PAUL IS PROOF

"For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."
John 3:17

Do not misunderstand the purpose of Jesus' life and ministry; do not mis-assign His target: not the flawless but the flawed; not the righteous but the unrighteous; not the sinless but the sinful; not the found but the lost; not the best but the worst.

Jesus came to find and (re)direct the lost and directionless; He came to put purpose in our journey and destination at the end of it. He came to re-purpose our flaws, mistakes and weaknesses into motivations, messages, and strengths. And so, regardless of why we are unworthy, or even how unworthy we are, God has made us His beloved mission. He has determined us, all of us who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, worth His time and His love.

• NOT TO CONDEMN BUT TO SAVE

Jesus was frequently questioned about, and judged for, his association with... well, sinners. In Matthew 9:9-12 specifically, adversaries of Jesus asked His disciples why Jesus interacted with the people society had condemned and socially quarantined. Jesus answered that the sick need a doctor, not the healthy. Society might have condemned and quarantined them, but God had not. God, Spiritual-Physician that He is, had compassion on them; spiritual stethoscope on their souls, He diagnosed that they needed healing. Jesus was the prescription; His ministry, the word and philosophy of God was the treatment. 

We, therefore, who have insecurities, deficiencies, and emotional turbulence, are most fortunate. For God is a specialist in our ailments. He is here and near and most importantly, equipped, to heal us. Although so many authoritarians would have arrived to condemn, Jesus came to save. He came to sentence us to life rather than death, and helps us to make the spiritual crossover.

• ONE SINNER WHO REPENTS

If you have ever believed that your mistakes or wandering have made you less valuable to God, read the Parable of the Lost Son in the gospels. In the Parable there is a father with two sons. One of the sons remained with and loyal to his father, but the younger son did not. The younger son left and consequently languished. He struggled in life and became desperate enough to reflect on his choices. He realized he needed to go home, but knew his father would not accept him back as a beloved son. But he had learned from his mistakes and had changed; he began to value the family he had been born into. He hoped, at most, that his father would take pity on him, relent, and allow him back as a servant.

The son journeyed back to his home. While was still a long way off, his father noticed his younger son and had not pity, but compassion for his son. The father ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. Immediately the younger son repented and humbled himself before his father. He felt unworthy; he did not believe he deserved the blessings he squandered, rejected and neglected. 

But the father began to clothe his son in the familial vestment. So great was the father's joy at his son's return that he immediately restored him and planned a celebration for his arrival. He exclaimed: "...my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." Though we had turned our back to Him, the love and mercy of God rushes toward us the moment we decide to turn our face  toward him. He considers our change of heart our return to life, and by Him we are welcomed home as beloved children once again.

It is thanks to the elder son's confusion that we understand why the wayward son was restored to his father's good graces so readily. The father had to explain to him that his younger brother's return was so beautiful because he had been dead. The elder son had always obeyed his father, unrighteousness, thus death had never claimed him. But the younger brother was in the clutches of death, he was a slave to sin, he was disconnected from the Kingdom. His return was so spectacular because it had been so unlikely. He return was so spectacular because he had been so far away! He had almost to the point of no return. His return was so spectacular because instead of suffering a loss, the Kingdom of God could celebrate a restoration, and addition. 

• SAVES THE ONE

In Luke 15:1-7, Jesus used an analogy of sheep to explain that God charges into the wilderness to save one of His lost ones. Just as in the Parable of the Lost son, those who never go astray are loved, but so, deeply, are those who do. In fact, we learn that "there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance."

We are cherished even more for who we are because of who we were. In His appreciation for us, God takes into account the arduous journey we take from past-self to present-self. After all, The people who left the kingdom worked harder than anyone else to be in it. The sick child restored to health, the lost child who found his way home, is cause for heaven-wide celebration.

• APPOINTED TO HIS SERVICE

In the book of 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Paul confessed that even though he considered himself to be the worst sinner of all sinners, by God's grace, he was appointed to His service. Returned children, healed children, are not just restored to a place in heaven, they are also given a purpose.

