get cleaned up

Image by Denis Collette…!!! via Flickr

“God does not tell us to clean ourselves up before he listens to our prayers.” – Kurt Hannah

There are times when we feel as though we are unworthy to come before God. Times when we feel burdened with guilt and worry, when there are things which are causing us to become worried that approaching God would be the worst thing for us.

Some of us think that we need to clean up our lives before we can approach God. We think that we have to stop drinking. We have to stop lying, cheating, stealing. We have to stop looking at pornography. We have to stop lusting.

We think we need to be perfect before we can come back to God.

The problem is, the only way we get perfect is by coming back to God. The only way we get rid of the chains that drag us down is by asking God to free us. The only way we come out from under the burden we carry is by having God remove it from us.

The only way we can be free, is by admitting that we need help.

We have this incredible promise that God has sent his Son into the darkness of this world as incredible light. When we are surrounded by the death and decay brought about by the brokeness which humanity has caused in this world, God brought life and newness.

Fall has always been a weird season for me. Weird because I love the crispness, the sharpness, the brightness that comes on a clear fall or winter day, but on the other hand I am keenly aware that the cold is killing things all around me. The trees become stripped bare.

The light that comes in Fall, however, is precious to me. Precious because I know it is fleeting. Precious because it is surrounded by darkness.

We do not need to clean ourselves us before we come to God. We need to go to God to get ourselves cleaned up.

losing control

Last night we looked at the ten plagues that preceded the exodus of Israel from Egypt. It struck me as we were going through them that they seemed to go on and on. I could see the eyes of the congregation, especially the young people, glazing over as we went through them (and we did it quickly). There are some interesting differences, but it is really hard to go through the whole list of ten and have any semblance of what this must have been like for the Egyptians.

One tragedy after another.

This would be like ten hurricanes crashing into New Orleans in succession. Like ten large earthquakes rocking Sanfransisco. We do not do well with one tragedy, let alone ten in a row. When one major event like this happens, everything shuts down. The whole country tunes it to see what is going on. Everyone pitches in to help.

But ten like this? We have no frame of reference.

That is why it is so hard to understand Pharaoh. Here is a man who is absolutely stubborn. He is given countless opportunities to do what God is asking him. There are numerous times where he could actually let go of his control and let the people go. But that is just the problem.

Pharaoh wants to keep control. Even when he decides to let them go, as he does a couple of times after a plague, he wants to control the terms of their release.

Pharaoh absolutely refuses to let God be God.

I see myself in Pharaoh. I see myself sitting here wanting to negotiate the terms of my surrender. I see myself trying to make sure that I retain some semblance of control over my life and the lives of those around us. I see myself refusing to let God be God.

This, however, does not work. God will not allow us to continually refuse to let him be in control. He may need to humble us. When I see Pharaoh, after the last plague, I see a man stripped of all illusion of control. I see a man completely defeated.

I pray that I will never get to that point.

I pray that I will hand my life over to God before he comes and takes it from me.

I pray the same for you.

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take the first step

I have been on holidays the last couple of weeks, which has been absolutely amazing. We did nothing. Well, nothing big. We woke up in the morning and then tried to figure out something to do. We might go out for breakfast at The Preserve Company and then go for a walk along the river. Or we might just stay home and play in the backyard. It has been great to simply spend time with the family and become a real part of their lives.

It has also been a time to reflect on what God has been doing in my life. These past couple of weeks I have come face to face with something I have been ignoring for quite some time. There is an area of my life which I simply refuse to give over to God. There is something that has real control of me and is becoming a major barrier between God and I. I have become very aware that I need to let God remove this road block.

The problem is, I do not want to.

I am faced with my own reluctance to give up this thing that has begun to devour my soul. It is no small thing because if draws me away from God. I try to distract myself with other thing. I try to argue that the rest of my life is going great. I try to negotiate with God. He can have the rest of me, as long as I get to keep this. So I am faced with an enormous challenge. Not only do I have to overcome a large temptation, I also have to overcome my own desire to give in to that temptation.

It is too big for me.

I was watching The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland yesterday (with my three year old son, if you were wondering) and there is this part in the movie where Elmo is trying to get his blanket back from Huxley who has stolen it. He has to go all the way to Huxley’s castle, which is a long way away. He thinks he cannot make it, because it is so far and he is only little and all alone. Then a bush next to him tells him that at least he does not have roots from his toes, and he can at least start the journey.

He can take the first step.

