Coming Soon:

"Court of Law" - an allegorical short story I've been working on for about 6 months. Hope to have it finished and posted here in the next week.

Changes

Made a few changes to the layout to make things easier on the eyes. Obviously colors are a bit different and the text is bigger. What say you? Yea? Nea?

More changes to come soon, hopefully. This thing needs some refreshing!

Fear and Trembling

This is a season of working out my salvation with fear and trembling.

Fear and trembling because I have sinned greatly, am totally helpless to fix my own heart and am completely naked before the throne of a holy, righteous, and just God.

I understand what the fear of God means now more than I ever have in my life. I have felt almost nothing but terror for a month now. The fear of God is borne out of taking a deep look into your own heart, into your desires, into your motivations, and facing the depravity that you find inside yourself. You look inside and realize that you are despicable and filthy to your core, that there is not one shred of good intention inside that rebellious heart of yours. You see darkness, filth. You realize that, if left to your own devices, you are going to continue along the same path you have always been on. You realize that if you continue, you will die. You will die.

We go through life with this false sense of immortality. We say we know that someday we'll die, but we do not really believe it. We believe that our sin doesn't affect anyone but us, but we deceive ourselves. We live each day as though they will just keep coming, over and over - the sun will keep rising, our lungs will keep filling with air, our car will complete the commute to and from work without accident each day. These are all illusions. There is no safety. There are no guarantees. The only thing keeping you alive this very moment - and every moment thereafter - is the sheer grace and patience of God. Jonathan Edwards likened this to a spider being dangled over the flames of hell by but a slender thread of silken web, capable of being severed at any moment.

I am the spider.

True fear of God arises when this fact settles upon your soul and you realize that God does not owe you another breath. He does not owe you another day to figure things out. There is no guarantee you will be alive at this time next week.

Are you in a position to meet your maker within one week? If you knew that your life would end in 7 days, if you knew that in 7 days you would be standing before God to give an account for your life - how would you live differently? The truth is that this possibility is very, very real.

And as I stood on the deck of a cruise ship sailing across endless blue oceans and stared out at the setting sun, I realized - truly realized - that I was going to die. Soon. I would not continue living forever. I would face Him someday, and that someday might come much sooner than I anticipated. Would I presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience - unrepentant?

I have never, ever known the kind of terror that comes with that realization. It is worse than any fear I have ever felt because you cannot run from it. You can avoid places, things, people, movies, books that scare you - you can't escape your own soul or His justice. The weight of the Law weighs on you and haunts you.

I helped serve communion at church two weeks ago when they had an unexpected need for a couple people. Standing there at the front of the sanctuary, holding two goblets of wine and listening to the band play softly, the fear gave way to despair and brokenness.

"Jesus paid it all . . . all to Him I owe . . ."

The goblets shook, wine threatening to spill over their edges, as I trembled and fought back sobs. I knew I shouldn't be there. I looked down at the wine, blurry through tear-filled eyes, and almost dropped the glass goblets.

My hands are holding the blood I've spilled. His blood is all over my hands.

On a surface level, I know that it is all these things that make grace and the Gospel as powerful as they are. Our depravity highlights the riches of His grace and mercy. But I have known these things the way I know that two plus two is four. I have the sense that I have not yet fully known them on the level we are meant to, or that I have forgotten them. And so my hunger grows. My desperate need for Him grows. My sense of urgency grows. My need to get close to and stay close to Him, my need to throw myself at the foot of His cross, to feel the rough hewn timber and the splinters digging into my fingers, to see the blood run down from pierced hands and feet and to know that my sin is atoned for by the sacrifice before me grows.

And perhaps that is why God is allowing this season to go as long as it is. He is not only the author but also the perfecter of our faith. He disciplines those He loves - a truth I cling to now like a man adrift at sea praying for rescue clings to a life ring.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Hope of redemption and transformation drive us to continual, daily repentance of our sin. Lose hope of that transformation, lose hope in the goodness of Christ, and you lose everything. Trying to live in and with Christ without a continually renewed sense of real hope in what He has promised is like trying to breathe in a room without oxygen. It will not work, and you can only hold your breath so long before you collapse.

