Love is an Artist

I have always been torn between my love for beauty and my sometimes severely practical mind. I long for beauty but I often decide that it's too frivilous and a waste of my time. I decide that I'm just being vain or falling for advertising that everything around me look just so. In my legitimate concern about my motives I had unwittingly limited God to my severe practicality. I don't think He likes being limited.

A few days ago, I asked God what He wanted to talk about and He said He wanted to talk about His love. (He never gets tired of this topic apparently.) So I asked, "What about Your love?" And He answered, "Beauty. I want to tell you about My love and beatuy." This is my best stab at putting into words everything He told me.

Beauty is the physical manifestation of My love. Beauty is not a reason to love as the world would say, “I love you because you are beautiful.” but is the fruit of love. You are beautiful because I love you. My love literally has created and continues to create beauty in you.

Creation is the overflow of love. My creation is so vast and detailed and tiny and specific and ordered and right and colorful and intense and useful because it is a prophetic image of My love. My love is all of these things.

You need to know about the connection between beauty and love because beauty is proof that love can’t be contained. Even after love has done all the useful, necessary, practical acts of selfless giving it keeps going and pouring just because. Your needs alone are not enough to keep My love occupied. As though it could be used up or worn out on your needs. My love creates and flows far beyond your needs. 

My love is compelled to create more because I have so much creativity, resources, and energy left over after I have abundantly filled all your needs. It pours out into extravagance and color and spontaneous life for no other reason than “just because.” Like a wall of water isn’t stopped or overcome by anything, My love keeps pouring. It fills up the tiniest crevice as well as whole valleys and is not slowed down. Love is rich and carefree with its riches.

You need to know this because this love is in you too. It is in you to flow to others. You need to know that the love inside of you isn’t afraid of using up its materials, resources, or energy. It isn’t afraid of making mistakes. How could it be? It’s love!

It knows that what one person wouldn’t notice or like will be just the thing for another person. It doesn’t judge its own creation. It doesn’t worry whether its creation will be accepted or how much or whether it will be enjoyed. Love is free to give and create and try and stop one thing and start another and go back again. Everything love creates is just right. If love did judge its creations the creation would always be judged perfect on the one merit that it was created by love.

You need to know this because I want you to accept the extravagant beauty of My love.

Be free. I am showing you how to be free. Quit limiting My love to necessary needs. Quit treating Me like a miser. Love doesn’t barely cover your faults, or barely make you holy. Love doesn’t barely keep you alive or barely give you some healing or barely give you enough joy in harsh circumstances or barely have enough time for you or barely and begrudgingly care for you.

I’ve offered you a castle and all of My wealth and you’ve been sitting on the doorstep eating leftovers from the kitchen. Quit thanking Me for My ‘rich’ provision of that corner you‘re sitting in. Quit trying and pretending to content yourself with the cold. Instead of trying to be grateful that you aren’t quite dead, step inside and tell someone to go start a fire. I want you to own your property and authority.

Jesus, give me the tour of my property and teach me to live extravagantly, taking my worth, my wealth, and my authority for granted.

Jesus' Voice Sounds Like This

A few days ago I was listening to a speaker online discuss the ways that God speaks. When he started to talk about how God speaks to us through the Bible, particularly mentioning that it isn’t always about warm fuzzies and that God uses the Bible to convict us too. He suggested that when God convicts us it makes us uncomfortable, makes us squirm, and puts us in the ‘hot seat’ so to speak.

I believe that God does convict through the Bible but as I was listening to him, panic and dread quickly built up in me. I turned off the sermon and asked Jesus what was going on and why was I reacting so strongly to something I mostly agreed with.

In listening to this teacher speak, I felt that old fear that maybe God did require something of me and if he found me out it was going to be very uncomfortable and awkward and I would be embarrassed. Then I felt a slightly newer fear that maybe I was going to be persuaded by a nice sounding man who has a lot more training and experience than I do to return to those dreadful lies. Then I was afraid that I’d never be free of fear while listening to sermons!

I know that fear comes from the Enemy and is in direct opposition to the truth and love of Jesus so I asked him how was the Enemy giving me this fear?

Very quickly it came to me. “He’s suggested that you don’t know my voice. And you agreed with him.”

Now that is how God convicts. Just the facts. Firm but not the slightest bit condemning. I’m thinking, “Okay . . . if that’s a lie . . . then . . . the truth is that I know your voice. I’m gonna choose to believe you but how can that be true?! I feel like I’ve been fooled so often.”

