in all of His mystery and glory

I have lots of thoughts on "Kingdom stuff" right now but today I'll go back to the conference and share some thoughts from Brian Zahnd's message on "The Twilight of Evangelical-ism". (reference in Mark 15-16)

We, as charasmatic/pentecostal/evangelical/fill in the blank Christians have bought into a "systematic Jesus" or way of Christianity. We "have it all figured out" - answers to every question. (Pastor Brian alluded to the 'Bible Answer Man') We have systemized Jesus and the Christian life. We have modeled our churches after corporate America. What we have and know is an American Jesus and our view of the Kingdom of God is republican values. Give me a break.

I dare say, Jesus is not American. I don't think he is into 'our rights' and freedoms. Don't get me wrong, I know I'm very blessed to live in a country where I do have the right to worship God freely and openly, I have the right to choose where (and how) my kids are educated, etc, etc, BUT the Kingdom of God is not built on such individual 'rights'. Whoa, I'm getting off subject now. Back to conference thoughts....

I think we have brought God down to our size, to our comprehension, when God is soooo much more vast than that. He is untamable, unmanagable, divine, mysterious and transcends the 'system' of our world. That's the God I serve. Though we wouldn't freely admit it, we all have wrong views of WHO God is...because we 'see' Him through our vague human minds-eye. As 'mature' Christians we think we've come to the end of figuring God out. How wrong we are!

He is our King, we are His people. To borrow a overly used quote, He is NOT safe but He is good. My life as I know it may not be 'safe' but I am secure in my Refuge, my Strength, my Strongtower. Somehow this untamable, unmanagable God loves me. He has given Himself for me. I can do nothing less than to give my life in service to Him. I don't understand Him at times but I know that He understands me and has a good, albeit difficult plan, for my life. It's difficult because His thoughts are not my thought, nor His ways my ways.

He is God and I am not. But I so am in love with Him - in all of His mystery and glory!

(OK, so this was a mix of conference thoughts with my heart ponderings too!)