Joy in Christ

The hole of emptiness in my heart is real and must be filled to have satisfaction.

I look into my past and see all the joys and pains I connected with then. When I say connected I mean part of myself was invested in people and events I shared with people then. It was part of a journey. There were times of fulfillment and times of emptiness. This is the way life seems to be many times.

When I look into the future I am tempted to tremble in fear about what will come, but yet I can also find great hope in the unknown. My present is the tip of reality. It is the "quickening" of perception. I long for peace and joy and fulfillment and intimacy.


"Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest."

"For my body is real food and my blood real drink."

"Remain in me."

"For I am living water. He who drinks of me will never thirst. For it will be like a well of water overflowing."


Intimacy with my God comes only from one place and that is my heart. The affections of my heart must be for my God and I must worship Him in sincerity and in truth. In spirit and in truth I worship. For it is only by this kind of worship that I can truly be intimate with Him and know Him. This is when the filling of that empty hole in my heart occurs.

In the past I've considered logic and emotion as two halves of my psyche. I've heard it argued that maybe they are really the same or at the very least inseparable. Why would I even care to pursue logic without emotion driving me to care? Many times I've found logic an enemy of my soul. It has not been from founded logical arguments so much, but rather simply from the process of a cold analytical mind systematically dissecting my comprehension and my grounds for the source of joy and life I've found in Christ. C.S. Lewis says the quickest way to kill joy is to begin to analyze it. This is true. Joy cannot be experienced at the same time as the analytical mood of seeking or skepticism prevails. Joy is experienced through faith.

This thing we call emotion is really a manifestation of the state of our hearts. If we were completely and totally emotionless would we be alive? Perhaps it might be possible to exist, but not to live if you know what I mean. For life, true fulfilled life requires feeling. Even furthermore, it requires a sort of joy. For a life with no joy leads to destruction. Many times people who don't have joy or know where it is or if it will come, simply hold on and wait. I know I have found myself holding on and waiting before. Yet joy is right here in my very heart in the living water of Jesus Christ. Oh how I long to truly understand and know Him and be filled with the joy that is in Him. How I long to embody that joy and shine as a light on a hill. I want to share that light with those I love and humanity in general. For this is His desire for me too.

Our enemy strives to cut us off from this intoxicating joy that we have in Him. For if he succeeds in cutting us off or maybe only in suspending us from it for a time he renders us ineffective and devastated whether we comprehend it or not. When in this
state our hearts can only hold out for so long and eventually they will go in search of fulfillment. This fulfillment may not be sought in Christ and if it isn't then we will have latched on to sweet and tasty poison that kills slowly and satisfies only enough to make us come back to it for more. This is a picture of typical addiction. Ironically Jesus fills us completely and totally with true life and joy like nothing else, yet we cannot seem to find ourselves addicted to His love. But when we do experience Him through praise and worship and our eyes are opened, we realize what fools we were and are whenever we leave his presence.

"It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men." --C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms

I find it interesting to note when Jesus taught us to pray. In the Lord's Prayer it begins with praise and ends with praise. I believe everything we do should begin with praise and end with praise. Praise and worship bonds us to Him through faith and releases this joy I've been talking about... almost like a chemical reaction. It is almost a recipe for joy: worship of Christ in spirit and truth through faith. When we worship from our hearts, God visits our hearts. Now express this love in love to others. Show others love and joy from the joy and love He fills you with and you will practically burst into overflowing. When the well feels dry don't look elsewhere. Always discipline yourself to keep your gaze afixed on Him.

Be joyful always. Pray continually. 1 Thes. 5:17

Listening to Voices in the Heart

  Sometimes when thinking about spiritual things I find myself tempted with a small voice in the back of my head saying, "What if this is really the way things are?" as an alternate and unscriptural view of reality is suggested to my heart. For example a common suggestion like this that comes to my mind is that maybe although Christians have a view of reality that God is answering prayer this is just a perception and really things just happened to work out the way you prayed. Or if things didn't go according to how you prayed then you think of it as though God had other plans or maybe that you are just going through a time of testing where you have to just hang on and have faith. The nagging suggestion in my mind says maybe in reality things just didn't go like you hoped and God's will wasn't a factor, in fact maybe there is no God. This thought or voice when it comes to my mind is quickly dismissed and pushed away. In fact sometimes I find myself carefully avoiding a fully focused attention on these ideas. Why? Because they are so contrary to the Word of God and the core of my Christian faith. These ideas completely remove God from the picture and place chance as a new god in His place. I think it makes sense that my initial reaction as a Christian would be to push these ideas away as they try to press into my heart, however I began to realize that the best way to eliminate these is to stop running from them and turn and face them.

