Divided.
Imputed righteousness and impotent flesh collided.
Wallowing in the shame of lust having the victory yet again;
Drowning in an abyss of self-absorption and pride – the root of all sin.
Why do I do what I hate while I claim to be free?
Of hypocrites and imposters, I’m the epitome.
Filled with passion and fervor over the gospel and my Savior,
Yet rejecting His freedom with my gospel-ignorant behavior.
How do we reconcile this paradoxical paradigm?
Sanctification is a gritty process but glorification is sublime.
Those aspects of salvation are accomplished in one moment yet don’t occur simultaneously.
Today I’m saved from my penalty of sin but I don’t always walk in that truth harmoniously.
So wherein lies the great divide of my spirit and my flesh?
Paul says in Galatians chapter five that the two will never mesh.
We choose each day which we will feed;
And consequently we decide which to impede.
Emotions and impulses swing to and fro like a pendulum of disaster.
You see, we have to decide ahead of time, “Who is my master?”
I cannot serve two, so why do I even try?
One is full of truth; the other is a lie.
How long will I meander through mediocrity and cop out of conviction
As I sink into self-pity and live as though freedom from bondage is mere fiction?
As I break down my predicament of war within my soul,
I realize the key to authenticity in a heart that’s been made whole:
Guard it, above all else, for everything you do flows from it.
So when the Holy Spirit offers you conviction, embrace it and don’t numb it.
What am I listening to? What am I seeing?
Eliminate the garbage and the results are freeing.
If you claim affection for Jesus as your Savior and your Lord,
Why would you think letting go of worldly pleasure is something you can’t afford?
Lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily entraps.
Don’t just sing a song, hear a sermon, and hope your life adapts.
Wrestle with sin; don’t let it put you in a headlock.
But remember Who’s living within; He is your strength and your rock.
So when you feel tapped out, like you’re seconds away from K-O,
Remember your victory is mapped out and Satan gets the final “woe.”
Because it’s not just you in the ring;
No, your fighter is the King.
And until all creation, of His holy name, does sing,
You’re living in the beauty in between.

Why? Why an unfounded mass shooting in Las Vegas? Why Hurricane Harvey devastating Houston? Why Irma coming soon after and hitting the east coast hard? Why ISIS inflicting torture and terror across the globe? Why so much pain and hurt and conflict over the stand or kneel debate? Why so much evil and so much corruption and SO MUCH suffering?? The world is just getting worse and worse left and right. Every time we turn on the tv or read the news, there’s another tragedy to take in. So we ask “why?” We just don’t understand how people could be so crazy, how calamities and natural disasters could strike back to back to back and be so unrelenting.

Behind the world’s why, though, is often an accusation. With every tragedy comes a pointed finger because we want so badly to understand the things we cannot. We need some form of closure. There has to be an explanation. If God has created it all, then He has control over what goes on in the world. So, then, it is assumed that He must be the why behind every tragedy. Because it is just such a cop-out for us Christians to say that every good thing comes from God but every bad thing is just something He allows. What makes us know the difference? And when we look at the Bible, we can find throughout the Old Testament that God not only allowed some awful things to happen but He commanded for lots of those things to happen. So then we are left dumbfounded, drowning in uncertainty and lacking any clear answer to give to our world.

The world’s sorrow is valid. The questions we ask are normal. We are finite humans with the inability to perfectly understand all there is to know. Duh. But we want to know. We hate not knowing. We all can fall into the same boat, Christian and non-Christian, of questioning and lacking understanding. So what’s the solution??

We ask “why” but really the answer to our why is more clearly discovered in the question of when? When does all of this hurting and pain and suffering and evil subside? When do we all get along? When do crazy people stop killing others for no apparent reason? When do hurricanes stop wiping out cities? When do tornadoes stop ripping through houses?

Though no one can tell you the exact date on a calendar, you can rest assured that it will end. You see, when sin first entered the world in Genesis 2, this was the fall. Not just the fall of humanity. This was the fall of creation as a whole. God had created everything. Not only that, but after each thing was created He said it was good. Every. Single. Thing. Was. GOOD. So how did we end up here?

When Adam and Eve ate from the tree, they fell to the deception of the devil. And what was originally good became less than good. Sin wasn’t this thing God created; it was a corruption of what God created as good.

