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.

Wait

A lot of us like to wait.

Wait it out. Wait till something good comes along. Wait till the timing is right.

Wait for the sign in the sky. That one thing to happen, in order for this to happen, THEN do something.

Wait.

In the Christian sense we wait on God. Which is NOT, a bad thing. Please don't get me wrong. But sometimes we wait too long, we don't take a step of faith, we pray about it, and the season has passed. The door has been closed. We are left standing, asking, "When God?"

I have done that more often then not.

We are scared to take a step of faith, take that journey toward here or there, or wherever/whatever! I know this is coming from a single guy, no children, no house to own or whatever. But I know there are things like jobs, children, spouses, etc that we HAVE to take into consideration. I know this.

But we are still not willing to take steps of faith knowing that we have prayed about it, gotten wise advice and it being just a GREAT venture/opportunity. We know that God is at the forefront of our mind in whatever decision we make and that God is with us in this decision (obviously if it isn't some sort of sin), but still.....

We wait.

There is comfort to be found in waiting. Once again, I know this, I've done this, I've experienced the comfort. But after it has passed, whatever 'it' is, one of two things happen. You see it for what it was and say, "dang, I should of done that." In comes regret.

Or, it slips pass your eyes, with you never knowing what you missed. In that case, ignorance may be bliss.

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen."Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."At once they left their nets and followed him.

Mark 1: 16-18

Christ called them to follow Him. They dropped everything they had to follow him. Without a hesitation. And for them, in the Jewish culture, that literally meant everything. Who they are, who their father were, how they will make all of their living, how their family will survive, who their boys will grow up to be... To follow a unknown rabbi.

Everything.

I don't say this, because I am some hero or some garbage. Because sometimes I still leap before I look. That sometimes I do need to consider more options, to pray more about it, to seek a answer before I start asking the next question.

And there are times where I am waiting. Stagnant. Waiting for God to come in and swoop me off my feet and show me the PERFECT opportunity or something. God can do that, He can. But He wants all of you and He wants all of you to have faith in Him, that He is with you when you choose to take that step.

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

Christian or not, He is knocking on your door right now.

He wants to take you on a great journey.
He is ready to hear what is hurting inside you.
He wants to forgive you of whatever you may think is unforgivable.
He wants to pour so much love on you.

Right now.

So what are you waiting on?

Apex, by Caleb Stewart

I’ve been told I’m a foolish romantic about life. And there are questions I haven’t even begun to ask because I am young and naïve. Maybe that’s true, but let me ask: what is life anyway? Because if growing old means growing sour, then call me young; and if being alive means being cold, then call me dead. To you I am.

No, we can choose where and how we live. We can choose to live in hell. Or we can let the sounds of heaven echo in our lips. I think I’ll do the latter. I won’t wait until I get to heaven to live there. Because I know that if I open my doors to light, to love, to life; if I find the beauty in the most violent of storms; if I find the flame in the blackest of ashes; if I find the water in the driest of deserts; then maybe, just maybe, people will find the heaven that is within me.

We make life about so many things. Things like money, fame, and travel. But, I know it’s not where you are or who you know, but who you are that sets you free. I didn’t have to travel the world to know that a kiss in Paris is the same as a kiss in a trailer park on the east side, if filled with love. Love is what sets us free.

So this love… where do we find it? Well it isn’t just something waiting to be found. It isn’t the kiss of a human, or the warmth of an embrace. It has nothing to do with some building on the street corner called a church. Love is a person. And yes, Love created the kiss. Love created sex and wine. Love built mountains and killed giants. Love did all of that and Love also made you. And whether you know it or not, you’ve been trying to find your way back to Him ever since.

Love sacrificed the thing that He loved most for you. And Love stands even now, at your door, knocking, with tears in His eyes, waiting for you to come and open it. He wants to fill every part of your life: even the sex and the wine. The only way to truly enjoy those things is in Him.

But it’s okay if you still want to say I’m a foolish romantic. You can call me religious or even stupid. But, I know what my Father calls me.

He calls me, Lightbringer.

Hope defined

Someone asked me recently to define 'hope,' here is what I came up with. I pray you find Hope from it...

Hope...

When I first used to think of hope, i used to think it was something you did when you 'hoped' for something.

Like you hoped for the best for a situation, whether its for you or someone else. It's hope in the process and outcome...that everything will be okay.

That someone will get healthy.

Someone will get the job.

And so on.

So I wished people hope and, in turn, had hope in God. You know, as many people do. It was still a "good" thing, I mean a impactful thing. Then we had a sermon a couple weeks ago about 'hope' during the hopeless times. (This sermon and the Louie Giglio sermon about Hope are pretty good)

He spoke out of Matthew 9:18-26. About the man with the dead daughter and the woman with the 12 years of sickness. When the pastor spoke of these 2 people in the sermons, he said they had Hope. NOT hope in the process or even the outcome of their problems, but HOPE in the One who provides/creates the Hope.

Read what the people said in the scripture...

The man: My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and SHE WILL LIVE. The woman: If I only touch his cloak, I WILL BE HEALED.

They KNEW; KNEW that God was going to do that if they had faith and hope in Him. The KNEW it, didn't second guess it, they did it. The moved, they didn't stand still and question whether God would work, would move, would heal, would act. They had HOPE in the Hopemaker. So many times we say we have hope in God and we should. But we have hope that this will happen or won't happen. We simply don't have Hope in Him, because regardless of the outcome or the process, He knows what is best for us and has His and our best interest in mind. So to have hope, brings hope....if that makes sense.

Well, I went to my car after church and dialogued with God about this. The woman in the scripture was sick for 12 years. I asked God, what is holding me back from You, and putting complete Hope, Faith and Trust in Him. Well it was something that stemmed back to high school...some 12 years ago! I had given aspects to Him about this desire, but never the WHOLE picture.

When I did, gave it allllll to Him, that's when things started happening. It almost felt like God was saying, "I've been waiting for a long while for you to do this, lets get started." Like God was waiting beside me all this time as I just pouted and yelled like a kid in a grocery store. I was moving in a direction toward He wanted to me, but kept wandering off, dragging my feet, getting caught up in life.

There are so so so many verses on Hope. I need to read up on those some more. I think I will end it with the one Giglio said, and it doesn't even have Hope in it.

Its John 16:33

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

Now that's Hope in the Hopemaker.