Beauty (I swear I'm tough! Really I am!)
For the past few months I’ve been thinking about this whole tasting God and seeing more of His character. I’ve been thinking about how often we as christians tend to point out the bad or sin in others or ourselves. But sometimes will swing to the other side, for fear of offending people. We tend to tell people about Hell so we can get them to heaven. Often times we can paint a better picture of Hell then we do heaven. Is that because we don’t know what The Kingdom tastes like? Maybe its because this world is in such terrible shape its that much easier to imagine Hell over Heaven. It could be because we are content knowing “I’m saved, so some day I’ll get to heaven. I just need to hold on till I die.” What if we were tasting God every day? Getting glimpses of Gods character. What if we were able to paint the most vivid pictures of The Creator of Beauty?
I don’t Think our job is to strike fear into people’s heart by telling them how they are wretched sinners, Our job is to be painters. We need to be painting pictures of Love, Grace, Beauty, Truth with word and action. I feel a lot of times we feel like we need to tell people what they are doing wrong (some times yes, that is the case). But when I read the scriptures I see Jesus displaying who he is before He talks about their sins, or they already know about him and have heard the stories.(john 4:10, 5:8-14, and all the miracles and teachings showed who He was. read the gospels.) Paul, in Acts is always painting pictures of who God is (Acts 17:24, 14:3, 13:17, 14:17, I’m sure there are more). Why is it difficult for us to display who God is?
Maybe it is because for the past several years or decades or more, we’ve been focused on sin management. The focus is doing Gods commands but not God... Eh I don’t know if that made sense. Let me try to explain my thoughts. You can do everything your parents tell you to do and still hate them. You can do things you know your spouse loves and be having an affair with another person. Like C. S. Lewis says you can do good for the sake of doing good (Mere Christianity). You can obey all of God’s commands to the T, and still be off and not know who God is (Pharisees).
Since I’ve come home this summer I have felt like God continues to tell me to see what He is doing in me. To watch the things God is changing or putting to death or bringing alive. It’s been an amazing part of this journey, tough, but amazing. I think to be able to tell people who God is we need to taste Him daily. We have to know what its like to have Him working in us. Most of the time I get antsy if I’m not out doing something. So it’s been good for me to learn to focus more on the inside of me. It’s this interesting balance, balancing what’s going on in me and yet still moving forward in trying to bring His kingdom. Balancing serving and sitting. I think it is key to finding fullness in Christ.
These days I am discovering the key to repentance and a holy fear is in discovering Beauty. I think if we pulled the plug on sin management and changed our focus to knowing God in EVERY aspect of life, the sin would be less and less (Matt 6:33). Some might argue by saying “We Need the law! It lets us know our need for God.” Yes we find out we Need him, but not love Him. You can need something and resent it for the fact that you need it. I think the key to an obedient HEART is knowing who God is. Look at Simeon Peter, Isaiah, Saul who becomes paul, Other people who encounter God.
When Peter saw Christ he said “ Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man”(luke 5:8).
We can also look at Isaiah who said “Woe to me!” I cried, ”I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, LORD Almighty.”(isaiah 6:5).
Job says, “My ears have heard of you. but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6)
I could continue on with examples of people seeing God and getting wrecked. When people realize who God is they were appalled with their actions. They changed because the taste in their mouths was to amazing and the old flavor turned sour in their stomachs.
I know for me the revelation of who God is is what makes me want to change. When I taste God in the new ways that makes me “despise myself”. That’s what makes me want to change, not someone telling me I’m bad. Until I taste a righteous God, bad is irrelevant, just something people talk about. An abstract concept.
Maybe another reason why we don’t paint pictures of God’s creative beauty is because it’s easier to talk about sin. It’s easy to point out the negative. It’s hard to discover beauty when we’ve felt so much pain in our lives. Discovering beauty is hard when genocide's are occurring in Africa, Aids is rampant, suicide bombers are plentiful, and when the hatred and anger of a broken generation fill the streets of the globe. It’s tough to talk about beauty when all we see is the sin in our lives. Telling others about the beauty we see in life is very difficult when it hurts to deal with the issues of our life. It doesn’t feel good when God works in us. It usually hurts... A lot. (all the verses above and more) I have found its like we have pieces of broken glass under our skin. To get this glass out God has to first cut us open. Then He digs down below our flesh to find the glass. Once found, He pulls it out. Of course one of the things about glass is it is sharp, so when God pulls it out it cuts us more on the way out. BUT, now your body will actually HEAL! No more infection, the root is out. We are one more step to walking in wholeness. Its our choice to let God get the glass out. (maybe you disagree, no worries)
Awesome thing about free will, its our choice to find the beauty. It’s our choice to go on a path that leads to the discovery of truth, but will bring hardship and pain. In the end this path leads to inexpressible Joy, Hope, Love, Peace, and Grace. As we get these things dealt with we see God in new ways. We see the clouds starting to part and Hope starting to rain down. How can we experience the Goodness in life if we are so full of un-dealt with pain and anger? We need to experience God’s touch in our lives before we can show others who this Healer is.
