Indie-ness Might Not Have Been Born Here, but it Definitely Found a Home at Our House

My wife and I have this running joke about being indie. I leave Facebook statuses about how she shops at Native Roots Market [the local all-organic, Oklahoma-produce-carrying market] and how she shops there with her own bag she made out of a bean sack that we got from the Anasazi tribe [which my uncle, a truck driver, brought home for us] from New Mexico who grow their own fresh beans and sells in these really original bean sacks on I-40 just for us [she actually has yet to sew the bag together for use at the market]. And then I posted as my status about how there's no way I could top her indieness even if I were to put on some Death Cab [an indie band] and then start watering my herb garden with recycled bath water [which I have yet to do-because it would take a long time and would, frankly, just be a waste of my time]. And then today I came home from work and told my sweetheart that at the office I was listening to the remix of one of Death Cab's songs, Soul Meets Body, that was what I classified as "the epitome of indie house music." [which it really is] And that's our thing that we do. And it's fun :) Because I married my best friend.

In a lot of ways, I feel like we're losing our grip on the simple fun and pleasures of life. Instead of enjoying a nice joke, we enjoy tv. And it has to be slightly more graphic than last weeks program, otherwise we'll have to go to DVR to get our kicks, right? Culture, mainstream music, TV, etc is so focused on getting and through the process of getting things you get power. And that leads to a lot of other things. Sex, money, a nice house, whatever. Take vulnerability for example. It is one of the pleasurable things to do. To be vulnerable. Because to be vulnerable you have to have someone you want to know you in an intimate way (emotional, spiritual, mental, physical, etc), but you also have to take a risk. It's scary, but it's enjoyable. The world has replaced vulnerability with possessing. We go possess things and it makes us stronger and better. When in reality with Jesus, the most pleasurable and enjoyable things is to be vulnerable to Jesus' Spirit. To let him enjoy us and to be one with us while we worship him. That is something that really nothing in the world can rival. Mainstream culture, in a lot of ways, has become a smokescreen to block our view from real life with God and redirect us toward ourselves. Who grows up dreaming of enjoying life with themselves? No girl ever dreams of her wedding day to herself. No man ever dreams of sitting by himself day after day and loving it. We are positioned to enjoy others and worship that One, Jesus. It's why Jesus says we are salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). And what does salt do? It makes things taste somewhat decent. And the point I think here is that as the salt of the earth, we are suppose to love life and know it, live it, and make life good for others. We should salt the culture, we should salt 3rd world nations, we should salt everything with ourselves. We need to be in pursuit of life in Jesus and with Jesus. Living life to the fullest with our hearts fully alive with our Beloved Jesus should be our main priority, our thing that we are running after. Jesus said to the Jews who were persecuting him in John 5:39-40:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (NIV)

How can we shine the image of God before others if we don't already have life and love with our God? We need to throw away the sinful things of this world (throw out the bad music, throw out the bad TV shows, the bad influences, the bad situations, and everything else bad) and pursue life with our Beloved Jesus. Because then we will be fully alive images of our Original, our God Jesus Christ.

Shhh! It's a Secret!

Inside of us, we have a secret. Something magical. Something wonderful. We have this world made inside of us where we have a beautiful God who desires to be our Lover. He is not seen with our eyes, or heard with our ears, or even touched with our skin, but only felt by spiritual skin, heard with ears of our soul, and eyes of our heart. It's something so personal, so intimate to us that we have trouble talking about it with the closest of people to us in this life (I've wondered lately if maybe that's why telling others about God's love can be so hard?). This Lover is Spirit (John 4:24) and woos us to a spiritual intimacy that goes far deeper, that gets to the core of who we are for the shear purpose of the Beloved enjoying us and us enjoying him, than any other type of intimacy this world has. We derive our identity, our favorite songs, favorite movies, favorite types of sunsets, smells of trees, flowers, times of day and night, and our absolute best (and even worst) fantasies and day dreams all from this secret. And it's also one of the hardest things to talk or communicate to others about in the real world. And it's worth everything. More than all the rubies, jewels, diamonds, gold reserves of all the nations in the world, and all cash currency in every country. It's priceless (Song of Songs 8:7). That's seems to be a general current state of affairs of the romance of God in this world.

