Reflecting or Deflecting?

"You are not one of his disciples, are you?" the girl at the door asked Peter. He replied, "I am not." "Didn't I see you with him…?” Again Peter denied it… (from John 18:17, 26-27)

When Peter denied Jesus, he was not only betraying his friend and Lord, he was betraying his own identity. For the last three years Peter had been walking with Jesus. Think of what a transforming life this had been for him: watching miracles and even taking part in them, hearing Jesus’ teachings, learning to pray and to love and to know God and to be known by God in a deeply personal way (remember that Jesus called him “the Rock”). To breathe the free air. To put it another way, he had become Jesus’ disciple, apprenticing himself after Him, learning of this new way of being in the world and of relating to God. The girl who approached Peter in the courtyard asked him whether or not he was one of Jesus’ disciples. His flat out denial betrayed his own identity. It effectively refuted all that he had learned and come to in the previous three years. All the life he had come to evaporated in that renunciation. He relinquished the new name God had given him. Turning from Jesus, he also turned from his own honor, his integrity, his character, his uniqueness, his seity. His own individuality God had given him.

This, of course, was nothing new for Jesus. Moses had done something similar after Mount Sinai. God had, per his request, shown him His glory. He had passed by him, and the experience left Moses's face shining, his whole body and spirit radiant, alive, awake, alert, aroused. It may have been a bit like a man just coming from a sexual experience with his beloved, his face and lips flush, his eyes open wide, his breathing heavy. Moses was beaming, gleaming, blazing, resplendent, like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion (Psalm 19:5). He then carried down the stone tablets and was unaware that his face was radiant like this. And he scared the people to death.

"When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him..." (from Exodus 33:29-30).

Even Aaron was terrified. And so you know what Moses did? He hid his face. He intimidated the Israelites by his having been so intimate with the Lord, and it must have frightened and embarrassed Moses, and so he hid it. By hiding himself, he hid the glory from the people that most needed it. He shrunk back and hid his association with the Lord God, just like Peter.

Nelson Mandela could have been speaking to the both of them when he said that “your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”

He could have been speaking to me, too. “We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us,” Mandela continues.

Oh, yeah? We were? I suppose His glory is the gift He has given to his closest friends throughout history, a gift that He gives to us still. Recently my wife and I spent time with a local community of believers where we were asked to share something personal that God seems to be up to in our lives. I shrank back. I spoke, but only superficially, a rock skipping off the surface rather than going to the depths. Why? Because I think I am embarrassed of my place with God, of His intimacy with me. Perhaps I hide because I am in disbelief that He would have me in this way, fuddled and bashful that anyone would notice that I’ve just been with the Lord God, and afraid that others would reject me for it out of fear and intimidation.

But that is not letting my light shine, as Jesus asked that I do.

“. . . And as we let our own light shine,” says Mandela, “we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I'm Just Me

Lately I've been feeling a bit... small. Misunderstood. Grumpy. Irritable. Far from use in the Kingdom. I wrote the following as an exercise some time back when I was in a similar place. I'm posting it now so I can bring it up often in these days of myopia and reread it until the light of the truth of God's love of and call for me blind me from myself and give me clearer vision again of the life offered me. The life I, on my best days, find myself even now walking in. The life that extends into eternity and finds its source in Jesus Himself. Here's the confession and the promise...

And I'm just me. I'm not a spiritual giant. I have no special real estate on God. I'm often irritable, grumpy, and unloving toward others. Mostly because I often fail to fall into the wild, crazy, furious love of God in the face of Christ who has come so far in pursuit of me. But even that doesn't keep me from His love. I'm not always passionate in seeking after God - often lukewarm and displeptic. I don't spell everything correctly. I sometimes don't make sense when I talk. I get confused, weary, jaded, and cynical. My teeth aren't as white as I want them to be. I am skinny and not well-built. I can be exceptionally lazy. I tend to whine and complain when comforts I feel I deserve somehow pass me by. My mind can be a haze of jaded and cynical thoughts, usually resulting in biting judgementalism toward others. I can lie and steal and hate. But somewhere, down beneath all this that makes me a broken and fallen human being, deep within my core, dwells the Living God, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End, who, in all His annoyingly and life-giving persistent love makes all things new. He heals and restores and rescues and brings life again. Even in me. One day I will be like Him. But that hasn't yet been revealed. I’m on my way, but I haven't made it yet. Not yet. But it’s coming. And one day He will take my hand, and pull me up, and all that I once feared that wouldn’t happen and dreaded that would will melt away and all these illusions I’ve held to will fade into the eyes of my God as I peer into His glory. A glory even I will share in. A glory generously poured out for me, so that I will know life. And in these days between now and then, I get to participate in that Something Big. I get to love like He loves. I get His eyes when He wipes mine with mud. I get to live big and live free because, even though I am so far from perfect, I am His. Forever. Promised. Sealed. Delivered. I get to know God and let that be my greatest and truest desire. Whom have I in heaven but Him, and what else could I desire here? And when all is said and done, that’s all I’ll be able to hold to anyway. And that’s so much that I won’t have room to hold onto anything else. Amen, and come, Lord Jesus.

