Tag Archives: Waking The Dead

Relationship Requires Work

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Here is something that strikes at the heart of everyone in this world.  The idea of intimacy and relationship.  What does this mean to you?  We think of love, we think of our spouses, we thing of family and friends.  Relationship is to be had all over our lives.  It took me 36 years to really learn this lesson.  To know that I was created for relationship.  Not just with my wife and kids, but with others and most particularly with God.  This is where I really want to focus today.  That relationship and intimacy that is to be had with God throughout our lives.

Did you know that we were created for relationship?  God did not create us to rule over us like a cosmic sheriff.  No…He created us for relationship with Himself.  Not at a distance either, but close and personal. The Bible is full of examples of this relationship going all the way back to Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, David, Daniel, Isaiah, etc.  It goes on and on.  Each of these people and many more, communicated with God personally.  It’s what we’re still made for today.  God desires to walk with each one of us personally.

The problem today is that we are so busy and the church has been watered down with so much religious non-sense that we have lost touch with what it truly means to walk with God in an real and intimate relationship.  Sure we may read our Bibles out of a sense of duty, but do you realize there is more?  God speaks to us not just through His Word, but through the Holy Spirit who dwells within us when we choose to walk with Him and follow Christ.

I used to have a hard time with this concept. Can you really hear God speaking to you?  I think yes.  Do you think He just stopped with the Bible?  Of course not.  God desires to walk with us.  Why do you think He risked it all to leave His thrown and walk among through the person of Jesus Christ?  He desires us to be restored who we were meant to be all along.  In this life, we will never be fully who we were meant to be and we will never walk in the fullness of the intimacy God desires.  But we can began to seek that out when we are in Christ, learning to walk with Him daily and be sanctified daily.

It’s daily struggle for us in this life.  There are so many things competing for our attention and affection.  It’s so easy to choose to not walk with God daily and to do other things that may call your attention or just to say your too busy to just stop.  I struggle with this daily.  I strive every morning to get up before the family and sit in my living room chair in prayer, in the Word, and writing in my journal.  This quite time is when I truly focus on Him and conversing with Him and the chaos of the day has not began just yet.

There are days, however, and this morning was one, where I just struggle with getting my mind re-focused and just opening my heart to Him.  Like I said, things are always competing for our attention.  I was listening to a conversation series from Ransomed Heart this morning on conversational intimacy with God.  I’ve heard it a few times before, but something John Eldredge said stuck out to me today.  That was “Relationship requires things of me that are harder than a life of comfortable distance” (marriage, friendships, etc)…”there are things required of me in relationship“…(When we turn to walk in intimate relationship with God something in us) “recognizes that more is going to be required of us than we ever imagined.”

Walk with God in real intimacy and relationship requires much more of us and often times more than we may have been prepared to give.  It requires our attention and focus.  It requires to be open to whatever God may want to reveal to you, whether through His Word, through your heart, or through others around you.  It also requires you being willing to accept when God says no.  Walk with God is a two-way relationship.  We have to be able to speak and converse and we have to be willing to hear Him as well.

The point is this.  Relationship requires work.  God seeks relationship with each of us as He created us for that.  Relationship with God requires work.  It will push us.  It’s not about mastering religious principles and precepts.  It’s about intimacy.  John Eldredge shares in Waking the Dead, “Truth be told, you couldn’t master enough principles to see you safely through this Story.  There are too many surprises, ambiguities, exceptions to the rule.”  When talking about having a critical spirit of others, my pastor shared something Sunday that is critical in conquering a critical spirit and in every part of life…”Talk to God first.”  That’s where it all begins.  Talking with God.   It doesn’t come overnight.  I will continue working at this for the rest of my life.  The more you do this however, the more clearer you learn to walk with Him and hear Him.

 

Do We Dare Stand Naked

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Everyone of us have had a poser side.  A fig leaf that we’ve hid behind for fear of allowing the world to see all of the hidden junk we may have in our lives.  It may not seem like it on the surface, but we go through motions each day putting on that facade that everything in our world is okay.  Sunday mornings at church can often times be poser city, when everyone puts on that happy face for those couple of hours before getting back to life as normal.  They may have troubles at home or doubts about life, but they don’t let that out.  In our jobs, we often hide.  Just take a ride on the elevator.  What do most people do, including me?  We stare at the floor counter, the ceiling, straight ahead.  We are afraid to be seen.  We hide ourselves from the world.  There are issues we all have in our lives that we can work on through many avenues.  Through prayer, counseling, fellowship, and more.

Even when we’ve repented of our sins and begin to work on those issues in our lives, there’s still something we hide.  As John Eldredge shares in Waking the Dead, we hide our own glory.  That’s the glory we receive from God when we are made new in our relationship with Christ.  There’s something fearful here and that is the fact that when we decide to live from this glory and the holiness that Christ offers, we stand fully exposed to the world.  For many, this still seems so risky, because it puts us out there fully.  As the book says, “It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not, to walk in your glory with an unveiled face when everyone else is veiling theirs.”

When I was reading this, this completely stuck out to me.  There is a great deal of truth to this thought.  The world has become a post-modern mess where the idea of living out the Truth of who we are in Christ can gain a lot of down the nose looks.  Many will often turn their nose up at people who are just out there and confident in who they are in Christ and aren’t ashamed to let it be seen.  It’s exposing and for many and yes for sometime even me, it can be a scary.  So what do we do?  We go back to posing.  We are around our friends, families, and acquaintances and we go back to hiding.  We either bring back the poser or just shy away from our glory.

Reading this gave me a lot of food for thought.  As I wrote the other day, Jesus said ““Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father.” (Matthew 10:32-33).  We are called to boldly proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.  We are called to publicly acknowledge Christ to the world.  If we do, we will be acknowledged before the Father.  So the answer to this is simple.  We need to live from our glory and from our true self.  We need to be bold about who we are in Christ and no longer hide from this fact.

Eldredge says, “To admit we do have a new heart and a glory from God, to being to let it be unveiled and embrace it as true – that means the next thing God will do is ask us to live from it.  Come out of the boat. Take the throne. Be what he meant us to be. And that feels risky…really risky. But it is also exciting. It is coming fully alive.” 

We can now stand naked to the world.  It does not matter how the world looks at us if we are living in the glory of God and from that.  We are made new in Christ.  Romans 2:29 says, “A person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.”  We need to learn to live our lives seeking Gods praise and living for his glory alone.  “Put on your new nature, created to be like God…” (Ephesians 4:24:).  “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ” (Ephesians 5:2).

This is boldness that is needed for all followers of Christ.  I pray each day to grow in this way to stand not just on what I write, but in the way I live and in my actions. I have worked to continually get out from behind the fig leaf.  I tell you what, since I started to come out, God has had me on fire.  It takes work each day because of the world we live in, but it’s worth the risk to stand bold and naked in our glory for the world to see.  Jesus felt it was worth the risk to hang on that cross for us for all the world to see.  It is worth the risk to stand bold and naked to the world in the God’s glory as well.  Do we dare to stand naked?