Downpour

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any power, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38 & 39

I have been reminded of this verse several times in the last couple days. The verse by itself, is pretty fantastic. I mean, God's love for us and how NOTHING can take that away. That's pretty freaking sweet.

Today though I was shown a different way of looking at it in my search to understand God's Love in my own life and was trying to think of a good analogy of comparing this verse in the light I was shown about the verse. I stared out the living room window watching the rain clouds pass by and thought about a downpour. I mean one like the video shows up above. One that is a wall of rain, that if you are driving you have to stop, you look out your window in awe of the massive amount of water that is coming down.

If you are brave enough to exit your house into this storm, there are several ways of approaching it...

1. You can try to run through it, to avoid it, but inevitably you will get drenched.

2. You can just deal with it, try to ignore it and walk it out and of course, you will be just flooded by the rain.

3. Finally, you can avoid the rain all together by either not entering it at all or even going out with an umbrella.

But no matter how you enter (or not enter) this storm, you cannot stop the rain. Ignore it, run from it, avoid it, use barriers against it, whatever, those choices do not stop it from raining.

I took this analogy and tied it to the verse of God's love for us. His perfect love for us. That no matter how we treat His love, by ignoring it, going against it, avoiding it, side-stepping it, and so on... we cannot stop His love. Because He will pour it down on us, His love, His grace, His mercy and there is no wall, no barrier, no chains that have been created that can stop it.

Nothing.

So then it is up to us to accept it, to embrace it, to run in it, to soak it up, to pass it on, to invite others in, to let it drench us.

Let's talk

Some of you know that I just returned from New York City on a missions trip with some of the youth from Harvest Bible Chapel.

Our task for the week was simply to go out into the city and start conversations with whomever is willing.

We asked 4 questions, not looking for any specific response, not saying people's answer are wrong, just asking their opinion on the questions.

So, let me ask you reader, if you are willing.

1. How did this whole thing start? I mean how was everything created, the earth, the universe, the animals, the plants? Everything.

2. What went wrong? How did everything go to crap?

3. Is there anyway to fix it? Anyway to make it better?

4. Finally, what will the future hold? For you and/or the human race/earth?

I'm not looking to start a argument, I'm not going to tell you are wrong, I'm not even going to tell you what I think unless you will allow me to.

But please do.

Comment, message me, email me, call me.

Let's start a conversation, because I want to know what you all think.

A messed up bedroom

So I've been in the process of cleaning my room for about 3 weeks.

Yes, it's a slow and arduous process for me.

This all occurred because, well, I needed to clean it yes, but also because of my "fake" move to a different apartment. This realization occurred after I had move about 95% of my stuff there.

The task before me was to once again move into the place I had never officially left. And now move all my stuff back again. This did present the opportunity to sort out and eliminate clutter. Oh man, even though I live out of one room, a single guy can get a lot of crap in that small place in a short amount of time.

Do I really need like 40+ t-shirts?

no.

When this process started it poured out into other rooms of the house, I'm sure my roommates repulsed by the amount of my stuff everywhere... I know I was. Just so much stuff and such little room. There was (is) a sense of some urgency with my roommates wedding coming up, with people that would be coming by the house as the time rapidly approaches.

I stood before these piles of stuff and just think to myself, "Self, if we would of just organized better," or "There is no reason you should have bought ______ that one time," or "Do you really need to own X amount of this same item?" Standing, thinking, doing nothing, while I should be doing something.

The piles slowly dwindled over time, items being given away to Goodwill, items stored in the attic and so on. The mess was slowly subdued into something more of a minor monster. Though in the public areas the mess seems almost gone, it's is just better organized, better hidden. Walk into my room, still piles of miscellaneous paper work and knickknacks stacked around.

These piles are the vain of my cleaning habits, the stuff I can pile up and I say, "I'll get to it later." So they just sit, until I get to them.

To which I don't.

This all reminds me of my life, our lives.

Man, I know I've created some messes in my life, sure I could probably point some fingers at some people, but honestly, it comes back to me making the mess. Be it a big mess that spills out into other peoples lives, or little piles of crap, "hidden" away that sit around forever like a festering wound, that eventually burst at the seam...that's a graphic thought.

We have these huge messes of lives that we are stuck in...be it relationships, careers, poor life choices, money, you name it. Big, small, doesn't matter, they still suck. Some of these messes feel like they never go away, while others are just short lived smacks to the face.

