I rarely testify...

i know this guy who pushes people, for no apparent reason other than to watch them react in a way that he can later make fun of, most people don't like this guy (secretly he doesn't want them to) but i like him. He asks hard questions, last night he asked me why i got saved.
i didn't answer him, because it's not my job. However i am obligated to others to say these things and these things are not nice.
I was never strung out on heroin or crack, never into gangs, and had a fairly virginal existence apart from a few stupid indiscretions. So what did i need saving from. Why did he save me?

I'm going to start at this from the angle that makes the most sense to me.
I didn't get saved to (or Christ didn't die for me to):

• __ live like everybody else
• __ be better than anyone else
• __ one day remember what god used to do in me
• __ complain
• __ have ministry fall through my fingers because i couldn't build up something lasting in myself
• __ condemn others
• __ secretly wish i had no accountability
• __ one day remember what god used to do with me
• __ bring dissension and division
• __ one day remember what god used to do for me
• __ have my marriage fall apart
• __ lust
• __ cry myself to sleep wondering what happened
• __ want after this world
• __ serve a man

i guess i could go on but that list could get pretty drawn out and offensive. Some would say, "well duh, but get to the point.", and i would say to them, "you don't tell me..."

i remember when i first got saved it seemed unreal that God wanted to have anything to do with me, i didn't have anything to offer or bring to table and I'm not saying that to sound humble, i truly had nothing--no charisma, dim intellect, shameful heart, really, nothing. And then somebody shared with me the rumor that God was infatuated with me, that he wanted to turn what i never had into what he always wanted. I didn't really believe it at first but i thought how could it hurt (yeah i know dim intellect, it hurts). I didn't start counting the cost till a little later, and that's another story altogether.

So here i am with nothing and he promises something, so i wait and i start to see little grumblings of something on the horizon, and i start living like it. You know, "don't talk about it, be about it". And i read and i can't stop reading, i fill myself up and i didn't even know i was that empty but i keep on shoving it down-chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word, and then i start regurgitating it (go smith cotton bible study) and then i start getting compliments and the other christians are all into me now so i have a base to build on, and in the midst of that i get a little cocky with my "hardcore" self, and start abusing my relationship with Christ, I start using it to get something. --do you see what happened there; i went from a place where i knew i had nothing to give so he started giving, to thinking i had something and taking away from Christ. It's crazy that God works like this but bear with me.

He is passionate, He's wild, Untamable, Immutable, God Most High.

He loved me when i had nothing and gave me something and continues to give long after, but even if I give him everything, my dreams, my hopes, my wife, my kids, my career, all i have, i would still be giving him nothing, and yet he gives. That's love, that's communion, that's acceptance. And i love Him for it. As long as i'm in that mindset where that he loves me, not my ability or my mark on this world, but truly me, i know he's close. I've lost sight of it several times; life gets in the way you know? But even then he's there.

Now on to the show. . . i read what paul said, and i have nightmares without sleeping. Paul states that he accomplished everything in his society to receive status and success, and then he turned and did everything pleasing to christians to achieve status in ministry (he single handedly saved a quarter of the known world), and then he says he counts it all as nothing (NOTHING?), to the comparison of knowing Him who called him from the darkness. And that's what i wanted, it's why i still do it, I've had plenty of let downs, a myriad of people stop pursuing this passion to give up and tell me, "good luck, you won't find it in that direction", I've seen people get saved, delivered, healed, and set free, only to drag the name of Christ back down to a cave deeper than the one He called them out of to begin with, and you know what, He's still waiting for them all with open arms, with bigger ministry opportunities, with a new vision and a new heart, if they would just reach out and take it. I have "reason" enough to afford me a fairly comfortable life away from His calling and I'm only just now seeing that he's still calling me higher than i thought i could go. but i don't want reason, i want to know him like paul knew him, not so i can save a quarter of the known world or so people will tremble when they hear my name, but so i can love him. He made me to serve him and he saved me to love me. I couldn't receive his love apart from Christ, it was his good pleasure to crush Christ to get to me, God traded heaven's brightest for earth's dimwit. And that's what i love, that it's so unexpected, so unwarranted and yet so perfectly simple, His loving-kindness is a gift, his priority has always been you and me. I'm feeling sick now writing about it, my worth is wrapped up in Christ's work but what a shame if my "work" is wrapped up in Christ's worth. Because my work is nothing.