Romans 1 speaks to this whole concept. It talks about how all of creation groans to be reconciled back to God. The earth itself. It explains how we allow sin to infiltrate our lives and we no longer honor God like we were created to do, but rather we worship creature over Creator.

Just like Adam and Eve, we fall to the deception of the devil all the day long. We exchange the truth of God for the lies of Satan. We elevate things God created as good above the good God Himself and end up drowning in sin-laden living. How do we get back to what is good? Not by chasing good things. But rather by falling at the feet of the Only One who is good in worship. We have to get back to worshiping the Creator. Because whether we surrender to Him or not, He is coming back to reconcile the whole world to Himself. And that is when all the pain and suffering ends. That is how the Christian has hope in a broken world like this one. I don’t have any hope that if I live a good life my life will be free from pain, but I do have confidence that even in the midst of trial, my hope is secure. Because my hope is not in some better humanity. That is such an empty hope it’s ridiculous. My hope is in ONE Person – Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Lion and the Lamb. The One who bore the sin of every man on the cross. My hope is secure because He has already come and sacrificed Himself and risen again to offer me life abundant and eternal in Him, and He is coming back in the end to rule and reign over all. He has the last word. No man stands a chance. There is nothing more reassuring than placing every ounce of trust in Him.

So, this earth, today and ever since the initial fall in the garden, is extremely broken. But the more aware I am made of its brokenness, the more mindful I am that this is not my home (2 Cor 5:1). The deeper I yearn for my true home in heaven with the Author and Perfecter of my faith (Hebrews 12:1-2), the Savior of my soul. The more I long for this world to be reconciled to Him.

But so much of the world misses this and gets caught up in questioning. I have lots of questions, too. But I find a sense of comfort in having questions because if I had it all figured out, God wouldn’t be God. But He is. Therefore, His thoughts and His ways are far above mine (Is. 55:8-9).

I know a big question of the day is about how a good God would allow so much evil and pain. And then many feel it is a cop out to say that anything good is from God but anything bad is just something He allows… and then people bring attention to the Old Testament of the Bible where there are so many examples of God not only allowing violence but commanding it. This is where it gets tough. And I totally get that. It’s super hard to wrestle with these issues.

At the end of the day, though it is so harsh, God is God. He is the ONLY ONE who is holy, perfectly righteous, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and almighty. He has every right to do what He pleases. He literally can do whatever He wants and it doesn’t matter what I think. That’s so humbling and terrifying but it’s true. So just the opportunity to live is grace. Each day, every moment, is a gift. Anything less than death is grace because all we deserve is eternal death. Yet, He created us not to be robots but to be humans with a soul and a will. We have emotions, a brain, a heart. We can make decisions. He offers us the opportunity to live our lives how we want to. We can’t control everything that happens in life but we can decide how we respond to things. The Bible tells us that the angels long to live life like we do because they were never broken so they don’t get the chance to be redeemed like we do. You see, there’s something more beautiful than being born into perfection: being born into brokenness but being redeemed and restored. What is wrong being made right. What is bad being made good.

And back to God’s harsh action in the Old Testament. We have to remember that the Old Testament was pre-incarnation of Christ Jesus. The Old Testament shows us the Israelites in their beginning stages as a nation. They were given the Law from God through His servant Moses. It came to reveal transgression (Gal 3). Without the Law, humanity had a sense of right and wrong (Eccl. – God has written it on the human heart), yet the Law reveals sin and what that means for us. It separates us from a holy God and earns us eternal death (Rom 3:23, 6:23). So, in the Old Testament salvation was still available to everyone even though Jesus hadn’t lived on the earth yet. They put their faith in He who was to come and today we put our faith in He who has come.

But God had a plan for His people and He was demonstrating His character and the identity of children of God through His chosen people of Israel in the Old Testament. There were Gentiles who made God their Lord and were saved by grace through faith, like Rahab, while God was bringing His Hebrew people into the land He had promised to them (Canaan). However, most of the people outside of the nation of Israel were corrupt and wicked. And God dealt with them as He said He would because we needed to understand the severity of sin. God had to show us that He takes sin seriously and so should we. And I don’t know if we’re necessarily better off today living in comfort and common wickedness, while in the Old Testament people were wiped out when they lived these kinds of lives. God tells us in Romans 1 about how He eventually gives us over to our sin when we continually worship the creature over the Creator. I mean how many of us are guilty of idolatry? I sure am on a daily basis. We elevate even good things over the BEST thing. That makes me an idolater. This current day idolatry infiltrates our lifestyles and before we know it we are giving God lip service but our heart is truly far from Him. Because, you see God doesn’t just want our religion status on facebook; He wants our heart, soul, mind, and strength (the greatest commandment that Jesus gave us).

