anyway... whatever.

These are two words we hear A LOT in today's colloquail conversations. They are the perfect way to blow off a comment, passively express your disgust in a person or topic, or insert yourself into a conversation to take it over. But recently, I saw them expressed in a letter being passed between two lovers:

lover 1 : thank you for loving me anyway
lover 2 : i'll love you whatever

Any one of us - or, all of us - could be lover 1.
Any one of us - or, all of us - could also be lover 2.
But, our amazing Heavenly Father is ALWAYS lover 2... He always loves us whatever may come, whatever we do, whatever the circumstance.

THAT is the kind of love we have received and as we have freely received, we are to freely give. And THAT is also our challenge as Christ-followers: to express the love and grace of God without any mixture of religiousity... to love in such a way as to remove all barriers to true friendship... to love in such a way that our beliefs are coherent with our behaviors... to love in such a way that we ooze Jesus everywhere we go.

Jesus loves me... Jesus loves you... and so do I.

If you didn't hear Steven Kirlin's message Sunday, click HERE!

God provides

As I shared the story of Christie and I this past Sunday, I can only hope and pray that God used it to encourage couples, challenge individuals and remind us all that God provides.

I closed with 5 points but I fear they may have gone by too quickly, so I'm going to list them again followed with a brief comment.

1) Expect God to test you (Gen 22.1-2)
God doesn't test us for the sole purpsoe of showing us our weaknesses - that's what a bully does. God will often test us so he can prove himself to us: to show us the depth of his love, the consistency of his faithfulness and beauty of his intimacy.

2) Make a covenant investment (Gen 22.3-4, 6-8)
We, like Abraham, often make decisions as if we don't really believe God will deliver on his promises. To test this selfish tendancy, God established a thing called a covenant. God never intended to be a distant-giver; he wants to be an intimate-sharer. In other words, God wants us to have some skin in the game of our relationship to him (and for Abraham, God meant that literally).

3) Focus on promises, not explanations (Gen 22.5)
When it comes to walking by faith - and not by sight - it can be hard to stay focused. Logic, rationalization and feelings can become our worst enemies, and temptation will always seem to make more sense than faith. The best tool to fight this is to focus on God's promises... What was the last thing God told you? What promise did he reveal to you in Scripture? And how has he affirmed this with you in your prayer time?

4) Depend on God's provision. (Gen 22.9-14)
So many Christ-followers' last words are, "I just can't do this anymore!" AND THEY'RE RIGHT!!! God never intended us to do anything alone and their cry of desparation should actually be a shout of epiphany! Don't just sigh and say, "Well, it will be whatever God intended it to be." Depend! Expect! Bank on! Know! that you will fail if God doesn't provide.

5) Anticipate God's blessing. (Gen 22.15-19)
By anticipate, I don't mean be anxious or impatient but be confident in God's faithfulness. Any person can say they trust God but it is only those who truly believe that God's love is better than life whom God can trust in return.

a big (and common) mistake

One of the most common and inhibiting mistakes believers make in their understanding of salvation and growing in their faith is looking at God through the lense of their own human experience (rather than looking at their human experience through the lense of God's character).

One of the facets of this mistake is the natural tendancy to think God can only do what we've seen him do before or what WE understand as possible (read that again and think about it). This a natural and even logical conclusion that applies to a large portion of our human experience; however, God is not bound to our human experience. On the contrary, God created and set in motion the human experience.

So why did He do it?

Here's my simple theology: I think God created our human experience for us to enjoy and share. First, for us to enjoy it with Him and second, for us to share with each other... and ever increasing "each other". The cool thing about these two dynamics is that they each play off each other. Enjoying this life with Him drives us to want to share our experiences with others (don't you enjoy sharing things you like with others?). And the best part of sharing is finding someone who has never experienced what we find so amazing and then watching them experience it for the first time. Isn't that fun to do? That kind of sharing, or a consistent sharing of such experiences (a.k.a. friendship), may just be what leads "others" to enjoying life with God, too.