All God's Children

Last night I was setting in John 17 (a Peoria IL unity effort) and I had one of those "discipled by God moments". It was like I was able to see how much each person had desired to please the Lord in that meeting. People of all different skill levels and talents, people of different positions and titles.

There was some dancers and banner ministers that I felt God was greatly pleased with as they not only minister to the Lord themselves but also mentored others in doing so. I think the dance and banner ministry is preparing another generation of service and praise.

The emphasis that I felt God was impressing on my heart is His desire for each person, everyone in His entire body, to fulfill their personal and unique calling in Christ. I felt like my heart for "seeing others come into their fullness in Christ" went up 10 fold. I felt like I was in second grade of leadership in my ability to see others walk in what they were called to do.

I think and emotional believe more and more, that unity is all of us fully functioning in what we are called to do. Sorta like an independent dependence or a freeing confinement. This unity is tied to a Renascence. Renascence is "new birth" and ever since the beginning we have been called to be born again. We have just failed to see born again in all the creativity and diversity that God desired. We see "born again" more like looking alike, when it means "totally different" in Christ Jesus. Were there even two churches in the first century that were alike?

God in His Godness is seeking to connect me to those who are not like me!

Security is the ability to be who you are and still be filled with peace, grace and love in every situation.

Taking God to the poor

You can't get who you are from somebody else

Do you ever expect people to like you, love everything you say, joyfully tolerate all you petty differences? Do you think people love you? I am not asking if people should behave that way. I am asking do your expect them to?

OR
Are people like you and me. People who have issues of judgment, hurt feelings, likes and dislikes, fears and rejection. In the real world that is not yet taken over by the Kingdom of God, we have people treating people badly. This is OK!! It is even good (in a heaven forever and redemption under way sort of way).

As long as people treat us poorly, and you can decide what poorly means to you. I'm not worried, someone, many people, are going to treat you poorly no matter how you define it. Even if you define it in such a way as to allow for every kind of evil, someone is going to treat you nice and make a mess of your plans and thought life. So in this life we are going to be ill treated.

At this point we are blessed (read Beatitudes for description). It is great to have the help of all humanity in our quest of loving God first and foremost. In this world you cannot get from others what you can only get from God. The great redeemer has give us broken humanity to assist us in loving and needing love from Him. Sure we need to love one another and ought to. But no one should ever pressure others to love them in a defining way. Only God gets to wrap His fingers around us and make us and mold us.

I am loved by God. No sticks of stones can change that. Just read VOM and you will see that is true! I was made by God to be loved by Him. If a few people love me while I am here on the earth, that is frosting on the cake or Moosetracks in the bowl.

PS: Trying to be loving to others while you are not yourself filled with the love of God results in pretending in the worst sorta way. But feel free to start with kindness and work your way up.

What is God up to?

Most of the time we do not want God's perspective. What we want is to know how to live our life with the most ease and praise. Even when God allows things into our lives to cause us to grow and mature, we reject them, seeking rather to have a good life, not the best life.

In some kind of religious way we can also take the discipline of the Lord and convert it into some kind of distorted self-righteousness. We can use the hard things we go through as some sort of "badge of self worth". Our heart can crow cold toward God as we live as servants for Him, having little love and a lot of fear.

To make life more complicated, we can do both at the same time. The human heart has the ability to deceive the mind and emotions. We can spend hours of our life by filling ourselves with guilt, shame, self-righteousness and self- worth. We can spend days and weeks bounding back between the "I shouldn't have to's" and the "No one else has to" and the I'm better because I". Living life with God can be turned into a never ending exam or an endless pursuit of what I want for me.

The cross is the place of truth and divine justice. As we realize how much we are loved and how much God is willing to do so that justice is served, we find a revelation of how to live. We need to go through some things because God is worthy of our being equipped to help others. Being loved by God is a greater way than some kind of divine neglect. We are loved with the intent to be like God Himself. Christlike transformation requires some enduring of stuff.

The authority to heal the sick, raise the dead, speak with transforming power into the life of another, all require inner and personal transformation. We go beyond talking about the ideas of these things and into living them out as we are personally and internally changed. God is making in us vessels of supernatural love. Like Jesus, we too are called to love Him much when the cost is beyond common acceptance. Now is the time to gain authority to "not be shaken" in any area of our life because we have become "unshakable in the encounters (knowledge) of the love of God.

What I like about those who do not like me!

Most of us have people who just do not like us. Many times these people have never met us. They know us through our opinions, beliefs or ideas shared through other people. They read something we wrote or overheard some comments and form ideas of us. As you can tell this is somewhat of an inconvenience or negative situation, but it does happen, everyday.

So what do we do now?

The first thing I want to do is love them for their zeal. Thank God for people with life and zeal. I have been zealously attacked (just like all of us) by people and find that I like their passion.

Secondly I like their boldness and desire to get things right, to fix the wrong, to show the truth to those in need. Don't read that above statement with sarcasm, it is not meant that way. People who love the truth are people who hold a character that I like. God has justice and righteousness as the foundation of His throne and we need both ourselves.

The third thing I like is that those who do not like me work good in my life. God uses them to make me a better me. All the thoughts, issues, things that I must work through by all the different levels of "un-liking" somehow make me better.

The fourth thing is that "un-like" brings some flavor into life. It mixes the pot of everydayism and stirs up the ingredients of life so that there is interaction, evaluation and just a good old "heating up". The pot gets stirred even more when the judgments are weak, wrong, a directer reaction out of the insecurity of others or just a plain lie.

So as you go through life here on earth, enjoy the "un-liking" as much as you can. Don't let the weight of trying to be loved by everyone be a daily burden. Yoke yourself with Christ Jesus and know that if people rejected, disliked, criticized, mocked, persecuted, make fun of, called stupid and blamed wrongly the perfect Son of God, you too are going to un-please them.