Yet His goodness is so great that He is actually there to catch us as we collapse from our rebellion. We come crawling home like a prodigal sullied in mud, broken, filthy, desecrated. Screaming in wretched agony, we cry out, "I delight in your Law, oh God, for it exposes my sin - have mercy on me, a sinner!"

And He, in His unbelievable mercy and goodness, makes all things new. Makes us new.

Our sin may leave scars. There are consequences. There is music to face. But there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. His plan is not to harm us. His discipline is not to harm us. Jesus. In His nail-pierced hands and feet I find freedom. Surrender of sin so that it may be nailed to the cross instead of me. Freedom from shame, from guilt, from fear and terror, from my past, present, and future. Forgiveness. Instead of the spikes that should be driven through them, my hands are filled with the wealth of His grace.

This is my collapse.

Praise God.

Make me new.

Prodigal

Just give me what's mine and then leave me alone
I don't need you anyway

I don't want you or your charity
I just want the spoils
Wealth
Success
Reputation
Sex
Family

Just give it to me and leave me alone
Don't ask anything from me
I don't owe you anything
Leave me alone

==========

God, this is great
What a waste of time you were
Now I have (almost) all l I ever wanted and
Didn't have to give anything for it

Just a few more things
Just a few more and
then I'll be satisfied

You'll see

==========

It's harder than I thought
But I'll make this work
I know I can

Just a little more self-control and
discipline and
reading and
listening and
learning and
note-taking and
then I'll have it down

You'll see

==========

What happened
Everything was going so well

This is all your fault

You didn't give me enough
You rigged the stakes against me
You won't take temptations away
I bet it's a fun game for you
Watching this

But I'll come out on top
Just a little longer
Just a little more

You'll see

==========

Oh God, what have I done
Look at me

I'm broke
washed up
cast down
filthy
alone

What have I done
Oh God
Look at what I've done
Look at
what
I've done

Look at these
Unclean lips
Bloody rags of
counterfeit righteousness

Damned

Can't talk to you
be with you
look at you

You'll see

======

Last-ditch shot
I can't fix it
Any of it

But maybe
Maybe I can wash your feet
Clean your house
Tend your crops
Feed your pigs
Care for your cattle

Just make me a
slave
lowly
marginalized

Just give me a
place to rest
scraps from your table
shelter

And I'll do whatever you want

It's too late for me
to be a son again

But maybe I
can find my
way back

======

Dust from the road caked
on my
bloody
bare feet

Wheezing
Half-blind

I can see you already
Your house
Your crops
Blurry

What

You're

Moving
Running

To me

Oh my God

What are you doing
Throwing your
arms around me
Kissing me
Your tears of
joy
flowing

What's this
ring
coat
shoes
calf

What's this
white robe for this your
whore
bastard son

adopted back
as
heir

It can't be
This is too much to
understand
take in
appreciate
pay back

I can't do it

But you
promise
you can

and now

I'll see

Yawn.

Battling apathy is a common theme for the last six months and something I'm really struggling with lately. Have I always been this lazy?

No Peace

There is so much that I am thinking about right now in regards to the future....there is not a lot of peace in thinking about these things, which causes me fear. The thing is, I don't know whether that lack of peace is just a result of fear of the unknown that I am afraid to jump into, or whether it's an indication that I should stay the present course and not do the things I'm thinking about doing.

Is that ambiguous enough? Haha!

Prayer would be appreciated.

Ruby Beach

OLYMPIC PENINSULA - October 16, 2009

The rain had started in Seattle and had not stopped nearly the entire trip. It pounded with a ferocity I had rarely seen as I drove out of the city, as though pushing back against the car to prevent my departure. The wind drove the rain with even greater force and whipped through the trees, bending their tops.

Eventually the rain subsided and even stopped for a while; now, hours later and as I rounded the northwestern tip of the Olympic Peninsula and turned south on 101, it was diminishing to little more than a drizzle. I passed through dense forests and through Forks, where I saw the word “Twilight” at least two dozen times in three blocks.

After stopping for gas and coffee, I continued into the forest, guiding the car through the foggy drizzle and lazy curves of the two-lane highway.

