Sweet Surrender

Matthew 11:28

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

One of Satan’s most brilliant lies is that if you surrender something to God, you’ll receive something less beautiful in return. If you come to God, he'll take your life away. If you empty your hands, God will place something less amazing in them. You’ll surrender gold and, in return, receive dirt.

This is the lie of chasing your dream: That when you let go of your plans and trust God’s, he will call you into a mission that you will hate. This is the lie of holding on to hurts. That when you let go of your wounds, they’ll be reopened, not healed and redeemed.

Adam and Eve believed this lie when they traded Eden for an apple. Letting go of the things we think are wonderful will force us to receive the mundane, the boring, the safe, from a God who always trades down with us, never up.

The rich young ruler who was afraid to give up his riches believed this when he walked away from Christ disappointed. He had too much good to trade in for so much average from Christ. But it’s a lie.

What father would give us a snake when we asked for a fish?

What father would throw a party when punishment was due?

What father would leave the flock to find the single lost sheep?

When you start to grasp this, a second lie will come and it will tell you, “I shouldn’t come to God just because I’m expecting good things from him.”

He’s no sky ATM, I agree. But the danger of this lie is that it quickly morphs into a joyless experience with God. Did the woman at the well say, “No thank you. I don’t want this living water you speak of. I don’t want to come to you just because I’m expecting good things”? Did the cripple who danced away healed say, “Leave me lame. I don’t want to come to you just because I’m expecting good things”?

No. They came with open hands and expectant hearts. They knew that the gift of his presence, the gift of his grace, would ultimately overwhelm anything and everything they let go of.

Surrender is not a commonly used word, in part because we think it means letting go of something amazing in exchange for something average. But we’re wrong. It’s a lie.

Surrender is not the end of a beautiful life. It is just the beginning.

Red Riot Blog

Red Riot Blog

During the holidays I'll be doing some writing for the best youth in the world on the Red Riot's blog.

So head on over there and check out the coolness!

Cheap & Nasty

Philippians 4:8

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

I love bargains, and I have skills at finding great stuff at super low prices. It’s a gift. For example a whole lot of cool earrings from Mr Price for 20 bucks. But as I’ve been wearing them, they’ve started to infect my ear lobes. Not great. So what I do is I wear the cheap ones for a few days, then take a break and wear silver ones until my ear feels better, go back to the cheap ones, and the cycle goes on.

We tend to do the same thing with our minds. We put stuff into our minds, not necessarily bad stuff; it’s cheap and easy and looks pretty cool, but it’s not pure silver and that starts to infect us. We put up with it until the infection gets too much, then we go back to the pure stuff, back to the Lord and ask Him to heal us. He does. Then it’s back to Mr Price for more cheap stuff.

But God calls us to live in His purity and holiness always; to wear His treasures, not cheap, rubbish stuff. He calls us to think on Him and His goodness, not on things that will infect us and bring pain. Turn your eyes upon Jesus; look full in His wonderful face and the things of the world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

Chameleon

We’re like chameleons. The more time we spend in an environment, the more adapted we become to it. The more time we spend with someone, the more we start speaking and acting and using phrases like them. I do it often. It’s not something that I try and do; in fact I fight the power. I don’t go into a conversation thinking, “Ok, now I’m going to say 'good not great' like Yas.” I don’t see something funny and then decide to laugh like Chels. By hanging out with them, they’ve just rubbed off on me. As Selena Gomez would say, it just comes naturally. By being with them, I become like them. And I think it’s an honour to them and a sign of our close relationship that I would let myself change to be like them.

Ephesians 5:1

“Be imitators, therefore, as dearly loved children.”

How do we imitate God? Simple. We just need to be with Him to become like Him. As I draw near to Him, He’ll draw near to me and rub off on me, making me more like Christ. The time I spend with Jesus should be evident in the things I do and say, I should be becoming like Him. Being like Jesus will glorify and honour Him in the biggest way. Allow yourself to adapt to the awesomeness of Jesus.

When the world is out to get you and no where feels safe, make like a chameleon and camouflage into Jesus.

Gotta Make Your Mind Up

Luke 16:13

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

My puppy Lucy likes playing and chasing after a toy while she still has one in her mouth. But then she gets into a dilemma of which toy to carry, which to chase, and how to get them both into her mouth at the end. And it doesn’t work out. Why? Because you can’t serve two masters.

