The "Holidays" Aka the Christmas STory,

So because it is near Christmas I suppose I should write something on how I feel about the holidays.

I lived with the Spirit of Christmas for my first two years in college. My appropriate response to my roommate who watch elf at least once a week starting right after Halloween was to be the nastiest Grinch on the floor. I actually was nick named the Grinch for two years and it still comes up time and again.

However, I enjoy the holidays, I guess I shouldn't call them the holidays because I have never cared to be politically correct.

So I have always enjoyed Christmas but I have never really understood it.

Now I know that I am not stupid but I guess I have never grasped in my own life the impact of the Christmas story.

It's kind of like communion, which I just recently got a real taste of.

You do it, because every one else is doing it and it's written in the Bible but you don't really know why you are doing it.

Then you learn why but you still have that misunderstanding, almost like that well I should do this even though I don't understand why it's such a big deal, but everyone else is making it such a big deal so I might as well too...right?

That is how I feel about Christmas.

It's originally about Christ.

I guess.

But it doesn't seem to matter because I have not been able to grasp it in my own life.

I guess I just don't get it.

And you can use words to explain it and so can I. But words only go so far, and experience only goes so far, and prayer only goes so far, and scripture only goes so far.

It's the fact that I need to collide with the Christmas story to understand it and to start living it out.

Why faith is dirty.

I was talking to a guy that works at my college about women preachers, simply because he was asking about what I wanted to do after I graduated and we ended up on women who are preaching today.

He had brought up Joyce Meyer and Beth Moore and we were discussing the difference in generations.

I think that these amazing teachers and preachers have an audience of middle aged women whom have had children and whom have been married. Which is great because they need Jesus too and they need to be discipled as well.

But I don't connect with either of these women. Maybe it's because I am a pessimist or maybe it's because I am a cynic. I don't really know.

So while I was communicating that this is a generational thing this guy wanted me to give an example so I told him this.

To them God is good so God sent his son to die for us.

To us Jesus came and saved us and it's because God is good.

To them hope is there and seen and felt.

To us hope is a distant thing that we need to collide with.

To them the church is made up of 'good' Christians.

To us the church is made up of people who are a mess and who are trying to live.

To them faith is a soft compacted manageable thing.

To us faith is dirty and beautiful and untamed.

And that is where I ended. Faith is a gift that has been given to man to use and mold and learn. God doesn't give us gifts to just look at and play with once in a while. They are meant to be used and molded and communicated.

Faith isn't logical. It isn't easily explained. It allows people to follow the Holy Spirit and it shows the world what the biggest difference is between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of men.

I mean you can look at any character in the Bible that is used by God and see that the culture around this individual thought they were out of their mind. Abraham was going to sacrifice his human son, Noah built a big boat, Moses wanted to lead millions of people from oppression, Jonah ended up in a fish, Mary was given the opportunity to mother the Savior of our fallen existence, these men and women were all considered crazies by there culture, because of their faith.

It's funny because we so crave for a revolution. We long for something to change, so we help the poor and we love people, and we think that if we take our social justice and but it on a white banner that we will change the world.

How we are so easily deceived.

We have missed the faith part. The trusting part.

We need to fall to our knees and surrender. Because our logic won't save us from the dirty faith that is commanded to be harnessed in any person who calls themselves a Christ follower.

This dirty, beautiful, faith is the need that the church so longs for. The ability to follow the Holy Spirit without hesitation.

Big words are not the proof of spiritual maturity.

The faith to be obedient is.

Taking it all out.

So I very short and yet pointed question asked to me today by a friend.

"Do you love God just because of his Majesty?"

I asked the person to expound and he asked me the same question in a different way, "Do you love God because he has done all this stuff for you through Jesus or do you just love God?"

My immediate response was "I love God because I don't know how to love him without all that other stuff. I don't know why I should love him if Christ isn't involved."

My friend's response got me thinking, "Well God gave you life, you should love him just for that."

