and this is what joy feels like.

Labels: Other

Originally posted between August 11-September 14, 2005. This is my favorite post (series of posts?) that I've done. The first entry is all over the place and rambling. Everything after that was a lot of fun to learn and think about and write. I may tighten up the first post just for readability's sake.

called: an introduction

So the next step in my quest to discover who God made me to be was this study of the word "called". Today I just want to qualify what I'm going to be doing over the next few days, because I think it's important that you understand that I am not a trained theologian. I've done my homework, I read a ton, listen to Pastors who inspire me, try to properly use commentaries, lexicons, interlinear Bibles and different translations to aid my study. I also try to rely on God to provide insight and unlock the text that He gave us.

All that is to say that this study was not easy. The main reason is can be best illustrated by one of those "is to" statments from your ACTs and SATs.

material written about creation : a huge mountain : : material written about called : _____

And the correct response would be: a pile of clothes.

So I am left in many ways to my own devices to understand what it means to be called and what we are called to be. Some scripture I immediatley grasped (at least at a surface level) and was able to work through. Others struck me out looking.

For exampe, when I started in Romans 1, the first usage I can find of "called to be..." I was given way more questions than answers. And not in the philosophical way that I love. For example, Romans 1:6 in the NIV and NLT says we are called to belong to Jesus Christ. But the word belong is seemingly inferred because it doesn't appear in any interlinear Bible I could find. So what does it mean to belong to Jesus? What does it mean that we are called to belong to Jesus?

What does it mean to be called? In the first 8 verses of Romans 1, the word called is used in many different ways. Paul is called to be an apostle. Some scholars say that Paul is called to be an apostle, but many others are not. Then Paul says we are called to belong to Jesus. He then says we are called to be saints. He also says that we received grace and apostleship to call others. Who is we? Some believe it to be select members of the church he is writing to, others all of us. One commentary said that "called to be saints" is directed at a select few, and another said that it is everyone. I suppose that's why it's called commentary. It's interpretation and I'm happy to join in that conversation. But seriously...

A lot of it just leaves my head swimming.

So I plowed through a bunch of commentaries, hoping to find something that explained this, but the explanations were quite frankly too complex for my little head to wrap its mind around. So let's just start here.

Called is the Greek "kletos" which can mean invited by God to obtain salvation in the kingdom through Christ or it can mean called to the discharge of some office. And it can infer divine appointment and selection.

Some translations use the word "belong", others do not.

So are we called to an office? Is everyone called or just some people?

This was the first verse I studied. And while my desire to go through Seminary is rising, my ability to answer these questions is pretty static.

But I want to find this answer... I want to understand who God created and called us to be. I want to ultimately understand how to discern who God made me to be. And I want to pass what I've learned along to you to aid your journey through the same questions.

So all that is to say that I'm doing my best to tread reverantly through God's word. And if something I say is way off, then by all means put me on the right course. Tomorrow I'll show you what God is showing me in some of these scriptures. They may take awhile to get through, and I hope they will be more readable than this word vomit of a post was... and I hope you'll find some light in what I put on the table. But ultimately this is a conversation... I want to engage my friends and my mentors and people who stumble onto this sight in it. I want to hear your answers, through face to face conversation, instant messenger, e-mail or comments. And I hope you'll enjoy it.

called (2)

The Greek word kletos is invited by God to obtain salvation in the Kingdom through Christ... invited, as in invited to a banquet.

Invited.

Let's just do a quick overview right now before we start to move through what some of these mean... (These are from Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy and 1 Peter)

invited... to belong to Jesus
invited... to be saints
invited... according to His purpose
invited... into fellowship with Jesus
invited... to live in peace
invited... to be Christ's slave
invited... to be free
invited... to the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints
invited... to one hope
invited... to win the prize
invited... to share in the glory of Jesus
invited... to eternal life
invited... out of the darkness and into His wonderful light
invited... to inherit a blessing & give a blessing

I could blog about those for the rest of my life and continue to come up with deeper truths...

and then there's this one... this one verse ... Peter's first letter, second chapter, verse 21.

