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Daily Transcripts
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Hashtag Reframe
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Community ~ Hashtag ~ Reframe
God is willing for you to lose everything you think you know about him so that you might be found.
In the Shadow of the Sun
They say that life is always easier
After you let yourself come undone
They say they'll give you whatever you want
And they'll be waiting in the shadow of the sun
And I'll be waiting in the shadow of the sun
Where I belong, there's something coming on
No more waiting, times are changing
And there's something coming on
To even tell the story of how Reframe became a book, I have to tell how it became an idea. And to tell you how it became an idea, I have to make a confession.
What do you do when you're doing everything right and it's not working the way you thought it was supposed to? That's where I found myself after reading the Bible every single day of my life for 7 years. This wasn’t a crisis of faith. This wasn’t a situation where I was like, ‘I don’t know if I believe any of this Bible stuff anymore.’ No, that was cemented long before. I didn’t have any doubts that there was a God. I didn’t have any doubt that Jesus came for me. I didn’t doubt at all that he loved me and actually wanted to be a part of everything and to the best of my ability he was.
I felt like I'm doing this, I am following the recipe right. Everything that I’ve ever been told I'm trying to do. I'm reading my Bible every day. I'm in prayer every day. I’ve been to seminary. I travel all over the place and speak to people. I speak to people every day. There is not a curtain and behind the curtain is a duplicitous life. We live this as a family. I'm following the prescription. Why isn’t this enough? And it sent me searching, searching in the scriptures, searching in the lives of those found in the scriptures, peeling back the layers in my own heart. I needed to know what I was talking about when I said “I am in a relationship with God.”
Can't Live Without You
All the thoughts in my head spinning 'round like a hurricane
And life leaves me so confused
When I trip and I fall I collapse like a tidal wave
So I'm crying out to you
You reached down out of nowhere
And picked my heart up off the floor
You put my life back together
And I'm not broken anymore
You're my only wish for a dream come true
And it goes like this: Will you come to my rescue?
You're the only hope that I'm clinging to
And I hope you know I can't live without you
(I hope you know) I can't live without you
(I hope you know) I can't live without you
When you say you are in a relationship with God, it's a pretty big thing to say. What does that mean? What does it mean to be in a relationship with God? Because for so many of us, what we’re thinking is the more Bible I can read, the more books I can ingest, the more sermons that I can listen to, the more music and worship that I can have in my life, the more media that I can consume about God, the closer I am to him. Is that how it works though? Because that wasn’t working. Frankly, that wouldn’t work in any other relationship in your life.
With God we’ve got him in some sort of “other” category, sort of this mysterious unknown category and that has been going on for thousands of years. Man has been trying to figure out where God is and where we are in relation to God and what levers you need to pull and what hoops you need to jump through in order to get him to move in one way or another and how not to have a falling out with him. So we’ve turned to the study of God, but somewhere along the line we made an exchange and decided that the study of God was God. We’ve compiled our data and we know more about God than we have ever known in human history, so why isn’t that making us closer to him? Maybe it is because you cannot be in a relationship with data because data isn’t alive.
How would it work if in your marriage all you ever did was read about your spouse, compile data and facts, try to keep them straight, try to build the theology of your spouse, try to form doctrine from that and never be with your spouse, not in any kind of holistic way, not in a way that is always on and never off, not in a way that is really life giving and life receiving, not in a way that is not compartmentalized? That wouldn’t be a healthy relationship, and yet for some reason that is what we try to pull off with God.
What is this relationship that we’re talking about anyway? For so many of us there is a threshold called faith and it is called belief and we feel like when we cross that threshold somebody is at the other side of that handing us a gift bag. And in the gift bag is our relationship with God and then we start talking about it from that point forward. What do we mean when we say that – I am in a relationship with God? Because it is all throughout the Christian subculture, we’re all talking about our relationship with God. It is being talked about from the pulpits. We’re all speaking of it. What is its shape? What does it look like? How do we know we’re in it? How does it work? That's where I found myself.
