The Importance of Sight

Every good lie contains just enough truth to tempt you.  My friend Shane put it this way, "If truth were a hot dog, Satan would offer you a corn dog."

Let's consider Satan's first corn dog offering:

Gen 3:4 Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

I highlighted in bold the kernel of truth in the lie.  Adam and Eve surely had their eyes opened.  Take a look:

Gen 3:7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened...

Now, the Bible says that the immediate effect of eating of the tree was that their eyes were opened.  Yet the rest of the Bible talks about how we need our eyes to be opened.

Psalm 119:18 Open my eyes, that I may behold Wonderful things from Your law.

Isaiah 29:18 In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see.

Ephesians 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints...

So, what gives?  What does having their eyes opened to one thing have to do with being blind?  If humanity inherited the fall of man through Adam, then we also inherited the vision of Adam.  What he had his eyes opened to, we do to.  So how can we see one thing and be blind at the same time?

It has to do with citizenship, dominion, and the realms thereof.  Take a look back at what God said when He declared over Adam what the consequences were of his following the leading of his wife:

Gen 3:19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return

Dust?  Adam is dust?  Wait a minute.  I remember back when Adam was formed...

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

Come on God, you can't have it both ways.  Adam is either dust or he's a living being.  Wait, but didn't God say that there was one way in which Adam could die?

Gen 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die

Yikes!  Was God saying that the tree itself was deadly to Adam and Eve?  I don't think so.  Look at this statement:

Gen 3:22 Then the Lord God said, " Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"— 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.

If Adam and Eve had continued to eat of the tree, they'd have lived forever.  So the "death" God warned Adam about in Gen 2:16 was not physical death.  Eating of this tree would grant perpetual physical life.  So, what death was God talking about when He warned Adam about the tree?  What was it about that tree that caused spiritual death?  Maybe it wasn't the tree.  Read the specific warning God gave Adam again, "...for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die".  That sounds oddly prophetic.

Maybe what God was saying that it wasn't the tree that was deadly but the cause for eating it.  Why did Adam eat of the tree?  He followed Eve.  Why did she?  She followed the serpent.  Somehow following someone other than God gets you dead.

Look again at how God described Adam when He created him:  "and man became a living being".  What components made up this new being?  God made man out of "the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life".  So Adam was part dust, part God.  When Adam followed someone other than God, he lost the God part.  It wasn't because Adam's eyes were opened that he died, nor because he ate of the tree, but because he followed someone other than God.  In that day, he lost the God-part in him and was left with just the dust-part.

So, how does this relate to vision?  Remember that sin was following someone other than God.  The tree surely opened their eyes to the fact that they are flesh, but that's not what condemned them.  It wasn't that they ate the tree so much as why they ate the tree.  Paul reveals this dynamic quite skillfully here:

Romans 6:16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?

Satan knew that obeying him would cause 2 things to happen to Adam and Eve:

1. They would be awakened to their flesh -- the fact that they live in a physical reality.
2. They would die to God.

The third thing that happened was his ultimate goal.  When they obeyed him, Adam and Eve gave Satan all their authority.  Points 1 and 2 above were just icing on his evil little cake.  But for us, the ancestors of those two knuckleheads, points 1 and 2 became a life and death affair.  What was the first thing that happened when Adam and Eve ate the tree?  They suddenly knew they were naked.  They had a physical awareness that had previously eluded them.  This, coupled with their having lost their God-parts created shame.  In fact, it's entirely possible that simply losing their God-parts created shame.  However, after all was said and done they were little more than talking dust.  You could call it a fall from grace, a spiritual death, anything you like.  The result was the same. 

In a very real sense, Adam and Eve lost their vision of the spiritual realm.  Just as they had no awareness of their nakedness before the fall, after the fall they had no awareness of the spiritual.  They were, in a very real sense, blind.  They unknowingly traded one set of eyes for another.  I say eyes but it relates to all the senses.  A vision is the same as an awareness.  This awareness is something that Jesus won back for us.  He also preached on it regularly.

