Scott Bane dot Com

Meditations

July 19, 2009

Posted in: Journal

Most people with blogs that never update them don’t write because they can’t think of anything (I think). My problem seems to be that I’m thinking about everything. \n\nDon’t live as though you have God all figured out. That’s one of the things that I’ve been thinking about. I am amazed at how much I do that. About 5 years ago I was struck with the thought and began seeing people all throughout Scripture that had their vision of God blown away by The Real Thing. About 2 years ago I picked up a “glad that’s over” attitude on the subject – as if I no longer had the problem of living as though I have God figured out. Turns out, it ain’t over. I am revisiting these lessons and meditations. He is still unwraveling my assumptions and the falsehoods I’ve believed and the shortcuts I’ve taken in place of really knowing him. \n\nI don’t know yet how to really be free. That’s something else I think about all the time. Again, a few years ago a liberation started to take place. So I’ve looked around with compassion and sometimes angst at people who do not seem to realize that their religion has placed them in a cage. “You’re not in a cage!” I want to shout at them. But now I’m realizing that I’m like one of those animals that has been let out of a zoo. I am no longer behind the bars and I know it but I still pace back and forth. Only covering the same tiny space as my former enclosure. I know I’m free but I do not yet know how to live within the full space he has given me. \n\nIf all the props that I used to think connected me to God were removed would I have anything left with him? Would we have anything to talk about? This is an old one but another that keeps coming back to me and occupies my mind at night. I once read something from Irwin McManus about God leading a revolt against the religion that he started. What if that’s what he’s doing again? In our day. What if all the people that Christians think are “running from God” are actually being chased by him? Have we painted God into such a corner that the only way he can get to the people the church has left unaffected is to rebel against it? Maybe he is telling us “tear all this stuff down and I’ll build it again in three days.” And we are shouting “blasphemy,” and trying to find a way to get rid of him so we go back to “normal” and do things the way we like to. \n\nJesus had friends. I’m blown away by this. I can’t stop thinking about it. Given the severity of his misson and the scope of the change he needed to bring, friends seem like they would be a waste of time. With 3 years to spend, Jesus invested himself in a really tiny group of people. From Acts we might say that only 120 people really knew him. If we go by the Gospels, it would seem a lot less than that even. If God sent me somewhere with the task of bringing thousands to him I don’t think I would have handled it like Jesus. It seems that he saw a few authentic relationships with him as the appropriate container for the thousands that would come to know him through them. I don’t think he has changed his strategy over time. If you can get a few people togeher who are truly serious about knowing Jesus, those relationships can provide the structure for something that can grow infinitely large. \n\nThese are a few of my thoughts lately, not everything but I’ve got to save some stuff for 6 months from now when I finally post again