No denying it

Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith. Remember that your family of believers all over the world is going through the same kind of suffering you are. In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation. All power to him forever! Amen. (I Peter 5:8-11)

At times, we believe we are the only ones under attack. It as though all the world goes on around us, busy with their business, and there we are right in the midst of the worst kind of attack. We feel alone, like nobody knows we are there, much less that we are struggling to just keep our heads above water. What is one of the greatest tactics in our enemy's arsenal? The feeling that we are alone - that we cannot share the burden we are bearing with anyone else. Our instruction today is quite clear - we will all experience suffering from time to time - but we are not alone in the battle. There are other believers, put alongside us expressly for the purpose of helping us stay alert and stand firm in the midst of what otherwise would be a losing battle. When we realize we are not experiencing these things alone, we might just see the advantage to forming a 'gang' to deal with the attack! We might call this 'gang warfare'. It is when we stand as united force against all the 'crap' our enemy is hurling our way. Our battles may not be identical, but we all have the same enemy! It could just be time for us to unite in our battles. 

God called us to be a 'body of believers' who stand firm against the enemy's attacks, but we oftentimes attempt to do this all on our own. What a foolish maneuver on our part. We won't avoid the suffering, but we might just find restoration coming quicker when we are battling together. If we are afraid, or too prideful to admit we are facing the battle of our lives, we may just find ourselves overwhelmed in the midst of the battle. No single soldier wins the battle - it takes a united front. Perhaps this is why God establishes us in community - so we can form a solid wall of resistance against our enemy. Support is important, but it seldom comes to those too proud to admit they need it. Oh, maybe that is the real issue at hand today. Maybe we find ourselves struggling with our pride - unwilling to allow others to see our flaws and failures. My flaws are out there, my friends - they are no longer hidden. I hide behind whatever I could for way too long. It did me no good - in fact, it actually did me more harm than good. How? The more I tried to deny my faults, the farther away I was from what I needed most for my rescue, restoration, and strength!

The attacks are real. The temptations are never-ending. The moments of weakness come, Words are spoken without thought, Frustrations are allowed to overtake the moment. Before long, we find what we had worked so hard on our own to avoid has come to a full head right there in front of us. Then we have to begin the 'mop-up' and we even attempt to do that on our own! Whatever made us think we'd resist alone, let alone be able to 'clean up' the mess left behind in our lives all in our own power? God gives us good, Bible-believing friendships for a reason. It is time we bring out the 'big guns' to fight the battle. The 'big guns'? Community! We need each other's strength when ours is wavering. We need one another's perspective when all we see is our own limited view. We need the combined learning of each other's experiences and God-given answers to help us sort out truth from our enemy's lies. We cannot, and should not, live without each other. We are not 'we' until we are open to living open lives before each other. Just sayin!

Bonded to one another

So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” (John 12:34-35)

Can you imagine if some of the Pharisee leaders had of overheard this conversation between Jesus and his disciples that night? "A new commandment I am giving you" would have sent their heads spinning! They would have debated the credibility of Jesus and then demanded to know who he was to 'give a new commandment' - because only God could give those! Hmmm...only God could give those...maybe Jesus was really showing his disciples that he and his Father were one - that he was 'really' God with a bod. 

The new commandment was not really all that new, but it emphasized a 'new work' Jesus expected from his disciples. They were to 'prove to the world' their faith - through love. In prior times, you 'proved' your faith through 'religious works' such as sacrifices upon the altar, keeping yourself 'ceremonially clean', and following all the rules inherent in the Law of Moses. Jesus is telling them there would be a 'new way' of doing daily life - love being at the core of all they would do. 

Just as I have loved you - nothing is better than having an example of 'how' we are supposed to do something. When I get those little illustrated booklets in some piece of furniture I am supposed to assemble, I am grateful for the illustrations because they help me make sense of the assembly. Jesus gave repeated illustrations of his love while on this earth. He embraced the unlovely, hung out with those society considered to be outcasts, and welcomed the faint of heart. Love does things differently than one might expect, huh?

