"The Glory of God is a man fully alive” Irenaeus 202AD. What a thought what a picture what a hope. Being fully alive creates in me all sorts of pictures! No fear of man, vibrant in faith, passionately loving and living with expectant faith and hope. What a life that would be and I feel it’s one God wants His children to have. But unfortunately we have been tuned to respond differently in our world. Advertising and marketing has opened the door for its self and the people they work for to make people reliant rather than alive. This made me think of a movie I watched recently. It starred Clint Eastwood and was called "Grand Torino", it was such a brilliant movie (albeit some poor acting) the themes in it were brilliant. But a line resonated in my head with such clarity about people, life and in general the world, and particularly this thought that I am now penning. The main character Walt Kowalsky was asked by one of his neighbours what he does; his reply was "I fix a thing; that’s what I do." Our modern world, and indeed the church wants us all to adopt the stance of Eastwood's character. I fix things. The expectation in the church is for people to be fixed and that is all well and good. But our biggest problem is that we alone cannot fix anyone. Jesus is the wounded healer and handing our life over to him is the only answer. But for many this act of surrender is seemingly impossible. Most require the Pastor or the counselor to FIX them. But we cannot! We sure can and should help but nappy changing is not our primary goal. It’s letting people realise who they already are filled with.
You see I happen to believe that if Christ came that we might have life and have it to the fullest, so then discovering the life of being fully alive is far better than wanting to be fixed. Rolling over like a passive dog hoping to be patted is a far cry from the dream God has for you and I. So expecting others to change us through any means is not the Gospel. Yes given we may need help along the way and a little bit of fine tuning, but if it’s all about fixing then there is never the finding of the truly alive person that needs to be released. But rather you end up with a propped up person who continually requires propping at every turn of life. Life is indeed a brilliant gift that is full of Gold but we have to find the Gold, within ourselves and within others around us. One of the true problems of the Church is that there has been an image formed in most peoples’ minds and hearts about what a Christian should look like and we have conformity. But the problem with this is that the intrinsic beauty that lies within us as individuals is never found. It is squashed under a mask of conformity. This then hinders any chance of us becoming truly alive.
The other issue that arises from conformity is that the people outside of the Church view us as image bearers of God. What we look like to them is representative of how people will see God. Jesus showed the world that God was overwhelmingly in love with us and desired to give us good things, and that in many respects we should be falling over ourselves to get to him. But on the contrary we are busy cutting out masks to conform to what we think we should be. We never come truly alive, primarily because we are far too busy filling a package that seems to be the stereotypical Christian rather than living the dream of true freedom.
I love this quote from Lou Engle "God had a dream and He wrapped your body around it"
Rom 8:19 In fact, all creation is eagerly waiting for God to show who his children are.
The word here for eagerly waiting is translated as being "intense anticipation: - earnest expectation" Waiting for the reality of those who will allow themselves to dream that the God of the Universe may have a greater dream for them than what they have allowed themselves to believe, with the confines of our finite minds. There has to be a time in every believers life where they begin to think "There has to be more to life than what I am experiencing now, there has to be more to God than I know, now" It is at this critical point in our lives where we can go one of two ways and I encourage you to take the first way. And that way is one of dreaming and allowing your head to be free in possibility thinking that there is more and God wants to give more. But at this moment we can choose to go back to old coping mechanisms, the second way, rather than pulling them down and allowing freedom to come.
Let me encourage you to seek greater depth and a closer walk with the oft forgotten third member of the Trinity the Holy Spirit and watch the door way of Glory open. But it will not happen while we ask to be fixed; rather it occurs when we allow dreaming to happen. And to take by faith the words of Christ, "I have come to give life and life abundantly.
I'm Pastor Rob and they are some of my thoughts
