Driving the Story

When I started my undergraduate work at Shippensburg University, I was swooped up into a very unique group of people.  These folk played tag with fruits, turned dorm rooms into coffee shops, and went to Philadelphia for no reason other than cheesesteaks.  They knew how to be, and they lived out their lives and faith authentically.  After experiencing the Spirit of God through them, I moved from where I was to a new place.  I became different.

God has been working this way for a while.  As I've mentioned before, the Spirit of God in relationship with people causes movement.  In fact, the Spirit is a movement.

In the first chapter of Ezekiel, the titular character is witness to a vision involving four strange creatures.  These creatures, in addition to having four faces and a variety of other curious features, had four wheels.  Verse twenty says that the Spirit of God led the creatures, as the creatures' spirits were in these wheels.  There is some pretty heavy symbolism at work here.  The Spirit of God is causing movement.

Ezekiel is a prophet for God while Israel is in exile, separated from their land and temple.  For these imprisoned Israelites, to hear that the Spirit of God was on the move would have been comforting.  God is sending His spirit out before Him, and He's a Spirit of movement.  A movement is always what brings change.  That's why we call it a social movement.  Things were about to change.

Notice also that God's Spirit was interacting with the wheels in the vision to move them.  He was leading them.  The Spirit does His work in us via relationship.  So what does this mean for captive Israel?  It means that the Spirit of God was coming to form a relationship with them to move them from bondage to freedom.

This sounds much like the God I know.  When I experienced the Spirit through my friends and other ways at Shippensburg, I gained a new freedom.  When God sends His Spirit, it's to help us understand a new way of living.  A way that is free of some sort of slavery we're in, even if we don't know it.  We're moved to a new place, turning over a new page in our story.  If you're ready for a new page of life, the Spirit is hovering over the waters, waiting for the pen. 

Togethering Somethings

For some reason, I've taken five classes on statistics in one form or another.  There's few reasons someone should take five statistics classes, and there are even fewer reasons for a person as terrible at math as me to take five statistics classes.  Nevertheless, I have taken them, and if I've learned anything, it's that variables can be very significant (I am so sorry for that joke).

You can do a few things with data from a single variable, but you can do a whole plethora of interesting things with the data from two or more variables.  When analyzing two variables, something interesting happens.  Data from one or both variables can be significant, but the interaction between these two variables can also be significant, even if the two variables themselves are not.

You may not care about statistics at all, which is most likely justified, but they show us all kinds of information about relationships.  Namely, that when two somethings act in conjunction, stuff happens.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that without a relationship, nothing happens.  Everything in the whole world is happening because two or more somethings are coming together to make it happen.  Without relationship, there is no movement.

This means that when entering into a relationship (of any kind) with another person, the interaction between the two moves both individuals.  Relationships cause interaction, and interaction causes movement.  That's why, in a counseling relationship, technique accounts for only fifteen percent of positive change, while the relationship itself accounts for eight-five percent. There's power in coming together.

This relational principle is the same reason God chooses to make relationship with a group of people on earth.  In the tenth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses urges the people of Israel to dedicate their hearts to the God who has freed and restored those in relationship with Him.  When people and God come together, miracles happen, the captives are set free, and there's jubilee.

Relationship has always been the vehicle through which God has moved.  As I said last time, what we form relationships with has the power to harm us or heal us.  When you join with something, movement occurs.  Are your relationships taking you where you want to go?

Making Heaven Suck

While in twelfth grade, a friend of mine told me something that changed my life forever.  He told me that I should drink coffee.  This friend of mine was a rugged dude; the kind of guy who would be featured in a Carhartt jacket ad.  When my friend told me this, it clicked.  I had been a fool up til then.  If Carhartt ad guy thought that I should drink coffee, who else held this belief?  My conclusion was probably everyone.  From then it was sealed; I would become a coffee drinker.  And here I sit, writing this as I sip a latte.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people say that they are sick.  It wouldn't be that big of a deal if they weren't so sure of themselves.  I hear some people tell me that they are sick so often that it's hard to remember anything else about them.  I look at them and I can't help but think, "Oh yeah, she's sick."

The sad thing is that they're right.  Sickness is a role, and if one constantly puts himself in that role, well then by golly, he's there.  No one would ever admit to desiring sickness, but if one thinks about it, sickness is kind of attractive.  The sick role get lots of attention, it gives an excuse for bad performance, and an excuse to lavish blessings upon oneself.  You know, to heal.  But being in this role has the obvious downside of "you're going to feel terrible."  And you will.  Because you're sick.

This works with anything.  It certainly did with me and coffee.  I put myself in the role of coffee drinker, and it became true.  When we tell ourselves who we are over and over, we're going to act that way because it's the truth we know.  But when we listen to who we tell ourselves we are, we're bound to get it wrong.  Because we have a horrible perception of what is true.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus tells His disciples that He will give them the keys of heaven, and whatever they "bind" on earth will also be "bound" in heaven.  When we declare truth on earth, heaven follows suit.  So when we say to ourselves that we are a certain way, and we believe with absolute certainty that it's true (whether we realize we're doing this or not), it's true.  We're making heaven suck.

This is why I believe the Bible also calls us to speak the truth in love to one another.  Because we are bad at perceiving the truth, God calls our brothers and sisters to help us establish it.  This should frighten you.  Because it means when you speak truth to someone else, it affects their eternity.  For better or for worse.

You are not sick.  Sickness may visit you, but you are not sick.  If you're choosing to form a union with sickness, you may want to stop.  It's going to make you feel terrible.  What else are you telling yourself that is not representative of reality?  Since there are those of us who claim that God is reality, maybe we should speak the truth that He sees.  Anything less makes heaven suck.  And a sucky heaven is just hell.          

The Essay Question

The essence of an essay test is that you write everything you know about the subject at hand.  This is true of our lives as well.  We live out a way of life that represents everything we know about doing life well.  That's why life has no multiple choice.  Because the way we live is our best answer to life.

Recently, I tried to Google "how many self help books are there?," and I couldn't really get a solid number after looking for about 5 minutes (which is all the time I care to spend on trying to find out how many self help books there are out there).  Regardless, there are many.  It seems we are culturally obsessed with becoming better than we currently are.

I have read none of these books, so writing a blog post on this subject is probably a bad idea.

The first few days of a new year probably means thinking of how to better answer life's essay question.  We all want to make our lives better.  The problem is that whatever your idea of better is, it wasn't your idea.  The idea of a "good life" is just the general consensus of what a "good life" is.  Self help books will help you become the self that someone else thinks is best.

Throughout history, many people have said that being "good" is what God wants you to be.  But this idea of good didn't necessarily come from God.  It came from people's ideas of the best way to answer life's essay question.

In the book of Habakkuk, the prophet asks God why He is acting against His own people.  God responds by saying that His people are acting in ways that are unjust, or unrighteous.  Since this is the case, God is going to make things right, or just again.

It has nothing to do with who is "good" or who is "bad."  All people seem to have a tendency to make things wrong.  We live in a world full of injustice; a world of unrighteousness.  The Psalms say that God's hands are full of justice.  So when God acts, things become right.  Things become just.  It only makes sense that those who are called God's people would be made right by Him.  To be made just, God needs to take away the parts of people that were steeped in injustice.  That's a pretty painful process.

In 2012, lots of people will try to write a good answer to life's question.  Maybe a better idea is to resolve to answer the question rightly.  Maybe a better idea than living well in 2012 is dying well.