First Love

Rev 2:4  …you have left your first love.

 1 John 3:16   “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us”

This picture is a grandpa picture.  That look of sheer delight, one for the other, is the look our Father has for us.  And it is the picture of First Love.  We know we are loved by God not because we do things for Him, but because He loved us first.  First Love is God’s love and affection towards us.  Can you put yourself in this picture as the child.  And can you believe that our heavenly Father longs to hold you.  This shared joy between you flows out of living loved.  God knows that the cross is what will win our hearts back to Him and restore the relationship.   He will win with Love and Affection what the law and its sacrifices could never do.  Would your face match this grandson’s grin?  Or would your expression be more like terror?  Jesus prayed for us to have this level of intimacy with His Father.  Our enemy fights against this closeness and against the joy that it brings to us and to Him.

 This is the Love month at our house.  We celebrate the month of February instead of just one day.  As St. Valentine day approaches  lets  remember; your first love is not that you love Him, but that He loves you.  Let’s celebrate the gift of unconditional love in our lives.  And let that Love pour out.

Rom 5:5…because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.  For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for us.

Learning the art of living loved and loving well.    Joni M.

When the ice melts…

healing happens.  One of the sweetest parts of living loved within a community is getting to see, really see the ice melt on a friends heart.  I am personally familiar with this kind of healing.  I was not able to see, really see, my own healing.  Its kind of like watching  the hands on a clock move.  The movement is not really detectable when you are focused on the change.  When  tragic events happen in a human life the soul will try and protect itself from future injury.  The heart will feel cold and hard towards God and others.  And then one day a camera captures an image, a smile, a joyful countenance and you just know the ice is melting.  Truly, it is a beautiful thing to witness, the power of God.                                                         

Ezekiel 36:26
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Joni

Freedom, thank you Lord free at last.

“The Lord is the Spirit,and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”  Must be because of MLK day, there seems to be much discussion these days and many school assignments on the topic and definition of freedom.  This verse makes it so clear where to find freedom.  And its definition is intricately tied to our definition of love, which I find is being redefined every day that I live more loved than the day before.  You cannot have love without freedom.  God is love, and His kingdom is a kingdom of freedom.  This verse is saying when God shows up, people feel free.  Change is possible.  Change is rooted in a relationship with Jesus.  In Him, God becomes open, personal, and accessible to us.  If we are exposed to the sun our skin is changed.  But if we’re exposed to Christ, our LIVES are changed.  We are sonkist instead of sunkist.

To cultivate the experience of more freedom for believers we need to create a safe place.  A safe place is a place where the fear of misused freedom does not get to rise up and intimidate us out of risking trust and love in our relationships with one another.  A safe place is what gets cultivated when freedom is expressed through love.  The essence of love is safety and connection.  If people don’t feel safe to be themselves and don’t feel a sense of connection with people around then, then it’s hard to convince them that they are in a loving place.

The other main hindrance that we see with friends who come to TBC is the collective false beliefs about God and His character and attitude towards us.  With a blessed assurance that His kindness and His peace will never be taken from you empowers you to look for the freedom that comes to us when Jesus shows up.  This security allows us to BE FREE everywhere we go. 

Learning the art of living loved and free.  Joni

Free Range Believers

Free range is a method of farming husbandry where the animals are allowed to roam freely instead of being contained in any manner.  I ‘ve been using this description lately as a way of describing where I am with God.  I have become a free range believer.  I roam freely with the Trinity.  The friendship stays organic and growing.  It began with securing with God who I am.  I know who I am. The more I live In my identity as one of His kids, the more freedom I experience in every nook and cranny of my life.  This is healthy for me.  As Jesus takes shape in me the stronger I become in my faith and trust.  Which has a positive impact on those around me.  I love them better.

I am discovering that living in spiritual community, like TBC, is opening me up and giving me direction in my journey that is deepening the freedom.  That freedom helps me live openly within complex circumstances of my life with a free and hopeful sense that God will be present and will give me what I need.

Recently, Renee gave me(Joni) this writing by Jeff Imbach.   I think it captures a picture of what we are about at TBC and how our conversations flow.

If I had someone….  who lived with humble integrity:  who believed in me, who had experience with brokenness and with healing, and the journey of prayer; who cared about me and had confidence in me, and who would respect the graced uniqueness of my own journey; who would not answer my questions but invite me to focus on opening my heart to Jesus in the midst of my life experience…What would I want to say? 

