That Egyptian Army, Though...

One of my favorite people in the Bible is Moses.

I mean his story is a story of redemption, of fighting against the powerful on behalf of the downtrodden, of submitting to God and having a front row seat at a display of His power.

It also comes with a long time of wandering around in a dry, hot desert while leading a bunch of complaining cry-babies.  To be honest, I don't know how Moses put up with his people as long as he did.  And when he is denied entering the Promised Land because he hits a rock in anger, you have to wonder as a reader how he didn't get to that level of frustration earlier, amiright?

He goes up to talk with God on the top of the mountain and comes down and the gang is dancing around a golden cow, having totally forgotten and forsaken the powerful God who has delivered them from their oppressive slavery.

It's easy from the comfort of a 2016 existence to look at such behavior and mock them for their lack of faith or consistency.

When you dig beneath the snark of how stupid and weak these people were, you actually get a realistic and gritty depiction of how stupid and weak we are.  Just like the Israelites, our HEARTS are often COATED in FEAR.

One of my favorite passages of scripture comes during the excitement of the Exodus.  Here the Israelites have left their bondage and are on the banks of the Red Sea.  A literal pillar of fire and clouds has been leading them.  They've seen countless miracles and plagues demonstrating God's power.  And they saw the most powerful leader of their day, the Egyptian Pharaoh, lose his resolve and let them go.

I mean dude was like a defiant teen with his tremendous refusal to accept reality and submit to a greater authority.  It seemed like he would never give in.  But he finally did.  And then about 10 minutes later when he realized that his slaves were gone and that he and his boys might have to lift a finger and work.  So, he gets all confederate on the Israelites and chases after his "property."

And of course the Israelites melt into a pile of cowardly goo when they see the advancing Egyptian army.  They literally start whining that it would be better to go back and be slaves then to experience freedom with God.  (Another blog post for another time but very telling on our view of "freedom" and "slavery" when it comes to our society and submission to God!) As a response, Moses gives one of the most epic statements in the entire Bible in Exodus 14:13-14:

"Moses answered the people, 'Do not be afraid.  Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today.  The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.  The LORD will fight or you; you need only to be still.'"

Be still.  The LORD will fight for you.  Stand firm.

In fact, the pillar of smoke and fire then goes between the Israelites and the Egyptians.  And the Bible tells us that one on side it brought "darkness" and to the other side it brought "light" so that neither side went near it.  God is darkness, confusion, and foolishness to those who don't trust Him.  To those who do, however, He is a shield, a protector, a LIGHT that illuminates every aspect of life and history to make sense in a way not possible to someone not open to the things of God.

And just for kicks, God threw the mighty Egyptian army into confusion.   Then Moses lifted his hands and raised his staff and God parted the Red Sea for His people to make perhaps the most dramatic exit in the history of the world.  Oh, and then he made the Red Sea crash down onto the heads of the Egyptian army as they attempted to cross.

Pretty epic, right?

It's easy to mock the folly and fear of the Israelites as nothing but foolishness.  And it was.  However, it is a foolishness that we all share in.  Whether it is the Israelites in the desert, Peter on the water, the disciples in the boat, or those of us today fretting about our family, our finances, our health, or even just whether or not people will mock us, FEAR has played a huge part in warping our conception of God.

GOD stands ready to FIGHT for you.  You literally have to do nothing but stand firm and keep focused on HIM instead of your FEAR.  An advancing Egyptian army, or a broken marriage, or a troubled son or daughter, or a broken relationship, or a financial hardship are all pretty frightening in their own way.  They ALL, however, pale in comparison to the POWER of the GOD who is FOR YOU and WHO DELIGHTS in FIGHTING FOR YOU.

Every time we allow our FEARS to shrink our view of the unfathomable SIZE and POWER of GOD,
we allow our CIRCUMSTANCES to DEFINE our FAITH as TINY and TIMID.

FAITH is the exact opposite of FEAR, and that's why FEAR works so hard to undermine it.  The larger our faith, the smaller our fear.  So as we allow our FEAR to EXPAND, our FAITH begins to rapidly DIMINISH.

Exodus 14 ends with verse 31: "And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in Him and in Moses his servant."

Put your trust in the GOD who sees you as a BELOVED SON or DAUGHTER.  In the GOD who is LARGER than your FEARS.  In the GOD with the UNMATCHED POWER to demolish your FEARS so that you never see them again.  Let your FEAR shrink and your FAITH expand.

