Forgiveness

Colossians 3:13
bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

I was just thinking about this today.  When we don't forgive, we trap ourselves in a place of not experiencing forgiveness.  When we hold anger and resentment in our heart, our heart begins to experience an ever increasing share of hurt.

Why is that so?

When we are unwilling to forgive someone else for their shortcomings and sins against us we are subtly telling ourselves that forgiveness and grace is unobtainable.  There is in each of us sin and brokenness.  Honest appraisal of our own sin leads us to recognize that what we are angry, or, hurt by, from others is rarely(if ever) as dark as what is in our own hearts.  And, if that person is not forgivable, then we must not be either.

As we begin to believe that we are unforgivable, next we think we are unlovable.  And as we process that lie it shapes our actions.  If we are unforgivable and unlovable, who really cares what we do, leading us to act more in alignment with unforgivable and unlovable actions.  It becomes a viscous cycle that slowly kills us inside. 

The dependent clause of this statement in Colossians is that YOU HAVE BEEN FORGIVEN.  That no matter what you have done, no matter how far you have fallen, no matter how dirty your sins, you are loved.  The "must also" follows as being a natural response to the change in your heart.  You don't forgive so that you are forgiven, BECAUSE you are forgiven, you can forgive.  And you will!

The bearing with one another is a great realistic picture of what life is really like.  The claim in Colossians isn't that the people in your life are just so forgivable, it is that they are just like you, sinners, who need forgiveness.  And sinners who can be frustrating.  So, out of grace and forgiveness we "bear" with them, even when they are causing us problems.  If you read this whole passage in the context of what it is saying; You are forgiven, so bear with one another and give forgiveness. 

It is all tied together as a mutually dependent experience initiated by Christ.  As you accept that you are forgiven, you, at the same time learn to be forgiving.  And the reverse is true, if we refuse to be forgiving, we are acting out a heart that says that we are not ourselves forgiven.  When we refuse to bear with one another, we are saying we are someone who is unlovable and incapable of being "beared" with ourselves.

So keep in mind this simple truth:  You are LOVED and FORGIVEN.  Christ freely offers to love us and forgive us right where we are.  Full of dirt, resentment, sin, destruction, pain.  And when we stop fighting that, and start embracing that, everything about our lives radically changes.  ESPECIALLY our relationships with those in our lives.

Know that you are forgiven so that you can love each other well. 

Yes, actions do speak louder than wombats.

Help by Asking for Help

Sin and pain have a way of turning us into hermits.  When something is wrong in our lives our first tendency is to hide it away.  This happens because we; 1) Hope it goes away  2) We feel embarrassed/ashamed  3) Think we are all alone.  All three responses generally occur together.  It can be so embarrassing and painful that we just want to hide away until it works itself out.  And we believe a terrible lie that this is a journey that we have to take by ourselves. 

This approach guarantees one result.....It never gets better.

And this approach is a terrible lie.

Not one of us is capable of pulling ourselves up out of our funk in a meaningful and lasting way.  We are in desperate need of people to hear us and help us.  As long as we hide our problem from those who love us, and, ourselves, it will only serve to slowly rot us away from the inside.  Like gangrene of the soul, sin and pain that are not dealt with eat away at us and cause ever increasing anguish and sin.

But, on the other hand, when we reject those three responses we have the opportunity to heal.  And we become a source of healing for others.

Matthew 9:18-22
¹⁸ While he was saying this, a synagogue leader came and knelt before him and said, “My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.” ¹⁹ Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples.
²⁰ Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. ²¹ She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”
²² Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.

This father was hurting and suffering, as a leader in the Synagogue, he is probably pretty aware that Jesus wasn't the most popular person amongst the leadership.  But he didn't care what asking for help might cost him, he needed it, so he went to the one place he could get it. 

Here is where, for me the story gets interesting.  We think that this is a little narrative to show how this mans faith in Jesus would lead to his daughter getting healed(which it does).  And right in the midst of this guys story, a suffering woman sees Jesus and goes to him for help also. 

