Wait, Watch and Be Healed

Medicine is the craziest thing. You can’t see what it’s doing, but you know whatever it’s done is working because you start to feel so much better. Jesus is the best medicine. He has the mysterious way of entering into the hearts of the people that embrace him and healing all their hurts. Before I transferred trains from knowing to embracing, I didn’t feel like Jesus had ever done much for me. Of course, everyone said he’d died for my sins, but how was I supposed to be sure of that. He was like the pill I was told worked well, but kept in my hand instead of swallowing. This made it impossible to  attest to its effectiveness.

Now that I’ve finally swallowed it, I can say how much it’s changed me. My most major symptoms have completely disappeared and any lingering side effects from my condition are being healed with each passing day. I literally become a new person. My old life is gone (2 cor 5:17)! The power of the life-giving Spirit has freed [me] from the power of sin that leads to death. (Romans 8:2)

The most critical piece of any medicine is knowing that it’s truly effective. And spiritual medicine is no different. You can feel the inner workings of a Jesus’ metaphysical solution just like a physical treatment heals a physical problem. The holy spirit is like a spiritual bandaid, protecting your heart, strengthening it and allowing it to regenerate into something amazing. People often wonder if they really have given their life to Jesus or how they could tell if they did. The holy spirit is the gift you get for embracing Jesus (acts 19:2). You know the song Amazing Grace?

“I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.”

That’s the holy spirit. It opens your spiritual eyes and gives you the knowledge of things that could never be realized through science or logic.

CS Lewis tried explaining this phenomenon when he said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

The holy spirit is like the light of the soul. It’s God’s way of saying, “I’m here.”

Embrace the Solution

Now, if someone takes medicine for a super tiny cold, it’s hard to tell how powerful the medicine really is because the change wasn’t insanely drastic. But if someone has a fatal form of cancer and takes a pill that cures them, it’s obvious to everyone that that was a seriously effective, power-punching pill. Basically what I’m saying is, I was the cancer patient.

I had always known that Jesus was God. It was the answer to every Sunday school question. But knowing is much different than embracing. Mark 3:11 says that’s “Whenever evil spirits saw [Jesus], they fell down before him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God.’” Evil spirits knew who Jesus was just like most of us do today. Knowing is obviously not the solution. But the moment I truly understood how much I needed Christ and genuinely offered my heart to him, my entire being was instantaneously changed. I had never felt an intimate connection with God by contemplating principles or doctrines. But I can say that I felt an overwhelming outpouring of God’s presence and love when I embraced who Christ was and allowed him to be the medicine for my aching heart. Finding God took no karmic manipulating, spiritual prerequisites, or saintly interceding. God came right to broken, little me the very moment I simply embraced the solution.

Acknowledge the Illness

Alcoholics Anonymous had it right when they made “acknowledgement” the first step to healing. The primary and most critical step to finding a solution is recognizing we need it.
 If we can step back and see that there is a spiritual dilemma in our lives, then the battle’s half won. The AA book says:

Step 1 – I admit that I am powerless over ____.

Maybe it’s alcohol, food, drugs or the need to be the best, the skinniest or the richest. Every person has an addiction, big or small.

The tricky thing about Step 1 is that it’s easy to avoid when the problems not that big. Like, when my cold first started, I didn’t feel THAT bad so it was pretty easy to ignore. Many people react the same way to their spiritual condition. “ I only lie a little.” or “I do good things to counterbalance the bad.” These are all ways of sidestepping the issue. That was my mentality for a while, but once the symptoms worsened it was much harder to ignore them. I was a drunken hot mess and even when I knew I should be happy I still felt like something was missing inside me. My symptoms were yelling out to me that I had a problem and the moment I opened my eyes to see them, I could finally start looking for some medicine.

Jesus: For Medicinal Use Only

I’m sick, you guys.

I hate it!
For the past few days, my throat’s been sore, my nose looks like Rudolph’s and I’ve lost all my desire for foods.
It’s not a pretty picture.