I guess I got him going a topic he likes because he suddenly became loquacious. I wanted to share this because, well, it’s genius and because God is so much better than we’ve imagined.

“My voice never condemns, accuses, or shames you. My voice never communicates disappointment with you. My voice to you gives you peace, my direction to you is clear. When I ask you to repent it is an invitation to freedom and a request to accept more of my love.

“My voice does not give you confusion. My voice does not say what you are not ready to hear. My voice marks a clear path to freedom. My voice is enjoyable to you since you love my truth.

“My voice rolls with authority, affirms who you are, speaks to you with respect. My voice, even my correction, gives you love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. My voice brings light and understanding. My voice does not cause you fear. My voice relaxes or excites you but I do not bring you tension or worry.

“My voice speaks of my goodness. My voice will not manipulate you or suggest that you are failing or a failure. My voice will speak better of you than you speak of yourself. My voice is gentle and kind because kindness leads you to repentance and gentleness makes you great. My voice is everything you desire.”

Warriors and Lovers

A warrior lives deeply. He knows that life is short, that nothing is worth fighting over but some things are worth fighting for. You could accurately interchange the names Warrior and Lover because it is impossible to be one without the other. You can be a fighter, a killer, or a soldier without love but it is impossible to be a Warrior without love.

It is also impossible to love without being a warrior. You can have sex, you can like people, you can enjoy all sorts of things, but you cannot Love without being a warrior.

If you love, you are willing to sacrifice yourself in whatever way necessary and only a warrior’s heart is strong enough to be able to sacrifice itself. But if you are a fighter without a love to fight for than you are an uncontrolled and aimless weapon.

A warrior lays down his life either living or dying for those weaker. This is a great mystery, why do the strong die for those who are too weak to keep themselves alive?

Warriors see the world as it really is and so have hearts full of deep pain, this is what makes their eyes sad and grim. Pain is everywhere. They have the choice to close their eyes to it, but they can’t stand to be willfully blind. They must see clearly. They believe the worst can and should always be faced because the worst is only the inverse of the best.

They would go crazy with despair if this were all they see, but it isn’t. Remember, warriors are lovers and lovers see beauty when no one else can. Warriors don’t fight so much against the pain but rather for the beauty. Warriors know that pain is a fungus, living off of the beauty; it has no life of its own. Where some see only despair, they see hope. If the pain is so great, the beauty it is living off of must be even greater. This is what gives their eyes a smile, in spite of the horrors within and without that they continually live through.

If you don’t understand warriors, or are not one yourself, then you will think that they have buried all emotion. In fact denying their emotions is a common fault among them. The truth is that they are more emotional than everyone else combined but their emotions run deep, fathomless as the ocean. This is their one fear, that their own feelings will sweep them away and toss them about uncontrollably.

The wise overcome this fear with humility. If God would sweep them away on their own emotions then so be it. They are not foolish and hate to be taken as such, but if God would make fools of them with their own emotions then they would gladly face that fate too. They find instead that God does not make fools of them but gives them the very keys to become the warriors and lovers they live to be.

Far from their emotions tossing them about, they find that they propel them very precisely, that they give them greater strength and greater insight. To be unafraid of weakness is to find fearless strength. Do not think that this means you will ever see the depth of their emotions. It is just as likely that you will see the bottom of the ocean. In fact, they will still seem to be particularly unemotional, because they despair of ever truly communicating their emotions at all. You must see them by faith or not at all.

They feel sorrow so deep that it seems they could weep without stopping forever. But they cannot weep forever and any fewer tears seem so inadequate that they may seem to never weep at all. They also feel joy. Joy so encompassing, so true, so fulfilling that heaven itself will spend eternity celebrating it. But here, they have not the time or the means to celebrate it appropriately so in fact, you may only see a content smile and a twinkle in their eye. Joy and sorrow are not mutually exclusive to each other; they are usually full of both.

They feel hope, but this is no light hearted hope, neither is it a hope that wanes or waxes. It is the hope of those who die without obtaining the promises but are assured of what they hope for. They feel the strength of their own hearts. A deadly strength that only gets stronger as time continually assaults it. A strength that is capable of laughing in the midst of despair because it has learned that despair is a grim illusion that will vanish in a moment. They feel desperate but far from panicking, they become even calmer to compensate and so even more deadly.

They are full of compassion and will care for the wounded with a touch more gentle and tender than a Mother’s. Their hearts do not break for themselves, but for you. They are fierce protectors, fiercer than wild animals. Nothing is more dangerous than a lover at war.

