Month: November 2015

Open Heaven // River Wild

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”
1 John 3:1

Do you understand what this means? Do you know what kind of intensity Jesus has used to bring us His freedom and love? John uses the word ‘lavish’ here for a reason–Jesus dumps His love on us like a waterfall over a cliff. He’s swung the gates of heaven wide open and has let Heaven descend on earth into the hearts of His children. When we encounter that love in a real way, He stirs up a wild river–passionate, explosive love for God and for the humans he created.

WHOA that sounds churchy. You know, when I look at that paragraph up there, I’m really tempted to ignore it and close the article I’m reading. It could be this one, or it could be the one I got it from. Either way, to most people, it’s not exactly a flashy, attractive sentence because it sounds like something only Christians would say when they’re at church and even then most of them probably wouldn’t even understand it. And that disheartens me because as true as it may be, that attitude is wrong.

Think about this for a second: people in my generation are flaky. That’s right; I said it–we’re absolutely horrific at keeping commitments. Why do you think we see so many people in our generation getting married and then being completely miserable? Let’s just admit it–we’re plagued. If there’s one sin we struggle with the most as a collective generation, it’s honesty and responsibility to our word. Like Jesus said in the sermon on the mount–we should let our yeses mean yes and our nos mean no.

Except we don’t do that. Like, at all.

Capture

We’re wishy-washy. We don’t like commitment. Marriage terrifies people everywhere. I mean, even the word ‘love’ is touchy for a lot of millennials (and don’t think I’m making this all about relationships, because I’m not–they’re just the best examples). But here’s something interesting–when Jesus says, “I love you,” he means it. He means it so much, he actually died because of it.

And now, he’s trying to give us his love. He wants so intensely to give us his love that he gives us moment after moment to accept it and often times shoves it right under our noses in a place we can’t ignore it. And when we finally accept it, and we let him into our lives, he opens heaven wide unleashes a downpour of love that we can’t escape. It engulfs us. It surrounds us. It gives us no other option but him, and honestly we needn’t want anything else anyway–this intensity of love shows us so profoundly how sufficient he really is that it stirs us to a feeling of passionate response, a wild river-like desire to go only one direction at all and that’s right toward him.

Lately, Philippians 3:10 has been the theme of everything around me:

“My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.”

The closer I grow to him, the more he will lavish his presence and his love–or at least the more I will see it clearly anyway.

Yeah, it sounds churchy, but it’s true.

I’m Getting Baptized! (Finally)

It’s been long enough.

You may be thinking, “Tyler–what the heck, man? I thought you were saved. I thought you’ve been saved. I thought that all these years you’ve been following Jesus that it’s been legit and it’s been for real. Why the heck are you just now getting baptized?” Well, all of those observations are true. Kind of.

Yeah, I’ve been saved. That definitely happened. Problem is, I said it happened twice before it actually did happen. Once at nine years old, and again at twelve, I told the world that Jesus had saved me. But you see, He hadn’t. Not yet.

I said the prayer (twice), and I listened to what the pastors said over and over but the truth is, my heart never ever changed. Not at first. It wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school that I learned what it truly meant to be saved–to have the Creator of the world in your own heart. Not until 15 did I realize even a smidgen what that meant for me.

But by the time I finally decided to do this stuff for real, I was terrified that the church I was in wouldn’t accept me. I was afraid they would see me up there for the third time in six years and say, “Well, here we go again. It’s not legitimate this time but let’s play along and let him have his day anyway.” Looking back, it sounds absolutely ridiculous that my church would act that way (especially now that I know beyond any doubts they wouldn’t have even gotten close to that), but in the moment I was terrified.

I let that fear control me for years. I don’t know how long it was that I stayed in my pew on Sunday mornings because I was shaking inside over what they would think if I decided to waltz up to the front one more time, but what I do know is that eventually the idea of getting baptized left my mind altogether and I forgot to do it. Eventually, another six years slipped away from me. And I know that during most of those six years, I was following the path the Lord was leading me down but the reality is that I can’t fully follow Him and keep his commandments if I don’t do the thing He did as the single most important thing to do first in his ministry: get baptized.

So today I’m proclaiming to the world: I’m a screwed up human being. Sometimes, I don’t even feel human inside because of my guilt and shame but the beautiful thing is that Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross frees me from literally everything. Guilt. Shame. Fear. The stress of figuring out what He wants me to do (He’s pretty clear and gives the answers exactly when He’s ready–plus baptism is a pretty clear indication of at least one thing He’s leading me to right now). All of those have no power over me anymore and the minute I decide to throw all my anxieties on Jesus and let Him sort everything out is the minute I start living in that freedom in a way that I can honestly never imagine.

Next Sunday I’m getting baptized. And it’s because I want to be His friend–to keep His commandments in the hopes that I’m led to know Him more and He be my very best friend in the whole world.

It’s been long enough.