Playing In the Cold (#537) — http://thegodjourney.com/2016/06/17/playing-in-the-cold-537/

Outside the box of religious obligation lies a road less traveled into the heart of the father's affection. Slinging freedom all over the place, this is the God Jam, the God Jam, the God Jam. So it is all about rainbows and puppy dogs. I'm telling you what, I got to Canada and I saw rainbows and puppy dogs. That's the best effort. And I saw a rainbow at 10, 10 at night. It's a little late. That's far north. Where were you? Up outside Edmonton. Stony Plains. Stony Plains? Up with Eskimos? Alberta. No, not quite that far up, but I'm telling you, it stays light, light, and it was raining all day and they go, it's a rainbow out here. 10, 10. 10, 10. What? That's a first. We go outside and I'm going, yeah, yeah, I've marked it down. It's the latest rainbow I've ever seen. I guess go to Alaska and top that if we're Finland or something. And then you get the Northern Lights. Ever seen those? I've seen them in Alaska. Yeah, we didn't see them last trip, but yeah. This is a bad time of year. See, it's too light. It's kind of dark. That's even the dead of winter. Well, it's awesome. But then there were puppy dogs. There's some people I knew, I had gotten a new retriever and there was some people that wanted to have a talk one afternoon while I was up in Innisfale. So we go out to this, they got to this home and there's eight four-week-old puppies. Oh, that's fun. And there was like six kids running around and puppies. That's the best. There was a waiting pool. The late night rainbows, puppy dogs. That was a good trip. Well, those were the good parts of the trip. There were scary parts of the trip, but there's lots to be learned there. Hi, I'm Wayne Jacobson. And I'm Brad Cummings. And welcome to this edition of the God Journey. Yeah, I learned what I learned in Alaska. What did you learn? How to drive overnight without falling asleep in your car. Now, the way Nino doesn't do that often. No, it's an important advice in case you ever have to. Okay. How to drive overnight, late night, without falling asleep. Yeah, how you do it? Roll down the window. Naked from the waist down. That's not good. No, no, no. No, that's what he said. Yeah, that's what he said. He said he did it to come home from college. He drove naked from the waist down because, number one, he wouldn't speed because he didn't want to get pulled over. And number two, he was uncomfortable enough that it kept him away. That's sick. That's how a lot of people do church. What? That's how a lot of people do church. I have never been to this church. And I wrote the book, The Naked Church, but this isn't it. Wow. I'm talking by way of analogy. That doesn't seem to me to be the best way to drive. It worked for him. I'm not recommending it. It's not an official, but if I ever have to drive overnight. I'm not going with him. No. You doing optics? No. Why are you doing optics? I'm not doing optics. I'm just not going in that car with that man, if that's what it takes. No, he goes alone. No, no, no, no, no. If you have somebody else with you, then you've already got the help you need. This is if you're alone. See, that's how we should do church. At night. Okay. So you're keeping it back? Yes. I'm sure you're not talking about the Church of Jesus Christ. No, no, no. I'm not talking about naked. You haven't driven something. I'm talking, we should do this with someone else. Church. Oh, I... Okay. That's a little bit... I think a lot of people's spiritual journey is driving late at night by themselves. I get that. And then they say, we're, you know, we can't go to church, we are the church, but you're still all alone. And one thing I don't like about that phrase, and I've used it back in the day. But if you're all alone, you're, yeah, you definitely are a piece of the church in the world, but the church takes shape when people live, love, share life together and experience. It didn't have to be in a, you know, building with all the rules and rituals, but... It's relational. It is a relational reality of God's family and the earth, however you touch that. And yes, it can be at Starbucks or in line at a store. It can be a number of ways you touch that, but, yeah, it does take some other, it does take more than one to experience the life of the church, because that's just the life of Jesus, which isn't bad, there's nothing bad about that. But the life of the church is my little piece gets near your little piece and all those pieces come together to be kind of extraordinary. I love the walking and talking and the individual relationship that we're meant to have with Jesus, but I don't think it's possible to be in this earth and to be walking and talking with Jesus and not care about a whole bunch of the rest of it. People. Yeah. Or even value from insights other people have that you don't have yet. Yeah. Because I get walking with Jesus and I get a piece of who he is. That's why I'm thinking you should do this with someone else. The podcast? The journey. Life. Okay, I'm tracking with you now. I spent the last two Sunday mornings preaching from a pulpit. Well, no pulpit neither one of them, but it was definitely the Sunday morning crowd. Yeah. And with the full on, you know, mini concert and I was the mini lecture. So and survived both of them. Nobody heard. I figured. But I tell you, they are my least favorite venue. And it's not that I don't think valuable things happen because it's one dimensional. I'm doing all