The Lie (2).

What is a Lie, but the promotion or protection of our will over all others.  If we Lie because we say we want to protect others, then we are in fact saying that we know what's best.  We are declaring that we do not trust Christ to work out his will.  We are taking it upon ourselves to rule, to betray him for our own status or our own comfort.  A Lie is an obstruction.  A Lie prevents light from penetrating where it needs to go.  Whatever the reason may be, it is never God's intention for there to be darkness.  A friend reminded me that in heaven, there will not be any shade.  Such is the Light of Christ that it is all encompassing and no shadows can be found.

Truth is hard.  Being a Christian is hard.  Sometimes I wonder if I do a disservice to my Faith because I talk so much about how hard it is to follow Christ.  But the reality of this world is that the hard things remain.  Truth haunts us whether we are believers or not.  That is why knowing who Jesus is, who he really is, is so powerful.  He is a sweet and powerful Light that comes to shine into the dark parts of our hearts and show us love, real love.  And once you have been given a glimpse of that saving light, it then becomes necessary to remind yourself and others that darkness cannot be tolerated.  It's hard, but it's not complicated...Thou Shall Not Lie.  It's not a matter of will, it's a matter of release and surrender.  It's not that you shouldn't lie, it's that you don't need to lie.  Thy Will be done.

Element: Prayer and Resistance.

I was praying for someone recently.  They were and are in great pain and we were praying for relief and healing.  I believe in the power of Jesus Christ to heal, I have faith in him.  However, I was not confidant that this man would be healed by way of my prayers.  But I hoped he would and still do.  I'm now untangling some things in my head as I think about it.  Here is the tricky part.  God put me in position to pray for that man, yet it feels now that I was very much in the way of his healing.  I was simultaneously the conduit and the barrier.  Christ put me there to call on his power to be a vessel to carry his love and healing.  It is true that we as believers are the only hands and feet on earth that God possesses.  I was there.  I was willing.  God is able.  So what happened?  There was too much of me in the way.  Pride is a funny, sinister thing.  It has a special power to make a man think so much of himself by way of thinking so little of himself.  Self doubt combined with lack of humility prevented the free flow of the Grace of God.  I, myself, was in the way.  It wasn't the doubt, because I was only doubting myself, not God.  It was my very conscious presence, my inability to get out of the way.  This is struggle to live as John the Baptist says, "I must decrease, that he may increase."  

I will give myself some Grace.  I'm just not there yet, but I want to be.  I want to be less, so he can be more.  I thought my self deprecation was humility, but it was not.  It was just a clever way of being self focused.  God is working his will out in me, yet I'm still very much in his way, but I pray I'm getting better.  Awareness helps.  Until it doesn't.  Such a subtle thing, to be made aware of something and then have to work to shed it from being a diversion.  

A heating element is terribly inefficient by design.  There is so much resistance in the conductor that as electricity tries to move through, the element become very hot.  Sometimes we as the hands and feet of God think it's our jobs to get as heated as possible for Christ.  The reality is that we are to remove the resistance, remove ourselves so that we may more and more efficiently conduct the Grace and Love of God to others.  We are here simply to receive and distribute Christ to a weary world that needs it.  They don't need the heat of our resistance and insistence of our will.  They need the unobstructed power of the living God.  We must get in position and then get out of the way.