TAM Reflection - MASKS

The first time I saw the masks we used at TAM - I could only think of how weird they looked. Honestly, it was difficult to take the whole idea very seriously - at first.

What a revelation! ... that sometimes God doesn't 'look' or 'sound' or 'feel' anything like what we expected Him to. Actually, I'm thinking that it is extremely rare for God to reveal Himself to us in ways which we totally expect Him to.

I saw some people dressed up as knights and swordfighting with woden swords not long ago... In watching them, I realized that if all things we DO are found righteous or unrighteous on the premise of what is Godly and what is unGodly, than no action we do is different to God than any other given action, so far as the physical nature of the movement itself. In other words, I move my arm up and down when I strum the guitar - riight? I move my vocal chords in certain tunes and sounds and what-not... right?? What I do can very well be an act of worship no more or less than the movements of those people sword fighting. Why? Worship a condition of the heart, not a movement of the body.

I walked past a garbage bin last summer - NOT a peaceful stream of spring-water - a GARBAGE BIN, and I thought about what was inside that I began to smell as I walked by. It reaked. To God, sin is far worse than that trash was to me - and that was one of the most powerful realizations I've ever experienced. Ever since, I will randomly see a garbage can or bin or whatever - and think of all the things in my life which I should 'throw away,' and make a concious effort to do so.

Okay, so when I first learned that God says (in Jeremiah 29:13) "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart." ...I expected to like find Him - to feel a certain way all of the time - the big one was I wanted to HEAR Him. I learned, by means of walking past trash cans whilst watching people sword-fighting (hahhaa), that He reveals Himself in ways we sometimes would literally never expect coming. There is no way for us to discern how God 'looks' or 'feels' or 'sounds' except by our constant drawing near to His Heart.

So, even while I write, God uses uncommon things to speak to me. Masks (the oddest looking masks I've ever seen) have been the tools, this time, with which God has revealed to me the irrefutable, undeniable beauty of the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

What a wonderful Savior! :D