honesty

It's been awhile since I blogged. I am well into day 56 of 80 days reading through end time scriptures. It's been amazing to see that the amount of scripture in the old testament that warns and proclaims what is yet to come is astounding to me.

It's been a journey of reading and experiencing on a different level the commitment that God has both to justice and to His chosen people, and along with them the church.

But there has been a great hesitation in me over these last few weeks, and probably the reason why I stopped blogging for a time. The hesitation isn't that the words I'm reading aren't true or that they are taken out of context or anything like that, quite the opposite actually. I am currently reading scriptures in Ezekiel that foretell the fall of Babylon but also the promise of one who will rule forever. It's powerful to recognize the thread that holds the beginning to the end and that the desire in all of us is to get back to that place in the garden of Eden where we will be WITH God.

My hesitation arises more in myself. The struggle to understand and AGREE with God's judgments right along side the struggle to be patient for His righteous judgments to come. It's an interesting conundrum. God come quickly and deal with the brutality in our world... by coming and wiping out all your enemies... brutally. And yet, it's not with brutality, it's with justice and righteousness and mercy that He comes, and gives warning, and pleads with the peoples of the earth...

My hesitation also comes from an understanding that God is all knowing, all powerful, and all sufficient. His timing is always right, yet how can the world be such a messed up place? I know and am learning as I study all these passages that John 3:16-17 remains true... He did NOT come to condemn the world but to save it. But does the world want to be saved?

In the three religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Muslim, Christians are the only ones who believe that God would become man - that he would stoop that low, it is heresy to the others. Yet we as Christians base our very faith and salvation on the proclamation that Jesus came to earth as a baby, lived, died and rose again, and is seated at the right hand of the Father and is coming again to rule and reign ON THE EARTH. This Jewish man, this fully God, fully man, will someday return and vanquish His enemies and set up His kingdom of righteousness and freedom.

That's why all those stories of Kings and kingdoms and princes and princesses pull at our heartstrings... we long for His return as righteous King and judge. And still in my heart I hesitate. Again, not because I don't believe and long for His return, but because it is so foreign to the way we live. His kingdom will not be a democracy. His rule will be absolute. I've lived in a world where those things sound menacing, not reassuring.

But then I remember His heart... For God SO LOVED the world that He gave His only son that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life. He is coming again. There is this great line in a song that Misty Edwards from IHOP sings that goes "He's not a baby in a manger anymore, He's not a broken man on the cross, He didn't stay in the grave, and He's not staying in heaven forever" That in a line is the truth of what I believe.

Here is again the hesitation... my heart doesn't LIVE what I say I believe. There's an honest statement for you. I still live in a place of fear and brokenness and not in the promises He's given. I quickly default to old habits and run to other things in the hopes that THEY will satisfy whatever it is my heart is longing for... or afraid of... or trying to attain.

In a message I heard this weekend, our pastor laid out beautifully the reason that it is to our ADVANTAGE that Jesus went away and sent the Holy Spirit to dwell IN us. God has given us complete access to His heart and His power through the Holy Spirit, and WHEN (not IF) Jesus returns the Holy Spirit will remain IN us to teach, comfort and guide us into all truth... the truth of who Jesus and the Father really are. His return is to bring GLORY to HIS name, and for the whole world to know that HE IS LORD.

But that seems so big and "out there" for my day to day struggles. Where is the line of walking that truth every day and going to work and raising money for a college? How do we walk the now and the not yet (to quote John Wimber)? How do I live in my daily pain and inner struggles and still walk out the truth of His glorious return?

Sometimes I wish it would be as simple as finding a wardrobe that led to Narnia. Really... that is what that story grapples with... can the two realms exist together? They have to, or really what is the point?