Brasil!

Brazil 2010

 (It should be noted that there are two fonts used in this letter.  The larger font is the letter to my friends, supporters, and family about my Brasil trip.The smaller font is a bit of a rant that I went on, and I decided to just leave it in the post.  Read it or not.) 

            I spent about 12 days in Brazil, and have been home for as many.  I feel as though I was in a different world for that time, but although it was a different hemisphere, it was still the same world.  “…God so loved the world…” John 3:16.  This could be the most famous Bible verse of all time.  I wonder if as many non believers know this verse as Christians.  I am very sad that so many people know this verse, and have heard it many times, but so terribly few know what it is speaking of—The Love of God--- very specifically The Love of The Father.  We may have stumbled upon a very difficult problem here.  Why have so many people never felt the love of The Father?

            I think that there are a few possibilities here.  One of them is very simply that we, the Church, the Body of Christ, have a job.  We are to take the love that has been given to us, and give it, show it, spread it, pass it out, live it…we are supposed to DO the second commandment.  (Yes, of course the 1^st commandment comes first, and I am supposing that we are only able to give the love that we have first received from God, because without Him we have no love.  I am very adamantly affirming that the 1^st commandment comes absolutely first and there is no beginning of an argument that it would in any way come after serving, or anything else.  I believe that we need to be filled with the love of God, and go on being filled, and THEN we are to give that love back to God, and to the rest of the world, but it simply must come in that order and we can not give something to someone else that we have not first received.  [I know I went off on this, but I want it to be exceedingly and abundantly clear that the 1^st commandment is first for a reason.])  The question always comes up: “Who is my neighbor?”  And I think it is a very silly question to ask.  Certainly the people who live on your right and to your left, but also who ever is in front of you, who ever the Lord brings to you.  And so I think one of the reasons, very briefly, that the Love of The Father is not received throughout the earth is that we are not doing a very good job.  I think we are certainly starting to get better and am very thankful for this.

 Another possibility that I will address ever so quickly is that perhaps God only loves certain people, and only they are capable of receiving His love.  I hope this is very clearly heretical and not foolish.  I do not think this is true.  I think perhaps another option remains.

I think that God loves very passionately and deeply and hotly pursues us, but often we run further and further away.  I think this is a very sad reality.  Real love is very skewed and misinterpreted in our world.  Last week a few friends and I were on Pearl St. in Boulder going around praying for people and loving on people, evangelizing, etc.  One of my friends came to me while it was going on telling me he just had a few people yell at him.  These people were very angry, and one of them said a very heartbreaking and also revealing statement.  I believe he said “…My god is a god of love, and he would never send his children to hell!”  I would like to take a moment on this sentence.  This is a very profound misunderstanding of love.  Now, in a very narrow sense, our God-YHWH the Creator of heaven and earth will never send His children to hell.  Let me explain what I mean.  Anyone who is a child of God, who has been grafted into the family, who has ‘kissed the Son’ so to speak, is a true child of God.  We are not truly children of God until we have repented of our sins and accepted the Lord Jesus as the Messiah, which He is, and declare that He is Lord God.  In a very broad sense, we are all God’s children, this is only to say that we are humans and He is Creator.  Jesus said that the Pharisees are sons of the father of lies-Satan(John 8.)  So, in this way, God’s real children will never go to Hell.  The problem with what this man said is that he has a profound misunderstanding of what love is. 

In our culture, and in the west, I think most of the time we think that if someone loves us that they will let us do whatever we want, whenever we want, how ever we want, and do nothing but ‘support’ us in our decisions and lifestyle choices and pat us on the back and smile at us and give us money because they love us.  Summed up, love is allowing someone to do whatever they want without consequence.  This is absolute folly, to the point that it is actually very wicked and corrupted. 

I think this is almost the exact opposite of love.  Love looks like John 15:13.  Love looks like God hanging on a tree for His enemies, in spite of their hate, because He will go to the ends of the earth, to death to bring us out of the evil wickedness that we have become, to put us on the right path, to straighten us out, to correct the mistakes, so that we can be with Him where He is, that the love the Father has for Jesus would be in us, and that we would love Him with that same love.  John 17.  Love is doing everything that must be done to pull you out of your sin, not glorify you in it, not accept your sin, and say that ‘it’s just the way you are’, or tell you its ok, etc.  That is not love at all. 

LOVE IS NOT: “I am going to let my best friend drive home drunk because I love him, and he wants to drive home, so I will let him, because that’s what he wants and love is letting you do whatever you want.”  Do you see what I mean when I say that love is not letting you do whatever you want? And that it is quite the opposite? 

