sudden perfection?

many people seem to think that if you pray to Jesus for salvation, you suddenly, magically, obtain the ability to be a perfect person, and, in fact, you should act perfectly all the time now. you're either 'there, made it!' or totally 'not there, complete sinning atheist'. people that think this way see a Christian falter, even in minor ways, and think 'how could you call yourself a Christian??!!! you didn't say thank you when i opened the door for you! i am never becoming a Christian, because apparently it doesn't work... you're still messed up!'

another line of thinking about becoming a Christian is that you have to somehow get yourself together first, before you can own the label 'Christian'. these people put off committing to Jesus because they think all the fun in life will be over if they follow Jesus. some put it off because they can't seem to get themselves 'together' enough to feel worthy enough to talk to Jesus at all.

the truth is that neither option is true!

in Philippians 3, Paul talks about how, in the world's eyes, he had 'made it.' before meeting Jesus, he had attained the highest religious ranks, he was a perfect citizen, a perfect Jew from the right lineage. he was the ultimate of ultimates. but when he met Jesus, he realized that all those things that made people admire him were total garbage! a waste of time and energy.

you may think, 'how's that possible? he was doing everything required! he met all the criteria! it's got to count for something, right?!'

the reality is that he was running full speed in the wrong direction. imagine you're a fan at the olympics, sitting in the stands to watch the 200 meter race. the crowd is sitting in awe and anticipation, the lights brightly shine on the track, the racers are poised in the blocks, the gun pops, and..... wait, one of the runners is running the opposite direction of everyone else!!! he's all alone going as fast as he can clockwise around the track! he's giving it his all... he rounds the bend, like a bullet... the crowd is gasping, the racers cross the finish line, the times come up on the board... he's not on there, and if he is, his name is dead last. even though they find out later that he demolished Usain Bolt's time and would've won the race, his time doesn't count. he wasn't going the right way. the whole crowd of spectators, including you, would agree that he didn't follow the rules; it's only fair that he lost. sad, but fair.

God is fair. He looked at Paul's heart before Paul met Jesus, and knew that Paul hadn't followed God's way. in fact, Paul was crossing the country specializing in killing Christians! he was running full speed in the wrong direction. he had 'gotten himself together' by the world's standards, but it didn't mean a thing.

Paul goes on to say that the only thing that counts is that he knows Christ! that's all there is to it. when he would die and stand in front of God, he wouldn't be bringing up the fact that he was such a great Jewish leader; all that mattered was that Jesus saved him and turned him around so he would run the race in the right direction.

but that salvation from Jesus didn't make him a sudden 'holy man'. he didn't stop being a sin-prone human. he didn't suddenly understand the whole world.

what he says is this:

"Only let us live up to what we have already attained." 

Philippians 3:16

the thing is, God accepted his repentance right when he repented. God took him in while he was still on his way to kill some Christians in Damascus. there were some immediate changes - he didn't go kill those Christians - but he had a long way to go to be perfect! and years later, when he was writing all these letters to churches he had planted, he says that what Christians should do is live up to what we have already attained. when we don't know much, we live according to what we know, praying that God continues to teach us and that we continue to learn. if a kid is in 3rd grade, you don't expect him to know trigonometry. and if he's a senior in high school, you don't expect him to be unable to spell his name. he should live up to what he has already attained.

it's a process, always moving, always changing, always forward. the important thing is to seek God fully along the way, and He will help you grow.

where are you in your journey? what have you already attained?

do you just believe there's a God, but aren't convinced of anything else? live up to that. think about what that means. what is God? all-powerful, all-knowing, He loves unconditionally, He is perfect, He is always right. it means He created everything, and that means everything belongs to Him. it also means He's bigger than everything. sounds like He's worthy of being worshipped! live with that in mind, and He will show you more.

do you believe the Bible speaks God's truth? live up to that. what does that even mean? well, it must be worth reading. God can speak through it to you. and if God, the amazing being Who created everything and is so perfect, allowed His thoughts to be written on paper for you to read, you must be special to Him! live with that in mind, and He will show you more.

do you believe Jesus told the truth? live up to that. what does that mean? it means He was related to God personally as His Son, which must mean He knew some stuff! it means He was wiser than everyone around Him, and that He was like God. He said if anyone saw Him they saw His Father. whoa. it means He predicted His death and resurrection and those both came true - which means He raised Himself from the grave! who else can claim that?! live with that in mind, and He will show you more.