  First of all consider the complexity of the universe and of our human bodies and of DNA and the cell. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to rationally realize our single planet Earth teeming with amazingly complex life and no other planet even remotely like it as far as the eye or computer aided telescope can see is not something that could just occur by chance. When you begin to study on the topic of the chances for life to spontaneously exist it quickly becomes obvious that it is beyond absurd to believe that things just happened to fall into place for us. Maybe we could reason that the universe is infinitely large and that in an infinite playing field every possibility that could be is. (By the way most scientists would probably dismiss this idea, because if there were infinite amounts of matter the planetary bodies would not behave as they do. Stephen Hawking and other scientists seem to think our universe is likely in the shape of a giant horse's saddle. Even if we do allow for this, what was the initiator of time and reality? It is not logical to assume things just are and always will be.) Although we can already see that we are stretching our minds beyond common every day human reason to some grandiose philosophical idea for the purpose of what? Eliminating a creator from the picture? Why are we so anxious to dismiss the most obvious answer to this question? There is a creator God who made it all! The reason is because this is a religious answer and it comes with the potential for a whole slew of spiritual ideas and commitments. Some people just feel more comfortable thinking of the world as a Creator-less place. Keep in mind I am not trying to prove Christianity or any other religious idea here, but simply point out that it is a rational theory for one to hold. In fact it seems more rational to me than others.

  When it comes down to it, what anyone believes is a decision of faith. Faith is influenced by logical rational discernible factors, but ultimately what to believe is a decision by the believer. So, maybe when the suggestion or voice enters my mind indicating that the hand of God is really just a silly perceived reality that Christians make things out to be and the real reality is chance I can turn the tables with reason and faith now. By doing this I can understand that probably more likely is that much of the world has a percieved reality that the world is a place of chance, but the real reality is that there is a creator God who governs and listens and interacts with the creation.

Romans 1:20
  For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.


  Something I've been studying and learning about recently is the voice or communication of God to his people. After reading a book by Kevin Harney called Seismic Shifts in chapter six I saw where he talks about the common perception Christians have regarding their relationship, interaction and communication with God.
He points out that the majority of Christians pray and expect God hears them, but do not consider God as one that commonly or frequently speaks back to them. Something I found fascinating was when he pointed out that hearing God speak takes just as much faith as believing God hears you when you speak to him. "They are two sides of the same coin.", he said. He pointed out that many people perceive God's communication to them in different ways. Some hear God speak with their ears, others with their heart and still other by divine nudges. All of these require faith to be believed as communication from God to you. Why would the loving father God we read about in the Bible not speak to His children?

John 10:3-5
  The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice.

  In fact I believe the nagging voice in the back of my mind that I feared to confront for a time and mentioned at the beginning of this entry is most likely the voice of my enemy that the Bible speaks of. It is the stranger's voice. Although, I did not perceive it as anything other than my own idea at first. Many times I think when the Lord speaks as well I consider it my own idea, when in reality it was Him all along who gave me the thought. A lot of times in cartoons you will see the little angel on one shoulder and the little devil on the other trying to whisper things in a cartoon character's ear and persuade him to do or think one thing or another. Although, we may associate this idea with cartoons and things that are whimsical which are not usually true, I believe there is truth in this picture. The Lord speaks to our hearts just as the stranger's voice may speak. But His sheep know His voice and follow Him. Believing that you hear the Lord's voice when He speaks is a matter of faith. Since I am speaking about the heart I am going to list my idea about what the heart is... Obviously your physical heart is an organ and nothing, but blood pumping happens there. But, I think the proverbial heart is much more than just my mind, brain or the place where thinking occurs. The heart is at the core of who you are physically. The proverbial heart is at the core of who you are as a whole person including spiritually, mentally and physically.

Definition of the "heart":
heart = place of: believed truths, thoughts, ways of thinking, desires and beliefs that I hold most dear, the core of who I am, what I passionately love or hate is dealt with and perceived here

It is in this core that notions or ideas to believe are proposed to me. Sometimes the ideas come from my own reasoning, sometimes from the Lord and still other times from a stranger. As children of God we must learn to listen to God's still small voice in our hearts or wherever it may reveal itself to our attentions. But perceiving a revelation as one from God always requires faith, just as believing I can pray to God and he will hear me does.

