A God Like Jesus

I can never get over the “otherness” of the Gospel.  It is so improbable that there would be a God this kind.  Even the most wishful of thinkers wouldn’t have had the gall to assume that there was a God like Jesus.  It’s like a Hollywood actor, snot-covered and crying his eyes out on the street corner, desperate to win the heart of a wasted drug addict.  Like a courtroom judge, begging that he could be sentenced to prison, instead of the hardened criminal on trial.

The God proclaimed by Jesus on the cross has no sense of dignity.  He doesn’t seem to understand the superiority that belongs to his title.  He is so out of touch as to not even feel embarrassed to suffer at the hands of the humanity he loves so much.  Doesn’t he have any self-respect?  Can’t he see that the people he love just aren’t that into him?

What a beautiful revelation!  In Jesus, we discover that the primary attributes of God are not his bigness or his strength, but his undying devotion to his wandering children.  HE IS steadfast love that penetrates every barrier.  HE IS relentless passion that would rather drown in our sorrows with us than leave us to fight alone.  HE IS undying hope because if love is willing to be crushed for his beloved, what possible danger could ever tear us apart?

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“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.  But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

Isaiah 53:4-5

Always Food

I’m back!  I haven’t written in a long time…not since the birth of my youngest son who is now almost 10 months old!  The addition of my son has added a lot of joy, but also taken a lot of energy and focus away from writing.  I have been waiting for a return to normalcy (whatever that is) so that I can start writing again, but it finally dawned on me that that isn’t going to happen.  Instead, I’m going to embrace the new normal.  I’m going to write what I can as often as I can, and I’m going to give up my perfectionism and click the “publish” button whether I think it’s good enough for public consumption or not.  I don’t know what will come of it, but hopefully something real and beneficial to my readers.  I hope you enjoy!

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There is always nourishment in Jesus. I forget that sometimes. Especially when I let my mind wander for too long on theological problems and abstract questions. I will start getting bored of the technicalities spinning through my head and will project that boredom onto the underlying truth that all those words are trying to express. “Jesus loves me”.  I know. “He is always with me”.  I know that.  Blah, blah, blah.

What a beautiful escape it is to surrender the mental toil, the attempts to explain, the questions and paradoxes, and simply breathe the truth. Let it in. Let it out. This isn’t a mind game. The gospel is not a psychological theory. It isn’t a self-improvement seminar. It is a living, breathing reality. It is the image of the invisible God, made known to man. It is the revelation of Emanuel, God with us.

Something births in my soul every time I remember. Every time I drink of mercy. Every time I taste that He is here. Truly here. When I awaken to his realness, his invasive goodness. Jesus is good food. Jesus is good drink. He is hope. He is purpose. He is life.

Found

I wrote this post a year ago; 9 years to the day after the lights turned on.  I’m now celebrating my 10th anniversary, and hope that you will discover yourself deliciously found like I did.  Enjoy!

Stephen Fulton

September 19, 2016

Today is the 9 year anniversary of my awakening. It went something like this.

I was exhausted. I didn’t fully realize how tired I was, because when tired is a lifestyle….well, it seems normal. While circumstantially my life was pretty average, my soul and mind were under torment. I was in that special corner of hell described in Romans 7. I had great desires. I had a heart that wanted to know God. I wanted to be a good Christian. I wanted to “deny myself and follow Him”. These desires meant that throughout my childhood and teen years, I actually listened to the sermons in church. It meant that I actually read the bible for myself (though never having the self-discipline to achieve read-the-bible-in-a-year status), and perhaps most strange for my age, it meant that I devoured books on theology. But my actions failed me. I was…

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Risen!

We must embrace what the resurrection communicates. It is not an event that is best memorialized by a special Sunday service. It is an event that is best honored through lives that have internalized its message.

In the resurrection we learn that;

a) Even our worst sin (killing God in the flesh) can not derail God from his redemptive purpose.  In the crucifixion, we discovered that God loves us to death (see Romans 5:6-8)…but what hope is there in a kind but dead God?  While the cross revealed his love, the resurrection reveals his power.  Even a dead God cannot be stopped from returning to life and accomplishing his purposes!

b) The death of the body is not the end of hope, but only the beginning.  Everybody fears death.  Everybody!  But in the resurrection, we discover God’s mastery over death.  It proves that the eventual loss of our own lives is not the conclusion that it appears to be.  It shows that even the darkest of circumstances are no match for the power of God to work all things together for our good!

c) There is no need to fight evil with evil. Jesus chose the weak way of “not resisting those who are evil” (Matthew 5:39). When his more pragmatic disciple, Peter, attacked one of Jesus’ captors (no doubt hoping a little bit of force could salvage God’s failing plan) Jesus rebuked him and healed the soldier’s wound. Jesus chose goodness even when it proved impossibly weak; even when it meant surrendering all of the territory that could have been his. He trusted God to breathe new life into all of the things that his own unbending goodness required him to lay down. In the resurrection, Jesus proves all of our “necessary” evils to be utterly unnecessary. It turns out that we do not need swords and violence in order to build or maintain our foothold in the world. We only need hearts that trust our good, good Father to pick up all of the pieces that our love requires us to lay down.

