To what end do I find my beginning?
I some times pace the floors of my little one bedroom apartment searching for God in the midst of my life. I look around every corner and under every bush. Some times I find things, unimaginable things, and others I simply know he was just there before me. I don’t want to miss one opportunity to see him or be with him, so why not look everywhere? Am I afraid that he won’t be anywhere I look, which is everywhere? Isn’t he in all and through all? So why do we struggle to find more of him? Is it that we’re not looking at all?! Maybe it has to do with the fact that we’ve all lost our sense of adventure, our sense of child likeness (didn’t Jesus say something about being a kid?…) or even our very desire to put forth enough effort that we’d easily throw away on a television show or by simply being critical of another believer. Have we gotten so off track that we don’t know what the track even looks like anymore? Have we lost ourselves to the point of no return? Maybe for some. My thought is that God wants our repentance, daily, hourly, often enough to allow him to change us at least enough to give us hope in living for tomorrow. Allow yourselves to live a life of repentance, of changing your ways from old to new, from being blind to seeing with new eyes. What you bind will be bond and what you choose to loose, will be loosed. Loose your lives through constance repentance. Turn away from your selfishness and give him your best, and don’t allow him to become a difficult task that one grits his teeth at. Let him be your greatest pleasure, not your greatest struggle. There is something about the Holy Spirit you MUST know, his only need is to be needed. His only desire is to be desired. His only want is to be wanted. Don’t bind him who died for you. Don’t allow him to become bond in your mind, or in your speech or in your attitude towards imperfect humans. Don’t make him pay for your laziness and careless living. Choose him and don’t stop wanting him. It isn’t about wanting him long enough to pray a sinners prayer and then nothing else eighty years… it is about the passion and the romance. The Jewish culture recites the Song of Solomon (the one erotic book in the bible) to remind them of the passion between them and their God. “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delight than wine” Song of Solomon 1:2, WHAT?! When was the last time you suggested God to be better than sports, food, television, music or even your own family? Why don’t we proclaim his name in the market places (aka, wal-marts and restaurants) or off our front porches? I met with someone recently that was about as exciting to talk to as a snail, and this person claimed to be a follower of Jesus. I was blown away that this “follower” couldn’t find anything better to do with the Gifts of the Spirit but tell me how wrong I am for wanting to get out there and preach the greatest message I have ever heard. This person simply just wanted to be right about the things of God while not even knowing God. I find God more in the lost places of this world than the the churches, bible studies and seminaries all combined! Besides, that’s our God’s character anyways, isn’t it? Why do we think we’ll find God in a building we started calling the church? We find him by looking inside ourselves, looking deep into the real church. People tend to let themselves believe that if they know enough about God that they will know him. Aren’t we talking about the God who commanded that we don’t make any idols of him? Why did he do this? Because he didn’t want to be confined and belittle by mans ways of “grasping” the infinite God. I love watching people (mainly the “know it all’s”) try to stomp on my fire and put it out because I start to burn them up with me. People are afraid of passion and are afraid of admitting that they don’t know who God is because they’ve spent all of their life trying to make an idol out of ideas that they had about some far off God they studied aimlessly. The truth is if they’d just sit down and let him speak they would hear the mysteries of the world revealed to them. But that doesn’t happen anymore, nobody believes our God is a God that speaks, let alone one who reveals his majesty to us. It is a shame.
I wish the general populous would grasp that they cannot grasp him like they want to, it is about what he wants, and that is to be God, unending, unfathomable, indescribable, uncontainable, unquenchable, unstoppable.
That’s (a piece of) my Jesus.