From Insight to Allegory: A New Site

It has been quite some time. I just wanted to stop by to let everyone know of my new page of creative short stories. Much like the tale of "The Library" as seen in earlier entries, many of my tales on my new page are crafted with a message in mind.

Feel free to follow my new blog at Creativity Brewing! Each day a freshly brewed story is prepared just for you. Always short enough for you to enjoy with your morning cup of coffee or tea!

Thank you for your loyalty here and please follow me as I branch out.

-Kevin Barrick 

You Are Not Worthless.

Over the past few years I have spoken in limited terms the concept of the fact we are found worthy by God to walk in His light, to be called children of God, to be redeemed from the darkness and transferred into the Light.

I want to believe that I have been misunderstood. Due to lack of articulation, I have seen these concepts being violently discarded. At the moment I will place the blame on myself. Perhaps I never was clear enough. So here this goes.

You are worthy.

You are worthy to walk with the Spirit.

You are worthy to be removed from Darkness and place within the Light.

You are worthy of the Grace of God to keep you on the Way of Life.


But that worthiness neither diminishes nor increases on what you do. It rests within you. It is who you are underneath your facades and cloaks and grime and filth.

Everything goes back to the beginning.

Perhaps even before the beginning. God had no need of Earth to be created for himself. It could be argued the creation of the world was done merely because His "very good" creation of Man needed a place and environment in which to live. Day after day God created; and at the end of those days God pronounced things as good. When it came to creating Mankind, He ended the day pronouncing it "very good."

God created us from the dust of the ground. Not by words like all else, but by His own hands. He fashioned man in His likeness by his own efforts. He then knelt down and breathed life into us. The breath of God filled our lungs and we began to live. We were perfect. We were made to live for God. We were made for the Light. We were made for the presence of God. We were inherently worthy to know God and be known by Him.

Then Mankind screwed things up. The command was to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I choose not to believe the common belief that this was arbitrary. That Man was made with free will and that there must be an alternative way from which to choose by our free will. Therefore God made that rule. To follow that idea leads us to God being evil. For He created Man doomed for He knew disobedience would be the option. Instead, the command was important. Perhaps the only consequence God was trying to prevent man from experiencing was death. Perhaps it was deeper in that knowledge of good and evil introduced the war between the two. If we only knew good (because we knew God) then there would be no war for our hearts. No divide in the Light. But should we partake in that tree's fruit we would cause that great divide. Thus God warned against eating it. In protection. Out of love. Not some conceited ploy to force Mankind to either choose God over pleasure knowing the outcome was their death.

Perhaps, then and again, to protect us He removed us from the Garden of Eden. For within that garden was rooted the tree of life. And if Man could live for endless days but be dead in his mind, then such torture would be the first hell. So Man was removed from the Garden. Not due to being unworthy of walking with God. Not because man lost his right to God. But because God sought our well-being.

In addition to all that, before the worlds were even formed God planned the Way of the Cross to redeem man. He knew that death would befall them, so He created a way to Life. We were not even made to be unworthy. Our worthiness was in God's thoughts and mind. Our worthiness is given to us by God.

We are born, having been fearfully and wonderfully made. We are made just the way God intended. With every passion, every drive, with every personality trait, with every strength, and even every tendencies to weakness. He created us perfect. A masterpiece. A creation worthy to be in His presence. A person with a right to His love and goodness. A soul deserving of His grace to walk through this world plagued by darkness and sin.


As a creation placed in a world plagued by sin and darkness, we will inevitably be infected by such parasite. It will lead us astray. It will add chains to our feet to prevent us from walking towards the Light, but will ever-slowly drag us deeper into the darkness. It will bind our hands so we can't reach out for help, clawing at the dust. It will cloak our once-radiant bodies in stench-filled and damp rags, making our passions quenched and personalities reek. We will lose sense of our true identities. We will begin to look in the mirror and only see the mask of hatred and shame darkness places over us. We will no longer see the Light of God burning in us. We will no longer recognize the image of God beneath the mire of the world. Death will churn within us. We will lose all concept of life. And we sway away in the boat down the river of death.

