The Fear Of Total Acceptance

On June 24, 2014June 24, 2014 By happyreignIn JoelLeave a comment

I am convinced that the thing we most fear isn’t rejection but TOTAL ACCEPTANCE. There I said it. At least that is what my fear was…and sometimes still is. You see for me growing up in a religious environment where it was suggested and subliminally ingrained in our minds was that no matter what we did, how many hours we prayed and fasted it was never enough. I still felt dirty. God was still Holy on His blessed mountain and I was still a million miles away. If I was going to make it to Heaven surely it was on the off chance that God was focused on Jesus waving His bloody-nail imprinted hands drawing the attention to Himself so I could slip through the pearly gates. Then it happened…then He happened to me. About 7 or 8 years ago it was my time, my turn to be wrecked by Grace. I was on the Heavenly Hit List and He revealed Himself in me, to me. The Scandal of the Cross turned over all my tables of religious failed efforts on bettering myself. He showed me an aggressive unrelenting Love that simply would not let me continue on living with the roller coaster religion of one day being up and feeling loved followed by the next day of me feeling like I was not good enough for Him. You see the Good News is that we have ALWAYS been more than enough for Him.

So why do we often respond with fear in the face of total Acceptance and Love?? I am sure there could be numerous reasons. But at the core of it all I believe it all comes down to Trust. I remember when God whispered in my ear and said,”Joel, all of the problems that you think you have can be taken care of by simply trusting me.” I mean wow! To think of a God that is so in tune with all of our emotions and so intricately woven in our day to day activities, that He always wants to make Himself known in every area of our lives. I will never forget when Heather my wife said to me,”I want to know all of you.” Honestly scared the sh*@ out of me. I could feel fear surrounding me. Why?? Because for Heather to know all of me would involve me being VULNERABLE. And that is where for many the rubber meets the road. Not only with relationships with loved ones but with God Himself. We have become experts in hiding…hiding behind religious masks and behind tough exteriors of independence. But through His love He is still coming down to us searching and calling us by our name like He did with Adam. Where are you?? Who told you you where naked?? Who has said that you are not good enough for me?? Who has filled your head with nonsense and saying that I am not more than enough for you?

My question is: Will you let Him in? Will you Trust that He is good? Will you let Him love you?

-Joel

His Rest Was Never At Risk

On June 7, 2014June 7, 2014 By happyreignIn Joel1 Comment

His rest celebrates perfection. His work is complete; the fall of humanity did not flaw its perfection. (Heb. 4:3 the Mirror Translation)

Each day I am more convinced in the totality and perfection of not only what Christ did but in WHO he is. He has always been the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world. The solution was there before the problem, our forgiveness came way before our repentance. There is this Capon quote that I absolutely love. It reads: Creation is just as miraculous now as it was at the beginning, because redemption is present at every moment and every place throughout every part of creation. The creation and redemption are one act, not two. In the moment Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the tree, they are redeemed. Not by that act but by him who made them. And therefore everything that happens after that is a proclamation of the gospel. Francois du Toit says: God saw more than his perfect image in Adam, he also saw the Lamb and his perfect work of redemption! I mean wow!!!

Growing up in the Church I always heard what God was about to do or was going to do but few rarely boasted in what He had done already. Religion always seems to put the good things of God in a far distant future. It thrives on distance and delay. Somehow Religion has made boasting through a language of lack as being “spiritual.” I am really excited about seeing how many have been waking up to the blissful reality of what Christ accomplished! Many when hearing the Good News feel life jumping inside of them. The truth is that the Good News is not a Message of something that they haven’t heard but it’s something that Religion tried to cover up. True Faith recognizes what has ALREADY taken place! In the beauty of this growing revelation we are not only finding who Christ is but we are also finding who we have always been… accepted and chosen in the Beloved before time!

Obscurity, Identity, Value and Thankfulness

On June 6, 2014June 6, 2014 By happyreignIn Joel2 Comments

Often there is a sense of wasted time or the looming fear of obscurity. We find ourselves with all these desires and dreams that God Himself has placed in us and we feel a million miles away from them. Was thinking of Jesus and him being a simple carpenter before his Ministry was made public. Here is the Saviour of the world and he is working on wood. Here is the creator of all covered in saw dust and splinters in his hands. I wonder if it was a setup from the beginning? The Christ who would be put to death on the Cross working with wood. The Divine has such a good sense of humor. So Jesus spent his years as a carpenter and the funny thing he wasn’t even known for being the best carpenter. When he came on the scene healing and teaching the people weren’t like,”Jesus the best carpenter of the land healed that cripple.” Do you think that Jesus ever thought those years as being wasted? Do you think that just being a son to Mary and Joseph was just filler? Or do you think he valued everything that Joseph taught him and that he cherished every meal that was prepared for him by Mary? That every day he rose and thought what will I learn today, who can I make smile today, who can I be a friend to? I absolutely love that in the moment when Jesus was baptized the Heavens opened up and God the Father declared,”This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.” If you think about it from the Ministry perspective Jesus hadn’t done anything yet. He hadn’t healed anyone or performed any miracles and here we see God declaring His affection, acceptance and that He is pleased with His Son not because of what he had done but because of who he was. Jesus’ identity didn’t depend on performance but it rested on whose He was.

Your identity is not wrapped up in your calling, or what you do. It is wrapped up in and solely relies on who your Daddy is! You are His! Whether you feel like it or not! Your value does not come from what you do. My wife loves to paint and she is amazing at it but for me to say she is just a painter would be to negate all these other amazing qualities and gifts that she has. Even farther still she is much more than her gifts! You are much more than what you can do or can’t do. You have value. I believe that each one of us is a unique expression of God on the earth, that it is not only we experiencing Christ on the earth but also that Christ is experiencing the earth again through us! I remember one day I was thinking of the Mystics of Old and God whispered in my ear,” If people met them today they would be marveled not by how supernatural they were but by how normal they were.” There is a lot of glory in everyday life but we fail to see it. There is something so powerful in sharing a smile or a hug but we have been so captivated by the smoke and mirrors that we have failed to see the glory in the mundane. Let us be marveled with love, friendships and family. Let us be caught up in awe with thankfulness because we got out of bed in the morning. I am supremely thankful for my wife who is my biggest blessing and everything else is sprinkles on the cake. Love you guys!

-Joel

Relationship

On June 4, 2014June 4, 2014 By happyreignIn Heather

Ya know how sometimes you listen to wisdom and it benefits you, and then there are other times when you don’t and you end up going down a mutli-year journey of not listening to wisdom only to find out that that truth is still true but now its burned into your heart through experience, and hopefully you won’t be too dense to forget it too quickly anytime soon? This is a story of one of those.

I think sometimes the most vulnerable times in my mind are sometimes when I spend time with the Lord. Looking back I think over the course of some years I grew calloused in my personal interaction with the holy spirit in hopes to avoid some pit of confusion or condemnation, both of course concerning religious thoughts even, for example, theological uncertainty amidst opposing schools of thought in my mind such as, personal doubt based on insecurities in my performance before God, or contrarily my arrogance in entirely ignoring my spiritual performance before God believing only on that of his son not opening up myself for dialogue about it to protect myself from the afore mentioned accusations, along with the lack of spiritual aperture to be able to keep it all afoot in my mind, casting blame towards myself in that if I was really spiritual and tight with God I wouldn’t be having any of these intellectual roundabouts.

Unfortunately the affect of this disclarity and self-accusation was an almost removed protection in my prayer times with the Lord. I came to take great comfort in the work of Christ and the declaration of his goodness over all of humanity because that gave peace to my soul and confidence before God. I know this might sound peculiar and odd to some but it was almost as if I was positioning myself in comfort with a theological viewpoint rather than in God himself.

I took safety in my relating to someone else’s conceptual soundness of God’s nature and that worked for me for a time. But as time passed I could feel unrest in the heart of me and I would think it’s because I’ve forgotten the truth: the truth about who God is, the truth about who I am, and I would once again almost methodically remind myself of these truths to bring comfort. While this is good, for me, it was still lacking. It was as if I had lost relationship with God and positioned myself hiding behind the concept of his goodness for protection, which worked…but didn’t. I was still missing out on the reason I was created. Let me continue.

As time passed I grew in the freedom of these truths I was learning, both in identity and experience but my one on one relational interaction with the Lord had somehow faded. I was no longer surviving on a tough mission field wrestling against principalities–because he called me to rest from that–and afterwards I guess there was recovering time to be had in my relationship with the Lord after what I had made our interaction out to be and the pendulum swung the opposite way. If God wasn’t breaking strongholds and releasing strong prophetic acts in the earth and ministering powerful words through me to people and I needed a break from all that, what was left of he and I? On the other side of that, if I’m at complete rest and nothing depends on me because he’s all sovereign and powerful and in control and I can completely rest in him in retirement what purpose remains left in the exchange? To what purposes have I reduced our intimacy to?

And so with this ominous void of recreational communication in our relationship, the doubt about ‘us’ would come around all the while I knew with certainty my unshakeable position that Christ had obtained for me. It was almost as if I always knew we were legally married but had lost intimacy of our enjoyment of one another as people and the shared experience of this life together, except as silent shipmates or something. Don’t get me wrong, the gratefulness was always there, the wisdom was sometimes there, the comfort was there, but face time was still missing. As I continue to live this life, more and more I’m discovering God relentless and unconditional goodness despite my end of participation in this relationship.

And so in this season in my relationship with him, his abounding goodness continued in full force. It continued to confirm to my mind who he was, but it was almost as if there was a lack of connection of the heart. And in this, life continues. Can anybody relate to this? I know I’ve heard at least one person say to me, ‘I remember what it felt like when I was experiencing the Lord more back then…what happened?’

Another contributing factor to this felt internal distance was pride on my part, even though I could see it was there. Where the directions you keep looking lie to you and make you feel like you well off with God. I already knew I knew nothing, I already comprehend my comparative nothingness in light of everything that it generous and extravagant being God himself. I at least I thought I was well off enough in that line of thought.

Turns out God doesn’t care if I know right answers, even though he taught us them. God doesn’t care if we think we know right answers when we obviously haven’t even barely begun to know anything really. Although God continually relates to me as my teacher, and the disciples never graduated from being disciples, he doesn’t care that about my accumulated experiences with him. He doesn’t care if I’m still being faithful and loving people well and whether I’m using the giftings he’s trained me to use. All of this means nothing to him.

He continues to be good, he continues to be faithful, he continues to show up on my behalf, but there’s so much more that what I’ve made it. There so much less that matters when it comes to his heart than we seemingly radical believing empowered christains have made it out to be.

Relationships are just humility and dependency. Independence–which is a reactionary weakness of mine that finds it way into my relationship with God is a false form of protection and comfort. Thankfully he’s ballsy enough in our relationship to shake that for me. Because our experience has taught us such, so often we try so hard for so long to do things on our own; even when it comes to our relationship with God, our interaction with him, and our expectations of ourselves as well as of him. Sometimes this creates some aspects of a relationship with God that has become sterile, formal, ritualistic, or stale, even in the midst of powerful corporate experiences.

Interacting with God is not about work. Let me say that one more time. Interacting with God is not about work. Relationship is just being yourself with someone. Giving them enough credit to be honest with them without any pretense or predisposed concept of who they really are without giving them a chance to show you or tell you who they are. God is really good at interacting with us as adults even when we’re acting like children.

Humility involves recognition of need. I think its one thing in your mind when you know that you could absolutely do nothing without God and then its another thing when humility is walked out in the way in which you dialogue with the Lord himself. Spending time with him, being vulnerable, listening, communicating need, asking questions, being teachable, discussing the painful stuff and actually listening rather than reacting out of emotion–all these things flow naturally out of humility before God.

After my brief years of doing life with God I think I’ve come to appreciate a hearty dose of perseverance and steadfastness and resolve in protecting connectivity with the Lord regardless of anything; not letting discouragement or accusation or confusion or distraction keep me from coming and being with him. He has always been and will always be for me. Always.

Let’s move fears out of the equation. Your relationship with God is not looming and threatening to end resulting in eternal destruction. He’s not going to reject you. He is good and will continue to be good. There’s no whirlwind of justifications, excuses, memories or enemies. But the wonderful part I’ve discovered about our existence in this journey of mine is that I was created to experience love.

I was not created to know of it, I was not created to experience it at one time, I was not create for a one time event of salvation, I am created with a need to experience the ongoing relationship with a living God that expresses love for me and towards me in an active and ever present way and reality. Nothing less will do in this life. It’s okay to need to be loved. He wants to spend time with me. He wants it. I still have things to be taught, I still have things to learn. But even the purpose of learning is not about obtaining the answer, which is good, its about the experience of exchange. For in the giving, is the receiving of love.

The most vital thing you can give someone your in relationship with is your attention. Withholding it simply not doing relationship. Relationships require time and space for them to happen.

I get to participate in union. I get to choose it. At one point God referred to Psalm 81:9 with me, ” You must never have a foreign God; you must not bow down before a false God.” I asked him to clarify his point to me at the time and he said that’s when you ‘run to someone or somewhere else for comfort other than me.’ He’s so good at being our everything, he wants us to experience nothing disappointingly less than himself.

And so, his mercy’s are new every morning. This was one of my journey’s that took too long to be reminded of but have found solace in his relentless pursuit of reminding me of what he and I are all about. He’s loves loving me and it’s not some concept in order to form a workable theology around. He enjoys relationship with me and his best for me is my daily face to face experience of that with himself. It’s what I’ve been made for, its what I’ve been saved for, and it’s the joy of my waking reality. My only strength is found in him. Peace.