the talking and people are listening to me. And can I? Even. Even Wayne is not having a staged and crowd conversation. Can I be funny? I can be funny. Can I be humiliated? I can be humiliated. In fact, I got introduced in Calgary this way. This is this is how it was introduced. I want you to know the links to which Wayne Jacobson will go to reach an unreached people group with the gospel of Jesus Christ. He'll go so far as to paint his toenails pink. Hey, here's Wayne Jacobson. That's how it was introduced. Oh, yeah. Well, I know the context of that. Oh, my God. No, it's not fun. He sort of just left you out in the cold there. Well, it was her. She started to tell the story. I told a little bit of the story of the family the night before. And I had no idea she was going to introduce me to her. She was going to go there. So they said, I didn't explain it. I just got up and kept going. And I'm afraid that they thought the unreached people group, which I don't know where the unreached people group came from. That's not what I would use. But I was afraid there was going to be a transgender crowd. And then that's what I was going to assume. And this is a young group of this is a congregation that meets on a university campus. So a lot of young people and other folks part of it. And that never came up. So there you go. Yeah. Now we'll get little emails and letters and tell us a story. But you have to invite me. I'll tell you a story if I'm there, but I don't tell it. Your favorite gathering. Someday we'll do it on the podcast maybe. I don't know. Couple of things to fix from last week. We said Rusty may help this with the website. Said he was from Kansas City. I thought I knew a rusty may from Kansas City. This guy's actually from Madison, Mississippi. So got that wrong. Thought I'd fix it. Also want to announce this. We're closing the God Journey forum on the website that we used since the beginning. It's kind of falling into disuse anyway, but just letting people know we're going to close it August one in case you posted some brilliant stuff back there. And you want to go copy and paste it and get it off the forum before it closes. So just a word of warning. If there's something there you want to get, go get it. There you go. And you know what? Monday morning, go to the airport, looked at my phone and saw this horrible tragedy in Orlando. My gosh, 50 people slaughtered in a nightclub. And man, my heart just hurt. After having puppies and rainbows for a couple of weeks. And then right back into the reality of life is brutally painful. But this was a gay nightclub, I guess. And that this guy comes in and shoots it all up and just the carnage and destruction. And it just breaks my heart. It seems so much of the discussion surrounding it is it's not really looking at the issues of the human heart and hatred and what's going on. It's like, well, we want to blame a thousand other things. I'm like, this is what happens in the human heart. Evil. Yeah. Evil is in the world. And no matter how much you want to talk about puppy dogs and rainbows, evil is still in the world. Evil is still in the world. And all the external law is never going to solve the internal issue. Yeah. And I just go like, gosh, this is where the church actually can shine the brightest if it's engaged. But so much of what the public is looking for is they're looking for safety and a guarantee that this won't happen. And I'm like, I don't think that exists. And part of the blame doesn't attend. I mean, it goes toward the religious groupings, right? Because there's actual laws against that in Islam. There's an anti-gay bias in evangelical Christianity. So I take up guns and go shoot up people. You would hope not. But we've had people do it to abortion clinics. There's this dark undercurrent of angst toward various people groups that, yeah, I don't think you're basic right on the middle, evangelical Christians are going to take up a gun and go shoot up an abortion clinic. But it does fuel the really disturbed people who do do that, who don't mind doing that. Yeah. I just honestly, I think Christianity, Islam are such polar opposites in terms of the God they worship. Oh, absolutely. There's nothing similar there. Yeah. I'll get that. And it's like, is this just extremism? It's like, part of me is like, I know a fair amount about Islam. And I'm going like, no, unfortunately, this is not bizarre. This is actually those who believe in Islam. The tenants would kind of suggest, yeah. And the dude was just in a mosque the week before and the guy was saying, yep, you know, the gay should be killed. And you're going like, okay. I haven't heard that report. The fact is most Muslims, though, aren't shooting up gay bars like that. No, I'm not suggesting that, but I am suggesting that Islam is not a religion of peace as everyone wants to pretend it is. And I look at a fair amount of its language. I'm just going like, the unfortunate problem is we really are frankly ignorant of a lot of what it believes. And so when some act upon it, even if we want to say that's awful and aberrant and the whole modern, you know, Islam movement would never do that. It's like, part of me is like, I don't know. The ones that are the most vocal and the most active and the strict adherence to what they actually feel like that's what justifies and fuels their obedience. I think the fear is that we're going to paint all Islam like that. And there is a battle inside Islam, obviously, as to whether violence is a way to