Her journey to seek healing was a bit "easier" than the synagogue leader.  She was already at rock bottom and obviously not a synagogue leader.  She didn't have to make a big scene to get Jesus' attention.  She just had to be there while Jesus was on his way to heal the mans daughter.  This mans plea for help, his transparency, his risk to expose himself, initiated the events that led this woman to her own healing.

When I was in college I was a typical 20 year old male.  I was dumb, loud, full of myself, and a real ladies man......ok, the last part wasn't true.  And, like a lot of other 20 year old guys I was struggling with issues related to sexual sin.  I sat down with the guy who led my bible study and discipled me and had a long conversation about what was going on.  He challenged me to share where I was at with the rest of my peers at our next bible study.  A group of 12-14 other 20 year old guys who looked up to me as another leader and a great example of being a super Christian.  This did not sound so comfortable to me.  How would they view me, I had presented myself as having it all together.  But now they would know I wasn't perfect. 

So, that next study, I asked if I could share something.  I proceeded to share everything I was struggling with and ask for forgiveness for not being honest about it and presenting myself as someone I wasn't.....a "got it all together" Christian.  What happened next shocked me.  Over the next 2 hours EVERY single guy in that room shared a similar story.  They had all been, like me, trying to just deal with it themselves and pretending everything was ok. 

From that time on it became one of the closest knit and honest groups I have ever been a part of.  God did great things in the lives of those guys.  A few are missionaries, a few work in other ministry roles, and all of them are walking with the Lord over a decade later.

I was so worried about me that I was missing out on a couple of awesome opportunities:

1)  I now had the support and transparency I needed to walk by faith and not in sin.  There was no more hiding and rotting away.  The actual help and encouragement I needed was now available because people actually knew what I needed!

2)  My willingness to initiate and be honest with my struggles gave each of those other guys "permission" to be honest about their own.  We had all been sitting in that room with the SAME PROBLEMS believing we must surely be the only person with a problem.  Which only made us feel worse about ourselves, which led to more "hiding".   


What are you struggling with in your life right now?  Sexual sin?  Relationship issues?  Financial distress?  Health problems?   

Stop believing you have to try to fix it yourself.  It is a lie. 

Stop believing that this is just the way it is and you might as well resign yourself to the problem.  This is an even worse lie.

The same power that raised Christ from the dead is the very power that can raise your burdened soul up from the grave it is trying to throw you in. 

We are not defined by our struggles and our problems.  We do not have to be controlled by the unhealthy drives that sometimes consume us. 

But we don't break those chains by keeping our head in the sand, or, just barreling forward on our own.

People in your life desperately need you.  Not to fix them, but for you to be honest with them about what is going on in your life.  You will be blown away by what doors are opened when we get transparent about what is going on in our lives.

Do you want to get better?  Do you want to see others in your life get better?  Then go ask for help, lay it all out there and run to the Cross.

If this is the kind of "help" you are being offered, this is one you can ignore......

  

Who do you love like?

We should treat sin like a disease.

Like its cancer.

Yah, you heard me right.  Sin should be treated like cancer.  You know, destructive, murdering, disgusting cancer.

And we should treat people who sin like they have cancer.

We should cry with them when they are hurting.

We should hold them when they are sad.

We should be quick to offer help when they ask for it.  But don't force them to take our help, because having cancer is exhausting and painful and sometimes they need some space.

We should pray for them every day.

Our hearts should break for the pain they are going through.

We should weep with them when the medicine sometimes feels worse then the disease.

And we should also remember that cancer isn't contagious. You can't get it by spending time with them and holding their hand, or, hugging them.

 There are two distinctly diametrically opposed ways of loving people.  We can love them in the law.  Or, we can love them in Grace.

