stalking god.

a response to: sexy “christianity”

A few weeks ago the corpse of sexy “christianity” was exhumed from its digital grave. What was little more than a dormant diary-entry reawakened and some of my most profuse heart-leakage started seeping into the cracks of facebook. And while its meanderings seem to have struck a nerve, I have a dirty secret to admit:
 

I am book-reading-and-blogging boy.

I wrote sexy “christianity” plaid-clad with a side of skinny jeans and coffee in a local java shop. My tactless and messy pen strokes were an attempt at confessing my own martyr-complex, pharisaic tendencies, and shallow faith with resolve to move back to the epicenter of a simple overflowing love for my Murdered Savior.

It takes one to know one in a culture where one of the most ostentatious and perhaps trendy things a Christian can do is write a blog about spirituality. Often we share our messiness with the world hoping to feel a little less messy. But really, we end up smearing our mess into a mess that’s more nice-looking but no less messy. The blogosphere is an inch deep and a mile wide.

But then, life’s not about a blog… or a style… The depth of your deep-V is not a measuring unit for the depth of your spirituality. Torn up shoes can’t prove how far you’ve walked with Jesus. And a longer beard doesn’t particularly make you more Christ-like (sorry, white-Russian-bearded-baby-faced Jesus!).

You can look like you know God… you can know all about God… but that has no bearing on whether or not you actually know Him. 

When you know all about someone but don’t actually know them, that just makes you a stalker.

GOD DOESN'T NEED STALKERS, HE WANTS FOLLOWERS... 

Temptation lurks in the murky and shallow waters of trending Christianity. It would demand every Christian forget Christ but continue looking as if they knew Him. This is what the temptation of early trending Christian culture demanded of Ananias and Sapphira. When selling land for the Jesus’ sake became the trend, the couple sought to be trendy. They sold their land with hearts bent on looking the part and hoping to receive Peter’s praise. That heart condition cost them absolutely everything.
 

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven… I will declare to them, ‘Depart from me, I never knew you...’” (Matthew 7:21-23)

Whether you truly know God is between you and Him, but my resolve is to peel back the spiritual-looking behavior (regardless of whether it’s dressed in suits, sackcloth, or skinny jeans) and take a look behind the curtain, into the mechanism of my faith. My intention is not to take any one flavor of Christianity to the woodshed… My intention is to make war. To raid whitewashed tombs by releasing clarion calls to the Church – that each one of us would check our own hearts with a sense of ruthlessness towards any corrupted motives we may find there. Join me, I dare you to.

For Ananias and his wife there was this pervasive thing called “self” that weaseled its slimy little way into something beautiful and made it sickening to the heart of God. God will be the judge of acts that are truly righteous and acts that just look righteous. Man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7)… That said, the Consuming Fire that is our God has an incredibly direct way of burning through the dross of our showy spirituality and dragging our true intentions kicking and screaming to the surface.
 

“If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Cor. 13:3)

“Quit your worship charades. I can’t stand your trivial religious games:
 Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings - meetings, meetings, meetings - I can’t stand one more! Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them! You’ve worn me out! I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion, while you go right on sinning. When you put on your next prayer performance, I’ll be looking the other way. No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I’ll not be listening...” (Isaiah 1:13-15 MSG)

 

...HE DOESN’T WANT A SHOW. HE WANTS OUR HEARTS. 

Want to be a radical Christian? Don’t look to trending Christian culture as a manual. You can’t pin radical Christianity like your favorite recipe or DIY. Look to Jesus Christ – the Author and Perfecter of your faith (Heb. 12:2).

Only the revelation of the glory of the Risen King Jesus will do if being consumed with passion is the end we seek. Only un-tinted, soul-altering, paradigm-shifting, idol-breaking, slit-side and nail-pierced-hands-feeling experience with Jesus will do. And to the one who has truly placed his hands in Christ’s side, and to the one who has truly put his fingers in the holes of Christ’s hands belongs a revelation that will not fail Him… yet it will destroy him, stripping him of all he owns. For that one, the one to whom Christ has revealed Himself, the only response that person will manage to muster is “here am I, send me!” For the one who has met Jesus face-to-face, worldly pleasures will be forsaken at the drop of a hat for the pleasure of Christ’s presence.

You can have works and not know God… But when you DO know Him – what a seriously blessed thought – works will inevitably, naturally, organically, flood out of you. A friend of mine recently put it this way: “When it comes to following Christ, good things are good only in so much as they are oriented by what is best, that is, a love for God.”

Hearts that are consumed by an encounter with the Risen Jesus Christ are hearts that will inevitably find their mission irreversibly intertwined with that of God’s. What breaks Him will break you. He breaks for bare feet and dirty water. He breaks for Africa and Skid Row. He breaks for impoverished coffee farmers and sweatshop laborers.

So in the midst of our social-justice-driven generation let the church bells resound with the thud of the question: “where’s your heart?” Wear your TOMS, drink your coffee fair-trade, and blog on your MacBook pro… but wear, drink, and blog because you’ve had an undeniable encounter with the grace of King Jesus. Not because you want people to think you did. Or because you want to think you did.