Until the Light of Christ passes over our eyes. Christ comes to us walking on those waters, taking away everything that kept us so ignorant to the Love and Light of God. He will take our hands and lead us onto the waters. He will guide us through the waters of death and plant us on the shores of grace and life. He will continue to lead us away from the murky waters and the darkness and into the realm of His presence and glory and Love. He will provide us grace as we stumble through the sands of the shore between Light and Darkness. He will provide us grace as guiding light as we grope through the twilight.

We were never given this access or power to the Great Love and Light by what we looked like in that boat of sin. We had nothing to offer in our hands. We had nothing to offer in our weaknesses. We were given redemption because our heart held the fragments of the power of God; our heart held the remnant of the light of God. Our hearts were crying out to Heart of Jehovah, pleading for reunification. As was the Heart of Jehovah calling out to find the shard of His heart that sin and death and darkness had bound and captured.

Furthermore we never lose this grace or this love based on what we become or do. Even should we completely abandon the Light, go back to the murky waters, and clamber into the boat to drift away into the sea of darkness, the grace to find our way back to the Light will never leave us. The further we drift, the further we have to pursue God. But we do not become unworthy or undeserving of the reconciliation between Creator and Creation.

Should we embrace this grace in terms of riding in that boat being led astray from Light? Well, absolutely not. That's ridiculous to think we can become awakened from our deep slumber in Darkness only to continue to take naps in our sin. We were awakened to charge after what we were born to experience: the Light and Life of God. Be careful, also, not to be caught up in the Dream of our Hearts where we imagine the awakening due to the great longings of our hearts to be reunited with the Life and Heart of Jehovah, and yet never awaken to truly experience it.

Allow the Spirit to awaken you and lead you. To say we are not worthy to be called the Children of God is to say God made a foolish choice in sacrificing for our reconciliation. To say we do not deserve to walk in the Light is to say that God created us in His image and by His breath for nothing except to abide in the darkness tortured by death and a longing to be whole. To say we do not deserve the help and grace of God to continue our journey to the Love of Jehovah and stay awake unto His Life means we believe God created us with the intention of letting us remain in the Slumber of Suffering and Death. In essence, we make God an evil God.

You were created to love and be loved. You were created to be awake unto the Life of God. You were created to walk in the Way of Christ. You were created to be swayed by the Spirit of God. Therefore you are worthy to such things. You have a right to run after the presence of God.

The things we have done or will do bear absolutely no weight in whether we deserve God's love. His love isn't anything we can merit. It is by God's own desire to lavish upon us great love. And if He so chooses to lavish that love upon us, who are we to say "You're mistaken God. I've done too much wickedness for you to love me." It is His choice to redeem you! It is the choice He has made to call you His child! And if God so chooses to draw us into a walk with Him, who are we to say "Well, of course God would want to walk with me because I've done such great things." We miss the whole point of it all! God isn't walking with us because He admires us or because we are gods to Him. It is we who are walking with Him. We follow Him as He walks amidst His Garden. We are being led through His light. It isn't meritorious. It is God reuniting our heart with His. Bringing us back to the Light He created us in.

You are worthy. Never believe the lie that you are too evil to be loved by God. Never believe the lie that you must change to be loved. God loves you because He chose so. He removes the darkness so that you may fully experience the Light. He removes your masks and blinders so that you may truly see His Face. He removes your chains so you can jump and dance and walk about in His presence and Light. He remove the ropes around our hands so we may clasp ours within His and be led by His holy love. We can clap and praise.

You are beautiful. God doesn't want you to remain in the dirtiness and darkness you find yourself in. He wants you to embrace the true beauty in the identity He designed in you. Wake up to His Love and make your way back to the presence of God by the Way of Christ through the Grace and Power of the Spirit of God. Don't take naps in sin. Don't return to the boat of darkness. Run after God and don't stop. Throw yourself in His embrace. Be alive in His Life. He chose you. He wants you. He loves you.

Grace to Keep Trekking

Grace is to keep you trekking down the right trail. You are not going to become the image of Christ without bumps and bruises and falling. That's why we have grace. So God can catch us when we stumble. We have to have faith in that grace. That it will indeed catch us. And God knows our nature. He knows we like to test things. So grace is not a one time safety net, but it a renewable airbag to prevent us from plunging into the depths of sin. Notwithstanding, God wants us to move past that point of testing out His grace. He wants us to use it as buffer, not as a canal through which we drift along in life.

Grace keeps us following after God.