Jesus enabled Paul, put him directly in the ministry, because Paul's past served the impact of his future. Paul was known, infamously, as the persecutor of the Christian faith. Having come further than anyone else, from the brink of death to the peak of life, Paul's testimony carried a weight different and heavier than anyone else's could have. When he, Paul, the most known, most deadly persecutor of Christians to converted to Christianity the world changed; the ministry of Jesus reached further than ever before across the world and generations. 

Jesus came to save sinners and Paul is proof. Paul's life exemplified the pattern of God's patience: this, exclaimed Paul's life, is the pattern that is the restoration of the repentant sinner: We go from death to life! Lost to found. Sick to healed. The faith and wisdom we gained during the journey back become the tools and materials we use to bring others with us back with us. Our value is increased all the more; our mistakes and weaknesses, hurts and scars, the process of our repentance and return, teaches us how best to help, to heal, to rescue the people who are what we used to be!

Maybe you are the lost son, the lost sheep, someone who walks away from or even against God. If you are, Jesus came specifically for you. Your heartbeat is in His ears, your thumbprint is on His body, your hurt has been destined for His healing. He has planned a place for you in the kingdom, a purpose for you in this life. He is closer to you than anyone else; it is your voice He most wants to hear, your face He most wants to see. 

Until now you've shown Him your back, we all have at certain times and moments in our life. We are not perfect in any moment, situation, relationship or act. There are times in everyone's day and life when our back, instead of our face, is toward Him. We lose our patience, we resist forgiveness, we make a selfish choice, relent to doubt or to temptation. It is in those moments precisely that God is most fiercely present, ready to sit and speak with us; the Great Physician, ready to heal us of the greed or lust or anger or meanness or depression that made us sick.

LOCUSTS + WILD HONEY

Of John the Baptist in the book of Isaiah:

The voice of one crying in the wilderness:
"Prepare the way of the Lord;
Make straight in the desert
A highway for our God."

Out from the wilderness came a humble man with a bold message and a roaring voice. It was a message for dwellers of the darkness, and for the inert in the light. A new way of life, the philosophy of Jesus, barreled toward humanity, to pierce it like the sun's rays do the earth. It was John's duty to prepare them. John the Baptist was faith in action; he prepared the people to become righteous vessels of the Holy Spirit, and obedient instruments for the hands of God. He prepared them for reversal, for submersion and for reconstruction. 

In his mother's womb, John leaped in the presence of Jesus in Mary's; he was predestined and ready to fulfill his purpose, to scoop and carve and clear the way for the ministry of Jesus and presence of God. If it was necessary then, to clear a place and construct a foundation, a basis of faith within one's life, it is necessary now.

Prophecy of the life of John the Baptist foretold several things: he would be a prophet of God, he would prepare the way for the ministry of Jesus, he would inform the people of salvation obtained by the remission of sins, give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide feet into the way of peace.

DWELLERS OF DARKNESS

In order to prepare for God and the word of God to preside in our lives, we must identify ourselves as either a dweller or darkness or one who is inert in the light. A dweller of darkness is one who lives separate, perhaps even in opposition to the word of God. Few of us would identify ourselves as such. But if the word of God has not made a life-altering impact on our way of life, a reversal of how we see and behave in the world, we are a dweller of darkness. A dweller of darkness has not yet been appointed by the light for a purpose of the light. 

John called the people to repentance, and thus to soul-deep revolution. The presence of God on the earth amid humanity meant recovery from the darkness, salvation from the sin. Every person John dipped into the Jordan confessed their sin; but it is important to understand the intimate process of confession of sin. We confess our imperfection, our mistakes and failures, and our uglier tendencies to God. By confessing them, we acknowledge them. One-on-one with God, we realize and claim and thus decide the areas where we most need His grace and mercy; discipline and instruction. Repentance is the first step not to condemnation but to reconstruction. We must realize all the places of darkness within us that are stemming the light.

