Heart of the Matter: Living in the Age of Fulfillment

Live from the Mecca of Mormonism, SALT LAKE CITY, Utah. This is Heart of the MatterTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology. – And I’m your host, Shawn McCraneyFounder of TGNN and developer of the fulfilled perspective—calling people to faith outside of religion.. Let’s keep learning together about walking as Christians in the age of fulfillment.

Show 26A: Flawed

Taped June 9th, 2020
Aired June 15th, 2020

In talking about being children of light versus children of the dark last week, we read where Jesus himself said that "the children of this world are wiser than the children of light."

Add to that the biblical fact that when a person chooses to follow Christ, they begin to suffer. This suffering takes on many forms including:

• Our will dying daily to his.
• Our choosing to love instead of retaliating.
• Making our eye single to him and not continuing to try and serve both God and Mammon.
• And the mere fact that the world tends to operate on the basis of, "If you are not with us, you are against us,"
• Devoted Christians often suffer alienation in the job market, neighborhood, and sometimes in opportunities others have in the world.

Add into all this that the Christian heart is set on another kingdom, and (in many cases) Christians are ultimately seen in the world as having failed or being flawed. Of course, this is not always the case but it more often than not appears to be, and I would gently suggest that

“the closer a believer is to being a Son or Daughter of God the more flawed they will appear to the world” meaning in the worldly assessment of them.

Jesus said it best, “You can’t serve both God and Mammon.” But every Daughter and Son knows that God will provide, and walking by faith in Him, we live lives of “reliance upon Him.”

Because we are talking about living in the age of fulfillment, and because our focus is on being Sons and Daughters of God in this present world, I want to repurpose the term FLAWED as a means to help Christians use the actual term as a cipher or an acrostic.

Faith and Love

So while I agree that being flawed in the sense that Christians realize how flawed they really are (in comparison to the goodness and light of God) I am suggesting that we also take this word, embrace it as our own, and use it NOT ONLY in the sense of being “humble and contrite” before him, but to also use the term to help guide us in our Christian lives today.

And so we take the first letter in the word Flawed (F) and have it stand for… Faith. Unlike children of the world, Sons and Daughters look to our God and King in faith and trust that he will guide, he will provide, and we will survive (or not!) based on Him and His goodness. We look in faith to His Son as being the author and finisher of our salvation and lives by the Spirit. And it is by faith in his directions and commands that we choose to live our lives.

Faith sets the tone for all of us – and the way we choose to live our lives proves that we do (in fact) place our faith in Him – nothing else and nothing more. As we have said over the years, the end game to the Christian life is love – but Faith in Him and His ways are what guide us on how to love. He says be patient: we place our faith in that and in Him and then exercise patience. He tells us to forgive. We place our faith in the importance of forgiving and we do it – which is an expression of LOVE. In this way, our faith in him and His commands describe how we are to love. No Faith, no love.

Of course, what I am saying is obvious but the major difference between the children of God and the Children of this world… begins with “faith.” Hebrews says that man cannot please God but by faith. And faith comes… by hearing the Word. So let’s work through the rest of the word FLAWED as a template for living the Christian life in this age of fulfillment.

And the next letter in the FLAWED Christian is “L.” Of course, Love. The end of it all. The ultimate goal. The end-game of faith, creation, intelligence and everything else. You can have everything else – everything else to a fantastic degree! – but if you don’t have agape Godly love, you have nothing. In many ways it is this love.

The FLAWED Christian Life

Of God that causes many Christians to be seen as FLAWED in this life? That choosing God and others over self is often seen as a sign of weakness or foolishness. . . that where others will subscribe and justify all manner of other means to live, to be mean, to exclude, to prey upon others and hold grudges, it is your godly love (which always give the other guy a chance, and always extends mercy, will does not need to be first but places itself last, that earns the Christian the title of a FLAWED FAILURE.

But this is really what this God’s love is – it denies the self and permits God to take place into every situation. And while this might make it look like you are an earthly failure the reality is you are a heavenly success. We talk so much about Love I will not belabor the point – but LOVE is part of having FLAWED Christian life.

F = FAITH
L = LOVE
A???

Artistic Expression in Faith

Can you guess?

A = Art, creativity, transforming and restoring, using ingenuity to create or repurpose something – expressing oneself through some means that is enjoyable to you and your maker. Its not art for arts sake, so much as its looking at our maker and replicating Him as a Creator. Of course, the very first verse in Genesis says what?

Genesis 1:1
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

We call this “the Creation.” And the creation is simply beautiful and amazing. Our God is the ultimate artist, expressing Himself through his creations.

Psalm 104:24 says
24 How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

Jeremiah 10:12 says
12 But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

This is not only our God but listen to
Genesis 1:27

27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

We are made in His image! With his communicable attributes! It does not mean you have to work in clay or paint. As a believer you are creating every time you teach someone something, every time you make a meal, every time to sing a song or smile to make someone's day.

