looking.for.logos

I've started school full time again, and thus my blogging is taking 2nd fiddle in my writing endeavors. However, for one of my classes, I read a chapter from a book called "Habits of the Mind" by James W. Sire that rocked my world!

Ok backing up, I have to say that naming this blog was a real challenge! I wanted the blog to stand for something more than myself. Even though I strive to be transparent and include my personality and life in my posts, it's not really about me, my day-to-day life, etc. I have a written journal for that, and no one would want to read it. I promise. This blog, as I've mentioned before, was meant to honor God publicly for what He has done and is doing in my life, the things he is teaching me, and more importantly, to hopefully work as a conduit for God's truth. He gave me the name, "looking.for.logos".


A seed was planted in my heart by a teaching series I watched while in St. Louis. The instructor talked about the concept of allowing God to transform our souls (mind, will, and emotions) by His Truth. As part of my healing journey and now my life as a disciple, I'm learning how vital it is to sort out the truth from the lies and to fight for the knowledge of God.

John 8:31-32 is a token verse worth memorizing. "Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

It's obvious, but Jesus was NOT kidding. The lies (strongholds) of the enemy are what systematically break us down. They go from huge fundamental lies like "God does not exist" to personal lies like "I fail at everything I do". It was a lie that lead to the fall of mankind and a system of lies that keep mankind from living in the victory that Christ died to give us. The antidote for Satan's lies, is TRUTH.

There are some that would argue that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Our culture today tells us that truth is a personal thing - It's truth if it is true for me, but it doesn't have to be true for you. We're told that truth is cultural or religious, or preferential. Ultimately, the world (Satan) tells us that truth is relative. Some believe that no one can really ever know the truth. They claim that the truth is ultimately unknowable. But that statement is self-contradicting. Proclaiming the "truth" that truth is unknowable nullifies the statement.

God has given us the absolute Truth through his revelation in Christ and the Scriptures. It is the "logic" of God - His thoughts - His reasoning - His logos - that breaks apart Satan's strongholds and sets us free from sin, doubt, guilt, FEAR, anxiety, hatred, unforgiveness, selfishness, etc. Knowing the truth and holding fast to it allows us to weather any circumstance in life. It gives us HOPE.

James W. Sire says, "The ultimate foundation for human knowing is not the autonomy of human reason; it is not the autonomy of human experience.  The ultimate philosophical and theological foundation for all human knowing is the Logos. The foundation is ontological: God not just as Being but as Reason or Meaning.  And this Logos has an incarnate from - Jesus as 'reasoner'. [Truth]" (Sire, 2000 p.202)

Jesus' ministry here on Earth was to impart a new logic, to teach about the Kingdom of Heaven and His father. Knowing Christ, the Logos of God, and living from the truth of our identities in Him, gives us victory over our enemy and lets us share that truth with others. God has placed a burning desire in me to be "looking for logos" in every situation, every circumstance, every breath. To be listening for the God's Truth in the midst of the flood of other noises. To be seeking after Christ, to know Him better, and to pursue that Truth so that God, through the Holy Spirit, can break down those strongholds in my soul and continue to transform me into the likeness of His Son.

I don't know where God wants to take this blog or even this vision for a future ministry, but I wanted to share a little more about the meaning of the name "looking.for.logos", and hope that others will join me in pursuing Truth/Christ/ and the Logos of God in all things.

50th Post!!

It's my 50th post! Which is an appropriate landmark, because I've had kind of a landmark day!

I've been so busy writing for school, that I haven't had much thought or energy for what to write on my blog! As I was in my quiet time today, I was praying about what the topic for this week should be. Nothing really jumped out at me. I've been hammering out several hundred words per day in essays, debate postings, and discussions, so the creative well has been a little bit dry. At the same time, I always feel like I'm neglecting to share all that God is doing when I don't make time to blog. So I keep my heart continually open for what God would have me write.

It has been a goal of mine, ever since coming back from St. Louis, to get rid of some of the negative artifacts of my past life. In talking to a friend who also grew up as a military kid, I realize that I hold onto keep sakes with real tenacity. There were so many times in moving around that I was asked to say goodbye to someone I would never see again. I have a couple of friends from the first fifteen years of my life, but most of the people, places, and things that I treasured from that time are gone. I've also lost quite a bit of memory to the PTSD fog that surrounds the chronic trauma I experienced. In that, journals, knickknacks, jewelry, pictures, and other things become overly important. I become fearful that if I don't hold onto that scrap of paper, the memory of that time will be lost forever. Abbey put it really well when she said, "I just know that my memories don't do it justice". I feel that I need something tangible to hold on to.

There are certain things, however, that are better left in the past. I have written in journals diligently from 1998 to now. Some of those years, particularly between 2006-2009, hold very dark moments of total despair. I wrote things, drew things, and recorded experiences from that time that still hold leverage over me, and God has brought me to a place where I'm ready to let those things go. Not all of it, but certain entries that are the very opposite of life-giving. Hear me: I'm not saying that it's wrong for anyone to keep things that remind them of tough times in life. But for me, at this point, I felt the Lord saying, "It's time to move on".  I have such strong negative associations to certain things that I wrote and drew - things God has already brought me through and out of - that to go back there would just be rehashing things He has already laid to rest.

