” (p.141-2). Some of my fondest memories are the ones where I’ve connected with a person on a deeply spiritual and emotional level, so that when we see each other, without saying a word, there is this unspoken bond and understanding between us. Maybe the reason I cherish these moments so much is because I long to be fully known and fully loved. Isn’t that every person’s heart cry: to be able to tell our deepest secrets without anyone gasping with horror; to be able to share our victories with others and have them truly rejoice; to be able to be in our pain without them trying to rush us through it; to be able to be fail and not feel judged; to be able to make mistakes and still be trusted; to be able to be who we are without excuses.

Intimacy comes when we share all of ourselves with another. But, we must understand that at its core, intimacy is more than just a constant level of relating. Intimacy is the experience of sharing life together. The only way to be fully known is to share your life with someone. Sure, I can tell you everything that I may know about myself, but there is so much more to me, if you just watch me for awhile.

Lastly, “No matter how intimate a relationship might be, that single relationship is not enough to satisfy the human hunger for love. No human being has enough love to meet such needs. Only our passion for God is enough love; only God’s passion for us can make us whole.Most of us will have intimate relationships, but we make the mistake if we think that intimacy is all we need. We also need companions, we need good fun, we need the brief and tender moment when a stranger stoops to help collect the clutter that has dropped to the floor” (emphasis mine, p.136-7). This describes the current condition of my heart. I fully understand that only intimacy with God makes me whole. So, I have been continually throwing myself deeper and deeper into my relationship with Jesus. But, I am longing for more companions in my life. People who will speak Truth and Life to me and allow me to do the same for them as we walk through the nitty gritty of life together.

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I have this longing in my heart to love and to be loved. We all have this feeling. I believe it’s because we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). God is love (1 John 4:8) and so He designed us for love. Love is a relational concept, for love to be fully realized there needs to be a relationship in place. That’s why when God created Adam, He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18). So, God creates Eve and she and Adam become one flesh (husband and wife). Maybe that’s why loneliness is so difficult, we were not made to be alone. That’s where I’ve been this past week. Longing for a wife. Wait, I’m a bit more passionate than that - what I’m longing for is to be wildly in love. I’ve always had this longing, it’s nothing new, but this past week has been particularly rough. Maybe it’s because I’ve been wrestling in my heart with the desire to throw caution to the wind and being pursuing this woman that I’ve recently met, even though there are some cautionary flags that have come to my attention. Though I would love to pursue a deeper relationship with this woman, there are quite a few obstacles that would need overcoming. Now hear me on this, I fully understand that love is a choice and that love takes work. But, it just seems like we are at differing life places. So, what I’ve been wrestling with is, in essence, surrendering this desire to God which hasn’t been easy.

In the midst of this struggle, there has been a song that has really ministered to me by Patty Griffin called “When It Don’t Come Easy.” Coming to terms with the loneliness in my heart is rough to say the least. Then, surrendering the desire to pursue this woman has been also very difficult. So, this song has been a good reminder that I’m not alone and that God is with me and for me. Being reminded of this has helped me to embrace more fully the reality that in many ways, this longing in my heart is for a love greater than just human love. It is a longing for divine Love.

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