i owe, i owe…

‘Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.’ [romans 13.8]

i love that verse.  i have been reading romans for quite a long time now and i just keep getting stuck on that verse any time I am near it

the continuing debt to love one another – what a cool way to be in debt – and the idea that it is ongoing – so keep chipping away at it – keep increasing the investment – but you’ll never actually be out of that debt – cos there will never be a time when you have loved enough, given enough, uplifted enough…

but the flip side is that unlike a normal debt, this is not one that has to leave you feeling bad and burdened or under a cloud of compulsion – cos like another verse i always get stuck on in 2 corinthians 5.14 where it says ‘for Christ’s love compels us…’ and again it’s not the compelling of ‘ooh you better do this thing or else’ but more a case of once we truly ‘get’ Christ’s love – once we understand the sacrifice and experience the joy and freedom of surrendering our whole lives to Him, then the compulsion sets in as a response to His love and grace

the “I can’t not’ness” of God’s love

wow this crazy redemptive revolutionary love of God is so wild man, it’s so completely liberating, it’s so undeserved (i know me!) it’s so much, how can i not pass it on, live it out, pour it out… and continue to do so

continuing debt of love – the one debt i hungrily embrace.

free, free, i’m free…

arr, so last nite of crew before baptist summer camp 1 (1000ish young people) arrive and my friend Craig Fincham leads a devotion/crew-building moment and confesses some stuff to the team and God who has been loudly whispering (well i have been incessantly converting His calls to a whisper so as not to pay too much attention to them) to me decides this is a moment of truth (MOT) moment to SCREAM at me – okay buddy, choose this day whom you will serve… i knew i had to and it sucked a lot (cos of the impending disappointment and hurtment that i knew tbv would experience and of course – once again – the embarrassment of not being big or strong or real enuff with this thing i’ve been struggling with for most of this last year, or maybe more accurately not ‘struggling with’…

and so i had to (take 2) confess that once again i got caught up in online pokering and while last time i confessed i left a back door which enabled me to fairly easily slide back into it, i knew this time it had to be kill kill kill (which is not easy cos i really enjoyed playing online and it gave me both an escape and an outlet for my competitive vibes) and so i have come home and deleted the software, this time with the knowledge that i cannot start again if… it is gone, finished, and i know that it won’t be a problem again in that regard cos the only reason it was able to become a problem again was cos i left a backdoor…

and so it was tough and it sucked to have to admit to her i’d been caught up in it again, but at the same time it was amazing and incredible and much needed and it really was (again, you’d think i would have learned last time) like getting a huge chunk of my life back again (and time which i need for book-writing so super stoked and excited for everything the time will free me up to be and do) and it was SO INCREDIBLY TIMED cos i knew deep within that as much as i was ready for summer camp and the workshops i had prepared and to serve and so on, that i wasn’t and i absolutely needed that moment to happen so i could stand in front of 1500 young people absolutely compromise free and not hiding my secret sins while admonishing them to be free of theirs.

burden lifted. thank you God. thank you lovely wife for your grace and forgiveness and lack of judgement.

thank you God for 15th chances… help me not to need a 16th… free me from my addictive personality that quickly gets my feet wrapped up and entangled with sin or distractful things which masquerade as not sin.

hebrews 12.1-3 starts with ‘therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw of everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…’