Unfiltered Jesus

I am no better than you. I too have sinned and fallen short. I am broken, I am human, I live in a fallen and dark world. Nevertheless, none of that holds any weight or anything over who God says I am.

Who does He say that we are?

We are: beloved, heirs, sons and daughters, royal priests, forgiven, loved, light of the world, cities set on a hill, world changers, peacemakers, the ones He sees and hears. We are righteous, holy, and unaccusable in His sight. When He looks at us and we have accepted Jesus all He sees is Jesus! (Genesis 6:13, Colossians 1:21-22, John 3:1, Romans 8:16-17, 1 Peter 2:9, John 3:16, Matthew 5:14, etc.)

We are all of these things. We are not our jobs, our hobbies, our talents, our families, our ancestors, we are simply children of God. A God that is alive and working. He is woven into the fabric of our existence.

I left the country to go on a journey. A journey where I wasn’t being influenced by the ever changing culture, by the same geographical struggles, by the influences of satan’s whisper in the oh-so-silent church. I came to find a unfiltered, undiluted version of the gospel that can only be found when reading the Word with all lenses removed. I am on this journey finding my path in this dark world. A path that leads to life and not death. A path that isn’t traveled by many. The thing about a journey is it is just that, a journey.

It isn’t something that should be rushed or “microwaved”. Rather, it should be a process. For character is built through hardships, hardships in which most normal Americans don’t deal with. This process is something special. Taken away from your geographical location, from your culture, from your church, from your people, from your family, from your home, from your comforts, from your job, and taken into a world that is much bigger and much different than one you could ever imagine. Here on the journey is where you find the truth. The unfiltered pure gospel. The radical, raging, violent love of Christ roaring out like a lion piercing the silence of the night. Here where people are poor, and don’t have many things. Where hot water, AC, clean water, good paying jobs, certain foods, and medical care are really not all that accesible. But where people are so kind and loving. They give the shirts off of their backs. They welcome you into homes, feed you meals, chat with you, spend time with you, where they aren’t in a hurry and they just show you kindness and hospitality with the little that they have been given.

There is something that was said to me at the beginning of the race by my first team leader, Jenna. I don’t know where it came from but she said on this race, “become love and struggle well”. That statement that she spoke that day has held a lot of weight. As we become more and more like love the struggles are inevitable. Struggling is a beautiful thing. Without struggle nothing good can come. Struggle brings growth, struggle is part of life. If we are not struggling we most likely aren’t doing anything that is worth while. Struggling is part of the process, so we should struggle well. In this process we have to be buried. By being buried, we die, but by dying, we live, and by being born again up from the death of the flesh comes fruit, fruit that can change the world.

Without a journey or struggle what’s the point?

We are not called to silent prayers or passively sharing the gospel. We are not called to go to church Sunday to Sunday and sit and listen and never take action. We are called to live a reckless abandoned life for Jesus. Over and over and over again in the gospels you see Jesus going against culture. You see Jesus showing what? Love and wrath, but not a wrath that people think wrath is. God is love. What does that mean? That means wrath is love. Wrath is aimed towards whatever keeps us away from God, if that is sin, if it’s shame, or whatever it is. Jesus flipped tables, scattered coins, animals, and people all in the name of love. They had polluted his father’s house and turned it into something that it was never intended to be. Jesus did not come to condemn but to love to death on a cross and show us there is more to life than heaven, but life and life abundantly. There are so many stories of people doing different things in the New Testament. We may keep asking to know the will of God, but it is stated clearly: “True spirituality that is pure in the eyes of our Father God is to make a difference in the lives of the orphans, and widows in their troubles, and to refuse to be corrupted by the world’s values.” James 1:27 TPT

We are called to help the poor, care for widows, preach the gospel, heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons (Matthew 10:8) and all these things require action. These things are counter culture. God is beckoning me to be a lion and to be counter cultural. I am challenging you to be lions. To let the true, raging, violent love of Christ roar out of you like a lion.

How much of the world is in you?

How much Jesus do you show to the world?

I say these things on this platform because even some of the people reading that are in my life need to see this. I love each of you. Most of this is from excerpts from my journal. But it is such an important message to hear!

I pray that Jesus would reveal his true, unfiltered self to you. That you would see the truth of the gospel and who God sees you as!