Romans 8

I'm memorizing Romans 8. I'm seeing how by reading it day after day (just the first 8 verses) what it means to preach the gospel to yourself daily and how the vast majority of my days as a follower of Jesus have not included a reminder of the gospel, of what has been done on my behalf. And it is amazing how these same verses day after day minister to me wherever I am. Because I seem to be one who is so easily weighed down and discouraged by each day, sometimes regardless of what the day brings. I am worried that I woke up too late, that my time with the Lord was not rich enough, that I did not serve people, that I did not represent Christ well, that I wasted time, on and on. Romans 8 is a constant and gorgeous reminder that it is all about what he did. That God what you and I cannot do. We cannot fulfill the law because we are weakened by our own flesh. But God has done it, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin so that the righteous requirement of the law may be FULFILLED in us. Not only is the sin paid for but the requirement of the law is fulfilled. When we take on christ, when we accept his obedience the law is satisfied. We are counted as just. I think about how weak I am in the smallest things, like the way that I interact with Katie and David this week as my parents are out of town. My desire is to imitate christ, and act the way our Father acts towards us-being both loving and just. Demanding obedience and carrying out discipline out of his deep and perfect love for his children-it is so hard! My flesh is in the way. I constantly become either to quick to relent out of a desire to please them and make them happy with me or am frustrated and stubbornly hold onto my rightness or I don't carry out the logical consequences and I make up consequences that are illogical as a means of control. What a mess. How hard it must be for Christian parents. I constantly am asking God,

What would you do? How do you handle this? Make me more like you God, I want them to have an understanding of who you are and I want the way that I interact them and the way that I care for them this week to exemplify that, to point to you.

So I come before my father discouraged. Certain that he cannot be pleased with me. And he gently reminds me that I have again forgotten his gospel. That he cannot be displeased with me because my life is now hid with Christ on high. That he is not simply pleased with me. He delights in me. As his own daughter. An heir with Christ.

The focus of so much of Romans 8 is on the mind. Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on things of the flesh and those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the spirit. How much I have ignored my mind. I am so focused on the actions of each day, as well as on my behavior, carefully policing them, intent on serving as many people as possible, intent on serving God himself and I let my mind stay in the thorns of sin and filled with darkness. When your mind is set on the flesh you cannot please God. The inner darkness and invisible sin leads just as clearly to death as does the outer, even if no one else can see it. Likewise, a mind set on the Spirit leads to life and peace.

Was able to spend time at a nursing home today. What a heart God has for the old, the widowed, the sick, the dying. How deeply affectionate of them he is. I said, Lord I don't know that my heart can be stretched to burdened for another group of people, but then I knew that it had already been done. 5 hours today at this nursing facility, most of it with one woman who is a Jehovah's Witness, talking about whether Jesus is God or not. Sitting with a woman who couldn't speak, just holding hands. Thats good. Its deep and its godly and its of the lord. The nursing home smelled like my favorite orphanage in Haiti in a few spots. And when you leave a place that is hard to be in, having that sense of transferring that burden over to the lord is such a good thing. God this is your burden now, I carried it with you but now it is all yours, sweet lord. Your yoke is easy, your burden light. I am weary and heavy laden. Take me to the water, because I am thirsty. Spending time with young life girls today. just plain hard. Probably getting harder as time goes on. Giving a talk on life with God on monday. What do I say to these beautiful children of God living in a world of such brokenness and desolation? How do I speak to them about life with God? How do they hear? And God, what do I do when you are not revealing yourself in a tangiable way to them? When will they see you? Why cant they see you lord, when I know your presence so well? And I have no doubt that you tore a veil in me, just like you did in the temple that I may see you. Do it for my girls lord.