So I started thinking about that statement, and I came to the realization that if I were to love God because he gave me my existence it still would be a conditional kind of love. I would love God simply because he gave me something. So in essence I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the reality of loving God without it being reactionary. I cannot love God on my own because I simply don't know how to love without loving through reaction which is where the post I just recently blogged about gets hairy because if you are supposed to love in a unconditional manner than the reaction of your life is not supposed to deter that kind of love.

I am not allowed to love in a reactionary way however, I seem to be trapped in reactionary loving. I love because.

But then I start to look at my newly founded relationship with Waylon. I am in love with Waylon and I don't know why. I guess you could say, we are compatible, or I love him because, but then I have those days where I just love him and there is no reason and there is no reaction but because it's just the reality of my life. Then I think whether I would love him even if he did not love me back and I come to the conclusion that I would. If Waylon decided to leave me tomorrow I would still love him. Because the love I have for him is not a worldly love. If my love for Waylon was worldly it would be very easy to stop loving him because a worldly love is flawed and corrupt and isn't truly love. But because this love comes from God I can love him in a deeper sense.

Or I take my niece for another example. There is no way that my niece has done anything for my love. I mean she just was born four years ago and walked into my life and the love just blossomed. There is a love there that I don't understand and only comes from God. It's a love that leaves me speechless at times and allows me to realize that I am very very small in a very big story.

So maybe the love that is embedded in my life is not just reactionary but is just slowly being portrayed through different people. I can love God without it being a reaction because I am commanded to do so, but I feel like it goes much farther than that. It is not just a commandment but it is a planted thing. And when the love I have for God and for myself and for other people is watered and put out in the sun and nurtured the love grows and it's grows like a vine grows on a house. There is no stopping it and it tangles around everything and in everything and through everything.

So the question still remains; Can I love God solely and individually without any help?

And my answer is no. I can not love God first because He loved us first. It was His hand that reached out to us and I can grasp this love and unfold it as I encounter the different aspects of who He is through different experiences, scripture, prayer, and relationships.

Loving You Back

So yesterday I came to a short realization that is going to lead to a long resolution. God doesn't call people to love you back.

I was thinking about the greatest commandment, "Love the Lord with all your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself" Matthew 22:37-39

The Light Bulb came and I realized that I should stop expecting people to love me back.

Now, most of you out there reading this will find this to be quite unbelievable but let me explain to you why I have come to this conclusion.

Christ commands us to live three things out through this passage. He first commands us to love the Lord our God with everything. Not just with two or three parts of our lives but with every part of our life.

Second he calls us to love ourselves. Now this is generally overlooked because most of the time people immediately go to love your neighbor because it is the first part of the next commandment however, one cannot love their neighbor without first loving themselves. And one cannot love themselves without first loving God with everything they are. So in essence one who does not know God does not know how to love.

So if you didn't catch it before let me show you again in a list form;

1. Love God with everything.
2. Love ourselves.
3. Love our neighbor.

Well that's all fine and dandy but what should I do when I don't feel loved back? When I don't feel like I should be loved back? How should I react and treat the people around me who marginalize my ideas and my lifestyle?

God did not call us to love in a reactionary way.

It's interesting that we, as a consumerist society become so entrapped with being loved. We long so deeply for someone to understand us. We long so deeply to be whole and the only way this is to happen is through someone to make us whole.

However, this is not the case in concern with the life that Christ commands of us. He commands us to love the Lord with everything, Love ourselves with the Lord's love and love our neighbor.

No where in there does it say: Love others to make them whole, Love others so they will love you back, Love others so you may be whole.

The reason I have used this conditional love is because I have grown up in a culture of condition. 'I will give you this, if you give me that. I will love you if you do this for me. I will cherish you only if you help me out. But watch out because when I have a bad day, you will not be loved. When you don't do things that make me happy my love is not for you.'

So many times I have tried to earn this love from other people. I have tried to be good enough, or smart enough, or funny enough, or savvy enough, or culturally acceptable enough for the people that I so crave love from to love me.

But I don't have to be any of those things anymore. I can just be me. I am good just the way that I am. And I didn't find this out on my own but I let someone in who has the ability to tell me that I am good enough and that I can not earn grace but that it's a gift.

