Part Ten

We went on vacation last week. I really needed it. My family looked forward to it for weeks. We would say, “two more weeks”, “One more week”, “Three more days”. . . it was a countdown until we left. Once we got there and got settled in it started to feel like home.

We were fortunate to be able to stay on the beach this trip. We had a patio outside that over looked the ocean on one side, and a lake on the other side. In the mornings sometimes I would go out on the patio to sit and enjoy the day. One morning, as I relaxed on the porch, I started thinking about the guard rail. We were quite a few floors up and I was thinking, “If that guard rail were not here I would not feel safe sitting here.” As a matter of fact if that guard rail had not have been there I probably would not have wanted to be on the patio at all. It would have changed the whole dynamic. A place of peace and serenity would have become a place of anxiety and fear.

And then I thought what if the guard rail was lower? Like maybe 6 inches lower? I may still feel safer, but it would definitely be less safe feeling. And then I thought (yes I know, welcome to my world) what if it were two feet lower and the rail itself was only one foot high? In that case it may as well not even been there. This rail was playing a huge part in my morning peace and quiet. It was enabling my serenity. I could stand up and lean on it, I could prop my feet up on it, I could hang my wet towel off of it. The rail had so many uses, but if it were removed the entire balcony would become useless. One piece of metal ten feet long and three feet high held in by eight bolts made my whole vacation more enjoyable and less stressful.

So you must be asking, “What does this have to do with my life and the eighteen inch journey?”.  . .  Glad you asked. . .  Everything.

I want you to envision the guard rail as The Law of God. And I want you to envision the patio as the world. God offers you peace and serenity in this world. He does not want you to leave this world like the monks thought, nor does he want you to dive off into the world mindlessly, like satan tempted Jesus to do. Instead he wants you, in this world, but protected by his law in order to keep your peace in place, in order for your “patio” to remain safe. His laws are not meant to restrain you from having peace they are there to secure your peace, to make sure you stay safely on the patio which brings the serenity you are looking for.   The Law is not there to restrain you from living life it is there to enable you to live life in a way that brings you freedom. God is not trying to keep you from happiness he is trying to give you true happiness. The Law is your guard rail to keep you inside of true life.

Think about this, what if we lower the law just a little bit? What if we say, “Well God wrote that for Israel back then. The Law doesn’t pertain to me now. We are now under the New Testament. We don’t follow the law. So the Law may have some good moral ideas, but it does not mean much to me.”? What you just did was lower the protection of your patio and endangered yourself. You lowered the law. 

In lowering The Law what we are saying is, “I know how to live. I don’t need anyone telling me what I can and cannot do. I Got this.” That is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden. And it is why you will buck The Law. It’s wired into your DNA. But you have to trust The Law and The Law Giver. You have to trust not only is The Law good and holy and righteous, but so is the Law Giver.

Once you realize this you can lean on The Law, you can prop your feet on The Law, you can hang your dirty laundry on The Law. Then you can know the law is good because you are trusting in The Law.

So many people see The Law as a condition of God’s love. In other words, if I will follow The Law then God will love me. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead The Law is a product of God’s love. He loves his people so much he wants to keep them safe, and in peace.

So pick a Law, any Law, how about, “Thou shalt not bare false witness to thy neighbor”. In redneck terms, “Don’t gossip about your friends”. What if we remove that rail? We just tell whoppers all the time about your friends? What if you expose peoples business and expound on it into places you do not even know about? It will not be long before no one trusts you, no one wants to be around you, no one enjoys the company of a gossip. How about, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”? What if we remove that one? Peace is gone, serenity is gone, lives are ruined etc. . . are you getting the point?

The sooner we see God’s Law as a guard rail and not a jail cell, the sooner we can find the freedom and peace that he so desperately wants to give.

Part Nine

Wednesday night, in my sermon, I talked about a subject in a negative light.  Since then, after much thinking, I’ve become quite convicted about it. I was preaching about belief and how our belief system drives our entire lives. All of which is true. However, at one point in the sermon I said, “And I am not talking about fake it till you make it. That’s just behavioral modification, which never works.” That statement is true, but it is also not true. Just like with many of the things of God this subject is just not as simple as we would like it to be.

In my mind, “fake it till you make it” is hypocrisy. It means, to me, act like you are something you are not until you become something you want to be. Sounds a lot like mystical hocus pocus to me.  I imagine a bunch of people showing up on Sunday morning dressed in nice clothes, singing songs about God and saying things like, “praise the Lord” or “God is good”, in hopes someone will think they are holy. Or maybe hoping their religious “Christianese” will get them some kind of notoriety. That kind of acting drives me crazy. In this context I feel like we need to be open  and honest. We should not try to put make-up on our infirmities, but we should be honest about them and be healed from them. However, while there is hypocrisy in trying to be something you are not so people around you will not see who you truly are, there is something to be learned about lining yourself up with truth. Which is not “fake it till you make it”.