Peter says we are called to suffer.

Invited... to suffer.

invited. to suffer.

Let it roll around in your head and mouth for awhile... say it out loud, sign it, write it down, sing it...

invited.
to suffer.

So we'll unpack that one last. Cause I'm really excited about all of this now. Have I mentioned lately that I love my Savior?!??!?!

invited. to suffer. How radical is that?

till tomorrow, then... be blessed... be loved...

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called (3)

Funny things happen when you go looking for specific answers. I've found that whenever I tell God "show me this!" He tends to show me a hundred other things on the way to showing me what I asked for. Often I don't see or get what I asked for, but I'm so blessed by the process, that I forget I even wanted something specific. Does that ever happen to you?

This study is knocking my socks off. I'm at a point where I will keep searching for the answers to who God made me to be, but if I don't get there for years and years, I will be okay with that... because the process of searching is doing wonders for my walk.

Today I want to get the first few entries down for everyone. For people stopping by for the first time, this study started by looking at the creation story and now I'm working through what we were "called" to be. Called being the Greek kletos, which means invited, as in invited to a banquet. And now, without further adieu...

invited... to belong to Jesus (Romans 1:6)
I'm invited to belong to Jesus. He owns me. I'm His. This is His life I'm living. Not in that borrowed time way, but in that He paid the ransom, He purchased my soul. What do I do with my life that reflects how I feel about that? If I continue playing keep-away then He still owns me, but it's harder for Him to bless me, to teach me, mold and and sculpt me.

If I own a dog... purchase it from the pound... it's mine to train, to discipline and to love. Let's say you owned a dog, and I went to your house and tried to be the sole caregiver of your dog... would that sit well with you? What if your dog loves me more? When called by both of us to choose a lap to sit on, it chooses me? What if I went to your home and disciplined or tried to train it? Even if I were good at it, you would feel slighted. Can you think of other would-be-owners that you choose between?

invited... to be saints (romans 1:7)
We are invited to be saints... saints means "most holy thing"... so the question is, why would we want to be holy?

Because Jesus says it's the best way to live. That if you live in a way that reflects holiness, you will live the way you were made to live. And that resonates with me... when I am unforgiving, it drains me. When I devote my time to things that knock me off track, it saps me. We are invited to live a life that lines up with how we were intended to be. Since I talked about this in the created post, let's move on...

invited... according to His purpose (romans 8:28)
Why can we trust Jesus as our owner? Why do we want to live like Him? Because of His purpose.

His purpose is to restore creation to his original intention - love, honor, passion, humility, forgiveness, acceptance, creativity, stark naked emotions, trust, generosity and so on.

If that's your M.O. and you created these things so no one knows how to do them better than you - I want to be yours and I want to be like you.

Now, what's His purpose that we're invited according to? According to Romans 1, it's to invite others to the feast. My brothers and sisters... I don't know all of the answers, there are lots of reasons to doubt and not understand... but I do know that this feast I'm invited to... it's the most powerful, life-changing, life-giving, affirming, wonderful feast I've ever been a part of.

God says if He knocks and you answer, He'll feast with you. For all of the great memories feasting with my friends and family, my favorite feast is alone with God. We get to be a part of His feast and invite others to His feast.

Invited to invite others to His feast.

God made us belong to Him, to live a life that is pure, that contributes to His purpose… Shall we continue? Perhaps tomorrow… lots more on the way, and they just keep getting better and better…

Tomorrow: fellowship, peace & slave

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called (4)

(for some background info, see the previous posts)

invited... into fellowship with Jesus (1 corinthians 1:9)
It's been thousands of years, and still the idea of hanging out with God is revolutionary.