So when we are living our lives and look around and see so much brokenness and suffering and pain, though a lot of times it is just SO SAD and SO ROUGH, it is grace. It is more than we deserve. Because we are living in the “in between.” Christ has come to the earth, lived, died, and risen. He has offered us life and life abundant in Himself (John 10:10… probs mention that one in every blog because it’s just so stinkin’ short and sweet but life in a nutshell). And yet, life abundant on earth is just still not quite the real deal because the anchor for our souls lies in a fixed hope built upon the person of Jesus Christ seated at the right hand of the throne of God. That’s in heaven, people! This world is NOT our home. It is temporary. Maybe that’s a cliché song by Carrie Underwood. But it is also undoubtedly the truth I wake up each day clinging to as a believer in the Kings of Kings, Lord of Lords, Savior of my soul. This world is so imperfect, and the very best things here still leave me empty because they are just a dim picture of what will one day be my infinity – H E A V E N. And ya know what makes heaven so great? Perfection, no sorrow, no pain, no suffering… Of course, but what makes it that way?? The full presence of the triune God. He dwells there forevermore having conquered sin and death once and for all, seated in His everlasting rest. And all of His children (descendants of Abraham from the Old Testament and adopted gentile believers – Ephesians 1, 1 Peter 2:9-10) will offer Him the worship He is due. In authentic spirit and truth. What a day. The whole world will be reconciled to Him. Complete restoration. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess (Phil 2). So, each day we truly can consider it all joy amidst trial (James 1) because it is not without purpose.

It’s like watching your football team play in the national championship. But the game is already over and you know your team has won. You know the final score yet you’re watching the game recorded. Sometimes it feels like you’re behind or you have a lot of adversity to overcome. Yet, it’s so funny how you still get so nervous watching every play when you know the outcome. It’s like we forget. The end is written. But we’re living in the present. The enemy never had a chance, yet with every fluctuation in the game we question if our team really wins in the end. WE KNOW WE DO. So take heart. He has overcome the world. This world that is fading may be all we know now on the full spectrum, but the world we were created for is what our soul knows and longs for. Keep pressing on, not in your own strength but in full assurance of the accomplished work of Jesus on the cross for you and me. Place full trust and hope in Him. And when you turn on the tv or read the news and hate what you see, rest in the promises of a promise-making and promise-keeping Heavenly Father.

This. Is. Not. Home.

This. Is. Not. What. You. Were. Created. For.

So live stocking up for yourself treasure in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy (Matt 6:20). Live for the everlasting kingdom. Stock in heaven will be cashed in full. Stock on the earth will vanish like a vapor. Yet in the midst of our finite lives, God cares about every struggle. That’s another reason Jesus came. As a man. He came to truly identify with us and sympathize with our weaknesses (Heb 2, Heb 4, just read all of Hebrews – it. is. the. REAL DEAL)!!! He is a personal God acquainted with our weaknesses. He was fully man, too (Phil 2). Not easy to understand, but if I could understand it all to a T, why would I believe that He is God?

My heart is heavy. But my heart is also yearning. Yearning to be closer to Jesus. Yearning for Him to restore and redeem and reconcile. I pray, though, that before He does that once and for all, we return to Him. We need a wake-up call as a nation and as a world. What really matters isn’t found in political arguments or racial debates. It is found in one Person. Jesus is really the answer. And when we truly understand that, our lives start to look different and our differences begin to fade away. When we pursue Him, we begin to look like Him. When we look like Him and talk like Him and act like Him, people all of a sudden start to see Him more. He doesn’t need people, but He uses people. He always has!!! So each day when I wake up, I want to ask myself, “who are you living for?” If the answer is anything but Jesus, I don’t want it. If I want to be a beacon of hope to a hurting world, that life purpose is the only option.