            That man had a very profound misunderstanding of what love is, and he has been fed that probably since he was a very young child.  The reason that it breaks my heart is because there are a great many people in the world who believe that about love, and are very greatly deceived.  I think this is the true problem that we have with love in the world, God loves very deeply and passionately, and we are so blinded and deceived, that we think His love is actually evil and wrong, and we REJECT His love, and instead partake of lies and deceptions that look nice, because if love is getting to do whatever you want, nobody has to change anything. 

            God loves, and sometimes the world receives it, and sometimes the world rejects it.  The Church loves, and the story is the same.  I bring this up in this letter because this has been something that has impacted me very strongly in the recent months, and on the Brazil trip.  I do not intend to bash the Body, or point fingers and start a blame storm etc.  That is not my intention at all.  I bring this up to tell you about how I have seen the Body do this very well, and how my heart has been impacted by it. 

            I learned a lot about unity in the Body on this trip.  I also learned about the Love of The Father on this trip.  I learned a variety of other things, but these are the two I want to focus on.  I must say that I had and have very immature understanding about what unity is in the Church, and how that is played out.  I was a bit concerned about this trip just because of all of the different ministry styles on the trip, the different church backgrounds, and even a few doctrinal differences.  A little bit, I thought that unity was everyone cutting their losses, and just sticking to one ministry style, one doctrinal system, everyone coming together and putting down their differences and doing it the same way, and not arguing about it, because we love each other, and we ‘just love Jesus’ so it will all work out.  Part of this is true. 

            Unity is spelled J-E-S-U-S.  We come together in the Man who holds everything together by the word of His power, and yes, differences do fall away and are laid down for the sake of Christ.  But the way I thought of it was wrong.  I was almost thinking of it as a sort of ‘communistic’ system if you will.  Where everybody is the same and everybody is equal all of these things.  The problem with this, is that it makes everybody and ‘eye.’  Not everybody can be the eye.  Sometimes I think we all want to be the eye, so all we have to do is watch… ;] (Just kidding.)  When you become a Christian, you don’t instantly turn into this clone who does everything the same as everyone else.  We are all individuals.  Your background and your experience do not leave once you become grafted into the Body.  How you act about these things does however change.

            I think unity better looks like this.  “We are all here, on this trip for one reason: Glorify Jesus to the highest place, where He belongs.”  There is an old saying attributed to Augustine that goes something like “Love God, and do whatever you want.”  This is a bit startling at first, but then it starts to make sense.  If you really love God, there are many things you are not going to do, and really when it comes down to it, if you really love God, you will want to do His will anyway.  (It is very important that ‘Love God’ comes first!)  I think unity is a bit similar.  If I am trying to glorify God, I am not going to get in an intense argument with my brother about why speaking in tongues is blaspheming and try to prove him wrong so that I can puff up my pride.  When everyone is united for the same cause: Glorifying Jesus to the highest place, and Jesus is at the center of it, and He is leading it, little ministry style differences disappear.  I was so blessed to experience this on the Brazil trip.  I do not remember even hearing of a single issue relationally on this trip.  (I am certain there were disagreements, but I did not catch wind of them.)  The first night we got to Campina Grande, we prayed all together for unity, and laid down our differences before the altar.  We followed this with an a capella run through of “They will know we are Christians by our love.”  Jesus took care of the rest. 

           

            Switching gears here a bit, I want to tell you about Brazilians.  I have never met a people so deeply affectionate, passionate, caring, giving, or loving than Brazilians.  These people gave us their time, their resources, their food, welcomed us into their homes, put us before themselves in everything they did.  I am utterly convinced it was the Love of God shining through them. When they hug you, they hold on as long as they can, because they want you to know that they love you.  I have never seen affection displayed so openly, safely and generously as on these 12 days.  They hug, they kiss, they smile great big smiles, they encourage, they laugh, and they cry.  When we would pray for the children, Ismael, our brother and translator would tell us to hug the children and their families first, because they would feel more comfortable, and they would open up.  I think there is no coincidence in our society that we have so very many people of all ages who have self worth issues, body image issues, sexuality is so twisted, suicide is so rampant, the alcohol and drug and pornography use in our children(Yes, children, not teens) is starting younger and younger all the time.  I think the desire to take your own life is significantly smaller if everyone you know is displaying their love for you on a daily basis.  Perhaps I am ignorant and mistaken, so be it.  I think we need to learn from the Brazilians.  I have had some incredible experiences with the love of God, but what I experienced interacting with my Brazilian brothers and sisters has profoundly impacted me, and is something that I will never forget.  These are a people who have the love of Jesus, and are quick to give it away. 

            I am so very thankful to everyone who supported me in prayer, and financially to go on this trip.  And of course, to my good friend YHWH for taking care of everything all the time; Love ya Pappa. 

-Ian