God reaches out to us... first He walked with us in the garden, then asked us to climb a mountain, to make Him a tabernacle, a Temple. Then He sends His Son, who invites a bunch of guys who were not wise according to the world, neither mighty nor noble, and told them to go invite a bunch of other people. Those people, too were and are not wise according to the world, and neither mighty nor noble (1 corinthians 1:26), and then Jesus apparently somehow that's beyond human thinking, takes up residency in our souls.

reason #4705 that I believe Christianity... God reaches out to us. It's not about us reaching out to God... the original catalyst of everything we're living for is God, not us. And He invites us into fellowship... a shared purpose... a family. He calls us brothers and sisters, friends. And together this community locks arms and holds each other up. We are invited to have fellowship with Jesus, the crucified Son of God. Just take a moment to let that sink deep within. Inhale... exhale... it's far too powerful for a blog, far too powerful for a sermon. I believe we only start unlocking the realities of this reality when we consider it from the depths of our minds and hearts and souls.

invited... to live in peace (1 corinithians 7:15)
God called us so that we could live in peace. But Jesus says He gives His peace not as the world does, so our hearts do not need to be troubled or afraid.

This isn't fleeting peace. Caesar was conquering the world "to bring peace", but to do so he was devastating the world. This is the peace the people Jesus was talking to would have been used to. And Jesus says His peace is real, hopeful, lasting... it's the peace of lying down to sleep and having no worries. It's the peace of a cool summer day with friends when all is well in the jungle. It's forgiving... not fighting to conquer, but resting in conquered. It's that kind of peace.

invited... to be Christ's slave (1 corinthians 7:22)
The Greek word for slave rolls off my tongue... apeleutheros... uh, right. Here's what it means: a slave... a metaphor for one who gives himself up to another's will, devoted to another to the disregard of one's own interests.

God says if you were free when you were called, you are now called to be Christ's slave. Disregarding my own interests and devoting myself to Jesus' will has meant a few things for me...

hearing the hard truths.
doing the hard things.
for no earthly wage. i get nothing out of it in the eyes of many people in my life.

Slave. It means living for Him, not for us. It means fulfilling His purpose not ours.

What I've found is that the less you fight this, the faster His purpose becomes our purpose. In the same passage, Paul also says that if you were a slave when you were called, you are now called to be free. If you feel like a slave to this world, to society, to your friends and family, to standards that aren't reachable, to goals that are meaningless, to the things that sap the life out of you... I'd like to invite you to live a free life.

And even though this free life is conditional upon devoting your purpose to the God who created you, remember that His purpose is love and hope and freedom. And remember, in the words of one who died too young... it's not a formula; it's not a test. It's a relationship. This fellowship is not about competency, it's about intimacy. It's not about perfection but connection.

"Spirituality is not about being fixed... it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness."

be blessed... be loved...

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called (5)

invited... to be free (galatians 5:13)
Ugh. I've written and re-written this post several times now and something's off. This is one of those key verses for my life, one of the verses I've pondered and dissected and read and listened and studied and lived from for a long time now. There's so much to say about it and the surrounding text, but I wanted to find a way to deliver what is on my heart about this passage without getting bogged down in paragraphs and paragraphs of exposition about the term yoke, about the juxtaposition of the law being a burden of slavery and Jesus (and Paul) affirming the law elsewhere, about the lists of the desires of the Spirit and the desires of the sinful nature, and... well, you get the point.

So let's just do this.

Paul says that it is for freedom that Christ set us free... "You my brothers were called to be free."

The obvious question is free from what?

Paul directly says that the law is not meant to be a burden, to keep you down and feeling like a slave to it. Deuteronomy 5 says "So be careful to do what the LORD your God has commanded you; do not turn aside to the right or to the left. Walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess." The law was meant to allow you to prosper and live in the Promised Land.

But the law had become a burden to the Jewish people at this time... the leading thought of the day seems to be this one of 'fences'. The Rabbis spoke of building fences around the law - like one would build a fence around a house. There is the law, which is meant to be good and allow you to live the life God intended you to live, and in order to make sure you uphold the law, the Rabbis, almost systematically, began creating more and more rules designed to make sure you never got in the vicinity of disobedience. Of course, this is impossible, and it's easy to see how this could begin controlling your life to the point where it was no longer celebratory and worshipful but now a burden.

We know that Jesus set us free from the penalties from our choices to turn away from God and not trust Him... and Paul says that we aren't to use this freedom to indulge in the sinful nature but to serve each other in love. Then he lists the desires of the sinful nature and compares those to the desires of the Spirit.

So here's what I want to get at...

invited... to be free

All of the things Paul lists as the fruit of the Spirit will be familiar to you - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Then he says there's no law against those things. Why is there no law against love and the rest? Because those are the ways He intended for us to live. And now He's inviting us to be free to live those... maybe we can put it this way...

We are invited to be free to live the way He made us to live. To be who He made us to be.

Let's take this one step further before going on to the next invitation. When I look at his other list - the desires of the sinful nature - I see things like hatred and envy. I've done some deep studies on this passage and I'm always left with a lot of conviction. I have lived from spiteful, hateful places before. I have and continue to experience envy and jealousy in my relationships - the question 'Why is this happening for him and not for me?' comes along more often that I care to admit. God calls these desires of the sinful nature. And what I realized is that they aren't sins because God says they are sins. They aren't sins because God's a meany and wants to rob us of pleasure. They are sins because they stop us from being free.

God wants us to be free to be the people He made us to be. When we live this way - lining our lives up, tuning our lives to the pitch of the desires of the Spirit - the fruit of that, the results are...

love...
joy...
peace...

God gives you permission to, in the words of my friend Justin, be deviant. To go against what society says is good and healthy. To reject feelings of envy and hate and all the rest that eat you up inside and rob you from truly experiencing life, and life to the full.

We are invited to be free to live.

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called (6)

So this may seem insignificant to most of you, but I'm sort of freaking out because I suddenly have several gray hairs on my head. In November, I will be 26, which of course is closer to 30 than 20, and you should fully expect me to unpack that as it gets closer to my birthday. And I realized that these little gray hairs speak of a much deeper issue going on in my life. They speak to what I fear.

There are a lot of things that I fear... I fear being alone. I fear that I'm not good enough, brave enough or talented enough to do the things I feel God calling me to do. I fear that I'll always be afraid of conflict and never be able to fully express what I'm feeling in a healthy way. I fear that I'll get stuck in the corporate world because it will feel safe, when I know that I'm not made to be here.

Last night at my house group, we spent time talking about our fears. For a night where we're all basically saying how much anxiety we have in our hearts, it was completely life-giving and sacred. For some of us, we realized that we don't have to go through this alone - that other people are also feeling these things, that others want to walk with us as we work through them and that we are free and safe to tell the people in this community what's actually going on under the surface.

What do you fear? What makes you say, as Elijah in 1 Kings, "I have had enough, LORD. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." What keeps you up at night? What do you fear?

In this continuing study of who God made me to be, I've found that the fears I have speak volumes to who God made me to be. I feel like if this is what I fear, then it must be reflective in some way of the way I'm wired. And when I started looking at the things we are called to... what we are invited to as part of the feast God is hosting, this was one of the things that rocked my world.

invited... to one hope (ephesians 4:4)
God says we should put our hope in Him. Unlike the stock market, where it is important to diversify the things you invest in, God says we can put all of our stock in one place.

I think about it like this. In the lottery I have a one in a bajillion (give or take a few gabillion) chance of winning, so it is better to buy lots of lottery tickets. And when I read about the tenements of other religions, it seems like an awful lot of it is based on chance. Even atheists leave a lot up to chance - they put their hope in the chance that this is all meaningless and doesn't ultimately matter, and if it does then they cannot know about it. As a former atheist of many years, it seems to me that this logic is based in nothing.

