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And here I am. Writing another blog post. It's been quite a while, but I think that should be ok.

Galatians 5:4-6
4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Last Sunday night I went to a concert in Southern Florida. Jimmy Needham was the artist, a singer whom I had only recently discovered.
I'm not here to write a concert review, but I will mention a few things about it. Jimmy Needham is pretty well-known around the country, so I assumed there would be a lot more people than there were. It was just a tiny conference-style room. We were there 45 minutes early and had the closest seats, right behind the reserved chairs. So we got the full experience. They started out with some worship by the home church's band. It was incredible, not because they were stunnily talented (they were, but I only half noticed it), but because it had been a long time since I had been in that kind of environment, live music, in a crowd, all of us singing to Jesus. A few months back I had thought about how truly amazing it is, just to have so many people using their energy to sing to God. And there's a difference, singing to God and for God and because of God. All three happened.

And then Jimmy came and sang/spoke for an hour and a half. What particularily stayed with me was his explanation of his song "Forgiven and Loved." He explained that it started out as a journal entry. "Tell me I'm forgiven and loved." Jimmy spoke of the God of his earlier years, the God with a "disappointed" sign plastered across his face.
I have been struggling this probably my entire life. It is my flesh and my insecurities that claim God is not pleased, that God's wrath remains against my sin, that I do not deserve love and that I cannot please God.
There is a lot of Truth in those feelings. That is probably why I feel that way---there is something broken in my communion with God, there is something broken about me, something actually ISN'T right.
But Jesus makes it right. He made it right and is making it right. Romans 8:1 says, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." None. At all. Jimmy kept repeating that that is the craziest verse in the Bible. It really is. It goes against my instinct. I want to work for it, but God says I absolutely, never ever can.
See it like this:
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Isaiah 64:6

And then:

...in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us.
Romans 8:37

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
1 John 3:1


"We cannot trade empty for empty, we must go to the waterfall, for there’s a break in the cup that holds love, inside us all."
David Wilcox

"But how much more could we enjoy each other if instead of trying to get them to fill us we walked with each other toward the waterfall?"
Mike Donehey

I need the waterfall.

how He loves

C.S. Lewis on becoming a Christian:
"At the moment what I heard was God saying, 'Put down your gun and we'll talk.'"

Three hours. Of history class on women and oppression and confusion. Strange laziness from no food and stress. Hmp. Well. Hopefully this blog won't come out jumbled---

Someone had noted a superiority that comes from religion. From his view, it is someone looking on another and judging, of saying that THIS religion is the only one, that it is right and therefore everything is wrong. To quote from an essay (on footbinding, kind of a different subject) by Patricia Ebrey, "With the child abuse construct [of footbinding] we are moving more toward pity, which of course also assumes a position of superiority as it empathizes with those viewed as victims." To say something is wrong means to claim to be 'enlightened' relatively.

What about the other side? What is it about us humans that does not want to be proved wrong, perhaps 'unenlightened'? To me that seems a big issue.
Also, I do not see Christianity as such. As religion, or even, really, as a 'moral' guide. It does not tells us what we can do, but what God can do. What he will change. Christianity (actually, Christ), in one sense, tears down those rules. God knows---he really knows we can't do anything good on our own. We can't.

Isaiah 64:6 (New International Version)

6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

We are deprived. We are depraved. We are oppressed. That is real oppression, that war that wages in our hearts and vies for our attentions, our selfishness and our ingratitude. (much like my thoughts and actions this hectic morning, I'm afraid. 'Nother story.) Our very self is in opposition against God and makes us miserable. Christ will make us understand ourselves, our nature.

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
C.S. Lewis

I think what people are truly missing, what they don't know about Christianity, is that God really loves us. He really does. He REALLY loves us. He loves us! He's jealous for us! That's what this is really about! You can't down play it. I once heard a pastor say, "I think that we concentrate too much on the loving side of God, we need to mention more God's wrath." But aren't they related? God's incredible wrath on sin, his repulse and (frankly) hatred of sin is demonstrated in that he would send his Son--himself---to kill it, because he does not want any of us to live with sin! He created us to live with him, to feed of him, to be satisfied in him. His love is our motivation for living in a certain way, of not wanting any part of our lives to be wrapped around ourselves, but to embrace him fully.
"All my self-imposed wants and rights melt before the flame of a loving God."

"Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance?" Romans 2:4

"And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:17b-19

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWgeUrD4MHI

When I think about just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me...