Then one day, Jesus will sweep us off our feet and into the clouds. And all of a sudden, everything that we have had as our own personal secret will become real. It will become physical. It will exist. And it will all exist in Jesus and with Jesus. We will see each others' secrets with God (1 Corinthians 13:2) and enjoy them all together. We will no longer strive to be fully alive, nor have to fight against the world to keep the candle inside of us burning in our secret room with God. We will be with Jesus, married to him, delighting in him, and receiving our hearts' every desire (Psalm 37:4).

Of course, it's not really a secret. We need to shout it from the tops of our roofs so that everyone may know and fall in love with Jesus and realize what God has set inside their own hearts that needs to be redeemed so they may live. But it still has the characteristic of something tucked away in our hearts, just for us to know. Like a note being passed under that table during class. It will be embodied in the new name Jesus will give to us that we only will know; the one that two lovers have for each other in their playful embraces (Revelation 2:17).

Enjoy Jesus and worship him in your secret place. Go into your room, shut your door, and be alone with your Beloved (Matthew 6:6). The rest...is up to you :)

Soon?

I’ve really started to wonder how close we are to Jesus returning lately. I watched a video on Youtube on how they are not letting press into the Gulf to view the oil leak. I don’t want to make predictions or anything, but I do believe we are anytime away from Jesus coming to sweep us off our feet. I definitely think the oil leak is a part of the “birth pangs” one way or another that Jesus talked about (Matthew 24:8) But how bad is it? How much control will the government take in this situation. Reporters aren’t even allowed there and the penalty is a felony if you do take illegal pictures/video within 65 feet of equipment and beaches in the Gulf. We can’t even see the wildlife anymore and how bad they are suffering (those are brown pelicans on Breton Island, Louisiana which are endangered by the oil above), and that’s according to CNN. It would seem without regard some of our liberties are being taken away in this situation. Will it last? Maybe. Maybe not. Only God knows what will happen. But Jesus is coming soon. And for us that is our wedding day soon approaching. For those who hate him, John wrote of the elders saying in heaven,

The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great- and for destroying those who destroy the earth. Revelation 11:18 (NIV)

Soon, we will be in our God’s arms. And soon Jesus will bring justice to this world and save us. Jesus badly desires for all to come to him. And that is why he has delayed justice to the world (2 Peter 3:9). But he won’t delay forever. Every single day, helpless little girls are raped by men in the sex trade, poor babies and families starve to death in Africa (especially Sudan), people everywhere are left in brokenness and pain in their hearts and many take it out on innocent people, war is rampant, child armies exist, women are forced to emotional and physical prison across the Middle East because of pagan religions, and the list goes on and on. Only Jesus can rescue and save us! And he desires us more than anyone else ever could. He is God and he soon will come back to take us away to his castle to be his forever and marry him and live happily ever after. Never to be separated from him or from our brothers and sisters in our Father’s family. Soon, oh so soon.

Who We Are

Most of us have heard that commentary about the question, "Who are you?" If you haven't it goes along the lines of someone asking someone else, "Who they are?" and then they give them a varied amount of responses, each of which gets shut down. They give him their name, not good enough, They give him their job. "That's what you do, not who you are," he responds. They tell him about their family. "That's your loved ones, not who you are." And so on. The whole thing is laughable, but brings up a good point. Who are we? Most of us would respond, I'm a child of God and beloved of Jesus Christ, covered in his blood and forgiven of my sins. Which essentially is who we are. But what does that mean? I think it's important to know us in the face of the world who demands that we derive our identity from what we consume, what we do, what we go to school for, etc. Here was what I thought about who we are as God's own:

