Mirrors

You stare so eagerly at that image

That image on the screen of your soululler device

That image in the glass in the window

On the wall

In your palm

But what do you see?

For some, one glance would suffice

But you can’t stop looking

Do you like what you see?

Or are you hoping to see more?

Are you hoping that the longer you look, the more you’ll explore

What’s behind that colorless mask

Painted with white cream, lipstick and false eye lash?

Is it your soul you’re searching for?

Are you hoping that mirror is a door

Leading to the real you?

The one who doesn’t have to be

What music, movies, and TV tell you to be

Are you hoping that mirror is the key

To your freedom?

Freedom to love yourself

Freedom to be yourself

Instead of a man-made product

In the endless aisles of these shelves

Others may label you

But they don’t know what’s inside

That right was reserved for your Maker

And His label reads “I made her –

“Beautiful”

So next time you look in the mirror

Try this

Close your eyes so you can see what’s inside you

It’s there you’ll see the truth

Before you had eyes to see

God created the heavens and the earth

And before he was finished

He made you from the dirt

He breathed life into that dirt

And said “It is good.”

If God can call dirt beautiful

Then who are we to dissaprove

Stop believing the lies

And realize who made you

Not him, not her, not even you

Now open your eyes

And walk in that truth

I’ll Listen

I’ll listen

With eyes and ears I’ll listen

With mind and heart I’ll listen

Because you’re worthy

Because you’re worth it

I’ll hear words worthwhile

Though I truly don’t deserve it

I spent more time ignoring

Your glorious utterances

More time indulging in lies

Suffocating the cries

Of my soul

Hungry for something with substance

Bloated with nothing but hot air

Gasses that blow with the wind

Ever changing

Never answering my questions from within

Nothing to hold on to

Nothing to stand on

Ominous clouds

Hiding the light of the Son

I see them clearing

As I listen to sounds of your love

Two Halves Don’t Make A Whole

There’s a story about two women who go to a very wise king to solve a dispute. Both women had a son of their own. However, one woman’s child dies during the night because she rolls over on him in her sleep. She swaps the dead child for the other woman’s son while they are sleeping. Both claim the son is their own, and no one else was there to witness what took place. So, the wise king made his decision. He requested that the child be cut in half so that each woman can have the son. One woman pleaded with the king to not take the child’s life. She rather the other woman have the child than see him die. The other woman, however, insisted that the child be cut in half. The king declared that the woman who pleaded for the child’s life was the true mother and gave her the child.

When it comes to deciding what’s true, we are faced with a similar dilemma. There are a multitude of “mothers” claiming that the “son” is theirs. They are claiming their god is the real god. Their religion is the real religion. Their ideology is the truth. Their church is the “true” church. How can we ever know who is right?
In this story, we soon find out that the mother who was willing to put her self-righteousness aside and choose mercy over judgement was the one telling the truth. She cared less about being right and more about the life of the boy. However, the other woman didn’t care about the child nor did she care about the other woman; she just didn’t want to be proven wrong.

Too many of us are like the woman who wanted the child to be cut in half.

When will we stop trying to divide each other? When will those who call themselves Christians stop trying to “cut up” the body of Christ? When will we realize that trying to prove a side is not going to unite us, but instead tear us further apart?

Like the son who was crushed by his mother in the story, Jesus’ body has already been broken. Like the true mother, He gave up His righteousness and didn’t try to prove His authority. Even when faced with false accusations that led to His wrongful death, He pleaded for the forgiveness of his accusers. And, because of His selflessness, we are made whole. We know longer have to be divided, all because God chose to love instead of judge. When we choose to love instead of judge, the Truth will be revealed. And like the wise king in the story, God will hear our cry and have mercy on us.

*The story in the first paragraph can be found in 1 Kings 3 of the Bible.

The Falsehood of Fear

Fear only has the power that we give it. It’s a product of our own imagination so we are the creators of it. We fear situations that haven’t even occurred yet — and will probably never occur. We allow ourselves to ride a roller coaster of emotions, which often distract us from the things we should be doing. We waste time thinking of ways to overcome the perceived obstacles or how to avoid the challenges all together.

Why does this figment of our imagination demand so much of our attention? I think it’s because we don’t believe in love. We don’t trust in the love of others and most importantly we don’t trust in the love of God. Our imaginary fears rarely contain any aspects of love in them. I mean, when do we ever fear that someone will be too generous to me or too forgiving? It’s often the opposite.

We need to realize that love is the reality and fear is not. More often than not, the people in our lives want to love us. And even when they fail, God’s love is constant and unchanging. Our fears can’t overpower His love. Fear is man-made and temporary. Love is God and He is eternal.

The Sleepers

As I lay here next to my snoring wife, I suddenly have this thought. We are simultaneously experiencing two different realities right now. She is sleeping and is totally unaware of my current reality. However, I am awake and am able to see her sleeping; therefore, I am aware of her reality as well as my own. She remains in darkness, while I experience the light of day. This immediately brings this scripture to mind: “for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, “Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” (Ephesians 5:14)

From a natural standpoint, my wife will not experience the light of day until she wakes up. In the same way, if we remain asleep spiritually we will not experience the light that Christ has to give; the light that makes everything visible. This light reveals the truth, exposing your evil thoughts, words and actions for what they truly are — sin (v13). When we are in relationship with Christ, He awakens us to see where we were (our unconscious “sleeping” state) and where we are now. We are awakened to a new reality — the spiritual realm. We are also aware of others who are awake and illuminated by His light, and those who are not.