Of course for normal human beings, the moment any small symptom develops they tend to grab the closest bottle of robitussen and chug.
But not me. My automatic response has always been one of straight denial. I spent the first day and a half of my cold in contemptuous rebellion. I was absolutely sure that there was no way this was a cold and quickly angered at the idea that I was wrong. Medicine was very much not necessary in my opinion. And my condition was totally temporary.

But oh, I was so so wrong. Not only was temporary the antonym of my condition, but as my sickness lingered on, so did its wrath. My cold was growing by mammoth proportions to the point that I could no longer deny a solution.

I started popping cold pills like they were a pharmaceutical form of chocolate M&Ms.
And By the end of the day, my sneezing spasms had ceased. Last night I took a Benadryl for further decongesting and then passed out on my couch. I woke up surrounded by a shallow sea of tissues, unlike previous days where I was drowning in a tissue monsoon. I jumped out of bed, poked at my significantly less red nose and started eagerly popping more of my medicinal candies. I know by tomorrow I’ll be completely cold free.

Take home message:

When showing symptoms:

1. Acknowledge the illness
2. Embrace the solution
3. Wait, watch and be healed

But what about a spiritual illness? I’m not sure about you, but I can say that I’ve definitely experienced a spiritual cold in my life. Except, it was more like an allergy that I was born with than a sporadic bout of congestion. It would rear its ugly head in certain seasons and was constantly reminding me of my limitations. Furry animals and outdoor activities have always been on my no-go list. But I didn’t really miss what I’d never had the chance to know. And my spiritual allergies were greeted in similar fashion.

My first response to my spiritual void was, unsurprisingly, one of denial, even though the symptoms were there. I’ve never been able to go one day without sinning. I was born with a condition, a spiritual condition. I was sick and I didn’t even know it. And when people told me I’d think, “How dare you! I’m not ‘spiritually ill’! I’m not a ‘sinner’! You’re the sinner, you freak.” But why is it that as relatively “good people”, we are incapable of controlling our actions and desires? I always find myself messing up even when I try to do the right thing. Even if we stayed in bed all day to prevent any sinning from happening, our hearts and minds are still under the influence of thoughts like jealously, gluttony and anger. In Jeremiah 17:9, it says that “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Good question. I know I sure can’t. It’s just the human condition. We are destined to mess up, and unfortunately the price we pay for our mistakes is death (Romans 6:23). Each mess up is like another hole in the bridge between God and us. Our condition makes it impossible to reach Him. So he feels distant and obscure, because He literally is from where we’re standing. But like a two-sided coin, this dilemma has some awesome news if you flip it over.

1. Acknowledge the Illness

Alcoholics Anonymous had it right when they made “acknowledgement” the first step to healing. The primary and most critical step to finding a solution is recognizing we need it. If we can step back and see that there is a spiritual dilemma in our lives, then the battle’s half won. The AA book says: [...]

2. Embrace the Solution

Now, if someone takes medicine for a super tiny cold, it’s hard to tell how powerful the medicine really is because the change wasn’t insanely drastic. But if someone has a fatal form of cancer and takes a pill that cures them, it’s obvious to everyone that that was a seriously effective, power-punching pill. Basically [...]

3. Wait, Watch and Be Healed

Medicine is the craziest thing. You can’t see what it’s doing, but you know whatever it’s done is working because you start to feel so much better. Jesus is the best medicine. He has the mysterious way of entering into the hearts of the people that embrace him and healing all their hurts. Before I [...]

poem

When sick of life and all the World-
How sick of all desire but Thee!-
I lift mine eyes up to the hills,
Eyes of my heart that see,
I see beyond all death and ills
Refreshing green for heart and eyes,
The golden streets and gateways pearled,
The trees of Paradise.
-Christina Rossetti

just watch.

How can you tell if Jesus is God? Or even real?

Reason #453: He changes lives.

“When Christ came in, that feeling He gives you- the gift of understanding life- which is everything was created for Christ and by Him and we’re created to be with Him. It’s the most incredible feeling because you’re where you belong. And contentment is given to you in life because you don’t have to look anywhere else and you’re exactly where you need to be and the question about life is answered.”
-Brian Welch

You can check out more of his story in this awesome interview

Me? Religious? LMAO

 

I’m not religious. 

