The Father's Song to you

I was reading a book called "In Heaven" by Dean Braxton about this man's experience of dying physically for 1 hour and 45 minutes then experiencing Heaven.  To be honest I am realizing I read way too many non-fiction books, craving the touch of God.  The desire God has put in my heart for Him is good but too often I go about thinking I am going to find Him in my way, rather than surrendering to His gentle leadings.  As I read one chapter in the book where Dean is describing the going ons in Heaven, he began to talk about the song The Father sings to each person that is unique and special to that person.  This song from the Father brings life to that person as it goes inside of them, I thought I wonder if I could hear the song He is singing to me.  Then the Lord reminded me of Zephaniah 13:7, listen to how the Amplified Bible states it "The Lord your God is in the midst of you, a Mighty One, a Savior [Who Saves]!  He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest [in silent satisfaction] and in His love He will be silent and make no mention [of past sins, or even recall them]; He will exult over you with singing."  I was blown away to imagine that the Lord sings over me and rejoices over me in a personal and intimate way.  I had to hide the tears as I shared this with my men's Bible Study, this is the kind of love my heart had always longed for but believed was not all together real.  This quality of love that God bestows on us (1 John 3:1) is so out of this world that comparing His love to how we have been loved in this world only serves to lead our heart away from Him.  In Ephesians 2:6-7 we are told that "...and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."  This is very important because since I am seated in "heavenly places in Christ Jesus" now than I can hear the song that the Father is singing to me.  My heart is bursting to hear this song that I may come alive even more with the Life (Zoe) of God.  As Dennis Jernigan pointed out about Zephaniah 3:17 (one of his favorite verses) that a song is very relational and that rejoice in the Hebrew means to rejoice and spin about.  God is that excited to sing over me, wow that is a lot to take in.  This really challenges all my cautious, religious, and safe type controls (fleshly).  I have never had anyone that excited or interested in me, except maybe my daughter when she was young and small.  Her running to me when I would come home from work (she was 2-3 years old), was a greeting that was better than anyone deserved.  The joy on her face as she ran to me, must be a slice of the reality of God's joy in welcoming us home into His arms.  To hear someone say that God loves you is wonderful but since it has been said so many times we tend to discard it easily, it is just information.  To see and experience the reality that God sings over us a unique song that penetrates into the deepest parts of our being and brings life is a whole new experience.  We as the Body of Christ need more revelation by the Spirit's work and less information.

Learning to Hear the Father's Song,
Bret

Cursed is the ground

The Lord has put on my heart to study for Him to reveal the effect of the curse on the ground in Genesis 3 and what He purchased for us through the finished work of Jesus Christ.  In Genesis 3:17-19 His Word says, "Then to Adam He said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life.  Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return."  As I was looking into the Hebrew meanings of the words, I was struck that the Hebrew word for toil itstsabown  which means pain and sorrow.  I sensed the Lord showing me that men have pain working to provide and that there is sorrow because the ground (work) doesn't produce what you expect.  This is all part of the curse because of sin's entrance into the earth and after the Fall.  As I continued to study the curse on the ground I was struck by this phrase "Till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return", I sensed the Lord pointing me to the burial of Jesus as how God broke the curse on the ground.  In Romans 5:14-15 we see the connection between the first Adam and the redeemer Jesus Christ, "Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many."  Since all those who are born "in Adam" would experience all the effects of the curse but we who are "in Christ" have been united in His death and burial.  This happened in the spiritual realm and we believe it by faith, thus the curse on the ground is broken through our burial "in Christ".  The curse is ended through death and burial, this another aspect of the Cross that we can celebrate God's victory on our behalf through grace.  This is all wonderful revelation but I am looking to the manifestation of this curse being broken and the blessing purchased for us "in Christ".  I am learning how to enjoy the journey the Lord has me on to reveal the truth of the Word, it seems to be like pieces of a puzzle coming together.

In Christ,
Bret

God is Love?