Jesus finished work declares to us that we are loved, we are chosen, and we are in the care of the God for whom death is no match. What reason is there to remain in fear?  Let’s open our hearts to trust in his love, trust in his power, and trust in his ability to resurrect all of the good that has been left for dead.

He is risen!

Can The World Be Saved?

Take it from someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety for much of his life: There is SO MUCH HOPE!

The madness of our age is the blindness of our own eyes to see the potential in humanity. It is fashionable in Christian circles to look out on the masses and be overwhelmed by the sin and confusion and pain. Sad headshakes and weary “if only” statements are as commonplace as saying “amen” to end a prayer. Though rarely expressed in words, our pessimism would suggest that the victory of the cross is a loss-reduction strategy at best. As if the cross has no power to redeem and rescue, but merely to forestall the inevitable disappointment and destruction of all but a few. In our neutered gospel it would seem that the first Adam has retained his right to define humanity, while the second Adam has been commissioned to make a big show but little difference. This is a far cry from Romans 5, which portrays the new Adam as being of far greater consequence than the first Adam. In verses 17-18 it proclaims,

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, MUCH MORE will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for ALL MEN, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for ALL MEN.” (emphasis my own)

2 Corinthians 5:14-16a says,

“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for ALL, therefore ALL have died; and he died for ALL, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

From now on, therefore, we regard NO ONE according to the flesh…”

It’s time for us to stop predicting what only our natural eyes can see. Yes, there are dangers and there is darkness, but there is also something greater.

When the Israelites saw only a harsh desert, God saw the place where he would give water, food, provision, and direction to his people. When Jesus’ disciples saw only two small fish and five loaves of bread, God saw a feast that would feed the multitudes.

So today when we look at the challenges of our age, let’s see them through the lens of redemption. Let’s look at the world around us not as hopelessly lost, but as already found and included. Let’s learn to declare these unseen realities to our own souls, and let’s learn to declare them to the world. Redemption is not finished with us yet. Not by a long shot!

Heartbreak

Here’s an old journal entry I recently stumbled across.  I don’t remember the specifics of the situation, but obviously I was hurting pretty bad!  I’m sure I was only writing to try and process the pain, but what came out was an anchor for the brokenhearted.  I hope it encourages you!

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Heartbreak. This is the hardest state that I know of. In almost every other state good advice would be to “follow your heart”…but when your heart is torn into multiple pieces, all crying out for some sort of extreme action, what do you do? Do you bury things? Or do you let everything come out and wound the people around you? Do you cry, or find funny things to laugh at? What do you do when it hurts? This has been an enigma for me. My standard reaction to heartbreak is to withdraw and embrace self-destructive behavior. But what am I going to do now? What is the answer for a broken heart?

Acceptance. I accept that what happened, happened. I accept that what happened is not ok. I accept that I don’t know what to do, and I accept that I am perfectly acceptable in this place. This is where religion will destroy you, but God will lift you up…because if there is any distance that needs to be spanned in order to meet God, he might as well be a million miles away. When my heart is broken, I don’t need guilt, shame, or to analyze what portion of the blame I should be assigned. I don’t need to wonder if God is angry at me, or have any insecurity in that relationship. I need the God who is here.

I accept that God is here. In the midst of the chaos and the pain, and the rush of contradictory and violent emotions that flood through my being, I know that He is here, and His heart is big enough to hold me when my own cannot. So it’s not about what I do. It’s not about whether I shout or I cry, isolate myself or find comforters, lash out at others or numb myself and move on. When my heart is broken it is not about what I do, it is the knowledge that who I am is acceptable, that He sees me, He knows me, and He permits no dark cloud to hide me from his affection. Even the darkness is as noon to Him, and it is He that holds my days as well as my nights. I am allowed to feel what I feel without guilt because these feelings are just passing through. They are just temporary sounds that cannot silence the symphony of love that surrounds me.

It is God who gives life to my heart, and when it is healthy, it is my hearts beat that moves me to the rhythms of his grace. But when it is broken and no longer able to lead, I let my heart go on bypass and let his heart fill my veins. His heart is worthy to the task!