  I've also been reading a fascinating and exciting book by T.D. Jakes called "Overcoming the Enemy" that I recommend. T.D. Jakes carefully examines Ephesians 6 in this book and points out that in order to stand your ground against the enemy there are some basic core pieces of spiritual armor that you must wear to be prepared to face him. One of these basic pieces of armor is simple faith that God is who He says He is and is capable of what He says He is in the Word. As Christians we've already considered rationally and logically whether it is plausible or not to believe chance or some other thing as god or the Lord told of in the Bible as God and we've made our choice. Now is the time to mature and move forward and not continually revisit the very foundational things we stand on in faith. If we face the enemy in battle and we are busy studying our foundation instead of standing on it he will quickly knock us down for sure. Stop doubting and believe! You must if you want to stand and fight the tempter and enemy of our souls.

Knowing Jesus

What does it mean to know Jesus? You hear people say you need a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. And "do you know him?" Many times people answer, "oh yeah I know him! I'm a Christian. Woo hoo praise God!", but don't have the slightest idea what it means. It's really a bit of a difficult concept especially for someone who doesn't "know him". But from what I can tell, like most everything, our ability to really know him is based in our faith. Knowing Jesus, at first starts with believing what the Bible says about him. It's about believing what the Bible says about who He is.. his character, his love for you, his power, his authority and all his attributes. And then most importantly, believing that he is with you right now this very moment... that he always was and always will be with you. Not looking at you from over a cloud off in the distance, but inhabiting you. Living in your very heart. And if he isn't in your heart, if you simply invite him to be there... he will come. When he comes he begins to convict you to change things. He wants you to do things His way. The Bible tells us (Luke 9:23) if anyone would come after me he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. By nature (flesh nature) we naturally desire to have OUR way in everything. When we don't get our way we believe we are miserable and in some form or fashion tend to express pouting. But as we learn to live with Jesus inhabiting our hearts we begin to have a new nature. This nature is referred to as the spirit nature. Our spiritual nature desires to have things God's way. Not because he is some oppressor over us forcing us to do things his way, but because we realize that his way is really better. As we learn to trust in who the Bible says he is and how wise and loving he is we also realize he has our best interests at heart. Much like how an earthly father usually is with their children. Knowing Jesus involves simply believing who he is according to what the Bible reveals and who he is according to what he reveals to you. This second part doesn't really come that much until you begin praying to him. The amount of prayer in your life is directly proportional to how well you really "know" Jesus. As you pray you form a concept in your mind of God and who he is, and what his character is. Then you try to relate to him with words. You try to communicate your thoughts and feelings and understanding of things to him. Why? Because this is what anyone does when they want to know someone else! They try to communciate to them with words. The next vital part of any relationship is for you to listen to the other person you are trying to know. Now if someone told me a statue could talk and I walked up to it and started talking to it... and then tried to listen to it, finally giving up saying, "oh well I guess it doesn't really talk." What was the problem? Most likely because deep down I really couldn't get past the fact that I believe it is impossible for statues to talk. Knowing Jesus involves believing that something is possible which the world will say is impossible. Until you truly believe that God can and does communicate to you specifically, you will never be able to hear him. So you say, "what if I don't know?" What if I just really am having a hard time believing this? It seems so ludicrous. God uses foolish things to shame and elude the worldly wise. (1 Cor. 1:27) The best thing to do first is simply pray about something. Don't necessarily ask for a new Porsche and wait to see if the car will appear on your driveway. But you could ask for a new Porsche and wait to see how God responds. If you continue praying about something over time and seeking an answer from the Lord as a person that gives replies to questions and requests, eventually you will see or hear or feel his response. He communicates in many different ways. Next... keep a prayer journal. As soon as you feel God has communicated to you about something in some way. Write it down. Write down in a journal prayers that you are praying now and leave space to fill in how you feel God has answered that prayer later. Over time your journal will serve as a testimony to you and build faith for you in Him. "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him". (Heb. 11:6) One thing I've learned over time is that when a Christian sins he or she tends to push away their belief in the fact that God is always with them and in their very heart and sees and knows things just as they do. Because when you truly believe that God is with you