Joni

New Snow

While walking on my treadmill this morning and viewing the thick blanket of snow that still covers the ground, it reminded me of God’s pure and perfect love.  When the snow falls it is pure in its form and appearance. Each snow flake is perfect but different.  There is no dirt (that I’m aware of) to hinder its beauty.  As the snow accomulates on top of the ground and trees, it forms a perfect blanket of white, reflecting all light.  But as the snow melts or as people walk on it, it mixes with the dirt of this world and begins to take on its color.  As the snow mixes with dirt and grass, it looses its beauty and ability to reflect light. 

God’s love is perfect and spotless in every way.  It comes into the world to enlighten humanity.  But the things of this world and the way we have been programed, distort its beauty and turn it into something less desirable.  Sometimes the way it appears to us can cause us to even reject and curse it.  It is  seen as something that gets in the way of our goals and desires.  Or God’s love is seen as something that must be earned or deserved.  It can appear passive or inactive.  God’s love, like the snow, can become unpleasant and unappreciated.

I am asking God to help me recognize the distorted ways I see His love.  The ways that keep me from drawing close and embracing His dreams for me.  Having lost both of  my parents before the age of three, I was programed to view God’s love as distant and passive (unconsciously of course).  I percieved that He cares about me but not enough to do anything to help me with my daily problems.  I have viewed His love as only rescuing me from the consequences of sin, (eternal death and separation), but doing little to give meaning and life to everyday existence. My misunderstanding of God’s love  left me with a lot of fear and anxiety.  Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of abandonment.  It resembled more the snow mixed with the salt and sand; a dirty sludge.

My misunderstandings about God, left me disliking myself and in bondage to my earthly attachments (to others approval).  These attachments have lead to patterns of unhealthy choices and addictions (food being my biggy).    It has taken more than fifty years of my journey to finally realize the truth about God’s perfect love.  Living in the awareness of God’s perfect love, is freeing me from my life long fears (1 John 4:18 ).  I’m learning to relax more in the daily matters of life, aware that with each happening Papa is there working it together for my good; that Jesus is aware of my weaknesses and always ready and willing to live through them and with each conversation I have with God, Holy Spirit shares with me Papa’s affection and reminds me of what I’ve been given in Christ.  More and more He is filling me with His passion for others. 

 I hope the memory of this rare and beautiful white Christmas, will continue to remind of us that God’s love is more pure than anything we have ever experienced.  It is too pure to force us to love Him!  It is too pure to manipulate or control.  It is too perfect to be selfish or self-seeking.  It is the kind of love that takes on human flesh and comes to rescue us from our delusions and bring us into the fellowship of the Trinity.  May 2010 be another year of discovering the beauty and perfection of God’s love, because His perfect love really does change everything!

 Renee  Brunette

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I have great affection for Christmas cards.  Especially the simple ones.  The message of the incarnation is simple.  It is perfect.    It is finished.  The rescue story culminates in the birth of Jesus.  We have a Father who loves us more than we can ever know.    My Christmas prayer is that we  come to  believe it more and more each day as He wins our trust and our relationship with Him deepens.  Christmas means we never have to ask God how much He loves us.   The card I found this year came to me from St Joseph’s Indian School in S. Dakota.  It simply expresses the most wonderous truth.

beneath a shining star, upon a silent night, within a lowly stable the GIFT OF LOVE was born.  Merry Christmas  TBC   Joni

Another truth about the weight of grace.

This is too good not to share.  This is from a new book I am reading called Better Off by Ralph Harris.  He is describing the desire of living”by the flesh” vs “by the Spirit”.   He uses something in the temporal realm that is familiar to me and my friends. 

Renee

It might go something like this:  Your perceiver-expresser notices you’ve gained weight, and the thought which follows is that you’re not successful because you’re fat.  Right on cue, flesh offers condemning thoughts–You knew this would happen, fatso!–If you listen to that for more than a few seconds, flesh will suggest a course of action, Well, you’ll never change, so go ahead and eat a gallon of ice cream!  Might as well have a little pleasure since you won’t have it any other way–and if there’s any ice cream in the freezer, it’s a goner.  Or flesh might suggest, Buy some workout clothes, get back in the gym, and GET GOING!   You really can’t live until you get thin….but you can do it if you make it your new crusade.

Following your ice-cream binge, you may feel depression, shame, or even rage, and swear you’ll never do it again.  Or, as with the second example, you may feel a rush of motivation and buy a new wardrobe.  Either way, the flesh is having its way with you because God isn’t involved in the expression of your life.  He’s got nothing to do.  To be clear, you’re not sinning, but neither are you living as you might.

Fortunately, that won’t work for long.  Since you’ve been born again and redesinged by God, you now crave what you’ve never known–God’s life!  The Holy Spirit will put up a fuss and alert you–you’ll feel conflict or like you’re just not getting all that you can out of your Christian walk.  And you’re not because you’re not getting real life.  While we’ll look intently at this in the next few chapters, the new way of living means that you look to the Spirit in you and HE produces the life.  In this instance, the Holy Spirit is also about output.  The Bible calls His output the fruit of the spirit (Gal5:22). When He is at work in you, when you listen and follow His leading, the expression of your soul will be goldy.