How many times have you read in the gospels, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."?  What Jesus is doing here is calling us to a spiritual awareness of what He is teaching.  He wants us to open our spiritual eyes and see:

Matt 6:22 "The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. 23"But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

Our experience is driven by what we see.  But more importantly, Jesus got us our real citizenship back!  But that citizenship is pointless unless we see always from that perspective.  We are no longer dust but dust+spirit hybrids!  Paul put it like this:

Eph 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

We are "seated in heavenly places" or another way to say it would be, "We exist both in the spirit realm and the physical realm but more so in the spirit."  Right now I'm seated at my office desk in my office chair, in the physical.  But my being, my consciousness, my awareness, the place I come from, is the spirit.  In a sense, I possess this body but I am not this body.  I have certain rights and abilities as a spiritual being or "living being" as God put it.  I can choose to be more aware of the spirit than the physical.  And I can choose to be more aware of darkness in the spirit.  Is there darkness in the spirit?  That's for another blog post.  Let's just say that I chose to flood my eye with light.  I look at God:  Jesus, The Father, The Holy Spirit, and His manifestations in the spirit.  This is a privilege and honor that Adam lost but Jesus regained for me.

Do not allow the cunning voice to persuade you that you have only one set of eyes or that there is nothing to see in the spirit.  God never tells us what is not.  God always tells us what is.  He never speaks lack and always speaks abundance.  Open your eyes.

King of Kings

Why is Jesus called the King of Kings?  I used to think that it was because He is the ultimate King.  And that's true, He is that.  But now I see it's more than that.  Consider these scriptures:

2 Timothy 2:11 It is a trustworthy statement: For if we died with Him, we will also live with Him; 12 If we endure, we will also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us; 13If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.

Hebrews 2:7 "YOU HAVE MADE HIM FOR A LITTLE WHILE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS; YOU HAVE CROWNED HIM WITH GLORY AND HONOR, AND HAVE APPOINTED HIM OVER THE WORKS OF YOUR HANDS; 8YOU HAVE PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET." For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him.

Now, we know and understand that Jesus has given us all authority.  But did we understand that this makes us kings?  When we enter into Christ, we become kings.  We were remade in order to subdue the earth; to bring all things into subjection.

So, we're kings.  What does that have to do with Jesus?  Well, we are kings and He is our King.  Consider how we refer to royal people today in a worldly sense.  We call them, "The King of Brittain" or "The King of Sweden".  That's their title.  The people they rule over are a part of their heritage and their domain.  What is Jesus' inheritance and domain?  Us.  A bunch of kings.  His domain consists of Kings.  The title King of Kings is as accurate as it is appropriate.

Yes, The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in The Holy Spirit.  But where does the Holy Spirit dwell?  By what vehicle does Holy Spirit express righteousness, peace, and joy?  The Kings.  Holy Spirit in me makes me a king.  I reign in life because of His indwelling presence.  And Jesus is my King.

Who Told You You Were Naked?

In Genesis 3, just after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and clothed themselves with fig leaves, we find this exchange between The Father and Adam:

Genesis 3:10 So he said, " I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself."
11 And He said, " Who told you that you were naked?..."

We still fall into this trap today.  It's important to chew through the events that transpired here one step at a time in order to see the dynamic.

1. Adam and Eve were naked.
2. God had fellowship with them while they were naked.
3. Adam and Eve's eyes are opened and they see they are naked.
4. They attempt to hide their nakedness.
5. Adam vocalizes to God that he and Eve are naked.

Nowhere in that set of events does God declare the nakedness of Adam and Eve.  He knew they were naked and had no problem with it.  In fact, God created them naked and called them "very good".  It was Adam who had a problem with being naked.  Adam made it an issue when God had not.  

How often are we passive accomplices to finding something objectionable that God does not?  What did God find objectionable about what Adam and Eve had done?  Was it that they were naked or that they had given away their innocence and suddenly felt shame at being naked?  When God covered them with animal skins did He do it for His sake or for theirs?  Remember that nakedness wasn't a problem for God, but it was for Adam.  Adam could not see himself as God did, so when he saw his naked body, he felt shame.  God knew that He was bound by His Word and could not undo what Adam had done, so He clothed them.

