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Tag: how to feel alive

  • 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.

  • NEW. Day 15 of Lent. To understand NEW we have to get the OLD.

    To understand NEW, we have to get what happened with the old.

    New day 15 of lent
    In Genesis 3 one event with 2 significant impacts occurred when Adam/Eve ate the forbidden fruit. The couple walked away from the tree not realizing what they had set in motion for mankind. They knew something was NEW, different. Because Adam tried to become his own “Source” of life – to be like God as the Serpent suggested 2 things happened-
    Adam and Eve were disconnected from the Source of life.
    Adam and Eve had connected to a NEW, different, and completely ineffective source.
    They now were connected to themselves- battery charged by the knowledge of good & evil, let’s say. They now looked at a source of knowledge other than God. They now chose the energy of self-reliance- taking the knowledge of good & evil into their own hands, which literally meant that it was now up to them to figure out what was wrong and up to them to now make it right.
    NEW Adam was now reliant on himself for power-life.
    And if his power-source got low, he couldn’t siphon power off himself to re-charge, and eventually his life-power would run out causing a physical death.
    NEW disconnected Adam & Eve immediately began to feel “EMPTY”.

    Their way of life changed; their way of feeling alive; that ALIVENESS they’d experienced connected to God was gone, their way of understanding, way of taking in and knowing truth was now formed by knowledge instead of given through the wisdom of a relationship with their Creator. They had a sudden AWARENESS of Shame-the universal ‘something is wrong with me’ that uncomfortable, painful, terrifying sense of being disconnected that feels stark and lonely-the experience associated with death. It changed their way of relating to each other (blaming) & even their way of relating to themselves (used their limited knowledge of good and decided they ought to hide-so they hid then they began to cover up with fig leaves) & awareness caused them to begin to take on a ‘personality’ over their essence. Hiding, hiding, hiding is our response to how empty we are and the beginning of our ability to LIE to ourselves and believe it which is now our NEW instinct.

    It would have been like taking a computer and disconnecting it to power and reconnecting it only to a data cable. Data alone can’t sustain power-life, but if data is all you can access, you will try to start to draw power from it.
    Man felt dead and empty. Gone was ALIVENESS and FULLNESS Christ speaks of that represents the Kingdom of God. (see day 7 of Lent blogs) This universal disconnection is called SIN. When Adam & Eve rebelled against God and ate from the tree of knowledge, they weren’t just guilty, they were disconnected. SIN in Spanish is defined as “Without”. Literally we are without our connection to our Life Source God and Creator. Sin is a condition before it becomes a behavior. We chose to disconnect from Life and reconnect to knowledge/self and the sinful things we do are a result of emptiness. We want to feel alive. This is the OLD problem.

    Understanding what changed with Adam & Eve is important when trying to understand spiritual transformation-renewing our mind to be NEW. Unfortunately a critical thing that changed with the Fall was UNDERSTANDING, man’s way of learning. It’s difficult to see when you can’t find your glasses, it’s even hard to find your glasses when you don’t have your glasses on…in the same way our ability to see accurately is unfocused by the problem we want to solve so bad as believers. We are born into the likeness of Adam, disconnected from the ALIVENESS and FULLNESS of the Source of true life and we have been connected to our SELF, our knowledge of good and evil as our source of life since our physical birth.
    The knowledge of good and evil does this, it leaves a world of Empty people that are trying to find the solution for feeling Dead. People who think they see what’s wrong and people who think they KNOW what can fix it- just START DOING this and STOP DOING that.
    SELF EFFORT won’t fix the problem. Trying as hard as you can, won’t fix the problem. Self-discipline, spiritual disciplines, and religion-a system of faith and worship, that you PRACTICE out, won’t fix the problem. It plays out like this:
    QUICK FIX- I don’t like the way I feel & I don’t like the awareness that something is wrong with me- so I REASON out the problem isn’t me but something else- it’s you, it’s this marriage, it’s my environment-anything besides me- now I feel better.
    Or I feel empty- if I just… get married, have kids, get that job, take that bible class, I will be fulfilled.
    Or I feel dead inside- let me numb that feeling with a moment or two of false aliveness and use sex, alcohol, material things, working out (vanity), gossip, food.
    Or I can do good and feel better, I can be religious, serve and give.
    Your quick fixes fail, again and again only to be repeated, again and again. And then condemnation sets in because self-effort won’t fix this OLD sin problem. But this feeling of disconnection=deadness and emptiness-is so strong and painful we’ll do anything to make it go away- blame, hide, lie to ourselves- which hurts others and our self.

    The Old problem is we disconnect from God our Creator and life, and reconnected to ourselves who are empty and dying.
    Death is in us. We are dead. We are stuck being Us.

    The Old problem is unsettling at best and overwhelming at worst.
    We are perpetual sinners. Remember sin is the condition of being separated from God and any ‘fix’ we turn to in order to fill the absence of God in our hearts is simply a symptom of sin lived out in a transgressing behavior-some look really good, others really bad. Both are motivated and driven by emptiness.
    How do we free ourselves from us? From this Old Problem?

    We have to re-connect with God.

    Jesus died to exchange the life in Him for the death in me.
    Jesus died to forgive me for who I am not just what I’ve done.
    Jesus sets me free from who I have become and not just the habits but the mindset of the knowledge-connection to what is good and what is evil of our self-effort.
    Jesus makes a connection to the Source of Life possible.

    “There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. Late one night he visited Jesus and said, “Rabbi, we all know you’re a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren’t in on it.”  Jesus said, “You’re absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it’s not possible to see what I’m pointing to—to God’s kingdom.”
    “How can anyone,” said Nicodemus, “be born who has already been born and grown up? You can’t re-enter your mother’s womb and be born again. What are you saying with this ‘born-from-above’ talk?”
    Jesus said, “You’re not listening. Let me say it again. Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. When you look at a baby, it’s just that: a body you can look at and touch. But the person who takes shape within is formed by something you can’t see and touch—the Spirit—and becomes a living spirit.
    “So don’t be so surprised when I tell you that you have to be ‘born from above’—out of this world, so to speak. You know well enough how the wind blows this way and that. You hear it rustling through the trees, but you have no idea where it comes from or where it’s headed next. That’s the way it is with everyone ‘born from above’ by the wind of God, the Spirit of God.
    …This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. (John 3 MSG)

    We can be born again. The NEW birth. Born again we are born from the breath of our Father God and not the womb of our mother. Born again we are reconnected, not just restored to the family, but reconnected to the Source of Life and made spiritual men and women again. We are alive. Given New Life.

    New Life lives differently, sees differently, thinks differently.
    New life shifts from doing (self-effort) to being (God abiding).
    New life changes its focus off behavior problems-the START DOING this and STOP DOING that cycle, and onto the power source of transforming behavior- Christ.
    New life is lived by faith, which comes from hearing the word of God.
    New Life is a restoration of the intended life God had for man connected to Him.

    Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Cor 5:17

    “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”                Ephesians 4:22-24