Enlarge in the Waiting - Romans 8 Part 5

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up my Romans 8 series today. Rather than try to cram twenty more verses into this post, I'm just going to hop through the end and focus on the elements that blessed me the most. During this series we've discussed how to move from heaviness to freedom and light. How to overcome sin not in our own strength, but through God's. How to get past religion and develop a real relationship with God. And how to look forward to an exciting future with adventurous expectation. But sometimes it takes a while to get where we're going. And to wrap this all up, we're going to talk about waiting.
 ^18-21That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. 

Yes, life on earth can be kind of rough. That's because we live in a fallen world, and nothing was ever meant to be quite like this. The world itself is waiting. Waiting for a full restoration to God's original plan. For the glorious time ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. We don't need to bemoan this situation. We're still children of the king. We ourselves have been restored to right relationship with God through the price that Jesus paid on the cross. So we wait joyfully, looking forward to that full release of God's kingdom. 

 ^22-25All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. 

This section particularly meant so much to me during the month I was meditating on this chapter. It seemed I had run into a delay with my writing career yet again, and I had no idea how long it might last. I was feeling the birth pangs. In fact, in the fall of 2010 God had given me a special scripture about the barren woman singing and becoming the joyful mother of many children. So I know God fully understands how it feels to be a writer. To be waiting for our "children" to be born. I'm sure this applies to any unfulfilled dream. It's okay, though, because the waiting does not diminish us. Just the opposite, we are enlarged in the waiting. Even when we don't see it. Reading that filled me with joy. I'm growing larger for Jesus. If the baby comes too soon, it might not be ready. It might not make it. By waiting, I'll be even a bigger, better vessel for pouring out his good news to the earth. And because of that, I can be joyful and expectant.

 ^26-28Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. 

Yes, sometimes we grow weary, we get discouraged, but God's spirit is right there with us. Praying through us. Interceding for us when we're so worn out, we have no words left to express it. Those of you who have had children understand, the end is the hardest. I had three completely natural childbirths, so I probably understand this better than most women these days. Just before you have to push that baby out, the pain is more than you think you can bear. You think you'll never survive it. It's not something you can do alone.

But praise the Lord, every detail in or lives of love for God is worked into something good!!! He is there helping us every step of the way. Clearing the path. Comforting us. Cheering, "Push, push, you can do it!" And delivering that baby safely into our arms. God has a good plan for each of our lives, and He will see it through to completion. If you have a dream to write, or go on missions, or just raise Godly children, whatever it is, the pressure is not on us to make it happen. If it's God's plan, we just do our part as faithful children, and He will take care of the rest.

I hope you enjoyed this series. I've decided to call it my freedom series. Let's all let go of the heavy load and let God do the work in us. Stay focused on Him, spend time in His presence, learn to dwell in the Holy Spirit, and let God move in your life.

Blessings!

What are you waiting for? How do you endure the waiting? How can you grow during this time?

What's Next Papa - Romans 8 Part 4

I’m continuing my study of Romans 8, an amazing chapter which has thoroughly impacted my life. Today we get to my very favorite verse—in fact, the verse that started my intense meditation on this passage.

 ^15-17This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!  

I just love that! Our life is not a timid, grave-tending life. I wonder how many people picture Christianity that way? Timid. Dead. I wonder even if there’s some implication in this verse that while we must be aware of eternity, we shouldn’t be so eternally focused that we’re no earthly good? Makes sense. Many religious Christians are so busy waiting for “the sweet by and by” that they aren’t enjoying the priceless here and now. We need to enjoy life. Embrace it in all it’s emotions and colors and facets. Dance, play, sing! God is with us here and now, not just after we die. We should be elated by his presence. Celebrate it. Delight in the world he created for us.

Jonny Sleiman rock climbing without equipment

Our lives should be adventurously expectant. I love that too. Lately I’ve noticed that I haven’t been as bold and brave as I used to be. I used to love an adventure. Yes, adventures can be scary, but they are exciting too. No risk, no reward. I have one adrenaline junky child, and he serves as a good reminder to me that risk can be an amazing thing. And yes, odd timing for the post considering the fact that I crashed my bike for the first time in over 25 years last week. Yes, I was going too fast for a beach cruiser on neighborhood roads. Yes, I’m still cut, and bruised, and slightly discombobulated from smacking my face on the concrete. But you know what? I survived. More than that, I discovered that I’m stronger, tougher, and more resilient than I ever would have guessed. And you know what else? Going fast is fun. While our adventures must be tempered with wisdom, overall, they are good things.