Sometimes, they forget that they are not made to love or fight alone. Sometimes they forget that they too have weaknesses that need protection. Sometimes, they are so used to comforting that they don’t realize that they need comforting too. Sometimes they protect so fiercely that they begin fighting the very one they are trying to protect. Sometimes they forget that it is good for those who have healed to become warriors in their own right, that they should not be protected from becoming great.

Every weakness that appears in themselves they throw back to God and between His strength and the protection of those warriors around them, they are an invincible force. The faster they are slain, the quicker they will rise again and claim that God is victorious.

Truly, the spirit of a warrior-lover can only be found in one place and that is God himself. But he has made his bride to be worthy of a warrior as noble as he and so has given her no other spirit than his own.

My friend, I perceive that you are a warrior.

Adventure: It's a dangerous business, trusting God.

As I have grown, my desires have become more basic and my dreams more fantastic. All I’ve dreamt of is adventure and all I desire is Jesus. “I desire to know Jesus, the power of His resurrection, to share in the fellowship of His sufferings and to be like Him in His death . . .” (Philippians 3:10) That is all I want from either this life or the next.

But how can I know Him? Knowing is a slippery thing; hard to understand and hard to define. Even those we think we know regularly surprise us. Think about someone you know, when did the relationship change from knowing of them to just knowing them? How does an acquaintance become a friend? It is a mystery to me.

I think the verse itself gives some significant clues about knowing. First, that suffering together is one of the truest forms of fellowship. Second, you must share experiences, either by physically being there with the other person or through them by communication. Third, you become like those you know, in the oddest ways. It is impossible to know Jesus apart from the power that raised Him from the dead, or without sharing in His suffering, or without becoming like Him in His death. None of these things can be separated.

I want to live a life of Adventure and I am convinced that He is The Adventure. The dictionary defines it this way, “Adventure: a bold, usually risky undertaking; a hazardous action of uncertain outcome.” What I’ve dreamt of was a risk worth taking. What I’ve waken to is that Jesus is worth risking everything for.

I want to experience every moment of my life with Him. I want to see everything through His eyes. I want to see how He acts as He walks through my life. I want to rely on Him alone. When I suffer, I’ll do it with Him. I want to be the pitcher that His life giving power is poured from. I am convinced that He is already making me like Him in His death.

I’ve realized that my goal cannot be defeated by circumstances or time. Most circumstances are outside of my control and many are not what I would have chosen. Thankfully, all those things I cannot control Jesus is controlling.

This takes a lot of pressure off of what most people would call my ‘life choices’. Whether or not I have a job, a car, a lover, friends, health, or a college degree does not affect my goal. Whether or not I trust Jesus is all that will.

Sadly, I do still have to make basic choices for my life and I only wish that I could state that I don’t constantly agonize over them. If my only goal is to know Him then how do I choose what to do with today?

I will choose boldly, courageously, by faith, and by a different standard than the world uses. I will not choose practically, because God is rarely practical according to human judgment. Many things I thought were frivolous He has revealed to be necessary and many things I thought were practical, He has proven to be useless.

I am afraid when I think about the standard He is telling me to choose by. The Life inside me compels me to continue bravely. I will choose soberly, but I will not choose fearfully.

I will not be concerned by my inadequacy because I no longer live but Christ lives in me. I will not be alarmed by what is bigger than me because I want to experience that nothing is bigger than Him. I will not be anxious about the unknown because I want to experience the wonder and joy of trusting the Knower.

I will not dread physical limitations because I want to experience Jesus' healing. I will not fear pain because I want to suffer everything that He suffered and to know the Comforter. I will not be concerned by death because I want to see His face.

I will not be uncertain about my influence on those around me because I want to experience that His influence is greater. I will not be alarmed by the judgment of others because I want to experience that God’s good opinion is enough. I will not hesitate to love because I want to experience His love for me and through me.

I will not be uneasy about a lack of resources because I want to experience that Jesus owns everything and watch Him treat gold like concrete. I will not fret over mediocrity because I want to experience what Jesus experienced of the Father in the 30 nondescript years. I will not despise the mundane because I want to see Him turn it into a miracle.

I will not be alarmed by my weakness because I want to experience His power. I will not worry over my flaws because He tells me they're redeemed. I will not scorn failure because I want to experience that He never fails. I will not be startled by temptation because I want to experience His freedom.

I will hope because the Hero promised. I will search for beauty because I've seen the Beautiful One. I will give myself to those around me because I watched Him give everything, freely, for me. I will fight for goodness because I'm betrothed to a Warrior. I will cry when it hurts because I know the Man of Sorrows. I will boast of my trust, not because it is reliable but because the object of my trust is.