Don't be captive to fear.  Embrace the freedom in God's security.

Heart Wounds: Fear Leaves A Mark

Recently, I said some very harsh things to someone that I love dearly.  It was a tense conversation and something that probably needed to be addressed long ago, but as the conversation progressed, I found an intense anger rise up within me.  I ended the conversation with very angry words that I regretted saying the moment they came out of my mouth.

As I continue to strip away the damage that FEAR has done to my HEART over the years, I have discovered that FEAR generally damages your HEART in THREE MAIN AREAS:

• FEAR distorts how you SEE GOD and how you RELATE to HIM.  Fear will destroy any real intimacy you have with GOD because it will prioritize other problems and things above God. It DENIES GOD access to the broken places in your HEART and stops up the access to healing.

• FEAR damages your conception of YOURSELF and breaks the God filter that allows you to see yourself as God does.  Instead you focus on how horrible you are and allow yourself to sink into depression, and into a personal spiritual and relational paralysis.  FEAR will destroy any real self-reflection of yourself and will cause you to see yourself in a skewed light.  Instead of being able to see your flaws and learn from them to get better, you will see them as unfixable messes that make you unworthy of love.

• FEAR mutates how you see OTHERS.  You will no longer see them as God sees them.  You will see their worst qualities.  You will mock them,  You will not be capable of COMPASSION because your focus is always on yourself and your own problems.  FEAR will destroy any intimacy you might have with others.  It will make them a punching bag for your own hurt heart.  

And although I've begun to break the cycle of FEAR in my own life, I've discovered that breaking free from FEAR is a lot like becoming a Christian.  Yes, you can become a Christian in an instant, but it also will take a lifetime to actually work out what that means.  In the same manner, you can break free spiritually from FEAR in an instant, but it will take time healing some of the wounds that were inflicted on your heart from that fear.

JESUS deals with this in Matthew 15:17-19:

“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

The things that come out of a person's mouth come from the heart.  And these defile them.

The focus is so often on external things, but Jesus refocuses us onto the HEART.  And the things that fly out of your mouth come from that heart.  And there's a reason.

So when you find yourself lashing out at someone and can't seem to understand why you can't control that anger, there is a reason for that.  There is an unaddressed hurt.  There is a wound that needs healing.  The same is true of others who might lash out at you.

And here's the thing--just because you've overthrown FEAR from ruling your heart, it doesn't mean that the damage is completely undone.  Just like following JESUS is a relationship that needs daily tending and leaning into Him, so does our heart need time and healing.

Too often, however, we choose to hold on to the hurts.  We don't want to let go.  We don't want to resolve it.  It's just who we are.  Deal with it.  We tell it like it is.

God's plan for you is so much bigger than that.  There's a reason that Jesus famously tells us in Matthew 6:21 that, "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  What you keep in your heart and refuse to let go becomes your treasure.  It's like Gollum's "precious" in the Lord of the Rings.  If your heart's treasure is not GOD, it will destroy you.

That's why God tells us in Ezekiel 36:26 that,  "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

GOD wants to give us a new heart.  He wants to heal us from our past hurts.  He wants to restore our view of OURSELVES, our view of HIM, and our view of OTHERS so that we can embrace the plan that He has for our lives.

For some of us, we find it impossible.  God couldn't do that.  He can't use me.  He can't heal me.  This won't ever get better.  Well, that's the wounded heart speaking within you.  That isn't the voice of God.  That's the lie of the enemy planted in the fertile soil of your wounded heart.

The truth is found in 1 John 3:20: "If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything."

GOD is greater than your heart.  LISTEN to HIM.  Pray to enjoy healing in your broken parts.  In fact, your restoration is meant to not just benefit you but also others.

American author Ernest Hemingway put it like this, "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many
are strong in the broken places."  The broken places of your HEART are fertile ground for GOD's HEALING and RESTORATION not just for you, but for the wonderful hurting folks that God will place in your path.  You will become STRONG in the BROKEN PLACES if you allow God to work.

It's my prayer for my recently revealed wounds.  These are wounds carried around by nearly 40 years of submitting to FEAR.  And these are wounds that can't be worked away.  They can only be LOVED away by the perfect and unfailing love of the FATHER.

