The Spirit of Striving

  Sometimes it seems as if we're in a constant state of stress and strain in our lives. The meaning of the word strive is, "to struggle in opposition...to contend with serious effort or energy." There is a healthy virtue of hard work and commitment to goals, dreams and vision for our lives. But there is also an unhealthy 'Spirit of Striving' that manifests when we refuse to accept God's gift of grace in our lives. There are some things in life that need to be accepted as gift and not earned through sweat and self effort.

 You can earn money and achieve much in life simply through self effort and discipline. A focused commitment to specific objectives and goals will certainly pay off over time....usually. But there are some areas in life where no amount of self effort can change the outcome. One area in life that beguiles and frustrates is the quality of our relationships.  We were created by God to love and be loved but we often struggle in our relationships.  Sometimes the more we 'strive' the more we falter. Why can't we just 'work harder' and achieve the results we desire?

 Something happened in human history that alters how we relate to one another. The book of Genesis reveals to us that humanity has been broken on the inside. We are born self centered and sinful. Until and unless we are 'born again' and renewed by the Holy Spirit we continue to live 'soul centered' lives bent on getting what we want through self effort with our own self interest at the forefront. What we really want and need eludes us because we aren't living in the 'rest' which is a gift from God.  For the Christian who depends on God for new life in Jesus Christ there is a certainty of love and forgiveness.  Instead of trying to 'earn' love and grace...we receive it as a 'done deal'  through the life, death and resurrection of our loving Lord.

  Grace wasn't meant to be a word that we invoke as a 'ticket' out of trouble and judgment. Grace was meant to be an invitation to relationship and life.  Man made religion is a creation based on self effort to earn God's favor and blessing....it doesn't work. In fact religion creates distance and dissonance in our relating to God. Instead of being able to come 'face to face' in intimacy with God, we wear masks of 'works' and outward goodness to cover our inner brokenness. No amount of moral self effort can cover up the hateful attitudes of pride and arrogance that often issue from the religious world. You can almost feel the strain and striving the minute you come into the presence of a person controlled by 'religion'.

  When someone embraces forgiveness based upon the finished work of God in Christ, they cease from straining and striving to please God on their own. They make a decision that what God has done is enough. The words of Jesus from the cross echo throughout history as a completed fact, "It is finished." Jesus the sinless one took on himself all our sin and brokenness and through the power of the resurrection gives us victory over the Spirit of Striving ..... the Spirit of Death that permeates our world. Ironically when we accept that marvelous gift of grace we are free to begin to live in the power of that amazing grace and love. There is a pure religion that responds with a willingness to love not for wages but for gratitude.  The New Testament letter of James, "Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep onself unspotted from the world." Man made religion is a 'cover up' of the broken self that leaves us striving and straining to become someone we can never be in our own strength.  Grace leaves us with an inner rest that gladly and humbly receives a complete new source of life and strength. The God of the universe by his Spirit comes in and replaces the Spirit of Striving with a Spirit of Holiness and Love.

  Are you tired of the strain? That inner anxiety and uncertainty that weigh down your mind and soul don't need to burden you any longer. Even in our striving for good things we often falter and fade into more pain and suffering. Today I encourage you to embrace the rest of grace. There is a place of rest for those who will truly acknowledge the great and marvelous finished work of salvation in Jesus Christ. The world of the Lord to you today is, "Be still and know that I am God." (Psalm 46:10)
In case you haven't noticed.... you are not God..... so stop trying to control everyone.....including yourself. Freedom begins when we yield ourselves to a very good God. He loves you... he's prepared a place of rest for you to begin your life anew.

Jim
  

The Performance Trap

  Life is demanding. Most of us in live in societies where more and more is expected of us in every dimension of our lives.  Often we have little control of the expectations of others on our lives. We have to work to 'make a living' and learning how to balance the expectations of our employers, teachers, friends and families is extremely challenging.

  In the context of meaningful relationships we can become 'driven' by the need for acceptance and love in our lives and compelled to live in unhealthy and unsustainable ways. When we struggle with insecurity in our souls, we often yield to unhealthy demands upon our time, resources and personality. When we are feeling our marriage or friendships being threatened, we are often tempted to 'crank up' our workload and just work harder to succeed. The challenge is we might be racing toward a cliff called burn out and breakdown.

  People cannot function long term without their relational needs being met in healthy and sustainable ways. We can 'hide' for periods of time and withdraw from relationships in the short term....but not for too long. The natural reflex after a painful breakup or challenging time in our relationships is to abandon the quest for intimacy. We tend to move in extremes between enabling and abandoning and neither is an effective or healthy way to live in relationship.

