4jlkelly

Tag: Augustine

  • Life. Day 47 of Lent. How to feel alive.

    Life. Day 47 of Lent. How to feel alive.

    i-am-the-resurrection-and-the-life-john-11-25-26

    Life. It’s really what it’s all about. Being alive. Feeling alive.
    We know death when we see it. Simply it’s the absence of life.
    And it makes most oddly uncomfortable.

    If you are ever alone and just stop to sit still and be, instead of do,
    usually an unsettling awareness begins to form.
    It usually gets most people up and moving quickly, because its uncomfortable that feeling, of being aware of who we really are authentically, of being who we are instead of doing something to feel like somebody.

    The problem is shame, that dawning awareness that something is wrong with me.

    Man’s solution since the fall is to engage our ‘knowledge of good and evil’ to fix this uncomfortable feeling. We don’t like the growing awareness that something is wrong with us so fix #1 is to convince ourselves its not us but someone/something else who has made us feel this way.  Get rid of that someone/something and wa-lah problem solved.  But it’s not…

    Fix # 2, we hide.  We cover up this awful awareness. We add on personality to mask the shame. By the time we are teenagers we’ve developed a distinct pattern of coping with this feeling. We are a personality type– each one of us. Hiding is the beginning of the ability to lie to ourselves and believe we can fix the problem our self and so we arm our self with ego and put on the mask of ‘its all good’.

    Fix #3, we work to fix it.  To relieve the sensation and hide the truth that something is wrong with us, we set about fixing everything and everyone except the condition worsens, the defenses strengthen, the lie grows stronger and the emptiness grows deeper because fixing it is really just arm wrestling with ourselves. We can’t fix it.

    Fix #4, we fill it. To fix this feeling of emptiness because we still believe the lie since we mask the shame, we stuff things into our life to make us ‘feel better’. We find hobbies and habits. We eat and smoke and drink. We enjoy shopping and sex and other temporary pleasures. We seek after power and prosperity. We rule and we control and we get really good at it.  But we never can quite fill our own emptiness.  Because built into this emptiness is a ‘way of knowing’ that makes it very unlikely we will even see our problem, much less agree that the problem exists.

    The things that people do that we think of as sinful are a result of this emptiness that can not be filled. No one likes to feel empty.
    We all want to feel alive.

    We ache, deep, deep down under the false filling and the fixing and the armor of our personality, in the soul we ache to feel alive. This is the problem with the human race, its not just bad behavior we traditionally have called sin, the problem with the human race is emptiness because we are separated from God. We are empty of the thing that makes us most who we are and make us feel fully alive. We are empty, dead inside and it drives us all towards something, anything that will soothe the uncomfortable awareness that something is not right.

    “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you,” Augustine once determined.

    And there comes a moment for each of us too, when we realize even though we are faking it and fixing it to feel alive, we are really dead inside. This is why our quest to feel alive is so intense.
    Who wants to feel dead? No one wants to feel dead.
    And it is this death in me that makes it so uncomfortable, even painful, for me to be alone with me, to just be instead of do.

    Jesus died to exchange the life in Him for the death in me.

    Jesus said “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10

    When people talk with words like redemption and salvation and being saved they are speaking about this exchange. Death for life. Our death for His life, His death so that we can be alive.

    Jesus came to offer you this great exchange. To die to forgive me for who I am, not just what I have done.  Jesus death and resurrection sets me free from who I have become- the fixer and filler and faker hiding from my awareness of the dead emptiness inside of me.
    Jesus opens the door to make a connection again to the source of life.  Christ says I can be born again. And I must be if I want to live.

    I want to live. I want to feel alive.
    If you ache to fill that emptiness then tell God, your source of life, the cry of your heart. Receive the free gift of eternal life by faith, trusting in the finished work of Christ death on the cross for you, where He exchanged your sins for His righteousness. Jesus called that being born again. Born again, I am born from the breath of my Father God and not the womb of my mother. This is a spiritual birth and I am reconnected to the source of Life.  Born again we are spiritual men and women again, with the Holy Spirit deposited into our very being.

    We are alive!