There are so so so many ways to create and express yourself artistically in the world – yard work, gardening, construction, in music, poetry, cooking – the point is express yourself, express God in your labors, for he is the one who created you with these talents.

The Role of Art and Skill in Spiritual Work

In Exodus 31:3-6, speaking of certain people, God says:

3 and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills— 4 to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, 5 to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. 6 Moreover, I have appointed Oholiab son of Ahisamak, of the tribe of Dan, to help him. Also I have given ability to all the skilled workers to make everything I have commanded you:

Exodus 35:35 reads:

35 He (God) has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them skilled workers and designers.

I think art and creativity is under-emphasized in the Christian community. So much so I think that Christians ought to lead the art world. But for some reason many Christians look down on artistic expressions – at least in the fine arts.

I once knew an Evangelical couple who completely mocked artists – talked down about their purpose and place in the world and in the Kingdom. We produced a Children’s book and the husband ridiculed the art in it. Don’t listen to these tight souls. Be who God created you to be, and I bet that in you there is an ability to creatively express Him and yourself to others and the FLAWED believer pursues creation . . . just like their master.

FAITH
LOVE
ART

And something that goes hand in hand with each of those things . . . work.

It takes work to believe and have faith, it takes work to love, and it takes work to create something. When I say work I don’t just mean working a job for pay. I mean laboring in Spiritual things and mining the things of

Spiritual Insights and Growth

Pursuing Godly Knowledge

I was talking with a brother Danny who answers the phones and takes your calls and he and I both enjoy a show called Gold Rush. And he noted how much labor, how much water, how much earth is gone through as a means to uncover just an ounce of gold. He likened the study of scripture and the things of God to mining gold. How we read, and search, and compare, and uncover tons of information, digging down deep to the places where God’s gold ultimately lies. And what a reward, right? What joy when we do all of that labor and it results in a payoff – a spiritual payoff – of even the smallest amount of truth.

We recently read in our verse by verseTGNN’s Bible teaching series—book-by-book, through the lens of fulfillment and spiritual liberty. study of Colossians where Paul says to the believers there that they have:

Colossians 3:10 – “. . . put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

The new nature being renewed in knowledge after the image of the creator of our new nature comes in the same way all knowledge comes – Work. Develop your spiritual IQ which will enable you to walk wisely through this world. The first chapter of Proverbs begins with:

The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel: To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth— let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.

This spiritual intelligence, this Godly knowledge, triumphs in the long run over IQ and PhD’s because it operates and arrives from the One who is all knowing – and therefore this intelligence transcends worldly wisdom and enters into eternal application. We get it by the combined one two punch of the Word by the Spirit. And it goes without saying that it takes some work, effort to hit paydirt.

The FLAWED Components

FAITH?
LOVE
ART
WORK

E – education. There is a bit of a redundancy here because of what I just said about WORK, but when I say education, I am not talking about an education in the world – that is fine if you are so lead and mandatory if God created you to serve in some capacity that requires higher learning. But I am talking about by reading and hearing the Word by the Spirit and educating yourself on matters relative to such.

Someone whose nose is in the Word and whose eyes are single will not typically rise up in this world – there are exceptions to this, of course, which are important in keeping us from judging – but the FLAWED souls in this world might try to steep themselves in a knowledge of the Word and I always add, BY THE SPIRIT (meaning by and with that Spiritual intelligence that God gives.) The Holy Spirit educating a person in the Word of God. I know some people who lack any real formal education but who spend hours working to discover the gold nuggets therein, and man, are they wise, and boy do they know the word, and this knowledge that they work for makes up any lack in formal education.

Okay, the final letter in FLAWED is . . . Dimension.

See all of these words:

Faith
Love
Art or Creating
Work
Education

All are interrelated in a Child of Light and operate in and around each other as a means to produce fruit and meaning in the life of the believer – as a means to amplify and mature them. Dimension is a word that describes the ultimate result of all of these things working in us. It is length, height, breadth, and depth of soul growing consistently over the life of the individual in the things of God.

The Prayer of Paul

Paul perfectly describes this – in fact most of it – in Ephesians 3:14 when he says:

Ephesians 3:14 – For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
19 And to know the love of Christ.

The Flawed Status of a Christian

which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. These passages all speak to the FLAWED status of a Christian:

And we can see that it is all tied to Christ, to the Glory of God, and not to this world, that it is about “might in the inner person” “By faith” “rooted and grounded in love” “passing (mere) knowledge” “but filled with the fullness of God” (who is our creator) And it enables us “to comprehend” (spiritual comprehend with spiritual intelligence) “breadth, length, depth and height”

Spiritual Comprehension

Of what? Of God and Christ, who are not of this world. In this we can readily admit, with joy, that while we are certainly FLAWED in the flesh, we can become some of the most complete souls on earth.

Understanding Through Affliction

That place is hard fought, loaded with suffering, uncertainty, and alienation – something the world does not understand. But our God and Lord and Savior understand it fully. And are with us all the way.

(beat)

Write your comments below! And we will discuss them tomorrow night at 8PM mountain, here on Heart of the Matter.