Coming Out Of The Closet

It is truly amazing how furious and fiercely the longing of God is toward the lost, broken and hopeless, and I am one of those who have been rescued by such an arresting unconditional love.

A friend sent me the links to a four part conversation with Paul Young being interviewed about his life and the writing of the story that turned into the book, The Shack. To say it impacted me is the understatement of the century; I am sensing afresh the boldness of His love for me to begin the baby steps needed to come out of the closet of shame and fear.

http://www.newday.org/ontheair/index.php?program=34122

God is using religious institutional systems (they are no threat or rival to God) and otherwise to drive people to helplessness. To expose power, to expose those things that need to be transformed!

More than anything I want to be real, transparent with myself, the Lord and with others, on the other hand, fear and shame is something that is designed to want to keep me known for who I’m not.
So much has been and continues to be stirred up in my life and I’m beginning to recognize the hand of my loving, caring heavenly Father in it all.
If I was to simply be released from painful circumstances and situations without being set, made free on the inside, what the hell good would it be to have to face those very same things again without the fear and its grip on me broken?

I am seeing that grace has no attraction to it without being vulnerable, transparent, and weak, swimming in an abundance of inner depravity. Performing will never earn or buy God’s favour and fear is something that drives us all to do just that perform.
In watching and listening to Paul Young open up and share about the depravity within his own life and how grace transformed him, I could easily relate to him.
On the other hand someone who has never seen or admitted to their inner brokenness of shame and depravity, grace no matter how loud they proclaim it has no more appeal than a conceptual buzz.

Rich

Though He Slay Me

This is going to be brief, my good friend Ron who had spent some time with us coming all the way here (to Ontario) from the Maritimes back a few weeks ago has been back home trying to walk out what Father has been bringing to light regarding his circumstances and situations within his family/marriage.
I spoke with him three times over this past weekend, the last call from him yesterday was from all human perspective very heart crushing news.

When there is more to share, and with his permission I will continue with updates, in the mean time I am asking for Father to continue to comfort him, and trusting Him to touch Ron in any way he chooses to do this.
If Father is speaking to your heart regarding this situation without knowing any of the facts, please embrace His nudges.

Rich

Blinded by the Light: Addendum

In my last blog entry, I included a link to Kent’s site, Faithfully Dangerous. I wanted to illustrate some thoughts I had, and it was not intended to be a criticism to what he shared. More to the point, it was an opportunity for me to put forward many new thoughts I had that his comment triggered, so thanks, Kent!

His blog entry was entitled “Hope In Our Brokenness”, and the key word that leapt out at me was ‘brokenness.’ Because of not seeing clearly and by that I mean allowing our Father to open our eyes to the truth of what a ‘nature’ actually is comprised of, it is only natural that we define this. For clarification, brokenness is that which has permeated all of humanity. None have been born into this world escaping that inevitable brokenness - none.

The title, ‘Blinded by the Light’ is a graphic illustration of what actually happened in the garden when the ‘angel of light’ a.k.a. the serpent, offered an eye-opening temptation, that Adam and Eve could become their own god. Funny thing is, this alleged illumination totally blinded them from seeing and knowing just how incarcerated they had become to the flesh.

It is out of this blindness that we have defined our position on what is good and bad behaviour. But wasn’t that the same mind set back in Jesus’ day when He was disparagingly accused of being a ‘friend of sinners’? You know, the ‘broken ones’ - those who’s badly flawed behaviour indicated that they needed professional help. Of course these self-righteous ones were only too obliging to bring these misguided sinners under their imposed control.

Like then, the deception that still keeps us all bound, especially those of us who do NOT see that apart from His nature (no matter how flawless our living appears to be), a bad nature (tree) cannot produce good fruit.

Maybe it’s time to ask the only One who is able, to open our blinded eyes to see unmistakably and NO longer to appraise (judge) anyone after the flesh!

Rich

Am I Sick?

This past winter has been one of the hardest on me personally health wise that I can ever remember, maybe it has something to do with getting older, I don’t know.
Lets take an inventory shall we.
First there was the prostate biopsy that was needed because of the PSA levels being a bit higher than they should be for a man my age, which was a delightful experience to say the least.
The results from that showed to be very good except for a couple of minor anomalies that caused some minor concerns by the specialist I went to, and the need to follow up every six months for two years just to make sure all is and remains well.

Following this was a succession of colds that lasted and lasted only in getting over one to be followed by yet another, four in all.
The last one turned into an extreme case of bronchitis then into pneumonia accompanied with the bonus of the flu just for good behaviour.
Because of the seriousness of this I had to have two different sets of x-rays taken along with a cat scan. The first set of x-rays showed a spot on my left lung, and following that, the cat scan showed nothing at all on the left lung, but something (a spot) on the right lung, as well as some anomaly showing up in the lymph glands in the right lung area as well.
Last Thursday I had to go into a neighbouring larger city to see a lung specialist, as my family Dr was stumped as to why there were these incongruence's showing up?
There’s more to this story but I will cut it short for now.

My point being, health wise, it was and is most apparent to me that in being sick, really sick, a physician or Doctor is hopefully someone that can do me some real good rather than additional harm.

I am pondering on the fact that Jesus himself said, ‘I have come for the sick-needy, for it’s the sick that are in need of a doctor/physician, not the healthy.’Is it any wonder that so many that have never been shattered/broken/devastated by their own sin look upon the biblical words such as ‘grace-love-forgiveness-healing-life’ as just concepts?
I wonder if God’s grace-love-mercy-life-forgiveness remains only for the needy ones, but not for those believing they are not sick, unhealthy.Also in this vain of thought didn’t Jesus say, ‘Those who love much are those that realize-know they have been forgiven much?’

So long as a person is duped into believing they have the right stuff and never seem to have a rendezvous with disaster why would His love-grace-forgiveness be anything but merit badges worn on their self-righteous vests?

Rich