Love begins at home - isn't that what Jesus meant when he told them to love each other? Begin with those closest to you - laborers in the daily journey we call life. Then allow that love to flow out of that bond with each other - so others begin to experience the love of God in their own lives. We ALL learn best when there is an example. Jesus wasn't telling them to make a show of their love, but to live 'bonded' to each other, solid in their beliefs, and united in their mission. When we live like that, there is no stopping this Jesus Revolution within! Just sayin!

Go for it

God desires intimacy - love demands this kind of 'renewing relating'. In our day-to-day relationships, this kind of intimacy cannot grow without depth of commitment and the willingness to be truthfully "naked" before one another in a spiritual and emotional sense. We don't need to remove our clothes to "get naked" with each other - we just need to remove our masks. Intimacy implies a certain familiarity with each other. It comes out of frequent exposure to each other - to the real you and the real me. It is the revealing of who we are, how we act, and what we like/dislike. It involves how we move and what moves us. In essence, until we reach this kind of depth in relationship with one another, we cannot truly be in a place of accountability with one another - and heaven knows, we need this type of accountability if we are to plant and harvest well!

Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith. (Galatians 6:7-10)

Intimacy also involves continual open communication. Truth be told, we just plain stink at being good communicators. For communication to reach a level where we are actually helped by what we share and what is shared with us, we need to be more than superficial in our sharing - we need a depth of revelation. Revealing who we really are, what we require or need, and how we plan to move or what it is we have planned. This type of communication can open doors for us to see our life through the eyes of another - and we all need to see life through eyes other than just our own! To this we have to add awareness, contact and frequency. We have to become aware of each other - not just on a casual level, but with the intent of knowing another at the deepest possible level. Awareness is more than just having knowledge of - it is being cognizant of what that knowledge can do when it is handled well. Contact involves close association with the other person - experiencing their "presence" even when words aren't spoken. It is in contact that we get to know both the spoken and unspoken needs of another.

Too many times we think of relationship as a matter of just spending "time" together. I'd like to challenge that one a little today - when there is continual association - even if it is just in your thoughts of another, you are developing a closeness of relationship. Yes, the presence of another is important, but so is the awareness of the need to keep them frequently in your thoughts and dear to your heart. Up to this point, you may have only suspected I was speaking about the relationships we have with each other. I challenge you to reread this and substitute God for each of these relationship characteristics. You and I need to be as intimate with him as we are with each other - to fail HIM on any of these points is to fail ourselves! One of the things I have come to appreciate in my relationship with Jesus is the ability to have an "informal privacy" with him. By this, I mean the ability to relate to him, not so much in the formality of him being GOD, but in the informality of him being my closest companion and my most frequent contact.

Not sure where you are today in your personal relationships with each other, but we all need to realize the importance of them. We can all do a better job of that! When I stop long enough to consider those that mean the most to me, I find myself smiling at the fondness of memories associated with those individuals. I also find myself lifting them in thoughts and silent prayers for their safety, continued growth, and God's best for their lives. When I think about my relationship with Jesus, my thoughts gravitate toward the tremendous selflessness of his unending love and grace. I can only hope to exemplify this type of love to those who I relate to in the natural sense. I don't know who you need to develop a better awareness of today, but if it is Jesus - go for it. If it is your spouse - go for it. If it is your cubicle mate - go for it. The guy next door - go for it. The checkout clerk - go for it. Until you do, you are missing out on what God intends for your deepest and most meaningful growth! Just sayin!