In order to leave the darkness, we must leave impatience and greed beyond. Self-interest cannot come with us. Anger and anxiety must be dissolved by forgiveness and trust in God. It is a process, a journey out of the dark, but as long as we are not inert in the darkness, we are active in the light. We move into the light when we leave darkness behind. Our new focus, in every situation, relationship, or mood we find ourselves in must be on:

"whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8)."

For light, the fruit of the spirit  is:

"is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23)."

SHADOW OF DEATH

Alternately, John was also sent to those who dwell in the shadow of death. That is: all of us. We all live in the shadows cast by disparity and injustice. We are all hosted by temporary bodies; we all love and befriend souls hosted by temporary bodies. John came to prepare us for a drastic change in our shadowed journey. Our walk through "the valley of the shadow of death", Psalm 23, takes on new characteristics: we are shepherded, led by the River of courage and comfort from which to draw.  

As we mold ourselves receptive to the ministry of Jesus, we adopt our eternal nature. Receptive to the ministry of Jesus, we become privy to God's purposes and plans. We become agents of God's purposes and plans. We realize that that which is wrong or cruel is not absolute. We begin to see, all over the world, construction zones. Project sites commissioned by the Holy Spirit, led and supported by advocates, fellow-workers of His peace.

The shadow of death therefore is a precursor to the light of eternity. John was sent to us to inform us that we are not stuck in death's shadow; this life is a beginning, not an end. John prepared them, and us, for Jesus to explain precisely how.

INERT IN THE LIGHT

It is not enough to bask in the light. From John, an itinerant preacher, we should learn that we are meant to move, to speak, to act. Submersion is in his title: John the Baptist; John the baptizer.  Submersion in the river Jordan was symbolic of submersion in faith. Our objectives shift, our purpose is established, our values are chosen by God, our wisdom is gleaned from Him. We are meant to use all of that. 

God provides the light, that is, the peace and comfort and hope and advocacy. He provides those things for a purpose... for our purpose. For our mission, our life's work in faith. What would we need advocacy for if we were inert? If we aren't breaking chains why do we need strength? If we aren't speaking out in defense of the meek, why do we need confidence? If we aren't going to love, why do we need comfort? If we aren't going to bear the burns of forgiveness and the bruises of compassion, why do we need healing?

We receive for a purpose. His advocacy is to advocate for us while we walk, while we speak, while we work.

 HOST OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 

For the Holy Spirit to arrive and reside in our life, we must foster within ourselves the climate in which It thrives. Only a righteous host can host Righteousness. This is why it was so essential for John Baptist to prepare the way. This is why it is so essential for us to prepare the way for God to arrive in our lives. We suffocate our faith when we foster a toxic atmosphere. 

We cannot allow impatience, anger, greed, temptation, or injustice to fester in the place where we expect God to be. We have to behave selflessly in moments we feel most inclined to be selfish. We must sacrifice and give when our desire flares. We must choose justice even when it does not equate with a status elevation of ourselves. In the day-to-day, the thought-to-thought, we have to create a habitable soul for the Holy Spirit to fill. 

The ministry of Jesus reached a region which had been prepared for it because this lifestyle is not one that can reside on, or reside with, another. It cannot be contradicted, it must be absolute. We cannot have one foot in the dark and one in the light; a house divided cannot stand. What we think, say and do will never be steadfastly perfect. But our intention to think, say, and do things worthy of, like God, must be! Our commitment to this lifestyle must be steadfast and absolute. Faith unfed will starve, and our faith's provision comes from what our minds, and voices and hands produce. Faith will not subsist on the wrong food.

John was appointed to guide feet to the path of peace. Within the ministry of God, we walk a new road: a path of peace. He cleared the brambles, he trod the path for us to follow. As we walk into the Kingdom, we delve into comprehensive peace. He taught us to prepare ourselves, to prepare our lives for change and reversal, for purpose and new direction. Because beside Jesus, fear is illogical, shame is removed, chaos is ordered, safety is ensured, provision is provided, defense is absolute. Beside Jesus, peace is established and upheld.

