Value

What is your intrinsic value as seen through a pre-qualified lens?

Sometimes everything falling apart is the best thing that can happen to you. Because shedding layers of pride and self validation makes room for your inherent significance to shine forth, entirely separate from your behavior and circumstances. 

Significance is not behavioral. 

Don't judge your significance based on the harvest you reap. Plant seeds and let your role, no matter how flashy, be enough. When we judge others by their actions and ourselves by our intentions we sabotage the value others have because we measure their behavior. We need to cleanse our minds, to cleanse our eyes, to be able to see others as worthy and celebrate with them rather than measuring their worth by works. We need to have a long term focus and identify ourselves by a timeless savior who stepped down into time and space and gave everything to include the un-included. 

Legalism doesn't work even for those who are good at it. Legalism masks over behavior and performance and sanctifies it as if it was a relationship. 

If you only see your value as operating inside the terms of performance, you will lock yourself into a prison of needing to please in order to be loved. 

If you only see certainty based on controlling your behavior, you will leave no room for relationship with the one whose behavior can't be controlled. 

Somewhere along the lines, tradition told us that if we control our behavior we can get God's behavior and response to be predictable, and that is a flat out lie. How many ways will we desperately grasp for control in a world of uncertainty before we see the truth:

Certainty is in God's character. 

There is an element entirely separated from trying to please God, it's called learning to trust God. 

What value does this God give by very nature of the fact that we are his? A value that has nothing to do with understanding, religious paradigms, our ability to accomplish anything or our intention to carry out good. God doesn't judge us by our actions or our intentions, he looks at the perfected work of Jesus Christ. 

Doctrinal paradigms can be more binding than heroin, because we sanctify them. Sadness permeates all of our lives but religion keeps us from talking about it. 

The value of being free, who could put a price tag on that? The basis for a life of freedom is relationship with Jesus. When you hear his voice, there is no human institution that can imprison you. Period. 

Last week I was walking alongside a lake when this truth sank to the bottom of my heart: in a world full of agendas, you speak the truth to my heart.

May I learn more everyday of who you are and how much you love me.

So, what value do you inherently bring to the table? 

"May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." 

-Colossians 1:11-14

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Interdependence

Make a deal with yourself to never let people's comments control your mood. 

I've got some bad news. Most people are more concerned about acting according to how they feel than feeling according to how they act. 

We will act according to what we believe even if it's a flat out lie. 

Practice taking actions and letting your feelings follow, rather than allowing your actions to be dictated by your feelings. 

So last week I was reflecting back on the experience I had when I was sick with the swine flu. I had anticipated going to Brasil for many years, and was thoroughly enjoying my time in the Amazon jungle when I fell ill and had to separate myself from the crowd. It was the tail end of our trip, and I had seen things most people never see. Pink dolphins flipping in the black river, children who saw a photo of themselves and their friends for the first time, even children who were bed ridden with illness and yet didn't know any different. Their simple dependency on a great God was the example I followed while going through the worst of the swine flu. 

One of my favorite things to do is make children laugh, and in Brasil it was not hard... Every time I tried to mix the Spanish I knew with the few Portuguese words I had learned, they would crack up. Celebrating differences looks a whole lot like letting your pride go for the sake of relationship. And there, through their laughter, it hit me. Carrying people's rejection inside of you will make you sick. 

Those who seek to be worth knowing rather than well known have seen this play out in their lives. Something messy and authentic happens when you are less concerned with people liking you and far more concerned with doing the right thing by the person in front of you. 

Comfort zones are way overrated. You can be right or you can do right. 

There is something that children have, something precious and freeing, maybe it's their ability to acknowledge their own need for interdependence rather than fighting for imaginary independence. Somewhere along the lines though, we all try to "be adults" and in our quest for control we all fool ourselves of our need for community. 

"People are tenacious when it comes to their imaginary independence. They hoard and hold their sickness with a firm grip and find their identity and worth in their brokenness, and guard it with every ounce of strength they have. No wonder grace has such little attraction." -William Paul Young (The Shack)

"Man is weak but the Spirit yearns to keep the course from the bow to the stern, to throw overboard every selfish concern that tries to work for what can't be earned." -Josh Garrels (Beyond The Blue)

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Verism

Begin with the end in mind. 

Start the task knowing what you want your end result to be. 

Thrust yourself into challenges with a solution mode. 

Create space inside of you for bigger and better things. 

Seek the long term picture, overlook the momentary pain. 

Lengthen your stride, wide your embrace. 

Renew your trust in Him who holds time in His hands. 

Begin with the end in mind. 

Verism is defined as the conformity to a standard, and synnonymous words include adherence, constancy, faithfulness, loyalty and precision. 

What standard are you incrementally confirming to? Who are you adhered to for the long, long, long haul? 

No passage of scripture refreshes my mind with the big picture (revolving around a relationship) that I am conforming to like this one: 

"And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints of light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross." Colossians 1:9-20

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Environment

Before God made any life form, he made the environment in which it could thrive.

We were made in God's image, are derived from his very character, and by his Spirit, are infused with his nature. 

"When your spirit is hovering over the deep, in the image of God just look into that darkness and speak!" -Andrew Peterson (Let There Be Light)

Words hold the power of life and death, and we have the sacred opportunity to create life or death every time we open our mouths, even when we speak to ourselves. This gift, I believe, is wrapped up with divine purpose and a higher calling to speak into existence the environment in which we want to live and invite others into. Create bridges for other people to walk on using your words, help them see hope from where they are to where God is calling us all, collectively. Life was never meant to be experienced alone, and we are all blessed to be in the presence of a holy and righteous Lord, and we are blessed to get to invite others along into his presence. 

Hospitality is making enough space inside of you to be a safe place for someone else. So, how will you be hospitable this week? What environment are you creating inside and around you that others can thrive in? This topic and these questions have buzzed around my heart for quite some time now, and I can't wait to hear from you what environment has made a big difference in your life and why. Remember, the environment is always created before there is any life living in it.

Maybe it's a picture that God has impressed on your heart, a way that you want to make others feel when in your presence, or maybe it's a physical environment such as a camp for children or a recovery center of some kind. This environment you want to create, invest some time thinking about it. Speaking about it. Create and develop it. And above all else, trust that God, the God who created the universe, knows what he is doing and will be faithful to complete the good work that he started. 

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