Contemplating

Recently, some friends came to visit...actually, a large number of friends came to help me and Paul celebrate our union as man and wife in the wedding of the year! Ha!

Some of those friends got a chance to visit a few places here, through which the Lord has dramatically impacted my life and given me greater revelation of Who He is and what He is doing in this world we call earth. Before 2004, I had a nice, compact, tight theology which seemed to work for me. Ok, stop right here. Please note the last word in that sentence: me...ME...ME....a theology that works for me? Wow, if nothing else, I've definitely had the rug of "me" ripped out from underneath my feet more than once in the last 7 years. If I've learned nothing else, I have learned this: no theology is about "me" or about "us"...it's all about God and His glory and what He is doing from eternity through eternity.

In 2004, God began to rattle my cage, shake my world and rip the rugs out from underneath me, and my 'religious spirits' didn't like it one bit. However, my spirit-man inside of me LOVED IT! Something began stirring deep inside of me, and I knew I was beginning a journey of discovery that would lead to greater love for the Father, relationship with the Son, Jesus, and intense and intimate fellowship with Holy Spirit.

Without departing from the Bible, I began this journey. In 2009, that journey landed me in Kansas City, MO where I've been stretched even further by 3 specific ministries, all of which God has used to burst open every box I've ever consciously or unconsciously tried to place God in...back to the problem that can arise when I limit God to 'my' theology.

Has it been uncomfortable? You bet! Has it caused tensions with others? For sure! Has my spirit-man been awakened to the living God of hope, who loves, I think almost more than anything, to pour out His affections on His children? Like never before! Have my biblical views changed? Indeed, they have as I have pondered and studied and realized that God is much, much bigger and much, much more involved in the nitty gritty of everything on this planet. Nothing is outside of His grasp, view, or the intentions of His heart. I've learned that I tended toward that heretical thinking of separating things into the spiritual and the secular, when truly, as Brother Lawrence clearly states, all of life is spiritual and has spiritual significance in eternity.

And so, here I stand, humbled to the core, and realizing that I need even more humility because if I begin to think that I have a 'clue' or have a corner on any market of anything to do with God, then I run the risk of placing my mind above the mind of God. Instead, I will submit everything within me to the triune God-head, bow low, and carry out the two greatest commandments as Holy Spirit leads me: Loving the Lord my God with everything, and loving my neighbor as myself.

As far as theology and all connected with it, I stand in the fear of the Lord, realizing that Matthew 24-25 and the entire book of Revelation is true, and I need to be prepared as a believer for all that is going to happen, with the end goal of loving people and pointing them to their messiah, Jesus, Yeshua, the God-man! In the process, Jesus prayed: Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. So, there is a biblical mandate to live lives here according to the Kingdom, bringing hope to the hopeless, and, as the old gospel song states: People get ready, Jesus is coming!

May God give ALL of us the spirit of wisdom and revelation from His throne room! Amen and amen.