and watching you and is as close to you as you are to your own reflection when you stand face to face with your self gazing in the mirror. It becomes extremely difficult to sin. At least if you truly love him it does. And the more you know about him and come to know of him firsthand from experiences the more you begin to love him and realize how much he loves you. There are many things that people believe in without fully understanding how it is possible. People don't always understand aerodynamics and how a plane could really fly yet they get on them. I'm reminded of a scene from Planet of the Apes where one of the leader Apes is handed a paper airplane that the man had created claiming that it could fly. The ape looked at it and thought about it for a second and then proclaimed, 'that's ridiculous' and waded the paper airplane up in his hand into a paper wad and dropped it on the floor. There is a Bible verse that says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good". This verse encourages you to try it and then you will find your evidence that the Lord is good. The ape could never watch that paper plane fly until he first believed it was possible or at least might be possible. People don't completely understand automobiles, computers, VCRs DVD players and microwaves but they use them. Oh yeah we have a general understanding of what is happening, or at least what people say is happening but we don't neccesarily fully understand it. If we got really interested in how it worked we could ask someone we saw as an expert on it and then try to study books others have written on the subject. The same is true about trying to understand how one can know God. It's also possible to know God without really understanding how it's possible to know God. Just as you can push start on a microwave and watch it cook your food without understanding how. But if you thought the idea ridiculous you would never put your food in there and press start. Even if somone else did it and said, "look see!", without belief you would try to explain the effects some other way. Belief is a requirement to even entertain the idea. If I decided before I try to use a microwave that I wanted to understand it so I go to school and study it. Then I get frustrated because it is just more complicated than I have the ability to completely understand right now and I realize I need more school and more study. If I let my lack of ability to understand it become a prerequisite for using it then there would be many things like it that I would have to miss out on. There are things we believe because of faith in ourselves and things we believe because of faith in others. Ultimately even faith in ourselves plays a role in choosing to have faith in others. There is a famous phrase from Des Cartes "I think therefore I am". Although after giving this some thought I think a better statement would be "I believe therefore I am". Belief is the foundation of knowledge. So my point here is that understanding is not the foundation of knowledge, but belief is... and that it is possible to believe without understanding everything. Even the things we do understand about life and the world, we understand by faith in our own ability to perceive what is true and what is false. So if I tell you there is a great cosmic microwave that you can use if you just believe, you would probably laugh. But more accurately I might say there is a friend that you can know who's name is Jesus even though you cannot see him with your eyeballs, you can and will learn to see him with your heart over time IF you believe that you can. Why does this seem to sound really cheesy at some level kind of like Christmas stories that say Santa will come if you just believe in the spirit of Christmas? Or some silly children's gag. This is related to the fact that we are in a world at war and that there are spiritual forces who would love for you to believe that the idea of knowing Jesus is as silly as believing in Santa Claus or fairies. But unlike these mythical things we have first hand testimonies from people today as well as written words in the Bible from verifiably not really that long ago of people who have known and trusted Jesus. But ultimately whether or not you yourself can know Jesus is a matter of whether you are willing to choose to believe in the possiblity of knowing him. You may argue isn't it just a state of mind then? But, really, knowing anything is just a state of mind.
The definition of your mind's state is directly related to what you've chosen to believe as truth (aka "world view"). Do you really know your mother or wife or is it just a figment of your imagination. Are you just having some amazingly detailed and realistic hallucination? If you really began to believe that how would it affect how you began to relate to your wife or mother? Isn't it true that eventually over time you wouldn't have much of a "relationship" at all but rather you would quite likely try to ignore them. Why is this? Because deep down you don't really believe that what you see and experience with them is the truth. You don't believe it is real. In the same way you must truly believe Jesus is real to have relationship with him and know him. How do we decide who to trust? We decide based on how trustworthy they have been to us and continue to be. The same is true with Jesus. "It is impossible for God to lie." (Heb 6:18) The Bible and Christians communicate a message of hope to the world. They communicate a testimony of a man named Jesus whom all have an opportunity to know, if they are willing to believe.