1) We are free! And that's not just emotionally set free from sin, but we are free to have as MUCH of God as we want. Jesus dying on the cross gave us "unlimited access" to God, as many have said. But what does that mean? We can get up at 4 am and pray to him without sacrificing a lamb? That sounds off to me. It means that we can be as close and as intimate to God as we desire. Jesus came to earth to save us and to tell us he was going to marry us one day. When Jesus said in John 14:2-3, "I am gong to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." (NIV) As John Eldredge pointed out in Journey of Desire, this is what a fiance would say to the woman he intended to marry. The couple moved into the man's house and he would go back and build them a place to live on the house. Jesus desires us to be completely one with him, always. And neither sacrifices, nor making sure to read the Bible every day, nor speaking about Jesus in front of others, or keeping the entire law makes him satisfied. The only thing that does is when we draw near to him in intimacy and worship him.

"The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming-not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship." Hebrews 10:1 (NIV)

2) We are apart of God's family. As Jesus' we have the promise that one day we will walk before him and say our I do's to the Son. He desires us. He wants us to wake him in his arms, every day, for the rest of forever. He wants to be one spiritually with us, always. Just look at his intentions. He made the world originally a flourishing, gorgeous place where we walked and lived and loved him in the midst of the garden. There were no boundaries, Adam and Eve were naked with Jesus. They had no one casting shame on them for being bare with God. Satan was unknown for the moment. There was unfettered intimacy with Jesus. That is what he is trying to redeem. And will redeem, and then some, when he returns. This time it will be a city, not a garden (although I'm sure there will be quite a few parks and gardens in the New Jerusalem). The Tree of Life even makes its appearance there. God will not rest until he has us in his arms once again. As Eldredge wrote:

"There is no union on earth like the consummation of the love between a man and a woman. No other connection reaches as deeply as this one was meant to...after creating this stunning portrait of a total union...God turns the universe on its head when he tells us that this is what he is seeking with us." (Journey of Desire, p.130)

He quotes Ephesians 5:31-32 next:

"'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife; and the two will become one flesh.' This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church." (NIV)

Jesus wants a spiritual intimacy with us that is the original of what earthly intimacy images. He tells us, I want you and I want to marry you! And so we have the hope that one day we will walk away in our Prince's arms. But not only do we get our Lover, we get our family as well. We are free in our Father, our wonderful Heavenly Father. We are free to talk and converse with our Best Friend, the Holy Spirit. We truly are free in him.

3) We are lamps on a lampstand. After Jesus has created a world of love inside of us, he wants us to show it off to the entire world. So many people still have no idea of what God's love really means. Many Christians still do not have an idea as many live their relationships in a distant manner with him. The thought of being naked before God and being in his arms and his tender embrace as two lovers is uncomfortable and unsettling. But Jesus wants us to be near to him, to worship him, to pursue him, desire him. Everything is all about Jesus Christ when we are in love with him. And that's how it is suppose to be. He is our God, he is our everything, our heart's desire. Be free and worship him and let that light shine before others that comes out of your relationship with Jesus. People need to know God's heart and only we can show it to them right now.

Holy Embrace of Jesus in the Midst

When life gets hectic and really busy, I can tend toward a trap of falling into "friendship" with God. And by this I mean not worshiping him completely, passionately in my soul and heart. Jesus is my Best Friend, but he's my God too. Sometimes I'll replace intimacy with pedestrian conversation. Eg our conversations tend more towards banal absurdity (to employ an oxymoron) of the conversation of "Hey what's up? Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Hmm really?" than the passion and the romance of something like John of the Cross' The Dark Night, "I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased, I went out from myself." Now, I love the usual conversation and talking with God, but if we don't have intense worship and intimacy with Jesus, we are just talking. God is holy and by holy I mean reserved to be special. It is the exact same concept with my wife except taken to the nth degree. I take our time to be very special, it's set apart, it's holy. I tell her I want to pursue her and only her by setting aside our time together to make her my complete center of attention. And she loves that. So does God. It's one of the ways women embody the image of God is in the desire to be pursued. By us making God holy in our hearts, we essential set him aside above everything else to pursue him above all things.