    “Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.  He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.’”  But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” John 7:37

    The word “innermost being” is the Greek koilos, meaning hole or empty place. It is often translated belly or womb. In Jn 7, Jesus is describing a spiritual empty place in the heart of man, not a physical belly or womb. This empty place is the source of thirst and the divine solution to this hunger/thirst is to fill it with living water from the Holy Spirit.

    Born again, we are filled with the Spirit of God. Filled we can overflow with this aliveness and influence others with the love and power of God.

    Today, maybe you are a Christian and you still feel that aching emptiness. Maybe you’ve agreed with the faking, filling and fixing that goes on as we try to ‘feel alive’ apart from God in the ‘old man’ style of self-sufficiency.  Maybe you’re still uncomfortable being and only comfortable doing. May I suggest you stop fixating on the outward behaviors of your life and fix your focus on Jesus Himself.

    Abide with Christ. And let Him fan into flame that passionate animation of abundant life connected to Him. Abiding allows the Spirit of God to fill us and fulfill us as we find passion and purpose living as we were made to be. Abiding with Christ we are aware of grace instead of shame.  We find love and we realize we are loved exactly as we are as God continues to transform us into what He was ordained for us to be.

    Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:25-26

    “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13

    Live loved.

  • Digging deeper to unearth the story of the FURY series

    Very recently I’ve been called to dig deeper into a certain mystery God began to reveal to me. I think the experience is universal to anyone who has been asked to share their faith.

    If you know me as a teacher or speaker then you’ve heard me say, “We have to know ourselves to know our God and we have to know our God to know ourselves.” I describe myself as a student of the philosophy though it’s not a very original thought.

    Augustine would pray, “Let me know myself; let me know Thee.”

    Calvin stated, “Nearly all wisdom we possess…consist of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” Calvin argued that one could not truly know God without knowing oneself and that one couldn’t truly know oneself without knowing God, voicing the obvious dilemma, “which one proceeds and brings forth the other is not easy to discern.”

    I agree, in fact I believe it’s a mysterious dilemma. And Christ’s first Beatitude as well as the first step toward understanding salvation begins with the knowledge that we are a sinner (know ourselves to be poor in spirit-a beggar with nothing to offer) in need of a savior (know our God someone who alone can rescue us from this condition).

    So it became very humbling to me over the past month that I couldn’t form an answer to a question that God continued to set into the mouths of many people,

    “What is your new book, FURY about?”

    I should quickly know the answer to that question. I’d invested well over a year of my life in the story. I have a marketing degree which should help me sell it, but I was tongue-tied and my stuttering reply, “Well…ah, um, hm…Just read it,” wasn’t going to produce a lot of interest. And to answer with the theme, “It’s about counterfeits,” doesn’t elicit emotion but confusion and the symbolic approach, “It’s about the crucible of suffering.” Makes even me think, “Really!? … who wants to escape into a book about suffering, we’ve all got enough of that ubiquitous subject.” But besides a long pause of silence with the massive, I guess I’d call it stage freight to have my creative work in the spot light, that’s what was coming out of my mouth—babel. Which if you read Fury will be very ironic…

    I’ve always said I need to form an AA type group, where I go once a day and have to say my name and “I am a writer,” because I know myself and I hate talking about my books. But that’s not totally true. I love to talk about the stories, especially when I’m in the middle of writing them and the plot is just rolling out or all twisted up. What I hate is selling the story—the business side of the business—the branding and the buzz words and the catch phrases and the mastery of a 60 second sales pitch where I hook you emotionally until you just have to read that book. Some people just have the gift and the confidence to pull it off like Billy Graham does evangelism. And whatever our reasoning, we’re much more comfortable letting the apologist defend the gospel like I’d rather my friends talk up my books.

    But God says, “ah, not so fast to be afraid my friend, I called you-to go-and promised you I’d be with you to the end-so what is there to be afraid about. (Matt 28:19-20)

    “We need to dig deeper and unearth some mysteries.”

    Jesus was showing me once again that the greater the preparation the less need for courage.

