Concession

And so I concede.

I give up.

You won this fight.

I can't get up.

These words aren't enough.

These objections too weak.

I've fought to run;

Yet you've fought to seek.

You take my freedom;

You reveal my futility:

I must stop fighting for myself,

And accept humility.

For if I could have won on my own,

By God You'd know I'd have done it,

But I couldn't,

Cause You wouldn't let go.

So I let go,

Because I had to.

My life is in Your hands.

It is God who Justifies

³¹What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? ³³Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised— who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

God has justified me. Justified me. The Creator of the universe, who holds eternity in His hand, has declared me "rightened." I have been set aright. I have been acquitted, given grace, and given pardon from the things that held me bound. I have been freed. I have been justified, by God.

Wow...it amazes me how powerful that is, and yet I have to admit that until just now, I don't know that I have allowed that concept to truly sink in to my psyche. If God is the one who justifies you, then yeah, who can be against you!? There is no qualified accuser. Everyone pales into comparison with your righteous judge, who has fully acquitted you, and even declared you "righteous." Who can be against you?

Yet we allow the world to come against us every day. We constantly fend off accusations. We constantly question ourselves in light of our context, and don't assert ourselves in light of our Ultimate Judge.

But above all, the enemy is the one who dares to challenge us every day. He is the accuser of the brethren, and every opportunity he gets he's in there to "be against us." He's in there to challenge the validity of our acquittal. To question the veracity of our pardon. And the reality of our newfound righteousness (rightness). We cannot allow him to do that though. We have to remember, God justified us! So who, can be, against us! No one.

Then the latter part of this verse goes even further; there is also no reason to condemn ourselves, because the sentence has already been carried out in Christ. He was killed to absolve us of our incumbent punitive sins. We are worthy of punishment, but have been declared worthy of pardon only through Christ and His death. So because of that death, who can question our acquittal? No one. To question that is to insult the cross of Christ. God has justified us...

GOD HAS JUSTIFIED US..

GOD HAS JUSTIFIED US!

The Creator of everything has looked to your acceptance of His son and said "you are now justified." No one can stand up to that. So any time the devil begins to creep in with those lies and those accusations, let us always remember that again, GOD is the one who justified us.

And no one can question that.

We aren't good

We are imperfect beings. Yet we are always striving for perfection. Truly, this is the paradox of human behavior.
We all have ideas of what we see as the "good things" about humanity, and there is perhaps no greater example of this than love.
Anyone can testify to the goodness of love. There isn't a person out there who, once having experienced or properly observed true love in one way or another, would point to that experience and say "that was a bad thing."
And yet in spite of the fact that we are so easily able to define the goodness of love, we cringe at the thought that there is an epitome of that goodness. Simple, it's hard for us to imagine, truly perfect love.
Yet is this not the logical outworking of something that must be "truly" good? Ought there not be a source of that goodness? A basic, bottom line definer for that goodness? Without it, love, along with any other "good" thing in our world, becomes an empty, hollow concept. It has no ultimate meaning, no ultimate definition or purpose. It is completely emptied of substance.
But even in the acknowledgment of this, we are still so often challenged by the idea of perfect love. It can be easy for us to ultimately concede to a perfect source of love, but when we begin to think on a God who is perfect love and who cannot love imperfectly, we cannot help but cringe.
Why?

Because to truly concede to that is to admit your imperfection. To fully acquiesce to that idea is to admit failure, true inadequacy, and the profundity of your human limitation. It is to confess His Lordship.

And man is that hard to do. To say that He is qualitatively better than you. To know that He is qualitatively completely better than you. You are bad. He is Good. You are imperfect. He is Perfect. You are man, and He is God.

The admittal of this divide between us and God is hard. But boy is it necessary. If we continue to adhere to our the futility of our human "goodness" true love will never be exhitibed. If it hasn't been clear, I am writing this to Christians as well. Any of us can easily cling to our human goodness, our human sufficiency, even after we've allowed God in: because it truly is so easy to just be human, and not be Godly. In order to do that we must continously admit His goodness, an our "badness." We must acknowledge His perfection, and our imperfection. And we must do these things because when it comes to those "good" things that we can only truly do through Him, things such as love are paramount to the success of the Church. Without it, our world will fail to see the true glimpse of the Father. They will fail to See Him in us, and so fail to know Him, because we failed to know that,
He is good, and we are not.

Unfinished Works

The fully autonomous self is the false self. The true self, is defined through Christ.

We have been so trained to see the world through our own autonomy (individualism). In fact, I have to admit that I myself was quite immersed in this perspective. This was such that while reading a book that questioned the autonomous self, I realized that on a logical plane I had never thought of the word "self" outside of autonomy. I thought, what else is "me" apart from solely me? In order to define "me," am I not violating the terms if I begin to define myself in terms of someone or even something else apart from me? I basically saw anything external to me as quintessentially not me, and thereby, unqualified to define me.