"...we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf." (Heb 6:18b-20a)


Matthew 11:27-28 (words of Jesus)
"All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Spritual Discipline

There are times when we get really excited or at least expectant about things. Then when things don't go the way we expected or hoped we can get really put out. Its this point at which you are "put out", "hacked off" or "ticked" that the enemy has found fertile soil for sin. Especially when this frustration is selfish in that it is about not receiving some form of expected self-gratification. Disappointment is common and when mixed with focus on it can result in a powerful force toward sin. Our focus is like a fire and there are many fuels. You've heard the expression "food for thought". Any thing that can entertain our mind or be "food for thought" is a fuel for our focus. The reason I chose fire for the analogy here is that fire has this uncanny property of increasing instantly in proportion to the amount of available flammable materials nearby. It also follows after them unrelentingly. Sometimes I grow very frustrated about "rabbit-trails", although I tend to be a cheif offender in following them. This is a term that symbolizes the many possibilities or roads of thoughts and contemplations that can be followed during a discussion or personal meditation. Meditation is a vital skill for a Christian to learn and I have been struggling to understand it. It is about learning to let go of focus on some things while holding on to focus on others. It is about directing the fire of our thoughts to consume only certain fuels while determinedly avoiding others. The irony here is that if you focus on how you don't want to focus on something you are in fact focusing on the thing! Sometimes avoiding a "rabbit-trail" is not just about ignoring it, but intentionally following an entirely different one while truly letting go of the first. "Idle hands are the devil's workshop" the saying goes. If you only resist focus on something, but are idle in actively focusing on something else your efforts will not only be futile but in fact have the exact opposite effect than the one you desired. I've been reading a book by Richard Foster called "Celebration of Discipline". It is an excellent book. One analogy he uses in teaching about spiritual disciplines is that Christian life is like trying to walk down a narrow road with a steep drop off on either side. The drop off to the right is symbolic of putting forth great effort to try and do what's right. The problem is you will never be able to put forth enough effort to be righteous. This is what the Pharisees tried to do. The drop off to the left is symbolic of complacency or not putting forth any effort to be righteous due to a realization that any effort is futile. The narrow road down the middle is symbolic of a life-style of spiritual discipline practiced not for the purpose of being righteous, but rather for the purpose of creating the right conditions where God might choose to give you the grace of blessing you with his indwelling Spirit and grant you with fruits of the Spirit (peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, etc.). In his book Foster also refers to our hearts like a garden. In a garden you don't ever force a plant into growing by sheer effort or will power, but rather you tend to the environmental conditions of the garden in hopes that this will foster growth of a plant that will one day yield tasty fruits. It is the same with the heart and God's Spirit is the plant. Maintaining focus on the right things is vital to meditation and it is vital to creating the right environmental conditions for Spiritual growth. It is also vital to appropriately handling disappointment. The ability to handle disappointment is really the majority of what is involved in having faith. Although that is not all it is. The most important element of faith is that one believes and fixes their hope and focus on the thing hoped for continually trusting that it will come about despite disappointments which seem to test the faith. The problem is often times we set our faith on things that have no guarantees. If I go on vacation to Florida with visions of sunny beaches in my head and when I arrive a horrendous hurricane shows up my expectations are dashed. The faith I had placed in the joy I would find in Florida was unguaranteed. In my disappointment at not having the self-gratification of enjoying the dream I had in my mind of what things would be like it is quite common to seek after something else for gratification and find one's self in sin. The key here is to take gratification in something else, but the refuge must be taken in something that IS guaranteed. Only the promises of God are truly guaranteed. Intimacy with God through worship and faith placed in Him is the best way of coping with disappointment. (This is what David did after petitioning and being denied when God did not allow his son by Bathsheba to live.) Sexual intimacy of a husband and wife in marriage in the physical realm is analagous to intimacy found in worship between man and God in the spiritual realm. Although the physical example is but a dim reflection compared to the depth and intensity of the spiritual one with God through Christ. Christian meditation is not only about knowing how to hold on to good thoughts while rejecting bad ones or about tending to the spiritual garden of your heart, but it is also about listening to God and obeying Him when he speaks to you. This is something that must happen daily. Jesus said we must deny ourselves take up our crosses daily and follow him. This means we don't live life indulging in all kinds of self gratification, but rather we focus on the gratification that comes in following Him over time and deny ourselves the instant gratifications that the world tries to offer in exchange. When taking a shower this morning I began to think about how it is necessary to take physical showers frequently to clean the body. Sometimes I don't feel like taking a shower because I am lazy, but if I don't I will get filthier and filthier over time. If that happens a single shower may not be enough to clean myself back to the way I was before. The same is true for the spiritual realm. We need to take spiritual showers daily as well. If we don't spend time in meditiation on Him, striving to listen to Him and obey what he says to us each day then over time we get filthier and filthier in our callousedness and worldliness. At that point one day when we decide to try and spiritually shower to clean off it will not be enough to clean us and restore us to the way we might have been before. Only over time after adopting a lifestyle of cleaning oneself can the desired state of cleanliness be achieved. This is why we persevere and press on toward the goal to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us. He took hold of us so that we might be the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus and have spiritual intimacy with the almighty God... So that our very hearts might be a temple and a place for the Holy of Holies. So, tend to the garden of your heart and seek to make it a place for the Holy of Holies by diligent bathing through meditation on Him and His word daily. Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.