And that’s just the word adventurous. What about expectant? Another amazing word. We should have hope—faith. We should dream big dreams. Imagine an awesome future. Don’t live in fear. Don’t waste your time worrying. It’s a pointless emotion anyway. Look forward to the future with expectation.

Greet God with a childlike, “What’s next, Papa?” Maybe I love that most of all. How’s that for simple trust? My daddy has something great planned for me. I don’t know what it is, but I’m not worried. I don’t even care! Because I know my daddy, and I know it will be good. So I run to him and throw myself in his arms. I let him spin me in a wild circle with my feet sailing free in the breeze. I giggle in delight as he tosses me over his head. That’s my papa—my daddy after all.

^18-21That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. 

I know who I am. I’m a child of the king. And no, not everything will be perfect. Not everything will be easy. But I can look forward with expectation, knowing who I belong to. Knowing I have a glorious inheritance waiting for me. I will go through the hard times with Christ, knowing that good times await me.
Meanwhile, my joyful anticipation deepens. Ahh. Thank you Jesus! Next time we’ll talk even more about the joy in the waiting.

Are you trying to control your life, or are you willing to say, “What’s next, Papa?” Are you timid or are you brave? How can you grow to be more adventurously expectant?

How to Get Past Religion - Romans 8 Part III

If you follow my blog regularly, you probably know I’ve been covering Romans 8 on a bi-weekly basis. I spent an entire month meditating on this chapter, and was so inspired that I wanted to share it with you. I’m looking at it in the Message version, and while some might argue that this is not the most literal translation, there are two things about it I really like. 1) It was translated directly from the Greek and Hebrew by someone who shares our mindset rather than a group of translators in the 16^th century. 2) There is a freshness to the translation that really ministers to someone like me who grew up in church.

For my third installment of this series, I’m going to breeze quickly through a bigger chunk of scripture that all deals with the same subject, how get past religion and move onto God.

 ^5-8Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored. 

Here’s the first thing I’ve noticed about religious Christians who are focused on morality and other outward issues rather than on the spiritual world and the spirit of God: They have a lot rules. Exhausting rules, and as we saw in Part II, that is not God’s plan. It’s a dead sort of Christianity. Christ freed us from the curse of the law. Not only do they have a lot of rules for themselves, they have a lot of rules for everyone else, and seem to want to control those around them. They often seem angry and have a chip on their shoulders. I translate it as, “If I have to follow these awful rules, then so do you, darn it!” Although, of course, we all know they would never use the actual word “darn” ;) No wonder the world doesn’t like so many Christians. No wonder so many unbelievers think church is a hypocritical, judgmental sort of place. Christians are putting so much pressure on themselves, that they’re stressed out and upset. And often downright angry and mean.

 ^9-11But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's! 

There’s a lot of pride and self-centeredness bound up at the heart of religiosity. I have to do it myself. I have to control myself. I have to follow the rules. I…I…I. Where’s God’s place in all of this. He sets the rules and walks away? No, that’s not the point at all. The rules were only ever meant to guide us and point the way to fulfillment and happiness. To set us free to accomplish God’s plans for our lives. If it’s his plan, his will, then he will do the work in us. Our job is to focus on him, to spend time with him, rest in his presence, and allow him to do a deep work in our hearts. God dwelling in us, bringing us fully to life. Take a minute to meditate on that. Imagine what it would look like to become fully alive through God’s spirit. What would that change in your life? Spend some more time to enter into his presence and let him become alive in you.

 ^12-14So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There's nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God's Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! 

God’s spirit wants to bring you to life. He has things for you to do and places for you to go. So let go of all that self-centered religion and let God bring you to life today.

What ill effects have you seen from religion-based Christianity? How has it hurt you? How have you seen it hurt others? What can you do to get past religion and move onto God in a deeper way?

God's Prescription for Healing Sin - Romans 8 Part II

^3-4God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn't deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

Sin. Kind of an ugly word. A charged word to be sure. Maybe it’s been overused. Maybe we apply it to anything we don’t like. We certainly don’t want to apply it to ourselves, but truth be told, we probably do it in some way or another everyday. From my understanding, there are two Hebrew words for sin. One means evil. Hopefully not too many of us are guilty of that. But the other one--the simpler one was known as “het” or “chet” in Hebrew. It means missing the mark. Veering of the path. Missing God’s best plan for our lives.

Yep, I’d say most of us do that every day.

