The Present

In this Christmas season, as I get ready to leave town to visit family I have been running around trying to get everything in order. There is a buzz in the air, traffic, shopping lines, etc. and it all can be exciting, chaotic, and/or a bit stressful!

I have been thinking a lot about presents as I gather my list of things I need to buy, what I will be baking, and even what I want for Christmas.

If you are anything like me – or know someone like me…I love presents!  It is one of my top love languages (I maybe have all five of them).  I love giving them and I absolutely love receiving them!  The idea of someone thinking about me enough to buy me something as simple as a stick of gum or a sparkly ring – I am always over the moon! I love Christmas because it is somewhat required to get me presents!

It’s funny to me how the word present means “a thing given to someone as a gift,” and it also means “being, existing, or occurring at this time now.” Coincidence? I think not!

At Christmas we get to celebrate the greatest gift we have ever received - God humbling Himself and coming as a child, giving His life for us so that we can live continually in His presence.

In thinking about the presence of God and learning about abiding in Him, I have come to the conclusion that it is all about the present! Father God, Son, and Holy Spirit long to meet us in every present moment! We are constantly one glance away from a full on encounter with the Trinity – we only have to choose to take a step into that particular moment.

Tis the season to be jolly, stressed out, financially strapped, depressed, and many other lovely emotions; or tis the season to be present. Present with friends and family. Present with our loving Father who designed us to do life with Him. What if we chose to be present? What if we put down our smart phones and looked into the eyes of Love itself or even looked into the eyes of the ones we love sitting right in front of us, begging to be seen or chosen?

If you haven’t been present this season, it’s ok. There is grace abounding and plenty of time. Take a moment now (or whenever you need to reconnect with Love) put your hand on your heart, take 3 deep breaths in and out, and let our Father be present with you.

Be blessed. Be present. And be loved.

Written by Bridgette, Los Angeles, California

Living by Faith in Relationships

3 Ways to Position Our Heart

Living in the unknown is one of the main reasons many people encounter anxiety and fear. I remember when I was involved in military ministry, I learned the uncertainty that military families faced while waiting for their leaders to tell them when and where they would be moving next. Once they received their orders, they were often asked to move within weeks. The families that thrived were the ones that saw the military life as an adventure and knew the decision would somehow work in their favor.

The military lifestyle reminds me of how we navigate life’s unexpected challenges. It is in these places of uncertainty that we give into anxiety and fear or lean into God trusting that He has our best interest at heart. We were never meant to carry the burden of walking through difficulties without relationship to our Father. When we begin to view uncertainty as a chance to draw closer to God, we can experience the adventure of the unknown realizing that God will turn everything around for good.

While reading How to Stop the Pain by Dr. James B. Richards, I realized this same idea of trusting God in circumstances also applies to our interactions with people. Just as life can be unknown, so can people. Not fully knowing others can lead to fear in our hearts about their intentions. When we encounter the fear of the unknown with people, we often attempt to release the anxiety by making judgments. However, when we discover God’s heart for the person and trust that He will protect us in the unknown, He takes away the anxiety.

We talk about living by faith during adversity, but how do we live by faith in relationships? Loving others often requires risk without the promise of a payoff. A while back, a girl that was in my circle of friends completely stopped coming around. Different people assumed she had either moved on, become busy, or had an offense against someone. It turned out to be none of those reasons. We later discovered she was struggling with depression and didn’t have the emotional energy to contribute to hanging out or having fun. How sad that instead of taking the opportunity to be there for her in time of need, we jumped to conclusions. Too often we personalize things when it has little or nothing to do with us. We can become so focused on our needs and feelings that we fail to consider the heart of the other person.

I believe as we invite faith into our relationships we can be free to take risks and love people the way that God does-without expecting anything in return. There are three different stances we can take in relationships which help us open our hearts and take the risks required to love people well.