God’s Righteousness Revealed

What follows is an entry from my journal.  I delayed sharing it because I thought it might be too controversial.  It is hard enough for us to accept God’s forgiveness, but to accept ourselves as perfect (in biblical language: righteous) feels like dangerous heresy!  But as scandalous as it may appear, by his own actions, God has declared us righteous.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” -2 Corinthians 5:21

“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.  Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” -Romans 5:17-19

This is not a polished blog post, just honest thoughts. I hope it inspires your own mediation on your redeemed perfection!

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I am at home with who I am! Matters of the heart can take years to resolve, and the mind can have long since accepted something that the heart continues to ignore. I knew that I was forgiven. I got that. But now to see that I am perfect….wow! I am perfect. And so are you! There is no fatal flaw, no bug, no mistake in our beings. We are as we were meant to be, and we were meant to be godlike! I am safe because I am known and trusted. I’m trusted not based on my past behavior, but based on my true nature. Who I am is trustworthy! Who I am fits into who he is with perfect ease. There is no need to try to shove a square peg in a round hole, and no need for Jesus to pretend he’s us so that the Father can tolerate us. We are not righteous by a shell game, or by some substitutionary trick…we are righteous first by design, and second by redemption.

At creation, God made man and woman, and said that we were “very good”. He said that we were made in His image. We were his children. Yet at the fall we get this sense that there must be some mistake. The fact that Adam and Eve sinned means they must have had some flaw. Then Adam and Eve had children who had children who had children who had children, down through the line this sense of inadequacy continued. We believed ourselves to be inadequate, we acted badly, and then used our bad actions to prove our inadequacy, thus trapping us in the sinner’s catch-22. A good metaphor would be the common racist attitudes that many white people had (and perhaps still have) towards black people. We enslaved them because we decided they were subhuman, didn’t educate them because they weren’t worth it, and didn’t empower them because they were not smart enough. Then when these uneducated, unequipped people acted uneducated and unequipped, we used that as proof of the inferiority of their race. What many whites did to many blacks is what the cycle of sin has done to all of humanity. We sin because we believe we are damaged, imperfect, only human, then use the fact that we sinned as evidence of being damaged, imperfect, and only human. Our belief produces an action that proves the belief…but does that make it true?

With Jesus, we finally get some clarity! At the cross we see all of mankind failing Jesus.  In killing Jesus religion sacrificed love to maintain control, politics did the necessary evil to maintain the status quo, the crowds who worshiped a hero gladly crucified a villain, and the radicals — the Jesus lovers, the sold out believers — ran and hid for cover. At the cross is the utter failure of humanity to do anything right! Surely, if nothing else, it once again proves our belief that we are inadequate, imperfect, broken? Surely this proves God made a mistake? And yet in our worst showing of all time, when humanity condemned our hope to death on a cross, the words “forgive them” and “it is finished” preceded a resurrection from the dead! And what did the resurrected hope do? He found his friends, empowered them, and let them loose to declare the forgiveness of sins and redemption of mankind to the ends of the earth! It turns out that even at our worst, God counts us worthy of the precious blood of Jesus! It turns out that while the fall distorted our understanding and distanced us in our hearts from knowing God, sin did not have the same affect on God! Even while our hearts and minds were in hiding because of our guilt and shame, God was ever loving us and valuing us according to the incredible worth he gave us at creation! If we were perfect then, we are perfect now! Sin did not change our nature, it only darkened our understanding!

In beginning to see this and accept this, I am finding freedom from self-suspicion. While religion promotes ruthless self-analysis as a means of rooting out sin, it turns out that finding oneself forgiven and redeemed restores innocence, and innocence is a much stronger power than self-suspicion! Forgiveness frees us from guilt so that we can enjoy God instead of hiding….and this is good! Discovering that there is nothing wrong with you enables you to make no more excuses, and to no longer assume the worst of yourself. Sin is not a fruit of my nature, only a fruit of a darkened mindset! As I feast on my true nature and the perfect fellowship I share with Jesus, I am unwittingly inoculating myself from the dangers of temptation. Childlike innocence is the greatest defense!

Hope for the New Year

It’s almost the new year! This is a time where many of us set goals for our lives. You may anticipate this to be the year where you finally achieve success (however you may define that word). Maybe this is the year where you finally get in shape, finally kick that bad habit, or finally learn how to enjoy life to the fullest. As seductive as it may be to idealize next year as a year of fulfillment, I have a better declaration for you for the new year.

Your new year is not about achieving a goal. You are not a factory with a quota to fill. It is not about changing yourself into someone better. The God who created you didn’t make a mistake. No, this is a year for two words.

The first word is Today, because the promises of God are not about some far off event. They are about right now. In the midst of the mundane and the exciting, the frustrating and the interesting, today is the day that God loves you. Today is the day that goodness and mercy pursue you (Psalm 23:6). Today is the day that God’s Spirit is pleased to dwell in you. Today is the day that you are his beloved child. Today is the day that He will not leave you or forsake you. God is not waiting for you in the future. He is habitating your today. Let Him find you here!

