Until Christ Returns

If there is one testimony that I have it is not in what I have done or will do but my testimony is in Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.  If there is ever the opportunity I would challenge openness, honesty, and vulnerability.  I just completed a two part blog series on The Cost to Intimacy and The Cost to Intimacy - Taking Another Look and in this blog series I came with presenting a few challenges.  The first challenge was in the area of what I listed above... openness, honesty, and vulnerability.  The second challenge is in the area of counting the counting the cost to intimacy- our pride.  And then the third challenge I put out there was in the area of being willing to turn away from the counterfeit, letting go of all the ways in which we cover up and pretend to be somebody we're not  and being willing to turn away from anything that competes against our worship to God.  I came with one observation.  The observation that obedience is not what cultivates intimacy with Papa God our obedience is the fruit of intimacy with Papa God.  The one problem I see is that the church has great difficulty in being able to exist as one body and live in the grey and messy.  None of us are perfect, the body of Christ is filled with a bunch of broken people all whom have been born into a world subjected to the fall of creation.  If that were not so we would not have what is says in Romans 8:18-25, "I consider that our present sufferings is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us.  For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to the frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved.  But hope that is seen is no hope at all.  Who hopes for what they already have?  But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."  Let me ask you a question, as you journey in Christ what do you hope for?  Do you hope for healing and wholeness?  What does healing and wholeness look like?  In the passage of scripture mentioned above we see this tension that is at play.  It is the tension between the now but not yet Kingdom reality.  We have some of what is in God's Kingdom but we war against that which is in the earthly Kingdom... the one reality is the clashing of the two and the growing reality of heaven invading earth.  Can we see in our day the sons of God revealed upon the earth? I believe this is a growing reality when we stop living in our earthly Kingdom reality and we begin to live from a place of our citizenship in heaven and in that sense be participants of ushering in God's Kingdom here on earth.  This defies certain logic when the supernatural invades the natural.  The very resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is a very good example of this supernatural invading the natural not to mention the immaculate conception.  When Jesus walked on water the supernatural invaded the natural.  When Israel conquered a People significantly larger and more powerful the supernatural invaded the natural making possible for Israel to have favor and conquer the land before them.  If the journey of Israel's Exodus out of Egypt has any significant parallel for us today, we're standing before the land in which the Lord has given us but there are a People inhabiting the land that must be conquered. ~ Numbers 13:30-33

...and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight

Self perception is vitally important.  If we feel like a failure we will always be a failure and if we say that our past failure will dictate future failure we'll never be able to step into any kind of break through in our life, whether that break through is in the area of addictions or unhealthy relationships or it's in the area of our finances.  It's interesting with Israel, they viewed themselves as grasshoppers... so they were... Every time Israel saw what the Lord had given into their hands they moved forward in victory but when their focus shifted away from the promises of God they ended up wandering in the desert waiting for an entire generation to die.  There exists this point of tension and in this point of tension we are all in different places with different experiences--all of which calls for an allowance for the grey.  Things aren't always black and white or as cut and dry as we'd like them to be, we like to be comfortable and they grey is not  so comfortable.

My testimony kinda disturbs the comfortable as I allow for my faith journey to 

exist in a level of tension.    

When it comes to homosexuals coming to faith in Christ it becomes even more apparent that life in the body of Christ needs to allow for the grey because life is lived in the grey.  We are all at different places in the Lord and in our journey.  We are all in this process of being transformed into the likeness of Jesus and that process will look very different from one person to the next.  Who are we to dictate how or what one person's journey should look like?  Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that we should become relaxed in our theology.  I am a firm believer in knowing the word of God and applying the word of God to our daily lives and I am for an honest examination of what the bible really says about homosexuality.  Some people don't like this phrase but oh well, I'm for a second going to choose not to be Canadian here and regardless if this offends somebody or not, the bible is very clear on what it says regarding homosexuality.  This is my conviction, the bible does not affirm gay marriage as an alternate and equal expression of a marriage between one man and one woman.  The bible does in fact strongly suggest that anything outside of one man and one woman partnership is a broken expression of who we've been created to be as Image Bearers.  And if that is true there is potential for healing and restoration in Christ but to what extent... here lies the tension.  There is a contingent group of individuals who claim boldly and adamantly and quite vehemently that change is absolutely not possible and then there are those who expect for every single individual struggling with same sex attraction to one day wake up having gone from gay to straight almost overnight and perhaps with one deliverance session, bada-boom bada-bing abra-ca-dabra now claim you're straight and if you're not you're just not filled with enough faith or you're not praying hard enough or you're not reading the bible enough!  

With that kinda philosophy my concern is that somewhere behind this social and political debate the truth is not only kept veiled but the church fails then to value relationship and discipleship.  

Our churches and our Pastors need to value relationship and discipleship.  It is in relationship and discipleship we grow in Christian maturity and where we can begin to embrace the man or woman that God created us to be and there grow secure in our identity and be given the ability to then move forward in God's Kingdom as children of God regardless of the battle that still remains ahead of us.

For now we only see a reflection as in the mirror; Then we shall see face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.  And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love. 

~ 1 Corinthians 13:12-13

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His Image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, Who is the Spirit. 

~ 2 Corinthians 3:18

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth.  These are the things I will do.  I will not forsake them. 

~ Isaiah 42:16

Yes, there is freedom to be found in Christ from homosexuality.  Yes there is hope for wholeness in Christ and there is life beyond homosexuality.  Nobody said the journey would be easy... it is a life long process.  Now, how one gets from point A to point B may differ and perhaps it's not until Christ returns we finally arrive to point B.  I think there is a level of choice in operation  here.  We can choose to allow for our present reality to dictate our future reality or we can believe and trust in God and know that He is good and agree to walk with Him and believe and hope for more.  We can view ourselves as a sinner and struggler or we can view ourselves as the victor and the overcomer in Christ, a Saint and child of God.  I am a woman created in God's Image.  

I hope for a day and time when labels and terminology ceases to be of any value and we begin to place our value, our sense of worth, and our identity in Christ.