Broken for Others

I believe to begin to experience this New Life "in Christ", the old life must begin to break down and not function.  Living for ourselves and our efforts to please God must fail if He is going to become the very place where we draw life.  I have spent much time walking people through this difficult, painful, and transforming time.  I know that I have been so broken at times in my life that the pieces of me were on the floor all around and I wondered if I would ever be a whole person.  Our self-sufficiency keeps us from opening our hearts to experiencing the love of God and the love of others.  Even scientists are now saying that our brains are wired for love, that everything works as it is supposed to when we are experiencing love.  You were created to be infinitely loved by the God who created you and is called your Father.  Love does not mean that there is not freedom but it does mean that life comes through a vitally connected relationship where we are strengthened and empowered by One greater than ourselves.

Landing in a mix of beautiful green trees, open fields of dirt, the green and blue Pacific, and the low buildings of Puerto Vallarta was our family's first opportunity to minister in Missions together.  In the midst of dirt roads, trash filled fields, and cinder block houses sat a cinder block building a little larger than the houses.  Our first day of actual mission work was to pour a concrete floor in this cinder block building better known as a church.  The thickness in the air of the humid hot of a summer day was stifling at times, the sweating had already begun.  Only blocks from the church was a central basketball court along with a minimal playground and not far away a dirt field that doubled as a soccer field.  This would be the place of our afternoon and evening outreach.  We sent teams out into the neighborhood to invite all interested to get free medical care, have a free meal (hot dogs), and watch the kids do a skit.  As activity began to flourish around the basketball court, another team member gave an announcement over the sound system, then kids began to find their way to a bustling group of white faces in a sea of brown ones.  Kids from the age of babies to even teenagers were interested in all the stirrings and especially when some balloons for balloon animals were pulled out.  As I looked out over the now more than 100 children, I was taken in by the faces of these children.  Many who had no shoes, the Holy Spirit began to sneak into a place in my heart where the compassion and love of God was moving within me before I could try to stay within the safe boundaries of my logic and reason.  As I continued to look into their faces, John 3:16 which is plastered around at football games and often quoted began to come alive.  Jesus spoke those words with these children in His heart, they were the world that God so loved He sacraficed His only Son.  My heart was broken for these children, not out of guilt or sense of duty but of His love for them.  Being reserved and rather shy I kept all these stirrings hidden from others but Father was changing me.  As the medical team found me to pray for a girl who was 11 years old and had seen some men break her mother's jaw only 15 days earlier, I was again undone by the love of God for her.  Her name was America, she had radiant cheeks and was only a little shorter than my daughter Megan (also 11 years old).  What a privilige to lead her through forgiving these men and then let Jesus lift her fear.

I believe part of experiencing our union with Christ is to be broken over what breaks the heart of the Lord, not just to have pity but to be moved by compassion.  When Jesus was moved with compassion over a person, then through His prayers there was a release of God's supernatural power into a person's life.  Loving others will cost us, we can't stay in our place of self-protection, convenience, avoiding rejection, or our self-sufficiency.  I believe that 1 Corinthians 13 is not the only place where love is emphasized as the highest motivation, throughout Scripture you see that God's motivation is love (1 John 4:8- God is love).  In some places the Fruit of the Spirit is talked about as a list of things to do, yet there is really only one Fruit of the Spirit and that is love all the others flow from this one.  Our heart must be broken by the Love of God for others or we will be compelled by fear (duty, guilt, obligation, some reward).  As a new friend said of the what, how, and why we are doing the things we are doing, the why is the most important.  In other words, motivates us to reach out to others is vitally important to God because He sees the heart.  The only way to have His heart is to lay down our life (the soul- mind, will, and emotions).  According to John 15:12-13 and Jesus model this is the abundant life Jesus invites us into experiencing.

May His love break your heart for others,
Bret

Be Fruitful & Multiply

Often it seems that the Lord takes an idea (a spiritual truth) and increases it in your mind, like pouring gas on a burning fire.  The Lord has been doing this in my life around the truth of blessings and curses.  As I have been reading a book on "The Blessing of the Lord makes rich and adds no sorrow" that I was given by a client, the truth that the Blessing is what produces fruitfulness and multiplication has been reinforced.  When I did a quick word study in the Old Testament the words "fruitful and multiply" appeared 40 times, showing this wasn't a one time thing but a theme God was reiterating.  When God blessed Adam & Eve together to co-reign, He blesses them twice in Genesis 1:22 & 28 with the words "Be fruitful and multiply".  This is covenant language (covenant is an agreement till death made by two parties that is binding) and is part of what makes up the Creation Covenant or covenant with Adam.  It is important that we see this is covenant language because the two parties were God and Adam who represented all human beings because we will see this has implications for us.  We see that from the very design of all Creation, God intends for us to be blessed and through the blessing to be fruitful and multiply.  I know in the past I thought this phrase meant to have kids and for those in agriculture to have good crops, so I figured I got the kids part covered and maybe I can bless our little tiny garden.  As you can tell God is shattering my old paradigm about the blessing and also being fruitful and multiplying.  I believe the blessing was key to Adam and Eve co-reigning on the earth and spreading the will and glory of God beyond the Garden of Eden.  Many people have wrongly believed that the whole earth was the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Eden which God caused to be fruitful and lush was about the size of modern day Iraq.  God displayed to Adam and Eve a prototype of what their dominion should look like, since they were His representatives on the earth carrying His authority and empowerment (the Blessing was from Heaven).  The rest of the earth lay untamed, wild, and in need of the dominion and ruler ship that Adam and Eve would bring.  Also after the great rebellion in Heaven by Lucifer, Satan had to leave Heaven because he violated his own nature and thus he was cast down to the earth (the wild and untamed part). 

I believe that if God had not blessed Adam and Eve they would not have the Divine empowerment to carry out their mission on the earth.  In the past I have thought God cursed Adam and Eve after they believed "The Lie" and chose to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Yet what I know had revealed to me is that really curse is the absence of the blessing or another way to think of it is that curse is the process of death.  So curse was the result of the Fall and Adam and Eve's disobedience and sin's entrance which leads to death.  I think this is very important to understand this because so many times we assume that we should be prospering and growing but without the blessing.  God announces the results of the curse in Genesis 3:14-19 which affect the serpent, Eve, Adam, the ground, their relationships, and their future.  The Curse is like a nuclear blast, the echos of this blast we are still hearing today in our everyday lives.  I don't believe that God expected us to be fruitful and multiply under the curse only to struggle to eek out an existence but thank God that He provided a way to restore the blessing to human beings.

I believe that Biblical prosperity is not about TV evangelists having personal jets but about every person yielded to God on the earth being fruitful and multiplying.  I have also heard people refer to Genesis 3 where it talks about toiling the land with thorns and thistles and eating by bread by the sweat of your brow as being an explanation of why life can be so hard some times.  This may be the result of living under the curse but then why did Christ come?  It is wonderful to be forgiven and cleansed of all sin, I never want to minimize the powerful work of the blood of Christ but it seems to me that we were in a whole lot more trouble than just our sins.  In Ephesians 2:1 & 2 refer to us being dead in our trespasses, walking according to this world, and children of wrath.  The redemption that God brought about through Christ is a complete redemption and addresses all the root issues that have affected the human race.

I will explore in future blogs how blessing is one of the keys to Biblical prosperity (fruitfulness & multiplication).  Hopefully this begins a little series that will encourage you and take you to a new level of freedom and life "in Christ". 

Blessings,

Bret