So I will strive to do what I have tattooed on my arm.

Love Recklessly. Another layer has unfolded in the revelation of what God's love truly is.

Sermon on the Mount

"Now when he saw the crowd he went up on a mountianside and sat down. The disciples came to him and he began to teach them saying;

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for rightesousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted becuase of rightesousness for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you because of me. For great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."

Matthew 5:1-12

I am required to memorize Matthew 5-7 for a class. Now I started off thinking that I would just be able to get away with memorizing it and not letting it memorize me. haha. That is not seeming to happen though. I can't help but meditate on what I am memorizing. It seems to be something I am breathing in now throughout the day.

So I am going to go devotionally through the book of Matthew. I am probably going to blog about it since that's what I do. I hope you enjoy it. If you don't well then don't come to my blog for a while because that is what I will probably focusing on for a while.

Something Misunderstood.

This morning I got overwhelmed with the reality that I feel like the church is faltering.

I am reading a book and I just got this overwhelming feeling that it's all hopeless. Now I write this while knowing who Christ is. I write this while having collided with Christ on countless accounts.

He is the truth.

But there are days where my sin gets the best of me. Where I feel like I am swallowed up in my transgressions and in the hopelessness of this world. It's kind of like quick sand. I feel like I am reaching out to something that I can't really reach and my lungs are filling with sand.

On these days my soul aches and the darkness of the spiritual realm becomes overbearing. I don't want to get out of bed. I don't want to interact in community. I don't want to live. I want to be what I feel. I want to let the darkness erode my being along with my soul. The hardest part of this process is the people that I am surrounded with. I try to communicate what I am going through and laughter precedes it because I am being over dramatic or unrealistic. When I get laughed at I pull back fast and I walk away and feel misunderstood. Sometimes the deepness of the spiritual warfare cannot be explained but needs to just be, and hopefully you will get through it. This spiritual warfare should be addressed communally but when your community finds you fantastical either because they are afraid of having these conversations or they simply just do not believe you, it's hard to be transparent.

I want to stick my head in the sand like an ostrich and let the world pass me by, but I know that I need to sit up and put my feet on the ground. I need to go through the day even when the day seems to allude my senses. I can no longer become lost in the opinions of what the Christians and the non Christians all push and pull around on their bandwagons.

So I will grapple for the truth as I sit here and combat the spiritual darkness that pierces every pore of my body.

It's one life that defeated the darkness and that life is the life that I find my identity and dive into.

Hey, I got engaged.

I have seen and heard about so many churches and how they have been slowly dying. These churches were at one point in history the thriving, communal place to be, but for some reason the old is really getting old and the newly birthed churches are blowing up. I sit back, in a town of ten thousand with at least five different denominational churches and realize even now that these churches are not reaching a good portion of the demographic. If it’s like this in Lincoln where one of the best Bible College’s remains what is like in other small towns where the strong presence of a bible college is missing? So I must come to some conclusion for the declension in the life of the church. I could easily say it’s the culture’s fault, but when has that excuse ever worked? I know I need to look deeper and the reality that I keep coming back to is that the church does not know how to dance.

I have always loved to dance with a partner, because it makes things so much more interesting. Everyone dances differently and so you get a different kind of dance with every single person. You could be dancing the same dance with two different people and it will leave you in a different state of being. The most interesting thing that I have noticed about a dance is that someone needs to lead. Without a leader the dance does not seem to go anywhere and body parts seem to flay in destructive ways. Heads bump into each other, arms flay and legs get twisted. Someone inevitably gets hurt and both of the embarrassed dancers walk off the dance floor, not only licking their physical wounds but also licking their wounded pride. But, when there is leader present the dance becomes a beautiful wonder. There is a movement that the audience can not deny and it sweeps both the dancers and the spectators.

The church has lost its vigor to dance. It has lost it's want to partner with the Holy Spirit and follow the Holy Spirit around in a erotic and sensual dance that will leave the church intimately reformed.