It's different for everyone. Sometimes, in letting go of a past relationship, we have to get rid of clothing or pictures that remind us of that person. Sometimes, it's getting rid of music or movies that take us to a dangerous place. For me, it was getting rid of certain pieces of jewelry, certain images, and certain journal entries.  I made sure that I was not alone, and I was prayerfully supported. I put on some worship music and started in my sketchbooks, tearing out anything I felt "check" in my spirit.
It was pretty obvious.

Once it was all said and done, I had a small box full of papers I never needed to see again. I wanted to burn them and get rid of them, but living within city limits doesn't allow for back yard bonfires. Somehow, though, I needed those papers destroyed. So the Holy Spirit prompted me to soak them in the tub. As I immersed those records in the water, I watched the ink slide off the page and one of my entire journals just slide out of its binding. I felt like that particular aspect of my past was literally being washed away.

Still not really knowing what to think or feel, I heard the Lord speak to me the phrase, "letting go of the former things..."  I looked up the reference in my concordance, and I found this in the Message Version of my Bible.

"You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything - and I do mean everything - connected with that old way of life has to go.  It's rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life - a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you."  Ephesians 4:20-24 (The Message)

Thank You, God, that you have given me an entirely new way of life, and that You've given me the grace to get ride of the old things. It's been quite a journey, and I know You're not finished with me yet.
I am so excited for what is to come. I know You have great and wonderful plans in store for those of us who call ourselves Yours.

this i know?

In church on Sunday, Pastor Micah was talking about "atonement".   Under the Old Covenant, atonement was made by the priest for the people of the nation (Aaron, at the time of these commands). Leviticus 16: 20-22 describes something really profound called the "substitutionary atonement".

Leviticus 16: 20-22 "When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting, and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites - all their sins - and put them on the goat's head.  He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed to the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert."

It's an obvious enough parallel. Christ carried our sins on his body on the cross. He was the scapegoat that made atonement for our sins. We've heard it a million times.  But I feel God calling me to reexamine my heart in all of this.

I was talking to my small group this morning about how difficult it can be to receive God's unconditional love. It's easy to know "Jesus loves me". We sing songs all of the time in church of the Father's love. But when it comes down to it, how deeply do we fully receive the unconditional LOVE of God?
My mentality was always performance-based.  I felt that I had to clean up my act, quit drinking, quit smoking, read my Bible every day for a week, and then maybe God would stop being mad at me and we could have a real relationship.  Even at Mercy, I would read my Bible furiously, try to finish our assigned materials faster, and stress myself out trying - trying - trying.

One day God stopped me and spoke into my heart... "Why are you trying to earn my love?"
I said, "I'm not!" (Because clearly, God misunderstood my motives...)
He gently replied, "Yes you are."
I argued back "NU-UH!"
It was quiet for a moment, but I could sense His presence. Like He was waiting. Finally, I humbled my heart and said, "That's all I got". *shrug*
It's hilarious to me now. But isn't it strange how we sometimes respond to God's convictions?

This was the point that God was trying to make:
Romans 5:6-8 "Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready.  And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway.  We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice.  But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to Him." (The Message)

Selah. Pause a minute and think.
Don't let these stories and metaphors and churchy-rhetoric distract you from the mind-blowing message of God.  We don't have to have some high priest put together an elaborate ritual, lay hands on a goat, confess my sins to it and send it into the desert. Christ made the final atonement. It's not something that demands a repeat performance. Christ took care of it.  And God sent Jesus because he LOVES you. He loves me. He loves us. Passionately, deeply, unconditionally.
You can't earn His love. As Pastor Micah said, "There may be retribution, reconciliation to make, consequences... but never will we ever have to atone for our sins again."
And that's LOVE.

Romans 8:39 
"Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture... None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing -- nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable -- absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us."

the perfect prayer

I've been thinking about prayer this week, and how much my prayers have changed as I've grown closer to the One I love. Both in Trinity's (@ trinityomaha) Sunday morning service last week and in Hearts (@heartsomaha) this past Tuesday, we've been discussing the concept of going from "familiar" to "follower".
Thank God we live in the US, where we have the liberty to become as "familiar" with Christianity as we like! We are free to attend the church of our choosing on any given day of the week, we are free to openly discuss religion at Starbucks or Village Inn, and we are free to read a Bible, or the Koran, or the Communist Manifesto. We have freedom to familiarize ourselves with whatever ideology we please. And I'm grateful for that! I believe that God intends for us to seek Him, not have Him forced upon us by a government.

But I came to a point where familiar was suffocating, and "civilized religion" (as Erwin McManus calls it) became a cage. It was placid and static and life-stealing. I was surrounded by hypocrisy and noise.  Eventually, I just tuned it out and let it blend into the background, like a bad commercial or paid programming. It wasn't until I became so desperate for God - so barbaric in my need for Him - that my relationship moved from "familiar" to "follower".  At the time, I didn't fully realize that it was God I was searching for, but I was uncontrolled inside, like an animal clawing for something with a frenzied desperation. It was a hunger that drove me to one hundred different ends, but eventually, I found what I was looking for. Well, I should say, He found me.