The Treasure in our Midst

Some rough thoughts on treasure...

We have this treasure in jars of clay… that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.

2 Corinthians 4:7, 11

Treasure. Prize. Fortune. Riches.

The treasure that Paul is speaking of here, in part, is God’s life in us, the kingdom of heaven, the same kingdom that we are to take possession of with all of our devoted, fierce, desirous, “violent” hearts (Matthew 11:12). Treasure also means that that is “beloved” or “cherished.” It is that we are cherished by God that is our treasure, or, put another way, His love and rescue and invitation of us is our supply, our resource, our advantage, our fortune. The gospel, the rock-hard reality of God coming to win and have us, is our greatest prize. We get to be His, and we get in on all that He is up to. And He is up to giving us life.

When Jesus said that the sum of the law was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27), he was saying first to make God your treasure (or, better, to recognize Him as your treasure). Growing in love to God is real freedom, and growing to love Him is growing to know Him (to know Him is to love Him), and that is what Jesus said would be our very lifeblood (John 17:3).

Of course, to treasure someone is to begin to recognize what it is they hold dear, and to even begin appreciating it yourself, and even grow to prize it as well. My wife loves basset hounds. I never did. But we got one, and her love of that little guy has grown on me. I love him, at least to the degree I do, because he is important to her.

As we grow to treasure God we grow to treasure what He treasures, and He treasures us, what He calls “the world” (John 3:16). To grow to love Him is to grow to love others, to recognize others as His treasure, even as we embrace ourselves as His treasure. And what does it look like to love others?

It is to realize that there is something within the hearts of us all that Jesus came to have as His own. The possibility of having it, after all, gave Him enough joy to endure the cross (Hebrews 12:2). To recognize that this treasure lies within us all, or better, is us all, is to see others as the treasures of the Kingdom that they are. Beneath the masks, underneath the posing and posturing, beyond the pain and shame and scars from this world. Even for those who are not yet God’s, there is a hint, an echo, a scent of what was meant when they were created. That is what God wants back.

Can you imagine what it would be like to live this way, to recognize every person you meet as God’s greatest treasure, unique and desired more than His very life? We’d stop at very little to have God and to have others be His. To have others be rescued from captivity into the full freedom of real and lasting life. To push beyond the fear of a real encounter with someone. To fight all of hell for someone. To have His heart for His bride.

It would be to have the heart of Jack Sparrow. Picture this scoundrel from Pirates of the Caribbean. What does he want? What is he after? One thing. The treasure. Always, the treasure. He keeps nothing, has nothing, serves nothing but that will bring him what he wants. That is the kind of singular passion we are to have for God. And, as mentioned earlier, to be wild for Him is to want what He wants: His bride, His treasure, back home in His arms.

All of that means, of course, that we would be desperately dependent upon God for training, provision, skill, and passion for “seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33) and for all that entails. As I walk in intimacy with God and learn of His heart for me and receive His intimate council, I begin to see others as He does, or at the very least to recognize in holy fear that others are more than I see them to be (1 Samuel 16:7), and in humility that I am more than I see myself to be as well. It is as C.S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory, that we have never met a mere mortal.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare.

Having the heart of Christ and His character formed in us opens our eyes to see the unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18), namely the treasure of the heart within. Then, we are free “to say whatever needs to be said” and “to go wherever we need to go” (Ephesians 3:11, The Message). We will run and not grow weary; we will walk and not be faint, headed straight out to find what has been lost, alongside Jesus our Rescuer and Friend.

This is the wild romance of God with us, more passionate and intentional than we imagine. These are the ways of God, the allure of His heart for us, and the invitation to soar with Him where eagles are scared to fly.

