No Accidents, No Coincidences

7:53 AM

Last night I went to sleep planning on waking up and jumping on The Blue Book with both feet first thing this morning, and blogging in-you-face about SEX. But I forgot to switch my phone over to “Silent.” Then BS sent me a text at 2:03 AM (BS= Brent Sears) and woke me up.

Which explains why I was up between 2:03 and 5:00 AM thinking what it means to fall back sleep inside a fiberglass bubble with 50 feet of water under my head. Which itself explains why SEX has to be postponed. Temporarily, anyway.

So much for my plans. Instead,

Forgiven … and Free
Despite growing up in church, until 3 years ago I had the idea that after Christ’s resurrection he ascended back to Heaven and pretty much left us on earth to our own fallible devices, stranded like the survivors on LOST, with not much more than the 10 Commandments as a map for our rescue.

Sure, there were a few red-lettered New Testament verses thrown in as a fall-back, for clarification, but the Holy Spirit amounted to a wisp of air from a ghost walking past, or a far-away echo of the words Christ spoke during his sojourn here on earth.

Message in a Biblical Bottle
Yeah, being a Christian under those conditions was tough; it was intentionally supposed to be tough so you could prove yourself and your faith, and if faith wasn’t enough to lead the way then we could count on Fear of God’s Wrath If We Messed Up to fill in the rest of the answers and keep us toeing the legalistic line till the Rapture and Christ returned to check our score cards.

To find out if we’d played God’s game on par.

As though God had left us here with nothing more to guide us than a message in a Biblical bottle.But is God really an absentee creator-landlord? Was Christ a millennium mailman delivering a gospel-gram?

No, and that approach is a guaranteed shortcut to a love affair with rules, traditions and legalism.

Learning from scripture that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion, was gospel to me. Finding out that God created us individually with a plan and purpose for our lives, from before our inception, was a revelation.

God’s promise of salvation through Christ means we’re free from rules, free from the world … leaving us utterly and joyfully free to follow his will and purpose for our lives.

And because God is omniscient, perfect and all-powerful I have a hard time believing God left us with the option of allowing us to do anything half-way, or of leaving anything he planned unfinished or half-done.

Nor do I believe his plan includes “Suggested Start Times of Your Convenience.”

OK then! I’m ready to get busy for God! So show me his plan and my purpose!
(... but first I’d like to pay off the mortgage, fix the car, get the kids in school, and get my 401k in shape. Then I'd be ready to focus and get serious about discovering God’s plan for my life. Oh yeah, I need to fix that leak in the basement, too. Maybe I can just study the Bible and get deeper in the word till then, say.)

There’s the "first" obstacle: “But first I’d like ...”

There’s the trap under your heel: “Then I want ...”

But I’m miserable and you don’t know what I’m up against. I’m already at the end of my rope!
Because you felt entitled to substitute your whims, your desires and ambitions for God's, and felt pretty smart about postponing God’s plan to tackle yours first.

You’re overlooking that His Work is going undone while you’re focused on creating your own schedule and solutions to your problems … because you feel uneasy and anxious about whether God’s solution to your personal or financial situation might not already be included with the Perfect Plan.

Oh you of soaring debts, scheduling conflicts, social commitments, demanding family obligations or burning career ambitions … and so little faith.

You want to play it “Safe” by helping God with your own customized fall-back plan. Even though grace promises we’re forgiven and free. Free from anxiety, worry, fear and doubt. All of it. Whatsoever.

Forever.

Treading water, even though it’s exhausting and leaves us subject to changing tides and currents, might seem like a safe way for believers who feel they’re in over their heads to stay spiritually afloat. Especially if we’re preoccupied with “How deep is it?” and petrified about drowning in our lives and circumstances.

Christ put the rope with our life preserver perfectly within our grasp. Even if we’re so focused on ourselves we ignore that he’s got us tightly, and eternally, from the other end.