Who has told you that you are naked?  Who has called filthy what God has called "very good" in you?  If there is any part of you that you consider less-than, ask yourself who labeled it.  Men and women alike struggle with self-esteem issues because they have taken as gospel what another human has said about them either in word or deed.  Many people take as dogma and doctrine in Christianity many things that are not found in the Bible.  Search it out.  Find out what God has said and what He continues to say.  You may find that the person who passed down judgement never had the authority to do so...

Creation and Priority

If you're like me, you've wondered why God dedicated only a very small fraction of His Book to tell the story of how He created the universe.  Growing up in such a technologically advanced culture has its disadvantages.  So much of what our scientists do is centered around figuring out exactly how the universe came to be.  How many billions of dollars have been spent, how many lives have been spent, trying to reveal the minute details of how the earth and stars were made?  Go do a search on Netflix for documentaries.  No doubt you'll find hundreds of movies dedicated to answering questions like "how does gravity work?" or "what happened at the beginning of time?" or "how does a star get born?".  Any career astronomer, geologist, astrophysicist, or archaeologist will tell you that the data is so vast and overwhelming that we may never know the real truth about how it all happened.  Yet they keep searching.

I believe this worldly search is indirectly proportional to what God intended for us to know about how it all began.  Let me explain.  As I was reading Genesis 1 and 2 today in The Message Bible, I was struck for the first time with how little God actually told us about how He made the universe.  Then I heard in my spirit, "God is very careful with words.  He says exactly what He wants for a specific reason."  So, He meant to leave the creation story vague?  Yes.

Why would He want to spend so little time telling us how He made everything?  Maybe because it wasn't a priority.  If you read the Bible with Him, you start to see that all He really wants is a relationship with us.  How the earth and stars were made is irrelevant to that goal.  As I pondered this, I heard in my spirit, "I want your eyes on Me, not on my creations."

Perhaps our culture needs to learn that the Who and the Why are more important than the How.  Spend billions on that, please.

He Was Always At Our Level

It's been asked many times by many people, "How can God act as if He's surprised when people act a certain way or do a certain thing?  How can He get angry when people choose to disobey Him?  He's God, isn't He?  He's omniscient.  He sees all, knows all."  This is a good question.  Yet clearly, the Bible shows that God has indeed been surprised, hurt, angered, frustrated, and pleased by the actions of human beings.  And clearly, God is omniscient.  He knows all and sees all.  So what gives?  How can both statements be true?

Please take what I write here with a grain of salt.  I'm only putting down what's in my heart and what I believe has been revealed to me.  Your experience may vary.

Here's the short answer to the questions above as spoken through Isaiah:

Isaiah 55:8
"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.

I think that pretty much sums it up.  If you believe God, then you can accept that He is an oxymoron.  What seems like a conflict of His being is nothing more than our inability to grasp His ways.  However, if you believe that He loves His children, calls us to understanding, and has provided a conclusive testament in His Word, you can find out how God can exist both in limitless form and in limited form on earth.  Please note that I say "limited form" for lack of a better term.  Even when interacting with us in linear time, He is God:  all powerful, present everywhere.

The first problem to tackle would be the how of it all.  Let's take forgetting, for instance:

Heb 8:12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."

So, God can forget?  Yes.  He said so through Jeremiah, quoted here by the writer of Hebrews.  Did God mean maybe something else by this?  If He meant something else, He would have said something else.  So I think it's clear here that He forgets things.  But how?  To answer this question we will need to go back to the very beginning for a basic clue that helps us infer things from the Bible:

Gen 1:26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; ..."

God made us to be like Him.  Let's set aside the big discussion on where our similarities with God begin and where they end.  It's safe to assume for the sake of argument that because we are like Him, we can look at our own abilities to determine what His may be, in some cases.  One such ability is a high mental ability called compartmentalization.  If you've watched a spy movie, you've heard of it.  Many spies and undercover detectives will compartmentalize their minds to keep their true identity and their false identity straight in their heads.  Don't read too much into that.  I'm not saying God is a spy or undercover.  What I'm saying is that He has the mental capacity to separate what He knows from who He Is, just like we do.

But why would God want to compartmentalize in the first place?  Perhaps we need to view God's motive for compartmentalization to see why He did it. God desires a relationship with His children.  Words are important.  They are especially important to God.  I've highlighted in bold the ones I think speak specifically to the reality that God wants to have a relationship with us:

John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

• He gives us the right to become His children.
• We are born from Him.  God gives birth to us.

