Thick cement & gravel cleanly paved clung to the ground,
Gripping the soil beneath,
Pressing it down,
compacting the life beneath.
A crack splinters through at the very center,
unleashing a burst of fiery red.
A Rose emerges,
driving away weeds, and ragged layers of cement.
Gravel litters the ground in piles,
a product of the emergence.
Twisting, writhing, and bursting towards the Sun.
Unstoppable Love, unrelenting Fire.
Something the Lord has gripped my heart with recently is the beautiful truth that He has won my heart.
This season has been an interesting one in that the Lord has continued to remind me of the relentless distractions, constant media frenzy, and the endless roads we could choose to take to get somewhere in life. There are so many choices literally every single place you turn. I don't know about you but I often get overwhelmed by things like huge menus and that is how I believe almost everything in life has become.
Last night, I went to the movies for the first time in a long time and about 2 minutes into the previews my mouth was literally almost open to the ground. As everyone sat there laughing I was literally tempted to get up and leave. It literally astounded me the language and just how completely vulgar the entire thing was.
Over the past 3 years I have managed to cut out a lot of the junk I used to consume for hours on a daily basis from E! News to things like Intouch and People magazine. I got sucked into the lives of famous person after famous person as they went through break up after break up, marriage after marriage. All of them chasing this dream of fame and fortune that only seemed to lead them down a deeper well of endless emptiness.
John Piper quotes C.S. Lewis in "Weight of Glory" saying:
[If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased]
Isn't that just it? We are too easily pleased, choosing to mindlessly consume whatever is put before us. We can get so consumed with our own stories that we forget what is the overarching story over it all. Though I don't follow Hollywood anymore, I have plenty of other things in my life that distract me more than they should and things that have only taken the place of the things I have walked away from. The change now is my focus is on how I can treasure and know Christ more not a list of things I have to avoid at all costs.
My perspective has changed because I am coming to see that all of life is warfare.
Whether you choose to agree with me or not it is the truth. The truth of this is across page after page in the Bible and it is our duty to daily take up His armor and fight. During certain times and seasons you will feel the heat of the battle more than others and the temptation is to focus on the darkness. An entry from a journal this year reminds me that our job is to keep our eyes upon the Beautiful One, allowing Him to direct our attention and our hearts on how to fight what is at hand.
Above all things this is a fight for your heart.
His love has broken through to win your heart but there are also powers at work to snatch your heart's focus as well as the hearts of those around you.
Paul writes that our fight is not against flesh and blood but against power and principalities of darkness (Ephesians 6:12).
This is a fight for your attention, your dreams, your will, and your daily focus. I believe all of these things stem from where your heart is anchored. Only by His strength and grace can we labor to keep Him anchored as our First Love. Oswald Chambers refers to it as the "labor of worship"- using all of your heart and all of your strength to keep Christ first. We are called to open our hearts and lives daily to the grace of Christ so He may fill us with His dreams, His desires, and His passions. When approaching the end of his life Paul writes "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7). You do not have the power within you to withstand the winds and waves but through Christ and His power you can stand strong.
Satan desperately wants for you to lose your First Love.
For so many in the world he doesn't even want them to know that this love exists!! All he wants is for you to be so numbed by distractions and decisions that you slip into daily life completely unaware and out of touch with the very reason you are alive. As Paul talks to the church of Corinth warning them of the false apostles proclaiming a different Jesus he says in 2 Corinthians 11:3 "For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led away from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ."
Pure, sincere, and deepening devotion to Christ is the reason why you're alive but this world is constantly trying to pull and drag you in the opposite direction. Your weapons? Community, the Word of God, prayer, finding activities and things that stir your affections for heaven, investing time to know and seek His heart. What a gift we get to fill our lives with these things!
Walking away from this movie I literally wanting to shout "THANK YOU, JESUS!" but I restrained myself. I literally stepped away thanking God that my life was not revolving around the media, other peoples' lives, cheap media entertainment that is overly vulgar, or even my own story for that matter. As a Christian we have the profound gift to have a life that centers on His story. It is the story of grace, beauty, and redemption unfolding all around us every single day. I am completely imperfect and broken and I do not claim to do this flawlessly- half the time I end up on my knees crying out for help because I have no idea what to do.
The power of the cross is that He has broken down every wall and torn the thickness of the veil of sin that stood between us and our Creator. The gospel reminds me daily that my Beautiful King has shattered the cement lying over my dead heart and stripped away the scales on my eyes to live differently. He has rescued me because He delighted in me and in response I get to treasure and know Him every day that I am alive.
Psalm 119 says, "My soul clings to dust, give me life according to your word."
This great love continues to break through but it is up to me to turn towards my Father and to ask Him to clear the dust that clings to my soul.
This breakthrough of love is one that unlocks a process. This process has begun for His hands to remove the weeds of intense fear of the future, worry for the present, and washing away the pain of past disappointments and hurts-- a sometimes painfully slow, unfolding process that sometimes leaves us impatient and dying to know why God is doing what He is. When I decided to follow Christ I never knew the depths of the process that was just beginning. It has been one of uprooting, clearing out, filling, emptying, and refining.
I believe that even as Christians we can choose to fill our lives with a whole lot of dust. We can choose to befriend so many people that it becomes easy to stay surface level and never dig into the changes and deep things of the heart. We can choose to watch endless hours of Netflix instead of choosing to ask ourselves where we're actually at with Jesus. We can choose to keep things in our heart hidden, tucked away, suffocating our fears until they emerge as tears and bitterness in our lives.
The choice belongs to you.
The break through is that He has stormed the gates of hell to win back your heart. This is no fairytale love that only exists in the movies.
This is the deep, all powerful, chain-breaking love that takes people destined to live and dwell in the darkness and draws them into the healing and perfect light of a King who remakes and changes lives every single day.
He is calling out, beckoning for you to reach out and see that He has always been there. Investing your life in Him can unleash a breakthrough of heaven in your life here and now as well as tiny break throughs day after day as He changes you, molds you, and strips you of the weights that cling to you.
The silence has been broken.
Open your heart and you'll see the song of heaven is being sung over your life for the gates of heaven are open. Jesus, the most radical of loves, comes to open your eyes, widen your gaze, and remind you there is no higher pleasure, no higher Treasure than what we have received as children of the King. Colossians 3:1-2 stands as the reminder. Set your heart, set your gaze, and be lavished in the love and mercy that falls upon His children every day.
His love is breaking through.
You broke into the silence and sang a song of Hope.
A melody resounding in the deep of my soul.
You have come running, You tore down every wall;
All the while shouting My love you're worth it all.
-"Unstoppable Love" Jesus Culture
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