make the world the next caliphate and those who really don't see it that way. And there's both in Islam. I know Islamists that do not ascribe to this theology of Sharia law and blowing up the world unless they choose to limit themselves but not forcing unbelievers to live up to their code. But it is a problem and we're not getting our hands around it. And these lone wolf things, you know, I was reading some stuff today. This guy has visited that bar a lot and was seeing, you know, having, so this could be just a deeply disturbed guy with his own identity and struggling with it and just the self-contempt, self-loathing that turns then on what he perceives to be the problem. And it's a tragedy of those 50 people that don't deserve to be dead today. Yeah. It seems to me so much of, you know, what is in Islam as far as a law and the severity with which they respond, I just go like, gosh, I would love to see the Holy Spirit penetrate into that space where transformation happens because of grace, not because of this effort to somehow exterminate, eradicate, or subjugate. And you're just going like, that that is where religion just goes to fowl because we're not going to be the agents of our transformation. We're not, but Christianity was doing the same stuff, right, 400 years ago? Burning witches at the stake and doing all kinds of things. So I don't think this is a problem. Part of me doesn't want to say Christianity was doing that. Weird, confused people. No, this was institutionalized. Christianity was doing that, that whole inquisition, the whole, yeah, we would look now and say, do they know the character and life love of God? No, they obviously didn't. But what passes for Christianity in the world over here, we've done some horrible things and kind of moved through a reformation and moved that into some different space. Still today, you meet people who quite honestly, if they had their brothers, they would love to just eradicate evil from the world and have it to themselves or have an island they could, you know, I meet people who, when I was doing bridge builder stuff, we really said, you know, we ought to have a Christian, something, nation, something, somewhere and anybody doesn't want to be part of that, just get out and or run them off in the ocean or whatever. It's like, man, once you put up a stop sign, you got to enforce that stop sign. And it's just all nightmare after that. When you use conformity tools to get society the way you want it, you really don't end up with that graced base target at transformation. Just don't. Yeah. Also don't really recognize why if you're a passionate lover of Jesus, you want to be off in your own little insular enclave. That to me, walking, the more I walk with the Lord, the more I care about more than just my space. Yeah. But a lot of people build our little thing and then there's other, this other thing. We've gotten a big discussion about the Saturday night with a group of people that really believe every event is orchestrated by God. So that God didn't stop it, says he sanctioned it. And then you gotta look for a reason why would God allow a guy to shoot up. And I mean, they were defending it to the Hill quoting scriptures. And I was, I was just, I finally stopped the discussion because just everybody had their say, but it was more heat than light. And I just said, you know what, I'm not Calvinist enough to jump on this bandwagon and say, my God created evil. And he does stuff like this. He allows, you know, watching the spotlight movies. He allows priests to rape children that God's orchestrates that for some higher good. I don't buy any of that. No. I think evil, we've talked about enough evil and pain in the world is there. And somebody said, why doesn't God stop it? I just want to scream and go, he is. That's what the cross was about. That's what his offer of redemption about God is wanting to stop all this pain and suffering in the world. But as long as then, we talked about this recently. It's not a coercive stopping. No, as long as we have free will. Transformative, redemptive stopping because of the change that is wrought in a human heart. But if it's one of your kids that gets blown up in a club, man, your heart's going to hurt. Yeah. But I don't know how you find any consolation in ordaining that action that seems more like the fruit of the devil in his wiles. Yeah. I don't know what comfort people find in trying to say, well, in essence, God allowed this and now I'm looking for the valuable teaching lesson that comes out of it. I'm just going like, good luck finding that if he's not the author. Yeah. Or if people get saved at a funeral. That's the reason why God would do that. That's the mercy of God acting in the midst of awful things. He's not the author of that. Boy, there's a significant number of people that do believe that and weirdly find comfort in that. So even if you've got a kid there, then, well, that God allowed it is comforting to me. And it was funny, in the middle of this discussion, somebody who was just saying, God created evil and they're quoting Isaiah 45, but they're missing James 1. You know, we don't see this scripture as an unpacking of who God really is. So the things stated in the Old Testament that I think get overturned, even in the Old Testament, that that seemed to be true. But no, just even the sacrificial system, which is what Moses says God wants and then David says, no, it's not what he wants. He wants a broken and contrite heart. It was never about