When I was young I used to dress up like my dad. I would put on his work boots, I would wear a hat like he did, I would carry a note pad like him, I would say things like he would say I would do whatever I could to be like my dad. My sister on the other hand played with baby dolls and played house. She would play like she was cooking supper and changing diapers. I hate to admit this, but sometimes she would make me play like I was her husband, yeah I know. So why would we do that? Because we were lining ourselves up with what we had been created to be. God created me to work and provide, and he created my sister to “make a home”. We were not even close to being old enough to do what we knew we were meant to do, but inside of us, deep down, we knew we were created for “that”, so we pretended. We called it playing, “make believe”.

Why would we call that “make believe”? Some would say it’s because we are making something up in our minds, we are imagining things, but I think it is much deeper than that. I think we are making ourselves believe what is true by our actions. By putting the two words together, “make” and “believe” the process is revealed. You could say it like this, we are making what we believe to be true by acting out that belief even though it is not yet fully realized.

So what is the difference between “make believe” and “fake it till you make it”? Well one says we are acting out what we already believe to be true, the other says we are being a fake in hopes that one day we can achieve a goal. One says, “I know what I am meant to be so I am going to act like that until I grow up in to it.” The other says, “I know what I am supposed to be so let me do that in hopes that one day I will get there”. See the difference?  Let me give some application.

Let’s say you get saved. And after your salvation you start to want to walk with Christ more deeply and so you chase after him with all you have. You read your bible and the words just jump off the page, you pray for a red light to turn green and it does, you go to church and you just feel the presence of God all around you. It is awesome and you love every minute! But then something happens, a dry spell. God feels distant. You bible is boring. Your prayers seem to hit the ceiling and come back down. Church is boring. What do you do? You have three options.

First you can just quit. Give up. Decide it’s never going to be the same. Say ignorant things like, “I don’t have to go to church to worship God” and “God speaks to me, I don’t have to read his word” or “I pray while I am driving to work”. Say what you want, those are all just excuses to not even try and walk with God anymore. It’s a cop out. And it’s a dangerous place to be. 

Second, you can “fake it till you make it”. You can go to church and pray and read you bible in spite of the dry feeling. And this is right! But hold on and check your motives. Fake it means you are an imposter. Fake it means you are going to pretend to be something you are not until God does what he is supposed to do and make you get that feeling again. Fake it till you make it means there will be an end. It says, “I am going to be a fake, until I make it to my destination.” The question is, then what? You’ve arrived? Really? If you have arrived what will you do if the dry feeling comes back?

Third, you can “make believe”. You still go to church, pray and read your bible in spite of the dry feeling, but here is the difference, you do it because it is who you truly are. You are not looking to “make it” to a destination, you have already “made it”, now you live as if you have “made it” and God will transform you to look more like his Son Jesus. But you have to trust.

Now we are getting somewhere, it’s about trust. One way says, “I will trust in my ability. I will work harder, do more, pray more and do better. I will give it my best. I will be a better Christian!” See all those “I”’s? I am trusting in my own ability. I will fake it till I make it. But make believe, it’s something different all together. It says, “God your way is better than my way. Your law is better than my law. Your Word is more powerful than my logic. So I will make believe I am what you say I am.” Now that will change your life!

The issue comes down to motive. If I am going to fake it till I make it so that I can get the results I want and then go back to what I was then it will never work. That’s behavioral modification. But, if I “make believe” I am already what God says I am so I can be transformed into “that”, then I am on the road to being more like Christ.

God does not want a fake. He wants you. All of you. Exactly like you are. Not some future version of you. He does not want you to try and clean up your act so he will like you more. He does not want you to stop sinning so that he can bless you more. He loves you just like you are. But, he does want you to have true life. And God knows that true life comes from living as you were created to live.

Play “make believe” today. You may be surprised how it changes your life. 

Working

Hey guys,
Just letting you know I am working on the next post. Just been really busy!

Jason

This is from Nora and beautiful

I read this morning in my little In Touch devotional book, "Commandments are in place to protect us from enslavement, which is the natural result of persistent wrong doing...We are privileged to have a Father who breaks our human chains. However, we are not freed so that we can disobey; rather, God offers us freedom from the domination of sin." I have to practice a daily communication with God because without it a weight of "meness" builds and it stinks. Its like the definition of insanity, doing something over expecting same result. I'm insane and God knows it, I'm glad God's love is from God. Constant. So constant I can't even quite grasp how constant it is.