There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a maiden.

-Proverbs 30:18-19

Diluted

A friend and I were discussing last night the movie Wild Hogs. He told me he hasn’t seen it yet because he doesn’t like Martin Lawrence. I told him that he appears alone in scenes fairly infrequently, since the thrust of the story is about four men discovering something together on the cross-country journey they have set out on. I used the word “diluted,” as in “Martin Lawrence’s antics are diluted in the movie, since he’s usually in scenes with other main characters.” That is to say, his presence is not as strong. His personality doesn’t come through as much. It’s watered-down, reduced, weakened, skimpy, washed out. It’s not a story about Martin Lawrence; it’s a story about Martin Lawrence and. It’s about the band of friends who call themselves the Wild Hogs.

I’ve been thinking about that word a lot since then, diluted. The other day my wife and I bought some “organic” lemonade, which means, I guess, that it’s a mix of fresh-squeezed lemons and a bit of water. At least, that’s what I thought until I took a swig, then I realized they labeled it organic because they want to warn you of its potency. They are trying to tell you that if you drink it you may grow a lemon orchard in your stomach, if your stomach survives the toxic acidity of the stuff and doesn’t melt into your toes. That is, if you can get it past your mouth, which puckers so hard at the first drop that not even air can get through and your jawbone nearly crushes under the intensity of your flexed masseter muscles. I quickly mixed mine with about 200% water and a pound of sugar and was able to enjoy the taste with what was left of my tongue. They should write fatally concentrated on the bottle, not organic. Pure. Potent. Strong. Undiluted.

It’s such a good word to describe what we do with our lives, this word dilute. Things around us are too strong to take in, so we dilute them. We do, all of us. Especially the most important things, the pure, fresh-from-the-vine, life-giving things, the organic ones.

Take the concept of grace, for example. There, you see, I called it a concept. It’s not a concept, it’s reality, it’s breath, it’s our heartbeat, our lifeblood. I have just diluted it into a “concept” or a “notion” or an “idea,” putting distance between me and it because if I were to receive it fully, 200-proof, undistilled, it could very well destroy me by its pure and unmerited extravagance. It would melt my ego and tear my sense of independence into shreds. It might even draw me close to God, and would that this would never happen, because then I might have to face the Really Real, and my identity that I hold so dear would certainly be crucified. It was this grace that Martin Luther encountered that launched the great Reformation, enthralled as he was when he encountered in the depths of his heart the reality from Romans 3:21-26, which completely ravished him for the rest of his life… destroyed him, really, for any other thing.

Or what about the gospel? I didn’t capitalize the word, did you notice? Officially, when you speak of the “good news,” you don’t capitalize the word, but you do when you talk of one of the four books about the life of Jesus canonized in the New Testament. Grammatically, you only capitalize “proper” names, those designating a particular thing, a specific or immediate one. The “gospel,” then, is not specific or immediate. It is, then, general, conventional, customary, commonplace, delayed, distant, removed. Distance. Do you see it, the way we dilute our experience with the gospel, with our experience of the Kingdom here, right here, right now, right among us, and the King here present in the here and now? Talk of the gospel as watered-down is prevalent in various circles of Christendom, and I won’t get into now how that is or where it comes from, because ultimately it’s me that waters it down, fearful of what it might require of me would I but believe it, enter into it, and encounter The One who brings it.

And so, we dilute things. It’s no coincidence, I don’t think, that another friend in that conversation last night mistakenly heard me say the word, “deluded,” as in to mislead, to elude or evade, to frustrate the hope of. That is an accurate description, I think, for what we do to ourselves and our friends that would otherwise fall hard and fast into the life and love of God would that we live and present it as it is with nothing added or taken from it.

The book of Hebrews says that Jesus offered up prayers and petitions “with loud cries and tears” to his Father, to the one, it says, “who could save him from death” (5:7). God heard him “because of his reverent submission.” The Amplified Bible has it “because of His reverence toward God,” and then goes on to describe His reverence: “…in that He shrank from the horrors of separation from the bright presence of the Father.”

In other words, He was horrified of being separated from the bright presence of the Father. He was terror-stricken at the prospect of separation. Why? Because He knew his Father, and He loved him with all he was. He was intimate with him, and reveled in being His son, the Son.

