How I am not like Jesus

We are called to conform to the likeness of Jesus.

What was He like?

Amongst His many attributes, we find:

Kindness: giving people the benefit of the doubt, being for them, a shepherd.

Compassion: not succumbing to cynicism before a foolish audience who won't learn, sheltering them from evil without and within, healing body, mind and soul.

Power: walking forward in the faith of His Father and the action-ministry of the Great I Am, transforming people (not merely soothing them)

I lack "power" - I don't normally dare ask God to bother with me - I don't deserve His attention. I don't seek His supernatural intervention with me... and that bleeds over to my intercession for others.

I have recognized this reality for two years, and started acting to overcome this weakness (this lack of faith in God and understanding of the world and myself) one year ago. This day I am in the midst of the movement of God in my life, Him reaching into my world and moving, twisting, altering in ways only He can. I rejoice today, and will decide in the days to come whether to learn from this experience, to see His power and take hold of it, or not.

You Don't Need to Wash Your Hands.

Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of man are what defile the man.

Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him; because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?

That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. - Mark 7

For one just returning from Haiti, this is GREAT news, to know that none of the soot and muck we gather traversing that land stains me. This is an encouragement, that what was embedded on my skin, in my hair and on my clothes does not affect my heart. As well, it removes an impediment before me which attempts to keep us away from the unclean world.

There is no unclean world, only unclean people. I have cleansed your heart and you will not be stained by the world. Go into the world, amidst the dirt which will cake your skin... and be a heart-cleansing source for others.

Our position before the Lord God Almighty is not based upon the state of our hands, our clothes, or our body; nor is it based upon our activities or inactivities. Rather, our cleanliness is "the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe... being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ."

Somehow...

Somehow He is the God who has already overcome

as well as the God ever-present in our times of trouble

He is the God who is both here and over there

He has it figured out

while allowing us to figure it out

He is the BIG

the small

the BIG within the small

and the small within the BIG