Free To Be Second

“Know that you are loved and live out of that.”

Loren Thornburg

Video chat is the next best thing to being in person.  Yet, what I find is so often I am looking at me in the small box rather than the person I am talking to in the full screen.  It seems it would be easier to keep my eyes on the other person in the bigger picture, yet I seem to drift back down to me in the small view.  If I’m honest it’s not just on video chat.  Even when I’m with people my focus can end up on me in my thoughts and direction of conversation.  We all have these tendencies.  We gravitate towards thinking about ourselves, wondering how others perceive us, and planning how we can get what we need.  What if we could keep others in our view rather than ourselves?  I don’t mean that we neglect ourselves but that we keep ourselves in proper perspective.  It’s easy to let ourselves become the full screen.  Yet, then we miss the joy of community and the freedom of not needing to be the focus.   Live free to come second.  There’s more joy there than you think.  

“If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

Philippians 2:1-4 Message

We can’t give what we don’t have.  It’s hard to give love we haven’t received.  We love best when it’s an outflow of the love we have been given and oh what overflow of love comes from knowing Jesus.  His love makes all the difference.  It’s because of how He has loved us that we can love God and others.  We can forget ourselves because we know He never forgets us.  We can lend a helping hand because He has brought to Him, a to a place we never deserved to be.  Sometimes we get this out of order and try to give without receiving.  Spend time in His love.  Receive the ways He is loving you through others.  Then, you can let His love compel you to put yourself aside and see those around you.  Then you can be okay with being second.  You might be surprised how freeing it really becomes.  Let God be first and see how He takes care of you.  You may find being first is not as necessary as you once thought.  Embrace the freedom of being second.  

Check out the I AM Second videos.  Here is one from hip hop artist Lecrae:

http://www.iamsecond.com/seconds/lecrae/

Just Around the Corner

“When we most want to quit is when we most need is to stick it out.”

Loren Thornburg

Have you ever noticed that just before a breakthrough is when things got the hardest? It’s in our nature.  A moth  becomes a butterfly by the pressure from the cocoon before release, a mom giving birth has to push the hardest just before the birth, or even a slingshot shoots the farthest when you pull it to its greatest tension.  Yet, as much as we all want to achieve great things and go far, we don’t like the tension needed to get there.  Which is why many of us stop.  Often when we stop is the very moment that we need to hold on, for breakthrough is just around the corner.  It seems to be how it works.  I wish it weren’t so.  I wish it were easy.  However, if we can see the tension as a sign of a breakthrough that’s coming maybe we can hold on long enough for the joy that is near.  Hold on, breakthrough is just around the corner. 

“Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner.”

1 Peter 4:12-13 Message

We are so quick to associate things that are easy with God’s hand in it and assume that when it’s hard His hand is gone.  I’m not sure how we got to that assumption for when we look at Jesus’ life we see God’s hand all over it and yet His life was far from easy.  Just after His moment of greatest pain bearing the weight of our sin in His death on the cross, comes the moment that He fulfills His purpose.  He defeated sin so that we could have access to intimate relationship with the Father.  We see it all throughout scripture where the greatest tension comes just before a breakthrough and He does the same in our lives.  The tension is never wasted.  God is using it to prepare you for what awaits you beyond the breakthrough.  So although it’s never easy or fun, it’s far from true that God is off the job.  He is very much in the thick of it, sometimes so much so that’s it’s hard to see Him because He is so in the midst of it all.  Look again.  Can you see Him there?  He is refining you there for the glory just around the corner.  

Check out this song about the verge of a breakthrough:

(it's #2 on the link below)

On A Verge Of A Breakthrough

The Ineloquent

Trapped in this cocoon like a moth I'm growing like I should.

This process hurts more than I ever thought it could.

I hear it's normal to feel the way I distinctively do when you're on the verge of a break, of a breakthrough

I can see my wings already waiting just around the corner 

and I can feel my heart racing is this waiting to no where. 

I can hear deliverance screaming my name over and over, It's so close, It's so close

Wounds like a ballon stretching pressure and it hurts the most

But when Im at my worst I know that freedom is close. 

I hear that a cocoon is necessary for your wings to bloom. 

I think I'm ready to be on the verge of a break, of a break, of a breakthrough.

I can see my wings already waiting just around the corner 

and I can feel my heart racing is this waiting to no where. 

I can hear deliverance screaming my name over and over, It's so close, It's so close

The Beautiful Change

“Change brings beauty in more than the leaves.”

Loren Thornburg

This time of the year is so fun to get out and see the leaves.  Here in Colorado all of the aspens are changing and coloring the mountainsides.  It’s fun to see.  It’s also fun to see the process.  There’s an anticipation in the gradual color change.  Somehow I don’t always feel the same about change in my own life.  I can sometimes see it on the fun things but not always the hard stuff.  I agree that some change is really hard to see any beauty in it.  Yet, what if I started to look for it?  I wonder what I might find.  I just might start to see that the transitions that seem so hard are yielding colors of gold across my life.  

“They’ll rebuild the old ruins, raise a new city out of the wreckage.  They’ll start over on the ruined cities, take the rubble left behind and make it new.”

Isaiah 61:4 Message

Nothing in your life is out of reach of God’s capacity to make it beautiful.  God loves to rebuild, restore and renew His people. With God it’s never too late.  We’re never too old, too far from hope or beyond help.  He can rebuild any amount of ruins.  Even what’s been completely wrecked He can make new.  Whatever your ruins or rubble God can make it new if you will let Him.  That means even the thing that seems beyond restorable, that very thing He can restore: the broken marriage, the deep hurt of a friend, the addiction that keeps coming back, the years lost, and whatever seemingly impossible situation you find yourself in.  He can make the change and make it beautiful.  Let Him take the wreckage of your life and make it into something new.  He can make the beautiful change no matter how lost it seems.