sacrifice. It's God winning us into a better reality. And I think some of that goes to that where you can ignore, you can read this God created evil and go, I don't think he did. No. In order for love to be genuine, real, voluntary and an act of the will that I have that's free, it necessitates the capacity for me to, I could choose not to love. And you just go like, well, I'm pretty sure most of us, if we were God, wouldn't have set it up that way. I don't think we're secure enough to let someone else have complete decision-making power that's independent from me. I mean, most parents struggle to let that happen in their kids. Even when they're past teenagers. Yes, yes. Most family struggles are because parents still don't allow that to happen in their adult kids. Yes. And I look at just the incredible love and security and confidence of God that says, you know what, I am going to create and then I'm going to allow my creation because it's made in my image to be able to make decisions independent of me. Even if it creates unspeakable horror for other people. Yeah, you just go like, who does that? Even with, oh my gosh. That's one of the things I try to explain that. I don't know that I can explain. I understand the free will and all that stuff. But when you watch horrible innocent victims slaughtered, raped, molested, whatever by evil perpetrators in the world. Man, I just, I'm one of those who are going, God, wrap this thing up fast, man. It's just, there's so much pain in the world. Yeah. And yet in that pain, God invites us into himself and wants light to be in the world. The people who are choosing not their own self-interest, but choosing to live inside God's reality. Go be redemptive in the world. Help the broken find whatever, help the grieving find hope. And I love that part of it. But man, it'll sure be nice when evil is finally done away with. Oh, I will rejoice on that day. I just, I think one of the helps for me in the midst of all this is to recognize that this life is not all there is. This is the womb of my eternal calling. This is where I get to be transformed. This is where that will of mind gets to be brought into harmony with his. This is where we're transformed. And all of the difficulty, all of the pain, the beauty of this amazing God is he can be at work in even that to bring about transformation and redemption. He's not the author of it, but he's not the abandoner of it either. No. And to be able to recognize in the midst of pain and difficulty that it's like, no, God didn't do that. That is evil in the world. That's finding a home and agreement in a human heart, which is why that's happening. And guess what? We need to be engaged with people in relationship if that's ever going to change. Yeah. And somebody asked the other night, how can there be evil in the world if God didn't create it? If God's creator of everything, then God had to create evil because there are evils in the world. And my view of that is I look at evil like sin, like darkness. It's not truly something. It's the absence of something. It's the absence of where God dwells. So darkness, I mean, we can't put it in a box and ship it somewhere. Darkness needs to be displaced. It is a reality. I mean, you can look at darkness and darkness can fill the room. I think sin and evil are the same way. It's people who don't know their love, the people that haven't been embraced by the creator and respond to that embrace. And so I don't think God has to create evil. It's just where he's absent and people give their hearts over to that darker side where the enemy works and lurks and whatever. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I feel like some of that is a little bit of philosophy going wrong where you're just going like, you're trying to tie off everything as a finite human being where I'm just going, you know what, I'm perfectly okay realizing that there are some things as a created being, I don't quite understand about the realm of creator. Right. I can't explain to you where did God come from? I don't know. Yeah. All I know is he graciously created me and I love to be in relationship with him. Yeah. And I think if we had more people engaging at that dimension where it's like, you know what, I don't have an answer for all those things. I don't even know if I wish that I did. I love understanding things, but I don't understand the darkness and the awful and the depravity and part of it is like, I don't know that I want to. I want to have somehow something of God's light and love working in me in a relational dynamic that can actually do something redemptive in those situations. Yeah. But you can't put God as the one behind it. No. Or you lose the capacity for redemption. And I think even the ongoing pain, when these things happen in our world, part of my response is always, my gosh, God, I want to be light in the world. I don't want to put that into the world by my own self-indulgence. Anything that in myself would reach out and harm others, and certainly not in that way, but at least not yet. But just even a... Well, sorry. I'm not sure where you're going with that one. Oh, right there. I think there's all... That just was a snarky comment, probably. Hey, some letters from other stuff that, more encouraging, maybe. William on the blog wrote this on... This was an old one, the old podcast about religious performance, 5.13. So that's a long time ago. So I remember speaking out in frustration after about six months of not hearing anything from