Breathing Jesus

God is saying, “I know the plans I have for you…to give you a future and a hope…” Jesus says, “In the world you will have trouble, but hang loose; I have overcome the world!” John wrote, “Greater is He that is in you than he that lives in the world.”

The circumstances of your life right now might look like anything but the inroad to a good, happy future. God has promised you just such a future in Him, though, so look to that and don’t be discouraged or distracted by the way things are. Coose to trust Him in the process. You might be a mess right now, but choose to trust trust him with your mess, and believe that in His own time, and in his own way, He will craft your life into the future He has promised.

 

Jesus. I come to you right here, right now, just like this.

I come to you with all my ugliness and pain,

With all my selfishness and personal issues,

And I acknowledge that this is the state of things,

In my soul right now.

Jesus, I come to you here and now. I come to you just as you are.

You are holy, and perfect, and blameless,

And at the same time you are tender and kind.

You have compassion on me just as I am.

You are good, all the time, no matter what reality feels like, no matter what my ugliness looks like.

Because you are good,

I will praise you.

Because you are perfect, and holy, and righteous, and awesome, and unspeakably beautiful,

I will worship you.

Worship is not a strange thing. It’s perfectly natural. We have made it out to be something strange because religious institutions, like the people that they are made up of, inevitably become corrupt if they are not kept in tune with their Creator.

I find, upon reflection, that I have always worshipped something in some way.

I am always performing worship in some way.

We are all worshipping something right now.

It becomes strange when we forget what it really is, and we try to pretend it’s something it’s not.

So I come to you right here and now, Jesus.

I come to you just like this.

With all my selfishness and jealousy,

With all this anger and frustration hidden deep in all the wounds that are yet waiting to be healed,

I come to you broken and bleeding out, ready to die, I come to you still holding on to this flesh-life in some ways, for some reason, with the parts of me that still don’t understand it means death, and I give you all of my best and all of my worst, all at once, and I say, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me!!!”

I hear your voice.

I know who you are.

I love you now, after all this time, after all this struggling and thrashing around,

Because you have been loving me this whole time,

Despite it all.

I rest in this place,

The place of perfect peace,

I breathe you in,

I breathe you out,

I soak in your presence,

I absorb everything that is going on right now in the atmosphere,

All this love.

As I do this, as the hurting places in me soak you in (the places that normally agree with all the ugliness)

As I set aside my restless nerves time and again, over and over,

As I gently lead myself back into the here and now, no matter how many times the distractions return,

In imitation of you, patiently demonstrating this love for my own soul, something still in some ways so foreign to me,

As I obey you by choosing to believe that you have accomplished all that is necessary to remove all separation, and that you want more than anything else in this universe for me to come to you and take full advantage of every provision you have made,

You meet me in this place.

You commune with me and speak to my heart in this place.

Only here in this place, where I am fully honest with you and with myself,

Where I am without pretense, without ulterior motive, without hope of reprieve through anything that would set itself apart from you in any way,

You heal me as these truths flow through me,.

You fill me and regenerate my soul.,

You cause me to hope, and you cause me to desire, and you cause me to be what you’ve created me for.

You fill up all the empty places.

You set me free from all the selfishness and pain.

Progressively, ever on and on, always more and more,

I rest only here and now, and your peace floods my soul.

Right now — here in this present moment — I choose to let this mind be in me which was also in Christ. I choose to acknowledge my beginning in God, in the Logos, and not in the kosmos. I have to choose this on purpose, in defiance of anything which may appear to present evidence to the contrary. The truth about who I am now is different than what is true about who I was before Jesus.

This is the basis of my entire reality now. No longer am I dependent upon feeding body and soul with what makes them happy in temporary ways. My innermost being, my spirit, has now been made one with the Spirit of God, and it is from this absolute center that I now live my life — feeding spirit first, and knowing that only in this manner can body and soul be effectively maintained in the ways that really matter.

I swim against the stream of the compulsions of this present darkness, and in so doing I deliberately engage with the Divine in my every waking moment.

This is not burdensome. It is not arduous. If I find that it becomes so, I need to re-focus.

I recline upon the promises of my Savior as I labor to enter into this rest. This labor can only be performed in the place of repose which comes from realizing what has already been accomplished. The energy to carry out these actions can only result from the peace that passes all understanding.

“Repentance.” The word carries with it a certain sense of foreboding. It seems an ominous chore, and one not easily reckoned with. Really, though, when framed in the context of the New Testament, it is an invitation into the sweetest kind of rest we could ever possibly imagine.

 ^“Come to me and I will give you rest—all of you who work so hard beneath a heavy yoke. Wear my yoke—for it fits perfectly—and let me teach you; for I am gentle and humble, and you shall find rest for your souls; for I give you only light burdens.”  — Matthew 11:28

Trusting in the finished work of Jesus is the only thing that you or I can ever really do that means anything…but trusting…to trust…that means everything.

When I first became a Christian, I didn’t know how to trust anything or anyone, let alone the very God who created the universe, who I didn’t really even understand at all! Somehow, though, even though I didn’t know how to do it, I did do it, and He began to teach me, and to guide me. So, a great adventure began. I began to be fathered by the One who invented everything.

