How to become foolish: don’t give a shit about how other’s see you (start there), but only how God sees you, and what He says about you.
Slowly, becoming fools for Christ sake: the basic paradox of our foolishness and that we are also masterpieces of God through Christ! We are to treat one another as masterpieces of God Himself, at the same time as realizing we are total idiots.
Depending on life experiences, we tend to see ourselves as worthless or overly worthy. Either way, our true worth rest in how God sees us, not how we see ourselves, and project outwards, or how others see us, which is fickle changing seasonally. Our worth and identity come from how God sees us, and who He calls us. He is our Namer. Our freedom comes from receiving and wearing His nuanced names of us. Our best thoughts even about ourselves are terribly flawed, partial and not impartial. We defend ourselves with our own self definitions. But His self definition of us is much more gracious and spacious as well!
Being a failure or success is meaningless apart from how God sees us. We can be both down here repeatdly and still never get a sense of His perspective and value of who we truly are.
True self worth comes from seeing ourselves the way God sees us—messed up but terribly and particularly lovable and worth helping become the true poems we each are. It’s not self esteem, it is God’s esteem of us that makes us worthy and begin to shine in who we really are. We can’t just come to value ourselves, we must do so from and in His valuing of us.
We really cannot minister identity to others, if we have not ourselves moved in this dynamic of knowing we are very unlovable and yet having received His intense love. That’s the start of our own true journey into self. And it is other’s as well. We love Him because we know that He first loved us, and called us by name.
Self love apart from God is a nightmare of narcissism in the end. And really we are never to love others truly from that base. We must first see how unlovable we are, and yet that we are terrifically loved, receive that love and then we may be useful in loving others into their true worth and identities!
How to be fools and heroes simultaneously, how to be idiots and wise men, how to be very broken and yet also radiant eternal poems at the same time, is the dance of human life in Christ while on earth. We are both absolute idiots and total geniuses in Him. Absolute fools apart from Him, and absolute masters in and with Him!
Just as our best thoughts are dust specks compared with God’s, and must be offered on the altar in order to be altered by His, so we must become fools to ourselves and others, in order to become saints in Him.
We must be foolish enough to be useful! But wise enough to love one another despite ourselves. We are nothing, but we are also giants in Him, and have to be wise enough to allow Him to be enormous in us, which makes us look like we are something. On the outside, we may appear wise or stupid, but if He is manifesting, we are properly yielded.
We have to be wise enough to not care if we ourselves look like idiots in order that His actual Wisdom be seen. This is the foolishness of Christ. How we see ourselves depends on where we place the camera. If we place it in heaven, the angle is different. As is the interpretation afterwards.
It is not being a fool for foolishness sake, but it’s being willing to look like one, for the sake of Christ. Paul tried to teach this. But we still all want to look impressive, but none of us is apart from Him.
It is the same contradiction of already been made righteous, but still being idiots simultaneously. I am an unclean man, yet I am also a child of the Living God, as Paul put it.
If we throw out, how we appear to others, and only focus on how we appear to God, our inner motivations shift, as does the radiance of glory we can hold and reflect.
We are both the most amazing poems God has ever made, and one of the ugliest things imaginable. As we progress in Christ, we are displacing disgust with His Glory, and we should be moving from glory to Glory.
The true occupy movement is God occupying us and us then learning to occupy others in His Love and make them more fruitful.
When we get enough of ourselves on His Altar, He can make us famous or nobody and we are content. Our circumstance no longer dictates our worth or impact. That is the way of Christ who made Himself nothings, so He could be our Everything.
Many of us are still afraid to become foolish looking; others are afraid to look like we have it all together for His Sake. In fact, none of us have it all together, but He chooses where to shine His Light, and our job is to be yielded, whether He makes us look impressive or like fools. That’s for His Purposes.
Where we perceive ourselves from matters. If we look at ourself from God’s perspective, we see more clearly. If we try to create and image He will like, or others will accept we misconstrue our true image, and His of us.
I often think about how He uses the seemingly foolish to confound the seemingly wise. It’s one of His Ways. Sometimes it’s hard to be perceived as either. But that’s not our choice. Knowing who we really are—idiots becoming angel like, sons and daughters of God, is the most humbling and best way to interpret all He allows us to collaborate with Him on earth in. We may find fame and fortune down here, or die alone with nothing—that’s not His Point. Would be willing to be a king or a pauper and just stay with Him regardless, that is what Paul’s secret of spiritual contentment was all about.
We can become a famous artist or leader or be a nobody. Either way we must know our “somebody-ness” in Him. Our true worth and names reside in Jesus regardless of our seasons of seeming success or failure. We are those called by our names, according to His Name. We see ourselves because He sees us, and names us. Our worth comes from Him, not by what we accomplish or don’t accomplish down here.
Solomon was made famous, but notoriety was not his worth. His worth was from and in God. John the baptist became very famous. God trusted him with fame, because He said, I must decrease that He may increase. As I decrease, He can make me either nobody or somebody in the world’s eyes, and it matters less.
If we are dead, we will shine in His Life. We become ourselves by being willing to lose ourselves. We become ourselves by being willing to lose ourselves. The path to true identity, is to be lay our version of ourselves down, to find ourselves eternally in His Identity! We offer Him our names of ourselves, so He can whisper our true forever names into us. We give Him our black stones so He can give us our White stones in Him.
Our ambitions are fruitless apart from the ambition to be nothings so that He may become everything. When He is everything in us, we will surely shine like the stars, and He will share that shimmer wherever He chooses!
Many of us are still working to appear successful to ourselves or others. The fact is, we are not on any level despite our gifts. We are only successful as we come in thanks confession and enter into Him. When we do, we realize on another level that we truly are successful as people because He lives, therefore we are. He has given you every good thing which people value about you, and when you give it back to Him it shines on another level.
Success itself is really just this: was I fully found in Him. Did I yield as much of myself as possible into My Source and Lover, so that I could shine in my true radiance and be named in my complete poem. Success has nothing to do with what we accomplished down here, other than how well and quickly did I die into His Being. And be re-born in each area. Not just once, but daily. Success is how much of us, was found in Christ?!
We wrestle with success and failure down here. We are both. But in Him we are more than a success. We are mighty poetic radiant shining majestic statements about our Maker, our Lover, and our Friend. We become by being in Him.
That’s the message of Christ. I came down to help you become friends. You can find yourself in Me, as you are willing to lose yourself into Me. I will show you who you really are—your eternal self, can already start to live out life here. But you must yield your definition of yourself of your own success and failures and take on my interpretation. When you do, I will show you how amazing you really are!
So then, in the end, success is about formation, and how fully formed was I at the end. Was I willing to let Him form as much of Himself in and through me as possible. Did I become spiritually mature in the end, where I was then useful to others. If so, I manifested love and kindness and all the other good fruits to my friends, my neighborhood and my world where I was planted. And there is contentment in that.
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