Missing the Holy Moment

I recently just went to a Switchfoot concert. The last time I went to one of their concerts was when I was a junior in high school in Chicago. The funny thing is that I have a specific memory from that concert.

I went with a couple of student community leaders from our student group and a couple other high schoolers. I remember that Nick and I were sitting on a bench at 11 o 'clock at night and we were talking about colleges. I still was wavering from the Bible College realm to the University realm. Journalism or Ministry? Nick told me that he thought I would grow more efficiently at a Bible College with a Christian roommate than with a roommate that came back to the room drunk.

Weird how that conversation stuck in my mind. It seemed to be a necessary Holy Moment, even though I didn't realize it.

Well I went to this Switchfoot concert with Waylon and his youth group. It was fun because the concert floor wasn't packed so you didn't feel like you were being suffocated by people. We heard Ruth, Reliant K and then Switchfoot came on stage.

There seemed to be a weight to there music that didn't seem to be found in the other bands. So we were watching them and thoroughly enjoying them and the singer started singing a song and started moving through the audience. He ended up about ten feet away from us and it was amazing how people gravitated to him and tried to touch him. It was a weird reality.

So the lead singer was having this moment in the audience and most of the audience was captivated by this moment. They understood the weight in the air and the mass behind the message. But, there were those who didn't get it, and didn't care much for the message. They were loud and obnoxious and extremely distracting.

It wasn't just that they were distracting it was that they were distracting the community from the Holy moment presented. From the Holy message that was trying to be relayed.

How many times do we miss the Holy Moment because we are not looking for it, or because we like hearing our own voices more than anything?

Does the church ever get to lost in it's own 'mission' and 'vision' that it misses the holy moment?

The Beauty of Sacrafice Cont'd.

So, I was preaching at a local church near Lincoln and the topic that we were trying to hit was; What does sacrifice look like in your daily life?

There was a question-answer part of the sermon at the very end, and the question above was given to me. I actually received most of my questions a couple days beforehand so I could think about how I would respond in the moment.

While thinking about sacrifice, the first thought was children. So many times parents sacrifice everything for their children. They bank everything on their children's future because they want to see and give them the best.

God is kind of like that. He sacrificed everything so that we might have life, and have it to the fullest.

While this sacrifice actuality is looked upon negatively at first, when one looks deeper into this idea there is something much greater.

There is Beauty. This great beauty is the after effect of this sacrifice. This beauty emulates the life that is given after the death has been taken.

And this beauty cannot be tamed. Just like the life that is given cannot be tamed. It can be self-disciplined to obey it's master, but if the master has sacrificed everything for it's servant than the beauty of it cannot be denied. The loyalty of the servant cannot be deterred or hidden. The servant who fully grasps this beauty and this life will do anything and everything for it, including sacrificing anything and everything for it.

We can try to look at this life in a purely logical way but logic cannot analyze and determine beauty. It cannot take beauty and tame it. It cannot tell beauty where to go and what to do because there is too much overflow. True beauty cannot be tapped.

This is where I turn when I see despair and desolation around me. When I watch the news and all I hear about is more school shootings and sexual abuse. When I see sin encroaching in every relationship that I am in.

I go back to the sacrifice that was made and the life that was birthed and the beauty that was and is clearly showcased and overflowing.

Because there truly is beauty to sacrifice.

There is beauty in sacrafice.

More on this later.

On my own terms

So I went to a random class yesterday and heard this really smart, soon to be professor, teach.

And he kept using this phrase that I caught onto.

"On my own terms"

He was referring to Christ and was discussing the reactions of the many people in the Old and the New Testament in concern to this phrase.

I have always realized this and even lived it out myself but sometimes you hear something old for the first time again. When I look into the New Testament and see all of Christ's interactions with people it's amazing how many times people come to Christ with "their own terms."

And how many times do I come to Christ "on my own terms" hoping that what I imagine will come true. What I fantasize and romanticize might be the truth when in all actuality I'm totally off mark.

I wonder if we come to Jesus on our own terms as the church?