I cannot explain or justify my choices up to this date by any other standard than this. To my physical eye they appear haphazard, irresponsible, unreliable, moody, flighty, foolish, and a host of other negative and undesirable adjectives. If you judge them this way as well, I don’t blame you.

However, as far as God has revealed to me, I have followed Him obediently every unpredictable and ludicrous step of the way. My only hope is that the foolishness of God is wiser than men. If you disagree with the standard I make my choices by or don’t see my actions lining up with my words, I would appreciate your honesty on the subject. I would like the opportunity to change my mind according to new information or to agree to respectfully disagree.

If, on the other hand, what I have written here resounds with what God is growing in your mind, then be encouraged. You aren’t the only one.

Goodness: [That's what I asked for but not what I wanted.]

I love God. No really, I do. I have all sorts of love for God. I love Him like a very little girl loves her father because not only does He love her but He also knows what's best for her even when she doesn't. Not to mention all the monsters in reality or her imagination flee when He's around.

I love God like a dog loves its master. I may or may not pay rapt attention to Him in the moment but I think He's the best thing since my squeaky toy and no matter how many trash bins, skunks or rabbit trails I simply must go check out we both know it's Him I'm coming back to.

I love God like I love my sisters and brothers, I would do anything for Him and really enjoy hanging out even if we've spent almost equal amounts of time fighting and playing.

I love God like I love my friends, He gives me thoughts besides my own to think and encourages me to be myself even when it isn't pretty.

I love God like I love my Mom, because I know that no matter what I ever do He's gonna be there for me just because that's who He is. Not to mention He's already seen me through every triumph, failure, embarrassment, low spot, silly spot, and emotional outburst already. He keeps giving Himself, and still hasn't given up on me. In fact, He's proud of me.

Not only that, but I trust God. I am so confident that He is the hero of the story He could seem to be the villain for an indefinite amount of time and I would still believe in His goodness. In spite of the fact that I know He is ultimately in control of everything and my life still sucks a good portion of the time. I know that He is good.

One time, I realized that His goodness didn't match up with my life story the way I thought it should. So I told Him He was a fraud, a liar, and a villain. I won't tell the whole story here but let's say that He treated me with such kindness that I am convinced for a lifetime of His goodness.

There's just one rub. In spite of the love I have for Him, in spite of the trust I place in Him, in spite of the goodness I have seen in Him, He is still scary. The truth is, He plain freaks me out. Makes me feel panicky. Makes me want to close my eyes and pretend He's not really that big, or . . . other-than-me.

Sometimes, instead of inviting me to His level, I wish He would just settle for mine. Mine is so much nicer than His. I wish that He would let "goodness" mean "mildly adventurous", "nicely unpredictable" and "reasonably comfortable".

I know that He knows best but isn't there another way to know Him besides the one that leads straight through hell? I wish He would have set life up with lower stakes. You know, made it a poker game, instead of a war.

Goodness is much more beautiful than I had imagined and much more severe than I had hoped for. Goodness hurts. Excruciatingly. Don't get me wrong, its a healing hurt, but the pain to bring healing is sometimes worse than the pain of the original wound.

In fact, excruciatingly is oddly appropriate because the ultimate picture of God's goodness was His plan to crucify Himself for our healing. God's goodness not only invites me to be healed and whole as He is, He invites me to be wounded willingly, as He was, for the healing of others.

I cringe and sometimes sob when I think of what His goodness might do next, what He might ask for. I fear the very goodness I love and trust Him for. But then I think of Jesus, not just vaguely fearing what God might ask, but knowing what He had already asked and begging in desperation for another way. His desperation and fear did not make Him any less. If He asks me to join Him in His suffering, then at least I know He empathizes in my trepidation.

I have known Him, I do know Him and I will know Him, all through the fellowship of His suffering.

Operation March: Completed

Miraculously, I did finish my goal of reading through the entire Bible in the month of March. It was pretty close at the end, I ended up having to read almost the entire New Testament in two days. I cannot recommend this.

Then, when I got to the end and tallied up all the chapters I'd read, I came up 24 short. After a bit of searching my record I found 22 of them in Psalms; I had messed up my "read through Psalms in a month" plan. I still haven't found the other two missing chapters but I'm pretty sure that the mistake is in my tallying, not my reading. On the other hand, I may have read the Entire Bible Except Two Chapters in one month, but I can't convince myself that I should be concerned about it.

So, at the end of this silly idea, what did I come away with? That's what I'm asking myself.

