the Kingdom

I must confess that I am going through a bit of a hard time.  Part of me is very angry.  Another part wants to have nothing to do with anger.  It is frustrating to be in a place where only a few things make sense and it seems that those are the things that are missing from everything around me.  I am man in experience, but quite a bit a boy in my heart.  I have a soft heart.  I only want to be a lover.  I guess the pursuit of love is a lonely pursuit.  Love will ultimately lead to understanding.  Understanding will lead to compassion.  Compassion will lead one to the cross.  The cross is a place of great honor in the Kingdom of God.  This place of honor is only a result of a willing heart to stand in the stead of others, "because they know not what they do."  Jesus was such a man of courage.  I can't even imagine.  I am tearing up now in my local coffee shop thinking about it.  I have exhibited the ability to be a total asshole at times.  I am in no way intimidated by loosing esteem in the eyes of others because of what I may gain from esteem.  This is a personality defect.  It is also a strength.  I need to care more.  I desire to.  When I tear up in a coffee shop thinking about Jesus being killed and hanging on a cross for me it is because I am aware of the man that He was asking forgiveness for.  He was asking for forgiveness for me.  He was asking God to forgive me, a man who knows not what he does, so that He could give me a destiny in Him.  He wanted me to have a chance at knowing Him more fully and using my life to express His love and grace to others.

I am sitting here in a café wondering what it is I can do.  My life of 33 years has led me to the seat I am sitting in right now drinking a local beer and wondering about Jesus and His greatness.  He died for me.    I am a person with many interests.  I get really into ideas of things.  I may be into snails, I may be into bees or seahorses.  I love jumping into a sea of the unknown.  I love it!  All of the things I can imagine in all their splendor pale in comparison to the knowledge of Jesus.  I really really mean this.  My knowledge of seahorses doesn't demand much of me.  My knowledge of Jesus compels all of the deepest parts of who I am to become a peacemaker.  To become a source of life.  There are a lot of deep parts to a human.  The compelling nature of that knowledge, and maybe a bit more compellingly, the unknown knowledge of Christ is truly the only thing that I really care about.



The last ten years I have been tied up with the idea that I was not what I needed to be to be loved.  I have been trying to become something that was worthy of acceptance by being anxiety ridden over my state of living as compared to others.  I became obsessed with cognitive dissonance, cognitive bias, status anxiety, the paradox of choice.  I looked at the state of man and his inherent qualities and determined that I must try to be something that would allow myself to fit in.  I have done a terrible job at fitting in.  I am just so lucky that I have come to know some of the greatest people on the earth in this time of history.  I know many people who have hearts for God and they have seen in me something that  was compelling enough to entertain my friendship and we have grown  a bit close.  I really have some of the greatest friends that I can imagine.  There is still something missing.  There are at least two things.  I have yet to engage with the calling that God has on my life.  I have yet to engage myself to my friend, the woman of courage who has the grace to see me for who I am in God.  The woman who can see the boy who I am and the man that I am.  I have been committed as they come and as repentant as they come.  I honestly don't think it gets much better.  I have to say I am a bit baffled that I am sitting here alone.  I look at the other options that others may pass me up for and it is very disheartening.  "You would walk away from me and entertain that guy!?"  Jesus was dying on a cross looking at people who were entertaining "that guy!"  He asked God to forgive them for they knew not what they were doing.


I have wanted to be a man.  I have been given exactly what I asked for.  I am becoming a man of love.  It is with great frustration and disappointment.  I am learning what it means to be a human who looks for the eyes of God scanning the earth looking for one righteous.  I want His eyes to find me.  I truly believe that God is seeking those who would just let go and follow Him.  I don't know what it is that I have to let go of, but I want to let go of it.  Jesus looked out over the crowds and had compassion on them.  He said that they were dejected and helpless like a sheep without a shepherd.  He asked His disciples to, "pray to the Lord of the harvest to bring laborers into His harvest."  At a later point in the life of Jesus he said that the Kingdom of Heaven is like the owner of an estate that hired workers to harvest.  At the end of the day he hired more for the same rate and the ones hired earlier were angered that this was the case.  The harvest was so great that the estate owner was willing to pay any and all to bring in the harvest.  The harvest that yet stood to be harvested was of such great value that any who were willing to labor would be rewarded greatly.   I look out into the world and the lives of my friends and I am saddened by the state of the harvest.  There is so much that we are to bring in but the laborers are few.  There are those who will beat the ox while it treads out the grain and will not allow the oxen to share in the reward.  These are the masters that most of us are serving.  My King will honor any of those who acknowledge Him.  He said the Kingdom is like a wedding feast that the King gave for his son and sent his servants to request their presence to celebrate and ,

"they were not concerned and paid no attention [they ignored and made light of the summons, treating it with contempt] and they went away—one to his farm, another to his business, 

They were too caught up with their own ideas to realize what they were being given.  They were too caught up with their own thoughts to realize that there is a consequence from refusing the gift of the King.  He punished those who refused and invited a whole household of people good and bad to attend the wedding reception.  He burned the city of those who were invited and refused.  At the reception the king fixated on the one person who was there who did not have on a wedding garment.  The man became speechless as he was tied up and thrown out into the dark where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.  I don't know much, but I speculate that the wedding garment is humility.  Without humility we cannot understand the severity of what we are being invited into through the death of Christ and His servants who allow themselves to stand in the stead of others through intercession.  If we take our invitation with no second thought we will be like the man who came without giving the proper honor and respect to ceremony.  God does love all men.  Any man or woman who has no respect or honor for the gift of the King will be cast out without a second thought.  I hate to say this so directly, but every person who has gone to hell deserves to be there.  God is not a fool.  His grace will not be made light of.  If we reject God, God rejects us.  This is very simple.  A fool says, "But...!"   "Depart from me I never knew you."