If I was, I would be really bad at it. I’m not very good at conforming and I suck at following rules. So far, my customary knee-jerk reaction has been to do whatever really makes me happy. Consequences are not normally considered. So for example, when I did well in school and my parents gave me warm fuzies from all their gifts of congratulations, I’d reserve a little space in my life for academia. Or when I’d go to parties and feel semi-coherent and very happy, I’d make it a priority to reserve a little space in my life for friends and their parties. And when I see happy, rich successful people driving to their nine to fives, I reserve a little space in my life to dream. I dream of the picket fence, the luxury cars, the impressive job title and the perfect husband -all things that will make me happy. That’s what we all want. Right? “Happy.” 

But then one day, in the middle of my happy place pursuing, Jesus pops up out of freaking nowhere, bypasses the doorbell and just runs right into my heart.  And suddenly my definition of “happy” is changed forever. The happy that I knew and the only happy that I’d ever experienced, was suddenly a total joke. To make room for the new gigantic happiness He was storing in my soul, I had to push out all the fake happy. There are these little boxes that said, 

“Success will make you happy.”, “A million friends will make you happy.”, “A bigger apartment will make you happy.”, “A new car will make you happy.”, “The perfect boy will make you happy”, and my all-time favorite, “YOU can make you happy.” They all had to go. 

And just like I’d pursued happiness through previously semi-successful methods, I now had an insanely huge desire to pursue Jesus because he made me happy. It wasn’t because I wanted some Christian title or because I wanted to be holier than thou or be righteous or a square. I had simply found something that made me happier than anything I’d ever experienced in my entire life! Jesus has this pure love drug that in small doses causes peace and sense of closeness to God. But in large overdosing quantities it puts you on the ground, out of your body and in total ecstasy as you feel God’s love surround you. Sorry weed. You lose. 

Being born again was the like swallowing a mind altering drug that put God at the center of my universe and made everything else just seem secondary. Have you ever met someone that had an addiction? The substance, for addicts, becomes all consuming. They try to have it as much as they can and when they run out all they think about is how to get more. It’s a crazy metaphor to use, but I feel literally the same way about my Savior. I feel like I’m addicted to God’s love and I can’t get enough of it. I can’t stop talking about Him and how he has radically transformed my life. 

I just can’t! 

And I know that I would feel exactly the same if no churches existed, if Christianity was never deemed a religion and if “Christian” was nowhere in the dictionary. In fact, for most of my life churches made me think of prime nap times and Christians made me think of people that forgot that life was meant for having fun. The easiest way to box me in, though, is to call me a Christian. That’s fine, I guess. Just don’t define me by my church attendance, my weekly tithe or how well I can handle the ten commandments. 

Because no one’s really a Christian because of following rules or breaking them. I’m just a crazy girl that had an encounter with Jesus and fell in love. 

Like I said before, I’m really not religious.

One was the Loneliest Number That I Ever Did

Enlightenment. Buddhism is all about this, or so I learned in my world religions course this afternoon. Supposedly, Buddha believed that desire was at the root of all our problems. He saw that the impermanent world left us with nothing to cling to and soon decided that we should therefore want nothing. Nothing! That’s a lot of things to cross off a Christmas list.  A lot of the monks that follow this doctrine go off into random forests to deprive themselves of all the fun things they used to love. Detaching themselves from materialism, these guys feel better enabled to make their way to nirvana.

By the time my little educational experience from this afternoon had ended, I’d come to a pretty crazy realization. I’ve been stuck in a Buddha kind of mindset for the past year of my life. For some reason, after my Jesus experience, I turned a corner and camped out in deprivation land.  While the monks focused on eliminating all desire, I had cut out all opportunities that might take me off my Jesus high.

