what I was like

You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion—how I violently persecuted God’s church. I did my best to destroy it. I was far ahead of my fellow Jews in my zeal for the traditions of my ancestors. But even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace. Then it pleased him to reveal his Son to me so that I would proclaim the Good News about Jesus to the Gentiles. When this happened, I did not rush out to consult with any human being. Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to consult with those who were apostles before I was. Instead, I went away into Arabia, and later I returned to the city of Damascus. Then three years later I went to Jerusalem to get to know Peter, and I stayed with him for fifteen days. The only other apostle I met at that time was James, the Lord’s brother. I declare before God that what I am writing to you is not a lie. After that visit I went north into the provinces of Syria and Cilicia. And still the Christians in the churches in Judea didn’t know me personally. All they knew was that people were saying, “The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!” And they praised God because of me.                        Galatians 1:13-24

 

You know what I was like. This is the gospel message we should live. Remembering—and reminding others of what we were like. Before.

 

Paul is looking back at things he would rather forget; things that were who he was before meeting Christ. Before coming to know and follow Jesus. Before his life was changed. And ultimately this is the gospel: being changed by Jesus in ways we cannot change ourselves. Being made whole again, a mending of the broken places. It’s not natural. We would all rather forget who we were before, how we used to act, the ways we used to think and used to speak. We can all look back and see what was—what we were—and usually we cringe.

 

There is this temptation in me to agree with all of this and assume it doesn’t really apply to me personally. After all, I came to know Christ as a young child. I was sinful, sure. But I didn’t have some dramatic turn around, some amazing conversion for wicked rebellion. I was a kid.

 

But I know what I was like 5 years ago. I know how I acted ten or fifteen years ago. I know what I was like before. I don’t think this is something that just applies to before we came to Christ, but at any point in our journey towards the Father we can look back and know what we were like before. We should always be able to see places we have grown or ways we have been mended. We should always be able to recognize the ways in which Christ is changing us.

 

I know the way I was before. I know the times when I thought I knew all the answers to everybody’s problems. I know what I was like when I thought I could do it on my own because I knew the Bible verses to recite. I know what I was like when I was trying to live for the future without allowing God to dig into and clean out the wounds of the past. I know what I was like.

 

And I know how my behavior has hurt people. I know the way dishonesty and secret-keeping has been damaging to relationships. I know how pride and fear have led me down paths of selfishness and self-centeredness. I know what I was like.

 

I am certainly not saying I have arrived or I am completely not like that any more. But this road to Jesus and with Jesus is a journey. I’m progressing. I know what I was like and how in so many ways I am not that way anymore. I know how in some ways I’m just not as much that way. I know that he is changing me, re-making me. I know what I was like and still he took me, still he loved me, still he saved me. And continues to.

 

And they praised God because of me. 

 

I love the way Paul ends this summary of his journey. They praised God because of him. Seeing the way God was working in him, knowing what he had been like, they could see that it was God, not Paul.

 

This should be us. This should be our lives too. So I’m carrying some questions with me today to evaluate if this is my story as it was Paul’s. Checking to see if there are things I should be surrendering so that it can be me. Would you carry them too?

 

Am I still living in the same damaging habits God has been calling me out of for some time?

 

Do I still fall back on the same lies so I can pretend to be someone I am not?

 

I know what I was like, how am I still like that? How has God changed me in recent years?

 

eternal

“What if they want to know who you are? What if they want to know who is sending me?”

 

These seem like good questions. Moses isn’t being unreasonable here (Exodus 3:13). He is just thinking ahead. What should he say if he goes to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and is challenged about who this God is? And so he asks and God responds with that famous and somewhat enigmatic name: I Am. Or in some translations, “I Am who I Am.”

 

God is saying, among other things that he is God of the now. He isn’t bound by time. He isn’t the God who was. He is now, where we are, when we are. He is God of every day and every time. God of every moment.

This is my eternal name, my name to remember for all generations.       Exodus 3:15

 

God is eternal. I don’t think I fully appreciate what that means. I want to, but it’s so other than everything I am familiar with. There is no context in my life for something with no beginning; something that will have no end or completion point. Everything I know and relate to wasn’t at some point…and then it was. Everything I know of will eventually pass away and become a “was” and a memory.

 

Except God. He is. He always is. A thousand years ago God is. A million years from now God is. This makes my brain hurt. God is not simply bigger than this moment I am living in. He is bigger than all moments, bigger than time. He is, no matter when. He always is.