Begin your path to healing today by allowing GOD to make you STRONGER in the BROKEN PLACES of your HEART.  FEAR has no place in your life.  You were born for a purpose.  Break free.

Branding Your Identity

Who are you really?

Who or what do you measure yourself against?  Honestly.  Think about this right now.  We all have this ongoing internal monologue about who we are.  Wait, you don't?  It's just me?

Assuming I'm not crazy and you have also spent a lifetime measuring your self worth by some standard somewhere, what is it?

Do you even know?

Our culture is kinda obsessed right now with branding, and re-branding, and image, and social media projections that have no basis in reality.  We're all obsessed with pretending to be something that we are not.  And this overwhelming focus on our false facades has completely cut us off from anything real.  For that reason, so many in today's society feel unsettled.  Unaccomplished.  Unimportant.  Unheard. 

We're binge-watching and tweeting away a FALSE life of no significance when GOD has an epic adventure awaiting just outside our door if we will just focus on what is TRUE.

In the JRR Tolkien novel, The Hobbit, there is a special moment early in the book where Gandalf touches on this idea.  Gandalf has mischievously selected a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, to join a throng of dwarves on an adventure to reclaim their treasure from a dragon named Smaug.  For those of you who aren't nerds, I will explain that a hobbit would probably be the last creature you'd take on an adventure of any kind.  They are short, fat, lazy, and not the sharpest tools in the shed.  They don't stray far from home, and they spend most of the day eating.  

The dwarves were not amused.  They questioned Gandalf's selection of Bilbo.  In response, Gandalf said of Bilbo, "There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself."

Gandalf saw a potential in Bilbo before anyone else did--including Bilbo.

And recently, I've been realizing the same is true of us.  In my own life, the voice that I've listened to in the inner monologue of my self-identity has been a hostile one. It told me that I didn't measure up.  It told me that I messed up too many things to be a success in life.  It told me that I wasn't as good as this person, or that one, or really anyone.  I'm not worth it.

It sounds childish for a nearly 40 year old to write this.  I get it.  And there's good reason for that. It's because I really was like a child cowering in fear.  The feeling of helplessness is like nothing that I can truly put into words.  Fear paralyzed me from moving forward and from seeing who I really am.  Fear caused me to passively accept defeat and embrace definitions for myself that were not TRUE.  

I believe that each person deep down inside answers two questions:

1.  Why was LOST cancelled? 

2.  What was that ending about?

Just kidding (for the most part.)  I believe the two questions that define everything in our life are:

1.  Who am I?

2.  Why am I here?

And how we answer that about ourselves determines our response to every aspect of life.  GOD has one answer for us:

Jeremiah 1:5:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;

Before you were born I sanctified you;

Jeremiah 29:11:

11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

2 Corinthians 6:18:

“I will be a Father to you, And you shall be My sons and daughters, Says the Lord Almighty.”

Sons and Daughters.  Known before we were formed.  Planned.  Created.  Given a future.  Thoughts of peace and not evil.  HOPE.

How often do we really listen to that?  Honestly?

If you are anything like me, not much.

Too often we compare ourselves to just about everything else--other people, standards and ideals that we will never meet, expectations, the words of others, our past.  These voices and thoughts drown out the still, small voice that assures us that we are LOVED.  That we are FORGIVEN.  That we are PRECIOUS.  

FEAR is one very powerful stronghold in the life of a human being.  It can keep you from the things you are destined to do and drive you to destructive behaviors designed to deaden your heart's pull toward your purpose.  It can simultaneously be a hidden and unseen force and a powerful prison from which you can't seem to free yourself.  FEAR can completely cut off the supply of HOPE coming from God and cause a person to be completely immune to words of life and hope spoken by loved ones and friends.

Just like Gandalf, however, God wants to silence those doubting voices.  God has a bigger plan and dream for your life than you could ever possibly fathom.  

Like Bilbo, however, you need to awaken your true identity and stop falling for false comparisons. When you stop accepting the false identity you believe about yourself, you will begin to see the sunlight.  A new day will begin.  God will reveal Himself to you in a new and more powerful way.  

When you correctly answer the question of who you are, you will be open to what massively important and amazingly life-altering journey that God has for you.  

Walk with me in this struggle.  Let's cast out fear and embrace our purpose.  I bet the world will thank us for it.

You are no longer a SLAVE of FEAR, you are a CHILD of GOD: