Reality Check...

My soul thirsts for God,for the living God.When shall I come and appear before God? Psalm 42:2

God certainly woke me up the other day... I came back from Newport and was struggling, and kinda didn't even really know it. Not that the experiance was Earth shattering or super unique, but it was significant.

I loved my time there. I realized my call there. I lived more disciplined and healthy there than I probably ever have...

So I came back and didn't really connect quickly here. Not that its impossible to know what I went through (just ask me, Ill tell ya about it!) but it was a change in my mind and in my lifestyle, which was hard for the people around me to understand. So in this struggle of figuring out how to live, Ive been learning a couple of things about God that I thought I would share as my almost month long absence ends in the blogsphere!

God has been completely reaffirming to me that I am His son. That I have already been chosen by God and that I am saved by the blood of Christ. This is a bigger deal that you might think. There is a deeper reality, a deeper truth here that I think we all need to tap into. We must tap into the reality that God's reality is where we exist, not the other way around. This world and this life isn't something that has to be figured out or achieved or completed. Rather, we exist in a greater reality, a bigger story than the one we live in. Jesus Christ and His work on the cross is the center point of time. God created this whole reality so that the Cross and the Glory of God could be lifted up.

Thats freedom! We live in a truth of salvation and mercy and Grace. The Gospel is such that we can be reminding each other of these truths every day! EVERY DAY!

I'm so guilty of trying to read enough, or think enough, or write enough... so that I can explain God to someone, or have the right study, or preach the right sermon. I can tease myself into thinking that this is pious or noble. But this real reality is such that I cant explain it nearly as well as experience and the Spirit do for each of us continually.

I'm reminded of the young man in Mark 10. He comes to Jesus saying "Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth" speaking of not murdering, cheating, lying, stealing... The one that he doesn't speak to is that you shall have no gods before me...

While this man has kept what he thinks is good in his world, theres still something wrong in his life, hence why he would approach Jesus. Then Jesus drops the bomb. "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor...come, follow me".

He drops his head, and without saying a word walks away.

WHAT??? my first reaction is "GO! do it! meet the requirements and come back!!! whats your problem?? how are you just going to walk away????"

This is speaking to something much deeper. Jesus wasn't actually telling him what to do to get to heaven, He was pointing out how this young man's reality didn't line up with that of God's. The man was sad not that he couldn't walk along with Jesus and see the sights... he was sad because he knew that in his heart his treasure was money and not ultimately Christ. You have to get this to get the story... its not that he couldn't just sell the stuff... maybe he could have, but deeper than that Jesus showed him where his reality was off.

God doesn't want us to meet requirements, or to accomplish anything to get into heaven. He wants us to leave the burdens of our mixed up pressures of this world and take on the reality of the substitutionary atonement of Christ. His reality is enduring and the Gospel is that we can be a part of that. Time marches on, and Christ will still come again, and evil will be defeated, whether or not I decide to work out today or not cut that person off in my car.

How free would we feel if we could let go of our jobs, our homes, our securities, even our families and friends. If we could think of them not as security or our comfort, but rather as gifts that will come and go as "the Good Lord sees fit" (to quote o brother where art thou). Thats freedom.

So even if I didn't get picked up for the Navy, or I never talked to those friends from my past again, or if I lost my jeep!?!?? Life would go on, God would be good, and Jesus still has died for my sins. This is reality, not the stresses and sins that we get tied up in thinking is our lives. Remind me of that, every time you see me. Ill try and do the same for you!

Praise God!