Moving past the war theme, I've been reflecting lately on our imagination and how it relates to knowing God. When asked to describe God, many of us use words like holy, loving, and good. While these are all true, they can often remain in the realm of the abstract. Your idea of love might look different than mine, and both of ours fail to encompass a full understanding of what God means when he says that he is love. Even when we use language to attempt a scientific definition, it can still lack warmth and life if it stays just in our rational mind.
Biblical definitions are the place to start in building an intellectual framework of understanding who God is. But what really moves our hearts is when we get internal pictures, words, or intuitive impressions of what God's love (justice, mercy, etc.) looks, sounds, and feels like. With these, our perception of him moves from distance and unknowability, to a nearness that we can understand. That's where our imagination comes in. To quote author Leanne Payne:
"The heart's capacity to see that which is true and real though invisible to the physical eye is not well understood in a day when the conscious and analytical ways of knowing are valued to the exclusion of the other. Both ways of knowing are important and complementary one to the other, and vital to belief."
In healthy relationships, there is not only an analytical understanding of the other person, but an intuitive sense of knowing and being known that transcends intellect. God is not an impersonal force, but a relational being who longs to reveal himself to us in personal ways. By praying, meditating on scripture, and being aware of his presence as we go throughout our days, we develop eyes that see, ears that hear, and a heart that is sensitive to how God is revealing himself in the moment. It's vital of course to evaluate individually and in community what we're seeing, hearing, and feelings against the Bible and what we know is true about God's character. It's also important to remember that not everything we receive is literal, and God speaks in parables and symbols throughout scripture. When Jesus refers to himself as the Vine and to us as the branches in John 15, he's not claiming a botanical physical makeup, but what we experience in him is like the vital connection between a branch and it's vine as the source of life.
Recently, after going through a rough week, I was being prayed for and feeling absolutely no connection to God. But instead of blaming God, or myself, and giving up, I chose to engage with God a bit longer, wanting to trust him even though I felt nothing. Suddenly, an image came to mind of the room in which I was being prayed for filling with angels and Jesus stepping out from behind me with a huge smile on his face! Though the previous hour of conversation had been bleak, this was so unexpected that I burst out laughing and was immediately filled with joy, a sense that all was well and that God had been there all along.
If someone had told me "Even in your pain, God has been here all along" it would have been true. But the image that I received from God carried that same truth with a weight that moved my heart. That experience with God has been a vehicle for deeper trust in his goodness even through the hard times. We can cling to the truths of scripture when the feeling is gone and God seems silent, but also rejoice when He allows those truths to apply to us in personal, experiential ways. Knowing the God of the universe personally is the most fulfilling experience we can have as humans, and makes for a life that is as exciting as we can imagine.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
War Post 3: In the line of fire
Diving for cover behind a group of trees, I tried to regain my bearings. Several men were down and I could hear their cries of pain in the distance. My friend and I had been separated from the rest of the company during the ambush and we had a daunting, uncovered stretch between us and where the others had regrouped. Knowing we had to move, we caught each other's eyes and in unison began to sprint. Immediately we were seen and bullets began to scream past us. We were moments away from safety when I lost my footing and fell hard, scraping across rocky ground. As I scrambled to get up, my friend stepped between me and the incoming fire, and our eyes met as several bullets ripped into his body. We were dragged the rest of the way to cover, and I could see that his wounds were fatal. Crushing guilt came over me as I realized that my life was spared while my closest friend was going to taste death. The last thing he said before he drew his final breath was "Aaron, I chose to take those bullets for you."
This scene played through my head during a recent prayer time, and I feel like it conveys much of what I've experienced spiritually in the last months. I've often felt like Jesus should stay removed from all the pain and messiness of my life, where in fact, he offers to absorb it all into himself on the cross. Trying in my own frame to carry the hurt from my own sins, and the ways others have hurt me, will quickly destroy me. But when I daily release and transfer that weight to Jesus on the cross, I quit being the judge of my own guilt and the guilt of others, and can hear God declare me innocent. Where I once built walls to protect myself from pain, a deep channel is created in me to receive the flow of God's love and to freely pour out to others. The best part is that Jesus invites me to this exchange not out of obligation, but because his love for me is so consuming that he was willing to endure agony beyond comprehension to be with me, bringing healing and wholeness. I am in him, he is in me, and we're in this together for the rest of time!