In the heat of this adventure, all the ugly melts away. All the bad stuff turns to dust. These loving interactions between God and the person — this communion made possible by what Jesus did — only this has the power to take away the things that can poison our souls.

Repentance is really nothing more than a wholehearted return to this simple relationship of trust. When we make it more than that, we wreck it. We really do.

Jesus cautioned his disciples against worry. He encouraged them to instead believe in the goodness of God. We may not have an accurate picture of what “goodness” really is, us being products of this present world, with all its faults and failings.

Allow God to teach you what goodness is.

This requires us to suspend our own judgment. We need to put all of our stuff on the shelf — our opinions, our feelings, our sense of what life should look like — and soak ourselves in the presence of the Living God.

His presence is freely available to us because of Jesus, and he longs for you to enjoy it! Allow Him to saturate you. Learn from Him. Relax in Him.

God is everywhere, and God is love. A wise man once said, “God’s love is not something… God is love…He is not outside of Himself, He is not a “loving” God…He is love.” Think about that for a moment. Soak in that. Saturate yourself with that.

Before you do anything else in life, take a moment to absorb this simple truth, that the God who orchestrated the cosmos, who created matter, and who breathes life into everything, loves you just as you are…and that He paid a price that is beyond description in order that you would be able to enjoy Him.

Then stay here as you move forward. Stay here as you go there, wherever there happens to be today. Stay here in this place where you are fully aware of this love. Be fully alive in God’s goodness. Do not forget…because forgetting is easy to do, and it comes naturally to us in this world, with its distractions and its trials. This is why Jesus tells us not to worry. God is good…all the time.

 

Pain can be very hard to deal with. Sometimes, it may seem that you aren’t actually able to move forward in life and do what you need to do in order to survive. It may seem that the pain is too great.

Somewhere beyond this present moment there is a future that you need to make it to. There are people who need what you have, because it’s something that only you can give them.

Someone once told me that, if you don’t fulfill your destiny, then God will just raise up someone else who will. Nothing could be further from the truth. Buried deep within your potential is a life that no one else will ever be able to live but you.

You are not replaceable.

You have a destiny, a purpose for being alive on the face of the Earth, and if you don’t fulfill your destiny, then no one else ever will.

So, take heart. Know that God is with you, even though it may not seem like it right now. The things in life that seem too hard to bear are shaping and preparing you for what’s next. Lean into God, and he will help you to respond to the challenges in the best way possible.

God, I don’t understand why things happened this way. I am in so much pain. I’ve asked You to deliver me, but you allow me to remain in these circumstances.

Just wait, I can hear you saying. Just watch what I am going to do. 

I find myself responding like the man in the Bible who said to Jesus, “Lord, I believe… Help my unbelief!”

I am choosing to trust you. It is difficult, but I am choosing to do it because I know that you love me. I can feel your love. I can feel you all around me. In you I am living and moving. It is in you that I exist. I can’t hope to do anything apart from you. I tried to live like that for a while, after getting confused about who you are. I saw you as being harsh and merciless… And, in time, I gave up. But that wasn’t really you… And you were faithful. Even when I stopped being faithful to you, you stayed faithful to me. You never left me, never forsook me. You were always here, protecting me, even through all of my anger and rebellion.

You are so good. I can’t even begin to think about trying to understand how patient you are. Your love is so unconditional.

My love isn’t like that. Not yet. But it’s changing.

As the old me dies and you rise up within me, my love is being conformed into the image of your perfect agape self.

My words could never thank you enough for how good you have been to me.

The things of this world grow strangely dim as we realize what is actually going on. All of this…these things which compete for our attention…all of these are subject to the physical laws of this material world. They will all pass away in their own time, but the eternal things will stay forever.

Invest in those things. That is who you are now. You are an investor in the realm of eternity. You are a lover of God. You are a participant in resurrection life, and in the power of the age to come.

These things are true about you, even though they may not be what seems most familiar. Live in this truth. Be here now. It is who you are.

God has made up his mind about you. His plans for you are good. Cooperate with Him. Agree with His plans. Be who you are. Be alive!

Exodus tells of the extraordinary forgetfulness of the Israelites. Moses had just finished leading them out of Egyptian slavery through a series of miraculous divine interventions, whereupon, at the first sign of trouble, they turn on him and immediately doubt whether the favor of God is truly upon them.

We all do this.

We should all stop doing this.

When you find yourself in the crucible of suffering, do not lose heart. Do not begin to doubt that God is using this, too, for good, and that He has a plan, and that this plan is good.

Trust in God, no matter what…and do not forget that He knows what He is doing.

“Come away with me. Though you are here, come away.” This is what Jesus says, and how God calls to us by his Spirit. We are so distracted here in this place. There are so many things calling for our attention. The best thing we can do is choose to entrust ourselves to God. It is a moment-by-moment kind of thing. It takes practice. It doesn’t matter how many times we screw up. God is not insecure about our weakness. He has felt the pain of this weakness himself, and he has overcome it, and he offers his own accomplishments in so doing to us, free of charge. He is well able to provide us with the help we need.

Close your eyes even now and come away with him, beyond the noise and above the fray of this present darkness; dive in and go deeper, higher…and as you soak in the mystery of faith, become your true self in the comfort of his perfect love.

This is why you are here and now.