Loving people in the law looks like this:
1)  High expectations of what WE think they should be doing FOR us
2) Consequences(withholding our love, anger, punishment, bitterness) when they fail to meet our expectations.
3) Always on the look out for "mistakes"
4) Treating them differently depending on the day and/or our mood
5) What have you done for me lately attitude


Loving people in Grace looks like this:
1) High belief in who they are regardless of what they do for us
2) Actions of love(service, sacrifice, patience, caring) even when they aren't at their "best"
3) Always on the look out for reasons to encourage and praise
4) Consistent treatment and attitude towards them that has nothing to do with our mood or the day
5) What have I done for YOU lately attitude

People are treated like objects all the time.  Even when we are generally "nice" enough people, we have a tendency to often look through a lens that defines that persons value by the value we perceive they are giving us.  When that value diminishes(in our eyes) we replace them with something "better". 

We have created a list of "do's and dont's" in our interpersonal relationships by which we base our love actions towards that person.  When they hurt us, make us angry, act incorrectly...we justify our poor treatment of them because they are getting what they deserve.  They didn't live up to the "law", and now its time to pay the piper. 

What is even more terrible about this approach to love, is that we rarely ever have enough personal introspection to fairly evaluate how little we live up to the standards we apply to other people.  And, we become self-righteous because of it.  We say, "look at all that I have done to deserve you acting in a way that I want, and you aren't doing it, you are a bad person!!"  And this self-righteous attitude becomes the basis for us playing the martyr.  "Oh, look at poor little me, I am such a good son/friend/employee/spouse, and they aren't treating me like it, I deserve better!!"

How do you approach people in your life who aren't living up to expectations?  Who are in sin?  Sin in general, sin against others, sin against YOU?  Is it time to make them pay for their bad behavior?

The Pharisees were great at the law.  And they were great at viewing everyone through that lens.  They were the first to judge other people, to call for punishment, to ostracize people for not being the "right kind" of person. 

So Jesus calls them out...a lot... And He shows us a much different approach to loving others.  Grace.  Given not because of the goodness of the person receiving, but because of HIS goodness.  

Don't get me wrong.  He didn't pretend that sin didn't exist.  But he didn't treat people like they were sinners.  He treated them like someone who was hurting and needed to be loved.  Even when they weren't acting very loveable.  Why did the sick, the sinners, the hurting, come in droves to be near Jesus?  Because He was going to treat them as if they were His very own precious children.  They had lived their whole lives in the performance based approach to loving in the law.  Being told you aren't good enough over and over and over again was probably pretty exhausting.   

So what does this mean for us?

We have to be brutally honest with ourselves.  How are we loving the people in your life?  In the law?  Or, in Grace? 

A simple approach to being aware of this, and to begin to shape our hearts and actions to reflect this:

Write down the ways in which you show love towards people through words and actions.  For instance;  When I love someone, I smile at them.  When I love someone, I offer to help them.  When I love someone, I am really interested in what they have to say.  When I love someone, I put their wants/needs ahead of mine.

Perhaps you can write it all out on a notecard you keep on you at all times.  Especially if you are suspicious that you  have been a tad bit too legalistic.  And as you interact with this person, review your words and responses about what you recognize as being true signs of love.  Then, do those things instead of what you might actually feel like doing.  No matter what that person has or hasn't done that day/week/month/year.

Where this gets hard is when that person hasn't acted the best.  When they have sinned and hurt you.  But that is what Christ centered Grace is all about.  While we were still SINNERS He laid His life down for us.  So, die to self and love without condition!

Sin is like cancer.  And we need to treat sinners like cancer patients.  We don't sit around criticizing them all day long for having cancer.  We love them right where they are at.  One of the interesting things about cancer treatment and recovery is that a patients "support" network(friends and family) is so essential to success rate.  You can give all the best treatment in the world, but if that person feels alone and abandoned their chances at healing are greatly diminished.

And when you love someone who has cancer, you don't do it ONLY if they will just get well.  You love them because YOU LOVE THEM.  Its a great benefit and blessing that your love can help.

When someone in your life is sinning, not living up to expectations, hurting you, you need to stop loving them ONLY if they will get "better".  Love them because YOU LOVE THEM.  They can be given all the "help" in the world to "get better" but if they feel alone and abandoned, their chances of healing are greatly diminished.  It won't make them better, but you CAN make it worse.

