When I think I may perhaps have God figured out, I'm proven to be so much more mistaken than I ever thought. Our God is not what I ever thought. My Christ is not what I ever thought He was. He is so much more.
First off, let's start with what Christmas is all about. The birth of our great Savior. Who came to see him first (in Mark's book)? But the magi, the wise men. They didn't come from Jerusalem, let alone Israel, they came from the east - meaning they came from Canaanite lands, lands that arn't sacred.
And as I keep reading about this Christ of ours it completely blows me away. He is not what I have learned in church services, He's not what I thought He was. Even when I said He was radical & real, I never knew how much so.
Jesus talked in parables. I had heard in the past that he talked in parables as an easier way for people to understand. Buuut - (Mark 4:11-12) He told them, "The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, 'they may be ever seeing but never percieving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'"
I love that! Even though it's not what I expected from the 'gentle blue eyed blonde haired' Jesus it speaks wonders to me. I have been asking myself lately: Does everyone that has once accepted Christ go to Heaven? Even the ones that don't really live it but they said the little prayer? But I gotta tell myself. Jesus' life - the way He lived, the radical things He said - never once said 'say a little prayer.' A young man came up to him once and asked him, "What good thing must I do to get eternal life?" (Matthew 19:16-30) Jesus began to list all of the commandments. Satisfied, the young man told of how he had kept all of these things. And asked Jesus, "What do I still lack?" Jesus said, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven. Then come, follow me."
The man didn't. Who knows, we could have been looking at the 13th disciple. But Jesus never asked for him to say a prayer. He asked for full throttle commitment. He never said that He wants us to have all the treasures on the earth and that if we say a little prayer He will take great care of us and love us and we will get many many blessings like Joel Oisten seems to say. Ha, sorry, don't mean to crack on ol' Joel, my momma has one of his books, I just don't always know about him & what he believes. But instead, Christ said to get rid of all we have and to come follow Him. In a physical sense, yes, but I believe in a much greater sense. In of ourselves. Our whole being. Over to Him. Our feelings, hopes, dreams, our life, everything to Him.
And there is much more I could write about his life. About how when He was being questioned before the cross He pretty much said 'I AM' - which makes me remember from Pastor Matt's service long ago the phrase I AM NOT. Aha. I AM means God. So he pretty much said that He was God - which is one of the reasons He got put on the Cross. About how a women who was Greek (Mark 7:24-30) had a daughter that was possessed by an evil spirt. She came to Christ and asked him to heal her daughter. And he wouldn't! He said, "First let the children (meaning Israelites) eat all they want for it is not good to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs (meaning her and the rest of the outsiders)." Ouch! But because of the woman's faith, He healed her daughter. I could also go on about how in Matthew's geanology of Jesus the only 4 women listed in it was a prostitute, a woman who dressed up as prostitute, an adulteress, and a woman who wasn't a Jew! (Rahab, Tamar, Bathsheeba, and Ruth)
I can't put my God in a box, I can't shape him into how I would love Him to be. He is. He just simply is. He can't be buttered up. He can't be shaped into a soft spirit. - I mean in the way He went in front of God, in the secret place, showed that He wasn't like Joab from the Old Testament (David's 'sidekick' in a way.) in any way. - He wasn't that kind of brutal. He had compassion, at times he seemed to have a soft spirit. He lived with compassion. And He knew His place, He had a cause. A cause He was willing to die for. He wouldn't stnad for fickle. He wouldn't stand for average. He stood for healing the broken, giving his life as a ransom, and being amazingly greater than average. It's amazing. It's captivating. And it's a cause worth living and dying for.
2 comments:
i played with the code of one of the templates, i could do it for you if you want
this class has been amazing for you. i'm pretty pumped that you're growing like this.
for most of my life i thought if i had lived in his time, i wouldn't have realized he was God's son. i figured i'd have fallen with the doubters, because everything i knew about him made him a confusing, shallow pansy. i subconcously thought everything he did was garbage, because that's just not what people are like.
few years ago i realized he was hardcore. and he was like people, he was a person. only, holy. in the sense that, if it was right, he did it. if it was wrong, he didn't. always. so not a pansy.
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