Initially, my baby Christian self wanted only to tell the whole world about Mr. Jesus and tattoo his name right on my forehead. My self-interest took a backseat to my enormous desire to be to the best Jesus follower ever. The only problem was I was still stuck in my slightly hedonistic, completely intoxicating lifestyle.  I hung out for a little while telling people what I’d learned, but eventually I knew I had to get away. First I left the habits, then I left the city and then I left my friends. Yes, all my friends. Because as much as I wanted to show them how much god really loved them, I felt like there was an effective way of evangelizing that I just didn’t know.  I thought if I just hid away for a few months, I could grow into a super strong evangelizing machine and return to the world full of answers and unafraid of temptations. But soon weeks turned into months. The summer turned into winter. And my time away from the world turned into an entire year.

The more temptations I found myself fighting, the more I felt validated as I hid deeper in my self-made cocoon. I went from going out almost every night to having Sundays become the most eventful day of the week. When I started to feel lonely I read a bible verse that said the solution I needed was service. That’s when I became a YoungLife leader and a Sunday school teacher. Instead of being wasted during my spring break, I went to Florida with Crusades for Christ and talked Jesus with secularized Spring Breakers. Talking about Jesus with slightly incoherent college goers made for one interesting and bizarre week. When the summer hit, I stayed in California with a friend from my pre- converted days. It was the first summer I didn’t OD on alcohol and probably my all time favorite. It wasn’t because of any big event, but because of all the small intimate moments we shared as I witnessed Christ transform her into a full-fledged Believer. She was the first person I’d ever brought to Christ and for a while it had me reassured that my lifestyle was somehow justified.

Yet after the initial comfort of no commitments or conflicts wore off, I became totally and inescapably lonely. On the bright side, I knew no one could say I wasn’t “acting very Christian” because I was doing absolutely nothing, but I started really hating that I’d some how become a total bore.

My life was about as exciting as a Tibetan monk’s. And it’s only recently become something to write home about. It’s been an awkward and unusually scary process of going back to the friends I’d left behind and trying to make new ones in my new city, school and sorority. I feel like such a stronger Christian  from my year in hiding, but I know I didn’t need to stay away as long as I did.

Nothingness is a real trickster. Just like the Buddhists, I started thinking that the way to avoid the bad was to avoid everything. I thought there was no way I could possibly mess up if I was doing nothing. I didn’t know that by doing nothing I was actually messing up.  I mean, in the very first book of the bible God says, “It is not good for man to be alone”. And Now I totally know why.  I’m not going to lie and say that becoming a Christian made my life easy. It made my life scary because I’m stuck in a world where people know I love Jesus and are watching to see what that means. I felt like Christ conquered all my really big habits (like addictions) the moment I was saved, but I was left with all these little things that still definitely get in my way. The thing I’ve come to learn is that even with God on my side, I’m forever going to look back on my life and see a long list of forgiven sins. But the key is not to fear the mistakes, but embrace them and grow stronger. Jesus didn’t defeat death so we could all stop sinning. He died so we could see that as inherent sinners with death as our karma we need grace to set us free.

I think Bono explained it most eloquently in an interview when he said,

“Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff. That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma were going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross.”

I can see now that the goal is not to eliminate all desires, but to align ourselves with God’s will and then control our desires accordingly with the help of Christ who strengthens us. (Philippians 4:13)  Suffering can’t be avoided by eliminating our desires or our social lives. The only way to overcome suffering is to simply trust in God and serve Him. It is only through Him that we are able to conquer all our fears, and live life to the fullest, embracing absolutely everything it has to offer.

I’d like to dedicate this post to all the friends who I still need to call. You’ve literally helped me become the person I am today and I love you and miss you more than anything in the world. I never thought I could ever go this long without you and it’s been excruciatingly hard. I hope u can forgive me for being such a weird Christian. I’m still new at this. Thank you for being so unbelievably patient and awesome : )

Born x 2

Below I’ve compared some of the biggest differences I experienced between my life before vs after being born again:

• Before: I felt like something was missing from my life.
• After: I feel very much fulfilled and complete.

• Before: Alot of the Bible confused me.
• After: Many times the Bible really speaks to my heart in a unmistakably personal way.

• Before: I prayed mostly when I wanted something.
• After: I talk to God as much as I can.