 

God is eternal and if ever there was a thing about God that made him bigger and beyond us it is this. We are so confined by time and place and the present. We are so temporary and so now. God transcends it all. And perhaps the most amazing thing of all is that one day, at some moment in time we will be yanked out of time as well. We will exist in the eternal where God is. A where that isn’t really anywhere, but is everywhere.

 

It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.            1 Corinthians 15:52-53

 

It seems odd to wait in time for a moment in that time where time will be stripped away. And yet I wait. Anxiously wondering when forever will finally arrive. Why is it so slow in coming? Why does the eternal take so long to start?

 

In the meantime I will wait and wonder at the eternal God who makes the way out of time possible. His name is eternal because he is eternal. He is the God of every moment and he is not swayed or changed by the passing of time. Trying to comprehend this makes my head and my heart soar.

 

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.    Hebrews 13:8

 

new self

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.     Ephesians 4:22-24 

 

It would seem reasonable, even expected, that putting on a new self would be easy. What has the old self given us anyway? It’s broken after all! Why should we wear it’s ill-fitting, unflattering tatters any longer? It would seem reasonable that to be naked and without self at all would be a better option than clutching at what never really fit in the first place.

 

And yet we do. We hold tightly to the old self.

 

We’ve taken this new self—these rich robes like Joseph’s many colors—a gift from our Father. We’ve taken them and we celebrate them…and still we keep the old. Tucked back and away of course. Not worn everyday or everywhere, but still we tend to keep them.

 

Why is it that once we are made new we like to live as if we are left old? Why is it not so simple to turn and walk and never look back?

 

We know the truth of it: Our old self lies to us. Our old self has nothing to offer us. But it is ours. It feels like a belonging we fear to leave; albeit a hurtful belonging. And so we seek to live in Life while still clutching shattered death. We want to keep in step with the Spirit and walk the narrow way, but cannot seem to let go. It does not make sense and it is a daily struggle, this leaving.

 

Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!          2 Corinthians 5:17 MSG

 

Look at it! Look at this new life we’ve been given. See it in contrast to the life we’ve left. A fresh start, a clean slate, no remembering for yesterday’s corruption. We are new, may we leave the old behind.

 

when you were dead

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Colossians 2:13-15

Sometimes I read these verses and I just shake my head. Partly at the wonder of what it is Jesus has done and partly at the wonder of why we still live like we do. Look at the language used here. Almost all of it is past tense.

 

When you were dead…God made you alive.

 

He forgave…he cancelled…he has taken away

 

He disarmed…he made a public spectacle…

 

It’s done. Or as Jesus said, “It is finished.” There is no more to be accomplished and all our past mistakes and heartaches have no hold on us any longer. Too often though, I notice that these amazing facts don’t affect our daily lives nearly as much as they should.

 

Old habits, old behaviors, past attitudes and destructive ways of interacting with others—that’s not who you are any longer. When you accept Jesus as the one who forgave, cancelled, and took away. When you see him as the one who disarmed and is triumphing over all that old stuff in your life, then you are not those things any longer.

 

Did you notice that the only language here that isn’t past tense is the last act? “Triumphing over them by the cross.”

 

All our baggage, all our past, has been taken care of. It’s been forgiven, the debts we’ve accumulated with God are cancelled. The only thing still being done is the winning. And it’s being done over and over again. Day after day.

 

When Jesus died on the cross and brought about all the forgiving and cancelling and taking away, it wasn’t just so we could look forward to heaven some day, but also so we could live today. And live without the weight of past sins and pains. Live without the guilt or self-disappointment that comes from choosing wrongly and living wrongly.

 

As you go your way this week remember, when you were dead, God made you alive. He forgave, he cancelled, he has taken away. You aren’t dead any longer. You are forgiven and he is triumphing over it all.

 

plundered

 

But this is a people plundered and looted,
all of them trapped in pits
or hidden away in prisons.
They have become plunder,
with no one to rescue them;
they have been made loot,
with no one to say, “Send them back.”

Isaiah 42:22

 

Sometimes I feel like this. I feel plundered and looted. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like little more than a commodity, a tool to be used by others for their own interests. Some days it’s difficult not to see myself as just a means to an end for others.

It happens some days, in the relationships we choose, with people we love. And it happens in the relationships we didn’t choose; those that are the result of work or other necessities. And there are times when it comes from people we aren’t in relationship with at all.

