Not there yet

"According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death."


"Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me."

One thing that I have not understood, and now only barely understand, is why Paul always said that he had not yet attained it. Faith takes the hope and we walk as though we are there, as if we have attained it. But if we think we are already pure and in heaven we would be living in a false reality. We are still on earth. We live earnestly expecting what is to come. He desired and expected that he would not be ashamed in anything. Nothing. But on the contrary, with boldness that Christ would be made manifest through him, his life, whether he lived or died. Paul's deepest desire was Christ and heaven. He clung to these. He set his heart, everything he did, on winning Christ and being found in Him. He knew that his home was heaven.
He did not strive for righteousness, for Christ is our righteousness. He strove to know Christ. To know his righteousness. This does not remove us from reality, it only enables us to live in it with a sense of eternity. Our lives manifesting Christ, because He is all and is in all.

We don't even know

There stands in a moment of time, in split second of a finger twitch, decisions that foreshadow eternity. Even though it is impossible to foreshadow something that is. The best way for people to understand things is through analogies and parallels to what they know. We need something to measure, whatever we are trying to understand, against. Some sort of standard in our mind that will bring us closer to the revelation we seek. That is why stories with morals, and parables with an underlying meaning, and metaphors and similes are so vital to the human.
We can not understand start to understand love until we say, "It is like the way of a lioness with her cubs." Or "It is the way of a man with a maiden." The only problem is, in trying to understand it through this standard, we confine it. Love is not only protection and providing nor is it only romantic. The truest thing we can say is, "It is." We have neither created love nor can we destroy it. We find ourselves caught up in it and acting out of it, but we have no comprehension of what it truly is. All there is to say is, if you try to describe it through a line, this end is love and this end is hate, then it is above the line, around the line, where it can not be pin pointed. If you try to put boundaries around it, as you would fence in a dog, then it is not even on the ground but in the air, and who can place boundaries on air?
It is not a balance you have to attain and maintain. It is set apart from it. It is not something that you can say, "Here it is!" or "There it is!" It is among you, within you.
Full of mystery and completely open and vulnerable, dwell together without complaint, naturally. A sovereign ruler who gives his subjects freedom to choose is no paradox, only the way it is. Absolute and abstract compliment each other, while 'servant', 'friend', 'child', 'sheep', and 'priest' describe the relationship with the Creator.
It is like this because He is like this. He is a person while being like the wind. He is outside of the limitations of time while inside of them. Creating everything from math to animals to chemistry to logic. He is external from everything he created. Yet He is involved in every little process of it. Holy. He is Holy. He is good and he has no nemesis.
Evil is trivial. He hates it because it tries to exalt itself against the knowledge of Him. Evil has blanketed the eyes of people, veiling them from His true character and nature. Everything he created is yearning and longing for the day when He will redeem it. It yearns and groans for that day like a woman in labor, crying out for Him. The only part of His creation that was not crying out for Him were the people, the very ones whom He created in His image, in His very likeness.
Jesus. The Son. He became our evil. He became judged and condemned for our pride, our wickedness. He took the fear out of death by becoming our sin, and he took the power away from the sin by removing the law, the moral standard. Now, whoever believes in Him is under God saying that we are not born of the world anymore, we are holy as he is. We are born of God.
He has taken us and given us what we don't deserve. Grace. He tells us to walk in it, that He has placed Himself inside of us. He wants us to be witnesses of His glory and nature. He wants us to know Him as a Father, a Friend, a King, a Shepard, the God. Not saying "This is what it is!" or "That is what it is!" but in a relationship. He will invade this place and the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. Be filled with his Spirit. Bless you as you walk in His anointing.

