Is Jesus the Only Way?

This week we are thinking and talking about whether or not Jesus is the only way, or put another way: is there anyone better to follow?

The short answer to this question is “No.”

No, there is no one better to follow. No, there is no other way. Period. Done.

Now that crisp “No.” answer (especially followed by a period) caused me all sorts of problems in my walk. Ooo, ooo, ooo – did I want to buck that system! If you said something like that to me 10 years ago, an eruption of defensive reasoning would pour out. Along with the question “Why?” more times than you would care to count.

At that point in my life, I saw Jesus as a member of an elite group of pretty cool folks; all of whom basically said the same stuff about love, compassion, mercy and peace. I did not understand why I needed to mark Him out as somehow different.

I have also had the benefit of an up close look at many other faith systems. And let me tell you something, there are some beautiful, wise, right things going on in every other faith system I have ever encountered. For example, I have found in Buddhism a voice so clear and strong for compassion and peace that I deeply resonate with the value. A favorite Buddhist author of mine, Ticht Nacht Han, speaks with clarity about the link between peace and compassion:

“We often think of peace as the absence of war… But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance….To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. ”

Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that true?

Or another example is the beautiful, wise Sufi poet, Rumi. Here he writes with such clarity about our longing for God:

“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?”

You see… there are reasons that people wonder about the singularity of Jesus; or more specifically, of Christianity. They wonder because they see such beauty, such wisdom coming from these men of other faiths. Why? Why can I not follow the Buddha or Han or Rumi and find God? Aren’t they pointing to Him?

And here is what I think… you can find God in these men in the same way that you can find God in a mountain, in shared tears, in the expanse of the cosmos, in a sleeping infant or in the ocean. Because God created them, breathed into them wisdom and beauty, you can see Him in the glimmers of that beauty. But just as a mountain or shared tears or a sleeping infant cannot represent God fully, neither can they.  But just as a mountain or shared tears or a sleeping infant cannot undo the problem of sin, neither can they. And because they cannot do either of these things, following them will always lead you to a dead end. Knowing some things, but being wrong about others.

But Jesus… well Jesus can do both of those things. And Jesus… well Jesus gives us the whole package.

I know this with my head… You see, I know what sets Jesus apart from any other human prophet, teacher or moral leader. It is not that He contains beauty or said wise things or even that he died for the faith, it is His claims of being the son of God and the signs that backed Him up. C.S. Lewis has my favorite quote on this issue:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

I also know this with my heart… You see, I know Jesus is different because He has been different to me. He has walked with me down a path that began with fascination (i.e.,"Wow! You know this guy had some pretty cool things to say. But man was he weird! What's the deal with spitting in mud to heal some one's eyes?"), evolved into a deep respect (i.e., "OK. This guy had some things very, very right about this world. He seemed to have his finger on the heartbeat of our brokenness and to be suggesting things that might actually heal it."), developed into awe (i.e., "There is no way this guy was just a great teacher. He never made a mistake. He never said one thing I can criticize or see through. He never once acted like a hypocrite. He was love 100% of the time. He is the Messiah, the Son of God.") and finally to sheer joy! This was the phase (for those of you closest to me) when I started saying things like - "Jesus is a radical !" And what I meant to express was my full joy and connection with his person. I would often think to myself "His teachings are full of challenge. There is no BS in Him. There is no placating in Him. He is ALL challenge and ALL LOVE. I've never seen anything like Him. I am blown away by Him."

And now, well now, we are onto new territory. Specifically, the growing love I have for Him is starting to loosen from stories about what He said or how He helped other people or even His vision and love for the World and is starting to become about something much, much more personal.

There is a line in a song entitled “The Face of Love” by Sanctus Real (listen to it here): "I may not know the shape of Your face but I can feel Your heart changing mine." And when I heard that lyric the other day on the radio, I just felt every hair on my body stand up and tears spring to my eyes: “Jesus is here, He loves me and His love is changing my heart”.