This was my view on defining me: the truly, completely, autonomous "self," right down to the letter.

Kudos to you, Western world. You've had quite the influence.

But is this the definition of "self" that Scripture gives? Absolutely not.

Galatians 2:20 ²⁰I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Colossians 2:2-3 ²Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Romans 11:36 ³⁶For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

These verses essentially clue us in to one of the premier, overarching biblical themes: true humanity is found through God, not through ourselves. Our existence is fundamentally defined through God (He created us) and therefore variably dysfunctional without Him. On a sheerly logical plane, one can see how this makes sense. Simply, if we are inherently contingent beings at the very core of our existence, then it is only in the outright acknowledgment of that contingency that true self-identity can be obtained. Without it, we delude ourselves into the idea of an absolutely autonomous existence, and not one of absolutely dependency. This is how things appear on a rational plane.

But there is also a more formative, Christian assuming actuation of this idea as well. That is, being people with the divine "imprint" upon our existence, think about that in relation to how we typically see imprints in the world. Things like a watch that "finds" it's watchmaker, a house that finds its architect, or a pot that finds its potter. Upon the meeting of these things with the person that created them, the true "mark" of the imprint that you see upon that item can now most fully be understood. You may be able to look at the careful hands, the classy style, or a whole slew of other things. He or she may be able to make it work better, fix problems others wouldn't see, or tap into abilities, capabilities or uses of these objects that only the original craftsperson could envision.

But I also want to take this comparison in a different direction. That is, I think the strongest point of this allusion is that we, being the handiwork of the ultimate Craftsmen, are the quintessentially unfinished works. We are God's masterpieces, but we are also constantly being formed. Because with us, God will not settle for anything less than perfection. He sent His law, and then ultimately His Son, as an attestation to that. However, the "down" side to that is that for us, perfection will not be met in this life; all is literally "perfected" in the glorification of our bodies in the end. So it is until that point that we must be in contact with our Creator. We must allow Him to keep our clocks ticking, to break and mold our clay when needed, or to maintain our house on the solid rock through life's years of wear and tear. Without Him we are forgotten works, old broken clocks or dying houses, Rembrandts, Mona Lisa's, and 9th symponies left unfinished, unremembered, lost in the vaccuous realm of half-ideas, fleeting thoughts, and forgotten inspirations. We must let Him finish the work. And the bottom line is that this will not happen if we do not know that we are the work, and not the worker. Just as a painting sitting in a room, or a symphony on a music sheet, or a mansion's plans on a drawing board, or, or, or... None of these things become anything until the worker does the job. And that's just it; we aren't the worker, and until we realize that we will never reach the fullness of our "selves." Who we "are" will always fall short, because we simply will not become anything: because coming to "be" for a work of art, demands the complete concession to the beautiful activity of the artist.
We must allow him to define us, and stop trying to define ourselves.

The fully autonomous self is the false self. The true self, is defined through Christ.

What is "I"?

I am such a constantly self-reflective person. I am always thinking about that….I often feel that I don’t know who I am completely. I need to have a better idea of who I am, but I also don’t want to consider it to the point that I’m not thinking on anyone but myself. This has often, and lately, been my struggle. In truth, I have often shied away from introspection because it makes me feel haughty, but then again in avoiding it I continue to do it because I have loose ends left untied….

I don’t know, it can be easy to get hung up on ourselves almost indefinitely. It truly can. But on another side, I think it can be good to work through those things, because when we define ourselves fully before Him and others, we are then enabled to minister to others better. I guess I’m kind of dancing around one idea; without an identity, how can I help someone? Think about that statement “How can "I "help someone.” By saying “I,” “I” am implicitly making a reference point. I am saying “I”, the person defined as “me” is helping someone. Well, if “I” is an empty and hollow thing, an empty, baseless entity, then what does “I” have to offer to someone else? What even, does “I” have to offer to God? I think we need to be defined. God doesn’t define us in vacuous terms, and neither should we do so for ourselves. We need to be “us,” to be “me” and “I,” and *know* what that means. Yes, within the overall message of the biblical text there is a definition of “me” to be found. There’s one for me, you, for everyone. There’s one out there for every person. And yet, without tapping into that, without tapping in both to God, ourselves, and others to find what that “I” is, then there isn’t any “I” that we have to offer to a world so desperately in need of truer self identification. We say that the world is “lost.” Well what do we want them to find? "Them"selves in Christ. Well how can “they” be defined if “we” aren’t defined? How can “we” (the Church) be defined if “I’m” not defined? I don’t think we can.

So, I think I am fair to understand “me” better. I have come to that point now…even in writing this. Ha. So God, help me to be okay with knowing “me” so that “I” can better understand how to help others find “them”selves.

Beauty in Scripture

"You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen..... 'But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. ... At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by."