John 6:40 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day."

• God wants to give us everlasting life.  Eternity is a long time.  God wants us around forever.  I don't want anything I can think of forever.  That's some serious desire, right there.
• It's open to ANYONE who believes.

John 17:3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

• Jesus' entire purpose was to enable anyone who was willing to know God.  That's it, just to know Him.  It's that important to Him.

Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. 21 To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

• Jesus wants to have lunch.  I realize that's oversimplifying the scripture here, but it fits.  He wants to share a meal with us, but only if we are willing to open the door.
• He'll let us take the throne for a spin.  Are you kidding me?  That's awesome.

So, clearly we can see that, since Jesus was already planned to be sacrificed from the beginning of time so that we could "know God", relationship with His creation (humans) is His number one priority.  If that's His highest goal, then He has sufficient motivation to allow Himself to share in an actual relationship with us.

Consider your own life and your own relationships.  What fun would they be if you knew everything ahead of time?  Let's take a step back.  Consider an amazing movie you've seen.  Maybe one with a super shocking twist at the end of the film.  Wasn't it exhilarating when the plot twist surprised and shocked you?  Now consider the same situation except now let's insert someone or something telling you the end of the movie before you went to see it.  It makes the movie pointless.  So, suppose in one of your closer relationships you have a friend who is engaged in some high-stakes life event.  Maybe they are in trouble or are simply going after something risky like starting a business or having children.  What value is there in that relationship if you somehow know 100% what the outcome of the high-stakes life event would be?

Now imagine the entire universe being like a book you already read.  If you are God, you not only know how every single relationship is going to go, you also set it all in motion!  What a boring creation.  Now imagine that, perhaps, just maybe, God did set all things in motion before time and then compartmentalized all of that in order to have a relationship with as many of us as would allow it?

What if, when He interacts with us, He both does and does not know what is going to happen?  Let me explain.  You see, science talks about this "Big Bang" that created the universe.  The image it brings up in my mind works with scripture, so I'll take it.  But I will also add to it divine programming.  That means that every single plan, every law, every probability, every flower, every star, every Ninja Turtle doll, and Cabbage Patch Kid existed inside that "Bang" that was so "Big".  Don't ask me to explain.  The best I can say is it's like the unfolding of a flower.  Ponder that for a bit.  So, God sets this amazing God-flower of creation rolling, then He jumps in and tweaks some things, just for fun.  He speaks all creatures into existence and then.....He goes hands-on and sculpts Adam out of dirt.  I believe somewhere between the "Bang" and Him creating Adam, He started to compartmentalize.

You see, I heard something a long time ago about struggling.  I was under the impression that if only everything in life would do what I wanted, I would not struggle and life would be good.  No struggle equals life is good.  But that was just a juvenile thought.  I had never experienced life without struggle, so how would I know that it would be good?  A friend of mine stopped me in my tracks one day and said, "Without struggle there can be no value."  We only appreciate things we work for.  Take video games for example.  Not long after the Nintendo Entertainment System came out in the 1980's the cheat code made its debut.  Normally, you would play through every level of the game until reaching it's finish.  Each level would grow progressively harder.  This can end up being 100s of hours of fun and/or frustration.  If you got too frustrated, you could use a cheat code that would allow you to bypass some of the harder aspects of the game.  This idea was too tempting to ignore.  I cheated my pants off.  Over the years I've cheated my way through 100s of games.  Know what I learned?  Cheating is a great way to ruin a good game.  Hard and frustrating as playing legit may be, it allows the game to retain value.  Each level won is worth something.  If you remove struggle, you remove value.

So, when God stepped into the Garden many thousands of years ago, I believe He truly did not know that Adam was going to eat of the forbidden tree.  Consider this exchange:

Gen 3:9 Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, " Where are you?" 10 So he said, " I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself." 11 And He said, " Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?"