I wish none of this had happened... So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. -J.R.R. Tolkein

Jews and socialism

A freshmen just asked me if I hated Jews...

huh?

also I believe that our country is heading towards the slippery slope of socialism, this I concur from the fact that I think Hilary Clinton will get the presidency because there is a governmental conspiracy.

The government is unfortunately not for the people anymore.

Sorry to break the news I'm sure I'm not the first, but if i disappear you all know why.

Deterioration

Do you ever feel like you are slowly deteriorating? I mean your insides. On the outside you look normal, but the insides are being slowly chipped away. Most of us don't really know why that is, so we try to use a natural medication for a supernatural epidemic.

However, I don't really think it works out, because there will always be that one moment when we will be left with ourselves. There will be an eventual moment when everything is torn away and we are left with what we have and want we sadly do not have.

This is why movies like Garden State, Elizabethtown, The Last Kiss, and The eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are so stinking popular because, they are clips of that slight moment. This moment seems to strip us of our doing and forces us to reckon with ourselves.

This reality strips us naked and leaves us out to freeze in the cold of loneliness and desperation. This cold ripples our skin and strips the marrow from our bones. It melts our fleshy surface, and leaves us with our soul to dry up in the wind.

While we are caught up in this moment we have a decision to make. Now I could be very limited and tell you that you only have two choices, but that would be very sardonic of my own existence. So I cannot give you only two choices but I must realize that you do have to make a choice because repetition is not truly possible, and the ascetic cannot be lived out.

Alas, we are called to make a slight decision to determine how we are going to react to our 'real' selves if they even exist, outside ourselves.

A Dream

So, I had yet another dream. This is not unfamiliar in the life of one Alison Higgins, but this specific dream was more like a parable than a weird dream.

Let me paint a picture for you of what I saw.

The setting was a street. There was nothing around except for two lawn chairs on the opposites sides of the streets. One was white and orange and one was lime green and white. The street was in a dessert and there were mountains in the distance.

And a man walked up in a blue button down shirt. He was older and if you looked closely you would see that he had been weathered by the storms of life. However, if you looked closely at his eyes you would see the laugh lines around his eyes. He sat down in the lime green chair.

Then along came a young man. This man was wearing a pink athletic shirt. There wasn't many things defined in this young man. All I know is that he was big. Not fat but big.

He sat down in the orange and white chair.

There was a short exchange between the both of them.

"I really like your shirt," the young man said to the old man.

"Well, that's interesting. I would be willing to lend it to you."

Then suddenly the young man and the old man both took their shirts off and switched.

They put on the other's shirts and walked away. Leaving the two chairs and the sun setting in the distance.

Something to say and someone to say it to.

I have really nothing to say. I am actually dry as a bone. I have written something about the game scrabble and defined more categories as a good modernist should but it doesn't seem to be worth any thing.

There has been a strange shift in my reality lately and I have a hard time dealing with it. I have found someone who wants to love and serve me selflessly. I have found someone who truly means the world to me and I have never been accustomed to that. I have always been the lone ranger, or the bitter romantic who knew that she was never going to have the "happy ever after" simply because she never had the "once upon a time" I look back on my life and have come to a realization.

As most of you know I used to scorn romantic relationships. I had no fervor for the romantic and I considered it a waste of time. But I secretly struggled with it, because I felt like it was never going to happen. It was a weird sword fight of wanting something holy and rejecting the whole idea. I guess I figured the goodness that I was looking for was never going to happen so I shoved it away and covered it up with the logic of faith and the reason of love. The problem with my sealed solution is that it logically and reasonably couldn't function.

I actually remember hearing a couple on campus use an analogy for relationships. They said that if you and the person next to you are running toward the Lord together you know you are supposed to be together. I walked away and I came up with my own analogy. I figured if you are running toward the Lord and the other person is running toward the Lord and the three of you collide that is when you know, and I have carried that around with me for three years.

I didn't want something mediocre. I didn't want something to pass the time. I had no desire of getting into a relationship and getting married and settling down and being the quaint house wife that cooks dinner. I am not a cook in the first place and I certainly am not quaint by any means. So I figured I would chuck the whole thing out the window and become content with being single and living a life that was determined on following God. I came to that point three months ago. I was determined to go to school and follow the Holy Spirit around like a love sick puppy dog.