This is all from Ezekiel 16. I think it gives us a "beautiful," ha, picture of how God understands beauty. He made Israel beautiful, and it meant so much more than outward appearance. It was about heart, about devotion and faithfulness. It was about relationship, relationship with Him. And then they threw it away. They tossed it away completely, and honestly to use God's language here "whored themselves out" to anyone, not even seeking 'payment.' The allegorical language in this chapter is very strong. It tells the story of a beautiful woman, who "degrades her beauty" by selling herself to everyone and anyone, at the same time essentially defecating all over the beautiful covenant relationship that God had entered into with her. This is how God saw, and sees beauty; again, about relationship, about the heart, about the inside, not the out. One more time…

Ezekiel 16:14-25 (greatly abridged): "You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen..... 'But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. ... At the head of every street you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, offering your body with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by."

The fall of God's beautiful maiden. The fall of beauty. Because of age? No. Because of disfigurement? No.
So what was it that degraded Israel’s beauty? What was it that so deeply tainted them in the eyes of God, their lover?
It was unfaithfulness, ungratefulness, and dirty, sordid behavior. It was, at it’s root,
Broken relationship.

Loving your Beautiful Wife, take 2

It's all about that Love that defines everything. It is fundamentally relational, and so it overshadows all objectified distortions of relational connection between people. And this is most certainly the case in romantic love, in the beautiful bond between a man and a woman, that God has ordained. He calls the groom to have a love for his wife like Christ exhibited for the church. In that there is no objectified errancy; there is only relational union. That is what I am called to. That is what we are all called to, if we feel that we are ready for marriage.
Looking beyond the things that fade away, and looking to the things that last. A person, for whom they are, at the heart of their relational self. And there are a couple neat things about that "relational identity:"

One, since the apex of our relational identity is found in relationship with Christ, the most beautiful woman is going to be one whose relationship with Him is vibrant and constant. A beautiful, healthy relational connection with the Author of relationship will shine more beautifully than all other components of beauty. This is what makes a woman glow. This is what makes her a person to spend forever with; because at the core of herself is a connection with the One who shows her, at its foundation, what "forever" feels like.

And two, her relational self will also strongly exhibit herself in her relationship with others. This is the secondmost truly beautiful thing about a woman of God. She shines as one who attempts to take her primary relationship with Christ, and project that on to all those around her. She glows for Christ, and that light shines through in her treatment of others. Simply, a woman who loves God and loves people is the most gorgeous of all.

You'll notice a simple pattern in these two characteristics; they are directly derived from Christ's two greatest commandments. I think this gives further credence to what is being said her about "beauty" because the more a woman's behavior reflects the true heart and character of God (by living in accordance with His two greatest commandments) then the more beautiful she will become.

And having said that, one particular reason I think it is paramount that we put these characteristics before physical appearance is the simple issue of aging, and potentially tragic deformative events. I am not one to be too gloomy, but on one side of things one mus consider the simple idea of their spouse aging, ultimately becoming "less physically attractive" than they are in their 20s-30s, and on the other, the more difficult idea of somethign tramautic happening to your spouse that naturally makes them less physically appealing than before.
To deal with the "simpler" idea first, again the issue is focusing on that person's relational rather than physical self. That's what ought to define them in your eyes, and that is what serves as the true basis for your love for him or her. Without that, then in due time when the natural "sands of time" pass over the face and frame of your mate, the connection between you and that person will rapidly dissolve. And if marriage is to be taken seriously, to be taken as something that is called to endure forever for the Christian, then in view of this it is absolutely crucial that the true definition of "beauty" and "love" be understood when going in. That is, that it must be about that person's inner beauty, it must be about their relational self, connected with God and with others. It must be about those things because those things, can last forever. And in spite of wrinkles, hunched shoulders, and shaky knees (haha :-) ) when the connection between two people is based upon Christ-rooted relationship, none of those transiet, temporal indicators will matter.

And yes, this ultimately transitions into the far more difficult realm, of the physically disfigured spouse. I am not one to say that such an experience is easy. However, I am one to say that if God takes marriage as seriously as He says He does, He can fully empower His people to see through His eyes of relational, rather than physical, union with their spouse. With those such eyes He can help us in our weakness, and fully enable us to think as relational rather than physical people. Again though, it may even be a misnomer at this point to say "help in our weakness" because if our connection with our spouse has been based within relational, Christ based connection from the start, if that has been the true definition and basis for our love, then our love should have little trouble changing despite adverse, physical circumstances. This is the power, I believe, that true love for one another can have. This is the power that true beauty defined through true love can have. That is,iIt's not about physical adversity, but about spiritual, relational union: where no matter what happens in the physical realm, that person always remains deeply loved and immensely beautiful on this side of eternity. That no matter what happens: this is what true, God based love can accomplish.