You see, for me the Buddha, Rumi, Han, Father Joe (my favorite Catholic priest), C.S. Lewis, even Joshua Brandt cannot change my heart. They may glimmer and glow. They may challenge and teach. They may even draw me in toward the Lord. But it is only through Jesus, (who He was, the life He lived, the death He endured, the resurrection He promised, the Spirit He sent) that my heart is actually healed. That makes Him the one and only; my one and only.

 Dearest Creator God,

Thank You for Your Son. Thank You for the fact that we do not have only the beauty and wisdom available in creation, but that You instead showed us Yourself. Continue to humble and grow us in the knowledge of Jesus. May we be ever deepening in our love toward Him and one another.

I love you too. Amen.

So Ladies here’s your assignment:

1. Own it. What has been your experience of getting to know Jesus? What attributes of Jesus are you most drawn to? 

2. Wrestle it. Where are you at about Jesus singularity? Do you believe that Jesus is the only way to God?

3. Live it. How does acknowledging Jesus as singular and unique influence your daily life? For me it has meant prioritizing His words, His ways and His love above all things. This has often been difficult, but it is REALLY practical. Let’s talk about how to practically put Jesus first.

Finding the Cross

So we were asked this Easter Sunday to consider whether or not Jesus was the only way… whether or not the cross was the only way…

I remember the first time I really started thinking about this issue. I was probably 12 or 13. The sheer horror of the cross overtook me. The idea that God authored that horrible death disgusted me. Torture, hatred, blood, death… why?

I decided then, that if God was: (1) loving and (2) real; he would have come up with something much better than a bloody horrific mess to deal with sin. And because of that (and the rampant hypocrisy I saw in the Church) I walked away from the faith. I walked away for a long time – somewhere in the ballpark of 12 years. I tried on a great number of faiths/anti-faiths in that time; including but not limited to: Paganism, Agnosticism, Buddhism and (as I affectionately called it) Paula-faith. None of it ever settled or satisfied for very long.

I was 25 and my daughter, Sydney, was 5 months old when God finally caught up to me. He found me at 2 in the morning rocking Sydney as she slept peacefully in my arms. I remember looking at her little sleeping face and being hit by a tidal wave of love so big it felt like my chest was going to explode. In fact, I started to cry because it physically hurt to love her so much. And as I rocked her… overwhelmed by love… I felt God whisper to my heart “And that is just a fraction of how much I love you.”

Something shifted in that moment. I was going to find Him again.

But it was a rough road back to the cross. I was mad about a lot of things. I didn’t understand sin. I didn’t understand wrath. I didn’t understand hell. And as a result, I DID NOT understand the cross.

I wish I could, in a single post, walk you through all of the lessons God has taught me to bring me back to the cross. I want to talk to you about how he taught me about sin and wrath and even hell. But today I want to highlight one lesson – the lesson that sets Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, at the center of redemption story that will eventually claim the whole world. And at the center of that lesson is a very bloody and brutal cross. A cross that simultaneously taught me about three things:  

First, the cross showed me about people, power and sin. Look, even if you don’t think Jesus was the son of God, you have to admit that the cross seems a rather brutal punishment. I mean he didn’t kill anybody. He walked around talking about forgiveness and love. He even healed people. But he also upset the status quo. And His open rejection of the power structure in the Jewish community elicited the most obvious manifestation of hatred and pride and sin that I can think of. And it came from the religious leaders, the MORAL ELITE, of the day. The folks most people thought of as the ‘religiously committed’, ‘devoted to God’ kinda people killed Him… brutally… and for no reason accept He scared them. That is naked sin. That is the reality of the thing lurking around in all of our hearts. It is capable of much worse that you can imagine.  

So the cross exposes sin. If you look directly at the cross, you see what unaddressed sin makes humans into and it is UGLY.