Why is it that so many people, including me, struggle with grasping that "God is love" (1 John 4)?  I know this is true by the amount of fear I see on the Body of Christ:  we hide behind masks, we tremble at the thought of Judgement Day, we don't share our real feelings, we perform for one another, we create images, we are distant in prayer rather than raw and honest, and we don't have the joy of the Lord.  I am not pointing any fingers here, I find myself squarely in the middle of this mess called the Body of Christ.  I have just come to the point in my life where I cannot question "God is love" anymore.  No human being on the earth or whoever was on the earth would create a God that is love, wrath, anger, fickleness, and perfectionist we could and would create.  I understand that our idea of love and God's are very different, He defines love as laying down your life (John 15:13) then proceeds to carry out this verse on the cross.  This kind of love is so beyond this world that we have nothing to compare Him to, so we usually compare Him to those who were to love us in our life.  If we were loved well, then we tend to be able to accept God as love to some extent.  Yet for those who received rejection, hurt, disappointment, and loss the Light of God's love is so overwhelming, He must turn it on slowly in our hearts or we would be overwhelmed to death.  Even the best expression of love in this human world fades in comparison to the purity and brightness of God's love.  To see His love we must always look to Jesus Christ, because in Him (Christ) dwells all of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9).  I understand that fear is the indication that we really don't experience the love of God fully, this from one of my favorite chapters of Scripture 1 John 4.  It really is a very radical belief to stand on God being love, many may say God is just, righteous, and truth but fewer would say He is love.  There has been a deep place within my heart for most of my life that has longed to know the God who is love but my heart stumbles over others beliefs that He falls short of this incredible nature.  Many have quoted Scripture in a way that betrays the fear in their hearts and I mean a terror.  Yet in 1 John 4 the disciple who was called, the one Jesus loved, says that fear expels every trace of terror and that when we stand before God on the Day of Judgement we will be as Jesus in this world.  Honestly my heart is tired of going back and forth, I am deciding today if there is anyone who portrays God as not love I will not believe them.  He is my Abba who loves because He is love, His covenant with me "in Christ" is a unilateral covenant of Him reaching out to me in love.  There is no performance, mask, or proper way I can live to earn this love.  I was even convicted that I am not completely honest with God in prayer because I fear if the yuck that sometimes spews from my inner world will bring punishment from Him.  Let's face it if you really believed that all the thoughts, intents, and stirrings inside were completely laid bare before God we may approach prayer a little differently.  It is so ridiculous the internal games we play to hide, when we consider God knows it all.  That even our best performed prayers or our greatest "good works" are totally exposed in His Light with all the selfish intentions behind them.  No our best hiding doesn't work but when we understand that God has declared us righteous "in Christ" why do we need to hide.  Then we can openly share with God the selfish thoughts, frustrations, forbidden questions, doubts, insecurities, and even secret sins.  I believe the grace of God is so much more powerful than we can ever imagine and more complete than all of our comprehension.  Yet we live small because we often have a small God who can't handle our problems, doubts, fears, sins, flaws, failures, and all the human condition so He is going to just punish us (maybe even eternally).  It is crazy but when we realize the picture of God the Body of Christ is picturing, I am not sure I would want to know this god.  I believe this god is far short of the God of Love I see in the face of Jesus Christ.

God is Love,
Bret

Orphan Heart or Friend

I realized through a few people and my own heart that loneliness is a big deal in our culture.  As an only child raised in a single parent home, I often felt alone in my everyday life.  The Lord just recently touched a place in my heart where I believed that everyday I had to do life on my own and this was just the way it is.  I remember waking up before school as a child with a foreboding sense of the day because I just knew inside that I was going to have to navigate the day alone.  Early on in life I made the decision of the "orphan heart", which is that I am in this alone.  In Genesis 2:18 we read where "LORD God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone;'".  I can only imagine the abyss of loneliness both Adam and Eve experienced after "The Fall", especially the loneliness that came from the disconnection between them because they had to "be like God".  In other words through "The Lie" they had to be in control, have it together, be self-sufficient, and be the source of their own supply.  If they let down this god-like mask then they would be naked, vulnerable, weak, human, and inadequate.  I like Adam and Eve learned to hide behind this god-like mask that I didn't need God and others as desperately as I really did.  This apparent strength was coming from an orphan heart which was afraid of trusting anyone but myself.  From this place it became more important to reinforce the walls of my self-protection, than to reach out in vulnerability.  I chose isolation over friendship, I chose safety over risking rejection, I chose a lie over the truth, I chose darkness over light, I chose my own strength over appearing weak, I agreed with hopelessness over hope, I chose death over life, and I chose being an orphan over being a son.  For many years I blamed my father who abandoned me through suicide and my mother through my distorted perspective emotionally abandoned me, both have responsibility for what was theirs but finally I made the decision to agree with an orphan heart.  The Gospel comes crashing in on this darkness through John 14:18  "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." and John 15:15 where Jesus says, "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you."  I have heard it said that there is a translation from the Hebrew that says orphan means comfortless.  This would tie into a passage that I have been meditating on 2 Corinthians 1:2-4 which says, God is "...the Father of mercies and God of all comfort...".  These verses go on to say that God "...comforts us in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort others..."  The Lord began to show me that I don't see Him as the God of all comfort that I expect to be disappointed, left on my own, or rejected by Him as I felt with others.  This deception sets me up to not receive from Him, when He is just waiting to bring comfort, compassion, and mercy.  I thank God that I am receiving a revelation of who He is as the Comforter (one of the names of the Holy Spirit).  May He be the source of comfort in your life.  Too many have viewed God as the afflictor rather than the one who brings comfort, where in Scripture does it say He afflicts us.  The Word does say he disciplines but discipline is done in love for building up not for tearing down.  I pray His comfort in your life.

In His Comfort,
Bret