I am not able to overcome this overnight, but I am able to take the first step. I am able to get down on my knees and surrender this to God. I am able to take up the Bible when I feel the temptation coming on strong. I am able to bury myself in God’s word, allowing it to soak into my bones and change me. I can be more aware of God’s presence in everything I do.

I can practice the presence of God.

I know I am not the only person struggling with temptation. I know that there are many of us who look at certain areas of our lives and are filled with guilt. I know that the feeling of shame has not left humanity since Adam and Eve first ate the fruit and were ashamed to be naked before each other. I know many of us look at this great gulf between where we are and where we want to be and feel despair.

With God’s strength we are able to take the first step.

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crisis of significance

Where do we find significance? Do we find it or is it given to us?

The following video argues that we find significance in ourselves when we are able to integrate all of our lives into one self, breaking down the barriers we place between “work-life”, “home-life”, “friend-life”, “___-life”, and breaking down the barriers that we have placed between us and the other.

Watch the video (it’s only about 6 minutes) and I’ll give some thoughts after.

This is a very humanist approach to the problem. If we would only realise how we are all connected, then we will be able to (re)create this space where we are all living in harmony.

I realise that the breaking down of barriers can only be good, as he says, but I think this will not come by “reintegrating our selves”. This will only come when we choose to give up ourselves for the sake of the others.

When we die to ourselves.

Only when we ignore the call of the world, and that desire within, to think only of ourselves will we be able to live this new life that thinks of others as our equal. I think this is what Jesus was talking about when he said we needed to die to ourselves.

The defining moment in the Bible is the death and resurrection of Jesus, the man from Nazareth. The whole story before it leads up to it, and the whole story after that event tries to figure out the significance of it.

Jesus’s death brings life.

And not just life for him, but life for us as well, because in Jesus’s death he broke the bonds of all those things that lead us away from one another and from God. Jesus said that he came to give life,

life to the full.

How many times have you wondered if there was more to life? How many times have you sat in your room on a rainy day and questioned the meaning of your existence? How many times have you kinda stood outside yourself, looked around and said, “Is this all there is?”

The guy in the youtube video nails the problem on the head, we no longer know if we are significant to anyone (even ourselves). The answer, however, is not to claim our significance by uniting our disparate selves (those pieces of us we show to others depending on our location and context).

The answer is to see ourselves in Jesus.

It is only in dying to ourselves that we see God and others.

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Christians and porn: a theology of pornographic lust

This is the third post in a series which aims to address the issues of pornography and our sexuality in a frank and open manner. You can see the other posts here, and here.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this statement.

You can look, but you can’t touch.

How many times has someone justified their lust through this kind of thinking?

How many times have I?

I work out at a gym about three times a week (it is hard to stay in shape in my line of work). I have had many women tell me that they hate to work out with men because they feel like pieces of meat. I always thought they were too sensitive, but as I have watched other men in the gym ‘noticing’ women I have to agree with the women. So many times a fit women walks past and all the guys spend the next minute watching her walk away.

A line from the movie Faceoff always runs through my head when I see another mans head swivel to watch a woman walk away.

Eve, Eve. I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.

Driscoll, in chapter three of Porn-Again Christian, talks about an encounter he had with a young Christian at Christian college.

I remember having a converstaion with another young Christain who frequently viewed pornography and told me that it was okay because he had examined the Bible thoroughly and never saw the word “pornography.” But, he convieniently missed the mountain of verses that speak about lust.

For some reason we seem to be able to very easily sidestep the statement of Jesus in Matthew 5:27ff

You have heard 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.

It is not as though lust is wrong, it is when lust is focussed on someone other than the spouce that God has given you is wrong. So when we look at the naked pictures of a woman or man who is not our spouce, we lust and commit adultery. If we read or listen to erotic stories which are designed to arouse us, we commit adultery.

Driscoll also reminds us that sexual sins (really all sinning) is not something outside of us, but comes from within us.

Jesus said, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sexuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Thus, sexual sins are not “out there” in the media, strip club, or gal with low-rise jeans and hi-rise thong. Truly, the problem is “in you.” It is from the sinfulness of your heart that lust and sin proceed like sewage from a culvert. This is the painful, unvarnished truth.

This is something that is hard for us to understand. We love to work on the outside, on the actions, on the appearance that we give to others. We work hard at building beautiful and thick masks that cover who we really are.

What we need to do is take off the mask, and allow God’s light to shine into the darkest part of our hearts.