• Before: I was afraid of dying
• After: I’m super excited for Christ’s return and I have no fear of dying because I live for Christ

• Before: I felt like every time I tried to be good enough for God I’d end up messing up and eventually just give up.
• After: I know with all my heart that I don’t have to be good enough because Jesus was already good enough for my salvation. So the good things I might achieve should stem from my love of God and not a feeling of inadequacy.

• Before: I used intoxicants to help me be happy and relaxed.
• After: I’ve experienced the greatest mind altering drug through my rebirth and baptism in the holy spirit. I literally can’t and won’t use intoxicants because I feel like it opens up my mind to deception and unnatural, counterproductive thoughts.

• Before: When I was told that Christ was my savior my heart hardened or just didn’t really understand.
• After: I can see the truth.
• Before: I believed that faith was an active experience that required a blind acknowledgement of things I’d never be completely sure of.
• After: I know that faith is essential to conversion and also a product of it. It’s like meeting someone and then believing that they exist simply because you’ve met them. In the same way, faith is a natural consequence of a Christ encounter.

• Before: I had a faint feeling that God was near to me on a rare occasion, but never in an absolute or definitive way.
• After: I feel his presence when I worship, when I pray, when I’m in a church service and in almost every instance it is very palpable

• Before: I didn’t tell anyone who Christ was because I wasn’t totally sure who he really was.
• After: I want everyone to know Jesus and I became especially passionate about the spiritual status of the people I love. One of the first questions I asked after being saved was who else in my family was saved. Unsaved people never ask this question. It had never even crossed my mind before.

• Before: Most of my motivations stemmed from things within the world that I believed would satisfy me and eventually make me happy.
• After: Worldly things seem much smaller in value to me now.

• Before: I had literally no control over the sin in my life and fell to most temptation.
• After: I no longer live in sin because I’ve been set free.

• Before: Church felt like an obligation and sometimes i was irritated just by having to be there.
• After: Church feels like my spiritual resting place where I can learn and grow and freely express my joy over all that Christ has done for me.

• Before: I thought being a Christian was about being good so I always felt like in some way fell short
• After: I understand that my salvation comes from Christ and has nothing to do with anything I’ve done to try to deserve it

• Before: I thought if I ever really did surrender my life to Christ, I wouldn’t have fun anymore or get to do the things I liked.
• After: I have never been happier because his plan for my life is ultimately so unimaginably better than my own.

• Before: Christian music was annoying and sometimes even made me feel guilty.
• After: Christian music identifies with the deepest, most passionate feelings in my heart, my love for Christ.

• Before: When I was around a really sinful environment, it didn’t bother me at all and I’d never contemplate the possible repercussions.
• After: Now I can’t seem to ignore the flashing red lights that go off inside me when I’m in a bad situation and sometimes I get an overwhelming feeling of sadness and empathy for the people who I’m around.

• Before: I felt like an unescapable sadness seemed to follow me wherever I went as if I was searching unconsciously for something I lacked.
• After: I feel genuine joy and peace that I’ve never felt before. I feel like a completely new person.

Prince charming Jesus

I was in love once. I knew it because of the way I felt. Other people knew it because of the way I acted. It felt like the world whirled around us and we were the only two people in it. He consumed my mind and had every part of my heart. The feeling was indescribable and there’s only one thing that even comes close. Jesus. No, not the far away up in the air somewhere Jesus. I’m thinking of the Jesus that invades your soul and warms your core and brings love straight into your life. The first time he made my spirit come alive, I was hooked. The love he gave me changed me. I knew it because of the way I felt. Other people knew it because of the way I acted.

Just meditate on this for a second. Have you ever heard someone talk genuinely about being in love? What about being in love with Jesus? If not, I think it’s safe to assume it would go something like this in both instances:

I just want to make _______(the person being loved) happy. I’ll do anything for _______.  ________ makes me feel complete. ________ is all I think about and I don’t want anything to get in the way of my relationship with ______. I hope our relationship will get stronger and we can be together forever.

You could just as easily put Jesus in the blanks as you could your last girlfriend. Why such a similarity? The answer goes much deeper than the “Jesus loves you” motto, but it is a great road sign to direct us.