Relationship with God

I've been reading a book about hearing from God. In thinking about this subject and praying I've begun realizing the most important factor in hearing from God is listening for him and recognizing his voice or communication. Furthermore, in order to listen and recognize it helps immensely when you have been praying to Him in faith and speaking to him from your heart. It tunes your heart and mind to the Lord's frequency if you will. Jesus spent the night with the Lord in prayer. All night long he was praying. So often I will find myself convicted that I need to pray more and so I will say a few sentences, a paragraph of words or maybe a page length of prayer to God and then... be done. After I finish praying, once I've said 'Amen' my mind tends to start shutting Him out again. Paul said that we should 'Pray continually.' (1 Thes. 5:17) It's hard for me to understand how to do that. I have great trouble with multi-tasking sometimes, because I have never been able to focus on more than one thing at a time, in fact I wonder if anyone really can. Another concept of multi-tasking is to keep switching from task to task focusing on each one periodically rather than the idea of focusing on all the tasks simultaneously. This seems more realistic, however I think what Paul/(God.. aka. God's revelation to Paul) had in mind was different from each of these two ideas. I think it was more like a colored lens that filters light. There's a phrase about looking at things through rose colored glasses. It refers to people who only see good things even when times are tough and might be seen as bad to someone else. I think this analogy can also be used here in that when we live life we see all things whether good, bad or neutral with a perspective of God and his hand in them. We should see everything in life through the lens of how it relates to our personal God. That is, we should see life through God-colored glasses if you will. Praying is more than just speaking a sentence of communication to God in your mind or aloud. Praying is about focus. The idea of focus has been a fascination of mine for some time now. The Bible speaks of the power of the tongue. Which I agree it is powerful. However, the focus of one's mind seems to me to be the precursor of the tongue. A person's focus is a seed for actions. My friend and youth leader when I was growing up, Roc Moore, used to say "what a mind thinks on, it will seek to act out". Dreams are fantasies that have the capacity to capture hearts. Sometimes they are grandiose fantasies, sometimes they are simple. Dreams are dangerous because they can be deceptions. But good dreams, dreams that are true can be an anchor for our souls. What I mean by this is that a useful tool in fixing our eyes on Jesus and focusing our minds through God-colored lenses is to hold onto the dream or picture of reality that the Bible paints for us. When we realize that the truths taught to us and promises given us in the Word are more than just exciting stories but an actual reality, then our dream can become to see those truths fulfilled in our lives. Then we can strive to let that dream capture our hearts. I am striving to hold onto the dream of intimacy with a personal God. The Bible speaks of many stories where God had a personal relationship with individual human beings. I believe each person should seek out fulfillment of a dream to have relationship with our loving God. In Jer 29:13 it says, "You will seek me and find me if you seek me with all your heart." My problem and the problem of many I suppose is to not be whole-hearted and persistent in my seeking. This comes from not truly having a dream a.k.a. a heart for this reality of intimacy with God to exist.

Joy in Jesus

As I was praising the Lord this morning during my shower I began to have a realization about life, God, the devil and man. I realized who my greatest enemy in life is. The devil, demons and forces of darkness sound horrible and frightening and they are, but they are not my greatest enemy. The greatest enemy has always been myself. I used to often wonder why God put us here on this world. God wanted relationship with man, an awesome indescribable relationship of love between God and man. However, in order for this to happen man would have to choose to want God and God would have to choose to want man. Without these two voluntary elements the relationship is contrived and cannot truly exist. So, God made the world and setup this thing we know as life for man to have. Life and the things that transpire during it happen according to cold, hard, rigid laws. There is room for great joys and peace as well as great tragedies and torment. The purpose of this hostile environment is for man to meet God and for a relationship between them to be fostered. The kind of man that rejects God and desires to be wicked has made his choice and God will respect it, because any other relationship with that man would be contrived and not real. But this wicked man is evil and must be apart from God forever. But the man who hopes in the Lord and clings to him has found the purpose of his existence and has fulfilled God's highest hopes for him. To him the trials and burdens of this life are nothing but minor troubles. In other words they are "light and momentary troubles which are achieving an eternal glory that far outweighs them all". Because these very troubles that we generally consider bad are actually being used to present us with situations where we must choose whether to cling more tightly to God through them or not. This is why James writes "Consider it pure joy when you encounter trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance and perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete not lacking anything". In Isaiah it says, "Those who hope in the Lord will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint". This is because our strength and our joy is in our hope in the Lord who is able to meet all our needs and carry us through to the end. God has such a powerful furious love for man that we can hardly comprehend it. He even sent his son on the cross to pay for our wicked mistakes and ways that we might still have a chance at being with him! God always loves us, even the lost ones that have chosen the way of wickedness, but not their wicked ways. If you begin to express love toward God that is genuine and set your focus on him in this way he will reciprocate and you will have a revelation of his love for you as well. This is why the scriptures say "You will seek me and find me if you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:13).

