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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

MIrror, Mirror

Mirror, Mirror

“If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20 NIV


This scripture is a hard one. Most people I know who are believers in God will usually confess some type of love for God. They love Jesus. They love Allah. They love the Creator. Whatever God they worship, they say they love. My faith in my God says that if I say that I love my God, then I cannot truly love my God unless I love the people God created. And therein lies the rub. People get on my nerves. People let me down. People disappoint me. People mistreat me. People annoy me. People misunderstand me. People talk about me. People are fake. People lie. People cheat. People do all kinds of things that make it really hard to love them. And yet, my God calls for me to love them anyway. Even with all of their obvious faults, and even for the stuff I don’t even know about yet. I have to love people.

There is a connection between our relationship with God and our relationship with people. The bible tells us that we are created in God’s image. All of us. Not just black people. Not just white people. Not just the people you like. Not just the people who do what you say. But all of us are created in God’s image. As a matter of fact, the best way for us to see God is in human form. God is invisible. God is a spirit. But if we are created in God’s image, then we bear an image of what God looks like. God came to earth in human form through the person of Jesus Christ. People who walked with Jesus or saw him in that day got to see God up close and personal. The one in who no sin dwelled. The one who walked in love and loved others. The one whose life we now read about in the pages of scripture. The one who said that he was going to be the only way for us to connect with God again. And then he was murdered. By people. People who said they loved God. They killed an innocent man, but they said they loved God. God says that’s not possible.

But truthfully, it’s just hard to love some people because we can see where they are just plain evil. We are exposed to the wicked plots and self-serving behaviors that they exhibit. And who wants to just let people get away with stuff? I mean nobody wants to be looked at like they are a pushover. And sometimes you just want to let people know that you know what they are doing or what they think they are going to do. Or you just want to fix them because they are so off! Seems pretty natural to me. I know I feel like that. Especially when you can see the problem and it’s glaring you in the face.

But I got convicted one day a few years ago. And God showed me that the evil and the imperfection that I am so quick to see in other people is a reflection of what I am doing to God. Our human relationships are a mirror for our relationship with God. That’s why we cannot say we love God whom we cannot see, if we don’t love people who we see everyday. We have to learn to love each other because it will also help us learn to love God.

Think about the imperfection you see in your most challenging relationship. Maybe it’s with a parent or a child. Maybe it’s a romantic partner. Maybe it’s a co-worker. Maybe it’s a friend. Take a look at what is most challenging in the relationship and reflect on whether or not you are doing the same thing to God. If the person is stubborn and wants things their way all the time, would God say that about you in your relationship to Him? If the person is afraid of commitment, have you truly committed to God? If the person is not spending quality time with you, how much time are you giving to God? If they are being rebellious, how rebellious are you with God? If they can’t keep their promises, how many promises have you broken to God? If they refuse to go deeper and be more intimate, how intimate are you with God? These are hard questions, but if you actually take a moment to reflect on it, you may end up cutting that person a little more slack. Because what you then realize, is that even though you have done this in your relationship with God, God still loves you anyway. God still provides for you. God still looks out for you. God still keeps you. God is still God to you, regardless of how you treat Him. And he never leaves you.

I’m not saying that every relational issue can be immediately resolved with this simple reflection. However, I do think that those who profess to know a loving, forgiving, faithful God, have no right to be so quick to judge the faults of others without first reflecting on how they are treating the one who loves them most. And just maybe, if you focus on doing the thing with God that you are quick to judge in someone else, then you will find that they are still loveable anyway. You may just see them a little differently. At least that is what happened to me. I stopped focusing on being frustrated with the person and started to focus again on my relationship with God. I saw where I was not as committed as I thought I was. I saw where I was being stubborn. I saw where I was afraid to take a risk. I saw where I was not walking in my purpose. And I started to pray about that. I started to confess that although these were faults in me, God still loved me. Although I fell short in my relationship with Him, he never left me. He found a way to love me. Through His son.