him. You're not answering me. And his reply before that even ended was, no, you're not listening. Wayne, you're completely correct. The greatest conversation with God have come when I was not expecting them. Remember, everyone, this will take time. And I know that his timing is perfect. I'm so happy to awaken every day and go and learn and love because I know Papa's plans for me are better than anything I can dream up. And I love that idea of... People say God's not speaking to me. Yeah, he is. He's always speaking. So I may not be hearing. I may not be in a place where I'm recognizing, acknowledging, but I do think God's letting his heart and thoughts be near us if we just can tune into that frequency or let him tune us better, said maybe. Yeah, I also appreciate the silence of God and the fact that his presence is communicating and quieting me and his love as opposed to this incessant demand to do stuff. Yeah, makes it easier to listen, doesn't it? Yeah, because you just go like, I think if we're driven a little bit by that performance dynamic, then it's anxiety producing if it's silent. Because I should be doing something. And we're like, I've come to realize, no, not necessarily. Maybe I need to be resting in something before I actually start doing anything so that when I get up from that position, I'm operating in a much different dynamic. I noticed, too, the more I'm convinced of his love and live in that reality, it's easier to sense where God's pointing you. If it's all about me and what I want from my life and what I got to get from God, that whole get, get, get thing today, the love of God makes it easier to say, oh, he might have me going this way because this is where I would be more inclined to have to lay down my life than I'm getting what I want over here from God. I'm using God as the fairy godmother thing. It's like rest and love are both ways that help us sense that more. This is from Reena. Man, this is an amazing story. I hate to read it just because I don't want to frustrate people saying, I've been trying this for years, I was in your podcast, what must I do to be saved? And when you were talking about how you know that you know him and are known by him, I realized that I've never felt connection with Jesus. I've been a Christian for many moons. Jumped through all the get out of hell hoops seemed like my becoming a Christian sinner's prayer and all the other experiences. Pentecostal, I've had over the past 30 something years, has been church or group manufactured. I was at home working and I said, God, make yourself known to me. And he did. Oh man! She says, it's hard to put to words, but I felt his love, presence, peace like never before. I know that he is with me and will never leave me. I knew that in my head, but never felt it in my heart. My heart is light and many happy tears have been shed. Good or bad, I'm looking forward to my new god journey. Thank you so much for the truth that you've been sharing. That's awesome. I'm glad you read that. It's a high hurdle mark for others, but it's the fact that God is very much real and he very much does want to answer that cry of my heart. He is not going to leave that unanswered. I can't dictate for anyone the time dimension and the circumstances, but I can't say that heart's cry is not going to be echoing up in the heavens unresponded to. No, and I think that the only reason I hate this is it was so quick. I just asked him to show himself to me and I know people out there. It is that simple. That's the part I love about it. I just want people to get frustrated. I've been asking God, you've got to realize if you're asking that and it's not happening, there's stuff God's got to rewire in you to help you see that. So just keep asking, keep leaning, keep seeking, keep knocking because God does want to, but don't settle for, well, he's not going to make himself known to me, so I'll just do the best I can to jump through all these hoops. Don't go there. Yeah, that's already sort of closing a little bit of the window out of the fear of rejection. Yeah, one more piece of advice I got in Canada that I forgot to mention. It's here actually. This is less scary. I mean, it's weird because we live in the states here, growing up in the states. What do you think? Montana, Minnesota, Minnesota, those are God-forsaken northern climates. We're so freezing cold. Who could live up there? And then you realize almost all of Canada is above all of those states. So I'm up there and they're talking about 30, 40 below as part of their regular winter experience and I'm just thinking, I don't know how you survive this. My goodness, we go up to visit my... You get quite used to it. We go to visit my dad's Shaver Lake and yeah, a week. This is interesting that the guy was with the last time I stayed in. He said what you got to do is play in it. If you don't play in it, it will own you. If you don't play, you'll get out. They build an igloo in their yard. There's wisdom right there. Isn't that something? I was thinking even the painful things we've just been talking about even in... I've been asking God and he's not been showing me stuff. I think there's a real thing about learning to be playful in that with God. Yeah, don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid of your grief. Don't be afraid. It's just because if you can't play and somehow find God, even in the midst of what's most brutal in your heart and life, it will own you. Like he said, the cold will drive you indoors. Right. And