Pastors and preachers have related this to God acting for Adam's sake here.  But I think that would have been dishonest for God, not to mention cheating.  I believe God set aside his foreknowledge of history-yet-to-come in order to struggle, if you will, with His children.  I believe God recognized that if He attempted to love us while having foreknowledge, there would be little value in our relationship.  And while He does perhaps separate His foreknowledge from His current knowledge, He does not leave us to chance.  He knows that He exists outside time and space.  He also knows that while He is outside time and space, He still loves us.  So, in a sense, even God has to trust God.  Jesus illustrates this idea ("never-the-less not my will but yours be done").

Now, I don't know if the idea that He limits His sight in order to cultivate valuable relationships humanizes God or if it Godifies us.  But I believe it fits His character.  The Bible is clear about the fact that God has humbled Himself on many occasions for our sake.  I don't think it's at all a stretch to believe that He would set aside His foreknowledge to get the most value He can from our relationship.

In A Whisper

I've heard how men I respect and try to emulate pray when they are alone with God.  Some get fired up and loud.  Some just talk like they are speaking to another person in the room.  This has been a stumbling block for me in the past.  I've always whispered.  Even when I'm completely alone with Him, nobody around for miles.  I just whisper to Him.

Today He said to me, "You have no need to get any louder than you do when you talk to Me.  You intuitively know that I'm so close, all you need to do is whisper."

Then I got all this imagery of lovers whispering.  There's something intimate and tender about a whisper.  There's an understanding in a whisper that goes beyond just intimacy.  It's a trust.  Even in a crowded room, a trusted loved one will hear your whisper because they are always anticipating the sound of your voice.  I have fashioned my ear to hear His whisper and somehow I understand that He has done the same for me.

Did Granddad Know?

Did Granddad know the legacy he was leaving?  I don't think he did.  Legacy wasn't important to him.  The power of his legacy was tied to the simplicity with which he lived his life.  Granddad just loved Jesus.  He simply loved Jesus.

Who Do You Say That He Is?

What did Jesus call Himself?

This is intended to be a Bible study on the importance of the ways in which Jesus referred to Himself.  I believe this reveals not only how He saw Himself, but also how He saw us.  God is a relational God.  He is 3 persons in One:  Father, Son, Holy Spirit.  The way Jesus saw Himself reveals the way in which He wants us to regard Him and how we are to regard each other as we follow Him.

Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of Man 86 times in the 4 gospels.  The title Son of God is used 40 times in the gospels but it's interesting to note that Jesus wasn't the one using the term.  In almost every case, someone else called Him Son of God.  Now, Jesus did refer to Himself as Son of God, this is obvious, but the number of times He used the title Son of Man (translated in a modern way to "The Human One") far exceeds the times He called Himself Son of God and the times someone else called Him the same.  I believe a pattern like this makes it safe to infer that Jesus saw Himself as the Son of Man.  But what does that mean?

Consider Jesus' attitude in coming to earth as described by Paul in his letter to the church at Philipi:

Philipians 2:5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.…

Consider carefully verse 7 above.  Jesus "emptied Himself".  Bill Johnson has said it many times that Jesus did what He did as a man.  He's eternally God, but His mission on earth He chose to complete as a man.  He chose to become The Human One.  The human one of what?  The Human One of the Triune God.  Father, Son, Holy Ghost.  Some would say that God cannot be human.  I would say, He's God.  He can be a duck if He wants.

It's true that Jesus wanted to model a life for us that we could live.  He set aside His divine "edge" if you will.  He said it Himself.  He could do nothing by Himself.  He only did what God was doing, said what God was saying.  He co-labored with Holy Spirit to perform every miracle, including His resurrection.  He also could only fulfill all righteousness as a man and then be a perfect sacrifice only as a man.  If He died on the cross while being more than human, the sacrifice would not have been perfect.  There is much to be said about why Jesus absolutely had to be fully human.  But I'm more focused right now on what is revealed in His choice of titles.

Yes, Son of Man accurately represents His being fully human but I believe there's more to be revealed.  Part of the manifold wisdom, if you like.  Consider the dynamic in conversation between those who spoke to Jesus about His identity and His response:

Mat 26:62 And the high priest arose and said to Him, "Do You answer nothing? What is it these men testify against You?" 63 But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest answered and said to Him, "I put You under oath by the living God:Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!"
64 Jesus said to him, " It is as you said. Nevertheless, I say to you, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven."

He agreed with the high priest that He is the Son of God and in the very next breath refers to Himself as the Son of Man.   Why?

