The Routine Buster

Are you caught in the grid? It's so easy to get caught up in our schedules, activities, and all. And that's all good stuff. But that stuff's not the point.

Trapped in the routine of our daily lives, the flood of the ordinary can drown out any spark of the supernatural. And the real casualty is our expectations. We don't see the miraculous because we don't expect it anymore.

Solace – the practice of getting alone with God – is the great routine buster. It renews our mind, and our heart. It refreshes our spirit, recharges our battery. In Solace, the Lord reminds us of the adventure we're on and the plans He has for us. He renews our hope and dreams.

We might just begin to hope in them again. And maybe, just maybe, even take the first baby step in that direction. You know, if this dream on my heart was to happen, what's the first step I would take? Then take it. See where it goes. What if?

Getting Out of that Chair

This week we've talked about how we put ourselves in the Good Guy Chair and people who have wronged us in the Bad Guy Chair, and how judging steals our identity. So here's how to get out of the Good Guy Chair; aka, the Victim Chair.

Forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not pretending nothing happened. We can admit they sinned against us and did an evil, ugly thing to us. Forgiveness is declaring they are not the evil, ugly thing – their action was. We forgive by understanding we as human beings are not what we do. And the other person is not what they do. They are not the evil they did to us.

Forgiveness is an act of the will. You can be angry about what was done to you and still choose to forgive. You can still set boundaries so you're not hurt again while still choosing to forgive. That is, provided our anger and our boundaries are set against the person's actions – not against the person themselves.

They are not what they did to us. That realization, which can only hit home in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, allows us to still grieve what they did to us and hence go through the process of healing the wound, while simultaneously releasing them from owing us anything for it. That's forgiveness.

The Good Guy and Bad Guy Chairs

Yesterday we talked about how judgement steals our true identity because we become what we judge.

When we judge, we put ourselves in the Good Guy Chair, and we put the other person in the Bad Guy Chair. The trick to getting judgement out of our lives and getting our true identity back is to get out of the Good Guy Chair. But that means releasing the other person from the Bad Guy Chair.

There's another reason we want out of that Good Guy chair as fast as possible. It has another name, a secret name. A name that if we realized it, we would never have climbed up in there to begin with.

The Good Guy Chair is really the Victim Chair. And unless we release the other person from the Bad Guy Chair, we will be stuck in a life of victimization. Who wants to be a victim? Not me, and I'll bet not you.  

The Great Identity Stealer

Judgement – more than anything else – steals our true God-given identity, who he created us to be. Because we become what we judge.

Romans 2:1 says, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” Did you catch that? To say it another way, “You do the same thing you judge the other person for doing.” So when we judge, we will start doing that thing we judged. God's word cannot be broken.

God didn't create us to be what we're judging. That's not our true identity at all. Nowhere in the Bible is judging on the list of spiritual gifts. No one has the gift of judgment or criticism. So judging is the great identity stealer – it turns us into something we were never meant to be.

I Like Winning Banners

In Song of Solomon 6:4, the Lover (Jesus) calls his Beloved (you and me), “majestic as troops with banners.” Armies carry banners to celebrate battles they've won, and to show off to any potential future adversaries how BA they are.

In the next verse, Song of Songs 6:5, the Lover (Jesus) says to his Beloved (you and me), “Turn your eyes from me, they overwhelm me.” The Lover is saying to his Beloved, “Don't look at me like that – the love in your eyes for me is overwhelming me with emotion and I might lose it,” while he smiles and looks away, so she can't see he's blushing. Jesus is blushing!

When you don't feel like you're winning at all, when life has the better of you, when you're sure you're going down for the last time, when you can't feel His presence, but you still choose His ways and choose to trust Him instead of give place to fear and anxiety – in those times when you felt Nothing but chose Him anyway, He felt Everything! You just won a majestic banner, and He blushed.

I like winning banners. Out of His overwhelmingly great love for us, He puts us in those situations where we feel overwhelmed and don't feel Him at all. So we can win a banner. So we can choose to trust Him instead of dwelling in fear, out of our love for Him, and it makes Him blush!

On that Day when we finally see him face-to-face, the walls of our mansion in Heaven will be decorated with the banners we won in this life in those moments when we trusted Him instead of ourselves or something else. Wow.

Getting Past the Savior to the Lover

We really gotta get past the Savior thing. Yes, Jesus is totally our Savior, and we love Him for that – while we were yet sinners and hated Him, He demonstrated His love for us in this – Christ died for us (my paraphrase of Romans 5:8).

But for some people, that's it. That sums up their whole relationship with him. God became human and he did this really spectacular thing for them a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, and it's great because now they have this great life insurance policy -- “salvation” and they get to go to heaven, sometime, in the sweet by-and-by. But it all seems very distant and impersonal and far away and, well, just not very relative to their day-to-day life in survival mode.

Jesus didn't die for you so He could be your insurance salesman. He died for you to be your lover. Salvation is just the tip of the iceberg! There is So. Much. More! We can know Him so deep, and with such ferocious intimacy.

Think about this today. Jesus didn't die for you to give you salvation, although that's a byproduct. Salvation was never the point; it was a necessary prerequisite. Jesus died to give you Himself.

The Lover-King

Finding your identity – the Real You – letting God introduce you to Yourself – it all starts with Passion. Your first Passion needs to be for Him. God plays many roles in our lives – by which do you know Him best?

Just as each of us fill many roles – we're a child to our parents, a parent to our children, maybe a sibling, a cousin, an employee, a customer – and different people know us by different roles – so God fills many roles to us. By which do you know Him best? Savior? Redeemer? General? Commander-in-Chief? Judge? King? Healer? Best friend? Confidant? Lover? A combination thereof?