  When fear of rejection drives you, love will always elude you. We need to learn how to set healthy boundaries and expectations in our relationships. At the center of all our relational lives, we need to have the love of God at the foundation of our inner world. Let me call that relational center the "Grace Place" of unconditional love and acceptance. You were created for satisfying relationships and you are perfectly loved by the God who created and shaped who you are. Our human relationships are distorted and broken by our own tendency toward selfishness and sinfulness. When we embrace the amazing love of God we begin to be healed from the inside out. We are being called by God to receive his forgiveness and his transforming grace. When we know his love.... when we know who He is, we begin to discover who we really are. There is something powerfully life transforming when you understand the reality of being loved forever and forever by the God of the universe. You are not an accident.... your personality, your desires, your dreams, your appearance are all aspects that God loves right now.  The spirit of our broken world demands you become something other than you are and then perhaps maybe..... just maybe you might be loved. The performance trap of a fickle world is unsustainable to the point that it becomes unattainable.

  Today, God is calling us to a place of acceptance and love where we will never be left....never forsaken. God's love is faithful and not fickle. He loves you right now....and invites you to come to him and receive healing and hope for all your relationships. It's when we begin to know his love that we can begin to really love ourselves and others in healthy ways that won't destroy us. It's time to get set free from the performance trap. You were not born to live trapped on the treadmill of others sinful and selfish expectations. Healing in our lives often begins when matters of the heart are set free. I encourage you to find a place by yourself in prayer and let God reveal his love to you today. Hear his whisper to you, "I love you right now."

  "For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

Jim

The Danger of Insecurity

  Security can be defined as being relieved from the exposure to danger: to put beyond the hazard of losing or of not receiving. An insecure person is always sensing danger and will order and structure their lives to minimize or remove that sense of danger. What or whom we base our security in or upon will either set us free or lead to further pain and suffering.

  One of the most fundamental needs of human beings is security in relationship. We desperately need and desire to be loved for who we really are.  In a perfect world, we would be raised in healthy and safe environments where our parents would model and mentor for us what unconditional love looks like. When we are raised in an environment that is unsafe and toxic, we take on an inner sickness of the soul that taints and poisons our realities at every conceivable level. Our fundamental sense of who we are (our identity) is marred by this pathology.... this often deposits a deep sense of insecurity into our inner sense of self.

  You have been created by God with a unique physical, emotional and spiritual self. Our uniqueness is meant to be celebrated, nurtured, encouraged and guided in healthy ways. When we have mentors who receive us as gifts and celebrate who we are and shape us in healthy ways, we become secure. When we have dysfunctional parents or mentors who reject or even abuse us, we become insecure and fearful... and our behavior and attitudes react to somehow rectify this rejection in our own strength. You were meant to be loved simply for who and how God created you.  Take a look at how God looks upon your first days, "For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them,  the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139: 13-16)

  When we are received as the gifts that God has created us to be in an atmosphere of nurturing love we grow into our prophetic destiny.  When we are rejected or abused and mishandled by toxic people we can often take on deep layers of insecurity, pain, anxiety and confusion. When we know who we really are we are free to move seamlessly into the places prepared for us in life. (Ephesians 2: 8-10)  From our loving God's perspective, you are a treasure of inestimable worth and value.  You are a unique mosaic that God desires to paint through the lives of family and friends who recognize your worth and value as far beyond gold and rubies. From God's perspective there is nothing more valuable than a human soul.

  Are you struggling with insecurity?  Do you feel loved for who you are....right now? So many of us are caught up in an endless cycle of performance and striving to become someone that others will accept and receive....we feel a need to 'earn' approval and love.  The absolute truth is that you are deserving of love right now in every dimension of your life. You are a unique and precious person created body, soul and spirit to be celebrated, enjoyed and loved right now for who you are presently. Until and unless we are able to connect with God in that fundamental and foundational way, we are bent into unhealthy forms that are bound in the chains of false expectations and conditions.