I think all our pale excuses and fearful shrinking and hiding in the shadows will be blown away by the bright presence of God. I have a suspicion that not only is a real encounter with the Risen One what we most fear and what we most need; it is what we most want. To open ourselves up to Him unreservedly, to plead and cry out for His life and presence with us, until we, too, shrink not from Him but from the horror of separation from Him. Wide-eyed with wonder. Sweaty with anticipation. Giddy with the hope and prospect of the encounter. Dry-mouthed, jaw-dropping, knee-knocking with expectation and trembling with awe.

In C.S. Lewis's A Horse and His Boy, Wihn is a talking Narnia horse who longed and rode hard for her home country, exiled as she had been. When she finally encounters the Christ-figure of Aslan, all she can do is, trembling, kneel before His beauty and declare, “I would rather be eaten by You than fed by any other.” It was the presence of his presence that was captivating and for her it would be a horror to think of separation from him. She would sooner have death. Or, in the words of a poet, she would rather be “broken in his hands than whole in barren lands.”

Keep me, Lord, with thee. I call from out the dark
Hear in thy light, of which I am a spark.
I know not what is mine and what is thine
Of branch and stem I miss the differing mark
But if a mere hair's-breadth me separateth,
That hair's-breadth is eternal, infinite death.
For sap thy dead branch calls, O living Vine!
-George MacDonald

Who Am I Becoming?

The other morning I read from Romans 12:1, a familiar passage to me. "Offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship." I've read that verse a hundred times, and the word that always struck me was "sacrifices." We are to offer ourselves as sacrifices. But that word didn't strike me this time as the most important in the verse. The word this time that bounced back at me from the page was "living."

We all know that the early disciples and apostles and the early church believers were persecuted, most of them killed in gruesome ways, because of their faith in Christ. So often the church and parachurch ministries hone in on the sacrifice of these believers. "They were the great ones in the faith," I've heard proclaimed from pulpits. "We need to be able to die for Jesus like them." We've all no doubt heard enough of this kind preaching.

But I don't think that's how it went down. I don't think those brothers and sisters just clenched their teeth and bared it, willing themselves to go through the torture and death and all of that. I think they found and latched themselves to a secret, and I think that secret was life. I think they had begun really living, and living more and more in the Kingdom, so that when the time came for them to choose something else there's no way they could. They had tasted, and were now wasted, for life, the real thing, the full deal. They didn't choose death at all; they chose life.

And I think the law of the Spirit of life in Christ works like that. It's easy not to steal, but it's a quite different thing to give generously out of a full heart. It's easy not to murder, but it's another thing to love someone to death. It's easy not to curse God, but it's another thing entirely to walk intimately with Him. That's the work of the Spirit within; that's the work of Christ and the New Covenant.

That's what is happening in me. I am to be a living sacrifice, a living icon, a walking, breathing, loving, living Friend of God. In all the beautiful and often painful and wonderful ways that can look, that's what I'm becoming… a living being, walking more fully into that new life in God.

My journey with Christ for the first year was like Lazarus hearing Jesus call his name from somewhere outside the dark tomb. When he heard Jesus' voice, I imagine Lazarus started feeling electricity running again through his arms and legs. His eyes opened and tried to adjust to the darkness of the tomb. He sat up. He stood. He began stumbling his way to the tomb entrance. He came alive the moment Jesus spoke his name. But he was still in the tomb. He was still wrapped in death shrouds.

Lazarus then came toward the entrance and stepped into the blinding light. The disciples came over to help unwrap Lazarus from the shrouds so that he could walk again. That's where I've been over the last couple of years… until recently.

Now I'm hearing Jesus' invitation to walk with Him, to ride with Him, to "soar where the eagles are scared to fly," as Josh Young's song has it. That's what I want, that's what I'm after. My heart is very much alive, and His blood has covered so many wounds to make me whole. The death shrouds have largely been removed and I'm stretching my muscles in the light of the new day. Now life begins. Now the invitation is heeded. Now the desire born deeply in me years ago is spoken to, drawn out, and set free to take me to God.

This weekend I took a walk at the Falls, this area just south of town where the river forms a waterfall that stretches about 50 yards long and 20 feet high. The bedrock along the bank is rugged and rough, with fissures and crevasses formed by the rushing waters of the river when rains would overfill it and cause it to flood its banks. This day, all was bright sky and cool breeze and the hammering song of the water forming a backdrop to the event, while I explored the area with my trusty iPod as a companion. I had tuned into some worship, unsure at first whether I should just listen to the music of the falls or sing along with Josh Young. I gave into the latter, and tuned into his song, "Can You Feel It." It was answer for me from the heart of God in response to my question to him that day, "Who am I becoming?"