God understands our frailty. God understands we act on impulse to latch on to what we crave. God understands our tendencies to unquenchable thirsts. He understands and desires to turn that around. He wants to be what we crave. He wants to be our unquenchable thirst. But He wants more than an addictive mentality. He wants us to run to Him and be satisfied. He wants to quench our thirst with His Spirit. And not only that, He wants to make living by His Spirit so powerful and wonderful that we keep coming back to His goodness and mercy and love. Not just an oasis in our desert of life, but to become an ocean dotted with isles the moment we taste of His goodness so that when we journey through life we are surrounded by His love and righteousness, plunging into the depths of His holiness with each step closer to transformation into His holiness.

We know what our task is; we know God's will. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."

Love- long after, desire.
All- a totality, completely
Heart- inner man, innermost core self
Soul- who you are, the essence of your being, what makes you you.
Might- force, your oomph.

So, we are to long after God with our complete innermost self, with everything that makes us who we are (our actions, our emotions, our passions), with every ounce of oomph we have. Not to passively "love" God, but to actively and passionately and personally love God.

But God knew we were going to mess up. He knew that when He said all, we would think some. He knew that when He said love, we would think appreciate. He knew that when He said our heart, we would think only what other people saw. He knew that when He said our soul, we would think who others think we are, not who we really are. When He said our oomph, He knew we would assume just enough to make it look convincing. So He gave us grace.

When we love sin more than holiness          |     We have grace.

When we love ourselves above God             |     We have grace.

When mediocrity triumphs within               |     We have grace.

When we are swept off our feet by sin        |     We have grace.

When we fear and sink in raging waters     |    We have grace.

When we run away from God's love            |     We have grace.

We were given grace not to abuse, but to embrace. We cannot live out holiness on our own. We will fall. We will fail. But grace is there to catch us and push us back onto our feet. God gives us grace to keep on trekking.

When we fall, we mustn't quit. When we fail, we mustn't deny grace. God longs for us to be closer to Him. He draws close when we draw nigh. He doesn't desire or wish for our failure, He wants for us to succeed in Him.

The Offender desires that I fear following God. That I come to the point of fearing that I might screw up too much because I follow after righteousness. When I fall, Satan wants me to remain slumped over in defeat. When I fail, Satan wants me to quit, fearing that my small stumbles in following Christ now is only a twitch of an eye when I'm further down the road of following Christ. That it is better for me to quit now than to be "fired" later.
But I will not quit because God does not quit on me.
I will praise HIS righteousness and HIS love.
I will embrace grace to keep me trekking on my journey to transformation into His Son.
I will not be dismayed by the giants before me. Because it wasn't that stone or that sling; it wasn't that hand or that David; it wasn't David's intellect or His might; not even was it his faith in God that brought down that giant. No; it was God alone who defeated David's giant. David simply decided to be the one through whom God channeled His own power.

Grace: God's design to keep us following Him. He keeps His hand ready to pull us out of our fears and failures. He won't quit on me. Why should I quit on Him?

Come.

We live in a world crazed by sin. We are like the disciples on that boat on the dangerous sea of Galilee. Like them, we are jettisoning our boats of useless things that just draw us deeper into the depths. We are getting pails out and sloshing the water out of the boat. Like them, we are racked by the waves and slammed by the winds.

http://marketingmatters.tv/

All too often we fear. We fear not physical death, but rather the death of our lives connected to the presence of our God. We fear being thrust into the oceans of sin; we fear being rejected by God for the sins of our hearts.  We look out into the darkness and see something that haunts us. Regret? Past failures? It just stands there, unnerved by the storm of sin. That something takes on a more lifelike figure and it begins walking closer to our soul, our boat in the middle of the sea. It looks like a Man of Hope, but it can't be. Hope is unheard of in our distress. But He calls out to turn away from fear. We test Him, and He calls us to walk out on the waves.

The same waves that made us lose our cargo. The same waves that crashed against the boat, threatening our lives. The same waves that crash against our faces, causing us to choke on sin and darkness.

"Come."

Christ is calling us to step out of the boat. To walk to Him and stop fearing drowning in sin. He is calling us out on the waters to faithfully overcome the sin around us. He wants us to supernaturally walk without sinking, live without fear, follow without holding back.

"Come."

