Freedom in Vulnerability

As I have been a part of leading a group on experiencing rest "in Christ" I came across a message that has impacted me not because it's new but has taken me to a new level.  I have attached the video by Brene Brown called "The Power of Vulnerability".  We live to experience love, love from God, love from our family, love from our friends, and love to our family and friends.  I believe this is the abundant life that Jesus invited us into, is a life of being radically loved and loving others.  What power raised us from the dead into New Life?  Ephesians 2:4-5 reveals that it is the power of God's love that raises us from the dead.

How can we experience God's love for us and others love for us if we are not vulnerable and known?  We can't.  I would like to suggest to you this is why the Pharisees and religious leaders of the day didn't know Jesus because they didn't let Him know them.  I have to be honest with you I have had a love/hate relationship with vulnerability.  I love it when I take a risk to be known but hate when the fear of being known is overwhelming (shame).  I like the idea of walking in the Light (Jack Frost talks about this in Experiencing Father's Embrace) more than I embraced a lifestyle of living in the light.  It seems altogether too risky, I could get hurt, and I may be disappointed.

As I listened to what Brene Brown discovered I became more and more convinced in my spirit that vulnerability is the only way to live.  By the way Brene Brown says she had a spiritual awakening and through another speaker I found out she has become a believer in Jesus Christ.

I believe in our American culture we are crying out for relationship, community, love, and family.  Yet our popular culture elevates intimacy without sacrifice.  Therefore sex without really knowing a person is elevated as the ultimate type of love and romance, when the truth is it is only one step away from prostitution.  The pornography industry is over $10 billion in America and $97 billion globally.  Yet if we dig deeper underneath the counterfeits, we see a society that craves intimacy, connection, and love.  Casting stones at the counterfeits does little to lead people into freedom and love.

I believe us embracing a lifestyle of emotional and personal vulnerability before those we long to connect with (especially God) can bring us into a place of powerful freedom.  I know this from counseling people for 19 years, there is never breakthrough without true vulnerability even to the point of a person feeling hopeless and powerless.  Jesus seems to ride in on His white horse to deliver and bring freedom when we are willing to be in this place.

Vulnerable His,
Bret

Rest is not about the Easy Chair

Many times when we think of rest, we think about physical rest.  Certainly, as the days of summer roll by with kids out of school and less strenuous schedules there is time for physically relaxing.  I know that I have sought rest in taking vacations, avoiding responsibilities, denying things in my life, and even hoping to escape to a deserted island.  At times the pressures of life seem unrelenting, does Jesus really have a place of rest for us to enter.  In Hebrews 4 we are told there is a Sabbath rest for the Christian to enter, not taking one day a week to rest (though that is great) but a place where we rest from our striving, seeking to please man, busyness, and anxiety.

God wrote into His creation for us to begin our weeks with a day of rest and even had His people rest the land on the 7th year.  He provided for this 7th year by giving them a 3 fold harvest in the 6th year, talk about a picture of trusting God.  While these are wonderful fulfillments of the Sabbath Rest, the greatest fulfillment is in the finished work of Jesus Christ.  When Hebrews 4 tells us to labor to enter into His rest it seems like an oxymoron.  Yet I find that the world system around me wars to pull me from a place of rest and overall does not value rest.  Since our resting from our works requires us to trust God.

Being busy and achieving are much more valued than rest and intimacy.  We are going to need to stand in the place that Christ has purchased for us and proclaim His finished work in the face of mounting responsilibities, pressures from our jobs, worries and fears about our kids, increasingly difficult problems in our world, personal struggles, and people hurting in our own families and friendships.  All these war to pull us away from simply trusting in who Jesus is for us and in us.

I see amazing believers and leaders who have entered into a place of rest but they have had to stand in the face of much that would seek to steal that rest.  The answer is not to seek to impose control and limits on the world around us so that there is peace.  As a father and husband how many long days working have I come home hoping there would be peace in my home, no issues with the kids, no more talk of schedules that don't seem to connect, or problems with the house.  When I look for peace outside of Christ I become irritable and frustrated with what does not line up with that peace.  When I dwell in a place of peace and rest with Jesus, then I am able to release this peace to others around me.  We must set boundaries but not to control others, so we can priortize the relationship which all life flows from.

Entering His Rest,
Bret

New Endeavor, Rest First

Life seems to be a series of transitions, including new seasons, starting new things, at times loss, and leaving something old behind.  In God's design from the beginning in Genesis we see a rhythm where God creates in the first six days, creating human beings on the end of the six day then God rests.  God declares the seventh day to be a day of rest (Sabbath) and blesses and sanctifies this day.  Did He rest because He was tired and somehow worked too hard.  God did not have to rest but chose to and began a rhythm that we still loosely follow today with our 7 day week.  So God works first in creating and then rests, which is exactly the opposite of the rhythm He gives for human beings.  Adam and Eve are created at the end of the sixth day, with their first day being the Sabbath.  God designed for man to rest and then work.

In laying out the beauty of redemption, God parallels Creation when Christ finishes His work on the cross, is resurrected, and then exalted to the right hand of the Father being seated on the throne (Ephesians 1:20-23).  When you sit down you take off the weight from your legs and naturally relax, this is a position of rest and authority.  There were no "born again" believers till after Christ went to the cross finishing His work, thus all believers were "born again" as New Creations from a place of rest not our working.  Many wrongly believe that they found Jesus but I believe that when we are in sin and living as orphans we are not looking for Him.  The Word tells us that "...the Father draws all men to Jesus."  In Ephesians 2:6 God seats us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ, in a place of rest and authority.

The question is do we grow in our walk with the Lord, increase in spiritual gifts, or be transformed in our inner man by our own striving, effort, or disciplining ourselves.  There is effort and discipline involved in places in our growth but we don't start by working but by resting.  "Every new spiritual experience begins with an acceptance by faith of what God has done- with a new 'sitting down' if you like."  It's actually from a posture of rest that faith comes forth as God breathes on His written Word to reveal it to us.  Many have studied the Word of God believing that it is by their self-effort that the secrets contained in it will be unlocked, only to be frustrated and may even become more religious.

In Father's Love He is the initiator and we are the receivers.  We are in a place of dependence, need, and even weakness.  Yet to those who learn dependence and rest there seems to be no limit to the grace God is willing to give them.

In Rest,
Bret