Second, the cross showed me about love. I remember the day God taught me this lesson. I was praying while I was making my bed or folding laundry or something equally mundane. I was being snarky with God about how he didn’t know one thing about suffering because he didn’t know anything about losing a child. And then He said (again to my heart) “Oh really? What about watching your child be brutally murdered, having the power to stop it at any second, but you don’t?” I fell to my knees next to my bed. My breath taken away. I knew right then that I was not capable of a love like that. That there is no love in my flesh that sacrifices Sydney for others. That I had never seen a love like that in any story I had ever read, in any religion I had ever explored.

So the cross demonstrates love. If you look directly at the cross, you see exactly how far God is willing to go.

Third, what the cross showed me was redemption. You see, the cross during Jesus time was not just a horrific death but also a POWERFUL emotional symbol. It represented the crushing authority of the Roman Empire and the merciless death of those who dared to defy it. Think the swastika but with actual dead, decaying people hanging on it. It was intended to elicit raw fear and complete submission. Now, walk down the street. Check out the cover of your Bible. Look at your own neck. What is likely there – a cross! The most recognizable emotional symbol on the planet. Except now it symbolizes GRACE. It symbolizes LOVE. God has literally taken the most vicious emotional symbol in human history and redeemed it.

So the cross demonstrates redemption. If you look directly at the cross, you see exactly what God can take back and make beautiful.

So is the cross the only way? I don’t know. Could God have come up with something different? Perhaps – He is God after all. But when I look at the cross now I feel confronted, loved and redeemed. And I can’t think of any other way to make that happen.

Dearest Abba,

Thank you. Thank you for your patience with this hard-hearted, stubborn child of yours. Thank you for the cross. Thank you that you are willing to teach me, day in and day out, about Your ways. Happy Easter. I am so delighted to be your child.

I love you, too. Amen.

So Ladies here’s your assignment:

(1)   Own it. Has God brought you to the cross? If yes, how did get you there? If no, what is it like to be asked this question? What comes up for you when you consider the cross?

(2)   Wrestle it. I mentioned that I walked away from the faith due to my initial reaction to the horror of the cross. What is your initial, genuine reaction to the cross? Have you ever wondered “why the cross”? If yes, what did that look like? If no, how do you understand it?

(3)   Live it. Let’s talk about the implications of living in light of the cross. How does being confronted with sin, being loved unimaginably and knowing that complete redemption is the goal affect the way you live your life? 

Itchy Ears - Reworked

 Hey folks - this is an old post that I've reworked to post to my church blog here in Vegas. I hope you enjoy the edits. Love ya.

I read a book about a year ago by Rob Bell called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Boy, oh, boy is this book controversial. Thoughts of this read, combined with Sunday’s sermon (stressing how scary hell is to a baby Christian) and my own winding path to the cross I wanted us to take a moment to tackle one of the scarier issues of the faith: heaven and hell. And I wanted to show a glimpse of my journey so far to hopefully give you the courage to share yours.

As you may or may not be aware, folks in the evangelical community are all up in arms because the perception was that Bell was taking a pluralist position on the afterlife. For those unaware, the church has been fighting back and forth for centuries about the nature of the afterlife (i.e., who goes to heaven, who goes to hell; what exactly is heaven, what exactly is hell). For at least the recent past, three positions have been articulated clearly: exclusivism (i.e. only Christians get in to heaven, everybody else goes to hell), inclusivism (i.e., Christians and some other people get in to heaven) and pluralism (i.e., everybody gets into heaven). Now, I am totally uneducated about who has held the majority position over the course of church history, but I do know two things: (1) the loudest group of Christians presently endorse an exclusivist perspective (I was gonna say majority of Christians, but I am not sure if that is true) and (2) there are amazing, committed, Godly people in all three camps.