Who knows what makes us special, not me, not los, not james, not moses, not paul, not billy graham, only he knows, and he's not telling. I will serve, i will press on, I will find his will for me, i'm just now getting the steam for this. . .

a short word to the haters, :pbbbbt

Deconstruction: arts and crafts

-We craft for ourselves a God we want to serve then we strive to appease and impress this false image.

-We incorporate religious exercise into our schedules to prove devotion

-We judge others on an imbalanced and sliding scale while judging ourselves in absolutes

-We fight with our faith family and offend our real family all the while rarely ever going out of our way to connect with others who are in “real” need.

“We trade intimacy for busyness and relationship for ritual.”

In all this we set ourselves up to feel and be disappointed. This god we’ve attempted to construct is never like the God that is; he cannot be satisfied, he always expects more and will guilt you into a lonely, secluded, intellectually pompous and barren grave.

It starts with us being too prideful to admit that “we” honestly have no idea who He is or what He wants. So we start to “do” things in hopes to make up for our lack of knowledge – then we guilt others by our seeming scholarship and devotion.

Performance is and always will be a poor substitute for living in the will of the Father. Our expectations should give way to our desire. Our expectation is reward and punishment but our desire is Love; overpowering, unabashed, everlasting Love. And that’s exactly what we find when we stop striving and allow Him to reveal Himself without our instinctive preconceptions and limited ideas.

The Act of Acting. . . aka the "myth of natural devotion"

Where does Jesus Christ figure in when we have a concern about our natural relationships? Most of us will desert Him with this excuse—”Yes, Lord, I heard you call me, but my family needs me and I have my own interests. I just can’t go any further” (see Luke 9:57-62). “Then,” Jesus says, “you ’cannot be My disciple’ ” (see Luke 14:26-33).

True surrender will always go beyond natural devotion. If we will only give up, God will surrender Himself to embrace all those around us and will meet their needs, which were created by our surrender. Beware of stopping anywhere short of total surrender to God. Most of us have only a vision of what this really means, but have never truly experienced it.

-Chambers

He did it again. there is no natural. a lot of us have a natural affinity for the things of God and we take such deep advantage of this gift and eventually believe the deceipt that this has something to do with spiritual power but all and all it's not the acolades or abilities but total surrender in the "other" places where we are weak, where we are desperate, where we are vulnerable. That's God's measure of surrender for us, not in our obedience to the call but our surrender to everything else.

To be more precise the "educated, mature christian" thinks himself fairly capable of being close to God and (almost without thinking) defends the eternally secure position of devotion. We think ourselves worthy of some credit, our walk has been tested, our character intact, and our failures swept under the rug, we think ourselves in some ways almost commendable, but "the trap lies in wait for those most unawares". We are never farther from God than when we lose account of our desperate need of mercy and grace and we are never closer than when the complete gulf of his holiness and our filth is blatantly on display before us and the world. I have friends who have fallen fast and hard, shaming themselves and the gospel they so willingly proclaimed, and in a way that fall is the thing that saved them, it proved God's grace isn't for the quick or the talented or even the adequately equipped, His grace is for fallen man, period, whatever place, whatever circumstance, his grace cuts through the B.S. of our pretenses and our excuses and our disbelief and rescues us from ourselves. 

This is the God i fell in love with, not the one who is impressed with my theology or the god of false hope, but the God who sees me for what i truly am and loves me. and it's not in spite of myself it's because of my self. The reason i called this blog the smallest peace was this very idea. that christianity isn't the sum of it's parts as a whole, it truly is the smallest piece. The piece that sees value and worth in unmerrited brigands and bandits (i.e. humanity). We don't make a mockery of the gospel when we fail, we make a mockery of the smallest truth (and the most relevant one) when we succeed and think it has anything to do with us.