Love because you have been loved.  Die to self every day and love because God is good, not because they are.

This is a true story about my life, and a good illustration of my point.....

Why Jesus doesn't "Like" your Facebook Post

Oh facebook viral posts.  Where would we be without your ever present condemning gaze?  This week has been a hard one for me mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  I mean I reallllly dropped the ball for Jesus this week.....  Though I had the chance to declare that I love Jesus...

 

 

.... I didn't do it....

 

 

Later, I had a chance to declare Jesus was my friend....

 

 

 





 

Well, I didn't do that either....

 

 

Then, sadly, I was part of the 97%...

 

 

 

 

After that, I decided that God wasn't actually good....

 

 

 

It's probably because I don't know how to have powerful prayer....

 

 

 

Are you sick of seeing these types of posts all over your wall?  And it isn't just the pseudo-Christians who are getting into the act.  Every day we have a long list of "share this if you support "x" posts to browse through. 

 

Maybe I am some sort of monster because I clearly do not support enough important causes....on Facebook.....

 

Why do we as a culture find these "like and share" images so compelling?  Do we actually believe that clicking like on some random picture with some Microsoft paint text superimposed on it makes a difference?

 

You and I need to understand something very essential about who God is, and, who He isn't. 

 

He is GOD.  This means He is not beholden to anything we do or don't do.  We cannot manipulate Him through magic words and fancy posts and online petitions.  There is a sense of Neo-Paganism that seeps into modern Christianity that seems to think we have the ability to manage and influence the Deity through some actions on our part.

 

One of my favorite events in the Old Testament is the Tower of Babel.  What is somewhat lost in the English is what it is they are really building.  They aren't building a skyscraper, they are building a ziggurat.  In ancient Mesopotamia a ziggurat was a large temple that you built for a god.  Since it was so big and tall the god would come to rest on the top(since he lived "above" them).  After he was good and rested he would then walk down the tower to the temple that would be placed at the bottom where he would be obligated to provide blessings for the nice people who built him such a fancy place to rest. 

 

The evil that was in mans heart was that they no longer wanted to take orders from God, they wanted to start telling God what to do.  We will build this tower, you know, to be nice, then you HAVE to do something for us.  So what did God do?  For their own sake, he frustrated their attempts to pretend that they could be in charge. 

 

Does this sound familiar?  I am going to do something fancy pants for God/Jesus and He is just going to be so impressed He will absolutely do something for me. 

 

Jesus--The Holy Vending Machine. 

 

Perhaps you think you are just declaring your love for Jesus, because Romans 10 tells you do so!  Well...kinda.  The concept of declaring Jesus as Lord is interwoven with a lifestyle of confession, repentance, and active belief.  Just saying "Jesus is Lord" doesn't actually mean you are living as if He is. 

 

If you liked the Office with Steve Carrel you probably remember when he is having financial trouble.  He is advised to declare bankruptcy.  So, he goes into the middle of the office and shouts, "I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY".  hahahahahahhaa you and I said at home.

 

That is basically what we are showing when we click and share all these posts.  Very rarely is our life reflective of discipleship.  Just like the Babelians(?) we want to keep things easy for us. 

 

Actually repenting of sin...HARD.  Clicking "share" on a post that says I know God has a plan for everything.....EASY!! 

 

Actually helping a homeless person....HARD.  Clicking "share" on a post about how nice it was that someone was nice to a homeless person....EASY!!

 

Do everyone, especially yourself a big favor.  Stop clicking like and share.  Start doing the hard work of living out the truth of those viral posts you seem to be so enamored by. 

 

 











How Offensive Is Jesus?

The great moral standard of our present age is tolerance.  Often, this tolerance is defined by not offending someone else with your words or actions.  To speak "negatively" of another's actions is considered a great transgression.  To be a civil and moral person is to be someone who not only doesn't speak poorly about another's behavior, but to also affirm it in some manner. 