We stand and stare into a mirror sometimes, thinking there is no way this mess is going to get cleaned up and we settle for doing nothing, wallowing in our mess, rather then doing something about it. It's overwhelming.

That there is no hope, so why bother? That even though you hate what's going on, what's happening in this mess in your life, it's just easier then doing something about it.

Or you have tiny piles of garbage in your life tucked away, out of sight, out of mind. Don't worry about the small things, because no one will ever see them, nor do you have to ever worry about them. They are tucked out of sight. There is no way they will ever come back and bite you. Right?

That this is life and this is how it's going to be.

So you deal with it.

You keep on keeping on.

Then you hear that this Jesus guy wants to come visit with you, have a relationship with you. That He stands at the door and knocks.

But your life is a mess, how can you invite Him in, with your life being a mess? Either you can't clean up the mess to invite Him in, or honestly, so many of us (including me) are content with our mess.

So we struggle and race to clean up the mess, thinking we have to have the place spotless. Furiously wiping up messes, cleaning up garbage, stuffing items in drawers, thinking we need to clean this mess up before He comes over.

Or we stand there, at the door, hear the rapping on the door but continue living in our mess that we have created. We don't think it's that bad. We have lived in this life, like this, for long enough, we are good without Him visiting.

We race thinking we need to clean it up, hurry, no time. No time, no time for visitors like Him.

We stand there, and slide a pile of garbage near our feet under the sofa. Close the door of the closet that has stuff spilling out of it. Everything is okay.

The knocking continues, we walk up to the door and lean toward it and listen.

He says, "Child, I will take you how you are right now. Mess and all. I just want to come in, have fellowship and love on you. You do not have to clean up alone but let me help. You can never be too dirty for me. I want to give you life and give it abundantly. I love you so so so much."

He does and He will...This I can guarantee and so does He.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
Revelation 3:20

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18

The Agreements We've Made About Love

This is taken from the book Walking With God by John Eldredge, I hope it impacts you as it did me...

I'm thinking about love this morning.

I've been noticing that most mornings I don't wake up super happy, and I'm not sure why. I've also been noticing for some time now that when I first wake up, I find myself racing through the coming day in my mind, bracing myself for what's required of me, but even more so searching to see if there is anything to look forward to. It's not really voluntary. It's almost as if my heart has a life of its own, and it wakes up before I do and begins to assess the prospects before me. "I slept but my heart was awake" (Song of Songs 5:2).

By the way, I think this is how our addictions get their claws deeper into us. Our day-to-day grind isn't anything close to Eden, and our hurting and desperate hearts look for something to which we can attach all those yearnings. We'll settle for a doughnut if that's all there is to look forward to. We have to be careful what we give our hearts over to.

Anyhow, this is what happened this morning. I didn't wake up with songs of happiness in my heart, and I found myself searching for something to look forward to. (This as I stumbled toward the bathroom. It all took place within a few moments). I don't want to give my heart to just anything that looks like hope, so I turn my thoughts to GOd, knowing, at least intellectually, that the only safe place for my heart is in the love of God. Love. It's about love, remember? I say to my heart. Come back to love, my heart. To the love of God. My self-talk helps, in that I being to realign my heart with God. This turning in the right direction is almost like turning a ship around. It takes time for the soul to ralign itself with God, and things are creaking and groaning, but slowly I am tacking into the wind.

As I turned my thoughts and the desire of my heart toward the love of God, turned my soul his direction (he is always waiting there), I noticed what seemed to be a twinge of pain. It felt, for lack of a better description, old, historic, deep-seated.

Have I made an agreement that I will never be loved? I wonder. The thought came partly through year of counseling others, partly through intuition, and maybe partly because someplace deep down in my heart that sentence keeps being repeated, and I can vaguely perceive it coming up from the depths. As I ask myself, Have I made and agreement? Did I ever come to the conclusion I will never be loved? something in my heart resonates, clicks. The though seems to fit. SO I know that this is something I need to chase after. Some healing is yet needed.

I know I'm not along in having a hard time believe in the love of God for me (we think he loves everyone else), or receiving the love of God, or letting it catch my heart up into life and joy, or, maybe especially, staying there for any reasonable period of time. An hour or two would be amazing. A day would be a triumph. And I'm thinking that maybe part of the reason we have a hard time believing in God's love for us hides back in our story somewhere. I remember something Gerald May wrote years ago: we need to let ourselves tell our stories of love - how love came to us over the course of our lives, or how it did not come, or how it left. We need to tell the story so that we understand. And I remember thinking at the time, No thank you. I'd rather not go there. Thanks just the same.