I have never really liked rain at all. It is just so dark and melancholy and wet. :) I like sunshine much better, for it is like joy and fun. This morning there is a heavy dark rain. I realize though that even when there is heavy dark rain in life, when I cling to Christ, there will always be a bright warm sunshine in my heart. (I know that sounds kind of cheesy, but it really is so true.) This is in fact the key to making it through life. This is the highest hope God has for us is to cling to him through the darkness trusting that he will see us through. The process of going through it strengthens our ability to hold on to Him and results in growth of our relationship with Him.

The most dangerous enemy we have is our own neglect of God over time. No matter how intense the fire of an enemy that is brought to our door, our God is able and willing to fight it back for us on one condition. That is that we cling to him through it and trust him for the help. This very trial achieves for us a closer bond with God which is worth more than silver or gold. Jesus is our high priest, our friend, our King and the sacrifice for our sins. He is the author and perfecter of our faith. No one comes to the father, but through him. He is our light and our salvation in this dark world. Sometimes we forget God until there is pain in our lives and then we try to ask for his help and be buddy buddy with him. He still loves us and will use that to draw us, but how much better when we have already been hoping in him and loving him before the trial. In some ways it seems that all of life is a trial. There is no drug, no friendship, no relationship, no food, time of sleep, television show/movie or amusement park roller coaster ride that can ever fulfill my heart like I deeply long for it to be filled. There is only one satisfaction for my soul and it is through the love of God and intimacy of his Holy Spirit living in me made possible by Christ and his sacrifice for me on the cross! My hope is always and forever in Him. Our doubt is really and always has been the only true enemy for us. When we doubt his love, his ability to deliver us, his big plan that is in place for the world, his existence or anything that is true about him we lose our connection with him. For connection in relationships is built on trust. And that is what we must have... a relationship with the living God. That is what our souls long for and will never be truly satisfied until they find. This connection to Jesus we have is our strength, our authority, our power, our love and our joy.

Lies and Camping

I've been thinking about the tree of knowledge of good and evil and about John 8:32. John 8:32 says you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. I am perplexed by sin. You would think if Adam and the human race gained this knowledge then we would know more truth and therefore be more free. Yet it seems that things became much worse after more knowledge came. It also seems ironic to me that the serpent was trying so desperately to use deception on Adam and Eve into gaining the knowledge of good and evil. Deception seems to be our enemy's most famous tactic yet the father of lies was trying to trick Adam and Eve into knowing truth. Because with knowledge comes truth. However, then I realized the devil was showing them the law. The wicked beauty of the thing to him was that not only was he tricking them into disobeying God and into following the evil desires forming in their hearts, but also the moment they bit into the forbidden fruit they would simultaneously know the law and already have broken it beyond repair. Knowledge of the law is a kind of truth, but there is more truth that needs to be known to be truly free. Knowing the law for Adam and Eve as well as for us now means being aware of your own wickedness. I believe I was thinking about John 8:32 out of context at first though. If you consider John 8:31 with it Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." Jesus' truth was that the only way out of the devious trap laid by our enemy and that we ensnared ourselves in from the beginning was from God. More precisely, that the culmination of God's plan for our freedom was realized in Christ himself and his sacrifice for us. Only when we hold to his teaching will we live in an awareness of the truth that frees us. Old Testament heroes of the faith didn't know about Jesus yet, but they did realize this truth that their only hope from the condemnation in the law hanging over them was in God.

I find Jesus' statement interesting that the way to really know the truth is to hold to his teaching. So, if you hold to his teaching you will know truth which will set you free thereby giving you more strength and ability to hold to his teaching. The more ability to hold to his teaching you have the more you will be able to know truth. This describes the process of faith. It grows in degree incrementally. But ironically you must take hold of one (or both) to get a grip on the other and start the cycle of faith growing. Either you believe the truth and begin holding to his teaching or you begin holding to his teaching to see if it yields knowledge of the truth. Either way at some point you must have some faith to get more.

