“What if I tell them?” The New Testament Gamble

What if I tell them who they are?
What if I take away any element of fear in condemnation, judgment or rejection?
What if I tell them I love them, will always love them, that I love them right now, no matter what they’ve done, as much as I love my only Son, that there’s nothing they can do to make my love go away?
What if I tell them there are no lists? What if I tell them I don’t keep a log of past offenses, of how little they pray, how often they’ve let me down, made promises that they don’t keep?
What if I tell them they are righteous, with my righteousness, right now?
What if I tell them they can stop beating themselves up? That they can stop being so formal, stiff and jumpy around me?
What if I tell them I’m crazy about them? What if I tell them, even if they run to the ends of the earth and do the most horrible, unthinkable things, that when they come back, I’d receive them with tears and a party?
What if I tell them that I am their Savior, they’re going to heaven no matter what—it’s a done deal?
What if I tell them they have a new nature—saints, not saved sinners who should now ‘buck up and be better’ if they were any kind of Christians, after all He’s done for you!
What if I tell them that I actually live in them now? That I’ve put my love, power, and nature inside of them, at their disposal?
What if I tell them that they don’t have to put on a mask? That it is OK to be who they are at this moment, with all their junk. That they don’t need to Pretend about how close we are, how much they pray or don’t, how much Bible they read or don’t?”
What if they knew they don’t have to look over their shoulder for fear if things get too good, the other shoe’s gonna drop?
What if they knew I will never, ever use the word “punish” in relation to them?
What if they knew that when they mess up, I will never ‘get back at them’?
What if they were convinced that bad circumstances aren’t my way of evening the score for taking advantage of me?
What if they knew the basis of our friendship isn’t how little they sin, but how much they let me love them?
What if I tell them they can hurt my heart, but that I never hurt theirs?
What if I tell them I kinda like Eric Clapton’s music too?
What if I tell them I never really liked the Christmas hand bell deal with the white gloves?
What if I tell them they can open their eyes when they pray and still go to heaven?
What if I tell them there is no secret agenda, no trapdoor?
What if I tell them it isn’t about their self-effort, but about allowing me to live my life through them?

What if I tell them?

— The New Testament Gamble by John Lynch.

I had a dream last night that I feel like I need to share…

First, a bit of back story. I had a massive Mexican dinner of chicken and cheese several hours before this dream. I think that might be the cause.

Anyway, so there I was, in this giant library. It was quite an awesome library full of dusty old relics, and I found several large ancient tomes that I wanted to check out. The problem, however, was that the books were so big that I got weary of carrying them around. So I stacked them on one of the bookshelves and decided I would come back for them when I was ready to check out.

But then it hit 5 PM, which was apparently when the library was supposed to close. I did not know this. And the weird thing was that this library didn’t just close when it closed; no, it turned into a mega ultra grocery store a la Sam’s Club. I didn’t know this either.

The even weirder thing was that in order to turn this library into a grocery store, the owners actually dragged all the book shelves into some magic room and replaced them all with shelves full of groceries. For some reason, I was not aware that this was going on, and I didn’t figure it out until I returned to the shelf where I had left my tomes and discovered that it had been replaced by a shelf full of Ritz Chips crackers.

This made me incredibly sad, despite the deliciousness of those baked Ritz snacks. I wasn’t in the mood for even a single Rit. I wanted my tomes. I shed a tear.

But then, on my dejected way out of the library-turned-supermarket, something caught my eye. It was called “The Bacon Barrel,” and it was an enormous barrel containing 80 pounds of bacon. It only cost $8.98 (that is the one thing I remember the absolute most clearly about this dream), and so I of course bought it. I was very happy, and had completely forgotten my tomes.

Then I woke up, and I shed a tear because The Bacon Barrel was not real.

“You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing, live along some distant day into the future.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Quote Blog

“If you can’t see very far ahead, go ahead as far as you can see.”
— Dawson Trotman

“Twenty years from now, you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the ones you did. So throw off your bowlines. Leave the still waters of the harbor. Catch the trade winds with your sail!”
—Mark Twain

“God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails.”
— Saint Augustine

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And what I can do, I ought to do. And what I ought to do, by God’s grace I will do.”
— Anonymous

“To know the will of God, we need an open Bible and an open map.”
— William Carey

If you want to climb mountains, you must be willing to descend into valleys. If you remain stranded on one peak your whole life, the view might be nice, but you will never go anywhere or see anything new.

So when you sink into those miserable, swampy lowlands, keep your heart trained on that next mountain, and think what joy it will be to climb it.

“The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer