Gift Giver

On January 7, 2017January 13, 2018 By happyreignIn Heather, Kingdom ConceptsLeave a comment

Spreading Kingdom Cheer For All To Hear

I wanted to lighten the mood and communicate some truth through this next piece entitled Santa. There are some really healthy concepts we can take from the fairy tale relationship society has with Santa that would be correctly applied to God. If this offends you, you should probably stop reading this and do something else that makes you happy. 🙂

Here we go. For some reason Santa always is depicted as the nice guy, he’s in a good mood! God, however, he’s the scary guy. He’s the mean, tight-fisted, we gotta perform for him to get us to love him guy. Santa on the other hand loves us all unconditionally. He doesn’t put anyone on the naughty list because he wants to, its just what he’s gotta do and that’s on you. God on the other hand sometimes get depeicted as delighting throwing people in a hell they deserve. That that kind of justice makes him happy inside. Mr. Cruel. 😦

Joy, abundance, generosity, celebration, warmth, comfort, safety, color, wonder, awe, love, and all those other things so many people associate with the idea of Santa and Christmas all come from God, that king born in a manger. He’s the guy that’s not a stubborn, boring, unfriendly stoic savior. He nice. And not only that, he’s funny. He’s understanding and patient. He likes you and enjoys your company. He delights in your creation and is full of wonder of the person you are becoming. He looks forward to time with you and believes in you more than you believe in yourself.

Stickler

When it comes to giving Santa’s reputation far exceeds Gods. When it comes to getting something from God, I picture intercession, fasting, declaration, and sacrifice. When I picture getting something from Santa, all you have do is tell him and sometimes he just knows because he’s that good and nice! And he always wants to know and give us what we desire just because he’s that awesome!

In my dreams I sometimes have Christmas dreams. I know God is revealing himself to me as the generous giver of glorious, wonderful gifts. He’s doesn’t mind the correlation when it raising our expectations of receiving good things from him. He loves giving good gifts to each of us. It brings him delight.

People always depict Santa as being for us! He’s on our side, but God, sometimes he likes us, sometimes he likes us less, or at least that’s what people believe! I’m sorry to say this but Santa didn’t die for you. He didn’t need to because Christ already did. If Santa died for you, he would have died, but you would still have needed an incarnate savior. Santa doesn’t possess within his endless resources the gifts we truly need in this life.

We never question where Santa gets his funding or what his real motives are for all of this generosity. We never wonder if he has enough resources or enough gifts that pertain to our specific desire. Availability is never questioned.

What’s In His Bag?

For some reason we put limits on gifts from God especially when it pertains to ourselves. God can’t possibly have enough joy for each of us, can he? I don’t really deserve that much joy? There obviously isn’t enough peace for my enemies and me, is there? I can’t possibly have peace and health today if I had it yesterday, right, I mean, that’s just not the way God works right? What does God want from me, what is he trying to do, is he just going to take this thing that I like away? We never just reason that God’s good to us because he’s good.

I’m not talking about God giving us plastic junk (not that he can’t communicate love to us through those things). I’m talking about our lives being filled with abundance of his goodness and our hearts overflowing with heaven’s wonders. Goodness no price tag can buy and the stuff rich men long for, sometimes found in abundance among the poor.

I love the Christmas season. It is a tiny prelude to the abundance of heaven’s eternal warmth, goodness, love, forgiveness, togetherness, sparkle-y-ness and generosity. Merry Eternal Christ-season.

Character Covenant Creativity

Family Freedom Gift Giver

Joy Judgement Kindness Trust

Love Praise Prayer Self-love

Family

On January 3, 2017January 13, 2018 By happyreignIn Heather, Kingdom ConceptsLeave a comment

Happy family standing on the beach at the sunset time. Parents hold in the hands inscription "Family". Concept of happy family.

Intro

In my mind family and the trinity are the same expression. God himself lives in community. Three in one. The individuals within God, the trinity, are separate persons yet one. They have individual expression, purpose, function, and yet are one. They move separately yet are one. How God relates to himself, or how the trinity relates to one another is the self-sustaining heaven humanity gets to partake of. Everything is satisfied within God himself, yet he invited us to experience the glory of his nature. And not only to experience it, but embody it through him indwelling within us. I no longer live, yet Christ in me.

Living Heartbeat

Family. Let’s start with marriage. God said let man and woman be made in my image. Himself, not fully expressed in man, or woman, but their functioning together. God could have made us asexual able to regenerate ourselves but he didn’t. He purposed for two genders to live their lives together, living it through him, by him, and in him, as two separate beings functioning as one. He said I have made you one flesh. Of course wedding partners don’t become Siamese twins but they are one person, one flesh, not a trinity but a binity? And then comes the third element, children.

We are never called to be one with are children, but one a larger scale we are called to be one as Christ’s body. We are all called to be one. How do we all become one? How do we become one with our spouse? Our children? We become one with Holy Spirit. Well you already are one with Holy Spirit as he lives inside of you and your spirit is one with his, but when we become one with him, we become one with someone who is already one with that other person, whether it be your child, your spouse, whomever. Fear in our relationships doesn’t lead us to love others well, Holy Spirit does. And often loving others well often begins with healthy love for ourself.

This might have gotten a little confusing but we don’t become one in family by forcing it. Any family with a teenager has probably seen that doesn’t work, but God is one with his children, he knows them, he knows you. Everyone wants to belong somewhere. Everyone wants to be accepted somewhere. These wants and desires have their origins in the innate purpose of family. If the church is ever to become one with each other, it is not a matter of church membership. It is a matter of holy spirit living. But this post isn’t my church post, this is my family post, but perhaps, just perhaps the function and purpose of the two are the same.

In the absence of family, or even with a healthy one, God is family to us. The trinity is our eternal family, always has been, always will be. Our natural families merely reveals his expressions. He is our mother, he was our mother’s love to us in our lives, that was him loving you. God is our brother, our friend, our counselor, our husband, our leader. He is all those things and so much more. He is the love you are experiencing every day through the people around you. It is him. He is that love. He is actively in love with you through your family, or those who play that role for you in your life.

Why Not?

So if family is created to be so wonderful and amazing and heaven on earth, why is it so often not? I’m not even referring to mine specifically, just in general it seems so many hard things can come our way through family itself, the very thing meant to be a blessing to us. Whether you feel misunderstood, neglected, abused, or abandoned, you are worth far more than any negative thing a family member believes about you. In fact you are a blessing to your family. God can give you love for your family with healthy boundaries even if they don’t have them.

You can not change people and others actions and words are out of your control. But you have the power to fully control your thoughts, actions, and words and when the opportunity arises, you can love. You can think and speak blessing. You can ask questions and listen. You can celebrate and you can serve. You may not be able to make others love you but you can celebrate them just as they are still fully possessing the full value of Christ’s sacrifice.

Interdependent Beauty

I know that my husband embodies Christ to me. And God wants me to get that. He wants me to connect that reality to my mind even beyond my heart. He wants us to be interdependent and needing one another. He wants life to be enjoyed being shared. This can also happen through community outside of the conventional family structure. The same healthy exchange of love is still lived, witnessed, and experienced through friendship and covenant amongst people outside of traditional marriage roles. But that’s still family. It still embodies the destiny and purpose of family.

Summary

The family entity embodies the presence of God. It can be heaven on earth as God lives through and in the participating people. We are not slaves or zombies, we get to live the fullest expression of ourselves in complete freedom and that reveals him as we get to love others and share life with them in all its ups and downs. A family living in the strength of love reveals the exchange that has eternally existed within the Godhead.

The kindness in your tone towards your husband reveals him, the empathy you show towards your wife reveals him, the joy you share your children reveals him. Heaven is community living in healthy love. No self-destructive or other-destructive behaviors. This is where things are headed. Loving people loving people. Family is meant to be the canvas that reveals a servant lover, a humble savior, a faithful friend. Healthy family is the breeding ground for courage.

Family is a safe place to fail. Without faithfulness beyond failure, it is not love and you can catch up on that in my other piece called LOVE. This piece on family may expand later but this is all I have for now. Moving along.

Character Covenant Creativity

Family Freedom Gift Giver

Joy Judgement Kindness Trust

Love Praise Prayer Self-love

Covenant

On January 1, 2017January 13, 2018 By happyreignIn Heather, Kingdom ConceptsLeave a comment

Introduction

We serve a god not of contract but a god of covenant. The idea of covenant is largely lost on the modern western world. Nothing is forever. There is always a loophole, fine print, an agreement that’s been arranged, an appeal. Prenuptial marriage arrangements, abortions, and a world of child support regulations, etc.,we swim in a world prepared for escape, a way out, an exit.

What if that wasn’t the way things weren’t meant to be. What if there was glory in taking responsibility for our choices. What if there was honor in being faithful, in following through, even when everything’s gone to shit. Even when convenience is lost and it seems as if all hope is gone. Welcome to covenant. The essence of covenant is something unbreakable.

Covenant = Freedom

That’s where the idea of blood came into covenant. As long as my blood is coursing through my veins, as long as there is life in me, our agreement between one another stands and is alive too. Covenant is an irrevocable thing. This can seem a suffocating concept, but when its in your favor, covenant is the one thing that causes the breathe of relief and the removal of all fear. This thing is unchangeable and isn’t going anywhere.

I could’ve researched covenant but I don’t think one understands it until they’ve experienced it. I am in covenant relationship with some people. No matter my mistakes, no matter my failure, no matter my performance, love and connection is still the standard of the relationship. Understanding is something enjoyed as life experience is shared within covenant.

Good always overcomes evil. My experience of covenant in this life was the recipe for the uprooting of rejection within me. Someone’s commitment over the period of years was the only thing that eventually quieted that voice in my mind that whispered, “You better perform right, or relationship will end.” The fear that would haunt, “If you fail too much, you will be abandoned and justifiably so. Rejection will be what you’ve earned and deserve.”

When people won’t be distanced, won’t be pushed away, won’t believe the worst of you, the barriers for the needed self-protection of independence dissolve. Covenant between people in regards to union is the antithesis of abandonment and rejection.

Covenant Anyone?

In Jewish culture, marriage is a covenant. The terms of covenant would be laid out in a dinner with both families present. The groom-to-be would lay what conditions he would fulfill if the covenant was received. After finishing stating his end of the deal he would offer a glass of wine to the bride-to-be. If she drank, the covenant terms were accepted and the covenant locked in place but not consummated yet. It was a the beginning of a covenant that was soon to come.

At the last supper, Jesus was proposing to humanity as a lover right before their eyes. He said the terms of this covenant was the laying down of his life – his very blood – in exchange for redemption of all loss, union, and fulfillment of design. He offers us still the cup of his blood and the brokenness of his body in the vulnerable offer of our inclusion in himself and righteousness unto peace that is a free gift. He says drink of me. You must drink my blood and eat my flesh he said.

It was his invitation of union. God doesn’t half ass anything. He’s an all-in kinda guy. This is the indestructible union of spirit with no fine print clauses underlying our relationship with him. Covenant is the only way he presents himself to us. I will never leave you or forsake you, he says. Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. All this extreme and dramatic language starts to taste like candy when it leaves no room for a draft of rejection to seep through, no room for the whispers of the coldness of a contract relationship to rear its head.

Conclusion

God is not into contract relationships, and his relationship towards you was set in blood, his blood and nothing in heaven or hell can legally undermine this spiritually, and eternally binding contract that God has made with humanity—with you. Nothing. Breathe. The nature of your relationship with God is indestructible and unthwartable by any force. This is the environment of safety meant to provide any child of God with the limitless freedom his secure love provides. This covenant is the foundation of joy.

Character Covenant Creativity

Family Freedom Gift Giver

Joy Judgement Kindness Trust

Love Praise Prayer Self-love

New Writing Series: Kingdom Concepts

On December 25, 2016January 7, 2017 By happyreignIn Heather, Kingdom ConceptsLeave a comment

Hey Everyone! I will be writing a new series of posts called:

Kingdom Concepts: Attributes of an Unseen Kingdom.

Every so often I’ll be adding another piece articulating some of God’s kingdom as it’s found all around us here on earth.

You can access these new pieces via the KINDGOM CONCEPTS tab to the upper right or on the side bar at the top left.

Love   (<— Check this one out!)
Character           (<— And this one!)
Covenant            (<— And this one!)
Family            (<— And my latest)
Freedom        (<— Just added this!)
Santa                (<— Just put this up!)