The sign for Ruby Beach came out of nowhere along the straight stretch of road between the evergreens, and without thinking I slammed the brakes and jerked the wheel to the right, flying off the main road and onto the dirt side road that hugged the cliff’s edge. This was not a planned stop and I was still sixty miles from my destination. Through the fog and the trees to my left I suddenly saw the ocean, churning violently and so close it seemed to threaten to scale the cliff.

Parking the car at the trailhead, I rolled up my jeans, not bothering to trade flip-flops for shoes, and stepped out into the rain, which was now nothing more than a mist that filled the air and smelled of sea salt. The trail down to the beach was surprisingly short, but the sight that greeted me at the bottom was even more surprising.

A rushing, silt-laden river spilled out of the forest at the base of the trail, its banks completely concealed by the overhanging evergreens and fiery deciduous trees ablaze with fall colors. It looked like a Northwest version of the huge brown rivers on the Discovery channel as they flow lazily through the Amazon.

As it approached the beach, the riverbed suddenly banked to the right, flanked by the massive driftwood logs that had floated down the river and then been forced back up the beach by the superior strength of the Pacific in a war of waters. River pushed; ocean pushed back. The result was that it was impossible to reach the beach without climbing over the tangled mass of cedar and fir that formed the cease-fire line between the river and the ocean.

Smooth, polished stones formed most of the upper beachhead, crafted and then deposited by the river and making for an unusual but beautiful look; I’d seen rocky beaches before – this is the Northwest – but this was much different.

Scattered along the beach, as though tossed from the cliffs by giants, were huge scraggy rock masses that stuck out of the water and received the brunt of the Pacific’s angry pounding. Their rough tops sprouted green moss and small trees and their bases were polished astonishingly smooth by the waves, giving them the appearance of slowly oxidizing gray metal; they changed color from brown to gray in a seamless, shiny wet gradient, finally blending with the sand at the bottom. Other smaller, equally smooth rock formations littered the beach, leading me to believe that just under the sand must lie a vast expanse of solid rock, likely volcanic.

Enshrouding it all was the thick fog rolling in from the Pacific, giving the entire scene an eerie but somehow peaceful quality. I was dumbstruck. The expanse of nature in front of me screamed of the awesome power of God displayed in His creation.

The most impressive element in the scene – and the one that got my attention immediately – was the ocean. I climbed over the logs and made my way to the confluence of river and sea, totally in awe of the might that felt as though it rushed outward from the very water itself as it pounded the beach.

And I instantly felt very, very small.

Standing on one of the smooth, flat rocks, I stared out over the Pacific in silence. The only distinguishing feature between the horizon separating cloudy sky and steel water was a slightly darker shade of gray. The ocean’s foam was a light brown that frothed and spit in all directions as the breakers slammed into each other with such violent force that occasionally a wave would burst unexpectedly through the throng and rush up the beach, forcing me to retreat. There was no distinguishable in-out, peaceful wave lapping pattern at the beachhead. The ocean just churned and frothed and leaped with rage as the wind howled.

God, this is so like you. The thought came from nowhere as I stared out at the water.

I’m standing here, this little man confronted with this massive ocean so much bigger than I am – I want so badly to run into it, to experience it, to get more of it; but if I rushed into those waves I would die. You’re the same way right now – so close, so incredibly powerful, but just out of reach. Why can’t I feel you? Where is my heart? Why can’t I seem to get near you?

I sighed. That was exactly why I’d come out to the peninsula – to get away from all the noise, all the static, all the responsibilities, all the commitments. Each day felt like a slogging ordeal that seemed to never end, and yet I was not making enough time for myself nor, more importantly, for Jesus. I felt drained, exasperated, tired, and constantly on edge. I was beyond dysfunctional at work, completely unable to focus, and stumbling around in every other area of life. I desperately needed time alone with Jesus so that I could examine my heart, talk to Him, try to sort out priorities and plan for the future.

I had lost my passion for everything – including the Gospel, a fact which scared me more than anything else. I could not shake the extremely discomforting suspicion that I was nothing more than a religious Pharisee, trying to use God to get what I really wanted and getting angry when He didn’t give it.