The invitation to one hope is because God is the ultimate clerk behind the counter. My "religion" has nothing to do with me and everything to do with God - God who knows the game winning numbers.

I am invited to one hope - a hope that is an anchor for our soul, firm and secure (hebrews 4:19).

I can live from this hope - I can be bold. It grounds me. When I have fears, I hold onto my one hope, knowing that God doesn't lie and that He's going to redeem this. When things get hard and life doesn't go the way you hope it would, I can lean into the hope God gives me to know that it's going to get better. And when I start to live from that hope and not the hope that I'll get it right or that I'll make something good happen or that the people around me will arbitrarily change, I find that I am free to move forward and experience life and life to the full.

In Ephesians, Paul says there is one body and one Spirit - just as you were called to one hope when you were called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

One hope. In God. Who is everywhere. Always. From the beginning of time. God who knows how this is going to end and who knows that the hope He offers is firm and secure, an anchor for our souls.

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called (7)

I had some serious God time tonight... time spent just listening and giving Him space to talk and reveal Himself. I want to make this a part of my daily routine. If you have an hour free, I recommend downloading the Tim Keel sermon from Mars Hill a couple weeks ago, titled "Creating Space for Solitude." The last ten minutes completely floored me in its simplicity. Sometimes the deepest, most powerful truths out there are the simple ones.

invited... to win the prize (philippians 3:14)
Paul says that he presses on toward the goal to win the prize for which God called him heavenward in Jesus. A few passages earlier, Paul lays out his goal - his prize: to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings.

This purpose can shape our lives as well. God invites us to attain this goal, to live for it. It is not a goal that is easily attained. Salvation is not just about a "ticket to heaven." It is about the daily choices we make, how we spend our time, what is important to us. Salvation is, in my mind, God inviting us to redeem our lives and shape them into something precious and lasting. The meaninglessness of average daily life is swept away and in its place is a purpose you can work toward every day of your life.

It is a noble purpose - to know Jesus intimately, to live from the power of the resurrection, to suffer together in a community. Let's say you lived your life this way for one day. What would that day look like? For me, the way I interacted with co-workers would drastically change (although I wonder if I would stay in my current job). The way I spent my free time would be completely different - I would make more time for solitude with God and trade in all the veg-out sessions of TV & internet for conversations with God). The things I wanted to talk about, my "heart posture" when faced with a decision between glorifying God or doing something that goes against what God had in mind, and the way I nurtured my friendships and family would all be held under my personal microscope.

God invites us to live for something bigger than ourselves. To live with purpose and passion. To let go of the past - both recent and 'ancient' - and move forward, knowing that we are forgiven, blessed and loved, and are allowed to forgive ourselves.

Far too often I see friends caught up in a cycle of sin and instead of moving forward every time, they get discouraged and live from their mistakes rather than God's victories. So let me keep this brief tonight and just pose a whopper of a question. What in your past do you need to let go of in order to continue to pursue the prize? What is getting in the way of the attainment of your goal?

What do you need to whittle away? What has nothing to do with who God made you to be?

Until tomorrow, then...

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called (8)

invited... to share in the glory of Jesus (2 thessalonians 2:14)
One of my favorite passages in all of the Bible is in 2 Corinthians 3. Paul says that we have hope that the glory we are tapped into will not fade away. He says that we are not like Moses, "who would put a veil over his face to keep the Israelites from gazing at it while the radiance was fading away." He's talking, of course, about the radiance you could see in Moses' face after he came away from a meeting with God. If I understand this correctly, Moses face was so lit up that he had to put a veil over it to keep his people from freaking out.

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."

Have you ever come face to face with Jesus? Have you ever had an experience where you are so clearly in God's presence that you can feel it in the air? It's like a weightiness that hovers in the room, a heaviness that consumes your heart. You can feel it. It's palpable. Tangible. You know you are in the presence of something bigger than yourselves. I wonder if this is just an inkling of what Moses' felt to be in God's presence.

