Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Embracing Mystery

My heart longs for mystery that is beyond me in every way.

I thirst for mystery that draws me and calls to me...
surrounding, above and beyond me.

A mystery larger and deeper than my wildest dreams...
Beyond all that I could ever have imagined...
in a hundred million lifetimes

Mystery that will unmake me 

And from beyond time and space,
Remake, expand and transform me.

Mystery endlessly completes me 
making me grow
into a wholeness I could have never known.
Timeless 
I am whole and known and beloved.

So I pass by the answers and the formulas and creeds
to embrace the mystery of God alone

I embrace Jesus and I am undone
a good my heart knows

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Getting The Horse Before The Cart or How Not To Totally Throw Out The Creeds, Liturgy, and Orders

Let me cut to the chase and fill in the blanks a little later.

When we approach God through our creeds, formula's, and as answers to our questions, it's only by God's sovereign pattern disrupt that we come into God's presence. We call it a spiritual breakthrough and have made it the preferred form for spiritual superstars. But it's rare, and there's a better way. This better way was abandoned to reason during the Reformation by Protestants and Catholic alike.

Our reason and our logic were elevated over our spirit to the point of shutting our spirit down. We were relegated to wandering in the labyrinth of our souls searching for a spiritual breakthrough.

People generally have a breakdown before they have a breakthrough because we cannot expect our soul to do what only our spirit can do.

Here the skinny: As God is Spirit, we must embrace the mystery of God to know him.

There's a letting go of all we know, understand and imagine, so that we can come into a deeper knowing...into the vastness of God...into the intimate presence of beginning to know God as our Father. This letting go is dying to our self, our old man, our soul man, so that we can live to our new self, our spiritual self in God.

It's All About Jesus

Two Huge Stumbling Blocks to Entering The Presence of God

* Creeds, confessions, and liturgical formula's have their place as an outer ordering of an inner grace, but they are the cart that follows the horse. In and of themselves they will never get you into the presence of God. We must release our traditions shadows, however holy in appearance, they are still shadows and not the substance of God. Some would argue with the Eucharist, but even with the bread and the wine, as with the waters of Baptism, we enter by faith and not by sight. We enter into the divine mystery through our spirit and not through our reason.

Now, on the other side of the coin, if you are in the spirit, these creeds, confessions, and liturgical forms can be a means of meditatively working out what God has worked within us. But they aren't exclusive, hence why we have so many wonderfully unique spiritual forms in every single culture where folks have been transformed by Jesus.

*Scripture As God: As to proof texts, Jesus said, "You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!"

As the old carol says: "Cast out our sin and enter in, Be born in us today."

It's Christ in you transforming you. It's Christ's life in you and me that grows the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Our one and only job is to abide.

It's Incarnational Life, abundant life, eternal life and it's God's gift to us in Jesus Christ.