07.14.10
Posted in One Year, Randomness, Songs, Thoughtful at 9:26 am by SapphiraAdi
So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do so we think that you’re good
And you can’t believe it’s not enough
All the walls you build up are just glass on the outside
So let them fall down
There’s freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground
We’re here now
This is where the healing begins
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the darkest side of us
So please don’t fight this coming light
Let this blood come cover us
His blood can cover us
This is a song off the new Tenth Avenue North CD called Healing Begins. A friend of mine and some of her friends who are students at Regent University made a music video for the song that you can watch here. They did an incredible job and I highly recommend watching it. :) Anyway, this song reminded me of a post I had started a long time ago so I thought I’d pull it back out and finish writing it. I kinda wrote it in mostly questions, partly because I don’t have the answers, and partly to make you think. :)
One of the LU podcasts I recently listened to was by Ergun Caner who was talking about hypocrisy within the church and how the #1 problem that those who are non-believers have with the church is that those who claim to be Christians don’t act like it at all. When I was thinking about this message I was realizing that everyone deals with hypocrisy on some level. Even if it’s not intentional. How many times has someone asked you “How are you?” and you’ve answered “Fine” when really everything was horrible? I know I have. Sometimes it’s just a matter of trust, and how much you think the other person cared. And other times it may be that you were in a hurry and didn’t want to take the time to explain.
So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do so we think that you’re good
And you can’t believe it’s not enough
But other times, many times, hypocrisy can become a mask we put on. We want people to see that we have everything together so we pretend we do. I think sometimes that especially Christians do this, maybe because we think that if we don’t have everything together then we’re doing something wrong. We’re not praying hard enough, we’re not pleasing God, we did something wrong. So we pretend everything is alright. But something I’ve learned is that the Church (as the Body of Christ) should be the one place we should feel comfortable enough to open up about things that we are struggling with, the problems that we are going through, and the things that are happening in our lives.
So why isn’t it? Why do we not feel comfortable admitting we don’t have it all together? If we as Christians can’t even be real about our lives, why should we expect others outside the church to open up to us about their lives? If those outside the church think that we are going to judge them because of the things they’ve done and that they’re not good enough to even come to church, how is that being Jesus to them?
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
I think that no one wants to say that they don’t have everything together because that involves being vulnerable. And what if people don’t care, or blow you off, or tell someone else, or condemn you? But the thing is, no one is perfect, so why do we expect people to be? It’s like we think that once you become a Christian your life is going to be automatically perfect and nothing bad will happen. How would things change if we felt safe enough to be open about everything?
Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the darkest side of us
So please don’t fight this coming light
Let this blood come cover us
Like the main idea of Christianity, is that we CANNOT do it by ourselves. We realize that there is no way we could do it ourselves and that only through God’s grace can we be saved and changed. If we really grasped that than why is it that we think we can live the rest of our lives on our own?
(about their CD “Light Meets the Dark”)
It’s a cry for confession, exposure, and the laying down of our pride. It’s a cry for honesty, for truth, and for an encounter with the One who is truth, and having that encounter change the way we see the world. You see, when we believe this thing we call the gospel, it allows us to be honest about who we really are. Or should I say, it forces us to come to terms with who we are. It frees us to not only be exposed but to be ok about being exposed; to speak our pain and fears out into the open. It frees us to be poor in spirit. Which, isn’t that the goal after all?
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07.11.10
Posted in One Year, Randomness, Thoughtful at 4:49 pm by SapphiraAdi
The night we went to Fuel and heard Brandon preach on ziggurats and the myth of human goodness, one of the other things that he talked about was our testimonies. He asked how many of us thought we had a radical testimony. One of those testimonies where you’re like “Wow, I was so lost and messed up and God like totally radically saved me.” And only one person raised their hand. Then he said something profound…He said that every single one of our hands should’ve been up because last he checked we were all lost, dying and going to hell and God because of His love and mercy saved us when we didn’t deserve it.
We all have a radical testimony.