Now I am not sure what the predominant belief is here is at the Gathering, but my sense is that, as a group, exclusivists have taken a lot of heat from the world. I think the basic assumption is that exclusivists are callous hearted and superior, while inclusivists and pluralists are more warm and relatable. I tend to get a little bent about this perspective, as I am confident that most folks who hold an exclusivist perspective do so not because they really like the idea of lots of people going to hell, but because they authentically believe that is what the Bible teaches. From an exclusivist’s view, inclusivism and pluralism are attempts to compromise the gospel to make it more palatable to the world. They take very seriously the warnings across the New Testament about false prophets and manipulation of gospel. Warnings like 2 Timothy 4:3

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

And I will tell you something true, Mr. Bell's book did scratch my itchy ear. You see for a very, very long time I could not stomach Christianity. I could not stomach it because it seemed very much like a country club with ridiculous entrance standards and outrageous consequences for declining membership; specifically, like what we like, dress how we dress, think how we think or burn in hell for all eternity. Of course this invitation was wrapped in words about love and acceptance but I saw through that to the purple kool-aid. And let me tell you what, I was not about to drink it.

So from that place, the place where I saw hell as a tool to make me afraid and manipulate me into agreeing to doctrines that made no sense, I needed a path to get to God, to get to the cross, around it. And from my perspective, God used pluralism and authors like Mr. Bell to create it.

But coming to God via a path that may or may not be sound doctrine begs the question: Am I actually drawing closer to the real God? The Creator of the Universe? Or am I drawing closer to a god that I am fashioning from concepts I already like? Can I "put up with sound doctrine" or am I "gathering teachers" to scratch my itchy ears?

And here is my take (as it presently stands). At the center of the Bible is a tension - a tension between who God is and what He wants and the apparent outcome. Specifically, on the one hand you have an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God, Creator of the Universe, who is love and wants every person who ever lived to return to Him. On the other hand, you have mention of hell, judgement, wheat and chaff, and weeping and gnashing of teeth. These two things are very, very difficult to reconcile. If you reconcile them by saying - "Oh well, God is all powerful, his love is unending, he will pursue people until he gets them even into the afterlife" you are over looking some very explicit warnings about how you live this life, the image of judgment and the clear picture that not all will come to the party. If you reconcile them by saying - "Clearly, I can tell you that ‘those people’ who didn't do or say this or that thing, in this or that way are lost and going to burn" you are over looking who God is and minimizing Him into a genie or mechanism that delivers certain things when rubbed the right way. I think we ought to realize that if God says He wants something, there is a good chance He is going to get it.
  
So what I think is that the itch we all have, or at least the itch that I have, is for the resolution of that tension. I don't want to sit with the dissonance - I want some preacher or some book or some philosophy or some approach to resolve it.

So I am trying, very hard, to make space in my psyche for this dissonance. I am trying to live within the tension – let it build and challenge me. I want to be unsettled for the lost. I want to be disturbed that there are some real and lasting consequences for the choice of not knowing and/or rejecting Jesus. I want to move and reach and speak and pull and love… But I flat out refuse to script what God means when he talks about salvation and the exact intricacies of who is in, and who is out. 

And when I am stuck… when I am scared that someone I love is lost (which happens often)… or feel the need to resolve the tension for my own satisfaction or to be right in an argument… I find great comfort in a passage from Exodus. Moses has asked God to reveal His glory to him, as a reassurance of His presence with the Israelites. And He says this:

I will cause my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
 
You see God does make one thing very clear – He has it covered. He is not interested in our determinations about who is in and who is out; He will have compassion on whom He will have compassion. And I so trust Him to get it right.

Dearest Abba,

Thank you for being so full of love and wisdom and grace that I do not ever need to worry about anything. That I can relax in your perfect will. May this will also compel me, may my own compassion push me to share just how great You are with each and every person I encounter. Please let my life draw people ever toward You.

I love you too. Amen.

So Ladies here’s your assignment:

(1)   Own it. So I confessed my itchy ear – I really, really don’t want there to be a hell… Ooo.. and I want everything to be tied up in a nice, neat package…. Where do your ears itch? How are you tempted to fashion your own god?