My son's favorite phrase lately is, "You're a bully".  This is most often employed when I speak firmly with him about something he needs to stop doing, or, start doing.  Last night I told him it was time to go to bed.  Shockingly, this did not cause him to immediately jump up from his seat and run to the bathroom to brush his teeth.  After a few moments I spoke much more firmly, "Get up right now or there will be consequences.  When daddy says its time to go to bed we listen and obey"  To which he replied, "You're being a bully!"

We don't like being told what to do.  We don't like being told that what we are currently doing is not acceptable.  It infringes on our "rights".  Who do they think they are to tell us what to do???

Like a strong willed four year old we want to believe that there is no questioning our choices.  What I think is right must be right...because I think it!

Jesus is often wildly misrepresented as some sort of hippy do gooder singing "Kum Bay Yah" around a fire with his buddies.  And he just wants to chill with you and make you feel warm and fuzzy inside because he is alllll about love.  This Jesus we have created is one who has very little to say about behavior, sin, heaven, hell, or any other "messy" topic.  His greatest purpose is to teach us all to, as the theologians Bill and Ted would say, be excellent to each other.

With this Jesus in mind speaking about sin to a culture mired in it is mocked and called hypocritical.  Accusatory questions like, "Do you think anyone is going to listen to you when you are being bully?  Jesus just loved people, I thought you were supposed to be like him!" are heard quite often.  Any person bearing the name "Christian" who has ever spoken publicly about some issue has heard some form of these accusations.

If we are to be faithful witnesses, to be disciples of Christ, how ARE we supposed to conduct ourselves in a fallen world?

Jesus angered people.  They didn't crucify him because he was trying to host a drum circle while reciting love poetry.  So the question is, why did they crucify him, what made them so angry? 

1)  He blasphemed.  He said He was God.  He didn't just say He was there to teach people to be nicer.  He said, I AM.  He claimed divinity.  He acted in alignment with that claim by not just healing, but FORGIVING sins. 

Even today, the claim that there is a God, and that Jesus is God, is offensive.  Why?  We want to be God.  Or, we want God to be the one we can define and control.  The story of history is mankind constantly trying to assert their own divinity and power and the disastrous consequences that flow from that belief. 

Right now, Jesus is speaking to you.  You are not your own god, God alone is God.  That is offensive to us.  We shout, "you're a bully!!"  What we think is what we want to think.  We are in charge of our own lives.  How dare someone say otherwise.

2)  He said that what you think is good is not good at all.  We want to believe that we are good people.  And that our choices are therefore good.  Jesus cut right through self-righteousness and took what people thought was good enough to justify themselves in the great scales of eternal justice and said it was crap.  People hate that. 

The Pharisees were constantly getting called out by Jesus.  They had created a whole system of laws and rules to prove how good they were.  And Jesus said that they were white washed tombs.  They looked good, but there was nothing good in them.  Not in God's eyes. 

But I am not a religious Pharisee might be your defense.  You're wrong!  We ALL are religious Pharisees.  People love to say Jesus saved his harshest words for the religious leaders.  This is a misunderstanding of what Jesus was calling out.  He wasn't calling out a bunch of devout believers.  He was calling out false religiosity created by man to self-justify themselves. 

Whether you believe in God or not, or, practice any sort of religion, you have a bit of Pharisee in you.  There are a whole system of rules, morals and ethics, you hold yourself to in the attempt to be a "good enough" person.  And, when others don't live up to your standards, like the Pharisees, you look down on them for not being as good as you are.  Being self-righteous is soooo much fun.  That's why we all do it. 

Jesus was very offensively clear.  YOU ARE NOT A GOOD PERSON.  Nothing you do to prove you are good proves that you are good.  There is only one who is Good.  And that is Christ.  There is only one way for us to be Good.  To be in Christ.

This is very offensive.  The message of Christ is that you are not a good person.  Perhaps you do plenty of things that make you an enjoyable person to live next to and you operate as a beneficial member of your local society, but, at the end of the day, you are not truly Good.  Only a good legalist. 


Now, here is the problem for Christians.  In what ways are you being offensive?  Because we should be offensive like Christ was offensive.  Not just offensive.