A Beginning II

It was not that they were just living a new fad or a vapor of an idea, no, it was definitely more. A revolution of non-conformity and of life. A revolution to step out of the darkness of oppression and into the light of freedom. What they had seen, what they had been given, no one could take it away. They experienced freedom first hand, and after it is tasted there is no going back to the chains. Enduring beatings and being on the verge of death, yet not retaliating in the manner one would expect. They did not fight back with violence or even peace marches. They tore down the strongholds of the mind, tearing away from their enemies grasp precious lives. They watched as fathers turned on their sons, and sons turned on their fathers because of this freedom. It caused pain beyond belief to them, but when someone is in the dark, the light hurts their eyes, and if they are unable to get past this initial pain, then they get angry at the light instead of waiting to see what it reveals. The leaders had seen themselves get caught up in this movement of freedom that had been a river rushing long before they came along. They were placed there to bring more into that river. And they did. They watched as community grew and in the midst of a person forced from his family because of the contrast of dark and light, that person, once in the brilliance, found a new family. A family bound by the love of freedom and therefore, almost unbreakable. And so, there they were; united and moving as in one fluid motion, unconcious of their differences, aware only of their similarity: they were free.

Soon more and more came into this freedom, this nation, that is absent of any government here, because the ruling authority has to be the one that feeds the river, the one that is the source of the light for that only makes sense. As more came into this nation, the fighting and beatings became scarce but problems within the people grew. Divisions within themselves. Some wanted to rule themselves, or they would make up stories just trying to get people away from freedom in order to have their own following. The aspect of unity and working and moving as one begin to slip leak and drain leaving dry tempers and wrong ideas. Such a shot of urgency and fear for the people that must have gone through the leaders. The people who had just stepped into this freedom of light, this nation of God, were already going off on their own separate paths, taking up anything that suited their sudden impulses, not living as though they were in freedom, but in chains again. It was not something that the leaders had put together or concocted, it was set in motion before they were even alive. Somehow, they had been appointed to tap into it and see it rush out over people, this water of freedom. They had to nip the ingnorance and apathy in the bud before people gave their freedom away. They cared and loved this people far too much to let them stand separate and weak rather than together and full of life.

So they wrote. They wrote to each community reminding them of what they first believed. Reminding them that the freedom they had stepped into was not cheap, but was worth every part of them working together. They started from the beginning and went down the steps of time showing the validity and the truth, and uncovering the deceptions and lies. They wrote to show that the lives they were living were not in vain, but were storing up rewards where people can not steal it. That the more they went out the more the source of light drove away darkness and the more people stepped into freedom. Then the people remembered, and they were reminded of their mission, of their purpose. And they stopped trying to clamor out of the river and run from the light, and all of them jumped in and stood not hiding anything. The let the water rush over them and the light search them. They allowed freedom to permeate their being and bring them into a family, because the bond of a family is stronger than the bond of one hundred steel ties.

A Beginning

They had fought and risked their lives, their families lives, for the ideals of freedom and equality. Tearing away from the grasp of a strangling and suffocating iron hand that ruled without care or consideration. Fathers had lost their sons, and sons had watched their fathers die. Children had been torn away from their mothers. They had endured seasons of scarcity and hunger; times of bitter cold with hardly a shawl draped over their tired shoulders. Overcoming the mass differences and prejudices, they had managed to unite a people to fight and to see the vision of a nation, one nation, moving and breathing as one organism standing and fighting for the same ideals they were fighting.

After the shedding of blood had ceased and they were able to severe the hand away from around their young neck, new struggles began. With an unstable government put in place, the people with many differences began to think that it would be better if they were rulers over themselves, besides each of them were different. What a pang of fear and urgency there must have been among the leaders who had seen these people unite to fight off Britain, who had seen the potential of greatness that lay here in the people and in the land. Then to see it all crumble before their eyes, they could not let it happen. They believed too deeply in the values and ideals they had fought for and brought others to fight for. They knew that if they could not pull the people together now, under one vision and purpose, the lives given in that war, in that revolution, would have been in vain. Brought to nothing. They cared and loved this land and the people far too much to let them stand separate and weak rather than together and full of life.

So a few of them began to write. Why did they write and not gather big public speeches? Their writing could not be lost in the air after it was conceived. Their writing could grab hold of minds and reason with them and guide them back to the vision, to the hope, to something better than what has been before. They wrote and defended their values again. They started over and got the people to focus on what matters, on why they were in this land and why they had fought that war, it was a revolution. A revolution of non-conformity and of life. A revolution to step out of the darkness of oppression and into the light of freedom. Then the people remembered, and they were reminded of their mission. They came together because one stick can be broken easily, but when you bind 13 sticks or 30, or even 50 sticks together, it is impossible to break them.