Innumerable pixels

If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both. (I John 4:20-21)

It can be hard work to really get into any relationship - from our relationship with Christ to the one with our cubicle mate at work. If you haven't figured it out yet, Christianity is not something you "live out" alone - you actually do much better in your growth when it is shared in relationship with another. We "sharpen" each other by the various things we each lend to the relationship. It is the "differences" we each possess that actually make each relationship so important - for it is in the "differences" where we learn to "walk out" our Christian faith. Immaturity demands everybody be just like who we are - maturity recognizes the differences actually allow people to grow. The sooner we learn to appreciate the differences in each other, the sooner we are open to learning FROM each other. It is not just "what" another person is that makes them different, it is "where" they are in their life experiences, too. The "what" is the make-up of their personality or temperance - the "where" is made up of the relationship characteristics they bring into the mix because of their own personal struggles and strengths. God accepts us just as we are, and soon we begin to acknowledge his work in our lives at exactly the right moment. We should be exhibiting just as much acceptance of the other person in our lives - because we are examples of his love. When begin to interact with others on a different level - not from a self-absorbed, self-focused level, but one which is much deeper because it looks beyond the stuff people so often focus on in relationships which is nothing more than surface deep.

We may come to a place where the "what" of another person's make-up will kind of get on our nerves. If they are in a place where they are struggling, we might just get impatient with them. If they fail us because of where they are at in their own growth experience, we get disappointed. There is nothing that squelches relationships quicker than failing to deal with these disappointments or holding onto them until they mount into one mighty big deal. The other person is not equipped to take care of our disappointment - if they were, they wouldn't have disappointed us in the first place! The only one really in a place to deal with our disappointments is God himself. He knows the bigger picture and can help us "re-frame" our own "picture" of the situation, so it comes into better focus. When he does this, we often see our disappointment in a new light, and this helps us let go of it or know exactly how to help the other person. The Bible is a textbook for living - complete with all kinds of instruction and insight into the "stuff" that makes us tick, helps us when we need help the most, and just plain gets us moving when we don't feel like we can take another step. 

People will disappoint, so we have to learn to forgive them and do it quickly. No offense is meant to be held onto. The condition taught in scripture is the "obligation" to forgive, not the "option" to forgive. Forgive as God forgave you - you don't see any option presented there. If you remember an offense, stop what you are doing, go and forgive your brother, then bring your prayers before God - no option there. If we'd learn to forgive a little sooner, we might just save ourselves a whole lot of additional frustration and disappointment! We cannot expect others to do for us what only God can do in our lives. Whenever we elevate someone else to a place of significance in our lives which only belongs to God, we are in danger of having some pretty unrealistic expectations in the relationship. Your fellowman is human - don't expect him to be divine! Don't expect them to fill your emptiness - only God can truly do that. Feelings have to be worked through. The best one to help us with this is God himself - he is able to sort through them and bring us to the crux of the issue in a shorter period of time than we could ourselves. It is in the process of allowing him to walk us through our feelings until we reach a place of being less reliant on them that we come to a place of being able to stop relying on those feelings as a measure of whether things are "okay" or "working" in a relationship. We get focus - feelings muddle our focus - God sorts things out and brings the "innumerable pixels" of relationship issues into focus.

Nothing is more important than knowing we can take things to God. No relationship issue is too small, or too great, for his help. He is concerned with what concerns us. He uses his word and his "children" to speak to us when we most need to sort things out. Don't just rely upon his "children" (fellow believers) to help you sort it out - be intent on learning what the Word has to say about the issues, as well. Jesus is our example of how to work through many relationship issues. He was pretty much treated with every form of contempt; loved by some, hated by others; had an inner circle of close friends, and knew many others as acquaintances; and dealt with the worst of sinners as though they were the most valuable of people in this entire world. Since he already figured this out for us, we might just save ourselves a lot of headaches if we'd just learn to take things to him a little sooner! Just sayin!

Stone upon stone

God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home. (Ephesians 2:20-22)

Irrespective of how we got here. Some of us got here by searching for something of significance in our lives, while others got here at the end of a long rope, just about to hang themselves out to dry. Regardless of 'how' we come into the family of God, we are a family and a family needs a place to dwell. We dwell in the presence of God - each of us making up 'one stone' in this great building. I used to think I could stand alone, but one stone does not make a building!