If your message to someone is not about the all surpassing glory of Jesus and His goodness, then you are just being offensive. 

Let me give a brief conversation example.

Bad Example:
Christian:  What you are doing is wrong.  You are a sinner.  Yuck

Good Example:
Christian:  Only Jesus is Lord.  Anything we choose to put on the throne before Him leads to death. 

Both can be viewed as offensive.  But only one talks to the world like Jesus talked to the world.  You do not share Truth with people by complaining about their particular sins.  You share Truth with them by speaking about He who is the Truth and how that shapes how we view ALL the things in our lives. 

Be offensive like Jesus.  Don't JUST be offensive.

Not exactly what I mean, but who doesn't love this guy?

Choosing to Love

Love has been really dragged through the mud in our modern age.  It is bent, twisted, morphed, manipulated and downright abused by a myriad of ever sifting opinions and attitudes.  Just listen to the music on the radio and what they have to say about love.  Or watch a movie or TV.  What is love all about in those arenas?  Feelings.

Don't get me wrong.  "Feeling" in love is just dandy.  There is nothing wrong about getting butterflies when you see "that" person.   But that is not "love", that is attraction.  You may contend that "attraction" is a prerequisite to love, but I disagree...mostly. 

We live in a time where we have the greatest access to luxuries and comfort.  Medicines and food.  Yet, depression and suicides are becoming an ever increasing problem.  What are we so depressed about?  I would contend that it is loneliness.  At the end of the day, we can't face our problems and our hurts, because we feel like we face them alone.

Why do we feel so alone? 

Because we have come to believe that our value and worthiness to experience love is based upon things we have to do to create that feeling in others.

I have to be pretty/handsome enough.

I have to be smart enough.

I have to be rich enough.

I have to wear the right clothes, see the right movies, drive the right car.

And we never feel like we measure up.  When we don't measure up to these arbitrary standards we feel unlovable.  We have accepted the idea that love is a feeling that we create in other people based upon things about ourselves that are deemed lovable.  When we can't engender those feelings in others, or, they stop feeling that way about us, we decide there is something irredeemably broken about us.

When love becomes an emotion driven feeling we will all become victims of experiencing people not feeling that way about us.  So what do we do?  For many people, it is jumping from experience to experience, or, relationship to relationship, to rekindle those high heady days of first attraction so that we can feel what we think is love again.  Because then we will be ok.  But, eventually, it too wears off, and we are left feeling just as bad and lonely as we did before.

Love CAN manifest itself in emotional feelings, but emotional feelings do not manifest in love.  Love, the kind of love we desperately seek and are made for, is an act of the will.  To choose to sacrifice your selfishness for the good of the person you have chosen to love.  And, as we continually discipline ourselves to that practice, we will find our emotions becoming realigned to reflect the reality of our behaviors. 

Our example and our hope is from the author of our very selves.  When God talks about love, he isn't talking about warm feelings he has for us, he is talking about the choice he has made to love us.  In Ephesians 1:14 we are told "Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes."  It doesn't say, we were pretty enough, or moral enough, or smart enough.  It says he chose us.

In Malachi we hear Israel asking God if he really loves them.  He doesn't write them some flowery poem detailing how pretty their eyes are and how his heart goes pitter patter when he sees them, he says, Of Course I love you, I chose you to be mine. 

Love is a choice we make.  An act of the will to love a person, not because of something they earn in our eyes(because that means they can also lose it), but because we have decided to commit to that choice. 

Do you want to be loved by someone who will love you as long as you are a certain way?  Or, do you want to be loved by someone who will choose to treat you selflessly in love regardless of your flaws, mistakes, and failures?  If we only seek love rooted in emotion, it will always fall apart eventually. 

That is the beauty of God's love for us, the love we are called to live in accordance to.  We are not under some obligation to earn it, or, to continue to earn it.  We are simply invited to experience being loved.

Ask yourself if in the relationships in your life(spouse, kids, friends, family) do you love like God loves, or do you love out of selfish desires of what you can get from that person. 