When my wife physically wakes up from her slumber, she will realize that I am also awake. We are now both aware of each other in our woken state and can experience one another fully and completely. Now if I speak to her, she hears me. If I touch her, she feels me. Her senses are awakened to me, and I am delighted that she can experience me and I can experience her. Thus, she seems much more alive to me. This is the experience those who are awakened by Christ have with each other and with God Himself.

However, even some believers have fallen back asleep. (See 1 Cor. 11:30). This doesn’t necessarily mean that they no longer have the Spirit of God, but rather they haven’t spent enough time in His presence, rendering themselves weak and incapable of staying awake. They remain in darkness, unable to recognize the worthlessness of their evil thoughts, words and actions. Why are these things worthless? Well, how effective are the actions of someone who is sleeping? To them, they may seem like they are doing something important in there dream-induced state, but in reality they are just sleeping. When they wake up they quickly realize that they were only dreaming and whatever they accomplished in that dream instantly becomes useless.

God is waiting for the sleepers to wake up, so that He can give them His light. If they continue sleeping they will never experience the true reality that awaits them. For them, night will never turn to dawn. And, this perpetual darkness will only lead to death. Where there is an absence of light, there is an absence of life. And true life only comes from God.

Timing

I’m convinced that our biggest issue, when pursuing our dreams, is timing. We get this huge revelation of what we are supposed to do in life and we run with it, rarely taking the time to figure out what it requires. We develop this plan of how we will go about living out our dream, but in our plan there is just one factor — I. I will make a difference. I will change lives. I … I …. I. The problem here is that nobody in all of human history has ever accomplished anything alone — and if they claim to have, they are “big, fat” liars.

Since we live in a world surrounded by people, other people will always affect how we live out our dreams. So, not only do we have to be ready, but the people that will be impacted must be ready as well. This means we will almost always get the timing wrong when launching a business, writing a book, starting a movement, or whatever else we decide to do in our self-driven will.

The readiness of ourselves and the readiness of the people we are supposed to serve are directly related. More times than not, other people aren’t prepared for what we want to do and we aren’t prepared to do it in the right way. We become obsessed with the idea that the process depends on us and if we don’t do something now then nothing will ever happen. This mentality prevents us from contributing anything of worth to the world because it’s no longer about others, but about ourselves.

Timing is everything and it’s the one thing we have zero control over. The only one who knows your future is the Creator of time Himself, God. It may take another 20 years before you debut that music album, launch that non-profit, or travel to India. In the meantime, are you learning to trust God? Are you aware of the people around you? Are you aware of the people you are destined to serve? The process depends less on you than you think; so stop trying to do everything in your timing and trust in the timing of God.

Stronger Than You Think

It’s easy to give up on something. That’s why so many of us do it. Some of us give up before the challenges even come, simply because the fear of what may, or may not, happen is too much to bear. Even as I write this now, I am battling the impulse to stop. My mind is telling me I can’t reach people through writing — they’re just words. It is reminding me that every time I start something, I rarely finish it. If these thoughts were the only thoughts I listened to then I would never finish this post. But there’s something else at work inside me. A strength that is beyond my own comprehension. A strength that keeps my fingers typing, even when my mind is telling me to stop.

If you’ve ever ran a race, then you know what I’m talking about. There are several moments when your mind tries to convince you to stop running. For some of us, it’s in the very beginning. The end seems too far away, and the mere thought of the distance overwhelms us. For others, the taunts of the mind consume us at the halfway point, because our body feels weak and we can’t imagine running the same distance that we just ran again. And still for others, we feel like giving up when we are only a few meters away, because we fear the experience of winning.

The strength that we must depend on is not of the mind, but of the spirit. And when your spirit is connected to the One who never grows weak or weary — the everlasting God — you have the power to go on. This takes trust. Not in ourselves, but in God — the Creator of the universe. “He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” (Isaiah‬ ‭40:29-31‬, NLT‬)

Don’t Hold Your Breath

This morning I woke up and breathed. In that instant, I realized that air (oxygen) is something I take for granted every single moment of the day. The most essential element for life surrounds us all the time. Yet, we passively breath it in and out, rarely acknowledging that without it we die. This alone proves that God loves us. Every breath is a reminder that He is mindful of us and aware of our needs at every given moment.

For many of us this is hard to comprehend, because we can’t see Him. But we can’t see the air either. That doesn’t stop us from breathing it in — allowing it to fill us up and give us life. Maybe that’s what trust is about. Believing in the goodness of something (or someone) that you can’t see. After all, who holds their breath and rejects the air just because they can’t see it. That would be foolish, and that person would die.

So, let’s not hold our hearts away from God; rejecting Him and the goodness He provides. He wants to fill us. And when we allow Him to, we are made alive.

Created to Create

Why is it that every child loves to create? Whether it’s building LEGOs or changing the outfits on a Barbie doll, we all loved to make something of our own. As we grow older this creative impulse doesn’t leave us — though it may be stifled by the demands of life. Deep down inside we all want to create something new. We want to behold something that we can call our own.

We can’t help but want to be little gods, imitating the Creator in one way or another; and I think this innate desire is inherently pure, but it can be easily perverted. The moment we take for granted the fact that we ourselves are created beings, we subject ourselves to an onslaught of selfish desires and ambitions. We fall into deception, believing that we are self-made and the creators of our own destiny. This is dangerous, and it only leads to death (both physical and spiritual).

When we decide to create independently — disregarding the One who created us — we detach ourselves from the One and Only Source of Life. The ability to create life only comes from the One who is life. No matter how hard we try, we cannot create something out of nothing. We can only take what’s been given to us and make something different. This is an incredible gift; and if we use it wisely, we will share in the joy of The True Creator.