I think that’s what we try and do. We carry God in our heart, but then we go chasing after money and success and self-gain; not actually sure which one we want more. Or maybe those other things hold our heart, but we try and chase after God, try and seek Him, then find we have no room for Him in our heart. We can’t do both.

As humans we love to multitask. Even smartphones now come with dual-core processors, allowing us to do two or more things at once. But when it comes to our hearts, they need to be pure, set on only one thing (No Added Extras). Jesus says we must hate and despise one master and love and be devoted to the other. He asks us to be hot or cold, yes or no, in or out. Kicking it with Jesus, or kicking yourself? You gotta make your mind up. Which master are you going to serve?

*YOU*

Today I was reading this chapter in Zechariah, and I thought, “This is cool, it can really apply to my life.” So I read it again, and wherever it says ‘Israel’ or ‘them’ or something like that, I subbed in ‘you’, and read it to myself. It goes like this:

Zechariah 10

The LORD Will Care for you

 ¹ Ask the LORD for rain in the springtime;
   it is the LORD who sends the thunderstorms.
He gives showers of rain to you,
   and plants of the field to you.
² The idols speak deceitfully,
   diviners see visions that lie;
they tell dreams that are false,
   they give comfort in vain.
Therefore you wander like sheep
   oppressed for lack of a shepherd.

 ³ “My anger burns against the shepherds,
   and I will punish the leaders; 

  for the LORD Almighty will care 
   for you and make you like a proud horse in battle. 
⁴ From Judah will come the cornerstone, 
   from him the tent peg, 
from him the battle bow, 
   from him every ruler. 
⁵ Together you will be like warriors in battle 
   trampling their enemy into the mud of the streets. 
You will fight because the LORD is with you, 
   and you will put the enemy horsemen to shame.

 ⁶ “I will strengthen you
   and save you. 
I will restore you
   because I have compassion on you. 
You will be as though 
   I had not rejected you, 
for I am the LORD your God 
   and I will answer you. 
⁷ You will become like warriors, 
   and your heart will be glad as with wine. 
  You will see it and be joyful; 
    your heart will rejoice in the LORD. 
⁸ I will signal for you
   and gather you in. 
Surely I will redeem you; 
    you will be as numerous as before. 

⁹ Though I scatter you among the peoples, 
   yet in distant lands you will remember me. 
  You will survive, 
   and you will return. 
¹⁰ I will bring you back from Egypt 
   and gather you from Assyria. 
I will bring you to Gilead and Lebanon, 
   and there will not be room enough for you. 
¹¹ You will pass through the sea of trouble; 
   the surging sea will be subdued 
   and all the depths of the Nile will dry up. 
Assyria’s pride will be brought down 
   and Egypt’s scepter will pass away. 
¹² I will strengthen you in the LORD 
   and in his name you will walk and live securely,” 
            declares the LORD.

The Start Of Something New

http://www.jonacuff.com/stuffchristianslike/2011/06/the-past/

Isaiah 43:18-19

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

 “Forget the former things;”

That’s a command, not a “maybe you should think about doing this.” And it doesn’t say, “Learn from them, wrestle with them, figure out a valuable lesson you can take from them.” It says “forget” them.

“…do not dwell on the past.”

God knows what we’ll be tempted to do. In this case, it’s obvious: We’re going to struggle with dwelling on the past. With making our home in the past, with defining ourselves by our past. God knows we’ll struggle with that and pleads, “Do not dwell on the past.”

“See, I am doing a new thing!”

Don’t you want to hug the Bible when it ends a sentence with an exclamation? This is not something casual or ordinary. This is a new thing! Hope is loud and bright and colourful!

“Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”

In this we’re told God’s ability to spring it up and change our lives will not be dependent on our ability to perceive it. There are so many days where I don’t see or feel the new thing he is doing in my life, but that matters not. He is doing it nonetheless, regardless if I do not perceive it.

“I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

I don’t care how wild your past was. I don’t care about how wasted the wasteland of your life was. Those are the very places God loves to redeem. Those are the very places he puts a way through. Those are the very places he puts a stream.

Sometimes, my past feels big and inescapable. It looms large in my head and my heart, a tattoo that will not fade, a defining moment that cannot be forgotten. But the truth is, the past is not my home. God is doing a new thing. In me, in you, in us. The old has gone, the new has come, I am a new creation!