John was a simple man who came from the countryside; he lived as a minimalist, eating only locusts and wild honey. God prepared him for great, prophetic, action-packed purpose yet he remained a humble man. The symbolism is that he subsisted on the natural, incredible, honey that is God's word and he crushed his enemies with the movements of his life. Locusts are used in the Bible to symbolize the enemy, the sin that corrodes the world. Imitate John, live humbly by the light and act boldly against the dark.

UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE

Elijah had just been sentenced to death by Jezebel, the corrupt queen of a weak king. She had recently, wickedly, wielded her husband's power to slaughter one hundred of Elijah's fellow prophets. And because Elijah had publicly undermined her power in favor of God's, she vowed that her most vehement objective was his execution. Elijah's heart dropped and just as swiftly, his feet fled. And continued to flee until Elijah was a whole day's journey into the wilderness. Once he reached a place of absolute seclusion, Elijah came to rest under a juniper tree; and with him, his soul-suppressing fear and dejection. 

Alone at the base of the tree, the prophet cried out: "It is enough! Now, Lord take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!" Elijah was overwhelmed to the point of surrender. A very natural response to a very human tribulation: fear, failure, dejection. Elijah's woe sculpted an imprint at the base of that juniper tree for you to sit in. At some point in your life you will need to sit in that spot and you should, because from that spot God rehabilitated His beloved child; He is equally able to rehabilitate you. 

Elijah's breakdown under the juniper tree is an illustration of God's receptive and attentive, gentle and empathetic nature. Yet the most salient point of the prophet's breakdown is God's subsequent ability to engineer the restoration of a broken spirit.

• Spiritual solitude carves the space necessary for recuperation.

Elijah knew that he needed to more than just hide from Jezebel. Before he settled under the juniper tree in the wilderness, he had reached safety: a different city, and he had arrived there with a friend. But neither safety nor friendship could settle him, never mind restore the tumult of his soul. To be healed of an afflicted soul, he had to find spiritual solitude. 

He rested on the ground of the tree and slept. He needed rest, and in that quiet place, boisterous only with the delicate twitter of nature, an angel touched him. The angel carried and delivered to Elijah a directive from God: arise and eat. Still despondent, Elijah surveyed the baked bread and the cruse of water and then complied. He ate and drank and rested.

God wants you to do more than simply hide from fear or enemies. He wants to tend to your wounds; He wants to assign an angel to  to deliver provision and to minister to your needs. In order to do that, He needs you to journey into a place where such ministrations can be delivered. A place of spiritual solitude, literal for Elijah and perhaps for you too, but figuratively as well. Exclusively two things must you permit entrance to your soul: the bread of life and the living water. You need to submit yourself to God's word and will and submerse yourself in His love and promises.

The baked bread that Elijah ate was more than a meal, more than a symbol. The bread was the bread of life, sustenance sourced from God. Elijah consumed the provision of God, the only organic substance specific and adequate enough to revive the soul. Elijah allowed the angel not to administer bread but to minister to him the encouragement, the purpose, the plan and protection of God. Elijah guzzled the living water that quenched and revived the spirit in him that had grown parched in the oppressive heat of the world. Elijah submerged himself in God's solemnity, it poured back into his life and doused the fires that had burned him nearly to ash.

God's solemnity will form a barrier between you and the chaos, you and the fear, you and the source of your torment. To have that barrier, to disallow the noise and chaos to permeate and frazzle your state of mind, you need to delve into spiritual solitude. You must allow God to minister to you through scripture, through quiet contemplate and trust in His authority over all forces in your life. Like Elijah, you need to rest and you need to know that redemptive rest comes through absolute reliance on God and the severing of all else.

• Identification of the cause and expression of the effects, outlines a response of restorative course of action.

The second time the angel returned to Elijah he added: for the journey is too great for you. God needed Elijah to be in a state of redemptive rest before He could present Elijah with the opportunity to rage. Outside of that state of God ordained peace, the anger and the fear would have consumed Elijah. His lament would have echoed and reverberated off of every broken place within him and around him. But restored to God, his lament was caught and heard and sheltered.

