I think there is such a thing as "popular people" in life. People who just "have it." Whatever it is. They have an advantage. They could be slightly more athletic, slightly more intelligent, slightly more inclined to having a major magazine offer them serious money to be their cover model. It's like Duke playing Florida A&M in the NCAA tournament. You know who's better. The world seems to be a master at setting up competitions in order for people to fight for their place. It's almost like a ritual for their right to exist in some cases. Granted, this is a far cry from DWTS or college basketball, but we've seen it in our daily lives since high school. The guy who can bench 250 lbs, has washboard abs, and runs a 40 in less than 4 seconds, he's got a date for Prom. The guy who has 2 feet of hair, hasn't shaved in two days, and spends his Friday nights watching Star Trek 2, well he needs to go back to Hastings and get a couple rentals for that night because there's not a girl in the world who's going to go with him to that dance. I think the main thin gthat we should take out of this is that not one person in this world has the image of God more in them then someone else. But for some reason that is in God's reasoning, some people just win more than others. And that is okay. It's not the way it's meant to be, but for the moment it is okay for us.
For more years than I can count, I was the dude watching Star Trek late night. I was a social loser by society's standards. Ah, but in the end, I got the girl :) Why? Jesus. No other reason then that. In many ways, I am still a greasy-haired nerdmeister, but Jesus used that process of being a nobody in the social desert to purify my heart and make me truly trust in him. I needed serious heart-work to get me ready to love my wife. I had to learn how to love Jesus before I could love the most beautiful woman in the world. Oh boy it was worth every second I was out there in the desert with God! She makes every day special, like it's Christmas. If I hadn't been handed the role of nerd for so many years, I wouldn't have had time to be with God to really work on my heart. Being second was a wonderful blessing to me. And in the end, we all will reap what we sow. We will get the Kingdom in the end, even if we have nothing now. When we are poor, we are rich beyond belief!! God knows his people. He is the one Person out of everyone, including the angels, who is not swayed by physical appearance. When God looks at us, he truly does look at our hearts. He desires our hearts. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." Matthew 5:8 (NIV). And so the blessing for being a child of God and also being the quiet, unassuming girl sitting in the back, or the "dateless loser" dude from high school becomes this:
"Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy; the wealth on the seas will be brought to you, to you the riches of the nations will come." Isaiah 60:5
When Jesus returns he will renew, or redeem, our bodies as spiritual bodies (1 Corinthians 15). We will still have skin and bones and stomachs etcetera, but we will finally be who we were meant to be. We were all meant to be radiant. The other night we were leaving our parents' house, walking out in the moonlight, and I stole a glance at my wife. There she was, beautiful in the moonlight. Striking, she was a goddess. She took my breath away. She's always perfect and breathtaking to me, but in that moment...wow, is all I could think to say.
The world with its ideas of marketing and consumerism wants to put a price on moments like that. Think about how much the makeup industry spends on capturing "perfect" moments with face models for their commercials. Why? Because if you buy our product, you can live as a radiant human being. You can live fully alive. You can finally be released as the person you were made to be. But only with our product. Now, is there anything wrong with buying makeup? Of course not. That's ridiculous how some churches ban the use of makeup, or forbid their women to try to look even somewhat decent. It's a form of control and a technique to quell their husband's fears that if their wives really looked pretty then they might not measure up and then they would leave them for Antonio who lives down the street with the awesome haircut and the washboard abs, far more than it is Godliness. But it's when that product becomes the medium by which you will have salvation and redemption of yourself, your image, your body, when it becomes an evil thing. And the temptation is there with it. The marketing ploys are begging us to feel like that about their product. And why not? If we do, then we have to have it and our demand will be inelastic. And they will make their money. But it is ourselves that we do it to. It's the sinful part of us that wants to believe that somehow, we can do it ourselves. And not by waiting on God. And that's when it becomes a sin to wear that makeup product.
Right now it seems that one of the buzzwords in the church is "revolution." And as much as I am an un-fan of buzzwords, this is one that is true. As Muse said in their song "Uprising"
They will not force us.