Some days we just feel more valued for what we can give than who we are. Some days it just feels like we are being taken advantage of or that we are just being taken. And it’s good to know that God sees this, that he knows. What’s not so great in this instance in Isaiah 42 is that God actually admits to being the cause of this reality for the Israelites. 

Why? Why would God plunder his own people? Why give them over to those who would view them as little more than loot to be taken?

Isaiah acknowledges that the reason God hands them over - lets them be plundered - is because of their choices. The life they had chosen for themselves had caused them to accumulate a lot of baggage. Well, that sounds familiar; that sounds like my life. Looking back on the choices I’ve made and the way I have sometimes gone I can see how I’ve accumulated a lot of baggage and am carrying around a great deal of “stuff” as a result of my history.

I don’t like to feel plundered. I don’t want to feel like those around me are using me, and I certainly don’t like feeling that it comes at the hand of God, that somehow he sanctioned it. But what if the stuff others are taking from me are the things he never intended me to have? What if it’s just junk that God knows is weighing me down, sucking life from me, keeping me from being who he created me to be? What if it’s all the baggage that a life lived away from God has accumulated?

To be honest, I’m not sure how I even feel about this while I’m still writing it. Last night I started this and stopped because I just couldn’t make sense of it all. I couldn’t come up with a nice neat explanation about how to know when feeling plundered by others is from God, and when it’s not. I couldn’t tie it all togetherwith a nice little bow that might make us feel better about the idea that God could be okay with us being looted by the world sometimes.

The fact is, this doesn’t package up nicely no matter how you look at it. We are never going to like this feeling that the world around us is taking advantage of us. And the truth is that usually (I believe) it’s not God at all. The world is a wicked place and it seeks to use us up at any and every turn. But sometimes God can be behind it. Loving us so ruthlessly that he pushes us into places we would never go on our own. Because ultimately he knows it’s for our good. I’m thinking that what I really need to decide, is not whether or not I can discern when it’s God-sanctioned plundering and when it’s not, but will I trust him either way?

Will I trust God to know what stuff in my life is just baggage I don’t need anyway? Will I trust him to control what I can’t and protect me from losing the really significant and important parts of who I am to a world that loves to plunder? Will I trust him to understand what I really can’t – namely, that sometimes it’s in our best interest to go through things we would never choose? Will I trust him with all of that?

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;    Proverbs 3:5

the good old days…weren’t that good

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Isaiah 43:18-19

 

What is it about the past that can hold so much sway for us? Sometimes we see the past with such rose-colored glasses that everything—even the bad things—seem so much nicer, easier, more desirable than what we have now. Whatever we had then, whoever we were with then, however we lived then can sometimes seem so much better than the best of now. We love to romanticize past events.

And other times, it’s quite the opposite. Other times what we remember is just the pain. Someone forgot, even though it was so important to us and they expressed interest. Another promised and never came through. We were mistreated, hurt, talked about, let down. We failed, lied, wounded others. We embarrassed ourselves, how could others not remember it just as vividly as we do?

For good or bad, we are skilled craftsmen at taking the past and bending it, highlighting it to better see ourselves and others as heroes or villains. It all depends on the day.

But the Father calls us to new things. To today. To present-ness.

Sometimes I think we tend to run back tot the past because, as God describes here in Isaiah 43, the present feels like a “wilderness”, a “wasteland” of sorts. We can look at the past and we know how events went. There is a sense of control that comes with looking back. We can embrace things as they happened or imagine how they could have gone differently, but either way we know how that chapter of the story ends. So it feels safe. It feels known.

The problem with the present is that it’s so momentary. There is far more past and far more future than there is present. So there is less for us to try to control. Less change for us to affect. If we live in the present, if we embrace the new things God is doing we must trust more; we must live by faith more.

 “See I am doing a new thing!”

  

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!   2 Corinthians 5:17

 

It’s the call to stop being defined by our past. It’s a call to stop “if only” and “what might have been” living. It’s a call to stop regretful living. Following Jesus is about having a clean slate, a new start…every morning.

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.   Lamentations 3:22-23

 

The fact is that the “good old days” just weren’t that good. They were fine when the day they were a part of was called today. They were a gift then. But they were not so good that they should be where we live now. They are not God’s today for us…or they wouldn’t be the past. They would be the now.

Today is new, and we are new, and the possibilities, the plans and the experiences are all new. They are God’s gift to us. They are today.

Today God is doing a new thing. May we have the grace and courage necessary to perceive it.