where is home?

I grew up in the same city and the same house from birth until at 18 when I went off to college. It is thanksgiving week so I have gone back to my old city, my old house to spend time with my family over the holiday. It is always such a strange experience to get settled in a place and then try to return to the place you once called home. It is a partial identity crisis I think. So much of our identity tends to get wrapped up in where we live, who we live with. A change in these parameters of living is strange and hard to deal with. I question who I am a little bit. I question what it will be like after finishing college to be living completely on my own, maybe even being responsible for taking care of a wife. But this is an identity crisis that I cherish. It makes me step back and think about who I really am. It draws me closer to my father who is the king of the universe and has given me a new identity, a new home. This is a home in which I have actually never been to, but yet a home I long for.

Listen, you who seek wisdom...

All over scripture is the statement that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom". I have spent the last week pondering what it means to fear God, asking God to show me what it is like to fear him. I still feel like I do not fully understand what this all entails but I want to point out a few things that I have come to understand. God is a King. Not just a King, but the King of all kings and rulers, human authorities, spiritual authorities. God's title alone should cause us as human beings to tremble. We are under his power, everything that He wills happens. Our lives seem to live sometimes under the illusion that we are our own masters and our destiny, at least in this life, is in our own hands. What a lie. We can make all the plans, we can store up all the riches, we can make choices about what we do with our time, but in the end these are subject to the will of God. James, in his letter, speaks by the Spirit of God saying: "What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil" (James 4:14-16).

I want to simply continue by speaking to you, reader. And when I say you this not just to you the reader but this is what I am speaking to myself.
You are a mist.
You are a flower in the huge field of God.
Your beauty fades.
Your material existence like the wind, there one day, gone the next.
You have no right to boast in your self-determination.
You belong to the King of Kings.
He fashioned you with his hands.
He is your God.
He bought you when you were running from him.
He bought you with his own blood.
The blood of God himself spilled onto the dirt below a tree.
You are now his.
He is the overseer.
He is the Shepard of your restless soul.
Your soul will always be broken apart from him.
You are dependent on him for life itself.
Fear him.
Tremble.
He is God.

And you will know wisdom,
faith,
righteousness,
holiness,
godliness.

A story about slaves and masters

Slave. This is not a name that most would take kindly to. This word brings to mind many things in the history of humanity. For Americans it reminds them of the days of the slave trade, where a country founded on the inalienable rights of a human being, showed great hypocrisy and racism. It might make you think about the history of the ancient world and how almost every major kingdom that ever existed, from Babylon to Rome, was partially built on the backs of those in involuntarily servitude. A Jew or a Christian, who knows about the history of Israel, may hear the word slave and think about how the descendants of Abraham were enslaved in Egypt and were delivered miraculously by God.

But I want to take you back to another event in history. I want to talk about the former and then the current human condition and what it means for our definition of slavery. Millennias ago there was a husband and wife that lived in nothing short of paradise. They were healthy and they knew no pain nor shame. This couple was unique because they were the only human beings who were not born into slavery. What set them apart was that they actually knew the creator of the universe. They knew God. But although they had this privileged birth right, an embodiment of evil coaxed them into breaking the one rule the creator, and lover, of their souls had set up for them. The beloved had rebelled against the lover. This choice was the selling of mankind into slavery. This is a slavery that is not so much different than the slavery of human being owning another human being. It created in mankind a rebellious nature that is always seeking to own and effectually controlled every man and woman. Everything that was beautiful and good in creation became perverted and controlled by the lusts of man's new owner. Men now seek after things to please their new master. They seek after riches, sensual pleasures, euphoria, dominance over fellow man (hence the man owning man slavery I started out talking about), and many other lusts. So quick and complete was the rebellious nature's control that the world became an evil place as soon as the once free couple was thrown out of the paradise they were born into.

I feel like I need to clarify something and reword some of this. Mankind was never meant to be completely free and independent. Dependency is part of human nature. Man is dependent on this rebellious nature, man needs a master, its simply how we are programmed. I want to point out the reality is that the human race simply traded masters. The original master of mankind was also the lover of mankind. One who knew them intimately, better than they knew themselves, and met their every need. This lover was nothing short of God himself. Now the rebellious nature became the new master when mankind rebelled against their master and lover. Under this new master, man is a broken creature, the new master is so concerned with meeting perverse lustful wants that many of the needs of a man are left unmet. Indeed, this new master does not even know how to meet the needs of man. Man experiences hopeless, shame, fear, loss, hurt, and loneliness, just to name a few. Amidst all the pains that broken man experiences, a longing for the real master may be found deep in his soul. A wall has been built by the new master so that fellowship between the lover and the beloved is no longer possible. I believe the lover feels pain even greater because his beloved has forsaken him.

However, amidst this story of heartbreak is the story of the lover, creator God, finding a way to be reunited with his children that are rebelling. He found the few men who lived on the earth who began to recognize the longing in their souls for their true master and sought him. He came to these men and set in motion events that would begin to put holes in the wall that man, alongside his new master, had built. He started by creating a nation of people that he would call his own, a people he would care for as much as they would let him, a nation that would proclaim the nature of the true master. Well to cut to the chase, for the most part they failed. God did everything he could to bring this rebellious nation into relationship with him but they continually were forsaking their lover.

Then at a crucial point in human history, God did the unthinkable. He became a man. He was born from a human woman and walked on the earth and grew up like any other man. Except he was God, he was perfect and he lived a perfect life while proclaiming something that sounded alien to human ears, a new world. This new world he called the Kingdom of God, this was a world where man could finally know God again as their master and God could finally reach out to enslaved man. Then after all this talk about the new world, some men got together and put God to death. But the ironic thing about this murder was that this was God's plan all along. He did this so that he could suffer for the evil man had done and smash down the wall that separated man from God. God had taken responsibility for what had happened to man and made a way for God to be the loving master of man that he was in the beginning.

Here is where our story intersects with today. Today Jesus has already be killed on the cross and been risen from the grave. He has smashed down the wall between man and God, between lover and beloved, and inaugurated the Kingdom of God-the new world. But a specific part of this story is still up to each man. A man must choose to partake in this reality of the new world. He (or she) must embrace Jesus as being in very nature God and being the one who is able to take down the wall between man and God. And this very day we stand at a point in time where this new world is not fully here. Even if man embraces the call of Jesus he still has his rebellious nature in him fighting for control. A battle is now taking place, the foe has been defeated with the destruction of the wall but he is always trying to find new ways to be master again. The man who has embraced Jesus, believes in him, trusts in him still must fight his old master, though not alone. God has sent a helper into the battleground of man's heart. The Bible calls this the Holy Spirit. However, all though the battle rages on, the outcome is already known. God will finally win, he will destroy the rebellious nature of mankind at a point in future history and will fully bring into reality that Kingdom of God. Man is simply called, at this stage in history, to resist the old master, to continually seek to make up for lost time with his lover and know him, really know him. Where man was once stuck in slavery to the rebellious nature that had taken over, Man can become a slave to righteousness, a slave to trying to know God more and more every day, a person who is trying to be overcome by the callings of God. This is a new person who has been spiritually reborn and is dependent on God again. This my friends is not a slavery to fear, its a slavery where you are not just a slave, or a servant, but you are also friend and the beloved. Jesus is your groom and you are his bride and you along with your lover are longing for the wedding feast that will take place at the end of time.


"For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved" (2 Peter 2:19b ESV)