When I use to read Acts I would think that my job was to Stand on street corners and in large crowds and preach messages of repentance. In Acts you see pictures of Paul, Peter, and that whole crew going around city to city preaching. After reading things like that I would ask myself “Am I not bold enough cause I don’t like doing that? Do I not have enough faith in Christ?”. Now, I don’t think thats the case. (Maybe I’m just saying this to make myself feel better for the fact that I don’t do that. Maybe I’m giving myself an easy way out. HA who knows. ) If you think about it, most of the places where they did there big stand up speeches was when they were in the synagogs. The people in the synagog were already well versed in the scriptures. These people had been told time and time again the great deeds of I AM. They didn’t need people to tell them the story of creation, the story of man, the story of the bride. The jewish people knew the story up until the time of Jesus. So when these apostles spoke they were speaking about things that made sense, because most Jews had a picture of God already in there head.
In other parts of Acts the disciples branch out to other nations and speak. When reading that I also use to think to myself, “do I need to be bold like that to be a good christian? Do I need to travel around telling people of their sins?.” I think the answer is a kind of yes, but not right away... I say that because the places where the Disciples went many times had already hear of The Way. The story’s of the great works and miracles had already reached the ears of the people in these countries. In the countries that they had not gotten to the apostles painted pictures of God before telling them to repent. Does our reputation as christians pre-seed us in America today? Do our actions back up our talk? Does our life paint a picture of God Almighty? Do we have the authority to speak on such things, or have we not lived a life of authority?
In America do people even know the God we worship? Do we know more sides to God besides Savior? Does our life style help lead people to the discovery of Truth? In working at Home Depot I have met people who have NO idea who the True God is. They think they do because christianity is the religion of America. One person I talked to didn’t even know that God gave the jewish people the 10 commandments let alone that there was 10 rules God gave humans. Thats not his fault. So does it make it our fault for not showing people who God is? I’ve also met “Christians” that don’t even know what Christianity is. How have we let such a vital thing slip through the cracks? What does “you need a personal relationship with God” even mean when we aren’t teaching people who God is?
I think we are at a time in history where we, the Church, are being forced to discover more of who God is. People don’t care about sin any more. Right and wrong is as relevant as it is irrelevant. With a mind set of “Hey thats great for you but stop judging me”, how do we expect to keep moving in the direction we have been. The direction of saying you are a “sinful person, repent, God loves you”. If people haven’t tasted the Goodness of truth how will they know that truth really exists? Or if us, Believers, were not there to tell them that what they saw was Truth or what they tasted was a part of God, why would we expect them to want God? If we as followers of God can’t see the beauty in the valleys how then can we point others to Beauty? If we aren’t desperate to walk in wholeness with Christ, how can we help others to walk towards maturity?
I think this cultural shift, changing of times, is good for the body of Christ. Its forcing us to seek and to find, to ask and receive.(Luke 11:9-10). It’s forcing us to rely on God in new ways, because old styles aren’t working as well as they use to. (Matt 5:36-39)
We have a job to reintroduce a country, a nation, a world to the Mysterious Creator. We need to be people who recognize beauty. Lets be so eager to taste this sweet flavor. Let’s discover God all over again. Our lives need to become a reflection of Christ. The Church needs to be a representation of who God IS and how He Loves others. I’m tired of people forming their view of God from how they see “Christians” behave. They see “christians” with “God hates Fags” posters and passing out flyers telling people they are going to hell. (sometimes the flyers do draw people to God, I know). We need to learn to delight in Him no matter what’s going down around us. I pray the our roots will be drinking from the river of Life, and that our leaves will be for the healing of the nations. Lets share with one another the new discoveries of Christ and encourage each other to dig deeper to discover more. Lets help people discover more of God where ever they are on their life journey.