so we intentionally play in the coldest weather. Bundle up and we'll go out and we'll play in it because if we keep playing in it, then we can enjoy even the harshness of it. But once you stop playing, it owns you. And you take the fear out of it. I mean, I think so much of what we try to avoid or even our desperate need to fully understand, I think a lot of that really is fear driven. At the end of the day, we're trying to find a way that we can control everything and I'm going like, gosh, if there's one fruit that's come out of our friendship is I have very little control over anything. Me included. Don't you say? What do you mean our friendship? You're very much so. But in that whole dynamic, it's being freed from that illusion and I think I don't think we stop paying attention to why is it that I, you know, I think one of the hardest things is to be misunderstood by someone else. I don't, I don't like that. To this day, I don't like that. But I recognize I'm used to it. I get that. I probably should be too. But I still don't. I still don't relish these moments. I got a few years on you got to. But I do recognize is like, you know what? So what? God does know my heart. I don't need to be afraid of all that. Whatever, whatever someone wants to run with as far as their misunderstanding me, I'm not going to be able to control that anyways. So why be owned by it? Yeah. Why do I want that? Why don't I have that stuff pull me into that space and having done my tour of duty in Wisconsin in my high school years. I understand cold. Oh, that's so far south of Canada. No, no, it dips down and it has its own permanent low. I mean, it's terrible. They look down from Edmund Tay say, really? Oh, really? No, no, no. They understand Wisconsin is the mosquitoes a state bird there, dude. I got mosquito bites all over my legs from playing botchy ball Sunday night before I flew out of town. Yeah. Oh my gosh. But I think if we can be genuine ourselves, honest, even in those painful places, whether it's physical cold, relational cold, that sense of God, I feel if we can be honest in those spaces, gosh, those are so inhabitable by the Lord and find a way to be playful. I remember the one of the worst days of our life together. Yes, the already and it wasn't our it wasn't between us. It was you and I together and I tell you what, I haven't laughed so hard my whole life than that day and needed it. That was yeah. And it wasn't trivializing what was going on, but it was realizing that there's humor even in the darkest stuff, which yeah, yeah. And that's healing. Yeah. And what it is, I mean, I think in order to do that, there is there is really a relinquishing of going, I do not have mastery over this moment. I'm not I'm not capable of controlling the elements and it's inviting God into that space to say, I'm sorry, this exceeds me. I need you present in the midst of this. And I remember, I mean, the fact that humor came out of that there was a levity. I started like that preserved my heart from just being utterly crushed. Yeah. And you just go like, wow, God, if you can meet me here, I don't know that there's a situation you can't meet me. Yeah. And the friendships that you have in this journey that can laugh in the face of pain, I don't mean, I don't mean market. I don't mean trivialize people's pain with laughter. I mean, people in suffering and loss of a child finding joy again, finding laughter again, even in the darkest places. That's that's where you know people are really getting the Jesus thing down. I can go back to my joy in you, your joy will be full. I'm not headed to the cross. Jesus is talking about that in the midst of a world that's being slaughtered by Roman occupation, all the injustice and abuse in the world. God looks at the world every day what's going on Syria, Polcott and Kenya, all these places. God sees it all and yet he's still the most joyful presence in the universe that joy, I guess that anguish is not always is not the only response to pain. Right. That joy and I don't mean circumstantial joy. I got all my answers to that. Joy is that inner sense of well being that locks in our heart even if everything going around us is in a big storm and in a in a in a horrible set of mind and and seemingly if we drag down into the despair of hard circumstances then like we said they own you those circumstances own you and you cannot find joy until they change and if they're not changing and your joy is set in that thing. Now you're stuck in a very dark place unfortunately. I had a friend that basically I thought this was the gift of perspective he talked about you know the unfortunate dynamic is the only place in the universe where rebellion is having its way and and and and it's not expressing its harmony with the created order with God is this tiny little planet called Earth as far as we know yeah well I'm gonna go with it because it really helped you know I haven't been off the planet but when I look at the huge cosmos out there and you're just going like that whole created thing God and in the whole grand scheme of things this is the one place where it's not quite expressing itself in peace and harmony like God would long for and it's the place that he has put us the connection there you put us here now it's not in harmony no but I look at it from a positive dynamic of going like wow every place else maybe it's humming along fine this is where it needs help and this is where God has placed me I think if I stay aligned to him some good