Sunday, March 11, 2012

honesty

Hello, Hello!

Wow, it has been a while. And with that, where do I start?
It's in the times that every day you are learning and challenged and growing and seeking that you can't and don't want to stop to think or to ponder or to write or anything, because you just wanna seek more of His presence, more of His revelation. We fear that if we are to stop and think, our momentum will slow, and when you are stewarding the overwhelming presence of the Living God, nothing in you wants to halt that.
So these past few weeks have been just that. Roughly 2 weeks I would say. Still going! Learning and gaining and pressing into Jesus' heart for relationships. Man, does He love relationships. He is passionate about them, scandalously, recklessly, desiring for us to know intimacy with Jesus. He is so passionate and so willing to teach, that if we open our heart, mind, soul, strength, He is faithful to reveal to us His heart of relationship. Not just a quarter of who we are, to love with our hearts, but to really know, physically love, with all of who we are. Why He created them, how He desires to HONESTLY teach us how vastly and uniquely and intimately He has relationships with each of His children. It blows my mind to think that we no longer are bound to what the world here has to say about what they think any kind of relationship should look like. When we begin to send boundaries and limits on what Jesus has in relationships, we have lost trust that Jesus knows our hearts best, and we begin to let limits and boundaries control our relationships and bind us here. Here to this earth. And that sucks! I know I don't wanna miss the fullness of Him. To put up a blocker in what He teaches us in saying "Heaven minded."
When we try and control and love out of our own flesh, we lose trust that Jesus knows how to love each person far better than we do, so as we press into that kind of revelation and understanding we begin to truly be set free to love. And I am not just talking about a love that is of us, but a love that requires all of us. Heart. Mind. Soul. Strength.
If we take a look at the relationships Jesus had with people in the Bible...HE BROKE SOCIAL NORM. Everything that was legalistic, He came and set people free of that mindset. He loved the women He encountered in the way that He knew they needed to be loved, disregarding the religiousness that would have withheld it. That is intimacy with Abba. Have you ever thought about the risk involved in that? That He sacrificed what was "ok" in society, what they thought at the time was how they guarded and protected their hearts, when really it was blocking them from being openly and embarrassingly loved by Abba... to love these women so scandalously, if you will. He was not worried about what the religious people would say, He was not scared of what it would have done to His name (when yes, He actually did it for His name sake, that people would remember why and how He loved. He desired that to be bound to His name) because He was more concerned at that time with loving His child so specifically. Risky? Heck ya! So why should our relationships with each other be any different? If we are called to love like Jesus does, if our relationships with each other are supposed to look like the example Jesus set...why have we chosen to water down His goodness? Why have we chosen, because we have, to take safety over the fullness? Which is not looking anything like what we have made relationship now. I know I don't want to live bound anymore! I wanna know Heaven minded relationships.
Why are we loving in only the way that we know how, because we are choosing to ROB JESUS OF HIS GLORY AND GOODNESS AND FAITHFULNESS IN RELATIONSHIPS! Why would we ever want to do that? So if that is the case, we have got, I have got, to re-train my mind with relationships. I want to love people as Jesus loves people. Because I trust that it is SO MUCH better than my love!
We cannot be afraid to let Jesus have control of our relationships, cause when we do take control, we are no longer operating in the fullness of His inheritance as sons and daughters of the King, but we are operating out of what we have heard. Jesus wants us to experience that! Jesus is restoring our idea of relationships!
"All that I have is yours..." Jesus said that to the son. If we desire to know the heart of Abba in relationships, we have to be willing to sacrifice what we know... for what is Jesus.
Yes, we are called to live different, but have we missed the idea of different? Have we become like the religious leaders, holding fast to the things of the past and not willing to listen to Jesus? Scared of change because it is so different.
Phrases like living above reproach and guarding your heart? We have heard those and have taken people's opinions on relationships more than we have sought Jesus for what that looks like. In that, we are binding ourselves to religion and not setting ourselves free in Jesus. We have to realize that Jesus' "different" is specific to each child, that when we say one thing, one way, for every relationship we are taking control.
I desire my relationships to be full! To be life giving. To be Jesus. I desire truth, and in that Jesus' presence has overwhelmed me with revelation far beyond what I can explain, what I can write.
Isn't God SO GOOD?! Take this and ask Jesus what it means for you.
He desires to teach you and always see you grow in this truth. That we are set free to love. LOVE.

There is healing. It is freedom! It is so fun! His presence in these moments is so strong that we can't do anything but praise Him. To praise who He is. For who He is. For Him to ask us to come into His presence is love. Wow, is that love.








I am honored to be learning this with Phil. We are honored to be carriers and LOVERS of His presence. It is sweet. It is good. It is an inexpressible joy because Jesus' heart to teach us and to have us teach others of His heart for relationship with each other... in the testimony He has given us, is far beyond compare. The only way to explain it is Jesus.
Ask us more, we like it! It's an adventure we have with Jesus. We are because He is.