…So if, after hearing the offering of the flesh concerning your weight, you instead turn to the Spirit, you might hear:  It’s alright, you know.  We can walk together in this little thing.  Let’s make it something for us to do together.  Your life is with me-remember?  And I never measure you by the scale–it’s not accurate.  But I will satisfy you and we’ll be together.  Living in this way you may feel genuine peace, love, and assurance.  Depression and shame will be gone because the life of God will be working in you;the expression which comes through you will make that apparent.  You’ll have God’s life for your life.

More on masks

It seems every time we pick up The Message we find a new verse about making sure we keep things authentic.  My hubby and I recently attended a masquerade ball and had a blast.  But I noticed something about masks, they make it difficult to see clearly.  Peripheral vision was extremely altered and people were knocking things off tables and running into walls.  Not only do masks impair our ability to experience love they limit clarity of vision.   It was fun for an evening but I am so delighted that I am on a path of removing masks.    The Message:  1Cor 4:1  We refuse to wear masks and play games.  We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes.  And we don’t twist God’s Word to suit ourselves.  Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open, the whole truth on display, so that those who want to can see and judge for themselves in the presence of God. 

If that’s not more freedom  I don’t know what is.

Joni

Jesus didn’t come for arm candy!!

I think we believe this sometimes.  That Jesus came to clean up the human race, make us all presentable and attractive.  We would never say it.  Not out loud.  Maybe not even think it consciously but the picture is there in our minds.  Jesus and His bride all cleaned up for God and the wedding. 

I found these amazing definitions on line for arm candy.  An attractive person who accompanies another to public gatherings but is not romantically involved with that person. 

We put Jesus wrist bands on and clothing that say Jesus, little fishy’s on the bumper of our cars.  He didn’t come to be arm candy, to make us look good nor did He come to collect arm candy.   He does not need people faking it, looking good on the outside so the world will know that Jesus is my home boy.   He wants to be romantically involved with us.   This relationship is to make us more real not better fakes.  He is seeking people who want to be real and will let Him love them into realness.

Here is another definition from the net:  A date that someone is using not to enjoy their company, but simply to appear important, wealthy or worthy of attention.

Sometimes the Christian culture we live in uses His name and identity to appear important, wealthy and worthy of attention.  And inside we know Him not at all and we are walking dead people pretending to be alive.

I’ve been soaking this week in the upper room discourse(John 13-17) via The Message.  After reading John 15 I had this revelation that Jesus didn’t come to redeem arm candy.  He is not interested in cleaning the outside of the cup but the inside.   “Live in Me.  Make your home in Me just as I do in you.   ….When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic….       Doesn’t that describe the opposite of the definition of arm candy.

I have felt at times as a woman, the Proverbs 31 woman, has been misused and abused to create arm candy.  I see women trying to conform themselves into this image of the Christian woman and it breaks my heart.  Jesus invites us to make ourselves at home in His love.  Come just as you are and let Him tell you who  you really are in Him.  Through an intimate and organic relationship with Jesus arm in arm.  

 Joni

An open life.

Living an open life in our culture can be very difficult.  The pressure to mask can be overwhelming.  This week I received a letter from a sister in Christ who has recently been moved from maximum security prison to a medium facility.  I would like to share a quote from her letter.  “As for me-living right smack in the middle of 120 women drives me even more to live my life loved in my Father because there is NO hiding it behind closed doors.”  I cannot begin to fathom the challenge of that kind of life.  Being a follower of Christ, a home-schooling mom I have felt at times like I live under a  microscope.  All my choices are judged and my relationship to God valued on the basis of that judgment.  Scrutinized in this way can really drive one to put a mask on and hide.  As I live my life loved more and more I care less and less about being judged.  As I experience the freedom that comes with living more loved I feel less compelled to defend my choices.  Discovered this passage in The Message(Luke 12:1-3) this week, Jesus is addressing his disciples warning them about the Pharisee yeast,

“You can’t keep your true self hidden forever; before long you’ll be exposed.  You can’t hide behind a religious mask forever; sooner or later the mask will slip and your true face will be known.”

Have ever felt your mask slip and then the resident anxiety that the slipping of your mask brings?  I think it’s a gift from above that we can’t keep our true selves hidden forever.  I know that now but not the first time.  The first time brought panic.  I didn’t know what true face was gonna look like.  I kind of like her now.  She’s almost pretty.  Her conscience is cleaner than she has ever known.  Being known this way feels like home to me.          Joni