Saturday, August 4, 2007

Don't be dissin' My Name. . .

I said this very clearly through Moses--yes, as a matter of fact, it WAS written in stone--do NOT take the Name of the Lord your God in vain. You dishonor Me by trivializing My commandment as if My central concern was to worry about your vocabulary choices, the superficial, surface form of your language, to the neglect and direct contradiction of the substance and function of your language--what you are DOING with your language. I am calling you to be the humility and the love of Crucified Christ to all your fellow humanity. I gave you ten concrete commandments to show you what it means to love Me and to love all those I love. But you fell in love with the law when I was trying to show you how to fall in love with love. What love looks like. . .

You put far more energy into whitewashing your exterior, the exterior of what is allegedly My Temple-your body, your person, your behavior--all that energy into manicuring the lawn and the exterior walls of your temple, while inside you are starving people of love, starving them from the basic material goods you have access to and they are in desperate need of, starving them by not reaching out your hands to help them, to serve them, of knowledge, of --and you deprive them of the forgiveness and grace and joy that will help make them whole.

The honor of being called by My Name should correspond with the evidence of My Love in you--the evidence that the fire of My Holy Spirit is constantly maintained in your heart. "Your attitude," as Paul reminded you when he was writing to the Philippians from prison, "should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who being in very nature GOD, did not take equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death-- even [that most humiliating and dispicable death reserved for the vilest of the vile--Nero, Hitler, Charles Manson, Saddam Hussaine, BTK-- the public shame of being hung naked and exposed for all the world to see and revile] death on a cross!

My Son was the only human to walk the earth who had the right to be Self-righteous, but He laid aside His reputation--didn't worry about what "church people" would think of Him for hanging out with the prostitutes, drug dealers, loan sharks, and 'trailer trash' of His day. Nor did He worry about what they would think of Him if He allowed Himself to be nailed to a cross and 'permanently' staining His reputation by dying with the lowest of the low. He was Not Too Good for them. He loved them enough to lay his reputation aside. . . But how many evangelicals do you know who can say the same? Frankly, I see you doing more crucifying than cross bearing with your sterile, distant, and sanitized church lady words.

You are obsessed with forms--with the exterior--that which everyone can see and judge you for. But you neglect the functions, the actions, the deeds, the sacrifices hidden within their forms, these functions that I have set before you as your purpose--you do not impress Me when you sanitize your language according to the prevailing whims of preferred vocabulary, but allow your ballooning egos inflated by the hot air your own (imaginary) self-righteousness-- based on trivial superficiality that I hardly care about--and those damned inflated caricatures of Christianity that you strut around with like floats in Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade--you allow those enormous floating abominations to block the path between Me and those who seek to escape from the fire of judgment into the fire of My love, of My consecration, My holiness. . .

Wake up people! You are not part of the solution, you are part of the PROBLEM! You are standing out there trying to get your bigger-than-life blow-up doll of yourself positioned as prominently and as close to Me as you possibly can-- for all the world to see. And guess what? I don't give a DAMN about your stupid inflated self-styled "Jesus dolls" and how many people you manage to impress by being seen "with Me."

What I WANT is for you to reach into the fire with Me and help pull these people out--to minister to their burns, give them mouth to mouth if necessary, to be more concerned about saving them than about getting slimed by touching them! Get your stupid floats out of the way and get in here and help Me. THEN I will acknowledge being seen with YOU and I will lift you up. If you want to save your life, you must lay it down. If you want to be great in My kingdom, you must make yourself a humble servant to people you currently seem to find unworthy of your presence. Holiness works from the inside out. No amount of whitewash is going to change the filth and death inside that house. Most of your neighbors can't see what I see in your secret rooms. And appallingly, you spend all your time worrying about what THEY see, when My view is allegedly what you care most about.

You fear cursing Me by mentioning Me in expressions of surprise or dismay, and while you put so much energy into bleaching your vocabulary, you curse Me by calling yourselves Christians, but not being Christ to the world, laying down your self righteousness and helping those seeking Me to get through the wall of fire that separates them from Me. You are more worried about getting dirty or burned than you are about saving them. And as long as you position yourself as the superior person, you are a stumbling block for the lost, not a stepping stone.

Now, you need to help or get out of the way. And you can expect me to approach your Jesus dolls with a sharp object and take care of the need for deflation, if you don't. And you need to be a little more concerned about Me cursing you for wearing My Name unworthily than you cursing Me by the culturally fickle inclusion of My Name in various idioms and expletives when they have nothing to do with fulfilling the call of Love. Study up and improve your game or you're going to need to find another Name.

Got it? God it? Good. (:

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