To me, he's my Lover-King. Like in the Song of Songs. Best. Book. Ever. It's all about this King who's all passionate for this woman, and he shows up in the middle of the night and at these goofy times when she's not expecting him, and he invites her to come into a wild and miraculous lifestyle with him. It's mostly from her point-of-view, and she goes through a couple identity crises and some pretty rough spots along the way.

It's written like a play, with two main parts. Most Bibles label the male part “Lover” or some such – that's Jesus – and the female part “Beloved” or something like that – that's you. I highly encourage you to read Song of Songs. We'll go through a lot of it in this blog.

He is so passionate for you it hurts. Think about that today.

Judging People vs Discerning Behavior

Yesterday we talked about the Tree of Life versus the Tree of Judgement, and which one we build our treehouse in. There are people who want to justify their sinful lifestyles who use arguments like that to say no one should ever say what they are doing is wrong.

These people are conveniently confused about judging people versus judging actions. They confuse a judgment about their behavior with a judgment about them. But the two are different. We are not what we do. You have intrinsic value, and so do I, because of who God created you to be. That is completely independent of what you do. God loves us unconditionally because of who we are, not because of what we do or don't do. You can love someone without loving their behavior. Just ask a parent.

Yesterday's blog was about judging people – that's God's job. But we can totally judge (or discern is a better word) behavior – especially when that behavior is either in direct alignment or direct misalignment with the Word of God.

Go Climb a Tree

I want to take a fresh look at an old story. One we as Christians all know and many of us take for granted, but it's immensely practical. We need to not forget this, and use it as a metric to test ourselves every once in a while.

In the Garden of Eden were two trees – the Tree of Life, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There's a shorter name for the second tree – the Tree of Judgement. “I'll decide for myself what's good and what's evil, thank you very much.”

If you think about it, every action we take, every we word we say, ultimately traces back to one of these two trees.

So which tree are we climbing? Which tree are we feeding to others? Where'd we build our treehouse? Let's pick our fruit (our actions and our words) from the Tree of Life. Let's cut down and burn that other bugger, we want no part of it.

The First Day

Some of you may have noticed the blog got a facelift this past week. I'm emphasizing the First Day concept – This is the First Day of your New Life. When I learned this concept, it really changed my life, and helped me live in my true identity – who God created me to be – every day. Every First Day.

Also, I've added a Translate feature in the upper right hand corner. We have a lot of international readers: Italy, Germany, the UK, Brazil, Spain, Ukraine, China, Albania, Russia, just to name a few. I have been thrilled to see how many readers from different countries have hit the blog, and I want to enable you to read in your native language. May God richly bless you.

So this really is the First Day of the rest of your life. Your New Life. The one where you know who you are to God, and are living out your destiny. So go ahead and give a jump and a shout – and do something today – at least one step – toward walking out that destiny, that passion, God's put on your heart.

Worship Is ...

… what breaks down walls in our lives (Joshua 6:20).

… what breaks chains off us (Acts 16:25-26).

… the leading strategy for warfare (2 Chronicles 20:21-22).

… the atmosphere changer (the entire book of Psalms).

… the love song of the bride to the bridegroom (Song of Songs 2:16-3:11, 5:10-16).

… where the Lord dwells (Psalm 22:3).

… what God can't resist (Psalm 118:5).

… living each moment in the presence of God, like we were in his very throne room (Revelation 4:8-11).

… the right response to whatever happens in life, good or bad (Psalm 118:29).

… the best lifestyle choice. Ever. (Psalm 16:11).

Worship in the Most Holy Place

Like we talked about Monday (http://www.davewernli.com/2014/09/living-in-holy-place.html), the temple in Jerusalem built by King Solomon is a great model for a worship lifestyle. There were three parts – an outer court which is as close to God as the regular people could get, an inner court called the Holy Place where only the priests could go, and an inner inner room called the Most Holy Place, where only the High Priest could go.

The Most Holy Place was separated from the Holy Place by a veil 4 inches thick of really heavy material. The veil represented our separation from God due to our sin. The presence of the Lord actually physically rested behind that veil, on the atonement cover of the ark of the covenant.

It was off-limits. Not even the priests could go back there into the presence of the Lord. The High Priest would go back there once a year with blood from a sin offering to make atonement for the people's sins. They tied a rope to his ankle in case he messed up and God struck Him dead on the spot, so they could pull out the body. Hey, they weren't about to back there with God already in a bad mood! 

Ok, that aside, here's the really exciting part. When Jesus died, that 4 inch thick veil was supernaturally torn in half.

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Matthew 27:50-51a NIV)

From top to bottom – because God did it. Jesus made the final sacrifice. His blood, once and for all, paid for our sin and opened the way into the Most Holy Place for us. No more separation between us and the presence of the Living God.

So here's the point. The way into the very presence of God is now open to us. And the way in is worship. Worship brings us from the Holy Place where we live into the Most Holy Place – to the very throne room of God. Now that's exciting!

Living in the Holy Place

The temple in Jerusalem built by King Solomon is a great model for a worship lifestyle. There were three parts – an outer court which is as close to God as the regular people could come, an inner court called the Holy Place where only the priests could go, and an inner inner room called the Most Holy Place, where only the High Priest could go.

Many Christians live in the outer court, thinking that's as close to God as they get, when they think about it at all. Trapped in the routine of the ordinary, we forget who we really are. That we are, and were made for, so much more.

1 Peter 2:9 calls us a nation of priests. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (NIV)

So we are supposed to live in the Holy Place! The priests were separated from the rest of the people, and so should we be. Yet many of us live our lives trying to fit in with the people we're supposed to be leading. We don't want to stick out. But we must. We are called to be the leaders. We are the ones who live in the Holy Place.

Pretty awesome, huh? Let's live in that Holy Place, being mindful of Him in everything we do, set apart, and not forget who we are again.