The word glory can mean weight and significance. As in, the LORD's weight and significance shines around, the LORD's weight and significance fills the earth. Our faces are unveiled. Have we tapped into the glory of God?

God invites us to share in Jesus' glory. Jesus has weight and significance that is beyond words. Sometimes I'll be in a room or around a person, and something is resonating. Something significant. Something beyond my little mind's grasp. God made us to share in it, to have a piece of it, to experience it. When I'm in God's presence, it's like no other "place" on earth. I get addicted to the feeling of it. I want more. And the good news is I'm created to want more. I want to recreate the moments that I feel this and experience it over and over and over and over and over again. I want to bottle it up like lightning and distribute it out to everyone I know.

Now get this. Paul says that our faces are unveiled. He says we are reflecting God. That people who are believers can sense it and see it because Jesus removes the veil. He also says that other people wear a veil, their minds dull to the glory of God.

We are invited to share in it and share it with others. To lift up their veils and show them what God is like. We were made to reflect God, through our actions, through our hearts. Paul says that we have the freedom to be bold because of this. Being bold is scary. It's not the easy thing to do. I think about all the opportunities I have to show people what God is like and I get disgusted with how few I actually do something about.

So let's start here. My prayer is that we would live boldly, touring our unveiled faces around to the hurting, the lost, the unloved, the forgotten. My prayer is that we would begin today. Not by going around and sharing the Gospel (although there is room and need for that), but by simply loving on someone who needs it, or taking the extra time to engage in a conversation and really knowing someone and offering to walk with them through their junk. My prayer is that we would live as people who reflect God in a powerful way, that we would tune into the eternal implications of that and that it would shape how we perceive who we are made to be.

Next: eternal life, out of the dark & into the light, receiving and giving blessings.

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called (9)

I'm ready to get back into my writing routine. Last week the big move happened, and this week... well, let's just call it one of the most unexpected, wonderful weeks ever... I want to continue working through all of the stuff we've begun here. I want to finish this and hear all of your thoughts on the matter.

invited... out of the darkness and into His wonderful light (1 peter 2:9)

The first question this verse raised for me is what is darkness and what is light? How is God's "light" better than someone else's "darkness"?

For me, darkness was depression. I'm thinking of one time in my life that I would define as "dark," and the overarching theme of it all is sad and in despair. There was no hope. No reason to believe that tomorrow was going to be better than today, no one to unload that on, I felt like there were only a couple options out, and one of them seemed a little... permanent.

But for others, darkness looks a lot different. They are more or less satisfied with their lives, having fun, surrounded by friends, but they have something "deep within" that is screaming that this can't be all there is. They long to be connected to something meaningful and lasting.

And yet, for others, darkness is numb. They feel completely detached from their life. They are driving along at a constant 35 miles-per-hour, stopping at yellow lights and feeling nothing.

The Bible says that God invites us into his wonderful light. The word "wonderful" here is thaumastos and means beyond human comprehension. The word for light reflects the subtle, pure, delicate and brilliant properties of light.

God's light isn't something tangible that you can see (although it can blind you)... it isn't something audible that gives all the answers (although he'll yell pretty loudly to get your attention sometimes)... God's light is subtle, pure, delicate and brilliant. It's between you and Him. No one else can see your light except for you. And it's God's light, the same light we all have, but somehow it pierces the darkness just enough (at first) to make you want to focus all of your life on it.

God created us to live in His light. To step out of our own personal darkness and into His subtle, pure, delicate and brilliant light. And when the darkness starts to overwhelm the light, all you have to do look a little deeper and His light will come pouring out around you. He wants you to feel love, to feel wholeness. He wants you to live an illuminated life. He wants to be your lamp, to provide light in the darkest of places. And He says its the best way to live.