It was a process. The process of a lifetime, but concentrated with concentrated effort over a forty-day journey. It was not geographical, it was spiritual. While Elijah's body exerted physical effort, his mind exerted spiritual effort: the journey provided time for the struggle in his soul. He had prepared and practiced. He had been brave and righteous. He had confronted his enemies... and failed. The courage he relied on weakened under the strain of his enemy's might. Finally God asked Elijah: why are you here? In effect, God wanted to know how Elijah had gotten to that place. Not the cave, but the deep dispirited valley of his soul.

God knew the intimate details of Elijah's plight but allowed Elijah the opportunity to speak, to describe it for himself. To articulate and thus identify core of his dejection. This was nothing short of the expression of a of raw, honest prayer. God invited Elijah, and he invites you, to present to knot to Him. And once you have, He says: Let's unravel it together. We say: this is my problem, and God answers: this is My plan for it.

A torrent of honesty gushed out of Elijah. Elijah's problems were not his fault. His failure was actually success; he had planted the seeds God gave him to plant, it was not his fault that they did not yield. Yet even if Elijah had caused his own problems, even if Elijah failed to follow God's directives, from this place of honesty and submission, God would have rehabilitated him. Just as He will rehabilitate you, regardless of your guilt or innocence, your success or failure.

Be honest in the prayerful vocalization of your anger, fear and pain. God listens patiently, and answers constructively. He always provides you the opportunity speak for yourself, to explain for yourself, to express what rages within you. Allow God to lead you into a private place, even if that private place is the recess of your own mind, upheld only by the pillars of God's strength. Because in that private place, everyone else's opinion is silenced; every noise the world, the fear, the pain, the anger, the enemy makes is unable to disturb you. In that private place you have the microphone and the audience of God.

And then you switch positions.

• The chaotic noise with-out attempts to mute the steady quiet within. 

After your exposition begins God's presentation. God will present the crack in your foundation, the fissure in your resolve and then He will demonstrate how to re-secure it, and how to re-establish your spiritual resolve. 

Elijah experienced an epic demonstration, complete with earthquakes and fire and destructive winds. While Elijah crouched in the cave, his cloak wrapped over his face and body, God sent the wind. God make the earth quake. God set the earth on fire. 

But God was not in the wind. God was not in the earthquake. God was not in the fire. God wanted Elijah to realize that no matter what noise or tizzy the earth or person or emotion makes, none of it has the power of God within it. Therefore of none of it should he be afraid. After the earthquake, the wind and fire, there was something: a still, small voice. The gentle, steady whisper of God. 

God demonstrated such an epic display in order to familiarize Elijah with the quiet power of God. The power so immutable, so unmatched that it does not need to stir up wind, or waves or quakes to completely restructure any atmosphere or any terrain. God wanted Elijah to realize the difference between the power people and fear hold in the world versus the power God holds over the world.

Similarly God needs you to be able to distinguish His voice from the rest; because if it's not God, it's not relevant. Elijah fractured because he paid too much attention to the noise of the world that he neglected to listen for the voice of God. God is a quiet power; with a silent tug He can topple any man, fear or nation. By an inaudible tweak He can reverse situations, return losses, restore spirits. 

Elijah had to learn to sense God's presence amid, beneath, and over the noise. He had to learn to root himself in the spiritual security God provides otherwise he would continue to be plucked up and tossed about by anything and anyone. Elijah learned to listen and then God performed his final demonstration: He listened too. Elijah's fear and tribulations were valid, he was justifiably overwhelmed. God heard his plea and answered it. He reassigned Elijah to a new position, and handed him a fresh purpose to accomplish while God prepared the inevitable destruction of his enemies.

As children of God, our lives are bookend-ed by His promises and by the fulfillment of His promises. The life in between is a spiritual journey of, hopefully, trust and subsequent joy and justice. Your steadfast ability to sense and distinguish God's quiet voice from all others, tethers each moment of your life from promise to blessing. Rest, when you need to, under the juniper tree.