1.  RECEIVING
Often, it is hard for us to receive because we have been so wounded by people that are supposed to protect and love us. Receiving requires risk because we are recognizing that we have a need and allowing someone access to our heart. When we are unable to acknowledge our needs, it blocks us from being able to naturally give and receive in relationships. Have you ever known someone that wasn’t self-aware enough to admit they had a need? This can be troubling because it is hard to contribute to someone that doesn’t see a need for it. It also becomes difficult to receive from this person because they are in a position in which they have little to give. When we fail to humble ourselves, and acknowledge that someone else has something to offer us, we miss out on the gift that God wants to give us through them.

The most obvious examples of people we receive from are our parents, mentors, or teachers. Typically, they have agreed to freely give without expecting anything in return. When the posture of our hearts is humility, we can also receive from the most unlikely people-the difficult person at work, peers, strangers etc. It is important that we acknowledge our weaknesses and need for love from others so that we can receive in a healthy way.

2.  GIVING
Giving is a major step of faith because it brings the possibility of receiving nothing in return. The reality is we all have times when we are unable to give back in relationships. There are also times when we choose to give knowing that the receiver is unable to reciprocate. I have a friend who is homeless. She is always in survival mode and in a constant state of need. While it is important for me to have boundaries with her, it would be unfair to place the same expectations on her that I have for myself because she isn’t equipped to live up to those expectations.

If we find ourselves consistently frustrated with people’s behavior, it may be a sign that we have placed expectations on them that they haven’t agreed to fulfill. As we pour out to others and let go of expectations, we can healthily give without needing anything in return.

3.  MUTUALLY GIVING AND RECEIVING
Certain relationships focus on primarily giving while others focus on receiving. It is important to know your role in any given relationship so that the expectations are clearly understood. I have found the rare friendships are those in which both people mutually give and receive to one another. These friendships are what Anne of Green Gables calls “bosom buddies”. They are the kind of people you can count on for fun, speaking the truth, and being there for you in difficult times. These are the relationships where someone allows you access into their life to give and receive. Oprah often asks people how many “real friends” they have. Most people typically say they have less than three. When we encounter these kind of relationships, they are worth holding onto.

God has recently been reminding me that above all else, He is asking me to love. This is the heart of the gospel and all that matters when everything is said and done. The only way we can fully love people is if we are willing to step out on a limb with God and release our need to understand people’s intentions. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” As we walk by faith with Him and trust that He can protect us from our fears, we can have unrelenting hope for other people allowing us to fully love the way that God does.

Written by Lacey, Los Angeles, California

Follow her journey here.

The Complex Emotional Life of God

Recently I heard a very well known Christian author and pastor talk about being criticized for claiming that God hates sinners.  He went on to quote Psalm 5 and insinuate that perhaps he didn’t even speak strongly enough, “You hate all evildoers… the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.”  Knowing his reputation as a sensitive and humble man, and seeing it there in black and white in everyone’s favorite Old Testament song book, I decided to hear him out, and thus began another attempt at understanding the complex emotional life of God.

If you grew up going to church like me, you may have grown up with a very one-dimensional view of God.  Maybe that’s the church’s fault, or maybe we are just simple creatures that can only focus on one thing at a time. Anyways, I grew up with a very heavy emphasis on the holiness of God.  And, to be honest, prided myself in being one of the faithful few who could bear the uncomfortable truth of a God who was holy, unflinching in his pursuit of justice, and consequently, angry with the world.  Of course, I was also taught that God is loving, merciful, gracious, compassionate, and caring, but I had a hard time seeing both of those sides of God at the same time.  One of the two, I thought, had to supersede the other.  At the end of the day, at his core, God was either a holy God who had a secondary sense of love, or a loving God who cared about holiness as long as it didn't mean anyone got hurt.  Based on what I could see at the time, I came to the conclusion that in the end, holiness triumphed over love.  And I held to that view for a long time, because it made God a little easier to understand and helped me understand my place in the world a little better.

I just about had all this figured out when I met a man named Ken. To this day, I’d have to say that Ken is the most openly loving person I've ever met.  On multiple occasions, within minutes of meeting someone for the first time, he would have them in tears just by virtue of him loving them so freely and indiscriminately.  Something about this resonated with my soul on a deep level as if to say, “This is what you were made to be.”  At the same time, it threw a wrench in my well-oiled theological machine and I knew that if Ken was right, I was wrong- super wrong.  Was it possible that God really loved people that much and that freely?  Or worse, if Ken was only a branch off the tree, that his love was only a small sample of God's?  And how was it possible that I was so far off course, if we were reading the same Bible and believing in the same Jesus?  After much wrestling, I came to the conclusion that Ken was right, and that God was indeed that loving.  But I also realized that I was not altogether wrong, and that God was still angry at sinners.  Very angry.  But how?  Why?  Who was the God I had been believing in, and who was the real God?  Was the God who brought plagues on the land of Egypt the same God who said “forgive them” to the people who were putting him to death on a cross?

It was at this point that I made a very important connection.  Somehow along the path of life, holiness in my mind had become synonymous with a stern, exacting old man who is always suspicious of people having fun (I always picture inspector Javert from Les Miserables).  When, however, I began asking Jesus, “What is at the heart of holiness?” I got a very different answer, and discovered that I was not the first to wrestle with this question.  As one man phrased it, “Of all the things in the law (the old testament definition of holiness par excellence), what is the most important?”  “Love,” Jesus responded, “To love God with all your heart, mind soul and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” Now, if I’m reading my Bible right, and God is no hypocrite, that means that God loves himself with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength- his entire being- and that he loves his smaller, less impressive neighbors, as himself (in other words with all his heart, mind, soul, and strength- his entire being).  Holiness and love were not against each other, they were one in the same thing.  At the heart of God’s perfection, justice, purity, righteous anger and all the other attributes I had previously associated with holiness, was a blazing, white-hot love that fueled all of it.  And when I saw that, I instantly understood why God was so angry (and yet with a completely different kind of anger than I had previously imagined)- why it could be said that he abhors evildoers, and yet in the same breath prays, ‘Forgive them.’

As difficult as it is to articulate, I will share a very insufficient example from my own life to explain how I am beginning to grapple with this paradoxical internal emotional life God.  There is a great organization here in my hometown that fights human trafficking around the world.  One of the ways they fund their organization is by running a small thrift store as a side business.  Very recently someone broke into one of their containers and stole a bunch of valuable stuff along with all the money they had there.  I was furious when I heard about it.  Victims of human trafficking are among the most exploited people in this world, and to steal from them is about as low as you can possibly go on the scale of human dignity in my opinion.  Whether or not the perpetrator knew who they were stealing from is not the point- the point is that they never gave a thought to who they might be hurting by their actions. They were completely blinded by the heartless and foolish monster of Selfishness.  And, at the same time, I felt a compassion for this person.  Who in their right mind would do such a thing?  What kind of twisted, broken place would somebody have to be in to break into a shipping container of second hand goods?  And how many times have I blindly acted out of the same selfishness, and hurt others in ways that I still may not even be aware of?  On the one hand, I was furious because I cared deeply about the people that were being hurt by their actions. On the other hand, I know that the perpetrators are themselves caught in a different but still very cruel form of slavery.  Then I thought, “If I, never having met these women or these petty criminals, am zealous for justice and at the same time care about their different kinds of suffering, how much must God be, who knit their ligaments and joints together in the womb and feels every subtle ripple of their souls?"  And if I can begin to see both sides of the story and realize how complex the situation is, how much more complex must it be for God, who sees every side of every story?

“Behold then, the kindness and severity of God…”

Anyways, the issue is far from resolved, but at least I hope I have moved another step in the right direction.  And if not, I at least am certain that the deep inner workings of justice and love in the universe are in better Hands than mine.

Written by Josh, Simi Valley, California