(2)   Wrestle it. Where are you at about heaven, hell and salvation? Why? Now ladies, there are likely going to be people in this group who see things quite differently from you. And you may feel tempted to ‘set them straight.’ I want this to be a safe place for them to express their unedited thoughts… so that means you are free to express differences of opinion (i.e., I hear what you are saying, here are my thoughts…) but it is not ok to squash one another. Let’s practice extending respect and grace toward one another.

(3)   Live it. Regardless of your position on heaven, hell and salvation it is clear that we are called into action. That we are called to spread the good news to all people (i.e., the Great Commission). In what way do you see your position hindering and/or helping you to move forward toward this aim?

Stand Your Ground

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground, and when you have done everything, to stand. –Ephesians 6: 13

I often think that God has placed a simple call on my life… “Go first.” This simply means, being willing to say the first vulnerable thing, take the first leap, sometimes shed the first tear. And it’s really “Go second,” because we all know who really went first, right?   

This post – well this post is about when it gets really, really hard to do just that. And I know all about that because, you see, I know about spiritual warfare. I know how it looks. I know what it smells like, because I am in one of the most intense spiritual battles of my life. Let me tell you a bit about it…

In January of 2012 things fell apart.

Ok... let’s back up a step… In August of 2011 I had moved across the country with my husband and daughter to live with our best friends in a beautiful farm house out in Eaton. It was a the realization of a call on my life, a call on all of our lives (or so I thought), to live out the principles of community laid out in Acts and gradually start feeding, into our little corner of the world, lives steeped in the gospel. It was a magical time. Things falling in place. Dreams coming true.

It wasn’t long, though, until things soured. My husband was not happy. There was conflict. Darkness crept at the edges of our lives… it lingered and yanked…pulled and tugged… it seduced. And then things fell apart.

Things fell apart after a phone call on Dec 30, 2011 when the first betrayal was revealed and continued to unravel as I realized my marriage was not what I thought. In the last year, I have felt the icy sting of betrayal. The crippling fear of mistrust. The grief of shattered dreams. The loneliness of uncovering the truth. It has been a very long and dramatic year and I have needed Ephesians 6:10-18.

For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. – Ephesians 6: 12

Let me tell you some things I have learned from the trenches over the last year. It is very tempting in the middle of a spiritual war to start blaming people. In my case, it is very tempting to start blaming David (my husband). It is tempting to think that I am fighting him, because it is his face that lied to me and his body that betrayed me. And when I am not blaming him, it is very tempting to blame myself. It is tempting because it is my flesh and blood that opens me to feel betrayal and my own human limitations that made it so I was deceived. But this passage of Scripture calls that out. It says to me – “No Paula! Your battle is not against flesh and blood. Neither David’s nor your own.”

Instead it tells me to be concerned about the rulers, authorities, powers and spiritual forces of evil. For me these forces come seducing with my desire for approval and my pride. They are calling me to be busy, to fill my time with obligations and dates instead of conversations and connections. They whisper doubt to me, about my standing with the Lord and His character and my place. They fill me with fears for my life and my future. They undermine my trust in others, suggesting that I cope by using silence (if no one knows they won’t ask) and masks (sure, I had great week).

It is them, against whom I am asked to stand firm.

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled at your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

I am to stand firm in the waves of temptation to blame, to run, to hide and to fear by remembering the truth, by taking on Christ’s righteousness, by walking in peace, by defending with faith and by speaking the very Word of God over my life. And let me tell you what… this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

Do you know how BADLY I want to lie? How much I wish the truth of my marriage wasn’t true? How terrifying it is, to let other people see what is real and vulnerable and raw?

Or how much I want to be unrighteous! When someone has smashed your heart to smithereens you want to key their car! To say the things you KNOW will hurt! Not mention there are lines of other people who deeply care about you, who want very much to help you along this path or see you as weak when you won’t.

Do you know how tempting it is to just give in to hopelessness? To quit fighting the good fight of faith? How vulnerable it feels to say, “I believe God will work this together into something beautiful for me” when what I have right now is suffering? Is pain?