 The gospel of grace reveals an amazing love that reaches into the world and loves us right where we are...with our imperfections... and liberates instead of enslaving.... that heals instead of harms.  You don't need to live with insecurity and fear. You can be loved in a community of faith, hope and love that issues from the grace of God... it's based on the powerful love of Jesus Christ. To be free of fear....fear of rejection and the prison of conditional love. God has created communities of grace based upon what Jesus has done in freeing us from brokenness and sin.  We don't become injured in isolation... we become injured in the context of pathological relationships. We also don't get healed in isolation. God's love and forgiveness call us out of the prison of dysfunction into healthy communities of grace.  My prayer is that God will give us all the courage to walk out of the prisons of unhealthy relationships into what God has prepared for us. He whom the Son sets free is free indeed! (John 8:36)


Jim
www.allnationsmobile.org

A Present Love

When you're sure, When you're certain
When you're pale, When you're broken


There's a presence and and a love
Always near, never far


He knows your name, your broken frame
Heals the pain, Adds no shame


Reaching deep, Calling out
Changing us from the inside out


Constant love, healing steep
Finding hurts, searching souls


What I need, what I want
Deepest desire, found its match


No games, No plays
Just Pure love calling me by name


Present love, perfecting me
Never left alone again
Finding who I really am

JM

Learning to Wait

We don't like to wait. We want everything NOW!  Our desires often act as tyrants to our mind, bodies and emotions. We demand satisfaction RIGHT NOW. When forced to wait we become convinced by a series of lies that time is being wasted. The reality is that life is a continuous cycle of preparation, action, waiting and completion. Most important and signficant desires and life events demand extended periods of waiting. We can either waste the wait or dig deep into our will and emotions and GROW inwardly. There are no shortcuts to maturity.

Isaiah the prophet of God tell us that waiting is never idle time when we wait on the Lord. (Is 40:31) 
"But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint."

When you find yourself frustrated and your desires and dreams delayed you can either fret or you can wait with the One who is allowing the delay. Do you know that your character is more important to God than your comfort? Time spent waiting is meant to be invested in relationship and the growth of trust. Intimacy demands time and so when we embrace the wait, we are saying yes to relationship.

The fruit of a life lived independently from God is weariness and internal discord. Peace can't be manufactured by men or women. Your circumstances are ever shifting but God remains a pure and reliable source of strength in our lives. 

The next time you begin to 'freak out' while waiting, turn your heart home to your heavenly Father. When you touch the heart of your loving God, your time of waiting can become a time of renewal, peace, and pleasure. He's waiting for you.... 

Jim

The Way of the Pilgrim

  To follow God.... to know a life of relationship with an unseen reality takes a real and vibrant faith. To live a life of faith demands a willingness to leave the known and worn paths of those who have gone before us... to blaze a new pathway through adversity, uncertainty and risk. Because of my work with international students at the University of South Alabama I have met many young people in search of a life of meaning and purpose. Many sense the call....but sadly few want to pay the price of the way of the pilgrim.

  Making a difference in a world defined by mediocrity and compromise demands both boldness and a commitment to something bigger than yourself. What marks the character of the 'trail blazer' and sets them apart from the 'average' person. Trail blazers (pilgrims) are willing to take risks and have a certainty that failure is not the ultimate enemy of life's dreams.

  We can't seriously think we will make a significant difference in our world if we are imprisoned by insecurity and unbelief. The New Testament book of Hebrews give us a clear and resolute view of what it takes to make an impact in our world....faith. "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

  What do you want to see changed in your life.... your world? There is something that you were born to do... something you were born to change and impact in our broken world. If you are not moving in the direction of making a difference....of confronting what is in need of change....then you could become a part of the problem.

  Do you seriously think you were put on this planet to watch reality shows and be a professional 'consumer'?  What a horrific waste of a life that would be.  No, you were born to a 'world changer'. To take your gifts, abilities.. your entire life and to offer them up to God to direct and empower you as a change agent in a very broken world.

  Instead of being a spectator and drugging your search for a meaningful life with media and consumption....why not live a life of faith and trust in a God of love and hope?  The world awaits people who will see a significant need and not shrug it off.... who will care when others have deep needs and become willing to serve and depend on God and his people to meet that need.  Faith is not just a mental assent to a statement of belief.  Faith is also a verb that demands movement and a response to the reality of both this world...and the next.  Are you willing to be a pilgrim walking the way of faith in this life?

  Often we lack direction in life because we ignore the realm and reality of the unseen spiritual world all around us....which begs us to open our hearts to the realities of the heart. There are 3 things that last forever and none of them are for sale at Wal Mart.  Faith, Hope and Love are 3 eternal realities that come to us as a gift from God. When we begin to walk in the direction of relationship with God...we have begun to really live.  Take a risk.... open your heart today....and begin to walk in the way of the pilgrim.  You were born for this.

Jim