Lies are downright mean. In fact quite often they are more than mean, they can be cruel. The cruelty lies in the fact that a liar tricks the deceived into a false hope. He leads them into a faith based on ideas that simply aren't true. In a way it is a betrayal of the deceived's trust in the deceiver. Betrayal is at the heart of every lie and I believe is the real core of wickedness and treachery. I suppose that is why Judas' sin was so intense. He betrayed the savior from betrayal as well as all sin. You could say betrayal is fueled by selfishness, but really I don't think it is wrong to want good things for your self. The real evil is to trust a deceiver that leads you to think you can get good things for yourself by viewing everything in life through a self-centric lens and giving in to a lifestyle of selfishness. Our enemy the devil specializes in raw deals a.k.a. lies. He is also often stealthy enough to make us think his proposals were really our own thoughts and ideas. Granted we do have evil desires living in our fleshly bodies and these desires are sometimes the culprit behind sin, but you can bet that anytime we even remotely begin to toy with an evil desire the enemy or an agent of his is there trying to foster it and sometimes encourage it into existence. Imagination is the part of us that dreams about things that may or may not be true. It is the seed of hope and faith or worry and fear. You begin to believe what you imagine either is true and/or possible or very likely will be. Any sin begins with an imagination that dreams of what things will be like when the sinful thing is done and the dream is always a lie. What makes the dream and sin so deviously cruel and treacherous though, is that often times even after the sin has been committed we fail to see the lie and go on believing that the pleasure we found in the act of disobedience was a fulfillment of the dream we held in our imagination enabling us to want to do it again. Yet what we don't realize, the truth our enemy craftily shades us from, is that with each consecutive sin we slowly destroy our very hearts piece by piece until at some point we can't even recognize the wickedness and death it is so disgustingly full of. His highest hope for us is that we will go to our graves completely deceived having lost sight of the truth of the wickedness, pain, death and eternal condemnation that goes along with disobedience to God.

I can't figure out if I like camping or not. I know my wife really loves it and I have found enjoyment in it too at times. But there are also times when I don't enjoy it as much. It occurs to me that when we go camping we are no longer at home and we no longer have the comforts of home. I have to sleep on a bed that is less desirable than the one at home and I have to eat food that is different from the kind I would have at home. But at the same time I find that in that new environment I am a little closer to God's creation and often things are a bit quieter. It is more secluded which sometimes seems undesirable, but after a time of being there can seem desirable. The hypnotic dance of the flames in the campfire often lure my mind into a meditative state and sometimes I will begin to sing praises to my God there and remember who I am. I realize that in this world we are camping. Our home is in heaven and the comforts of that heavenly home will be great. They will be much greater than this world we camp out in for now. Paul refers to our earthly bodies as tents. Sometimes we forget that this world is just a campground and that the comforts our hearts long for are at home. Sometimes appreciating comforts of home only comes when we leave them and we never really have a comfort until we truly appreciate it.

Hope

Sometimes I get so discouraged. I find myself longing for something better. I had high hopes for this new year... I still do I suppose. But, I just seem to have no self-discipline. I realize spending time with the Lord, seeking, praying to and worshiping him is something that has the greatest affect cumulatively and when practiced consistently. It is like exercising. Working out once in a while and hoping to become buff is futile. It's like sporadically dieting every now and then when the thought occurs to you that you're fat rather than consistently following a plan and sticking to it. So it is with one's walk with the Lord through life. A man's focus defines the man. As a man thinks in his heart so is he. (Prov. 23:7) Focus is so powerful and sometimes so hard to control. Like the grip of emotion in a sad song, a man's focus can be latched to negativity or despair. Each previous thought or note leads into the next. We are creatures with moods and associative minds. Each idea somehow leading to the next. Randomness in a discussion is often thought odd or funny and seldom is it truly random. Our thoughts flow like a river through mud, creating gullies over time that become harder and harder to escape. Part of being a Christian is having a new way of thinking. Do everything without complaining or arguing. (Phil. 2:14) Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things (Phil. 4:8) Negativity, hopelessness, despair and faithlessness are all wicked and from the evil one. Following these gullies in the mud is a way of darkness and ultimately death. But fixing our minds and hearts on whatever is true, lovely and pure as Phil. 4:8 says is a way of joy and life and light. I remember when I was first taking cello lessons, my cello teacher used to get upset with me for practicing something he hadn't shown me how to do yet. The problem was I would try it, but do it all wrong and then practice it that way. The more I practiced it the deeper ingrained it would become in me to play the song the wrong way. So it is with life and God. We need him to teach us how to play the songs we face when living in various situations. We need to learn how to play them right and once we know, practice them correctly and daily. "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Cor. 10:5 Our thoughts are precious and our enemy knows this. If he controls or sways our thinking he controls us and possibly even our destiny. (This is why television programs exhibiting the worldly culture and way of thinking often even only on a subconscious level are so powerful and dangerous.) Learning to recognize a negative, faithless, hopeless, worried or despairing thought and rebuke it replacing it with a faithful thought rooted in our commitment to believing in God, his love and saving power is vital to walking in the Spirit as Christians. Trying to do this on your own is dangerous as well. Though God does not magically change us and our lifestyles when we become Christians, he offers us all the tools and help we need to do it. As long as I am pressing on and trying to be His and live His way trusting him for the rest, he will cover the rest for me. Because he is faithful and he is love.