Living the Dream

What if God has dreams for you that you are not even aware of?  What if they are so big, you will never be able to comprehend the magnitude of them?  What if they are so outside your preconceived notions of who you are, that you would dismiss them if someone were to tell you of them?  How would you react if you found yourself in a place that was challenging everything you considered holy, good and praiseworthy about yourself?  Could you embrace His dream for you in its beginning stages with no guarantee of the outcome?

Joseph is my example today.  Maybe I relate to him especially right now because of my recent challenge to awaken to creativity.  I know it is a poor parallel, but it helps me understand the process Joseph might have gone through.

We see him in Matthew betrothed to Mary when he finds out she is pregnant.  He is an honorable man, so he plans to divorce her quietly so as not to expose her to public shaming.  Then an angel appears in a dream and tells him not to be afraid to marry her because this situation was initiated by the Holy Spirit.  Joseph is given the invitation to go “all in” with an incomprehensible explanation that is supposed to settle the matter.  I can see this being effective if happening in real time, but it was all given in a dream.  It must have been a powerful experience because when Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the lord commanded him.

Imagine that?  The angel spoke to him in a dream because God had a dream for Joseph that was so big; so beyond his natural ability to understand, that He didn’t want him to miss it by reasoning it out.  Maybe this marriage was one of opportunity for Joseph.  Maybe he was attracted to Mary initially or maybe he was going along with the wishes of his family knowing this was a good match.  Whatever their background, we are not told.  All we are told is that Joseph had the proper lineage to be the father of the King.  His lineage is laid out in the previous portion of scripture.  He is a descendant of David.

When things got a little complicated and embarrassing, Joseph wanted out, until the angel gave him a prophetic word with just enough information to keep him going in the direction of his calling.  Practically speaking, the angel only told him five things:

1.       I know who you are, and where you have come from.

2.       Don’t be afraid.

3.       Carry on in the direction you were headed.

4.       Something you cannot understand and do not have a grid for, is happening.

5.       This is what will happen as a result, even though you still don’t understand a word I am saying.

Joseph woke up and did what he was directed to do.  Simple fact.  Profound implications.  Listen and follow.  One step at a time.  Choices matter.  One life lived in the spirit makes a difference. 

God had a dream for Joseph bigger than anything he could conceive.  Even walking it out day by day probably didn’t bring a whole lot of clarification.  Granted, wondrous things happened to give him the affirmation that he was “living the dream”, but did he always know it or feel it or see the big picture?  Probably not.  And maybe that is precisely why he was chosen.  He didn’t need to.  He just listened and did.  He let God take care of His portion and he took care of his.  I think it is stunning when you think of the dreams God has for each one of us that can become a verb and not a noun when we just hear and do, hear and do.  We can be “living the dream” and living in the fullness of who we were created to be, as well as fulfilling the assignment we were given by God.  Some of us will have understanding of the big picture and may even have a more public platform, but some of us will live a quieter life, but still have influence far beyond our family.

I love the fact that Joseph was a background person.  He just faded into the background.  You can look at the story and think he only had a walk on part, but if you continue the story you will see that living the dream was pulling on all of who he was as a follower who could hear, a leader who could make urgent life changing decisions at a moment’s notice and a sojourner in a strange land.  He was also a proper father who taught his son a trade and one who raised his son to love God above all things.  Small steps matter.  Being faithful in daily life is part of living the dream. 

So, right now, I am exploring what it means to live in the dream of God for me.  It is not anything I desired or sought after, but apparently God has issued me an invitation to consider a part of my identity that was hidden for many years.  Who knows where we are headed?  I just know that I have accepted the invitation and I am turning my noun into a verb.  I am “living the dream”.

Question Queen

My son calls me the “Question Queen”.  It usually refers to my need for information about the details concerning what he is doing.  Nevertheless, as I contemplate scripture and what I have been taught, I find I have more questions than ever.  Did you ever have the feeling you were taught something that didn’t make sense?  For instance, I don’t understand how we got the notion that God the Father turned His back on Jesus when He was on the cross.  I have heard over and over that God is so holy He couldn’t bear to look at sin.  Wasn’t the cross His idea to start with?  Scripture says that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19).  That word “God” is theos which the Blue Letter Bible defines as, “In the Sept. theos translates (with few exceptions) the Hebrew words Elohim and Jehovah, the former indicating His power and preeminence, the latter His unoriginated, immutable, eternal and self-sustained existence.”  That sounds like what we consider to be the Father.

Didn’t Jesus say He never did anything He didn’t see the Father doing?  What was Jesus seeing?  What part of the Father was laying down His life for mankind?  Certainly, the Father was laying down the life of His Son; the Son He was intertwined with, and could not be separated from in His essence.  He gave His Heart of Hearts; His Son, sacrificing Him as a Lamb for, but also AS mankind, releasing the world from the futile way of living passed on to us by our forefathers (1Peter 1:18-20).  

How can we say that the Father was not with Jesus right through to the end?  I guess I don’t believe the interpretation that when Jesus said, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”, that He actually believed that God had turned away.  I think Jesus was taking on and voicing the cry of humanity that went all the way back to the Garden.  When Adam sinned, he was the one who turned away from God.  The enemy was only too willing to defile Adam with self-consciousness which resulted in Adam hiding from God.  God never hid from Adam when he sinned; He went after him.  But, when Adam hid, in an exaggerated consciousness of self, he felt forsaken.  It is easy to project our own perceptions on another and reinforce them until they become our reality.  Yes, there was a new reality for Adam, but God had planned for the possibility and eventuality of sin.  In His compassion and love, He offered Jesus as the sacrificial lamb before there was ever a world. So, why do we continue to think that the Father, that same God, would turn away from Jesus at the very moment He was fulfilling the plan that was hidden in the Heart of God all along?  It just doesn’t make sense. 

