'If you play a little rough, you get respect. And with respect you get just a little bit more space on the ice.' Gordie Howe
This man was one of the toughest and most talented men to ever play hockey. He was also one of the most brutal but he did it to get space.
"He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me." 2 Samuel 22:20
Maybe the tough people in our lives are just using their elbows to get space but God gives us space that we could never get using our natural strength.
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Showing posts with label Space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Space. Show all posts
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
The Warm Orbit
This morning I was thinking about God's attributes like the orbits of planets in the solar system.
Justice being the outer orbit... colder and wider. In order to approach the sun you must pass through this outer orbit. Justice is barely warm. It is changeless. In those outer orbits the sun is dim, far away and distant.
The expressions of God's love and mercy are in this sweet spot orbit (like the Earth is in). Any closer and we would burn up but any farther away we would freeze. Life takes place in this narrow circular band.
Justice must be satisfied before a person can approach love.
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." - John 10:1-3 ESV
It is possible to approach this zone of life at too steep of an angle or at the wrong speed and just pass on through only to burn up as you get close or overshoot it entirely.
"But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever." - Jude 1:10-13 ESV
Jesus is our Shepard navigator. He opens the door and travels at just the right speed with just the right spin. When captured by His gravity He keeps others in the right orbit also. If you miss Him you miss your only chance. Other teachers have gravity but their ideas have set them off course casting them out into the cold. The warmth they felt was only momentary.
I am just using a little science to illustrate a truth. Some folks think that space is the answer for the future of the human race. That our origins came from out there in the blackness somewhere and answers will be found out there eventually by our ingenuity and exploration.
I am all for exploration but I think what we want is close by and not far away.
Spiritually we need to pass through judgement to find mercy. The cross is where we do just that. God came to us to give us answers. He did not come as an alien being from a different planet. He left a throne room of light in the highest Heaven to descend into His own creation so that we could be warmed by love and mercy and thrive again.
Find Jesus and you will find the sweet spot where life will thrive. His orbit will bring us right where we want to go.
---
Justice being the outer orbit... colder and wider. In order to approach the sun you must pass through this outer orbit. Justice is barely warm. It is changeless. In those outer orbits the sun is dim, far away and distant.
The expressions of God's love and mercy are in this sweet spot orbit (like the Earth is in). Any closer and we would burn up but any farther away we would freeze. Life takes place in this narrow circular band.
Justice must be satisfied before a person can approach love.
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." - John 10:1-3 ESV
It is possible to approach this zone of life at too steep of an angle or at the wrong speed and just pass on through only to burn up as you get close or overshoot it entirely.
"But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion. These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever." - Jude 1:10-13 ESV
Jesus is our Shepard navigator. He opens the door and travels at just the right speed with just the right spin. When captured by His gravity He keeps others in the right orbit also. If you miss Him you miss your only chance. Other teachers have gravity but their ideas have set them off course casting them out into the cold. The warmth they felt was only momentary.
I am just using a little science to illustrate a truth. Some folks think that space is the answer for the future of the human race. That our origins came from out there in the blackness somewhere and answers will be found out there eventually by our ingenuity and exploration.
I am all for exploration but I think what we want is close by and not far away.
Spiritually we need to pass through judgement to find mercy. The cross is where we do just that. God came to us to give us answers. He did not come as an alien being from a different planet. He left a throne room of light in the highest Heaven to descend into His own creation so that we could be warmed by love and mercy and thrive again.
Find Jesus and you will find the sweet spot where life will thrive. His orbit will bring us right where we want to go.
---
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
The Need For Space
The last few days I have been thinking about 'structured living' and how useful it is. The trains run on time because there is a structure to the process that many people adhere to. The train schedule we see is just the surface schedule that is seen by the passengers behind that schedule are maintenance schedules and a hundred other schedules only a select few see. But, the result is that at 10:03am the door opens, we get in, and we sit down to go where we need to be.
We need structure so that we can have order but we also need to have space.
"Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me." - Psalm 18:15-19 ESV
When the schedules behind our visible schedules are revealed we are overwhelmed. God must structure our lives with grace is order for us to function according to our design. He must bring us to the wide place of freedom. No program is going to get us there.
Perhaps the 'strong enemy' is the program that wants to swallow us up and spit out a little drone that just functions well in the systems of the world... be here... do this... say that... lean right... disagree with them.
"Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.
Like the partridge that gathers a brood that she did not hatch, so is he who gets riches but not by justice; in the midst of his days they will leave him, and at his end he will be a fool.
A glorious throne set on high from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living water.
Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise." - Jeremiah 17:7-14 ESV
The tree that sends out roots by faith looking for the water has a structure but that structure is not imposed on others. The tree looks for water and we send roots out to the sanctuary that we are given. It is right beside us. In times of drought it is right there and full of life that will result in fruit season after season.
But, If we sit on the eggs of our own structures or ones that have been imposed on us those eggs may hatch but they won't be ours. Those birds will fly away and become little Ishmaels (mocking children born of our effort but not of faith).
God's wide place produces fruit like Isaac and those children are of us and they become a heritage.
I want structure. It is useful but the most important structure is the one that directs me to put down roots by faith. It is the redemptive structure that consistently seeks to save with seeds of grace words and Gospel hope.
--
We need structure so that we can have order but we also need to have space.