And that is probably the only way any of us can stand to have a chance at loving other people. Through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Otherwise, we would just leave people in their sin as we engage them in relationship. If there was no way for God to love them, I don’t have a chance to love them, because all I could see is their faults. But God chose to make a way for me to be loved by Him and for them to be loved by Him. I don’t have the luxury of judging someone else and choosing not to love them because I see their faults. I’m doing the same thing to the God I say I love. And maybe I would be a little less judgmental and critical of others if I first look at my relationships with other people as a reflection of my relationship with God. Consider them a mirror. Check the reflection first before you speak in judgement.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Curse of Adam

The Curse of Adam

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; 
through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow 
you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:17-19 NIV

Today, I am going to deal with the other third of this curse from the garden: Adam’s Curse. I first started looking at this upon preaching my second ever message in 2007 in which I discussed “The Family of God”. As I prepared I noticed a few things that seemed out of place in society relative to what God created. And I found myself constantly going back to Genesis to read and re-read chapter’s 2 and 3. There is so much here that if we can just meditate on these things for a while, we can probably change the world. And I feel especially strongly that the lives of men can change if they understand what the curse of separating from God actually yields.

First I will deal with the first portion of the passage regarding Adam listening to his wife. Some people blame Eve for the fall, but Eve never got the instruction from God. She got it from Adam, who got it from God. God said, “Because you listened to your wife . . .” To me, that tells me that God speaks to men and gives them instruction and holds them accountable for what they hear. Not to judge it, but to obey. That is, if it comes from God. If they obey other instruction, then they will have to suffer the consequence. Or, even more, the world suffers because men do not hear from and/or obey the commands of God. The first part of the curse, affected the ground because of Adam. Because Adam came from the ground, it was cursed because he was cursed. The whole earth suffers the consequences of a man’s separation from God.

Second, this separation creates an antagonistic relationship between men and the earth. There is always a battle. We see shows like, Man vs. Wild and marvel at what seems to be the crazy battles of man going against nature or animals. But that is not the picture that I get from the garden of Eden as to how things were supposed to be. Prior to the fall the ground must have cooperated with humankind in order to get food. Otherwise, the curse would just be a pronouncement of what already existed, not a consequence of disobedience. He was always to get food from the ground, but all things worked in harmony. So that tells me that part of Adam’s curse is to have to painfully work to get his food and the ground that he gets it from will be resistant.

Third, the effect of the curse describes the type of work that Adam would now have to pursue. That word toil means laborious labor. The type of work where you just slave away all the days of your life. The type of work that adds no value to your life. Meaningless work. Slave labor. Never enough reward to equal the labor involved. Always feeling like you are playing catch-up. Never ahead. Always feeling like the world is against your advancement. The third effect of the curse is for a man to constantly work without purpose. Toil was not God’s design for your life. You were created to have purposeful work. The effect of the curse is for you to constantly feel like you “Gotta do what you gotta do”. “Gotta make this money”. The third effect of the curse will cause you to disregard the pull of purpose in your heart in favor of making money the quickest way you know how.

Gentlemen, you are called by God to work in this world in a way that is redemptive and life giving. Yet, because of your separation from God, you have settled for making money by any means necessary. Totally disregarding the desires that God has placed in your heart for you to go out and fulfill. You probably have this nagging feeling all the time that you were created for more. Good. You are supposed to when you are not where you belong. That nagging feeling is God tugging at your heart, trying to get you to finally stop and realized that you now have an opportunity through Jesus Christ to connect to your source again. You can finally stop living under the curse and start living on purpose. You can finally stop trying to hustle your way to feed yourself and your family and learn how to let the ground work for you instead of against you. It is possible. There are people doing it. There are people who have responded to the call of God and ignored the voices of anyone who speaks against what God has already said. It is possible to live life on purpose. It is possible for you to have the life that God called you to and not live is this constant toil. If you are reading this, then consider this a tug at your heart by God. He is planting a seed, or watering what has already been planted. You know that you are not where you want to be, but you are not sure what to do about it. My advice: Learn how to connect to your source and obey His voice. In that type of life you will find purpose and meaningful work. Without it, the curse prevails. The life you desire is already yours. It’s up to you to respond.