We want selfless love for ourselves, but don't often give it to others....

Can you Trust until you Agree

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶ in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight

We have a lot of disagreements at my house.....A LOT.  Generally, the main disagreerer is my 4 year old son.  There is very little that he likes to agree to.  Especially about things he has already made up his mind about.  For some reason he is very sensitive to "hot" temperatures.  Once he has decided that something is too hot(food, bath) he is convinced that he can NEVER touch it. 

(On an unrelated note, when he was about 9 months old I once fed him boiling hot baby food without first checking the temperature....he cried for a reallllllly long time.)

When it comes to the bath it is almost comical how incapable he is of putting even a toe into the water if he thinks it is too hot.  His baby sister can be happily swimming around in it, but that doesn't matter.  If we gently splash him with the water to show him it is ok it causes hysterical crying...

It is pretty obnoxious......

The problem we have, and most parents have with kids, is not that we can't get our kids to agree with us on something, but that our kids don't TRUST us about something.  My sons mind is made up already.  I can't argue him into agreeing with me.  It is so ingrained in his head, that even the lukewarm water "feels" boiling hot.  What needs to happen is for him to trust his daddy.  To trust that I would not throw him in boiling water and hurt him.  To trust that I know more than he does, and when I do something to/for him I am doing it in love for his good. 

When we wait to be convinced that we agree with someone or something, we never really move forward.  We are great at arguing.  If you bring up "this" point. I will point out "that" problem.  At the heart of our "disagreements" is that we fundamentally refuse to place our trust in each other. 

Trust undermines the need for agreement.  When we trust, we act rooted in that trust with the expectation that agreement will occur naturally.  This leads us to not worry about the "details" but to instead fully engage with that person and what they are telling us.

If my son was so deeply rooted in trust in his dad he might have some anxiety about the temperature of the water, but one word from me about its "safeness" would be enough to step in boldly.  Then he would find that he could agree that it was indeed fine. 

There are so many things we struggle with biblically and personally when it comes to God.  In our modern age we find ourselves demanding some sort of absolute, airtight, rock solid, measuring system to evaluate our agreement with God.  When something doesn't make sense to us, we throw the whole thing out.  Especially when it comes to the issues close to our heart.

Sexual sin.

Creation.

Marriage.

Discipleship.

Justice.

So we end up standing outside of moving forward because we are waiting for it to either be conclusively settled in some sort of manner that we can agree to, or, for it to be proven wrong, so we can jettison the whole thing.  We start with the presupposition that God can't be trusted.  It might not be something we say out loud, but it is the functional reality of our behaviors and actions. 

And like a four year old we often refuse to even acknowledge that the water is demonstrably not too hot.  We become so worried that maybe it really is going to hurt, so we are ready to put up a fight for every inch.

Because we don't trust.

Now, before you accuse me of anti-intellectualism, and blind sheeping...let me point out that all of significant interpersonal relationships, that are healthy, are built on trust, not pre-agreed upon agreement.  As we invest in a person we learn to trust them, even when we might not initially agree with them.  And we hope that they trust us as well.

God is not a "religion".  He is a person, He became a person in the flesh as Jesus Christ.  We are made for a relationship with him, not a religion with him.  As we approach the things he has said, and he has called us to, we are called to trust him, even when we might not initially agree with him.  To taste and see that He is good. 

And isn't that a great thought.  God doesn't say, agree that what I am is good, he says, trust me, taste and see that I am good.  To even get to the point of tasting, you have to trust him.  After you have trusted, and then tried it, you are now equipped to agree with Him. 

Proverbs 3 makes a powerful point.  Trust, not lean on knowledge.  Do you trust that God WILL make your paths straight.  Because I guarantee that you are just like me, when I do it my own way, my path is anything but straight.  It is a painful mess. 

There is never any way to know what tomorrow will hold.  Whether the water you look at is too hot.  But if God is who He says he is;  Good, Just, Righteous, Loving.  Then we can trust him when he says to "come this way".  And we can then taste and see that His ways really are good.

Trust is important