do you believe that you have sinned and that Jesus is the only way to be saved from your sin? live up to that. what does it mean? it means if you don't accept Him, you're in deep trouble! and if you do accept Him, it means you are incredibly relieved and grateful! it means you are covered by His perfection, even though you still sometimes mess up. it requires that you live your life to please and honor the One who saved your soul! and if you're trying to live to please Him, it means you read His Bible and pray to Him to find out what pleases Him, from the way you dress to the way you think. live with that in mind, and He will show you more.

we can always grow. we always have more to attain. it's not a boring life! we are not 'there' yet, and we can't 'get ourselves together'. come as you are. surrender to His KINGship. Jesus is waiting to show you more.

built-in filters

i love photography. just my own little recordings of life around me with my little camera... i've never taken a class, but something just feels right about framing certain parts of life in a viewfinder. some things seem meant to be captured for all time.
one thing i have been noticing over the years, though, is how the photo so often does NOT reflect the reality. somehow reds are troublesome to capture: the rich gradations of velvet red in a flower get lost in a blob of brilliance once the photo is taken. i throw so many photos away of gorgeous red flowers... here are examples:

all detail is lost...

instead of the striking tulips these were to my eyes, they appear as simple red blobs...

on the one hand, it is so frustrating to see such beauty and be unable to record it to look at later, when the short-lived flower has fallen apart. on the other hand, i must marvel at the ability of our eyes to decipher all the richness of color hues. God made our eyes SO intricate that they easily read what my complicated camera cannot!

another 'aarrrgh!'-worthy part of photography here in town where i live is all the man-made structures that get in the way of my photographs. when i am driving down the road and i see incredible colors pop, i snap a photo, thrilled. but when i look at the photo i've just taken, it is so often criss-crossed with electric lines or jumbled with houses or cut off by telephone poles. half the work of taking photos these days is trying to find an angle that eliminates all these ridiculous things!

here are some examples of what my mind thought it was seeing versus what i was actually taking a picture of:

what i thought i saw on the way to work:

gorgeous flowering trees, contrasted against each other

what my photo told me i saw:

telephone poles, sidewalk, and road in front of little trees??!

what i saw out my front window:

a gorgeous tree bursting with flowers!

what i really was seeing:

my neighbor's cluttery plastic flowers and garden decorations galore

the winter was no different... you'd think the snow or something could cover our man-made junk, but my photos tell a different story.

the majestic pines i thought i was capturing:

glorious, snow-covered trees reaching to the sky

what i really caught:

how many wires crossing this spot??? SIX??!!

the incredible puff of cloud i thought i was seeing:

stunning...

the distraction i really saw:

more wires?? really?

the sunset i saw as i drove down the main drag by our house:

a startling view of God's sky

what was in the way:

still a beautiful sky, but marred by street lights and signs...

at Christmas time, i looked in our window from outside and saw our little tree, looking so cute and bright through the window. i saw:

the cutest little brightly-lit tree in the cutest little window!

apparently i was really seeing:

dim colors, and mostly reflections in the glass of trees and sky and our sidewalk lamp...

and how about that gorgeous soft sunlight that catches the trees just so when the deep blue clouds behind them set their color afire? i saw:

stunning blues against yellowy leaves

what did i get???

shining wires, grey-brown rooftops, more neighbor clutter, and a no parking sign??

what does it matter? so i took some photos and they didn't turn out how i saw them. move on, right? 

but take a moment to ponder what that means about your eyes. do you realize how amazing your senses are??? not only do your eyes take in all the input at lightning speeds and relay all that information to your brain, but there is a part of that visual assembly line that filters out unnecessary things so that you SEE a modified image in your brain! scientists say it's in the thalamus and the visual cortex. incredible. we know those other things are in the picture, but our brain picks out the beauty so we can enjoy what we see. 

even while you've been reading this, think of your whole field of vision for a moment: the rest of the computer screen, the border of the blog window, the keyboard, the room around you - it's all filtered out so you can concentrate on what you read. awesome!

it reminds me of the same thing i learned in nursing school about our sense of hearing. we hear SO much, but our auditory system tunes out all the 'extra' stuff so that we can hear what's relevant. that's how we can be in a room full of people, but concentrate on one conversation. when we drive our car, we don't even hear the rumble of the engine as loudly as we hear the thoughts in our head! 