And I did, the problem is that He led me into a relationship that I was apparently fully ready for but was certainly not prepared for. And so I found myself in a place with a man named Waylon Lawrence whom I had known briefly the year before but had not passed much time with. The thing about Waylon is that he was content with God too. He wasn't looking for anything out of the ordinary and then we seemed to stumble into each other and fall into God's ultimate power, which suits us because we are both fully clumsy individuals.

Waylon has become the love of my life. I would try to explain it but it would seem superfluous and silly. I would sound like a child using words that I can't grasp nor fully understand. And so I will just say that he is my beloved and that I would proclaim it to anyone, anywhere, and at any time of the day.

And the best part is that I haven't stopped following the Holy Spirit. Now I just get to do it in an even better way because Waylon catches things that I don't, and sees things that I can't see. Lucas posted a comment that if you want to do great things for God remain single and if you want to know God get married and have a family.

Well I am saying I am going to do great things for God with Waylon because God is great and his greatness will shine through.

Like I said, not much to say simply because what I am going through I can not fully explain using words. They just don't seem to matter or make any sense at this point. Maybe I will get my words back some day I will be able to explain it but I'm not banking on it.

Cling to the Living.

If you know me well you know that I would never tell you that I have been fully saved. I never had that moment where I "turned my life around" I would even go as far to say that I don't think that a person can be fully saved. I would however, say that I am constantly being converted.

God is constantly giving me chances to follow and I am hesitantly getting better at obeying his requests. I came to a point this last summer when I realized that everyday I get up and the only thing that is keeping me alive is Christ. I figured when I came to that conclusion I should start living that way.

Well I am a consistent frequenter of postsecret.com and I saw this postcard this week. I have been doing some major reflecting in the last two days and when I saw this it reminded me of my past life. I don't want to say my old life because each day I am being given a chance for my present life to win out and my past life to be what it should be, the past. So I saw this postcard and started thinking about the past. My great grandma started this whole dying thing off when I was in seventh grade and it didn't end until my Senior year of high school. I had seven people die in the time frame of five years. And this is the first time that I have publicly written it out. I don't like talking about death. Every time I bring someone home my mom will talk about high school and how hard it was for me and I get really emotional and avoid the conversation.

My friend Nick knows this about me. I don't like being in a very high strung emotional environment. Even if it is a celebration. I have a really hard time controlling my emotions and so the best thing is to turn them off and to let them go. I am getting better at it thanks to a God send but it's still really hard for me. I am so used to pulling away and separating myself from really emotional situations. That way I don't hurt anyone and I don't get hurt in the process.

That is the state that I have been living at and in the past that post card would ring very true in my life. I clung to the living but I do remember telling people that death and I where bed mates. While I clung to the living I did it out of selfish manipulation and self protection.

God has opened my eyes quite a bit in the last three years and has healed a lot of those wounds. I am still very sensitive when it comes to death and pain but I have come to the conclusion that God is my everything. I am learning that life tastes different when God is your everything, and while it's very hard sometimes, this life is so good.

Morning Conversation

"You have so many strikes against you...pretty much only by the grace of God are you going to get into Heaven"- Rob

"That's what I'm banking on"-Me.

I am the way the truth and the life.-Jesus

I am reading G.K. Chesterton write down. We have started conversing about his book Orthodoxy quite a bit and he hits on a lot of stuff that I have been thinking through in concern to theology and philosophy.

"Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immorality I need not to think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity."

For whoever wants to save his life will lost it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.-Jesus

So lets talk about this life idea. I have life. I come out breathing and screaming and in essence living. But what is the life that Jesus is talking about? I know that we walk around dead when we are sinners, but how are we walking around in death. In my mind death is the end of a living organism. Which means nothing will be walking around if it is dead. But then I think about Hell or what we view of Hell as the western church. If we are dead in hell then we are not living.

I guess I need to redefine death and redefine life for this paradox to truly make sense.