A great weight of inauthenticity was pressing upon me and getting heavier every day; and it was eating away at my soul and my passion like a slow and steady acid drip. Fake, fake, fake. Liar, liar, liar. You don’t know Him. Stop acting like you do. Even if you tried He wouldn’t care – He knows you don’t really want Him. You just want to be a better version of you – admit it. You make Him sick, you know that? Look around you – you know why you don’t have passion like those people? Because you don’t know Him. And you’re never going to have passion like those people, because you’re never GOING to really KNOW Him. You’re going to spend the rest of your life fooling yourself into thinking you know Jesus. And sooner or later everyone is going to see you for what you really are . . . and someday, He’ll see it too. And then it will be far, far too late for you. Can you hear it already? “Depart from me . . . “ Fake, fake, fake.

I was terrified.

And so the peninsula trip had thus been planned a month and a half ago, a desperate and last-ditch effort to cry out to God with my whole heart – and all its inauthenticity – from the best place I could think of – the edge of my known world. This was quite literally it – nothing but the mighty and vast ocean stood before me. I prayed silently. Here I am, God. I’m on edge, literally and figuratively. Please come and meet me here. I’m not even sure I’m here with a pure heart, but I need you to make it right.

For a while there was no answer. I simply stared out in silence at the leaden water and waited.

My thoughts drifted back to the Genesis sermon I’d listened to earlier that week. Mark had made a point that I had not expected or ever heard before: God is a God intimately involved in His creation, not some kind of watchmaker who made a clock, wound it up, and then stepped back to let it run. He speaks and the sun rises, the wind blows, and the waves crash. He speaks over it still today, not just at the time of creation.

And then suddenly I knew why I was here and what He was quietly whispering to my heart.

My hands have made this ocean, this beach, this surf. With my hands and with my words I cause the waves to crash and the tides to change, the wind to blow, the sun to rise and set. I tell the waters to churn or the seas to calm and they will obey me. This ocean before you is mine. If I am so involved in my oceans, why do you believe I am not involved with you? Do you not know that you are more precious to me than my seas?

I felt hope flare up like an ember in wind.

Do you remember when you were a boy and you stared out at this same ocean and realized that I made it to reflect my glory and to show you my love for you? Why do you now doubt my love? You tremble rightly when you look into your heart; but do you not believe that I am capable of purifying even that which is impure? If you have been justified by my Son’s blood, will you not also be spared from my wrath through His blood? No, your heart is not pure, and no, you have not sought me – I sought you.

Motion in my peripheral vision caught my eye. I looked up just in time to see a bald eagle alight on the top of one of the scraggy rocks, less than a hundred feet from where I stood. The eagle preened itself briefly and then stared at me for a moment before also turning its gaze out over the waters, blinking in the wind.

This is my ocean. All of this is my creation and so are you.

Peace rushed like the river slamming into the ocean.

The God who had made the limitless ocean stretched out before me was the same God pursuing me. The same God who desired a relationship with me. The same God who was intimately involved in every minute detail of my life.

I had been meditating on Romans 5:5 on the way out to the peninsula, longing for such an outpouring of the Spirit. I longed for the hope of the joy that would spur me to persevere. And so I continued to mediate and pray.

Father, please send your Holy Spirit and pour out your love into me. Do verse 5! Please! I don’t even know what that means, but please just do it!

It occurred to me that at the root of my terror was something that I had felt ever since I was a child. It was my view of God as a Father.

God, to me, was a strict, serious, not-to-be-trifled with Father who was not particularly fond of me as a son. In fact, I was probably His greatest disappointment. He was usually angry and would withhold Himself from me if I was disobedient – and sometimes even when I wasn’t, just to make me squirm. He loved me out of obligation and not out of selflessness; he longed to punish me, not lovingly correct and prosper me; and He was probably very, very sorry that I even existed.

And so I lived in constant dread of disappointing Him through my perpetual failures. Obedience on my part, then, was not out of love or joy but out of fear. And I doubted that God would help me because, in my view, I was not loved.

And is that what you see here, at my ocean? He whispered again. Do you see obligatory involvement? Disinterest? Punishment?

I thought for a moment. No, Lord. I see power. I see orchestrated beauty in creation and your hands in it. And that means You are good. That means you care for me.

Then why do you doubt me, Matthew?

I could say nothing but no response was needed. And so I looked out over the Pacific as the wind howled and the leaden, frothy waves churned, confident in His power and fully assured of His trustworthiness.