It’s hard to know where to start. This month has been a whirlwind so far. Mit Romney went as fast as he came, and debrief came and went in a similar fashion, only refreshing my soul in a way the Republican candidacy never could. Vietnam has, in every way, reminded me why I fell in love with the world in the first place. Laura bought every souvenir Ho Chi Minh city had to offer for next to nothing. Just crossing the street is insane. Rats run on hundreds and hundreds of wires, bundled up like trellises over the city streets. Worshipping on the rooftops of a city with 12 million people was our daily bread.
And now we’ve reached Da Nang with 3 other teams, all living together, and there’s another beach. Work here mostly involves old women, orphans, and Vietnamese youth church services – that’s a whole lot of spoon-feeding. We very rarely know what we’ve ordered until it’s set before us, and I bought two weeks of groceries for 2 dollars. I’ve been to three third world theme parks here already (they’re my love language), all for under 4 dollars apiece. Tyler and I stumbled on a Vietnamese roller rink, and spent an hour rolling around in skates 4 sizes too small to Asian Pop and Lady Gaga remixes, locals falling around us like we were in the Thriller music video. We’ve got cheap karaoke. Open gym badminton at our disposal. Free refills on popcorn for white people at the local Cineplex. We’re living the dream.
Month 3 of the Race starts a new chapter, a deeper chapter, where pressing in is not only recommended, but the only way forward. I find God confronting my insecurities and imperfections with alarming interference, His double edge sword piercing every thought and every word, war waged freely against every stronghold my old identity still claims, with each hack the Spirit’s chant ringing, “Give me more I want it all, I want it all, I want it all!!”
Actually, I said that all wrong. That’s hardly been my experience at all. God has a thing or two [or twelve] to show us about identity this month. Actually I think that’s wrong too. God has one thing to show us about identity this month, and it’s all we can do to take it all in – I mean, Him all in.
Jesus.
And He says it like this – “start over and stop trying.”
Ok here’s what I mean. When we accept Christ into our hearts and finally give ourselves up to Him, God does a work in us that changes us. In fact, He changes us so thoroughly, we’re completely different in ever way. Only it’s less like He changes us, and more like He completely gets rid of us and puts Himself in us instead.
God’s God. He’s up there. We’re men and women, born as men and women, children of Adam, who, as you probably know, sinned. Well, that’s not as important, as the fact that He became a sinner, the important clarification here being that we aren’t sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners. Think about it this way, Adam chose to seek truth on His own, apart from the dependent union with truth He had. This makes Him sinner, naturally separated from God. That’s all that means. Now, we’re born of Him, (we all are), and so now you and I are sinners as much as I’m a Weiss because my dad was a Weiss, and so was his dad, and I presume his dad as well. I didn’t ask to be a Weiss, or choose it, but here I am, a Weiss. Same thing with sinner.
Now, God created us to be in relationship with Him, and He will have His relationship. But as God is the opposite of sin, as much as He’d like to, He can’t have anything to do with us. And unfortunately, that’s on our end. And nothing we ever do will make us any less sinner, and thus any more reconciled to God, just as nothing I do will ever make me any less Weiss.
We know this because of the law God sent into the world, moral law, legal law, whatever, the law laid out in the Bible, and the law by which I know that I haven’t followed it completely – no one has. Except, well, Jesus. And we are enslaved to this law, just like one is married to a spouse they don’t particularly get along with, that makes all these requirements and demands that they can’t keep, but refuses to divorce them.
So now we have this amazing part of the story, where God sent His Son into the world, who was also Himself, who did everything the Father did, by listening to this voice called the Holy Spirit, who was also Himself. It’s a confusing turn of events to be sure, but the main take away is what He did. And that is, He died. Why did He die? Because God wanted us, and He’ll go to any length to reunite us with Himself, even having His Son die to pay the penalty for our separation. That is, He Himself paid it. He died. And there’s this amazing thing that happens, when “Christ died for all and therefore all died,” Jesus said “NOPE I’m not gonna let you guys be married to this guy, Law, He’s all wrong for you.” And He says, “Come with Me, in fact, come in Me, and I’ll get us out of this.” And He puts us in Christ like I would put a bookmark in a book, and now we go around with Him and do whatever He does, even though it is not directly happening to us. And so then He goes and gives up His life, and we die with Him.
And this amazing thing happens, this wonderful thing that I’ve learned to love with all my heart, when we die we are free from our marriage to the law. And though the righteous requirements of the law still fully stand [ye must be perfect], we are no longer under obligation to fulfill those requirements because we are not married to them.
[cont. in part 2)