And I ignored the issue for years.

Now I am trying to bring my heart back to the love of God, let it heal me, and stay there. IT feels sometimes like searching through a dark forest for a wounded deer and trying to coax it in so I can touch it.

Our story of love is a very tangled story about the most precious thing in our lives (our longing for love). It's a hard story for two reason. For one thing, we're too close to it to often have any clarity at all. Can't see the forest for the trees. More deeply, it's a heartbreaking story, and we're not sure we want to revisit the painful details. That's why we're ambivalent about love. Oh, we yearn for it. WE want to be loved. But we hide from it too, building defenses against it, fortressing ourselves from being hurt again. We settle for a doughnut.

Then we wonder why it's hard for us to connect with the love of God, let it in so deep that it heals us, and remain in his love.

I need to come back to agreements. As I explained before, agreements are really subtle and nasty things. They pin our hearts down, or shut them down by handing over to the enemy as sort of key to a certain room in our hearts , and in that place he shuts the door and locks it. This is what's behind the impasses you find in otherwise healthy people's lives. Your friend Jane is a wonderful woman, loves God, leads mission trips. But she collapses internally whenever someone criticizes her. Goes into a depression and binges. Your brother Dan is a kind and loving man, on of the more mature men you know. But he hasn't returned your calls for three weeks because over dinner one night you asked him why he hasn't been dating anyone.

You've probably just run up against a wounded place in the heart held in bondage by an agreement, quite often having to do with love.

Think back over your story of love. IN those moments when you were wounded you were really vulnerable for agreements to come in. They come swiftly, imperceptibly, often as a response to some message delivered with the wound. Your boyfriend breaks up with you. It hurts too much, so you shove the pain down and try to get away from it. Bu your heart is coming to the conclusions. It's all because of me. I'll never really be loved again. And the thing is, you may not even be aware that you made the agreement. Our enemy is cunning, and after he secures the agreement, he drops the issue for a while, goes underground, lays low for a while so that nobody discovers his work there. By "lays low for a while," I mean it could be thirty years or more. All you know is, you can't feel the love of God.

Standing in the bathroom with the shower running and empty, I wonder...where and when did I make the agreement that I will never be loved? I wonder...how common is that agreement to the human heart? I don't really know what else to do and I've go to get on with my day, so I prayed,

Jesus, okay. Okay. Come in here. I really want and need your love, much more deeply than I've allowed myself to let it in. I want to stay there, keep my heart in your love. Come and show me what sort of agreements I've made about love. Show me where they are, when they came in. Help me to let them go. Renounce them. Accept you love instead. Oh, heal my freaful heart. I am willing to look at my story of love. Walk with me there.

Later, in my office, I sat for a while in silence. I didn't have any clarity, but I could sense rumblings within. The last thing I wanted to do was force this. That never brings the wounded deer close enough. So I sat and futzed with some other writing. Maybe that was enough on this for today. I did some spell checking. Looked out the window. My thoughts drifted off to bow hunting. A meeting I had later in the day. A phone call I forgot to make. But I knew I didn't want to go near the subject of making agreements about love, so I was careful not to justify my dissociation and just walk away. Finally, I came back to this issue with a question for myself: What do I believe about love?

That it never stays.

Whoa. Geez. How long has that been there? I wonder. Okay, I see it now. I do not trust love. I don't. That characterizes a lot of my life. Jesus, come into this. I sighed deeply and sat in silence again for a while, almost like mourning the delivery of some very somber news.

I knew it was true though - the revelation, that is. Didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why I believed love never stays. Dad left. Alcohol took him away. Mom left. She had to go back to work to support us. Brent left. I realized, at least intellectually, that his death was not really him choosing to walk away from me. But still, he was gone. I could name a number of others, all who left. My life felt like a series of people leaving.

Jesus, what do I do with his?

Give it to me.

Okay. I give this to you Jesus. I let it go. Your love stays. I can trust your love. I renounce the agreement I made that love never stays. I invite you into the pain that brought it, all the losses. Come and heal my heart in this place. Free my heart to trust in love, in your love.

Now I do have to go. But I want to treat this place gently, think about it during the day, and return to it when I can.

*******

Please forgive me for the typos...I'll put the next chapter up later. Like I said, I hope you guys are impacted as much through that as I was.

Much love.