but if we want to, if we focus on it, we can hear those little sounds, we can see the rest of our field of vision. 

it all comes down to focus. 

i read an old writing by charles spurgeon that my husband forwarded to me today. it talked about how we pray. i find, personally, that i have a really hard time focusing on praying. i start with all the best intentions, but before i even realize it, my mind has often wandered to other topics. or if i pray laying in bed when i can't fall asleep, the next thing i know is that i've fallen asleep! how is it so hard to focus?! charles spurgeon put it like this:

The common fault with most of us is our readiness to yield to distractions. Our thoughts go roving hither and thither, and we make little progress towards our desired end.... How great an evil this is! It injures us, and what is worse, it insults our God. What should we think of a petitioner, if, while having an audience with a prince, he should be playing with a feather or catching a fly?

that's me: audience with the King and here i am distracted by a feather.
it IS insulting. it IS sinful. God tells us to pray continually, to be in constant communion with Him, to live our lives as though we have constant audience with the King. that's the reality. we DO have constant audience with Him!
how dare i push Him to the side! how dare i tune Him out like the buzzing noise of electricity in my ears, or like the wires criss-crossing my vision!
really, i think we were created with amazing physical details so we can relate them to our spiritual life. we were made to treat God the way our bodies automatically treat the things we focus on: that conversation in a room full of people, that brilliant sunset behind street signs.
while our body does these things naturally, we must train our hearts to focus on God. it doesn't come naturally to our sinful selves.
may we grow to focus on what matters. may we see God's beauty and His holiness and tune out the distractions!

by the way, the gorgeous photos of what i thought i was seeing are all from corbis.com, an incredible photo website. :)

and the charles spurgeon clip was from april 12, out of his devotional, Morning and Evening.

life has come!

we have not been abandoned at Jesus' tomb. we have not been left with sin and guilt and shame.

God is the God of LIFE!

when all seems dim and lifeless, He loves to bust in, tear down walls, restore, and speak life into dry, dusty death.

when all seems lost and we sit on the floor crying, that is when God loves to step in.
"I AM HERE!" He shouts.

when we hear one too many discouraging words, and our inner voice says, "give it up; you're no good," that is when God gathers us into His arms.
"I love you," He whispers.

the ultimate proof of His love to bring life and hope into the impossible came after Jesus had been lying completely dead in a tomb for days. He was wrapped up in burial cloths, put in a cave, and a huge rock was sealed across the entrance. the Romans even stationed guards in front of the rock, in case those rebel disciples tried something fishy.

Jesus was dead and gone... or so they thought.

but God wasn't done. He ripped through the clouds, quaked the earth, flung aside the stone, knocked out the guards so that they 'shook and became like dead men', and raised Jesus from the dead! (Matthew 28:2-4) in the earth's darkest hour, when evil thought he'd won, GOD rose victorious!

the core thing that Jesus did while He was on earth was conquer death. he destroyed our ultimate fear. He killed the scary in life.

we need only to accept His victory to cover our shortcomings, and we will gain that same resurrection Jesus had. amazing because when we look honestly at ourselves, we can only truly find guilt. each one of us is personally responsible for nailing Jesus to the cross (see my previous blog, Good Friday). and even though we jumped eagerly into our sins, God provides the way out. He says, "I am the Way out; follow ME." and if we are willing to turn our back on our self-love so that we can take His hand, He will lead us to life.

and He reminds us of His love for life everyday.

how many different ways does God say, "I LOVE YOU!" and prove to us that He is the author of LIFE?

one way we get to see glimpses of His face is in the world He created. i particularly love the detail and diversity of flowers. each one screams, "i was made by a God who loves LIFE! i was hand-crafted here in a field, or here in the forest, by a God who loves to create beauty where there should be nothingness!"

so here are some photos i've taken over the years of God's expressions of Himself:

hearts, from God to us...

actually taken by my parents - roses in Nigeria

the same roses as above, a few days later...

and a few days later - a gorgeous transformation!

amazing - this is how we found this rose - looks like a butterfly!

looks like a heart to me!

"The God who made the world and everything in it 

is the Lord of heaven and earth and 

does not live in temples built by human hands. 

And He is not served by human hands, 

as if He needed anything, 

because He Himself gives all men 

life 

and breath 

and everything else... 

'For in Him we live and move and have our being.'"

Acts 17:24-25, 28a