This scene played through my head during a recent prayer time, and I feel like it conveys much of what I've experienced spiritually in the last months. I've often felt like Jesus should stay removed from all the pain and messiness of my life, where in fact, he offers to absorb it all into himself on the cross. Trying in my own frame to carry the hurt from my own sins, and the ways others have hurt me, will quickly destroy me. But when I daily release and transfer that weight to Jesus on the cross, I quit being the judge of my own guilt and the guilt of others, and can hear God declare me innocent. Where I once built walls to protect myself from pain, a deep channel is created in me to receive the flow of God's love and to freely pour out to others. The best part is that Jesus invites me to this exchange not out of obligation, but because his love for me is so consuming that he was willing to endure agony beyond comprehension to be with me, bringing healing and wholeness. I am in him, he is in me, and we're in this together for the rest of time!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
War post 2: In the trenches
Moving to a new city, living apart from close friends, and joining a ministry with an older, confident staff can sometimes be as daunting as it sounds. A few months ago at Central I was among the oldest on campus, in ministry leadership positions, feeling like I was ready to graduate and take on the whole Empire myself. Thankfully, I am in the best community to help me transition into the real world of full time ministry. Still, sometimes I can't help but feel like I'm a kid who's in over his head, light-years away from being the confident leader that I'd hoped I'd instantly become as soon as I began with Ascent. How easy it is to live in the world of comparing myself with others around me and my idealized version of Aaron.
But God has another idea as he revealed during a prayer time in which I saw myself immersed in trench warfare covering the back of another soldier. If I'm sulking in an attitude of I have nothing to offer, it won't just affect me, but those around me who I'm meant to support!
When I, or you, are struggling, may we not give in to self pity worrying about what we're not, but turn to God to hear him tell us who we ARE. There are souls under attack, waiting for sons and daughters of the King to take their place in bringing Jesus' kingdom of love to a hurting world. Jesus says the kingdom of God is here! Being in relationship with God isn't just about going to heaven when we die, but living empowered by his Spirit, bringing heaven to earth every day, in every part of our lives!
He is with us! And we are in this together.
But God has another idea as he revealed during a prayer time in which I saw myself immersed in trench warfare covering the back of another soldier. If I'm sulking in an attitude of I have nothing to offer, it won't just affect me, but those around me who I'm meant to support!
When I, or you, are struggling, may we not give in to self pity worrying about what we're not, but turn to God to hear him tell us who we ARE. There are souls under attack, waiting for sons and daughters of the King to take their place in bringing Jesus' kingdom of love to a hurting world. Jesus says the kingdom of God is here! Being in relationship with God isn't just about going to heaven when we die, but living empowered by his Spirit, bringing heaven to earth every day, in every part of our lives!
He is with us! And we are in this together.
Friday, November 12, 2010
War post 1: Sin as disease
It's a heavy subject for my first series of blog posts, but lately I've been immersed in portrayals of war. Besides the reality of the inner city where drug and gang related shootings are common, I visited one of the largest WWI museums in the world here in K.C., we've been watching the series Band of Brothers which chronicles the experience of a company of paratroopers in WWII, and I'm reading a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor who spiritually and practically led a resistance movement to Hitler's Nazi regime and was eventually killed in a concentration camp.
In trying to grasp the reality and depravity of war, it's impossible not to ask the question of God, "Where were you?" One insight from Bonhoeffer that has meant a lot to me is how he describes war like time-lapse photography, which highlights movements which otherwise might've gone unnoticed. "War makes manifest in a particularly drastic and unshrouded form that which for years has become ever more dreadfully clear to us as the essence of the 'world.'" Injustice, abuse, violence and death all exist before and outside of war, but when they occur in such a concentrated and horrendous way, we can no longer pretend they don't exist and that we and the world are getting along just fine.
