I’m not on the throne in your kingdom.
This thing is bigger than idols, though there are idols.
I have created a reality where I can’t win. Where God can’t win. It’s a kingdom built around lies. It is a prison where truth comes in as weak trickles, loosing their power by the time I reach for them. The rules are different here, the laws are not God’s laws, not even the world’s laws. The deception is complete.
Months ago, Tim had a vision of a woman locked in chains in a pit. (El roi, the God who sees me) And then Jesus tearing the bars off the pit, tearing the chains off in his mighty power, and setting her free. It was such a powerful image, one I needed so desperately to hear and see and believe.
The belief has been the struggle.
Last night, driving in the gathering dusk on icy roads, I got the same image, but she – I – was still in that pit. The chains were gone, but it was so dark and cold and lonely and I was trying to cover myself with a tiny square of a rag.
Later, Jesus said I don’t want to come give you the comfort of a larger blanket. I want to take you to a place where you won’t need it.
What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? What fellowship can the light have with darkness? (How can I bring you peace and comfort when you choose to live in darkness?)
There were 3 songs about his kingship and authority and thrones and altars.
And God showed me this land I live in, this place I’ve created is built on a lie. Just like no lies can stand against the truth of God, I’ve created a kingdom, an alternate reality, where none of his truths can stand up to these lies. Everything that happens, the things people say and do, the words I read, are filtered through lies. They get twisted, they get thrown out, they don’t apply to me. They can’t apply to me. I built a throne to my misery. I deserve it. I can’t escape, I shouldn’t escape, there’s no way to escape. The lies shut me up, keep me in the corner, keep me moving and functioning as they destroy me from the inside out.
God showed me it’s a whole world. Towns built to bitterness, places I can go to torture myself, lies about my identity continually reinforced.
Beauty is devoured and doesn’t last.
Hope tastes stale because there’s no truth behind it.
Loneliness rules the streets.
The will to get up and get out has been crushed, and is continually crushed.
There is no strength, nothing of holiness and goodness that lasts. It is all so fleeting. Truth and hope and grace will not last the night.
But God…
But God shone his light on the devils’s schemes. He revealed the world, the lies, the way it works, the reason my attempts to escape have been so puny and unsuccessful. I can’t just try to find a way out, I have to leave it all behind. I can’t attack one lie with a truth, I need to filter everything, all the time through the word, the truth, of God. I can’t let it come in through the atmosphere of this world I’ve made. When God said take every thought captive, he means to me, right now, every damn thought.
Is this true?
Then walk in it.
And yes, this all seems so simple and obvious and has been told to me a million times. But it always got swallowed up by lies. It was eaten by the beasts of my unworthiness that were strengthened each time I rejected the truth of God for their lies. Every time my heart grew weak at the sound of their breath in my ear. Every time fear ruled my heart.
The foundation of these lies was one that I hear time and time and time again:
No one is coming for you.
It is devastating in a hundred ways. You are not worth coming for. You are not worth saving. You are not worth pursuing. You are too much trouble, too much effort, too damaged, too unstable, too much of a predictable failure. There’s no help for you. If you want out, you have to do it on your own. You have to do everything on your own. He tempts me to get up, try it. And laughs at my failure. See, no one’s coming for you.
But damn it, it’s the biggest lie.
My Jesus came for me. He left heaven for me. He took these lies and this sin and this alter to destroying myself and overcame it. He finished it. He said “I will tear down this temple and in three days rebuild it.”
He will rebuild me.
He will build his kingdom around me and in me and through me.
I need to live in the world where I am worth coming for. I have been saved, I’m being saved, he will always be rescuing me from the clutches of death and sin and the broken world.
Let the King of my heart
Be the mountain where I run
The fountain I drink from
Oh-oh, He is my song
Let the King of my heart
Be the shadow where I hide
The ransom for my life
Oh-oh, He is my song
I have been running to mountains of rejection, drinking from fountains of unworthiness. Hope has been proven in vain in this world, and the fire of the will to fight has been utterly put out.
But my God is a fire starter. He’s a rescuer. He’s the light. The way, the truth. And I will need to cling to that truth and learn to hear the truth, really hear it in my heart. I will need to learn to find the beauty. I will find my song again.
He is my song. I will sing it to myself, sing it to the darkness, sing victory over lies.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
dragons at the edges 