fear

One day every week I consciously choose to go out into the city, whether I "feel" like it or not. I must do so if I expect to learn the culture and understand the mindset of people who have grown up in a completely different culture, history and experience than myself. This week I chose to go to the Holocaust museum, with no agenda, no time frame, no expectation...just me and Jesus.

With my headphones in my ears, I entered the underground museum and asked the Lord what He would have for me today. I had no idea what I was walking into.

Walking from room to room, I stepped into the lives and stories of innocent men, women and children who had experienced something so gruesome and horrific that my mind had no category for it. One room in particular had letters from individuals, most of whom did not survive, that they had written on their way to a concentration camp, in hopes their family would receive it (if they even survived). This particular letter struck me differently than the rest.

Whoever wrote this letter realized the deep fear that existed to bring about such atrocities, and I began to wonder further about this fear myself. The holocaust was about hate, but ultimately the root of hate is fear. What did Hitler fear about people different from him? What did he fear in Jews, Soviet POW's, the disabled, homosexuals, Freemasons, in people different than himself? Something gripped his life enough that led him to kill nearly 6 million people. I could not wrap my mind around these facts.

I began to reflect on my own life...what things do I strongly dislike? Why? Or what things cause me to feel insecure? And how do I respond to these things? I do not kill, but maybe I do in the words that I speak to someone out of my insecurity, or out of my fear...out of my flesh. If I walk securely and confidently in who I am and Who's I am, I have the freedom to breathe life, speak life, live life in Christ...abundantly.

I want to be able to have a conscious awareness of this in my life. I want be a life-giver rather than a life-taker. I want to be the face of Jesus.

today's wrestlings

Today I chose to venture out to a part of the city that contains a section of the old Berlin wall. I had no agenda, just desiring to experience God in whatever way He wanted to meet with me. I found myself staring at this section of the wall, now just a memorial, and it served the purpose to decide who was free and who was not. Here I am, free, not just physically, but more by grace and love. I am free to know Christ and to walk with Him daily.

I managed to find my way to Starbucks, of course, and wrestled over my coffee and these images. Freedom in Christ, to wonder deeply into His heart and to fearlessly trust Him with a childlike faith, requires sheer abandon and nothing less.

Jesus says in Matthew 16:25, "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." In other words, "come, follow me" means an abandonment of my very self. Maybe in our culture today Jesus would say, "whoever abandons their life in, by and of this world will contrarily live life to its fullest." Essentially, defy the laws of gravity, all scientific reason, and step out in what feels like risk to the flesh, pursuing a God that is not safe but that is good. Maybe that should be the definition of "scandalous trust"- to defy the very laws of the world and expectations on how to live. It sounds scary, scandalous, risky, crazy, and irresponsible. But what if this is exactly what Jesus meant?

Is it my responsibility to discard responsible behavior in the name of Jesus? Should I really pursue Jesus with the faith of a child? Who has no fear, only the fear of missing the wonder of something fresh and new and mysterious?

Religion tells us what we can't do, instead of walking with Jesus in the freedom of what we can do. When I look at Christ's life, He was all about breaking the "rules" established by the self-righteous Pharisees. Yep, Jesus broke the rules. But He was perfect in every way. And He said, "come, follow me" not "come, follow my rules."

John 18:36, "My Kingdom is not of this world." So why do we think His reasoning, His purposes, His understanding, His knowledge would be of this world? He said it's not! The Kingdom of Heaven is completely contrary to this world; its reason, its function, its mindset, on all levels. And maybe, until we start stepping out of the "norms" of institutionalized church, we will miss God. We might miss experiencing Him, His Spirit actively living, freeing, pursuing, healing, transforming lives - our own and those around us.

When we don't abandon ourselves fully to Christ, we will choose another version of Jesus to follow, and essentially create our own "Christ."

dangerous wonder

"The danger is that you will not listen to the voice that speaks to you through the seagull mounting the gray wind, say, or the vision in the temple, that you do not listen to the voice inside you or to the voice that speaks from outside but specifically to you out of the specific events of your life, but that instead you listen to the great blaring, boring, banal voice of our mass culture, which threatens to deafen us all by blasting forth that the only thing that really matters about your work is how much it will get you in the way of salary and status, and that if it is gladness you are after, you can save that for weekends."
-Frederick Buechner

Thoughts?

why I'm here

First of all, welcome to my life, my wrestling, and my pursuit after more of Jesus. My desire in this blog is that you would experience Christ more, right where God has us on our own journey with Him. As I continually encounter people who have no idea who Jesus is, wandering around this foreign city, I keep asking myself why I'm here. The only thing I can come up with, and truly is more than enough, is that this is God's best for me, right now. I know nothing more, but I know I can rest in that alone.

"Foolish faith" is how I feel about my life right now. To most people, nothing about my life makes sense to the human eye, and the reality that I am living in Germany is anything but normal and is potentially "irresponsible." Yet I know I hear Christ's voice calling me "outside the city gate" (Hebrews 13:13), and I must follow hard after Him.

God's sole desire for our lives is that we would know Him and walk with Him. That is it. And to be honest, it makes no sense to my human mindset. But to live in the Kingdom of Heaven is to live contrary to the world, and that is right where God desires us to be.

So why am I here? To dive even greater into the mystery of who Jesus is, and live my life authentically in front of those I encounter. And I can rest in that.