But what I also know, from walking this thing out for an entire year, is that God is faithful. And this armor thing – it’s right and it’s good and it’s perfect and it’s holy.

It looks like sitting across from Lisa Horst and telling her the whole truth. Even when I was scared I would be rejected.

It looks like calling Joshua in tears to ask for his honest feedback, his strength and his courage.

It looks like singing out Mumford and Sons “I Will Wait” to God in the car so loud my chest aches.

It looks like swallowing my pride and repeatedly making space for my husband in my daughter’s life. And the fruit of watching Sydney (my daughter) spend her birthday with her father and be really happy. Never having to wonder if I want her to love him or not.

It looks like receiving grace and encouragement from the beautiful friends God has placed in my life.

It looks like God showing up to confirm that this is the very post that is supposed to start this season of my life.

You see - I also know that God was with me and in me and for this because of the timing of this very post. Because on February 4, 2012 I was crying out to him in despair and anger in my office. I remember I lay on the floor and dug my fingers into the pile of the rug and said to Him “I am not getting up without a word from you! I know there might be a client out there soon. I do not care. It’s You and me right now.” (FYI: Please do not read this as an endorsement to make demands on God. This worked out in this situation probably because: (1) I was just authentically broken and (2) God is incredibly gracious.) Fortunately, for me (and my clients), God did have something to say. He said “Ephesians 6.”

Now I am no Bible scholar, so the address didn’t mean anything to me. When I looked it up though, my heart started racing when I came to versus 10-18. So much so that I wrote in my prayer journal:

Answer: Ephesians 6:10-18.

I believed that answer so much I have written out those verses in every journal entry since that day.
That means that I have unintentionally been writing and meditating on the very Scriptures that would form the basis of this first blog post for 1 year. I did not pick this date. I did not pick this sermon. But God did. He did it for me – so that I would know He is here. He did it for you too.  

Dearest Abba,

I am humbling myself before you. May these women know that they find in me a battered and torn soldier; someone who does not perfectly or completely wear her armor either. May they know that any wisdom I have, is simply because You were gracious to give it. Give them space to really embrace Your Word.

I love you too. Amen.

So Ladies it’s your turn:

(1)   Own it. In what ways are you now or have you in the past struggled with spiritual warfare? Which flesh and blood are you battling? What rulers, authorities, powers and spiritual forces of evil are you overlooking? Many of you may not want to do this publicly… so please feel free to do it in a journal or with a friend.

(2)   Wrestle it. What does it really mean to buckle the belt of truth? What about adorn the breastplate of righteousness or take up the shield of faith? Which piece of armor is the easiest for you to identify with? Which is the most difficult?

(3)   Live it. In addition to understanding where we are and what Scripture has to say about handling it, we are going to need some tools for carrying it out. So let’s share ways we’ve been successful at donning our armor. What are your tools for taking up your shield of faith? What about putting on your boots of peace or securing the helmet of salvation?

Days 5 and 6

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." - Anais Nin

"How do you see your life?"

My life is a thread in a tapestry, at once of central significance and insignificant. As part of the tapestry it joins and binds, brings additional color and beauty, adds to and completes. Apart from the tapestry, it disintegrates, loosens, subtracts, abandons and rejects. Yet in either circumstance, the tapestry goes on.

I experience my life as a story, often a great novel or film. Sometimes I imagine that I am the central character. After all, there I am in every scene. I even carry the vast majority of the dialogue. But I am not the main character, but more of an audience to a story written about God on the pages of my life.

Life on earth is a test.

"Character is both developed and revealed by tests..."

"Every day is an important day, and every second a growth opportunity to deepen your character, to demonstrate love, or to depend on God."