The second word is Growth. You are not a factory, and there is no quota. You are a tree, planted by the Lord. However hectic the life of farmers may be, the life of a tree is simple. Drink up the water from your roots. Enjoy the sun on your leaves. Grow. It’s not yours to figure out what sort of tree you are, or what direction you should grow in. God already built into you everything he intends you to be. If you grow slowly, enjoy it! If you grow rapidly, enjoy it! In this year you get to drink from the subterranean river of God, which your roots can taste no matter what storm or drought may mar the surface. Drink from his goodness in every season, and enjoy the days of sunshine too! Let his wisdom, his love, and his peace saturate your roots, spread through your branches and leaves, and produce fruit for the nourishment of others!

Let God find you and breathe life into your todays, and drink up his love. You will grow!

Counterintuitive

 

Many important truths are the opposite of what would seem logical. Our logic puts confidence in what it can control and distrusts freedom. Our reasoning finds comfort in what it can understand and avoids the naked wonder of the unknown. Our values see the sacrifice of a few (soldiers, refugees, the generic “others”) as being necessary for the benefit of the many.

Then a child was born. A hope dawned. And our logic was exposed for its folly. When the Son of God laid down his control in order to free those that religion and respectable society oppressed. When Jesus preached in such a way that many left confused and with more questions than they had ever had…but also found their diseases healed and their hearts touched by love. And when the One for whom and through whom all things were made chose to die at the hands of violent men rather than forge a human kingdom in the necessary sacrifice of others. At this time, all that humanity had discarded as too weak, too sentimental, too emotional, too unrealistic turned out to be the very force that overcame the darkness of the human condition.

It turns out that when love is killed, it grows. When grace is given, purity is born. Now those of us who never sought God have been found by him, and those of us who fought against him have been given the place of honor at his victory feast! Only the logic of God would benefit the vanquished as much as the victor!

So cheers to the counterintuitive hope that is ours! Today we celebrate a child that was born. Today we rejoice in the son that was given!

“…and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.” -Isaiah 9:6b-7

Are We Caught in a Cycle?

Are we just caught in a cycle? Is the suffering of yesterday a prophesy about tomorrow? Can there be an end to the logic of war that decides it is worth the deaths of our young men and women, and their young men and women, and the countless civilians who get caught in the crossfire, and the displacement of people and widespread poverty…in order to protect us from danger? As if these countless deaths aren’t a danger worth avoiding…

Is there a path out of the distrust that leads to division that leads to conflict that leads to war and death? Are we, like generations past, destined to fight and kill our brothers and sisters, just because we were born in different places under different ruling powers who can’t find a way to coexist? Is that our future?

It is easy to understand why so many Christians are fatalistic on this point. If the people with all the money and political power can’t find a path to peace, what can we do? It is easier to prophesy peace for another time when Jesus comes back. But what if he’s already here? What if we are his hands and feet? What if his Spirit has been liberally poured out on us? What if Jesus told us that we would do even greater things than he did? What if we held keys that could unlock peace? What if we are the catalyst?

You don’t have control. But you do have influence. You have friends. You know people. And those people know people. And in one way or another you are connected to people who will be pulled to the opposite side and become your enemy if worst came to worst. You are not a spectator in humanity’s unfolding drama. You are an actor. The steps you take leave footprints for others to follow. So what can you do?

When the Facebook world becomes rife with political divisions, conspiracy theories, and excuses to disconnect, choose to engage positively. Find a reason for hope. Find laughter. Find the beauty in humanity, and share it with your friends. When our communities are in conflict and racial or religious tension builds, be a bridge builder. Make friends with people from the other side. Learn about their culture. Listen to their stories, and share your own. Find the person behind the stereotype, and tell others what you find. And when fear threatens to derail your own peace and make you a prisoner to your own protective instinct, remember Jesus, who “for the joy set before him” endured the cross. Remember the man who sacrificed his own life for people who didn’t even want him. Rejected, despised, brutally beaten and crucified, his words were “forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing”. Remember that the tragedy that begot our victory was the sacrificing of the one sinless life on behalf of the sinful, not the other way around. And remember that when perfect love was finally extinguished and all hope seemed gone, it was only the opening act to a reborn love and eternal hope!

We are not bound by the cycle. We’re are not helplessly being led to destruction. Church, we have a voice! We have hands and feet! let’s use them to show love and mercy. Let’s walk in the Spirit of the one who would rather die for the many than send others to their deaths, and let’s resurrect hope in the hopeless, and peace in the confusion! Let’s use the influence we do have to establish peace, allowing God to grow it!

“Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.” -Isaiah 9:5-7a