Here are the lyrics, with emphasis placed on the portion that pierced me especially with God's response:

All across the world
The river is flowing.
There's a passion that's growing
For the things we have not seen.

All across the world
the Spirit is moving.
There's a sound that's resounding
in the hearts of you and me

Can you feel it?
The rain is falling
Children dancing
Freedom's shining down
Can you feel it?
It's a celebration
The Father's laughin'
He's drawing us to Him
Can you feel it?

Inside our hearts
A new life is growing.
There's a warrior that's rising
With a need to be free.

Can you feel it?
The rain is falling
Children dancing
Freedom's shining down
Can you feel it?
It's a celebration
The Father's laughin'
He's drawing us to Him
Can you feel it?

Out of the Shadows

The idle flapping of the sail is doubt;
Faith swells it full to breast the breasting seas.
Bold, conscience, fast, and rule the ruling helm;
Hell's freezing north no tempest can send out,
But it shall toss thee homeward to thy leas;
Boisterous wave-crest never shall o'erwhelm
Thy sea-float bark as safe as field-borne rooted elm.

-George MacDonald

A few days ago I was driving home from work and the Scripture came to mind about how the world will know us. I think in one of John's epistles he says that "they will know you by your love." I've always taken that to mean our love of God, our love of each other, our love of others, that kind of thing. And while I think that's still the gist of it, I realized something I've been missing.

John says that we will be defined by our love, that in a world full of despair and cynicism, hatred and fear, we will be known by those around us as those that still love, that still in some deep way have a capacity to love. And love what? Certainly God, certainly people, but I think we'll also be known for loving the things that are worthy and noble and true that Paul points out. I love chocolate molten cake hot out of the oven with vanilla bean ice cream melting quickly on top, spreading like some gigantic glacier sitting atop a volcano, and drizzled high with magma-like chocolate syrup. Mmmm. I love the way that the sunset each night invents new colors to threw into our sky. I love my wife's eyes, because in them I see the deepest and most beautiful heart I've know here. And I love God's Kingdom. I love to live in it. I love to learn of it. I love to express it.

For some time, I've had a real urgent and potent desire to walk in a specific calling God’s given me, to follow in that “tap on the shoulder,” as Calvin Miller calls it. I think God has given me some moments of clarity and I've been faithful to take note of them when they come, but for the most part I've hidden them away because, over and louder than the voice of God I have heard the voice of a thousand enemies shouting and taunting a thousand lies in my ears. I've been disqualified on every ground.

But after a very long and weary night of battling these same lies, I awoke to hear God speaking again. Compared to the noise and shriek of the others, His voice is the music of a snow-covered winter landscape, where all noise is muffled into a crystal silence and everything, no matter how scarred, is blanketed with beauty. He reminded me of some of the things He's already spoken to me and, maybe more importantly, reminded me how much I really want to walk with Him in the unique calling of my life, to set out with Him. Or better, to really continue on with Him, having already stepped out on this adventure.

It's more than a job or a career or a “calling” in the modernistic meaning of the word. It's journeying with God and His friends. It’s battling side-by-side with the hosts of heaven. It’s entering into the life of God. It's coming alive. I've been driving down the road with the radio off. Oh, I'll get there, but the journey is a rather long and boring and tedious one. Or, I'm at a movie theater watching some incredibly fascinating flick... with my eyes closed. Opening I find it's my very own life I'm half-watching scream by me on the movie screen.

So, it's time I jump in, let go the ropes of control, and set sail. I'm reminded of Thomas Aquinas's experience with God toward the end of his life when he stopped writing. Puzzled, others came to him and asked what happened. "Compared to the reality," he said, "my words are but straw." Earlier, God had spoken to him saying, "You have written well of me, Thomas. What would you have as your reward?" In the soulful response of a lover of God, he replied, "Only You, Lord."

Onward, then, and upward.

Stretching to a True Height

I love my heart. I mean, I love the treasure that it is, the imprint of the Living One there. More than an imprint - his Life, with all the fullness of Him in his desire, his passion, his love of life and risk and me and his bride. That it looks different than everyone else's, that it's unique in that it has nuances and quirks and a story all its own and words spoken to it personally that bring it to life like some spring rain for the barren fields, that it likes what it likes and dreams and beats its own slightly different rhythm... this is not its shame, but rather its glory. It's like those mighty pines stretching on the ranges of the Rockies - they're made from the same stuff. And from afar, they all paint the scenes some brilliant green. But close up, they are all unique, bearing different scars from the wildlands and some curvature from restless winds. But they are all mighty as they dive straight into the sea of high sky above. They clap their hands in adoration of their Maker.