When we follow Christ and walk in His Spirit, we will not have anything to fear in sin. We will not be overcome by sin. It is only when we stop loving God that we sin. It is only when we turn our eyes off of the power of Christ that fear has opportunity to jump in and we become afraid.

Maybe we will fear. Maybe we will sink in our sins. But Jesus Christ our Redeemer is right there with His hand outstretched to lift us up and walk on the water again. He doesn't desire our failings. He doesn't expect us to fall short. He wants us to experience His great power. He wants us to triumph over sin by the power of His love. He wants us to walk with life anew and never ever again sink in sink.

He is with us. May we follow Christ and not sink in sin any more.

Beauty in Following.

(http://epiphany-lutheran.com)

There is a beauty in following Christ than is near-indescribable. It is a complex thing when you scrutinize it, but a very simple thing when you take it for what it is.

Why it is complex:

God created man. Man sinned. Man plunged into revolving darkness. Hope disappeared. Darkness prevailed. Light was shadowed. But then Hope was born in the most hopeless of times and places. Hope rose to live a life that pointed to attainable perfection to the law. Hope was the Messiah, the Saviour of Man. Christ abode in God, pleasing the Father and embracing His love. Christ died for sin, though sinless was he. Christ was buried in the grave, fully dead. Hope was buried with Him and darkness filled the world again because the hope found in Christ died when He breathed His last.

Then three days later hope broke free from the clutches of despair and rose with Christ with radiant light, casting off the tendrils of darkness. Christ rose from the dead and brought with Him life everlasting to those who accepted His call to repent and follow. And that's a key thing to note. Christ died for our sins so that we could be reconciled with God and be restored into His Kingdom and be able to live with Him. But then He arose to new life. For one, it was to fulfill the word of God; and another, it was to enable us to walk in newness of life. When Christ died, we were able to die to sin. When Christ rose, we were and are able to rise up again to life anew. And it is with this new life that we can follow Christ when He beckons us.


Why it is simple:

Christ redeemed us. It is only logical to follow Him in respect of gratitude.

Satan wants us to turn that simplicity it to irrationality. He wants us to fear. What if Christ leads us to treacherous places? What if we go alone? What if we get hurt emotionally or physically? What if He leads us to a completely foreign place to our expectations? What if...?

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. --1John 4:18

We have nothing to fear. When we follow Christ, we follow love.

 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love. --1John 4:16

And that is the beauty. Wherever Christ leads us, we will walk in His love. Whatever we experience, we do so through His love. Whomever we meet, we encounter by the love of Christ. We have nothing to fear for what lies ahead or where we will end up because Christ is leading us in the love of the Father.

So follow Christ.

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. --Matt. 16:24

Repent and Follow: The Heart of the Gospel.

(http://foundurself.files.wordpress.com)

It's like driving on a highway. First, you need to change your
mind about where you are at and where you are headed,
then choose to take the next exit that leads you to a different place.

The moment John the Baptist stepped onto the scene to announce the Messiah's presence, his message was repentance. The very first message Jesus brings is "to repent." The word repent is an important one. Often we blow it up, making it more complicated than it really is. The Greek word gives the idea to go against a particular thinking pattern as well as going with another pattern of thinking. To change your mind. Thus, Jesus calls us to change our minds--our minds about ourselves, about God, about the future of mankind, and about God's love. Why? Because the Christ is about to reign as King in Earth and in our lives. We ought change our minds that we can live how we desire. We can no longer view ourselves as our own, but that we are property of King Jesus. Turn away from self-ruling and turn to Christ-submission.

The next message Jesus has is on a more interpersonal level. He visits two fishermen. He goes to them and tells them to follow, or to come after, Him. Jesus wants us to stop what we are doing and follow after Him and do things His way. Jesus comes to us in our way of living and gives us the opportunity to come after Him, to follow Him. He then speaks to us on our terms and uses our skills and knowledge to fulfill His kingdom, should we choose to accept His calling. Jesus told these fishermen that He had a task of fishing after men. Of casting out a net and catching people for the Kingdom of Christ. They would use their skills on knowing how not to scare fish (people) off. They would use their skills of patience and endurance. All the while, they would be following Christ. Learning new tricks, learning new methods on how to add to the Kingdom of Christ. And it all starts with changing your mind and following after Christ.