I felt like okay, I know the Bible. I know it pretty well and I believe it and I believe a relationship with God is available and I believe I'm sort of in that relationship to the best of my ability. But when we sing songs about wanting more and going deeper and out beyond the shore and into the deep, do we mean that or do we only taste that when we are in crisis? What I began to realize is wow, to really get at this idea of a relationship with God, I have got to find out what it is not so that I can find out what it could be. And I began to write.
The way that it has turned out is that the first part of Reframe, the first section of three is exactly that – deconstructing what a relationship with God is not and trying to explore where this kind of subtle mistrust, this subtle “I think I’ve got to have a Plan B because God might not come through for me” comes from.
For example, hearsay. If you get hauled into court for some reason to testify to the character or events of a person's life, you're not allowed to say all the rumors that you’ve heard. You're not allowed to say things you don’t know firsthand. That is called hearsay and it is inadmissible. How much of what you are calling your relationship with God is based upon hearsay? What do you know firsthand, first person? What memories do you have with God that only you and he share? How much of what we’re calling a relationship with God is nothing more than rumors of God as opposed to experiences with God? And belief. Belief isn’t all there is to it. There has got to be more because I believe in a lot of people that I'm not in a relationship with. Relationship is more than belief.
So we spend the first part of the book rethinking, rethinking ourselves, rethinking the box that we’ve made and shoved God into, and rethinking how it is we’re trying to relate to him, all things that I needed to know, all things that I needed to find out.
Then as we move forward through Reframe, we move into a second section. Why are we doing all of this? What is motivating us? What is driving us not only in our spirituality but in our lives? And we begin to explore hunger and the way that hunger motivates almost everything that we do in one way or another. We begin to explore the fact that so much of what we do, so many of the knee jerk reactions, so many of the assumptions and misunderstandings, so much of what we are doing is because we are starving. We explore how it is we’re trying to fill hunger and where that is leading us.
A starving person will eat just about anything. That's a simple fact. A starving person will eat shoe leather. A starving person will eat rotting flesh. A starving person will eat dirt. A starving person will eat anything that passes for food. We know this stuff biologically. We know what might motivate us physically to try to feel full, even if feeling full is just an illusion. But rarely do we take that and apply it to our spiritual lives where the real story is, where the real thing that motivates the course and trajectory of our lives lies.
From a spiritual perspective are we mostly just eating junk food, mostly quick and easy, something to make us feel full? I mean, is it like a drive-thru full of empty calories? I mean, if you had to describe your life in the past years, the last couple years, what would you say? I mean, you can say all kinds of really good spiritual things, but most people would say it is kind of a blur. It is a struggle to avoid hardship, to kind of keep things above water, to have balance, to be grateful. It is a constant struggle and it is like there is this anxiety that is chasing us that we’re trying to run away from, this depression that is behind us that is stalking us that we’re trying to keep one step in front of and we’ll run and we’ll run and we’ll run and we’ll grasp for whatever we can to try to hold onto hope. We have all of this constant motion. Is that what this is all about? Is that the full nourished life that we would call shalom? Is that what is going on here?
Maybe we’re hungry for a reason. Maybe we’re trying to feel full in ways that can’t fill us because there is a difference between feeling full and being nourished. When we eat, we’re consuming something that we might sustain life. What are the ways maybe we’re making God a consumable and using him as a product that makes us feel full in ways that can’t fill us? Maybe we’re living our lives precisely like the ministry Jesus spoke of. If you read the gospels, you see Jesus constantly, constantly, constantly saying how you are trying to achieve what you are trying to achieve will not happen the way you are trying to get there because it can’t. You're trying everything external to try to fill your inside life, and maybe your outside life will never have order or meaning until you are filled from the inside out. Jesus even had an exchange, a bit of a confrontation with the religious leaders of his time in the book of Matthew where he called them whitewashed tombs - beautiful on the outside, dead and full of bones and decay and uncleanness on the inside.