Again, when being questioned by Pilate, Jesus does not choose to speak of Himself as royalty or divinity in any way.  He simply agrees with the title given Him by the person addressing Him:

Mat 27:11 Now Jesus stood before the governor. And the governor asked Him, saying, " Are You the King of the Jews?"
Jesus said to him, " It is as you say."

It hit me suddenly one day as I was listening to a song by Hillsong.  One of the singers brought up Matthew 16 where Jesus asks His disciples who people are saying He is:

Mat 16:15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

And then I got it.  God is so amazingly loving, patient, merciful, and secure that He is to us what we allow ourselves to believe He is.  All the effort Jesus put forth.  All the eternal planning, divine wisdom, blood, sweat, tears.  The cross, His life growing in favor with God and man, His trials in the wilderness.  Eons of watching His dear dear children squander life and grace, love and mercy.  All that, He endured.  And when He had finally wrapped it all up, when He had rescued us, when it was all over and all ok, He left it up to us to value it or throw it away.

He called Himself the Son of Man to give us the honor of discovering the Son of God.

Problems and Provision

During my recent trip to San Francisco, I decided to bring along some Graham Cooke to listen to.  You ever hear or read something about how The Kingdom works, some principle or law or something, and you hear God say, "Pay attention!  You're about to do this!"?  Yeah, that happened to me on my trip.

I was listening to Graham tell an audience that they  need to learn to see correctly.  Graham does that a lot.  But in this instance he was talking about learning to see problems for opportunities for God to glorify Himself.  Graham said, "God never presents you with a problem that does not also come with His provision."  I could go into more detail but the gist of it is that much of our joy as Christians is stolen through the way we choose to view life.  We need to learn to do as Jesus said and keep our eye single.  Keep it trained on God and heaven and how heaven operates.  A worldly problem isn't a problem at all.  It's a dock for the ship of heavenly provision.

So as I was listening to Graham explain all this, I went through situations in my mind's eye where I had seen this happen.  There were many.  I also took a look at how I reacted to the circumstance when first presented with the problem.  I found two important patterns in my history:

1. I reacted out of fear.  By seeing the situation as a threat, I allowed it to command my emotional state.  I believe Yoda put it best when he said, "Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering."  What Yoda didn't tell young Anakin was that suffering is caused by missing the provision God sent along with the problem.
2. When I gave myself over to the power of fear, I panicked and made decisions that caused me to miss provision.  It's widely-known secular wisdom that to stay calm in a crisis situation is the best way to avoid tragedy.  Pilots who stay calm in a dog fight usually win.  Soldiers who stay calm in a firefight usually win.  In each instance where I panicked in my history, I jerked the wheel of life hard to one side or the other and ran head-on into yet another problem.

So what's the connection between staying calm and divine provision?  If you make all your decisions by simply reacting to the problem, all of your focus is on the problem.  You end up with tunnel vision and are unable to see the opening God has created for you to receive His provision.  As my trip to San Francisco came to a close, I learned this in a big way for the first time.

I had a meeting until 5pm in Palo Alto (about 40 minutes from San Francisco) and a flight out of San Francisco that boarded at 8:50pm.  Then I had a connecting flight out of Phoenix, AZ, at 10:50pm to Baltimore.  I knew ahead of time that there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth on that trip.  I'm a tall man.  Long flights are usually brutal.  Historically, I've tried to sleep for the duration of the flight.  A connecting flight made this impossible.  I had to have my wits about me to connect.  So I was silently dreading this flight.  When my meeting was over I noticed that I had a voicemail.  It was the airline saying that my flight out of San Francisco would be delayed by 2 hours.  They were concerned that I would not make my connection and wanted me to either fly out of Oakland or San Jose to Phoenix so I could make the connecting flight.  But I had a rental car that needed to be turned in at the San Francisco car return!  How would I make it to either airport?  I already checked out of my hotel, so I wouldn't be able to stay there if I had to!  Was I going to have to sleep in an airport for a night or more!!!????