If someone falls in love, it’s always a direct result of the connection they’ve had with that particular person. So, how much more in love would a person be if they develop a connection with the Son of God? It’s just logic.  Paul is a great example of a person who was totally in love with Jesus. He tried to explain to the early church in Galatians just how much Christ changed is life saying “…I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20) John Piper said “[Paul’s] whole life was nothing but a daily experience of working out what it meant to be loved by the Son of God.” And evidently it changed a lot of things, from his first name to his first letters. Everything he did stemmed from the desire to express his gratitude and love for the person that saved his life.

Has Jesus saved your life? The answer is yes. Just like Paul’s encounter that resulted in his crazy days as a radical, you have also been saved. And I think this idea needs to be reexamined. It’s not just about the status of our souls’ and our quick tickets to heaven. It’s about the relationship we gain by having Jesus infiltrate our lives. What if Jesus had a facebook?  Would we feel a certain hesitance to change our relationship status when it comes to Christ? Maybe his request would stay untouched or just added to some limited profile where he’d have access to a partitioned piece of a life, like special holidays or Sundays. But all the while, he’s still waiting to be genuinely and unabashedly embraced so that his presence can truly manifest itself.

Have you ever tried to network with someone because you knew they had the potential to help you? Maybe they worked for your dream employer or knew someone that knew someone that knew somebody special. The point is they were in a place to hook you up in ways that could be promising for you future. Without a doubt, Jesus is the quintessential hook up. He cannot only hook you up for eternity, but he has the God of the universe on speed dial. Having a relationship with the Son of God is like getting a gold medal in Networking 101. The moment we give Jesus the well deserved chance to prove his stuff, he not only finds ways to astound and transform us, but we quickly find ourselves falling head over heels for the guy…slash God. Yet some people don’t even feel inclined to start the introductions. They might exchange business cards with him or just put him in the back of their minds for a rainy day or sit and ponder his existence.  But putting Christ on bench side status is about as effective as losing the number for a potential employer.

The ultimate dilemma is in finding the faith required to make that genuine connection. It’s seem insane to think that someone that lived 2000 years ago is really still alive and waiting for us to find the faith to call out his name. And, it seems even more insane to think that through his atonement we can be freed and actually feel his transcending presence in our hearts at this very moment. “Yet, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise.” (1 Corinthians 1:27) So while our logic is insisting it’s fallacious our hearts are urging us to believe.

St. Augustine examined this perplexity and soon affirmed that “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.” It was by predestined design that faith was made the key to unlock the reality of our world. Going up to an altar or saying a few sentences to symbolize an attempt at belief is not going to bring us to the love that Paul experienced. The moment we try to maneuver or manipulate our circumstance, we’re doomed for failure. Our minds really have no place in the matter.

What’s required is an act of descending the mind into the heart where doubting, rational thoughts can’t invade. This is where our faith can be found. And just as St Augustine described, it is from this transcendence that we can literally witness what we’ve been searching for all along. Instantaneously, we can finally see what we allowed our hearts to believe. In this place, Christ can directly touch our hearts and our lives and take the blinders off our eyes. His love is so powerful and so overwhelming that it can mimic on a larger scale the love we play out imperfectly in our relationships all the time.

Have you ever met someone that seemed slightly miserable or unfulfilled, but had a catastrophic change of mood when they found someone that loved them? If a person’s love can change someone how much more could God’s love change someone? Not only can God literally supply us with love, but He is love. (1 John 4:8)

Perhaps that’s why our world completely obsesses over love. We write books, make movies and sing endless songs, always about love. We’re so quick to embrace the product but somehow seem to miss its maker. “All you need is love?” “What the world needs now is love?” “Your love is King?” “Power of love?” If God is the power plant of all things love, we could just as easily rename these popular love songs, “Power of God”, “What the world needs now is God”. You get the idea.

So could it be that we’re running towards the warmth when we really have access to the sun? We can sing our love songs and immerse ourselves in love stories or we can take a chance on real love with the one that planned our existence. He’s still waiting on our friend request.