We have to pay attention to this because it is not a joking matter. We want what we want and we want it easy. When things stop making sense, then we’re not really all that willing to go back and examine our role in it. We usually just want to blame God, but if you're going to be in a successful relationship with somebody, you’ve got to own your part of the relationship.
This is Not a Test
This is not a, this is not a test
This is the real thing
This is not a, this is not a test
This is the real thing
We gonna go til we got nothin’ left
This is the real thing
This is not a, this is not a, this is not a test
This is not a test
This is not a test
So if we’re hungry, and we are, if we’re even starving, and in some ways we are, how do we get nourished? Is Jesus having the same problem now that he had when he walked this earth? Because constantly Jesus had these encounters and confrontations with the religious leaders, the people who knew what they were talking about when they talked about God, the people who were leading the people and were telling them how it was that their reality was shaped and what God was going to and not going to do and how he was and wasn’t going to do it and what he liked and what he didn’t like.
He says in the book of John, “You pore over the scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, yet they testify about me and you're not willing to come to me so that you may have life.” In other words, you're following your traditions and you're studying your scriptures. You're doing the recipe. You're following the prescription, trying to find a way to relate to God and get him to relate to you, not realizing that God is standing in front of you, speaking to you in a voice that you can hear.
Are we still doing the same thing? Is it still the same problem? How do we get nourished? How do we get this living water that Jesus talks about? If we drink that we’ll never thirst again.
We begin to explore what the nourished life looks like and the components that we have to have to succeed in any relationship that is life-giving and nourishing which leads us into the final part of the book where we have to discuss restarting, letting some of these old things fall to the floor and reframe the way we’re looking at life itself, which will invariably invite us to do something we don’t like much – change. Irreversible change.
We get a picture of what it looks like to be whole and we hunger for it, but we’re not going to get there without change because change is an absolute constant in life. It is an absolute constant in the scriptures. It is something God is continually inviting us into because anything without it will become stagnant.
We get pretty freaked out when we start talking about changing our faith. We get pretty freaked out when we’ve got our dogma and our theology and we think it is exactly right, not realizing that we’ve built it through all sorts of assumptions and misunderstandings rather than through a first person, always on, never off, holistically integrated, life-giving, collaborative adventure that we are actually invited into. But we’re afraid we might get it wrong. If we get it wrong that might have implications and that might lead us down all kinds of funky, wrong spiritual paths. But when you are in a relationship with somebody you know you are in that relationship and you know the person you are in a relationship with. When you are in love with someone it is a constant and you are constantly adjusting. Change is necessary. Change is actually a very, very, very good thing.
Speaking of being in love with someone, oh the love the Father has for us! I don’t think we realize… I mean, I think we intellectually understand theologically a merciful, benevolent God, but if we were able to taste and see what God has done… I mean, like I said, we get a taste, but if we were able to live in the moment understanding how profoundly loved we are and how we are the one holding God at an emotional arm's length, sort of being the on-again-off-again love… Have you ever been in a relationship like that where you have given your heart, you have invested your heart into a relationship but the other person is kind of holding back and holding you out emotionally? You're like giving and giving and giving and giving and giving until you are given out. Those relationships never work. Yet, this is what we do to God. Yet, where we would be long gone, where we would be long gone, he remains.
So often we find ourselves angry at God, but if you were God, would you trust you in the relationship? I mean, when we peel back all of the layers and get truly honest, who has been the unfaithful one in the relationship? The entire arc of the narrative of the Bible shows us God's willingness to be involved in the lives of people. He invaded earth and condescended himself into a human body so that he could rescue you. God is over the moon in love with you, willing to move heaven and earth to be with you, to commit his life to you forever. Why are we settling for assumption, misunderstanding, doubt, fear, anger and any other cardboard, plastic replacement we can find? There is no other love like this. It's not even possible. This love not only transcends space and time. This love transcends our humanity. This love is eternal. There is no other love like this one.