"Then the channels of the sea were seen, and the foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, O LORD, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils. He sent from on high, he took me; he drew me out of many waters. He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me." - Psalm 18:15-19 ESV
When the schedules behind our visible schedules are revealed we are overwhelmed. God must structure our lives with grace is order for us to function according to our design. He must bring us to the wide place of freedom. No program is going to get us there.
Perhaps the 'strong enemy' is the program that wants to swallow us up and spit out a little drone that just functions well in the systems of the world... be here... do this... say that... lean right... disagree with them.
"Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.
Like the partridge that gathers a brood that she did not hatch, so is he who gets riches but not by justice; in the midst of his days they will leave him, and at his end he will be a fool.
A glorious throne set on high from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake you shall be put to shame; those who turn away from you shall be written in the earth, for they have forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living water.
Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved, for you are my praise." - Jeremiah 17:7-14 ESV
The tree that sends out roots by faith looking for the water has a structure but that structure is not imposed on others. The tree looks for water and we send roots out to the sanctuary that we are given. It is right beside us. In times of drought it is right there and full of life that will result in fruit season after season.
But, If we sit on the eggs of our own structures or ones that have been imposed on us those eggs may hatch but they won't be ours. Those birds will fly away and become little Ishmaels (mocking children born of our effort but not of faith).
God's wide place produces fruit like Isaac and those children are of us and they become a heritage.
I want structure. It is useful but the most important structure is the one that directs me to put down roots by faith. It is the redemptive structure that consistently seeks to save with seeds of grace words and Gospel hope.
--
Monday, January 5, 2015
Traveling In Time And Space
In a way knowing the finished work makes us time travelers. Strangers trapped in time and space with knowledge of the far future and the distant past. Grace is the attitude we adopt when we see things from eternal perspective.
If we walk only by what we see or by how we feel, we will never understand life. Life is given by God and it is a puzzle that is missing pieces if it experienced by the senses alone.
"Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." - Matthew 15:14 ESV
Someone must see beyond the situation. A grace person is visionary. They look for something that only God sees and receiving something from God that only God gives.
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," - Ephesians 2:4-6 ESV
"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" - Romans 8:29-31 ESV
Jesus, Eternal God, was born as a baby and had to learn who He was. We are born again and have to learn who we are. Just as it is heresy to say Jesus was not human in every way it is error to say believers are somehow more but a spiritual sense that was dead is made alive when we first believed. Our spirit responds when we hear grace and our spirit prompted by the Holy Spirit sees with eyes of grace in situations that add an element that the five senses could never pick up.
"Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power." - Colossians 2:8-10 NKJV
"The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 'For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ." - 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 ESV
We all know people who are very good at puzzles. They can do a lot with the pieces they have to survive and come to complicated conclusions. By predicting human nature they can forecast outcomes with degrees of accuracy. But faithless forecasting is spiritually blind and provides blind leadership.
Grace is the missing puzzle piece. It is what makes sense of human history. It is what makes sense of our personal life.
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." - John 1:14 ESV
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a NKJV
How can love be this way? It can be this way because it understands beyond the five senses. It originates outside of time and space but is manifested in the moment.
"so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us," - Ephesians 3:17-20 ESV
The cross was a defining event in history. It changed the potential course of every human life. The broad road leads to destruction but this road paved by the cross is narrow but it leads to eternal life. If we know Jesus it is because we took the road less traveled and have an awareness of that alternate road.
Today is another day to walk as called out ones thinking and dealing with people and issues as if we have read the last page of the book. Our senses can rule us but if we are stirred up in the truth we can also live another way and function in the grace and mercy that will outshine time.
If we walk only by what we see or by how we feel, we will never understand life. Life is given by God and it is a puzzle that is missing pieces if it experienced by the senses alone.
"Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." - Matthew 15:14 ESV
Someone must see beyond the situation. A grace person is visionary. They look for something that only God sees and receiving something from God that only God gives.
"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," - Ephesians 2:4-6 ESV
"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" - Romans 8:29-31 ESV
Jesus, Eternal God, was born as a baby and had to learn who He was. We are born again and have to learn who we are. Just as it is heresy to say Jesus was not human in every way it is error to say believers are somehow more but a spiritual sense that was dead is made alive when we first believed. Our spirit responds when we hear grace and our spirit prompted by the Holy Spirit sees with eyes of grace in situations that add an element that the five senses could never pick up.
"Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power." - Colossians 2:8-10 NKJV
"The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 'For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ." - 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 ESV
We all know people who are very good at puzzles. They can do a lot with the pieces they have to survive and come to complicated conclusions. By predicting human nature they can forecast outcomes with degrees of accuracy. But faithless forecasting is spiritually blind and provides blind leadership.
Grace is the missing puzzle piece. It is what makes sense of human history. It is what makes sense of our personal life.
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." - John 1:14 ESV
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a NKJV
How can love be this way? It can be this way because it understands beyond the five senses. It originates outside of time and space but is manifested in the moment.
"so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us," - Ephesians 3:17-20 ESV
The cross was a defining event in history. It changed the potential course of every human life. The broad road leads to destruction but this road paved by the cross is narrow but it leads to eternal life. If we know Jesus it is because we took the road less traveled and have an awareness of that alternate road.
Today is another day to walk as called out ones thinking and dealing with people and issues as if we have read the last page of the book. Our senses can rule us but if we are stirred up in the truth we can also live another way and function in the grace and mercy that will outshine time.
--
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