Built by God - not by human hands or schemes. This is important for us to recognize because our pride would want to make us think we were the ones doing the building. We think we are the ones doing the changing, coming into conformity to the principles taught by God. The truth is the lessons that lead to change in our lives are taught by him, but the 'practical lab' portion of the teaching is just us finding out he intends to give us the power to live by those same teachings.

All of us built into it - not one of us who calls upon the name of Jesus is left out of the building process. We have a place - we belong specifically where he places us. We may want to be the cornerstone, or even the stone that everyone sees first, but each stone is equally as important. I think this is a good lesson for us to learn - none of us stands out as 'more important' or of greater value than another. We are all equal in God's house - the thing God does in us make us all equal.

God is quite at home in this temple - how about you? Are you comfortable in what God is building? Have you settled into the place he has made for you? Are you secure in your placement? If you are, you find all the other stones around you are wondrous stones - each fulfilling their role in this great building. There is no more competition or need for 'one-upmanship' in this family. No middle child syndrome here! He is the firstborn - no one usurps that position. We are one of many - too numerous to count. Each perfectly joins with the other. We don't 'fit' because a few chips get knocked off here and there - we fit as we are. Just sayin!

Do life as you do life

What are the people in your life doing today? I didn't ask what you are doing - I asked for you to tell me what they are doing. Do you know? Did you bother to ask? If you did ask them, what was the motivation behind your asking? There are times we ask what someone will be doing or what they are doing right now because we really want them to be doing something else - something we want done. There are also times we ask because we don't want to interrupt them if they are knee deep into whatever it is and our interruption would only waylay them, robbing them of their time and energies that would be best invested in exactly what they are doing. I think we might not do as good of a job 'understanding' what another is doing, though. We 'hear' them tell us they will be doing this or that, but do we take time to understand the 'why' behind their 'doing'? It may seem insignificant, but when I realize someone I care about is doing laundry for the fourth time this week, I may begin to appreciate they need some help with the task!

Nothing should be done because of pride or thinking about yourself. Think of other people as more important than yourself. Do not always be thinking about your own plans only. Be happy to know what other people are doing. (Philippians 2:3-4)

Our plans are good, but I think some of us may be guilty of trying to always include the other person in our plans, sometimes at the exclusion of theirs. When we begin to see how another prioritizes their work, we get insight into where they are investing their energies. For example, I 'prioritize' my blog for first thing in the morning. Why? I am at my best and this is the time I have set aside to get alone with God, study his Word, and let his words come through me. Yes, I have written a few blogs later at night, but the truth of the matter is that I am a morning person. Early to rise and early to bed. That's me. When someone wants to support how it is I 'do' my day, they will also recognize the importance of me giving my best time of day to God first. Understanding why a person prioritizes their day's activities is only one way we begin to understand how they 'do' life. 

Some 'do' life 'out loud' - needing to talk through things with others because in so doing they find their 'answers' are sorted out - not because the other person had the answers, but because in talking them out, they were able to see them clearly. Learning to listen and not 'talk over' someone who needs to 'talk through' their plans is hard sometimes. We want to 'interject' our ideas and thoughts about how they should 'do life', but in truth they aren't asking for our opinion or approval! They are merely using that time together to bring clarity to their plans - by talking them through with another. Others 'do' life in a more 'list checking' kind of way. They are organized to the 't' and find it absolutely mind boggling to live without a list. They don't understand those who can live 'spontaneously' and just 'do' what suits them at the moment. They 'need' their lists - it gives them focus and they thrive best when they have focus.

You see, we all live life a little differently, don't we? We all 'do' life at our own pace, using our own 'methodology' for how we get things done. Instead of trying to make someone live life as we do, it is quite honoring of the other to allow them to do life as they do. Just sayin!