Jesus most definitely desires us to want him, desire him, to crave him, and to day dream about him all day long. He wants to be the object of our affection. Exactly as a lover wants to be his beloved's always. And when I don't pursue him, it's usually due to one of two things: 1) I completely forget him or 2) I'm way too lazy to pursue. (Shame on me for both of those things, I feel terribly about them both). Jesus writes about our dilemma with him in the Song of Songs

"I slept by my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking: Open to me my sister, my darling...I have taken off my robe-must I put it on again? I have washed my feet-must I soil them again? My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him...I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone." 5:1,3-4,6 (NIV)

We have these minds that just don't want to be with God, think about loving on Jesus, and just want to zone out, or focus on small things, all when we are faced with the possibility of true joy and pleasure in the romantic embrace of Jesus Christ. How could we say, why should I get up and go to him? After all that we know, after all the joy and happiness and pleasure experienced in the torrid love affair with God? We truly are in a battle against ourselves! We need eyes to see and ears to hear the romance with God, always. We need time every day where we don't just have the normal conversation with God throughout the day, but we have a time of embracing with Jesus' Spirit, where we can worship him fully, bare before his eyes and enjoying Jesus' touch. We need ecstasy, we need rapture, we need it every day. And not only to make our relationship with Jesus flourish, but also as an act of spiritual warfare against our own flesh and as a protective barrier against Satan and his angels' attacks.

Servant in Love

My wife tonight made me a video slide show of pictures from our entire romance set to Colbie Caillat's Fallin for You and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever watched in my life. I mean I wept it was so sweet. I just watched it again and it's 3:30 am and I should be doing my math homework but that doesn't matter and it just made me cry again! The titles she wrote, the pictures on it, everything, it was perfect. And I was sitting there just watching how my wife came alone and Boom! My entire life changed years ago when I met her. I am not kidding, ever since the day I met her, I have had nothing else I've wanted to do each and single day since but be with her. Ever since she walked into that cafe, Plaid Cafe, that one down on campus corner that one Saturday afternoon, where we first met and had our first date, every day, every hour since that time at about 3:30 that Saturday, I have wanted nothing else but to just be with her. And you know, I knew this ever before that time I met her, but our entire romance mirrors our relationship with Jesus. Ever since that day in August almost 8 years ago when I read John Eldredge's Journey of Desire and discovered that Jesus wanted to be my Beloved and marry me one day, I have been enthralled with him. And wanted to be with him. He changed my life.

Life with God is one of the most incredible things ever. It's one of the hardest things to do in the world. Truly. As God's beloved we don't have an easy path sometimes. Peter got crucified upside down. John was sent off to a remote island and lived alone with God. And Jesus. The Father said there was no other way besides the cross and the cup could not be taken from him. We are lovers of our Father in a dark world and in many instances what is required of us is a lot. And it usually is simply by his grace that we are able to complete the task. I spent 6 1/2 years alone before I met my wife. I remember wondering if God would ever bring her to me. I remember being so lonely and feeling like no one cared about me or knew my name and if I died tomorrow how no one would care except my parents. And I felt like a traveler in the desert. It was by his grace, by his love, by his immense beauty, by the promise of his good heart that I had only to trust in and knowing that one day I would finally hold our Beloved in my arms for good. And now I'm home with my wife and waiting for us all to go home to Jesus. One of my favorites on faith in Jesus is Hebrews 11. I love it because it encapsulates all of our heroes from God's word and how they only did it because they had faith in God. It begins with this verse:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 11:1 (NIV)

I am sure of Jesus' love and that one day we will marry him and be with him forever. Worshiping him in oneness and intimacy forever. This romance is worth everything. I promise you that. The romance with Jesus, with each other, winning the world for our Beloved and our Father through the Holy Spirit, it's everything. It's perfect. It's wonderful. It gives us hope, faith, and it lets us give every bit of love we have until there's nothing left and then we discover that we still have love left in us even then. It makes us want to be simple servants. I just want to serve my wife. I'm going to do those dishes for her and then clean her car, all before she wakes up! I just want to serve Jesus and love him forever. He is so beautiful. So wonderful. And I can't wait to be with my wife and Jesus and us watch this slide show and then another one of all three of us together. God is perfect because he is love. Why wouldn't we sacrifice everything we have for him when his heart is this beautiful?

Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty....Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day." John6:34,54 (NIV)

For We Are Travelers in a Foreign Land

Whew, we just came off our 3 day weekend. It was great. We had all of our daughter's grandmas over for dinner, homemade ice cream, and fireworks for the 4th. It was fun. My Granny and my wife's Grandma have opposite personalities. Mine is quiet and reserved, "country quiet." My wife's is talkative and excited about life. But they both love Jesus and are the sweetest women. We shot off something called "The Big One"? I think. It shot up into the air and then exploded and made really pretty lights. Everyone was shooting off fireworks and so it sounded ominous when we walked around in the dark outside. It rained earlier in the day and it would have rained out the fireworks had it not stopped. That would have been the second 4th in a row that would have gotten rained out.

My wife and I keep talking about the sex trade going on. Especially right here in OKC. It's just shocking something that terrible happens right here. I want to see restoration of those girls in their Father. We need our Father so bad. Only he can provide healing for sins like that. We've been talking about how we need our Father's wisdom. I read through parts of Ecclesiastes this weekend and I have these moments in life where I get it with that book. More so than usual. I love Ecclesiastes. A lot of people don't like it, or interpret it to their own fancy, but they miss the point of the book when they do. My wife and I are an interesting bunch. We both have incredible relationships with God, but we relate to Jesus very differently. God is my Lover. And God is my wife's Father. In reality he's both of those things to us in relationship of course because the Father and the Son are one. But primarily when we relate to Jesus, we relate to him on two different relational planes. So I asked our Father a couple days ago, make me need you. Boy did he. What happened was I started to have a lack of rest in me. I couldn't rest! I couldn't look at my weekly work at the office or school and say, I did good. Now, I'll rest. Fail. One of the greatest joys I have is to sit down and talk about life with God. I needed it with the Father. He is so wise, he is the beginning of wisdom. And so we talked about Ecclesiastes. And I realized how badly I needed my Father because I need to know how to live life here. I need to know how to be like his Son. And I need my Daddy to teach me that. I need to know my Father is a Warrior and will save those little girls and bring them to his house one day where the former things will not be remembered (Is 65). Where they will play and have fun not be afraid of anything. Who has anything to be afraid of when God is our Father? Like Gandalf screaming as he charges down into the valley in Lord of the Rings leading the armies of Gondor as they obliterate the evil orcs, so I need to know my wise Father will fight for me, for us, for freedom, for liberating the world into the kingdom of his Son, and obliterating Satan and his angels. I need to hear him tell me, I want you to marry my Son. And have him throw us our wedding party. I need to sit over coffee with him on a porch and just talk and listen to him for hours and hours. I need my Father. We all need our Father. And by being covered in Jesus Christ's blood, we have relationship with our Father. And no longer have to be afraid of intimacy with the Son, with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit.

I wonder what kind of engagement party our Father will throw for us in preparing for our wedding to Jesus? Will it be outdoors? With candles and music and dancing and great food? Will the beach be just over our shoulders and the stars overhead? Our Father is crazy about us and no one wants us to marry his Son more than he. What will his expression be when we finally kiss the son? What will his face look like when he is about to leave with us to go fight and make war on evil earth? What words will he say to us when we sit on the back porch at nighttime with the fireflies and stars everywhere and we have nothing to do but just be with him?

We have a perfect Father in our Lord Jesus Christ. I can't wait until he returns and we are with him and our Beloved Jesus.