{Perhaps you need this chastising word as much as I do today.}

Christ came to earth to show us the Father, He modeled perfection for us, He gave everything and paved the way for His children to follow in doing the same.  Christ is the example and our goal as His kids should be to be like Daddy.  It’s so innate in us to do this that we can all conjure pictures of either ourselves or our children walking around in mom or dad’s big shoes. Even as kids we are drawn to follow the example set for us. 

If Christ’s example could be put into a picture, I’d say it would be a waterfall.  It’s powerful and pure, majestic and influential, beautiful and serene.  It changes the environment around it, the sound resonates in your ears, it’s beautiful and attracting and yet the water stings and scourges all who dare draw near.  That’s the model.

How many people aim for that influence, that power, that purity, that constancy?

We settle instead for being drippy faucets. 

Christ models a waterfall and we settle for a drip of water in a targeted place released at a strategically acceptable time.

I’m fascinated with the Galatians, and so many others of there time actually.  Their problem was sin and I grant that, but the sin they committed in wanting-or feeling as though they had- to do more intrigues me.  They wanted to do MORE than was asked.  They wanted to do it for all the wrong reasons, apparently, but they wanted to give God more not less than was being asked.  I don’t see a ton of MORE when LESS seems such an acceptable option.

I went to the mob museum in Las Vegas recently.  They have three kinds of tickets.  You can do regular admission which just lets you walk around and look.  Then they have a premium level that lets you go in the investigation room.  And then there’s the prime that lets you do it all, including the gun range. Many places are like this.  You can just get your foot in the door or you can come in with guns blazing.

Heaven might not be an exception. 

Perhaps a drippy faucet sort of life will get you in the door.  But it certainly isn’t what Christ said follow Him into.  Maybe the basic admission ticket is ‘cheaper’ but the experience it gives you is just as dumbed down as the cost.  Maybe the Father will look at our drippy attempts and say, “Yeah, the bar was set pretty high.  Good try though!”  And maybe He won’t.  Maybe the example has been set and we should hold it as our target.  Maybe bargain basement living isn’t what He showed us and it certainly isn’t what He died to give us. 

C.S. Lewis was right, we are such trifling things going about after our temperal pleasures, unaware that they are mere mud pies in the slums.  A feast at the seashore awaits us.

No one likes a drippy faucet, be the waterfall.

I’m often known to say that there is no spiritual hierarchy in God’s world, there isn’t a Spiritual Elite class or a Super Christian category.  We’re all part of this Body and we each play integral roles. 

My son liked the music of Lecrae many years ago, may still.  I found I liked it too.  Far Away is one of my all time favorite songs.  He’s a young man I have long been drawn to for the uniqueness of his relationship with the Lord and the way he allows us to see that relationship ebb and flow, grow, stagnate, and struggle to thrive. 

I recently read his autobiography which was a great read.  In my mind Lecrae carries a blazing torch in the Kingdom. 

There are others like him in my hierarchy.  While I say I don’t ascribe to spiritual elitism, I guess my attitude makes a liar of me.  Lecrae is a powerful foot blazing a godly path through cultural waters.  Timothy Keller is an intellectual theologian, a mighty brain charting courses through murky territory so that we can all better comprehend how to traverse the landscape of sanctification.  Priscilla Shirer is this wonderful voice calling us all to care and be impassioned for the purposes of the Lord.  Tim Tebow leaves another footprint of spiritual uprightness that says you can be good and godly and thrive in a predominantly secular realm.  On and on the list goes of men and women who seem to be a slightly larger or more powerful part of this Body we share.

The dream of sharing a table with these beacons of faith, joining in prayer and sharing words of wisdom, truth, and encouragement, it’s a desire that seems fitting and yet so far from reality.

And then I read Peter’s words in I Peter 5 where he tells us to resist the devil because there are others in this fight with us—you need to win not just for you but for me.  I couple that with I Corinthians 12 that tells us we’re all vital parts of a larger whole. 