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called (10)

invited... to inherit a blessing & give a blessing (1 peter 3:9)
I find myself regularly praying that God will bless me, my friends, the people in my life and anything else that is able to be blessed. Sometimes a round of prayers like that seems rather selfish when I step back and think about it. Part of it is coming from a humbled place (as in, God, you are able to bless these things and I am not.) But part of it comes from the vending machine place (as in, God, you're my dad, so do these things for me).

What I've realized though, is that while God is certainly not a vending machine, maybe it isn't a bad thing to just ask for blessing after blessing for no other reason than you want it... if you take the 1 Peter 3:9 verse seriously.

Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

I normally don't use The Message for translation/study purposes, but I love the way they translated this verse:

That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless--that's your job, to bless. You'll be a blessing and also get a blessing.

I'm realizing that God blesses us because He loves us. Because He wants us to live a blessed life. A life only He can provide. But He also expects us to take that blessing and give it away, immediately. For example, let's say that my job and therefore my salary is a blessing from God. In this case, it would be God's expectation that I give away the blessing, my salary. Or I am blessed with talents and gifts and abilities. Give those away too - use them to bless others. Or, let's say the blessing is that God is restoring a broken place in my soul. How can I give this blessing away? Simply by being there for someone else who has a broken place in their soul.

What I'm saying is this. God isn't just handing out blessings like a really great lunchlady. He is doing that of course - more and more blessings every day, regardless of whether we "deserve" them or not. But He's also inviting us to help Him restore the earth to its original intention. He lets joy into the population so that joy can spread. He allows one person to be healed so that person can help another heal. It's the divine version of "paying it forward."

Now, it is obvious to me that God is pouring out blessings on all of His creation. My friends who don't put much stock in God's place in their life regularly receive serious blessings. I believe that God provides for them regardless of their response, just as He provides for us regardless of our response. So what's the difference? The only difference I can see is our response.

Count up your blessings today and figure out how you can use them to bless someone else. Because God is pouring out the blessings as our inheritance, but instead of hording our inheritance for ourselves, the blessings are intended to equip us to get in the game and put some points on the scoreboard.

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called (11 & out)

And here we are at the (long-overdue) end of the called study. The original intention of this study was to discover deeper truths behind who God made me to be. The thought that was pushing me a couple months ago - whittle away anything that isn't who God made me to be - still rests heavy on my heart. I was having a hard time understanding how we begin to discern who God made us to be, so I started to dig into the creation story, looking for reasons why God created us, and then worked through this study of the word "called" in the New Testament.

And today at the end of the study, I feel like I'm a whole lot closer to the truths I'm looking for... yet still miles away. I suppose that's a good thing. I hope that my entire life is spent discovering and sharing these things, and I'd be a little nervous if I found all there was to find my first time out. Such isn't the case though, so I'll continue in the coming months to play with this idea.

But today we come to the last called statement... called, the Greek kletos which means invited as in "invited to a feast".

invited... to suffer (1 peter 2:21)
What kind of feast is this that we've been invited to? Peter says that if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, it is commendable before God. Now, I can't begin to wrap my hands around what "commendable before God" means, but suffering for doing good and enduring it... that seems pretty easy to nail.

Except, sometimes I think it's actually impossible to understand this verse while we live in America.

I'm passionately pursuing God in my life, and I'm really excited when I get a chance to talk about that with other people - believer or not. I love teaching the Word (in fact, I want it to be my life's work... but we'll get to that some other time). I love giving people a new lens with which to see God. I love pointing out where God is in people's lives. And I get the sense that with that should come some suffering, but here in my office, here in my ministry, here in my Chicago, it all seems kind of... whatever. You know what I mean? And I could talk about how we as a culture have become immune to this message, and many people for many years have made this message watered-down and spineless. And I have strong feelings about that, but that's for another time.

Today I want to suffer. Because God invites me to suffer. It's part of who He made me to be.

In Paul's letter to the Church in Rome, he says some really counter-intuitive stuff that lights my soul aflame...

"Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."