can happen I do it could be simplistic but I go like you know what that premise is a whole lot easier than separating myself from him and then demanding answers for everything that he didn't do necessarily and I'm going like I think I'm gonna stay allied with the one with whom it is working and and go God what can I do what good can I do in this situation am I powerless or am I powerful and are able to do something and that flips the whole thing we're not just victims of the broken world we live in we really have that same free will on here on purpose to be part of something bigger and be a redemptive you know influence in the world in my life as much as I could bring destruction to people today if I go that road it can also bring healing and light and peace and joy into people they can do that same I look I can sit as a victim and I can ask all the unanswerable questions is why did you do all this God as if he was seeking to bring about death and destruction or I could in the same circumstances realize guess what God proactively put me here I'm not going to be the salvation of it all but he did put me here to be a resource of his in the midst of what's all wrong and so I could look at my own existence as an answer and the fact that proof that God cares and that's why people say well why isn't he doing anything to stop it why aren't you that's why his son died that's why you're here yeah that's he is doing everything he can to bring this age to completion and in the midst of it is it incredibly painful at times yes it is can we find joy in him in the midst of it that's the great hope I think of God's work we can find joy an overwhelming yes and that just brings a better sense of freedom to the whole thing and then what about where pain doesn't go away and you've got the chronic something or you've lost or whatever then I think there's even hope in God telling us just remember guys this is not the main feature this is the lobby of the show that's going to go on for all eternity Paul says this is a momentary light defliction and you're just going like I think that's at the point of time where he's about to have his head chopped off I was just going through a litany of all the stuff he's you know when you trace his journey and you're just going like okay from the conversion of Saul to the apostle Paul out of all this just going like if you track that journey he went through a bunch of stuff that would have shipwrecked most of us and somehow he's taking it in stride and saying I have learned the joy of contentment whether a bounding or a based and just going like okay I want to know what he knows and there's real knowledge in knowing that this is like that do that vapor even where there is great affliction and pain whatever it's not even going to hardly be memorable from eternity it is all we have so it seems overwhelming but when you look at it why would God not fix all this right now is because he's got a bigger picture we can't even begin to wrap our heads around this is just I tell people I think life when we look back at it from eternity life on the planet is going to be like when we were two or three years old we don't even remember most of it we thought about this but life is going to take on such a bigger reality from now to whenever all ages to come it's not going to be as significant as it feels to us living right here in every pain every day something isn't fixed isn't changed just seems so huge instead of in God's idea of time and space this is short this is brief something bigger is coming something better is ahead personally for me it's helpful to dislodge one of those little Christianisms that I don't think is very helpful you know when we say well everything is under God's control I was like well technically sure but it doesn't seem to be that that's how he set up planet earth and I would like to disavow people of the emptiness of trying to declare that because he doesn't seem to operate that way could he yes I have no problem declaring that God could control everything but he doesn't seem to do any of that if he actually has given us a will and that scares people who only find comfort for whatever they fear and well it couldn't happen if God didn't allow it see but I look at that going like only a God who knew something beyond what you would fear could have done that would have dared to take that risk and that's where the power of the cross really is all transforming where you're just going like wait a minute God did not do this oh dang I shouldn't have done that I think he's looking at this going like I have made provision for this to be solved but I am allowing the dynamic for this to be real you can follow me or you can choose not to follow me and for whatever God has in all this the parable the prodigal here's the money go away he knows his boy is going to get hurt he knows he's up to no good he's going to go down a dark road first and God's willing to wait that out for that boy to come home and find the affection of his father again and there's some big piece of that that even the older brother who didn't take the money and roff he's as far away from God as the younger brother if you try to coerce that moment you can't it will never be real he'll never be possible it's like love is not real unless it's voluntarily voluntarily given the transformation in us doesn't really take root unless we are willing to allow that to transpire yeah so what you're really saying is you can't micromanage what you love that's well said