I don’t Think our job is to strike fear into people’s heart by telling them how they are wretched sinners, Our job is to be painters. We need to be painting pictures of Love, Grace, Beauty, Truth with word and action. I feel a lot of times we feel like we need to tell people what they are doing wrong (some times yes, that is the case). But when I read the scriptures I see Jesus displaying who he is before He talks about their sins, or they already know about him and have heard the stories.(john 4:10, 5:8-14, and all the miracles and teachings showed who He was. read the gospels.) Paul, in Acts is always painting pictures of who God is (Acts 17:24, 14:3, 13:17, 14:17, I’m sure there are more). Why is it difficult for us to display who God is?
Maybe it is because for the past several years or decades or more, we’ve been focused on sin management. The focus is doing Gods commands but not God... Eh I don’t know if that made sense. Let me try to explain my thoughts. You can do everything your parents tell you to do and still hate them. You can do things you know your spouse loves and be having an affair with another person. Like C. S. Lewis says you can do good for the sake of doing good (Mere Christianity). You can obey all of God’s commands to the T, and still be off and not know who God is (Pharisees).
Since I’ve come home this summer I have felt like God continues to tell me to see what He is doing in me. To watch the things God is changing or putting to death or bringing alive. It’s been an amazing part of this journey, tough, but amazing. I think to be able to tell people who God is we need to taste Him daily. We have to know what its like to have Him working in us. Most of the time I get antsy if I’m not out doing something. So it’s been good for me to learn to focus more on the inside of me. It’s this interesting balance, balancing what’s going on in me and yet still moving forward in trying to bring His kingdom. Balancing serving and sitting. I think it is key to finding fullness in Christ.
These days I am discovering the key to repentance and a holy fear is in discovering Beauty. I think if we pulled the plug on sin management and changed our focus to knowing God in EVERY aspect of life, the sin would be less and less (Matt 6:33). Some might argue by saying “We Need the law! It lets us know our need for God.” Yes we find out we Need him, but not love Him. You can need something and resent it for the fact that you need it. I think the key to an obedient HEART is knowing who God is. Look at Simeon Peter, Isaiah, Saul who becomes paul, Other people who encounter God.
When Peter saw Christ he said “ Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man”(luke 5:8).
We can also look at Isaiah who said “Woe to me!” I cried, ”I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, LORD Almighty.”(isaiah 6:5).
Job says, “My ears have heard of you. but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6)
I could continue on with examples of people seeing God and getting wrecked. When people realize who God is they were appalled with their actions. They changed because the taste in their mouths was to amazing and the old flavor turned sour in their stomachs.
I know for me the revelation of who God is is what makes me want to change. When I taste God in the new ways that makes me “despise myself”. That’s what makes me want to change, not someone telling me I’m bad. Until I taste a righteous God, bad is irrelevant, just something people talk about. An abstract concept.
Maybe another reason why we don’t paint pictures of God’s creative beauty is because it’s easier to talk about sin. It’s easy to point out the negative. It’s hard to discover beauty when we’ve felt so much pain in our lives. Discovering beauty is hard when genocide's are occurring in Africa, Aids is rampant, suicide bombers are plentiful, and when the hatred and anger of a broken generation fill the streets of the globe. It’s tough to talk about beauty when all we see is the sin in our lives. Telling others about the beauty we see in life is very difficult when it hurts to deal with the issues of our life. It doesn’t feel good when God works in us. It usually hurts... A lot. (all the verses above and more) I have found its like we have pieces of broken glass under our skin. To get this glass out God has to first cut us open. Then He digs down below our flesh to find the glass. Once found, He pulls it out. Of course one of the things about glass is it is sharp, so when God pulls it out it cuts us more on the way out. BUT, now your body will actually HEAL! No more infection, the root is out. We are one more step to walking in wholeness. Its our choice to let God get the glass out. (maybe you disagree, no worries)
Awesome thing about free will, its our choice to find the beauty. It’s our choice to go on a path that leads to the discovery of truth, but will bring hardship and pain. In the end this path leads to inexpressible Joy, Hope, Love, Peace, and Grace. As we get these things dealt with we see God in new ways. We see the clouds starting to part and Hope starting to rain down. How can we experience the Goodness in life if we are so full of un-dealt with pain and anger? We need to experience God’s touch in our lives before we can show others who this Healer is.
