Seriously- Does God like to party?

It seems many times that our view of Father God is one of serious, somber, and even that He is disappointed.  I remember talking to a family member and their comment about the world was, "God must be so disappointed in us."  Yet Jesus in the story known as the "Prodigal Son" reveals a very different picture of the Father, at first their is the sorrowful and longing father looking for his son's return but then as the story comes to an end we see a portrait of party-throwing dad celebrating his son's return.  His joy must not be connected to his son's behavior but the reconciliation of a broken relationship.  Jesus is telling this story to a group of ultra-serious religious pharisees who wander what He is doing with hanging out with "sinners".  I believe that Jesus who came to show us the Father, wanted to bring then into an encounter with the Father through a story that reveals who He is.  Honestly, this image of the rejoicing father is one of the most difficult for me to accept since I never had this image given to me through parents.  I know others who had a fun-loving dad, who always had great jokes on the tip of his tongue, was deeply spiritual, and loved others well.  For Him a party-throwing dad as an image of the Heavenly Father is not a stretch but for me it is a big stretch.  Jesus didn't seem very interested in fitting in with the Pharisees or even making them feel comfortable, He was much more interested in them encountering His Father even if it was offensive.  I believe much of life is wasted on seriousness and trying to appear competent and have it together, I know because I have been there.  Since life is full of challenges that go beyond our ability to handle them, then seriously looking to address problems is important.  The Pharisees saw serious sin problems all around them, so they set out to deal with this by taking what they knew (the Law) and the laws added to seriously deal with all this sin breaking.  Yet, their results stunk, Jesus would even later point out that they themselves were the biggest hypocrites.  I can relate to the poor Pharisees, they were doing their best to clean up all this sin mess and clean up their own lives.  At their best efforts to be clean, Jesus calls them "white-washed tombs" not exactly a complimentary picture for guys who are really trying hard to be clean and have it together.  Jesus might as well have called them clean-shaven, dressed for a formal dead guys.  Though they looked good on the outside (law keepers, religious, in control, and serious) they were dead on the inside.  I believe part of what Jesus is saying in the story of the Prodigal Son is the Grace of God is so powerful to transform people, cleanse them, and bring them into right relationship that it's time to party.  The father is not throwing a party because of his great achievements to lift himself up but he is celebrating the extravagance of his love to restore a very broken relationship.  The way Jesus describes the father's actions of killing a fatted calf, which would feed several hundred people, is of a father who throws an all out party yet there is no hint of purely selfish hedonism only the extravagant love of a father for his returned son.  A party-throwing Heavenly Father is an affront to our image of a serious, distant, and disapproving father.  One of the images must go, I choose the Father that is party-throwing and goes all out in abandonment.  Yet this means death to the overly serious, distant, and reserved father-image I have known and also the mirror image of myself as the serious, reserved, in-control/calm, and withholding person.  Our image of God, will reflect the way we see ourselves and thus the way we live.  I embrace this joyful, party-throwing, extravagant loving, and unreserved Father.

Son of one Joyful Father,
Bret

Battle for Presence

Out of the first 29 verses in Genesis, 25 times some activity of God is mentioned.  It is truly God who is on center stage in the Creation of the Heavens, the earth, the plants, the animals, and all of mankind.  It is His Presence that is truly the focal point of Genesis, the creation of mankind is discussed in detail but it is God's activity that is the purpose behind the book.  Like the mighty headwaters where many great rivers flow from, the Presence of God is the source for all life and where creatures get their purpose, design, and name.  When Moses asks who do I say sent me when going to Pharaoh, God says "I AM who I AM".  There is the reality that God is and always will exist but we as finite human beings draw from His life in the present.  I cannot live in the past, the future, but only in this present moment.  It is the reality that God is not only present in this moment but that I am in right relationship with Him through Christ.  When we feel guilty we are looking at a past decision that we deem as a mistake, there is no awareness of God in this process.  Fear also exists because I envision a reality where the God of love is not present, yet orphan thinking and living is at the root of so many of our problems.  When we begin a line of thinking apart from Christ, where are in the land of orphans which is where the Enemy operates since he is the first orphan.  Jesus makes the bold proclamation that truly changes our reality, ""I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:18).  Why is this a bold statement, because for 400 years human beings have had limited interaction with God and even throughout Biblical history God's Presence was not always available.  Human beings have perfected our systems of orphan living, relating, and existing.  To say to an orphan planet, that you will no longer have to live as orphans, is like saying in the middle of the Sahara desert that you have found water.  When Jesus says that He will come to us, He never talks about leaving.  He is coming to make His permanent home in a people, that we may be continual carriers of His Presence.  God defines Himself as life, so separation from life means death.  To be in an orphan is to be in the state of death, whereas to be united to Him means being united to the very source of life.  So a big part of orphan thinking is picturing scenes/memories from the past where God is absent and being stuck in the pain.  Also, picturing a future where God is not present or expected to come through on His promises is also orphan thinking/living.  It is so easy to fearful of the future when in our imagination we see future events without the Presence of our loving Father, then this picture can go from a daydream to a vain imagination.  Is there any time where He removes His Presence?  In the Old Testament the Holy Spirit would come upon the man of God or prophet for a certain season, an example is the anointing was removed from Saul when he rebelled against God and then the anointing was placed on David.  In Ephesians 4:20 we are told, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption."  Since we are sealed and in other Scripture joined to Him and one in Spirit with Him, then He will never leave us.  So there is a fundamental shift from the Old Covenant where God would come on people for a season and the reality of the New Covenant where we are a permanent dwelling place for the Holy Spirit (we are the temple of the Holy Spirit).  So all thinking and living that is not consistent with this truth is lie-based orphan thinking, I am never alone (orphan) and His resources are always available to me.  Thus the Presence of God is central in every believer's life who wants to walk as a son or daughter but it is our choice to come into alignment with the truth.  Worship is one of the ways we cultivate His Presence, not that we are creating His Presence but that we are connecting with the reality and truth that He is present aligning ourselves with this reality that previously didn't exist (before our being "in Christ").  In Hebrews 5 we are told to exercise/train our senses to discern good and evil, which means to having our senses be aware of what God is in and what He is not a part of.  Everything that is not from God ultimately becomes corrupt and evil.