We believe God inspires. We believe he inspired the scriptures. We believe he is a creator. We believe he inspires us. Do you understand that you inspire God? Inspiration is to create. Inspiration is also to cause someone to act. God acts on behalf of humanity in practically every page of the Bible. This exquisite planet that we live on and eternity placed into our hearts drip with his passionate love. We inspire him. If we didn’t, why would he come for us? Why would he die to rescue us?
There is one word in the Bible that pretty much sums the whole thing up here. It is found in the book of Isaiah. Immanuel is coming. Immanuel says it all. God with us. That is all he has ever wanted, to be with us. He doesn’t want to be a science project. He doesn’t want to be a theological statement. He's not a character study. He's not a lab rat that we study behavior over. He wants to be with you. But you're going to have to want to be with him just as bad, to the point that there really is no other love like his love and then and only then we will begin to taste Eden again. And we explore this in the last part of the book.
Welcome Home
Hello, I've been waiting for you
I didn't know if you'd recognize my voice
Cause I've been whispering your name again and again
I've been imagining this day and I'll never be the same
Welcome home
Welcome home
It's so good to see your face
Welcome home
Reframe is the story of taking an old picture off the wall because you’ve looked at it for so long and have known something was wrong about it but couldn’t figure out exactly what, finally realizing this whole thing doesn’t work because of the frame around it. I’ve got to reframe this photo, this image, this picture of this God that I know loves me and that I know that I love. I look at that picture and it is so beautiful. I want to be in that picture. I want to be in that scene. I want to be there, but I don’t know how to get in there.
Taking it down from the wall, letting the old frame fall away, reframing the whole thing and realizing what you thought was so complicated and so mysterious and so impossible to navigate and nearly impossible to figure out was far more simple than it ever seemed and far more unexplainable and unimaginable than you thought, to wake up and realize it has been here all along but I’ve chosen so many other paths to try to get there when it has been here all along, that is Reframe.
Reframe reframes us, God, and God with us. For me, Reframe set my heart free. But more importantly for me, writing Reframe set God free. It is my humble and sincere prayer that it will do the exact same for you. I believe, at least in my own life, Reframe is one of the most important things I have ever done and one of the most important things that we must do. We are made for relationship. It is hardcoded into our DNA. We are made for God. We are made in his image. His DNA is in us. We are made to be in a first person, collaborative, always on, never off, disruptive, pervasive, all-consuming relationship with God and we cannot be in a relationship with God that wouldn’t work in any other relationship in our lives. May the Reframe book reframe you, reframe God, and reframe the relationship that connects you and in the process may you find utter freedom and a true picture of what it looks like to be created in God's image.
To get your copy of Reframe, From the God We’ve Made to God with Us, visit www.ReframeBook.com. And as I say so many times in this book, it is all about you and it is all about what you do next.
Over My Head
I have come to this place in my life
I’m full but I’ve not satisfied
This longing to have more of You
I can feel it my heart is convinced
I’m thirsty my soul can’t be quenched
You already know this but still
Come do whatever You want to
I’m standing knee deep but I’m out where I've never been
I feel You coming and I hear Your voice on the wind
Would you come and tear down the boxes that I have tried to put You in
Let love come teach me who You are again
Would you take me back to the place where my heart was only about You
And all I wanted was just to be with You
Come do whatever You want to
And further and further my heart moves away from the shore
Whatever it looks like, whatever may come I am Yours
And further and further my heart moves away from the shore
Whatever it looks like, whatever may come I am Yours
Then You crash over me and I’ve lost control but I’m free
I’m going under, I’m in over my head
And You crash over me, I’m right where You want me to be
I’m going under, I’m in over my head
Whether I sink, whether I swim
It makes no difference when I’m beautifully in over my head
Whether I sink, whether I swim
It makes no difference when I’m beautifully in over my head
I’m Beautifully in over my head
I’m Beautifully in over my head
For more information about Reframe, From the God We’ve Made to God with Us, visit www.ReframeBook.com or www.DailyAudioBible.com.
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Tamarie 08/19/2015 19:12 |
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