As all the worst-case-scenario thoughts raced through my head, I remembered God.  I calmed myself by reminding myself that He is intimately involved in my life and wants only the best for me.  It would be an awful mistake to get all upset and do something that would cause me to miss His provision.  So I called the ticketing agent at the airliner.  The phone number didn't work.  I tried again.  Same thing.  I looked on their website to find SOMEONE to call about this mess.  Nothing.  The best I could muster was a computer voice asking me to dial this number for this person or that number for that person.  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!  TIME TO PANIC!!!

Then God stepped in and reminded me about what Graham had said, "No problem comes without God's provision."  God said, "Do something crazy; trust Me."

So I calmed down and decided that, no matter what, God would make this experience amazing!  It didn't matter if I went to San Jose or Oakland or even if I did have to sleep in an airport terminal.  God would be there.  We would have fun, He and I.  So I looked forward to the next 24 hours with joy.  Then I just made decisions that were simple and made sense.  I had to return the car I rented.  This means that I had to go to San Francisco airport.  I knew that by the time I got there, there would be zero chance of me making my connecting flight.  But I went and did so with joy.  As I drove through rush-hour traffic, I was joyful.  I sang songs and prayed for people.  I marvelled at the scenery of Palo Alto and the greater San Fran area.  It's truly a beautiful place.  In short, my struggle with the problem pushed me deeper into His Presence.  This situation was not a problem.  It was to be a dramatic experience of God's provision.

I returned the rental with no issues and got to the check-in counter of the airline.  I explained my situation and gave them my ID.  Almost immediately, and without any discussion, the check-in agent says to me, "We've put you on a direct flight to Baltimore on another airline.  You have plenty of time.  It doesn't leave until 10:50pm and it arrives in Baltimore at 6:20am."

Dude...

Want to know what time the original connecting flight out of Phoenix arrived in Baltimore?  6:20am.  So let me get this straight, I miss the original flight, that I was dreading, and get put on what I would consider an upgrade and I lose absolutely no time what-so-ever?  Provision.

It turns out that the direct flight they ended up putting me on was full.  Had I not been assigned a seat as early as I was, I never would have gotten out of San Francisco that night.  Had I demanded to speak to someone about the debacle before leaving Palo Alto, I'd have missed a flight that I didn't even know existed.  Had I driven to San Jose or Oakland, who knows what would have happened.  Clearly the only way for me to get on that upgraded flight was to trust God and carry on.  The only way to not experience suffering that night was to see that God had a plan for joy that night and that I only had to believe that and ACT as if it were real.  All my decisions were intuitive on the way to the airport because, to me, His provision is real.  

So what am I more concerned with in any situation:  that the situation goes smoothly, or that I'm smooth in the situation?  The only way I know to remain smooth is to remain mindful of who He is and who I am in Him.  It doesn't matter where I go or what I'm doing, I can have joy so long as I'm doing it in Him and with Him.

The Purity Debate

A friend posted a link on Facebook to this article: Naked and Ashamed

The basic premise is how men have used scripture in the past to demonize women, shame them, make them feel bad about themselves.  This is all true.  I don't know to what extent this still exists.  I'm not a woman.  What I was concerned with was how the topic of purity was being framed as little more than a tool of oppression.  It has been used that way, sure, and it will be again.  But what is God's intent behind purity?

Here's what I posted in response:

 Now, as far as sexual purity in general: do you understand what a soul tie is? Intimacy, true intimacy with another person is spiritual, soulical, and physical. We open ourselves up and becomd vulnerable to mesh with one of the opposite sex in order to be complete. God encompasses both the feminine and masculine. Man does not. Not until he joins with woman. Such a joining can only *safely* be done in covenant. There is honor and beauty and grace in the covenant of a woman and a man becoming one, becoming complete. The emotion of even touching lips is a love offering. Who knows that an offering you didn't fight for isn't really much of an offering? Imagine the honor of never having kissed someone until you were in a covenant with them for life... Imagine the beauty of that moment when it finally comes. A lifetime of tenderness poured out in secret before the one you chose who also chose you. This is the reason that ancient hebrew marriage celebrations lasted 5 days. The newly-weds would explore intimacy with love offerings of 1sts for 5 amazing days while the bridesmaids and groomsmen would wait on them hand and foot. You see, purity is not about discipline or right and wrong. Purity is about potency of heart. The impact of love can only be measured by the purity of the heart behind it.