if i had what i lacked...

i recently attended a spiritual growth conference called fully alive at the church i attend and work at. steve deneff (http://www.stevedeneff.com/) is pastor of college wesleyan church at indiana wesleyan college. he challenged us to stop trying to get better (definition of one of the words used for healing) and to ask God to make us well/whole (definition of the the other word used for healing).

examples: getting better is not being so critical and cutting others down with our mouths. getting well is learning to praise others and lift others up with our words. getting better is not looking at others with lust and stop watching certain shows and programs. getting well is learning what love is and how to experience it with your spouse.

he had us a list a sin/area we struggle with. he encouraged us to look at that "thing" behind the sin. what is it we were really craving? lust is our substitute for love. possessions/selfishness is our substitute for knowing our value in God. sin is a our replacement for something God can gives us and longs to give us. he then asked us to dream what it would like not if we were simply better and didn't do those things, but what would we look like - what would it be like - if we were well. if that "thing" that our sin was acting as the counterfeit for was really in our life. if we didn't need the counterfeit not because we had exhibited enough self control and "got over it" aka got better, but because we had the real deal. something better. because we were well.

i am reading a book called Jesus for President (side note: a great read if you like to have things that you've always believed challenged and wonder if there is an alternative biblical view to the way things are for christians in our current political system). in the first part of the book the authors discuss this same idea. us counterfeiting.

MOST of the ugliness in the human narrative comes from a distorted quest to possess beauty. COVETING begins with appreciating blessings. MURDER begins with a hunger for justice. LUST begins with a recognition of beauty. GLUTTONY begins when our enjoyment of the delectable gifts of GOD starts to consume us. IDOLATRY begins when our seeing a reflection of God in something beautiful leads to our thinking that the beautiful image bearer is worthy of WORSHIP.

so i'm back to more wondering. what is it in my life that my sins represent? that "thing" that is behind them? what is it i lack that leads me to counterfeit the real thing? and why am i not going after the real thing? how would my life look different if i had the real thing? how would i look? what would i dream?

i think i am going at things backwards - totally, ridiculously backwards. you see this in the christian world. we try so hard to rid ourselves of our sins. i mean that's how we tell who is and isn't a christian right? those who are following these certain behaviors and avoiding these other behaviors. but what happens when follow those and avoid these? am i suddenly no longer a christian? if it's all about what i do than can't i just fake it? and am i faking it?

when Jesus was on earth it's interesting what He had to say about this. He said the one way people/others would know that we belonged to Him was by our love. He didn't offer a list of things we would do or avoid, but that love would guide us. love would shine through. i can do many things but if love isn't in them it depletes their value. paul reminded of this when he said that if he spoke like angels but without love it was simply like a two year old on drums.

what gives my actions their beauty, their wonder, what separates me from others is the love that i possess. and honestly i think i'm lacking in that love. it's not so much love for others that concerns me. i run low on that, i do, but i think that's because i run low on the love that God has for me.

at some point if you are short up on the love God has for you, you run out of it for others. what you end up giving is from yourself. it's like diluted cool aid. it works, but doesn't taste as good.

so what would my life look like if i really understood God's love for me? what would i look like if i understood that? it seems kind of little and maybe even obvious and slightly self-absorbed, but then i remember that it was love that brought Christ here. and it's a love we have yet to grasp in our world. we've battled this unconditional force that sent God into man and history reeling ever since.

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.

i am part of the world. as a follower, yes i can't be of the world, but neither was i asked to remove myself from it. i cannot separate myself from it so i must understand the love that brought Him to this world so that i can understand how then to really love the world.