And I hear the words that an eye can’t say to the ear it doesn’t need it.  And the hand can’t say it has no need of the feet and the mouth.  And all the sudden it occurs to me that there are two dangers hidden in these words.  One, I can dismiss the value of your role, as an ear I can say I have no need of you the eye.  But then there’s number two, I as the ear can say you have no need of me. 

While most of the time I find an abiding fulfillment in God’s appointment—it’s enough that God designated me to be this little part of this great Body.  But then there are the times when it occurs to me that I desperately need the Lecrae’s and the Gordon MacDonald’s and the Kirk Cameron’s that make up this Body

while not being quite sure they need me.

If you wonder whether or not I need you, I do.  If you think the world could survive with just a handful of amazing men and women like your spiritual heros, it couldn’t.  If you’re not sure if your role is one we’d miss if you didn’t fill it, we would.

Spoiler alert:  if you haven’t watched Wanda Vision and you intend to, don’t read this!  Totally gonna spoil it for you here. 

So there’s this scene in the end where this woman is walking through the middle of town and every eye is on her with the most loathsome of death stares.  She’s the most hated woman around.  All the while, she’s dying inside because she’s just given up her whole world for these same hater’s freedom.  For some reason this scene just played through in my mind and I was struck by the realization that this scene is a modern day version of the most lasting of stories. 

Jesus walks through town, He climbs a hill, He rises above the masses of onlookers, and they look on Him with the greatest of disdain.  All the while, He’s dying because He’s giving up His life and His perfection for these same hater’s freedom. 

There are a few authors who have pointed it out before and I believe they all have it right.  All humanity replays the same stories with different people and different scenarios but the same themes on a loop.  We all understand sacrifice.  We all seem to understand unconditional love.  We paint the same pictures of relationship and acceptance and selflessness and longing over and over again with new faces and new genres but the same old desire. 

I believe it was John Eldredge who says that the reason there are so many fairy tales is because deep within us all is a knowledge of and longing for a true love that will satisfy and embrace us, sacrifice for us and complete us.  We create Prince Charming because He’s the longing of all our hearts.  He’s the child’s portrait of the lost soul’s desire.  He’s the imaginations way of visualizing the One who might ultimately fill our God-shaped chasm. 

It’s amazing how often in our non-religious, entertainment driven, carnal and temporal world we see vestiges of eternal longing echoing our greatest desires from the recesses of our creative imaginings. 

There’s a reason for this.  God has set eternity in our hearts.  God’s ‘invisible qualities’ have been on display for an eternity past and we all are, without excuse and without exception, aware of One who is Greater.  And the longing to know, embrace, and be known by Him oozes from our minds and hearts onto our screens, into our stories, and out of our every day desires. 

The Prince in your fairy tale, the Wanda in your tortured life, the true love in your favorite movie-He’s real and He’s here, and He’s the One you’ve been drawn to in every movie, show, book, and story line for a reason. 

He is not hidden and He is not distant.  He’s as available as your mind’s eye and as near as your dreams.  And He’s the fairy tale ending to the story of each of our broken lives.      

Daniel’s rise to power within Babylon began with a dream.  Old King Neb had the dream, he refused to tell anyone the dream, then he demanded someone tell him what the dream meant.  Enter Daniel. We know the story-the statue, the prophesy, the kingdoms.  But this is what I love about the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular:  it’s always new.  This old story many of us have heard so many times and somehow, with the enlightenment of a living Spirit, it’s all new. 

Daniel and his friends-lives hanging in the balance-what do they do?  First, I could wax philosophic about their friendship and the fact that they shared a home and a faith.  When all seemed dire, Daniel runs home to his buddies and urges them to join him in seeking the Lord.  Beautiful picture of life in the Body of Christ.

But then comes the twist. 

During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision.