    Preparation first calls for training on how to prepare oneself. God uses words to train me and words are found in books, so off I went to be a student again. It was a refresher course on the fundamentals of story- Hero with a goal meets conflict that transforms him—and marketing—communicate the most powerful elements of your product/book clearly, succinctly and passionately to get the buyer/reader involved enough to buy/read. Evangelism is done the same way. We have to learn the Biblical truths, verses and the pathway and communicate it with a clear passion by practicing.  Yes. Practicing. That means you prepare and then you practice what you are going to say. Out loud. And first to a few people you trust for feedback. The first few times someone pops one of “those” questions—Tell me what’s different about you. How did you get to be a Christian? How can you believe Jesus is the only way? It’s scary, terrifying, totally out of our comfort zone kind of work to give a reason for the faith we confess. But we are all called to open our mouth and give an answer. And God has a way of ‘calling us out’, repeating the same question a few times until we get that He’s calling us to ‘prepare’ an answer.

    As I organized my thoughts to give an answer about FURY I thought about my faith and how prepared I was to share it. I thought about the privilege it is when someone we’ve built relationship with trusts us enough to ask those intimidating questions. And I refreshed myself with my prepared answers. Remembering 1 Peter 3:15-17 “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.”

    I dug deeper to know myself and my God and the story that He gave me to tell in FURY.

    I thought back to my own conversion as a teenager and what brought me to the point where I came up with the origins of the story of FURY. I told you about how I imagine FURY in my last blog as an attribute of God. But in September of 2003, National Geographic made a profound statement that unsettled my soul and later sparked my curiosity to create this story .

    “There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach—and in the destruction of lives.” They called it 21st century slavery and it penetrated my heart as I read about the “estimated 27 million men, women, and children in the world who are enslaved—physically confined or restrained and forced to work, or controlled through violence, or in some way treated as property.”

    I thought, what if that were me? Abducted and enslaved with no way of escape. Hopelessly held in an evil often terrorist system. And then I realized, that had been me. And you, spiritually. We were once held by evil, enslaved to sin, afraid and hopelessly lost people. Victims of a fallen world and enemies of God in dire need to be rescued and redeemed.  Read Romans 5.

    So in a future not so distant from ours, I began to pen a supernatural story. . . There is an evil terrorist who abducts a beloved daughter who you might have come to know first in the story, The Choice. This daughter is loved by her father and quickly coveted by a powerful enemy. Like all of us, Jaclyn Cooper wants to be rescued and returned to her father but the world she is held in is unescapable. She becomes a victim to its violent culture and is exploited by a powerful drug called Eros. Enslaved by such evil, it looks hopeless. As her family prays, an elite group of warriors are sent to find her. Their commander, the Fury, is an experienced veteran of battle who is up for the confrontation with this kind of enemy. What FURY is not prepared for is the aftermath of the rescue where they must deal with the internal enemy of the drug Eros. As they are pursued, duty will call the Fury sacrificially to obey without exception. He must learn to equip and empower a civilian girl to a faith beyond what she can see as they face overwhelming odds to return Jaclyn Cooper to her family.

    Evil has held us all, but God is furious, pursuing us with great FURY in this gripping love story of rescue and redemption. For those who long to break free. For those who need to be reminded we weren’t created and saved just to survive. For those in the battle who need to be encouraged by the Spirit’s victorious power. For those who wait that long to know God remembers them.

    The FURY Series is an intense and original perspective about the furious love of God.

    The Fury was inspired by the supernatural style, compelling characters and futuristic story world’s of authors like Ted Dekker or Erin Healy. If you look at the covers of The Fury Series you will see a tree that symbolizes the tree of life. As Dr. John D. Hannah teaches, “the Bible begins in a garden and will end in a garden.” Each book in the series begins with a supernatural prologue that sets the tone and the theme for that story. You will quickly learn that counterfeits-our enemy’s use of lust as the counterfeit of God’s love-is the theme of Eros.  Use this link to read the prologue and first chapters for free. http://www.amazon.com/FURY-Book-One-Eros-Fury-ebook/dp/B00OWPYUVY

     

    The FURY Series by J.L. Kelly. An Intense Epic Where Two Worlds Collide.
    The FURY Series by J.L. Kelly.
    An Intense Epic Where Two Worlds Collide.