Stuck

Do you ever feel stuck? You know what I'm talking about...just a general feeling that life is about a sense of survival mired in a bunch of rules that if lived out correctly, somehow make me feel OK...but certainly not free.

   I was spending sometime reading this morning and it wasn't very long before I came across a statement that stopped me in my tracks. It reeked of truth fullness. I say reeked because however it true it may be, it stinks.

   The book is called 'Crazy Love' and is written by a man named Francis Chan. A man I deeply respect. Let me share with you what he wrote - It's a simple statement about his own walk growing up but let's see if it gets at you a bit - "Christianity was simple: Fight your desires in order to please God. Whenever I failed I (which was often) I would walk around feeling guilty and distant from God."

   Does it get you a bit? Maybe I'm on this island alone, but I don't think so. I find that a lot of people's relationship with God is encompassed in that statement..."Fight your desires in order to please God". The problem is, it's such a narrow view of who God is and it's completely self defeating. You will never live in freedom while living dominated by that mindset.

  I'm not telling you to go live it up and do whatever you want...letting your desires rule you while kicking your inhibitions out the door. What I want to present to you is a perspective change. Instead of living life trying to figure out how not to do "wrong", life should be born out of loving our saviour and realizing how big His love is for us. The essence of our relationship with God is love. In that place comes a fulfillment and rightness in life that is not burdensome but completely freeing. We spend to much time focusing on trying to kill things instead of trying to nurture a real relationship...because we are trying to kill junk in our life without a relationship....we feel defeated...In fact, we are defeated.

  Are there things that need to die in our lives? Absolutely!!! However, I can't do it by myself and fail when I try...especially under the mindset that this is what I need to do to please God. I need to love God and live out that love in every area of my life. When that happens those things in my life that need to die will die because I'm not giving them life anymore. Loving Him and living out that love, that pleases God.

  We often feel stuck in our lives because of a broken mindset. I'm not good enough...I don't measure up...I won't ever defeat this... So let's kill the elephant in the room! It's true!!! All of those are true, but when God loves us all of that doesn't matter anymore - He defines us...He lifts us up...He is the one that defeats the unconquerable. The broken part of the mindset is the belief that somehow we have to correct all of our deficiencies and kill all of our wayward desires before God can really love us. That's what so many believe it means to be a christian...trying to get God to love us!!! That is a broken and narrow view of God that simply isn't true and keeps us stuck in our little survival patterns.

  I want us to move beyond survival...beyond mindsets that keep us locked in chains we create ourselves...I want us to be free. Freedom comes in relationship with a God that loved us first...so...

“Awake, O sleeper,

    rise up from the dead,

       and Christ will give you light.”