And no one understands that more than God himself. He made us after all. And He knows us intimately. Although I don’t think it would be fair to say He “planned” for us to sin, I imagine He “knew” it was going to happen. For the record, I don’t think God is the control freak most Christians seem to think He is. I happen to think He has given us a ton of choice and more responsibility for our own life than the whole “God is in control” mind set seems to acknowledge. Oh, and that there’s an enemy too, who seeks to destroy us, and as we saw in verses one and two, we’ve been given power over that enemy.

Anyway, back to verses three and four. So mankind fell into sin. And it created a degree of separation from God, but He wasn’t numb to our plight. He had a plan. And not a wimpy little plan. No, it says here He went for the jugular by sending His own son. A son who died for us on a cross to pay the price for our sin. Pretty amazing. God took a personal interest in our human condition. Why? Because He loved us. He wanted to fix this disordered mess once and for all.

Laws—rules, they could never fix the mess. They weren’t enough to earn us salvation. To restore our relationship with God. And guess what? They still aren’t. We don’t need the band-aid of the law anymore. What we need is the deep healing that Christ offered on the cross. We don't need to accept Christ's salvation once and then earn our own salvation everyday for the rest of our lives. We just accept Christ's salvation, and it's done.

So why do we spend sooooo much time trying to fix ourselves, control ourselves, be perfect, please people, live up to some impossible religious standards?

Now we get to my favorite part of these verses. We don’t have to try harder. We don’t have to redouble our efforts. We just relax and embrace what the Spirit is already doing in us. If we’ve accepted Christ and His forgiveness, it’s God’s job to fix us. Not our job. His!!!!

We just have to hold on for the ride.

Wow! How freeing is that? Take a minute to feel that freedom. Breathe it in. Shake off the heaviness of guilt and sin and live in the moment of liberty and forgiveness. Of spiritual health and well-being. No wonder that dark cloud from verses one and two has been blown away and now we can live under clear, bright skies. Sigh. Lovely.


Have you been redoubling your efforts lately? Have you been stressing over your sin? How could you simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in your life? What would that look like?

How Romans 8 Can Set You Free - Part I

^{Romans 8}

^1-2With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. (The Message Version)

All last month I meditated on one chapter of scripture: Romans 8 in the Message version. Some days I would read the whole passage, sometimes half, others only a few verses. I meditated and mulled over those words until they really became alive to me. So I thought I’d do a series about Romans 8 to share with all of you. It’s rich with truth and light that will set you free.

Let’s begin today with verses 1-2. Plenty to chew on there. I will break it down piece by piece.

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved.

What dilemma is this? Perhaps the very dilemma of fate? Chance? Or is it our ultimate fate as fallen human beings. A fate separated from our glorious maker. Perhaps even eternal separation, which would be the appropriate result of our sinful state. But with the arrival of Jesus, the slate is wiped clean. We are reconciled to our heavenly father. No longer pawns of fate—of Satan, the enemy of our soul—but beloved children. A royal priesthood, ambassadors of Christ to the dark world around us.

Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.

I know I’ve lived too much of my life under a low-lying black cloud. Even as a believer. What about you? Do you ever feel oppressed, depressed? But that’s not the plan. Christ has set us free from that. We no longer have to live under that darkness. But what is the condition? We must enter into Christ. The light of the world lives in us, shines through us. He is more than capable of dispelling that darkness. As we soak in His presence the darkness dissipates. As we speak His name and declare His word the darkness must flee.

A new power is in operation.

At the cross Jesus conquered the enemy. Satan lost his power. Death was defeated. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us. And He’s given us the keys to the kingdom. As His ambassadors, His children, He’s given us the power. Yet too often we feel powerless, defeated, and broken down. We must put on the full armor of God that we might stand against the assaults of the enemy. We must fill ourselves with the word of God so that we can not only withstand any attack, but even be on the offensive for the kingdom of God.

The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

And here’s the best part. The Spirit of life in Christ blows in like a strong wind, clearing the air of that black cloud. Can you see it? Can you feel it blowing crisp and clean across your skin. Take a moment to close your eyes and picture this scene. Picture the black cloud in your life. Name it. Then watch the Spirit of life blow it away and clear the air. We are free from our original fate. Free of the brutal tyranny we were born under. Free from a life as slaves to sin and death. Free to serve Christ in all His liberty and grace in clean air under bright skies. Why don’t you take a moment to dance in spin in that freedom. I know I will.

Thanks for joining me today for this foray through the first two verses of Romans 8. Come again in two weeks when I’ll continue with this study. And please take a moment to share your thoughts, impressions, and experiences from these first two verses.