Here is the letter to the urban kids. Its a letter I need to hear as well.
Sons and daughters of God,
I am here to speak to you about he who is greater than life. Life with God is different than life with out God it two key ways. It is immeasurably better and immeasurably harder. It is harder because you die to yourself. You no longer believe the message our society is doing its best to tell you: you have to take care of yourself, your needs, your desires. You can't trust God with your sexuality. You can't trust him with your lonliness. You can't trust him with your fear. I am here to say that you can. That your sin is no match for his grace. That your life will never earn you rightness with him. That he alone is the one who will set you free. You will not set yourself free.
God, I want them to know that your name is Faithful and True, those who have known so little faithfulness. I want them to know that you will wash us and we will be whiter than snow, you purge us with hyssop and we will be clean. You are a God who cleans. You are a God who loves. You are a God who is good who demands absolute goodness and perfection and love. I hope that one day you get sick of life as it is and you sense that there is something better for you. That something is life with God. I hope that once you step into life with God, you know that you are stepping into battle. And I mean that in a very serious way.
I love you, I want to tell the urban kids. Your leaders keep coming because we love God and through loving God we are able to genuinely, deeply, passionately love you.
I love seeing you play basketball because I know that you are improving even when it consumes a lot of your life. Jesus will consume all of your life. And it will be so good.
I hate that you don't trust your heavenly Father because the only dads you've ever known have been more broken and more distant and more unreliable than most things in your life. I hate that you think he doesn't love you because you don't see him answering in your prayers.
I know this doesn't make sense to you right now, and its hard to hear for anyone, but he answered every prayer in jesus. And when you pray for your family or friend or your boyfriend or yourself, you are praying for deeper things than you think. Praying to be loved. To be accepted. To be cared for and protected. And each of those deep things Jesus has already done for you. We know the end of the story already and he wins. He absolutely wins, and when he wins and we are his, we win too. He will be your dad your mom. He will be your lover. He will be all that you every have ached for, the only fulfillment you can ever hope for. The only thing worth living for.

My sin wants to tell me that its hard to praise you today because I did so little.  My sin wants to tell me that it was stupid to go to the honors induction ceremony. My sin wants to tell me that I will be a failure this week, that I can’t do all there is to do. My sin hates me and it hates you even more. I am not defined by sin. I am defined by your son. How my day was doesn’t matter because my life is hid with Christ. When you look at me you see perfect obedience. You see perfect sacrifice. You look straight at me, you the maker of all the things, you look at me with your eyes like fire and your hair white as wool and your name is Faithful and True, this perfect righteous GOD looks at me and declares for all to hear, she has met the requirement. She is worthy to spend eternity with me. She has been perfectly obedient. She has never sinned. She is my daughter and I am well pleased with her. Why? How can you say these things about me that can never be true?

Because of Christ.

Because of what Jesus Christ did. Because he has clothed me in his righteousness. I am clothed.

I’ve got to start ending my day and beginning my day with Jesus Christ. Instead of thinking about the day and what I did well and what I did poorly and where I should have been more bold with the gospel the only thing to do is get on my knees and thank Jesus because you look at me and He is all you see. You do not see Krystal. You see Jesus. And I never been so fully myself as I am now that I am identified with you. I have been saved from my utter brokenness. You saw me just like you saw the boy in Matthew 17. You see me-unable to fix myself. You say the words that change everything.

Bring her to me.

And you heal me instantly. In a second I am healed. As soon as I am brought to you. And now, as one who is alive, I am like the disciples, who gave power to. But just like them I forget your power and cling to my own, which isn’t even my own its yours too. And I try to save. I try to cast out demons. I try to make dead bones come back to life. And you say, my daughter, my beloved whom I have adopted, this girl that you care so much about, these brothers you want to know me, these college students who need to be healed,

Bring every single daughter, every single son to me.

Bring them, my darling. I will heal them MYSELF.

And you will. You heal instantly. You cast out demons immediately. They cower and the flee before you. And you the most powerful one are my Savior, my Redeemer, my Righteousness. My sacrifice. I belong to you and you are enough. And you love me so well when you give me nothing but yourself so that I can remember that you are enough when it is so hard.

You are the only thing worthy of my life. 

letter to the lord

I just look at you Love, who are you to love me? Who are you to bring me to this beautiful home that I get call my own? To these people that love me? You have given me more than I could ever ask or imagine. I love you so much. For coming so close. Coming all the way to this world, putting on humanness just for us. It never gets old, Jesus. As i sit here with food that I love with a God that I love and am able to rest and hear the birds and listen to the wind be with you, I know that this is where I belong-wtih you. and that nothing else matters, except that I am with you. You have so much to teach me jesus about sufficiency. that you are sufficent for me. Wow, lord. That one sentence-you are sufficient for me-I don't think I need to go any where else today lord. I need to explore this very simple, very deep truth. I don't need any lofty ideals or fancy theology-I need a greater grasp on your sufficiency, through the incarncation, through the cross, through the resurrection. They point to you being all sufficient. Supplying my EVERY need. I know that the very patterns of my thoughts have to be fully redeemed by you God. And I know that your redemption comes through death, and death alone. I know that you are fixing up my thoughts, you are crucifying them, my whole mind, to replace it with your own. Thank you for not letting even a REMNANT remain. Because 