In His Presence,
Bret

Kingdom and Family

Bill Johnson once said, "If you have left the concept of family, you have left the Kingdom."  I see this hunger in people's eyes to be part of the Body of Christ but as family, not church members, attendees, visitors, or any other such title.  These things all came much later but the only two relational structures in the Garden of Eden were marriage and family.  You could say that the desire to belong and be part of a family comes out of the depths of how we are designed, deep in the very fabric of our being.  Yet we see the breakdown of marriage at the Fall and the family is soon to follow as Cain kills Abel after the Lord did not receive Cain's offering.  The tearing apart of the family is like the fracturing of a rock hit with a sledge hammer, the fracture is jagged, brutal, raw, and tragic.  If you notice the Western Culture is quickly redefining family through media, government, and popular opinion.  No longer are a husband, wife, and kids the normal for a family, the "Modern Family" could be made up of two dads or two moms and kids.  There is much confusion in our culture of what family really is, I heard of one marriage ceremony where the vows were "As long as love shall last."  One of the most foundational relational structures  in our society is continuing to crumble from the initial fracture in the Fall.  Yet Jesus leads a revolution to not only restore what was lost but to go beyond bringing human beings into the glory of God.  The glory was the original target, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Romans 3:23).  Ever since becoming a Christian 28 years ago I knew deep inside that Christianity was about God's love and family, yet I didn't always see this lived out or modeled.  Since my family had been fractured at an early age, I had a deep desire for family but no idea how to live this out.  I believed that because other people came from an intact family that they did not have the same deep desire that I had.  Yet I did not realize that so many had had fracturing in their families and in their hearts in different ways then I had.  For so many the search for a father and family lay buried under other pursuits for love, approval, money, and success.  I have often talked about and meditated on identity, a foundational revelation for us to walk in freedom and life.  Yet it is the family, the relational structure, in which a child is nurtured, blessed, loved, affirmed, and raised up so they can walk in their identity.  How can you have sons and daughters without the love of a father and mother?  In Ephesians 3:14-15 it's said, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,"  God is the beginning of all fatherhood and motherhood, because Adam and Eve were created in His image.  God created Adam and Eve, gave life to them and thus is the beginning of family.  The Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the first family.  Name means origin and includes identity, thus God is the originator of both family in heaven and on earth.  It is deep in our DNA to desire family, the belonging, the love, the acceptance, the protection, and the empowerment.  Amazingly we are invited into the family of God, not to just be servants but to be His sons and daughters.  We are truly brothers and sisters "in Christ" because of this Father's love to bring us home by sacrificing His Son Jesus.  What the Father has done to bring us home into His love as sons and daughters is a very worthy subject to explore in-depth.

In Father's Amazing Love,
Bret

Does Father like us?

As I watch my 9 year old son and his 12 year old sister, I know they love each other but they doesn't mean they always like each other.  There are days, moments, and hours where they are rather irritated with each other and if I was to ask I am sure they would say they don't really like being with one another at that particular moment.  As I was worshipping in Toronto at the Radical Heart Conference, I sensed the Holy Spirit ask me the question, "How much do I like you if I want to spend all eternity with you?"  Now maybe I am the only person on the planet that struggles with self-esteem, self-hatred at times, and self-worth but this significantly challenged what I previously believed.  I knew that because of what the Word said that I have been saved into eternal life and going to Heaven but I had not really considered the reality of eternal relationship with the Father.  As I heard sermons on Father's burning heart for us to be in relationship with Him, I realized that you don't choose to spend eternity with someone you don't like.  The Father's choice to spend eternity with us as His sons and daughters because we are "in Christ" is radical when you realize this is the whole point, relationship.  There has been so much focus on getting in the door (saving faith) and getting others saved (evangelism/witnessing), that we forget this is an eternal reality and relationship is the point.  I began to meditate on the reality that Father wanted to spend eternity with me, no wander He needed to deal with sin, unholiness, fear, rebellion, and the Enemy (just to mention a few).  If I live in the reality that Father God is tolerating me because of Christ's sacrifice, then I will live only receiving a portion of the abundance of Promises and grace that God has poured out.  I believe that faith and receiving love are very connected (Galatians 5:6).  I have heard that children's joy is in direct proportion to their parents joy over them, in other words if we realize how much Father likes to be with us our response will be to like who we are as well.  So many times there is the sense that we would be a better person if I witnessed more, studied more, knew more, or did more ministry.  What we are really saying is God would like me more if I was a different person in some dimension of who I am.  Yet how does Father relate to us, does He not relate to us as a New Creation, a son, a daughter, holy, and blameless.  So from the Father's perspective (which is the truth) He see us free from all the sin, flaws, and impurities that we see.  In Zephaniah 3:17 we see a picture of God's response to Israel and a prophetic picture of how He sees us, "The LORD your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy."  Take a moment to imagine the reality that Father has saved you, so that He can spend eternity with you.  He likes you that much.

Eternity with Father,
Bret