They will stop degrading us.
They will not control us.
And we will be victorious.
They might have written those lyrics tongue-in-cheek as a way to get crowds pumped up before college football games, but there's more truth there then on the surface. We need liberation of our spiritual senses. This world is so demanding to our hearts; it's a slave driver to our desires. And we have to put it in its place. It belongs to be crushed under Christ's foot. I remember when I was in Honduras on a mission trip. And was shocked to see the world's fingerprints there, even in the ghetto of Tegucigalpa. The images and commercials of the world's "popular people" showing off the latest product. Seriously? These people wouldn't have food for dinner if someone didn't give it to them out of the goodness of their hearts. The demons are going to pay for that one when God destroys them once and for all. These people didn't have a chance it seems. No food plus they have to deal with the world. We live in the most marketed place of all too. We don't have it easy. Just like Lot (before he had children with his two daughters - btw) living in Sodom, we are seriously distressed in our hearts by this culture. And why shouldn't we be? It's all geared towards getting our flesh to overrun us and change us to its ideals and cultural ways which are simply to do what feels right. But when we are truly alive in God, what really feels good is being near God. We must resist against this world. We must rise up now in the Spirit. And it doesn't start with picketing, or demonstrating. It starts by rising up against our own selves. Putting our heart for Christ above the world, and putting to death our own innate evil desires. We are beautiful in Christ, we are strong in Christ, we are lovers, warriors, poets, and dreamers spiritually in our God. Those are identities we can't find elsewhere outside of God. We are gods and goddesses in Jesus (John 10:34). The world promises pathetic copy cats to these things. We need to see things as they really are.
The real key to winning this battle for me is intimacy with Jesus. Not even intimacy, but ecstasy. We need intimate times with God that are mind-blowing and incredible. We all crave a union with God and we all need to get it. Not once a week, not just at summer camp or a mission trip, we need it every single day. We need times with God where we cry out words like what these lovers of God wrote:
Jesus, Lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly - Charles Wesley
I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased; I went out from myself leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies - John of the Corss
You are the One whom I desire....There is nothing created that can fully satisfy my desires. Make me one with You in a sure bond of heavenly love, for You alone are sufficient to Your lover - Thomas a Kempis.
We need intimacy and INCREDIBLE ecstasy with God every day because:
1. We were meant to have it all the time with God. I mean, he put His Spirit inside us. How intimate is that?? I can only imagine being able to go into my wife's soul. Jesus does it with us because he is the one we will marry one day. Our bodies are his temple for crying out loud (1 Corinthians 6:19), not some church building. I mean really, if you saw the svelte Fernando saying to his love Britney on some afternoon soap, "Your body is my temple," you know he desires her. And Paul said in Ephesians 5: 31-32 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be units to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church." How much more plain can he make it? He wants to be intimate with us. Bad. He desires us. God wants us.
2. We need it to fight against our own lusts and shortcomings and to fight against the world. Our brains' pleasure centers will always be there, regardless of how close we are to God, how much we read the Bible, or how many times we go shopping. We need that part of our brain to LIGHT UP when we get intimate with Jesus. Our hearts need to race at the thought of meeting Jesus inside ourselves. We need to have similar physiological effects on ourselves when we worship Jesus as a person would when they are sneaking out for a secret rendezvous with their beloved at 3 am. Because in this world we still have to deal with our flesh. Instead of it being a thorn in our side, let's turn the tables on it and put to death sin and make ourselves physically crave God. David wrote in Psalm 63:1 "My soul thirst for you, my body longs for you, in a dry a thirsty land where there is no water." He desires God, body and soul. And he recognizes where he lives, a dry and thirsty desert with not a well of water for his soul in sight. Jesus is just waiting to be desired, pursued, needed. And he's waiting right inside of us. So worship him! :) Go for it!
We have a passionate God who is deeply, madly, crazily in love with us. He is giving us all of himself. And we our his forever.
What Jesus really wants from us is for us to say to him,
My Lover is mine and I am his - Song of Songs 2:16
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