I want to step out today. Have you noticed the nearer you draw to the edge the louder the voices of condemnation and accusation become? Good grief. I know it's His voice calling me out of the cave, out of the shadows, but I can't remember now what it sounded like (and I just heard it yesterday, but today it's only an echo, which just shows me how much I can lose in one night). I feel like that boy whose house caught on fire late one night. His parents grabbed him and ran with him downstairs to safety, but fightened, he pulled away. His parents made it outside and screamed for him, only to see him on his 2nd-story window's ledge. His room now consumed with flames, the only way to freedom and rescue was a freefall into the night. His dad below yelled for him to jump. Gagged and blinded by the billowing smoke, the son could only choke out, "But Daddy, I can't see you!" "I know, son. I know," he cried, "But I can see you. Now, jump!"

It's time to come out of the shadows. Time to stretch to my true heigth and stature, next to the enormity of this Awesome God, desperately dependent upon him to come through, for his breath and living water. "And like a volunerable bud on a wide western plain, whose hopes outreach its strength as it streches for the sun and laments for the rain..."

This is my heart's cry in this day, Lover of my Soul. Rescue me.

Heroic Intimacy

Overflowing with the generosity that comes from the abundance of real love, [God] creates us to share in the joy of this heroic intimacy. One early mystic says we were created out of the laughter of the Trinity.
-The Sacred Romance, p. 74

My Lord God – I am your apprentice, and my eyes are on your hands as my Master. I am your squire, learning of your ways as we go this road in the rescue of the princess of the kingdom taken captive long ago by an evil one, long locked in a stone fortress guarded by an evil dragon.

I am your soldier, and you my Commander. Teach me the ways of a warrior, strengthen me in the weight of the Sword.

I am your sheep, hearing your voice and finding safe pasture. You lay your life down for me.

I am your son, destined to inherit so much. I see the strength from your arms, the passion of your heart, your desire and authenticity, your tenderness and patience, and remember that I am a stem of that victorious stalk, a seed of you, a bearer of a great image. This is who I am to become like – this Jesus. The Lion and this Lamb.

And I am your friend, let in on all the secrets of your Kingdom, on the heart of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit. What dignity and honor you give me by your invitation to ride with you. Yes!

Yes, Lover of my Soul. Here I find, too, that I am the object of your grand desire and affection. I am to be known as a bride becomes known to her groom on that night and in all the coming trysts between them, those secret meetings known by them and by them alone. And I am to know you – for this is life. This is why you came.

With all that I am, with all the breath in my lungs and blood in my veins, I cry “Yes!” Yes, Holy God – to your invitation, I say Yes. I am yours, O’ great I Am.

Who I am in Christ

Christ has...

drive out the prince of this world. John 12:31

disarmed the powers and authorities. Col 2:15

been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Matt 28:18

made himself your life. Col 3:4

given you new life. Rom 6:4

made himself God's abundant provision of grace. Rom 5:17

made himself your strength, through whom you can do all things. Phil 4:13

out of his great love remembered you, not the sins of your youth. Psalm 25:7

You have...

fullness in Christ, the head over every power and authority. Col 2:10

Christ as your life. Col 3:4

been given authority to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. Luke 10:19

the Counselor with you forever. John 14:16

the Holy Spirit as your encourager. Acts 9:31

not chosen Christ, but he chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit... the Father will give you whatever you ask in his name. John 15:16

the Spirit of truth, to guide you into all truth. John 16:13

every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Eph 1:3

the angels as ministering spirits sent to serve you. Heb 1:14

You are...

the righteousness of God. 2 Cor 5:21

the apple of God's eye. Psalm 17:8

not put to shame, because your hope is in the Lord. Psalm 25:3

rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought into the Kingdom of the Son. Col 1:13

counted as dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Rom 6:11

alive with Christ. Eph 2:5

from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 1 Jn 4:4

included with Christ, marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. Eph 1:13

living with the Spirit, keeping in step with the Spirit. Gal 5:25

strong in the Lord and in the might of his power. Eph 6:10

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many. 2 Cor 1:8-11