I have let a thought stay for so long-the thought that you are not enough. What a dangerous, destructive thought that is. I see it as I travel through your Old Testement. I look at the men and women and I identify with them, as they each think that there is something to gain apart from you-I do the same thing lord. You know it better than I do. Oh, how I think that I can let small sins and small idols stay in the temple of my body and my mind. I have let them reside for so long. I turn back to them when I think you aren't with me or that I can't depend on you. I let little behaviors go on and on and I know that you have said that its a big deal and I know that it is a trick to think that my spiritual life can remain untainted by my anxiety, my perfectionism, my hoarding, my restricting, my judging, my coveting, my idolatry. What a wretched creature I am! How I need to be led to the cross day after day, reminded of you and your love. How resistant I am to give my All to you! I speak of it all the time, and yet my heart, God, you know the darkness. It is not dark to you, my soul is clear as day to you. No sin of my hidden. None is hidden from you. You see what I eat. You see my thoughts. You see the things that I would be so ashamed if any person ever saw. You have seen me all along. Your hand has been in my life from before I was born. YOU knit me together in my mothers womb. YOu knew all along the gods that would capture my heart. You knew my shackles before I ever was bound to them. And you see the way I still long for those bonds the way the Israelites longed for Egypt. Oh, Lord, what will you do with me?Wrap me up, hide me in the shadow of your wings. Bring me to surrender. Bind me to you, lord. Betroth me to you God, the way that you promised in Hosea. Betroth me to your Son lord so that we are One just as you and He are one just the way I will taste oneness if I am ever to marry, if that is your will for my life-but either way it is just shadow of the marriage of the bride of the church to the Son, the resurrected One. The one who made himself nothing, and was obedient unto death, death on a cross. I look at the world you have made and I know it is barely a taste, barely a drop of your glory and majesty and power. And I think to myself, who is this God? This perfect one, who loves us far more than we know. Who loves me, calls me by name to himself. Who is calling the girls that I think love, the people that I think that I am pouring into. But I am not-you are God. When there is good that is done and I am involved-all the goodness is yours. The fact that you can use me only points back to your surpassing power that you could take one so selfish and so broken, and use her to carry out your perfect will and the advancement of your glorious Kingdom. Its all for you God. Its all about you God. I don't praise you enough! I don't ascribe the glory. As I sit here and type tiny little words that are so inadequate for you, you come into this small act and you change ME, renewing my heart-forever changing my heart of stone into a heart of flesh, forever breathing life into these dry bones. I know what you say, Lord. You say that we are all dead until your spirit gives us life. You give and take away. And you alone are good. How is it that you long for me? I know that its true, because you promise it in your word and I see it the sending of your Son-the testament of your longing for us, but I have no grasp of how YOU could long for ME. You lack nothing, everything is yours already. And yet you long for me. You long for the orphans of Haiti. You long for the nonbelievers of Montenegro. You long for my little brother. You long for my young life girls. And I think that I know longing, and I do not. My longing is not like yours. My longing would never send my son, fully God, to be fully human and to fully die. YOu never cease to amaze me when I stop to think about who you are. You are so, so good, sweet Father as my roommate loves to call you. 

Sweet Father. 

Easter

What a day we have today. Christ is risen.

Christ is risen.

Oh, Lord Jesus, how you have bore the cross, despising its shame for the joy set before you. Oh, Savior, how you have done all things to bring us to yourself. I’ve tasted and seen, Jesus and I have found that you are good. That you are the best there is. What a joy we have this morn! We celebrate the resurrected one. How can our hearts not be overwhelmed? How can we not sing and dance? Lord, I think of what this day must have meant two thousand years ago. Tell me Jesus, what did it mean to the women who came to the tomb and saw you. What it did it mean Thomas when you placed his hand in your side? What did it mean to Peter Lord? Peter is on my heart this morning. I just imagine. Fishing-I don’t know what he was feeling. Guilt. Shame. Crushed. Lost. Despair. Fear. Longing. Longing for you Jesus. For you to return. To have responded differently on that terrible day you were crucified. To have stayed with you to the end. And he looks up when John says something that he doesn’t dare to hope is true. He sees you. What a rush must have come over peter. I can’t imagine the joy. The relief. The love. The peace. The knowledge that everything has been made right. The understanding that he will NEVER be apart from you again because death has lost its power. The grave has lost its sting. He jumps into the water and starts to swim. He can’t wait another minute. He’s running to you as fast as he can. God give us that same urge to run toward our love with everything in us.