We are all in a state of transience.  While we are in this state of transience we have a chance to respond to an invitation to a wedding. We have the choice to show up with honor and pleasure.  Every bit of our conscious lives is leading up to a moment where we cease to exist.  We will be gone in a vapor.  Some of us will die tonight.  The problem is that because men are not swiftly judged for their evil actions that the heart of man becomes more strengthened to pursue his sin (ecclesiastes 8).  We lie cheat and steal once or twice and we become more likely to continue in our sin.  Some of us even parade into more sin with the notion that we are given grace and that God's love will overcome.  God's love is fierce.  God does not forgive us unless we have forgiven others. The stance of arrogance and coming to a wedding feast without the proper clothing is indicative of one who has not yet discerned his own depravity  and accepted the forgiveness for it on a daily basis.  This person will not love another.  This person will be cast out.

I started this out by thinking about Jesus saying that, "one cannot serve God and mammon."  He goes on to say that we cannot serve two masters, we will love one and hate the other.  He is saying that it cannot be done.  It is not possible.  Not possible.  He isn't saying that we shouldn't serve two masters, He is saying we can't.  It is not possible.  The reason I have been thinking about this is because it is becoming very clear to me that we prefer serving mammon.  Most of us will serve anything other than God.  I find myself in a café wondering how I can become a laborer.  What is keeping me from being one.  There is part of me that wants to sell all my stuff and just go!  I ask myself why I am working at the job that I have dreaming about being used by God.  My heart breaks at least twice weekly while at work dreaming about being used by God to purify his Bride.  I want Him to come back for a bride who loves him.  I don't want Him to approach a bride who was too lazy to put oil in her lamp because she didn't realize what she was being invited to.  The parable informed us that half of the bridesmaids were foolish.  It states in Matthew 25 that they knew the bridegroom was coming but he was late.  Knowing that he was delaying their foolish hearts assumed that they had time to be lazy and ride out their grace.  He came in the middle of the night and they missed their extension of grace.  He would not let them enter.  He said once again, "depart from me I never knew you." All of these women were virgins.  They had waited, but half of them waited in vain.  Hosea 4 says that God's people perish for their lack of knowledge.  It does not pay to be ignorant. If we ignore the truth as presented in scripture we will perish.  If you are too lazy to find out for yourself prepare to hear those dreaded words.  I say this so strongly because I feel that this knowledge is what is missing.  We perish because we do not realize the severity of the experience we are having as humans.  If your life is stupid, it is probably because you are not seeking God.  If my life is junk it is because I have failed to give it the honor that it requires.  The honor that my life requires is to seek God and walk in His ways.  It is not acceptable for me to live by some demonic idea that Grace will cover my foolishness.  Grace allows us to see our foolishness and go get some oil.  If we don't do that it is all in vain.  All of it.  If the principles that you make your decisions by make you feel justified, you may want to rethink your approach.  We are taught by christian imbeciles that cloak themselves as leaders into thinking that God is our buddy who wants us to buy their books.  Try buying John the Baptist's book.  Its called, "repent now for the Kingdom of God is at hand!" It is all about humbling yourself in the sight of the Lord and letting Him rend your heart so that you too will seek to forgive others seventy times seven.  If we do not forgive others He will not forgive us.

The Bride of Christ!  I can only imagine who she is.  I see her and my heart rejoices and weeps with great fortitude as I see what is ahead.  Really the question is will we let our hearts turn toward sin because it feels good and we don't have to deal with it right now because God delays His judgement.  There is a myth in the church that people just need to know that God loves them and they will turn to follow Jesus.  This is not true.  It is very untrue.  Imagine it in a human sense.  A young man with a heart of love gives His attentions and affections and efforts to a young woman and she refuses his love to get a chance at some foolish man because He presents a challenge.  We are not looking for love.  We are looking to flaunt ourselves in such a way as to attract other lovers because it fills us with a sense of power and validation.  This is called the pride of life.  It is what makes a man show up to the King's son's wedding reception without the wedding garment.

The good news is that God is calling you right now to choose Him.  Choosing Him is choosing His ways.  You cannot serve God and mammon.  There is so much more to say about this, but now is not the time.  Seek it for yourself.  I can almost guarantee that your life is a bit of a joke.  We cannot mix the fabric of sin and the fabric of grace and not expect the garment to not tear.    God does not want us to live the way we have been living.  He wants us to pursue Him.  I have a terrible time with the same call.  It is a matter of our hearts.  Ask God tonight to challenge you with the things that He is calling you to that you are avoiding.  Ask Him to show you who you need to forgive and those you need to ask forgiveness from.  Yes, God wants you to dream of His great works.  If you think, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" it has so much less to do with thinking that you have what it takes to land some job or do some task as it does with learning to being content regardless of the circumstances.  It is learning how to be content with less.  It isn't about learning how to dream of having more.  It feels weird saying this because it seems to confront most christian literature.  It is a matter of putting the cart before the horse.   Solomon was wise and asked for wisdom.  Because he did this God gave him all the other things.  He was a miserable man because of his power to choose and get whatever he wanted.  He had a 1000 women and wasn't satisfied with one.  Riches will sell you out in a heart beat.  I see people taking jobs and missing their calling in life.   I fear on a certain level that I am one of those men.  Would you take the gig because it was an "opportunity of a lifetime" and find yourself sold out and hollow as your days come to a close.  We make all of our decisions based on the allure of what something promises our hearts.  Beware of what is promising your heart.  Anyone can put honey on their lips to make them sweet.  Choose the thing that is challenging your heart to come out of its shell and experience the vulnerability of living in the light.  You have been in the dark long enough. Come out and experience being real.  Real love.

--i found this while writing my post-- Wedding Garment