I don't know what the journey from "familiar" to "follower" looks like for others. I feel like God has to be kinda loud with me because I can be so strong-headed. :) But I was thinking about how all of this related to prayer. I used to say to God what I thought He wanted to hear. Now please understand me, I believe there are many occasions where we use another's words in a prayer in an act of reverence or to be guided when we don't know what to say. In corporate prayer, especially, there must be thought and theology applied. I'm talking about personal, "prayer closet" time.  Sometimes, on those occasions, our hearts need to cry out from the core of our beings and our minds need to take a break while the Holy Spirit inside of us intercedes.

If I was upset, I'd dumb things down in talking to God. I'd go through the ACTS model and make sure that I adored, confessed, and thanked before getting down to what I really felt. And usually, by the time I got to the supplication part, I felt stupid for asking anyway. This was, of course, because I was in the land of the familiar. I didn't understand who God is or how He sees me.

I am not a theologian or a Bible scholar. I don't claim to know much more than anything at all! But I'm looking at today's scripture and this verse rips my heart out:

Matthew 27: 45-46
"From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?" -- which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 

The commentary in my amazing Study Bible is strangely quiet about this. For good reason. I've heard many, many sermons preached on these two verses. I don't claim to have the "right" answers to this weighty passage. Here's what I do know: Jesus lived and died and never sinned.   (1 Peter 2:22)  Regardless of the multi-layered implications of this final, audible prayer of Jesus Christ, we know that He was not found "guilty" in screaming this from the cross.

Without going deeper, here is my one thought... Can we be so candid with our God?  I, unlike Jesus Christ, am a sinner. I know it, God knows it, the world knows it! So why am I so afraid to say the "wrong" thing to God? He knows my heart - he knows my thoughts. Can't I just be honest? Because sometimes, when life hurts the most, or I am the most troubled or confused, I don't want to ask for peace and wisdom and favor. I want to ask the impossible questions like Christ did on the cross. Regardless of whether the premise of my prayer lines up with the doctrine I hold fast to be true, if it's what I'm thinking and feeling in the moment, I am not allowing God entry into my reality if I am not willing to be honest.

In my journey from "familiar" to "follower", I noticed that my prayers (for the most part, not ALL of them) went from "let these gifts to us be blessed" to "Abba... thank you. Abba... help me. God, WHY?" And it opened up a world of conversation that I never knew existed.
He already knows. He does. The only person I was conning was myself.

What is your perfect prayer?

tsk tsk

Shame is an incredibly powerful human emotion - one that I have struggled with most of my life.  The reason that shame is so devastating, is because it the number one hinderance in relationships. Shame keeps us alone and isolated, unable to reach out in our perceived inferiority, and unable to even ponder God as we cower in His holiness. Taken to its logical extreme, shame is a killer. People say, "I just died." And it's not far from true. Shame is what drove me to try to take my own life several times.

dictionary.com defines it:

shame

 [sheym]  noun, verb, shamed,sham⋅ing.–noun

1.

the painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another: She was overcome with shame.

2.

susceptibility to this feeling: to be without shame.

3.

disgrace; ignominy: His actions brought shame upon his parents.

4.

a fact or circumstance bringing disgrace or regret: The bankruptcy of the business was a shame. It was a shame you couldn't come with us.

I was struck this morning while reading in Genesis (doing a little OT catch up), by the count of Adam and Eve's eyes being opened in the garden.

The first human emotion they experienced after sin entered the world was shame.  Genesis 3:7 "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves."   So many times, when I would find myself ashamed, I would try to cover it up. Backpedal, make excuses, hide, even run - physically run. In extreme cases, I buried the shame so deep inside of me that it became a festering wound, causing me to live injured year after year. 

What was God's response to their shame? He covered them properly and "made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them." (Gen. 3:21) 

To cover the first sin and the first shame, God saw that Adam's feeble attempt to cover himself would be entirely inadequate. So He shed blood and covered Adam and his wife with the skin of an animal.  And to cover our shame - we, being no less naked from a spiritual perspective - we were covered by God through the shed blood of His Son.         

Christ bore our shame, and the Bible says that He despised it.  Hebrews 12:2 "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." (emphasis mine)   And in that act, God was able to cover us.  Isaiah 61:10 "For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness"  It's an awesome parallel. We are covered in garments by God. 

And as far as our shame, as disciples this side of the cross? Psalm 25:3 "No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame"  It's restated in Romans 10:11  

Conviction? Yes.  Humility and Repentance? Yes. Shame? Never.

Thank you, God, that we do not have to scramble about trying to cover ourselves for the shame of things done to us or decisions that we have made. Receive the covering that God has given you through the shed blood of Christ on the cross. 

We do not have to carry shame. And that is so liberating.

Has Satan ever tried to trap you in the lie of shame? What have been some of the results of shame in your life?