Monday, January 18, 2010

And now for something completely different. . .

Do you like the story you are in? Does your life make any kind of sense to you? If you were a screenwriter making the movie of your life would you take some "creative license" and tweak it a bit?

Behind the intellectual format of this blog is my underlying conviction that we are all involved in a story. Our story. And our story is happening inside of God's story. Unfortunately, as soon as I drop "God's story" into this post ten thousand different perversions of what I meant are formed in your minds. You see, I am convinced that man's propensity to attempt to control God's story and consequently your story leads him to foolish decisions about God's story.

We could sit and list versions of God's story all day long. We hear from the people who make God into a puppet-master, laying out human history and then "sovereignly" making it happen.
Some say that God is dis-interested. He put it all together, wound it up and let it go. God is something like an absentee father. We know he's there, but he doesn't visit often. Some would make God to be Santa Claus, organizing us into those he likes and those he hates. Dolling out presents to make our lives more comfortable or enjoyable. But only if you are not on the "naughty" list.

Man is eternally creative in his or her attempts to create a God we can live with. But I am more concerned with your story. I am afraid that much of Christian theology over the years has caused many hungry, passionate people to suspend their story and "wait" on the Lord. I do not think we were designed for this. Let me try to explain.

Creation as I observe it is busy being what it was created to be. Trees do their tree thing and ants do their ant thing. The ocean is all oceany and the mountains, well, have you ever seen anything more mountainy? The story of mankind is no different.

We were designed to enjoy relationships. We as humans were put together to be intimate with other beings. Have you ever watched someone who really loves their dog, their cat or their horse? They talk to them, they listen to them, they hold them and they love them. They ooze intimacy in their relationship with their pet.

Have you ever watched a really good parent. Their ability to exist in the world of a two year old and the adult world is uncanny. A really good parent makes their child feel totally connected to them and still gets the bills payed. Children who grow up feeling intimate with their parents are the ones who are best prepared to live their own stories. Do some field research - check it out.

The same is true of friendships, marriages, teams, and communities. Intimate relationship and the pursuit of these relationships is what we were designed for. Being human is being in relationship. Too many of us have allowed a static idea about who God is and what he wants, to interupt our pursuit of intimacy with others. Yes, God has stuff to say about how we live our lives, but he talks to us along the way; from within our story. We were created in his image. We have been asked to love, to risk, to pursue; to create as we live our stories.

I have fallen in love with Jesus. I know that sounds cliche'. My story is my story and I don't apologize for it. I look for ways to hang out with Jesus the same way I look for ways to hang out with my wife, my kids and my friends. I listen to the things he says, the same way I listen to the things my wife, kids, and friends say. I enjoy what he decides to give me, the same way I enjoy what my wife, kids and friends decide to give me.

I don't wake up in the morning waiting for God to tell me what to do today. I take the stuff that bubbles out of my heart (the new one God traded me for) and I act on it. All the time, listening for what my friends have to say as I live my story.

Just some stuff we should REALLY talk about.

3 comments:

  1. I think that is something that every chirstian needs to hear, god is intersted in you and your story in more that a how does it fit into what i am (god) doing kind of way. I think god is more or less asking us what we want to do with our lives and how we want our stories to go and he builds our stories in to his.
    The question I think that most christans need to ask them selfs is not what does god what me to do with my life but what do I want to do with my life, because god made you and he put the desires of your heart in your heart.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, see what happened was...

    I find that this blog post seems to have hit me square in the nose. I found discomfort really in the idea of talking to and hearing God. Mostly because I was terrified that he was going to tell me that everything I was doing was wrong. So, basically I shut Him out and hid behind the lies of the enemy. I find comfort in disarray due to the way I grew up. And I feared change even tho it would have benefitted me completely. People stick with what they know. And what I knew was chaos. So I surrounded myself with situations that would ultimately lead to discomfort, because it actually felt normal to me.

    Now however, I feel confident that the life I lived was just a chapter in the story of my life. I feel that my whole story is designed with multitudes of plot twists and whodunits. And I can't even begin to convey how excited I am to turn the next page. I spent the weekend battling my own demons and was so relieved to see God standing there when all the dust settled. I know He is in my corner and thru Him all things are possible. I'm glad to see that the story I thought I was living was not what God intended for me at all.

    ReplyDelete
  3. God is so good. Why is this not the message people hear in church? I think if it was it would change everything.

    ReplyDelete