Day 46, Budapest

It is the second day into our week of lectures, and already my mind is crammed with new ideas and thoughts. Sverker, a Swedish missionary, is speaking this week. I looked at the schedule yesterday to get an idea about what our topic would be, and the words on the sheet said "The Gospel".

I prepared myself for a week of teaching on Jesus. I was mistaken. Im not sure how the rest of the week will turn out, but we haven't talked about the life of Jesus. Instead we have been talking about deep things that are totally changing the way I think!

We are talking about our identity, the masks we wear, and how we "pose" for the world. He is using many different movie clips to highlight his points. I am very impressed. I find myself sitting back in my chair, trying to comprehend the words that are piercing my heart as he brings lie after lie to the surface and allows God to shine light on them.

One of the things that is continually popping up in my mind, is that we all need more love than we deserve. We were created in His image. I find myself walking from time to time asking questions....questions i think everyone asks, something that is core to actually living a life with "life" in it. These times usually happen while im alone, when no one else is around, no one's gaze is upon me and i don't need to "perform" for anyone, like when I'm staring into a fire, or by myself on the bus, walking home at night alone...."Who am I....really.......why do I think the way I do, why do I feel the emotions i do,....why do we all put on different faces around different people? What am i looking for.....why do we do this?....why am I more aware of this when no one else is around?" We want to know more about ourselves, the spiritual part of us, the emotional part of us. We wear masks, we pose, change the way we hold ourselves, so that we can gain someone's acceptance, love, affection. But deep down, we are looking for the real us. We were created in God's likeness, after his heart, His image. We find our identity from God, it is bestowed on us, we can look at ourselves and know "I am like Him", so we look at Him to understand ourselves.

But something has happened.....we have lost our identity. We believe we came from monkies, we think we were a great cosmic accident, homosexuality, we think unborn children aren't even humans until they are born......Even if we dont believe in any of these things and have a relationship with God, we still feel uncertain of who we actually are.....I think the cry of most of our hearts is...."There.....has.....there has to be more than this......" There is, and God wants to take us there, He wants to show us more.

Another thing that we have been discussing is the Law, and how we still cant seem to shake the bondage of it all the time. The Law is a gift from God to bring the flesh to its end, to reveal the truth about our flesh to us.

Galations 3:21 NLT
"If the law could have given us new life, we could have been made right with God by obeying it"

Galations 3:19 NLT
"Well then, why was the law given? It was given to show people how guilty they are..."

1 Corinthians 15:56
"For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power"

Its not that we should become evil people sinning all the time because we are no longer under the law....no, not at all. We dont sin because of other reasons, not just because the law says not to. If the law says to not beat your wife because you will go to jail....I dont care about that law, it doesn't mean anything to me at all, why? Because we are governed by a HIGHER law, because of our relationship with Christ. I dont WANT to beat her, not because the law says not to, but because I love her. Love is the higher law here. If we were governed by the law, what kind of marriage would that be? You come home and go to hit your wife and then stop right before your hand strikes her and say, "Oh...I cant hit you because the law says I cant" That isn't marriage. You can find examples of this for every law.

Im getting ready to head out for another outreach, so I gotta run.