When I use to read Acts I would think that my job was to Stand on street corners and in large crowds and preach messages of repentance. In Acts you see pictures of Paul, Peter, and that whole crew going around city to city preaching. After reading things like that I would ask myself “Am I not bold enough cause I don’t like doing that? Do I not have enough faith in Christ?”. Now, I don’t think thats the case. (Maybe I’m just saying this to make myself feel better for the fact that I don’t do that. Maybe I’m giving myself an easy way out. HA who knows. ) If you think about it, most of the places where they did there big stand up speeches was when they were in the synagogs. The people in the synagog were already well versed in the scriptures. These people had been told time and time again the great deeds of I AM. They didn’t need people to tell them the story of creation, the story of man, the story of the bride. The jewish people knew the story up until the time of Jesus. So when these apostles spoke they were speaking about things that made sense, because most Jews had a picture of God already in there head.
In other parts of Acts the disciples branch out to other nations and speak. When reading that I also use to think to myself, “do I need to be bold like that to be a good christian? Do I need to travel around telling people of their sins?.” I think the answer is a kind of yes, but not right away... I say that because the places where the Disciples went many times had already hear of The Way. The story’s of the great works and miracles had already reached the ears of the people in these countries. In the countries that they had not gotten to the apostles painted pictures of God before telling them to repent. Does our reputation as christians pre-seed us in America today? Do our actions back up our talk? Does our life paint a picture of God Almighty? Do we have the authority to speak on such things, or have we not lived a life of authority?
In America do people even know the God we worship? Do we know more sides to God besides Savior? Does our life style help lead people to the discovery of Truth? In working at Home Depot I have met people who have NO idea who the True God is. They think they do because christianity is the religion of America. One person I talked to didn’t even know that God gave the jewish people the 10 commandments let alone that there was 10 rules God gave humans. Thats not his fault. So does it make it our fault for not showing people who God is? I’ve also met “Christians” that don’t even know what Christianity is. How have we let such a vital thing slip through the cracks? What does “you need a personal relationship with God” even mean when we aren’t teaching people who God is?
I think we are at a time in history where we, the Church, are being forced to discover more of who God is. People don’t care about sin any more. Right and wrong is as relevant as it is irrelevant. With a mind set of “Hey thats great for you but stop judging me”, how do we expect to keep moving in the direction we have been. The direction of saying you are a “sinful person, repent, God loves you”. If people haven’t tasted the Goodness of truth how will they know that truth really exists? Or if us, Believers, were not there to tell them that what they saw was Truth or what they tasted was a part of God, why would we expect them to want God? If we as followers of God can’t see the beauty in the valleys how then can we point others to Beauty? If we aren’t desperate to walk in wholeness with Christ, how can we help others to walk towards maturity?
I think this cultural shift, changing of times, is good for the body of Christ. Its forcing us to seek and to find, to ask and receive.(Luke 11:9-10). It’s forcing us to rely on God in new ways, because old styles aren’t working as well as they use to. (Matt 5:36-39)
We have a job to reintroduce a country, a nation, a world to the Mysterious Creator. We need to be people who recognize beauty. Lets be so eager to taste this sweet flavor. Let’s discover God all over again. Our lives need to become a reflection of Christ. The Church needs to be a representation of who God IS and how He Loves others. I’m tired of people forming their view of God from how they see “Christians” behave. They see “christians” with “God hates Fags” posters and passing out flyers telling people they are going to hell. (sometimes the flyers do draw people to God, I know). We need to learn to delight in Him no matter what’s going down around us. I pray the our roots will be drinking from the river of Life, and that our leaves will be for the healing of the nations. Lets share with one another the new discoveries of Christ and encourage each other to dig deeper to discover more. Lets help people discover more of God where ever they are on their life journey.
posted by chris at 12:32 PM
2 Comments:
Amen brother!! God has been showing me some amazing stuff about how He is romancing me.
He has also been teaching me about Beauty and it's importance in this world. When I made my personal mission statement last year I thought it was a little lame that I was dedicating my life to creating, compelling, and restoring Beauty and Truth.
Now I see that this is an fantastic calling that I can only do with the help of He who is Beauty and Truth.
Love ya man!
Wow! I definitely agree with all of it. Everytime I read your blog I just see the amazing work God is doing in your life, and it's really encouraging. It makes me want to seek God more every day, and continue experiencing him in new ways, so that I can too share who He is, and the awesome things He does.
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