It’s like I am being asked to believe God pushed the “pause button” and fast forwarded through the climax of the movie; the part where He pulled off the impossible, with all the tension and drama and excitement, and tune back in after it was all over.  He is the Divine Script Writer.  He wrote the Book.  The Book says,” He became sin”.  He did not become a sinner, but the mystery was how He included us in Christ and became sin so that the whole creation could be released from decay.  It only makes God bigger to see with different eyes and question some of the things we have come to believe.  It is the only way for me to really appreciate how big God is; how magnanimous and majestic.  How wondrous is His Love that never fails and is always with us.  

How can I believe God will never leave me or forsake me in my personal hell, if I have in the background of my theology, a notion that God turned away from Jesus on the cross?  Instead, I see many scriptures that say God so LOVED the world.  I see God coming after and delivering again and again, from Genesis to Revelation.  We might get tired of delivering others, but I think it is part of the nature of God.  He is not like us.  He will keep coming after mankind until He Is satisfied with the results.  That is what the Holy Spirit still does today.  He is another way for God to be present in our situations, however painful or bad we have chosen to make them.  The Holy Spirit is the Gift we have been given.  He helps us believe just how present God is with each one of us all of the time.  He enters our hell and helps us believe there is a finished work that we can reconcile ourselves to that has delivered us from evil.  That is our hope.  That is our assurance.  That is our reality.

Contemplations on a Snowy Day

Making war on negativity has made me realize how subtle it can be.  After learning to reframe my circumstances and look at life through new lenses, it has become easier and easier to state things in the positive.  It’s not that I am turning into Pollyanna, but I am truly changing my perspective.  I recognize my old propensity for habitually choosing a downer outlook, and I find it harder and harder to approach life from the limitations of a situation.  I am practicing moving into the sufficiency of God in everything I face.  The natural progression of that is a growing awareness of how negatively I have been viewing scripture; even when some amazing things are happening in the Word. 

Take for instance the story of Moses.  When he entered a dialog with God in Exodus 33, Moses says, “See, You say to me, Bring up this people, but You have not let me know whom You will send with me.  Yet, You said I know you by name and you have also found favor in My sight.  Now, therefore, I pray You, if I have found favor in your sight, show me Your way, that I may know You.” 

I used to think Moses was whining and complaining because he had no one to help him lead this people.  Could it be that he was just stating a fact?  Could it be the light was dawning on him that God could be the one and only partner he needed?  After all, he is recognizing he has favor with God and that God knows him by name.  That means he realizes God knows everything about him: every strength, and every weakness.  In all of that, he has favor with God.

In this passage, I believe Moses is taking his favor in his hand, and offering it to God.  He stretches that hand to God and seeks to put a concrete experience around the favor he has.  He dares to ask God to be the one to show him the way so he can enter into an experience of progressively getting to know Him in a new way.  He knew Him as the God of the plagues who defeated Pharoah, He knew Him as His mouthpiece, He knew Him in the tent, He knew Him as the Divine Architect of the tabernacle, he knew Him in many aspects, but now he was going to know him in a new way; on the move, leading a nation into the promise.  All the other ways were facets of God’s nature, but now there was going to be a new way to relate and enter into a process.In this place, Moses eventually puts a demand (in the broadest sense) on the favor of God, and asks to see God in His glory. 

So, again, I have been taught, or picked up something that is based in a negative.  Every explanation I have ever heard approaches this section with a tinge of the negative.  The sense has always been that God put Moses in the cleft of the rock, covering him with his hand to protect him so he wouldn’t fry in the glory.

What if we looked at it as if God gave Moses ALL of the desire of his heart which he had the capacity to receive at that time?  He filled Moses up with everything He possibly could in those moments, releasing realms of glory that brought Moses into a new understanding of who he was and Who God was.  It prepared him for the next phase of his life, where God and he would be leading the nation together.  He put Moses into a place beside Him, on the rock.  It was a new side by side positioning.

Yes, God covered him with His hand.  Yes, the scripture states that “you cannot see My face, for no man shall see me and live”.  But, all that means to me is, there was a beginning of a new process and a new way that would lead to the fullness of Moses’ heart’s desire. 

The scripture goes on to record all kinds of events and interactions Moses had with God.  Each one was a marker and a learning experience of Who God was in a new dimension, and who God called him to be.  He was learning more and more of the nature of God and Who He wanted to be for Moses.  This was working to enlarge Moses’ understanding and expand his capacity to receive God in a new way.

This wonderful process led to the transfiguration in the New Testament, so while we are reading of the other significant events and people in scripture, Moses is in a process that leads to the transfiguration where we see that he obtained what he asked for.  He got to see Jesus in His glory.

Sometimes we have to read between the lines.  We can do this when our lens begins to change, and we see God differently.  God told Moses He would proclaim His name, “The Lord” before him.  That word was proceeding right through the generations into the New Testament preparing the Way for Moses to know Him in a new dimension; in His glory.  He was picking up bits of revelation all along the way which expanded him and his capacity to receive what his heart was asking for. 

When we are overwhelmed in the presence of God we sometimes pray prayers that are too big for our present ability to receive in fullness.  That’s okay.  I believe it is just the Spirit of God initiating something He wants to give us, so He prompts us to voice it so He can grant it.  How brilliant!