For one thing, the Bible seems to have shrunk some. I have conquered my childhood feeling of it being an impossibly long book that I might hardly read through in a lifetime. I also have come away really liking The Message version but with the conviction that what version is read matters very little in the scheme of things. It's not about which version, it's about God's words, Jesus' story, and the Holy Spirit teaching us from the inside out.

At the same time that the length of the Bible shrunk the amount and depth of information, as well as the general delightfulness of the stories grew. I loved reading through Paul's writing in common American English. For once I could identify in many ways.

It was no longer some old frowning scholar from another world laboriously lecturing over the niceties of the Gospel. Instead it was just a man, like men I have met and heard, speaking boldly because God had told him to use the authority God gave him. He felt many of the things I felt as I taught what God had taught me: love, urgency, hopelessness, exhilaration, inadequacy, boldness, and above everything trust that God would complete what He started. I noticed and could understand how in almost every letter he mentions that he longs to be with them and that letter writing isn't sufficient.

With the New Testament in general I was reminded that Jesus is amazing, and of course loving, but definitely not nice. I was reminded that I live a mystery, a wonderful, scary, ludicrous mystery; Christ in me.

I noticed that in the Old Testament it seems as though God promised good things for whole-hearted obedience but in the New Testament Jesus teaches that trials will come just because you follow Him, promising only internal and eternal rewards. I didn't reach any sort of conclusion about this, just noticed it.

I realized that God is not only sarcastic to me personally but that He always has been. This delighted me and made me feel a bit smug. Not all sarcasm is bred from insecurity, sometimes it's just the best way to get the point across. (And coming from God, it is most definitely a Love language.)

Overall, I think that God has answered a few of my questions from this post about reading the Bible.

What am I to look for as I read it?
I don't need to look for anything as I read it. If I already have something on my mind then I'll know what to look for, if I don't, just enjoy the read.

What am I to do with all the questions that surface as I read?
Ask them of course! But don't get worried if they aren't all answered. It's not about understanding everything, it's about knowing God one day at a time.

Why is it so important to keep reading this book?
I really love the answer to this one. You've probably heard people say that the Bible is a letter from God to us, they usually go off about how awesome this is and how deplorable it is that we don't believe how precious it is.

I can tell you why I never could feel the preciousness of this idea. One really old, really long 'letter' from God and not even to me personally, was all I got till heaven? That is about as good a deal as getting to eat old bread crusts for the rest of your life without even getting any water.

The problem with a letter is that it usually means the person isn't there. It's just something to let you know they're still alive while they're off vacationing. The problem with that idea is that God isn't off vacationing, He's with you, in you, communicating and presently available for two-way conversation. So, why would I read a letter from Him if He's already here?

But, a book, a story written by a person I know and love, even a memoir, I would read that even as they were sitting in the room with me. I would eat it up and read it aloud to them and laugh at their jokes and ask them questions, and learn more than I might have ever known about them from a conversation.

Once, I saw a poem that Cassie, (my very dear friend who has been writing copiously ever since she could hold a pencil) wrote hanging on the bulletin board on her wall. I would guess that we were about 12 at the time and I had never really noticed any of her writing until I saw this poem. I don't remember what it was about or anything it said. What I remember is thinking, "She is thinking some of the exact same stuff I've been thinking about but we've never talked about it."

I mentioned something about it to her and told her I'd like to see more of her writing, to learn more about the Real Cassie. That year for my birthday she gave me a book of hand copied poems of hers with this inscription in the front:

To My Very Dear Friend
Lauren
{Who expressed the desire
to know the real 'me'}

You can bet that I treasure that book and that I did learn more about her from reading them. I learned that when you read a person's writing you get to see and know a part of them you might have totally missed otherwise. Is it just me or does it sound better to you to read a book because it's written by a dear friend of yours, then to read a letter by someone you will meet someday?

Another thing I've learned about reading the Bible is that if you go to it without an agenda, without the need to search for something in particular, without being driven to deduce or apply whatever principles might be lurking, it can be soothing. Not in a silly, vague, sense but very realistic comfort, like a mother soothing a scared child with a touch of her hand, or a wound being soothed with the right ointment, or being reminded, when it looks like all is lost, that Goodness does prevail. It restores hope and gives courage freely.

The Bible can be returned to again and again not because it's become comfortable or familiar but because it fits, it's right, it's real. In an upside-down world where most things are terribly wrong and even the right things aren't quite as they should be it reminds me that life is bigger than what I see in front of me and God is more active than my feelings tell me.