I am having a reaction to the overall tone of this section. It's written as if God learns something about us through our performance on little ascribed tests throughout our day. Did Paula pick up that litter? Oh no? Mark it down in the book. Oh, Paula held the door for that elderly woman, Excellent! Mark it down in the book. It is my understanding that God knows me fully. That He needs a test to understand me no more than He needs oxygen to breath. I do think life can be considered a test - but it is a test designed to expose me to myself. To show me who I really am, like a pregnancy test reveals if you are pregnant or not -it tells you the way things are. In that way, I don't really think God's tests are pass or fail. We may certainly be displeased with the result (i.e., crap! I still have a fear problem) but this is not a 'failure' so much an acknowledgement of the truth (i.e., I need to grown more).

Life on earth is a trust. 

The world and all that is in it belong to the LORD; the earth and all who live on it are his. 
- Psalm 24:1 (TEV)

"We never really own anything during our brief stay on earth. God just loans the earth to us while we are here. It was God's property before you arrived and God will loan it to someone else after you die."

Amen!

"The first job God gave humans was to manage and take care of God's "stuff" on earth. The role has never been rescinded It is a part of our purpose today. Everything we enjoy is to be treated as a trust God has placed in our hands."

Amen! AND more importantly EVERYONE! Our children, our friends, our parents, our in-laws, our spouse, our family - a TRUST. Treat with care

Life on earth is a temporary assignment.

I am also having a reaction to this section, albeit a mixed reaction. On the one hand I want to shout "Amen!" this world is not right! It is unjust and there is mercilessness and suffering! I don't belong here. Again to quote CS Lewis from the Weight of Glory:

"It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far to easily pleased."

Or as in one of my favorite Swtichfoot songs Beautiful Letdown put's it:

 "It was a beautiful letdown, the day I knew that all the riches this world has to offer me will never do. In a world full of bitter pain and bitter doubt, I was trying so hard to fit in until I found out that I don't belong here."

But I think we need to hold this truth in tandem with a corresponding truth; specifically that heaven is not somewhere else, some time later, where we go after we die. Instead that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It is now. Our citizenship to the kingdom of heaven, our operation in the kingdom of heaven begins instantaneously with our renouncing our citizenship to the world and giving our heart to Jesus Christ. Certainly, we will know the kingdom with more fullness and completeness as the old world ultimately dies away, but we can access the kingdom and are part of the kingdom right now. We carry out it's aims, Right Now! We pray for the kingdom to take up a larger and larger residence RIGHT NOW!

Mr. Warren makes this point, "We're not completely happy here because we are not supposed to be... You will never feel completely satisfied on earth, because you were made for more. You will have happy moments here, but nothing compared to what God has planned for you."

On the one hand, I think he is correct - This world, as it is, will never satisfy us. But the implication is that it is because we are aliens on a foreign planet and won't be happy until we go home to planet Zeta (or whatever). That is not my read on Biblical truth. We were made for this planet and this planet for us. This is our home. We are not headed off to some other planet (neither literally, figuratively or metaphorically); our planet sick, our world is dying from sin. We cannot be satisfied so long as it remains. As long as their is injustice, suffering, oppression, betrayal, murder, hatred, malice, deceit, death, decay, isolation, loneliness, heartbreak, insecurity, fear, selfishness, entitlement, pride, gossip, bitterness or self-loathing. As long as the kingdom of death marches along side the kingdom of life we shall not, we cannot be satisfied.

True. The only immediate escape from this reality is death. When we enter the full presence of God and leave the world behind. But this will not always be so. God promises that someday His kingdom will rule ON THE EARTH. Our home will be restored, redeemed. Sin will be cast out. A Holy Temple restored.

Our job, our mission, is to go about acting as if today were that day. That the fact of the future, is the the Truth now. Ephesians 4: 22-24 puts it this way:

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. - NIV

I realize that this understanding of heaven is not popular - in the sense that most folks talk about heaven as a far off, distant paradise in the sky. But I encourage to you examine Christ's teachings and dig into your Scripture and see if it is not so. Test it out.

For me it has meant changing citizenship now. It has meant acknowledging God and His kingdom as alive and active everyday, everywhere. It has meant participating as if it heaven were now, even when the kingdom of death would have me believe otherwise.

Love you.