A Christian concept of sin is that of a disease which is present in all of us. Though I haven't committed a wartime atrocity, I see the very same self-serving tendency to satisfy my desires (even if it's to cover up my fear or pain) at the expense of others play out in my everyday life. The good news is that Jesus says “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.” Only when I acknowledge my sickness, can I hear the call of the One who truly heals. And instead of beating myself up when sin surfaces in my life, I can confess it immediately to God, stand in Christ's complete forgiveness, and be surprised that in my diseased condition, it's only by God's mercy that I don't sin more than I actually do.
C.S. Lewis describes the Holy Spirit as a "good infection" which over time spreads in us to heal the ways our identity, mind, and ability to relate to others are affected by the disease of sin. Rather than just treating symptoms of the disease by trying to make ourselves stop doing specific sinful actions, we can spend time with God asking him to do healing work in those deeper parts of us that He brings up, which is usually one area at a time. This process continues until we are no longer in these diseased bodies, and are made new and perfect with Him.
The next time you hear of wars and abuses, may you be reminded of our spiritually diseased condition, and remember the promise of healing from a God who loves us.
In trying to grasp the reality and depravity of war, it's impossible not to ask the question of God, "Where were you?" One insight from Bonhoeffer that has meant a lot to me is how he describes war like time-lapse photography, which highlights movements which otherwise might've gone unnoticed. "War makes manifest in a particularly drastic and unshrouded form that which for years has become ever more dreadfully clear to us as the essence of the 'world.'" Injustice, abuse, violence and death all exist before and outside of war, but when they occur in such a concentrated and horrendous way, we can no longer pretend they don't exist and that we and the world are getting along just fine.
A Christian concept of sin is that of a disease which is present in all of us. Though I haven't committed a wartime atrocity, I see the very same self-serving tendency to satisfy my desires (even if it's to cover up my fear or pain) at the expense of others play out in my everyday life. The good news is that Jesus says “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.” Only when I acknowledge my sickness, can I hear the call of the One who truly heals. And instead of beating myself up when sin surfaces in my life, I can confess it immediately to God, stand in Christ's complete forgiveness, and be surprised that in my diseased condition, it's only by God's mercy that I don't sin more than I actually do.
C.S. Lewis describes the Holy Spirit as a "good infection" which over time spreads in us to heal the ways our identity, mind, and ability to relate to others are affected by the disease of sin. Rather than just treating symptoms of the disease by trying to make ourselves stop doing specific sinful actions, we can spend time with God asking him to do healing work in those deeper parts of us that He brings up, which is usually one area at a time. This process continues until we are no longer in these diseased bodies, and are made new and perfect with Him.
The next time you hear of wars and abuses, may you be reminded of our spiritually diseased condition, and remember the promise of healing from a God who loves us.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Day of birth, and birth of a blog
Hello all!
I thought it was fitting to launch this blog on my birthday to mark a year of new beginnings. This is my first post-school birthday, my first full time job, but not, however, my first blog: long ago I had a Xanga online journal/diary which dealt with the oft-tumultuous joys and concerns of being 16..
A snapshot of life now: I'm working full-time in Kansas City with Ascent Ministries: a discipleship organization where I receive teaching in the Bible, leadership, prayer, and other aspects of ministry, while serving the poor and building relationships with internationals in the city. We travel to Pella, Iowa where I meet with students from Central College (from where I graduated) to walk with them in their faith, and I am involved with leading worship for Ascent happenings here and there.
The title Traveler's Song came from feelings of change as I enter my post-college future that has seemed so far off for so long. The phrase "when I grow up..." is being filled in, and I'm seeing life more as a journey with my Author where the end isn't success, prosperity and safety, but more of Him here, whatever and wherever that looks like, until I'm united with Him there.
Thrice - In Exile
I am in exile, a sojourner
A citizen of some other place
A citizen of some other place
My heart is filled with songs of forever
A city that endures when all is made new
I know I don't belong here, I'll never
Call this place my home, I'm just passing through
A city that endures when all is made new
I know I don't belong here, I'll never
Call this place my home, I'm just passing through
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