Friday, July 15, 2011

The Curse of Eve

The Curse of Eve

“To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Genesis 3:16 NIV

Quite often we read the bible and do not see how the words written thousands of years ago have any relevance today. Or, we gloss over certain scriptures and stories because since we’ve heard them a thousand times in some way shape or form, we become numb to them. But I thought that it would be fitting to revisit an old story in the beginning of the bible and look at it’s relevance today.
The story is of the fall of Adam and Eve. Maybe we have all heard this one before. Adam and Eve were chillin’ in the garden with God and Eve got tempted by the serpent to eat from the one tree God told them not to. Adam ate too, and here we are today in a fallen condition. Later, in swoops Jesus to save us from this fallen condition and we are supposed to have access to this previous blissful state of existence. Sounds great.
But what I have found is that one of the challenges of religion is that it doesn’t give you the opportunity to understand what you believe and why. In many churches if you ask too many questions, you are told that you think too much and that you need to stop questioning God. Personally, I am a curious being and I wasn’t about to put my faith in something that some human being told me to, simply because they are doing things that somebody else told them to do. I want to know. And when I look at the curse of Eve, as a woman, I want to know how this applies to me today.
The most evident application of this is the first part. Painful labor. If you have ever had a child naturally, or have ever witnessed birth, you can attest to that one. I saw my Goddaughter come into this world, and let me tell you, I am still amazed that women do that everyday. How in the world can something so big come out of us like that? I cringe just thinking about it. But I wonder if it was always supposed to be like that? I don’t know anyone who has had a painless birth experience without the assistance of drugs. If you know, please have her contact me so that I can take notes for when my time comes.
But it is the second part that I have always had questions about. What does it mean for the woman to have her desire to be for her husband and for him to rule over her? After much study, prayer and observation, I have an idea. And I think the manifestations of what this means are painfully evident in today’s society. And it can start with a simple question. How much of a woman’s time is spent doing things in order to please or get the attention of a man? And once she gets the attention from that man, how does he treat her? I have heard countless stories of women whose sole purpose in life seems to be to get a man in some way shape or form. Their entire existence is all about some dude. They don’t think about anything else. Don’t have any other goal. Don’t desire anything but a man. And those women that I have seem behave this way are also some of the ones whose hearts get broken badly. The ones who repeat the same pattern in their relationships over and over and over again. And it may get worse if they have kids. Because their desire may still be for a man who doesn’t want anything to do with her and he can use that against her. She is living under the curse. Even if she does go to church.
So my follow up question would be, then what was her desire before? If the curse said that her desire was now for her husband and he would lord it over her, then who or what was her desire for before the fall? And how do we, as women, learn to live there and not under the curse? The only thing I came up with was God. They already had everything else in the garden of Eden. All of their needs were supplied. They lacked nothing. They even had full access to one another. They were both naked an not ashamed. They had intimacy with God and intimacy with each other. Adam didn’t lord anything over her because she was his especially created partner. There was no hierarchy. Until the fall. Before that, all of her desires were met. So the only thing to focus on was God.
Moving into the implications of that for us today, I bring you to Jesus. The one who came to earth in order that the ultimate punishment which resulted from this fall would be fulfilled, and that through Him, we could find our way back to the place where we trust that God is meeting all or our needs and even knows and is working out our desires. So the only thing to focus on is Him. As we do this, our desires begin to change. Those things that we used to desire, don’t seem to appeal to us the same way. The things that we sought that would be harmful to us, but we wanted to do it anyway, lose their luster. Including how we engage men. Desperation is easy for a man to sniff out and use for his own agenda. It’s a consequence of the fall. But if you do have a desire for a man in your life, then trust God to lead you to him. That doesn’t mean simply sitting in the house waiting for some man to walk up to you door. But God has plenty for you to do. And as you seek out His purpose for your life and follow His path, you would be amazed at who and what else you may find along that path. Setting your entire being on getting a man will only lead to the consequences that were written in this book thousands of years ago: “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Yet setting your affection on God has a better chance of bringing to you a man who won’t seek to rule you, but who understands true intimate partnership. And it can also help you to avoid unnecessary heartache. Learn how to live in the blessing, not the curse.