Take all that you are and offer it to all that He is. Steadily, faithfully, lavishly. With dogged resolve in valleys and green pastures. The life of radical abandon is one that has walked so steadily so long with Jesus that on a dime it would do anything Jesus asks. To ask the veteran Jesus follower to sell, give, or lose all is to ask little, for He has the supreme treasure of Christ. If he loses anything he has lost nothing.

God doesn’t want cookie-cutter lovers with no heart and soul. He wants you. Every piece of you - every flaw. So run to him. Take your cultural relevance with you, because you’ll need it… God will you use in any condition. All you have to do is run. – Jayson Schmidt

Marred Identity

A windstorm came through my town this week and knocked out the power for a half-second. My wi-fi was down for a few days and I almost lost my mind... I mean, what am I gonna do? Read a book? First world problems... So here's a nugget on Marred Identity... A thought on what it means to have our identity uprooted and planted so deep into Christ's, so entangled in Him, that we really begin believing what God says of us - that we are new... 
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Marred Identity. 
Perpetual and undoctored scarring left to immortalize the fact that you are broken.  A nagging, ticking, monotonous, crackling voice that won’t let you forget that you are damaged goods - splayed out, exposed, and exhibited center-stage like a circus freak. When you’re broken you’re either shown off, experimented on, or thrown out. 

It’s not that way with Jesus. He came with the cure for marred identity in hand. He is the salve. He is the remedy. He is the cure. To the orphan He is Father. To the spouseless He is Lover. To the restless He is Peace.

The day that Christ died humanity’s infirmity met its match. Death met Life and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. He called out to the sick of heart, the scarred and mutilated mess that had become us, and declared in one fell swoop: “It is finished!” The ground shook and when the dust settled the knotted mess of man’s marred identity unraveled at the foot of the Cross.

To the forgiven Jesus said, “Go in peace.” They did not think twice or tie a theological noose around their faith. They simply believed they were forgiven and went on living their lives as if it were true. Maybe it is in the simpleton that salvation is most secure, for they have heard God’s voice saying over them “My Child!” and they go on to live their lives in light of that blessed fact. No second-guessing. No double-takes at the grave to make sure it’s empty.

I assure you, He is not here, He is risen. So stop overthinking it. God has said “I have clothed you in garments of righteousness,” so go on and live in them. God has said, “You are a new creation,” so stop feeling around for scars of the fall where you will not find them.

So often, I want to be used by God to address the marred identity of others before I myself have fully chosen to believe that I am actually a new creation. It is the moment in which we have fully surrendered to our new identity in Christ that we have become mobilized to address the marred identity in others, and no sooner. 

altar brawl.

There are "altar-calls" and then there are "altar-brawls." One resurrects souls, one buries them alive. One shuts up long enough to hear you surrender to God, the other tries to shut you up long enough to force your surrender to itself. At their most extreme the both of them will bludgeon your ego and make you cry. A few weeks ago one of my posts turned into a theological cat fight... an altar brawl. The Sonship Diaries was an ugly attempt at beholding the silky maleficence of sin and the glory of grace all in the same breath. I admit not only that I communicated poorly but that the reason behind my rhyme was peripheral at best. 

So I've been reading, thinking, and talking to Jesus. Flipping theological pancakes, if you will... And realizing that I've still got some exploring to do before I wrap my upper story around the whole mess. Yes, flipping theological pancakes. Don't think too hard about it. 
 
I'm sure tomorrow the whole knot will untie itself and God will throw the last punch. But today I'm re-reading forgotten pages in the Psalms and holding a match between my grubby little fingers and up close to the very combustable pages of "My Opinions" - a book authored mostly by me and mostly for me. 

Psalm 105, 106, & 107 retell the entire story of Israel... Start to finish. It's ten books condensed into three nail-biting chapters.  Somewhere in the middle of the story I tripped over this little biblical shoelace: 

In the wilderness their desires ran wild,
testing God’s patience in that dry wasteland.
Psalm 16:14

their. desires. ran. wild.  

Imagine. It overtakes you. An overwhelming, devouring, consuming desire. Adrenaline coursing through your veins. Mouth salivating. Heart pounding, harder and harder, in your chest. Eyes glazing over… And your mind becomes completely overwhelmed with ravenous lust. An ex-slave-master come to give you a taste of aged wine. Your entire being longs after it. It’s undeniable… you like the feeling. You let go... you give in. Wrong feels so right. 

Can it satisfy?
Who gives a rip?

This was Israel's attitude towards the God that fed them with magical bread and had worked no less than twenty monumental miracles for their sake in a matter of days.

Some nights I hear rapping on the door of my heart. Nearly Midnight. The old Slave-master waits outside uninvited. Dressed to the nines and whispering through the mailbox slit. His words are an intoxicating toxin. 

And then I awake from the dream at the mention of the name of Jesus. The old Slave-master is a dead man. His epitaph reads "It is finished" - chiseled into stone with diamond. His whispers are heard neither here nor there. He is dead, thus saith the Lord...

I forget often that I am not like Israel. Because somewhere between Exile and Pentecost something actually happened. Something actually changed... drastically.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20

So today I reckon him dead because Jesus reckons him dead. 

And as He stands in victory, sin's curse has lost its grip on me. For I am His and He is mine, bought with the precious blood of Christ.