That is the Gospel. "Change your mind about sin and yourself and turn away from the worthless pursuits of darkness and instead understand that Jesus is your King and choose to follow Him, learning His love and experiencing the society of the Kingdom." It's like driving on a highway. First, you need to change your mind about where you are at and where you are headed, then choose to take the next exit that leads you to a different place. Understand where you are with sin and the direction it is taking you (death), and then choose to turn away from sin and follow after Christ and take the road to a different destination (life).

Grace, Scars, and the Will of God.

"But God"...will show you His will.

He will not hide it under a log for you to dig up. He will not dangle it in front of you among five other options and have you grab at one like on a TV game show, hoping you get the right one.
God created you for a purpose He wants to fulfill in you. And that right there is a blessed thought. Because of this: Sin will not so much disqualify you from fulfilling that as it is you turning away from God's path and choosing your own way.
Yes. Sin is stupid. Yes there are consequences. It destroys so many things. But God is greater than your sin. He can overcome it and use your weakness to show Himself strong in you. He will take your flaws and turn them into beauty. He will bind up your wounds so you can in turn point those who have been injured like you to the Shepherd and the Healer.
Sin is stupid. And Life isn't a movie where you ought to pursue after flaws and look out for those plot twists like God using your flaws to expand His kingdom. We are going to screw up enough on our own without intentionally keeping it in our mind that the Grace of God upholds us.

Maybe I am the only one who does that. I find myself in such a constricted world. I enjoy writing and I enjoy pondering in the creative mind. That is how I come up with potential conversations in my head. If I am supposed to have a meeting with someone, then I will recite my lines and concoct all sorts of rivers that the conversation could flow--for better or worse.

And I've somehow become of a mind that says: if you're going to screw up, then screw up big time. That way you can minister to people better. They will see how flawed you are and realize that if the grace of God extends to me, then it will definitely extend to the as well. It's a movie of sorts. The drunkard of a street bum sobers up, starts ministering to street youth to keep them from the dangers of alcohol. Then he seeks out those already in the clutches of their addictions and points them to the Saviour who can break every chain. He will point to his old "home" stained with the spillage of his drunken stoops. He will point to the scars on his body where he barely escaped alive from a car collision that he caused by being drunk behind the wheel. He will then take them to the cemetery where the teenager he killed by his recklessness rested in peace. Then he will raise his arms and, with a tear in his eye, proclaim in a silent roar: "How great is our God! He has broken my chains of greed and lust and addiction. He can break yours, too."

That is what God can do, sure. But it is a thing that ought be far, far away from our mind to pursue in order to further the kingdom. We should never seek to drink the darkness of sin so we can minister to those drunk with the darkness. We should drink of life so we can boldly and with full assurance offer the water of life.


So you were made with a purpose. God created you to be a engineer or a doctor or a teacher or a pastor or a missionary or a mechanic. He gave you experiences and joys and hobbies and passions that has fashioned you for His will. God doesn't want you to have to guess. The faith He requires of you is not choosing the right bend in the fork in the road. But rather this: To take a step in his way even when it seems scary or hard or painful. It is to trust God to provide and to keep and to protect.
The disciples were told to follow Christ. To give up their lives and follow Him. They were placing faith in which road to take, they were placing faith in the fact that if they followed, they would have nothing.
When Zaccheus chose to follow God, he knew that he should stop swindling people out of their money. He had to trust God to provide when he repaid everyone fourfold. He had to trust God not to be murdered on the spot when he came to each house to repay.
Abram was given a direction to go with little else information. He had to trust that God would keep him safe during the journey. He had to trust God to provide him with the land He was leading him to. Abram had day by day instruction, but never the final destination until he reached it. He wasn't making a guess, he was following God strictly.

So we, too, ought to follow God. Not as if we have to hope we jump out onto the right invisible platform. But we should follow Him knowing this is where He wants us and trusting Him to keep His word. If we decide to turn away from Him and we get scraped up, we just need to turn back to Him. Then along the way share with those we meet the truth that turning from God produces pain and wounds that run deep.

So may we follow God. Maybe where we are at now is not the final destination, but the road to make it. We are here to learn, to impact others, and to continue on. Not impulsively, but by God's decree. Trust God. Follow God. Love God. And abide in Christ.