                                                                Daniel 2:19

I looked into that word vision.  In Job 33:15, the same original word is used and here’s what it says,

In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds…                                             Job 33:15

That verse certainly makes you think that this ‘vision’ appears to Daniel while he’s in bed not just attempting sleep but slumbering. 

One more verse:

So the decree was issued to put the wise men to death, and men were sent to look for Daniel and his friends to put them to death.

                                                                Daniel 2:13

This verse is just five verses before we read that Daniel is zonked out in bed. 

When your life hangs in the balance, how easy might you find it to be to get in the bed and conk out?

This is what faith looks like.  It’s what appropriately placed fear looks like.  It’s what real peace can do.  I believe Daniel was able to leave the problem with the Lord, trusting Him to work even when Daniel really wasn’t, because he knew his God to be so good at handling problems that all he really needed to do was rest in His ability to take care of it.  He had a clear conscience before the Lord and an abiding faith in God’s ability to handle his problems even as he slept. 

God doesn’t need for us to work harder.  He doesn’t need for us to pack in a few more hours or steal His Sabbaths in order to accomplish what really needs to be done.  He needs for us to trust Him so implicitly that even as the executioner awaits, we can sleep peacefully in the palm of His capable hand. 

What keeps you up at night?  What fear, what need, what burden is stealing your night’s peaceful slumber?  God can handle even death at the door if we’ll surrender and let Him do it.

There’s a sweet children’s series written by Jenny L. Cote.  It tells of the adventures of some immortal animals that serve as helpers to the Lord as He orchestrates the historical components that would later make up the Scriptures.  In one installment, the animals assist the prophet Ezekiel.  There are numerous scenes where the prophet is shown sitting at his table, ink in hand, candles lit, scrolls in abundance, taking down the Lord’s dictation.  I wonder if he ever saw the task of being the hand that held the pen through which God wrote and thought himself unworthy or inept for the task.  It was God’s words.  But it was, decidedly, Ezekiel’s pen and hand. 

And then there’s Peter.  Thanks to Cote, I often see Ezekiel and others as familiar in this dictation role.  But not Peter.  He was not called to write.  He wasn’t trained or educated or erudite in the scholarly work.  He was a fisherman.  He was not young, but rather an old dog to whom new tricks surely felt harder to learn.  He was mature, with a wife and home.  He had a business and a life. 

And then God told him he was to be so much more. 

I wonder if he ever dreamed that part of that ‘more’ would be serving as God’s stenographer. 

There are only two books of the Bible attributed to Peter and neither is particularly lengthy.  And yet they are masterful.  As far as the literary component, they are beautifully written, well worded, concise, eloquent, fluid, pointed, incredibly well done.  And they were written by hands worn callous from the menial task of fishing.  The hand that held the pen was well worked and hard used and not of the smooth and scholarly condition of an intellectual.

I wonder if he wrote out what would become I Peter and read it over a hundred times to make sure it was right.  I wonder if he proofed it over and over before sending it to it’s intended recipients.  I wonder if he wrote it all in one sitting or if God just inspired him one small theme at a time. 

I wonder if he felt assured that what he’d penned was what God had, in fact, dictated. 

An uneducated, slang speeched, fisherman wrote a literary work that I sit here and marvel over two thousand years later.  God did it.  But Peter offered himself up to be the man who held the pen.

That for which I am ill-equipped and uneducated, that which seems illogical and ill-conceived and advised, that is what God has a pattern of working with and accomplishing.  Sometimes just once or twice and sometimes in a repeated pattern throughout all of a surrendered life.

What might our calloused hands be called to accomplish?  What might our temporal minds be inspired to grasp?  What might our small lives be on the verge of building? 

For the Ezekiel who seems to me suited for the task and for the Peter who seems so unsuited, God …well I guess that’s really the end of that sentence isn’t it.  God. 

Old call. New vision. Let’s begin.

Well just fast forward through the first two minutes! I’ve tried four times to edit this video so you don’t have to watch me listening to the birds but it just isn’t working so you get the whole thing today. So sorry.