THE UPRISING

Most of us want to skip over the disciplines & go right to the results & rewards of those disciplines. We want to have powerful prayer lives, but also want to skip over establishing prayer habits. We want renewed minds, but want to skip over the habit of carving out regular time for meditation & study. We want that land of milk & honey, but don't want to trek through any form of wilderness to get to it. We want transformed lives, but want to avoid at all cost life-surrender & the tediousness of establishing
spiritual disciplines.  I think it's wisdom to look for the best approach, the best fit, & the right rhythm when it comes to applying spiritual disciplines to our lives. But even the most perfect fit won't be void of times when it meets resistance & you'd rather do anything else but spiritual disciplines... And yet, despite contrary feelings, you must. That's the nature of discipline; that when it meets resistance it breaks it down & breaks through it by continuing to press in. Any good trainer will tell you that learning to press through resistance is part of the training. I's during times of resistance that we are actually becoming strongest. but if we reject the hard parts of training we will never be fully trained.  Regarding spiritual discipline, we can not simply follow the path of least resistance. That's called meandering. It may hide under the guise of rejecting legalism or 'still looking for the perfect fit', but underneath, it's still just an "I don't want to & especially when I don't feel like it, so I'm not gonna'.  We have every right to have this posture, & God does not love us less when we do. but the issue is not God's love, it's the issue of fruitfulness, transformation, increase, effectiveness, & all else relating to your call to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the dwelling place for God.

On the outside, errands, starbucks, lease payment, parent, employee, a missed appointment, a quick hello.  

On the inside, vicious skirmishes & ambushes. Swords drawn - blood spilled. Hurling some aspect of my inflamed or inflated self onto that cross I drag everywhere I go.

Kill it, I say to God's Spirit in me. Crucify it, He does.   When I hurl it up onto that splintered, blood splattered beam, my part is over & His begins.  

On the outside, errands, starbucks, lease payment, parent, employee, & a quick goodbye.  On the inside, at red lights, eyes close & head hits the steering wheel in worship.   Messy, stilted, wordless pockets of worship at the red lights & stop signs, & in the starbucks addiction line. Gritty worship in the Fall winds - the cityscape ahead & my heart hurling itself ahead - head on into the oncoming come closer now of a hide & seek God.  

On the outside, I'm tapping out these aimless words like a pregnant soul needing to deliver. On the inside, warfare & worship... tenderness & grittyness... fasting & feasting.... jagged-edged worship.

Christian zealots often mistake their own zeal for the zeal of the Lord. This leads into many places & paces God's Spirit has not necessarily called them to. Many 'strange' fires & burnouts result. Zealots often inadvertently make zeal itself their guide, thus subverting the Holy Spirit's role in their life. Zeal certainly has an essential place. But zeal makes a bad God. Even if it's zeal for the things of God.

Zeal is a great catalyst, but a bad God. One leads to strange fires, flash fires, & spiritual burnout. The other, to holy fire, holy fruit, & a spiritual renewal that is sustainable. One leads to strain. The other, to rest.

I have a friend... who has been in the trenches with me, taken bullets for me, grabbed live grenades thrown my way, threw them a distance off, & resuscitated me when my breath failed.  I have a friend, who has scars from the battle we've shared, who has tattoos for the mission we've shared, who smells of the worship we've lived, & who speaks from a heart giving itself away.  Closer than a brother.  Better than many friends of old. I have a friend who has never been perfect, & has sometimes disappointed me, but has never once failed me. Closer than a brother. Yeah, we're 'come what may' that way. 

.  

 

   every six paces. ..  awe-shock, locked-gaze, love-struck, blood-stained, stuff-surrendering, imperfect, God-dependent, heart-pregnant gratitude. this is how i'll make my way home..

 

 

R   e   a   c   h   i   n   g        Q   u   i   e  t  

 T    o   d   a   y   '   s       M   i   l   e   s   t   o   n  e

Knee to cement,

head to dirt,

hand to sky,

hard to contain gratitude

right there in the narrow straights

between God, Goliath, Mission, & me.

Rather this adventure,

where fear & faith sometimes play the game of high speed chicken on this one lane narrow road

than the quiet of a

risk-free, low-yield life.

Yeah, knee to cement,

head to dirt,

hand to sky,

hard to contain, gratitude

right down here in the narrow straights.

 

Absolute Surrender is an act of war. It leads to the massacre of all little gods. And the morning alarm clock sounding off is a call to the field of battle. Sometimes the skirmish takes hours, sometimes minutes, sometimes seconds. The bodies of lessor gods strewn all around - there is where holy fire turns from flames to blazes. There is where & when the day begins. There is where Love has a strong shot at being how the next 24hours is done.

Much of your fruitfulness in the next season has already been predetermined by the quality of your relationship, discipline, & obedience 'with' God in this season. 

So stop blaming God for not being dependable. And stop calling some of your current failures a problem of faith. You can not fast & pray your way into the rewards promised solely through obedience. Your prayers of faith in the next season can not get you the rewards meant to come solely by obedience in this season.

"Be not deceived. For God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, that will he reap."

Sow this "...Abide in me & let my word abide in you, then you shall ask what you will & it shall be done" -Jesus.

Ours is no religion of perfectionism which touts all else as false Christianity. No. Christianity is a religion of relationship. Relationship with a God who embraces both the strengths & weaknesses of individuals. Relationship with a God who teaches us both how to walk without stumbling & how to stumble without leaving. In essence, how to live dependent, transparent, humble lives with others & with a God who enables us to display His strengths as well as enabling us to make even our greatest weaknesses glorify Him.