I definitely didn’t even think about raising my hand. I mean, yeah, I know I was a sinner and that it wasn’t by any of my good deeds that I’m now saved but like…when I share my testimony it doesn’t sound like anything special. People ask, “What did you even do wrong?” And when I really think, I can’t think of many “big” things I’ve done wrong… I’ve always grown up in a Christian home, was saved and baptized when I was little, and have continued to grow in my faith since then. I don’t really ever remember a “time before Christ” and a “time after Christ” like people always ask you to divide your life when you share your testimony. :P I don’t really feel like my testimony is ever going to change anyone because, well, I guess because it seems like my testimony is nothing special.
But the more I was thinking about this message and trying to convince myself that my testimony really is radical I remembered a passage in Matthew, actually the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says,
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder,’ … But I tell you that anyone who is anger with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” – Matthew 5:21-22
(My comment: calling someone “idiot” or “stupid” is the same as calling them a “fool.”)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” – Matthew 5:27-28
(My comment: I’ve heard that lust is the opposite of love, love seeks the best for the other person, lust seeks to please only yourself.)
Those are 2 of the 10 commandments that I thought I’d never break. I hate hurting people so why would I even be tempted to kill someone? Yet I know I’ve been angry with a lot of people… And I would never commit adultery, yet I know that I have lusted. And that’s just 2 of 10! Going by the standard Jesus set, I betcha I’ve broken all the rules in the Bible. :P This was written in my Bible from a sermon I heard on this passage, “It’s about your heart – not about what you can get by with but about your attitude in doing it.” The way Jesus re-explained those two laws was all about your heart, the inward thoughts behind the outward act. And like my post “the myth of human goodness” said, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). While it may seem like I haven’t done much wrong, my heart is deceitful and wicked and while sometimes maybe my actions aren’t bad, my heart and attitude can be.
Maybe I need to really grasp the depth of the statement Brandon said, “We are completely undeserved. And God saved us. That’s radical.”
“Completely undeserved” …maybe even beyond completely undeserved. We deserved nothing, actually what we deserved was death. lol Kinda sobering huh? We say “God I don’t deserve this!” when things are going bad, and yet, any “good thing” that happens to us, that’s actually what we don’t deserve. We don’t deserve anything that God gives us, but thats why it’s called grace. :) We were lost and He found us and gave us a purpose. We were hopeless and He gave us hope and told us to go share that hope with everyone. We were unlovable, but He choose to show us unconditional love and commanded that we love as He loved us.
I’d say that’s radical. :)
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07.07.10
Posted in One Year, Randomness, Thoughtful at 3:33 am by SapphiraAdi
“That they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26, NIV).
Have you ever been taken? Ever been sucked in to something that looked pleasurable at first but was really destructive? Have you ever been taken from someone?
Maybe you don’t know this, but we all at one time were taken. Through some form or another, we have been enticed by Satan and stolen away from the One person who loves us inexpressibly. Some don’t know they have been taken. Some are still in that moment of life where everything is going good and where sin is pleasurable. They don’t see that they’ve been taken by Satan, they don’t know that under the cover of things that look good is evil, ugliness, and death.
In the movie Taken, Bryan’s daughter goes to Europe with a friend on what seems to be a fun few weeks of following a band. But before they’ve even spent one night in Europe, both Kim and her friend are taken. In the movie they are both sold into sex trafficking and Kim’s father does everything in his power to find her and get her back.
While I doubt any of the people reading this have actually been sold into sex trafficking, the premise and theme of the movie is true for all of us. We’ve all been taken.
And get this… God is the Father who does the same for us.
There’s this haunting line in the beginning of the movie where Bryan is talking to Kim on the phone as the traffickers are moving through the house looking for her and she’s hiding under the bed in what she thought was a safe place and than Bryan says, “They are going to take you.”
Satan has taken us. He has kidnapped us from God and tried to get us addicted to other things, like popularity, wealth, and love. But God is the perfect Father who knew His precious children would be taken but allowed it to happen because He can and will do everything to rescue us back. He will chase us to the end of the world to rescue us and show us how much He loves us. “He chooses, He pursues, He rescues, He woos, He protects, He lavishes.”
The movie was such a great reminder to me of how much God loves me and how He loves me enough to pursue me when I run away, and rescue me when I’m in danger, and protect me from evil when I lose my way.
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