So a good friend of mine gave me this book entitled “Waking the Dead” by John Eldredge and I have never read a book before that has impacted me like this. So I decided I would re-read the book and just write down my thoughts as I read it in order to share the awesome truth about Christianity with anyone who will read this. If I write even one thing that makes you think, then it was worth keeping up with this. I feel like in our society that people think it’s OK to be a Christian, but nobody talks about it whether to not offend anybody or just because people believe it’s a personal thing. It is deeply personal, but I can’t be silent about how God is working in me. God is/has been waking me up and I hope He slaps you in the face so you can be what He has meant for you all along.
Why is life so freakin hard sometimes? I wake up some days wondering what God has in store for me today and just feeling utterly lost. Have you ever woken up like that? Like you have no idea who you really are, why you’re here, what’s happened to you, and why? Things happen in life that you can’t explain and you wonder what the heck God is up to. You wonder if you’re blowing it and this is God’s way of punishing you or if God is just holding out on you. When the Twin Towers fell, it was hard to imagine a good God that would allow something to happen. How are we supposed to know what’s really going on? Simple, ask Him. Jesus is talking in Luke 4:18 when He says, “He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind.” That’s exactly why Jesus came! He came to lift the veil over our eyes and hearts and to give us sight to see when we’re blind.
“The glory of God is man fully alive.” (Saint Irenaeus) I want you to read that. Read it again. Logically, we could believe this because the Bible is full of promises of fullness and life but then we experience the realities of everyday life we just get worn out. Can this statement actually be true? John 10:10b “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” This seems a bit more than just being forgiven. God doesn’t just forgive us and cleanse of us our sins, He gives us LIFE. I was really surprised to find that this point is emphasized everywhere in the Bible. Psalm 16:11a “You have made known to me the path of life.” John 1:4 “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Acts 5:20b “…and tell the people the full message of this new life.”
Right now you may be thinking, “OK Bill. I already understood that God can/has given me eternal life. What good does that do me now?” While God has promised you eternal security in heaven, He has also promised you so much here on Earth. Psalm 27:13 “I am confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” Luke 18:29-30 “’I tell you the truth,’ Jesus said to them, ‘no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.” Whenever we think of eternal life, we think of life after we die. The word eternal means “unending”, not “later” though. Life begins now. The glory of God is man fully alive? Now? My coming fully alive is what God is committed to? This is freakin sweet! If we hold on to this truth then things would start looking a lot better. So if this is what God is offering, where is it and why is it so rare?
Here is the full verse of John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” There’s a reason Jesus spoke these two things at the same time. God is offering life, but the Enemy is set against us so we’re going to have to fight for it. WE ARE AT WAR. This was something that totally blew my mind when I first heard it because how often do we picture a battle going on? It isn’t a pleasant thought, but it’s true. “The world in which we live is a combat zone, a violent clash of kingdoms, a bitter struggle unto the death. I’m sorry if I’m the one to break this news to you: you were born into a world at war, and you will live all your days in the midst of a great battle, involving all the forces of heaven and hell and played out here on Earth.”
So before sin came into this world we all know that everything was perfect. We hear a lot about the original sin but how often do we hear about original glory? Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them.” Psalm 8:5 “For you made them only a little lower than God, and you crowned them with glory and honor.” You may doubt that you were made for this glory because this glory has been the object of a long and brutal war. Satan was once full of glory too. Then he was cast out of heaven. He couldn’t conquer the Mighty One so he’s set his sights on us, who were made in the image of God.
Think about all of the war in the Old Testament. In Exodus when God sent Moses to set his people free, war was as plain as day. Blood. Hail. Locusts. Frogs. Darkness. Death. After Pharaoh conceded he ended up chasing after the Israelites and then God decimated them in the Red Sea. Then it’s war after war to get into the Promised Land. Deborah, Gideon, Elijah, David, and Jehoshaphat all fought in wars. This just didn’t end with the Old Testament either. Jesus said in Matthew 10:34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peach, but a sword.” When Christ came to Earth, it was an invasion and the Enemy knew it. That’s why Herod tried so hard to kill Him. When Christ comes again, He will come to end the war and throwing Satan into the fiery lake. The entire focus of the Bible is about war, about setting our hearts free so that man can become fully alive.
Until you come to terms with the fact that we are at war, you will not understand life. It’s hard for us to believe that God wants life for us, now, and that we aren’t somehow blowing it when we see 4 year old girls’ molested by their fathers or your own family going through a divorce unless you can accept that there is something set against us. Maybe you’re at a point in your life right now where you feel that God is rather silent. I know this sucks because at times I feel so overwhelmed by everything, but the day will come when Christ will set everything right and destroy the enemy. Until then though, this is going to be a bloody war. When Jesus said that the thief came to steal, kill, and destroy why don’t we think that the thief literally wants to steal, kill, and destroy? This war that’s being waged is for your heart and to fight it we’re going to have to see with the eyes of our heart.
If this sounds completely metaphorical right now then you will just have to keep on reading these, I guess I’ll call em journals, as I post em. I would love to hear input from other people whether you think I’m crazy or if you have questions. I’ve been challenged this year to not keep this news hidden and maybe this will help you in some way. My prayer is that God opens your eyes like He’s continually opening mine.
In Love,
Bill
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