So I'm not going to physically suffer here. My life is not in danger (at least at this point in time). But maybe there are other ways that this suffering can be lived out in our lives.

Can I just be completely honest with everyone?

I'm in counseling. Every other week, I spend an hour unpacking my life with a therapist. And it's been the most life-affirming, healing experience I've ever had. But there's so much pain involved. There's so much baggage and hurt and junk that's drug up every week. Sometimes I can't believe that it can go deeper. I think "well, this is it. This is the deepest my baggage goes." And then the next week I'm a complete wreck because of something new that exists.

There are a lot of people I know who need to spend some time in counseling. Or at least they need to spend some time taking a good, hard look at their lives and deciding what they want to do about it. Do we want to live from guilt and abandonment and all of the other messes that life in America in the 21st century gives us? Or are we ready to live from a place of freedom (which God also invited us to)?

This is getting long, so let me cut to the chase. Part of the salvation deal is that God wants you to experience healing and freedom now. Healing so you can be free to be the person He made you to be. Suffering through the mud and the mire so He can lift you up and give you a firm rock to stand on. Suffering so that you can perservere, so that you can build character, so that you can live from a place of hope. That this is going to get better. That this is going to be redeemed. And sometimes the journey can feel a lot like suffering. Like it's the last thing you want to be doing.

But we can endure it because God wants us to be the person He invites us to be.

Labels: Favorites, Jesus

originally posted between August 9-10, 2005

As many of you know, my personal studies over the last couple months have revolved around the theme of who God made me to be. I'm just starting to scratch the surface, but I wanted to share the first fruits of the study. I began with Genesis 2 & 3, the creation story, hoping to gain some insight as to God's intention for creating us.

This may take a few days to get through, because I want to keep it at a readable length. So the big questions of why God created us, as well as the insights into how we discern who He specifically made you and me to be will be coming.

But without further ado... part one (four? I’ve talked about this before) of who God made us to be...

God created us in His image... now this goes deeper and deeper the more you study it, but just a some basic questions lead us to livable answers. What is God's image? Why did He decide that we should be the ones created in His image, and not, say, cats and dogs? And how can a person reflect God's image, or likeness?

Some basic answers - My image is how I present myself to the world I live in. My face, my hair, the clothes I wear, how kempt or unkempt I keep my toenails. Now it is very possible that God created us in His physical image, but we have no way of knowing that, and I don't believe God puts things on the table for us to know that we can't know. And He's very up- front that if we see him physically, we're done. So it goes back to how He presents Himself to the world - namely, loving, just, forgiving and all the other characteristics we know about God. So I think we are created with the capabilities to reflect those characteristics about God. We can be loving, forgiving, fight for justice and so on. I notice that dogs and cats can also do things like love and forgive, albeit in more basic forms. But humans are capable of all sorts of deep emotions and reactions and choices that it doesn't appear other life forms are capable of. So He uniquely gifted us with the ability to be like Him.

God created everything and then put us in the middle of it... God gave us a role in the world He created... the story He is telling. He allows us to partner with His other creations to continue to create and innovate. We can use what He created to sculpt the world. God says rule, work, subdue, care for, nurture the land, the sea & the air. We, of course, get to choose whether we use that for good or evil. But I believe that was one of the reasons He created us was to partner with us in shaping the world to reflect Him. So God plants a garden and puts us in the middle of it. He calls the things He makes "useful" and "beautiful". More on this tomorrow...

God created us to be fruitful, to increase in number, fill the earth... God wants us to produce more of us. He gives us the, ahem, tools to fill the earth. He doesn't just send in more people - we have the pleasure of raising, nurturing and sculpting more people to do the things God created us to do.

There's so much more, but that's enough for one day... tomorrow I want to talk about living by God's law, being creative, not being alone, and being naked & feeling no shame... so for now, I'd love to hear the reasons you believe God made us, and any insights you have on how we figure out who God made us to be... so go crazy with the comments.

Labels: Favorites, Jesus