Author: K2 Media

There is Nothing Wrong with You

Posted on by K2 Media

Put your hand up if you’ve ever felt like or been told there’s something wrong with you:
You’re ugly
You’re fat
Your nose is weird
You talk too much
You sing too much
You’re naughty
You’re a liar
You hurt me
You think you’re so good
You’re hopeless
You’re an idiot
You failed
You have no brains
You’re a snob
You’re so negative
You can’t do it

We’ve probably all experienced it
And we’ve probably all believed it
That doesn’t make it true

God chose us in him before the creation of the world (before we believed there was something wrong with us) to be holy and blameless in his sight (nothing wrong at all). Ephesians 1:4

There is nothing wrong with you!

Feeling Devastated

Posted on by K2 Media

I want to say something meaningful about the feeling of devastation that I have experienced today. As I look back over my life thus far, I see so many highs and so many lows.

One minute you consider yourself in poverty.
The next minute you receive an inheritance.
One minute you write your first real novel.
The next minute your computer deletes all your files.
One minute you have two parents.
Then one day you have none.
One minute you’re falling in love.
The next minute your heart is breaking.
One minute you’re healthy.
Before you know it your body starts to deteriorate and you discover you were never invincible after all.

I want to give people permission to feel alive. Be up and be down. Own it. Say you’re happy with the biggest smile on your face! Say you’re depressed and you need time to process the latest grief that has altered your life. I’m saying that I’m the latter.

Own yourself. Stop pretending that life is always good or always bad. Admit that it is full of a range of experiences, emotions and perspectives.

If you have something you’d like to admit, right here and now… I’m listening. That’s about the best I can do…

The Contrast Argument

Posted on by K2 Media

This is my take on the “contrast” argument.

Some people say that light only exists in contrast to darkness; hate only exists in contrast to love; cold only exists in contrast to heat. This sounds somewhat rational, but in my understanding this argument is fundamentally flawed. There is a point at which my eyesight will be blinded by too much light. My eyes know what that point is, and that point has little or nothing to do with whether darkness exists. My body will also freeze to death at a certain point, and again this has little or nothing to do with whether or not heat exists, my body knows what it can handle and what it cannot and the threshold is not in my mind and whether I think cold is real: it’s in the limitations of my body – is it not?

In the same way to argue that good cannot exist without evil or that love cannot exist without hate, only proves that we have never gotten to the core of goodness or love at all, just like I’ve never frozen to death!

I truly believe that love is immutable. It exists without need of contrast, an unchanging, ever-fixed mark.
If we only knew love (and I’m arguing that we fundamentally don’t) then hate would die off just like, when a person freezes to death the heat in their body dies!

By faith, I believe that God is love – even though I’ve barely scratched the surface of experiencing that love. And I believe that whoever the devil is, he has blinded our collective eyes to that love, and he is right now trying to trick us into believing that everything in life boils down to perception and nothing truly “exists” at all. He is crafty and I would caution those who want to believe he doesn’t exist, to beware. He will try to rob your mind of love, hope, good, life etc…. But he can only alter your perception and not your reality, because your existence is IN Christ – which is to be IN true and real love.

Today is the Day the World Died

Posted on by K2 Media

Today is Good Friday. We call this day “Good” because it is the day the whole world was crucified in Christ. Sounds like a contradiction doesn’t it: death is good.

Death is the ultimate blessed-curse.

God issued this blessed-curse at the inception of the world: “If you eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you will surely die” (Gen 2:17). Personally, I understand this word death to mean: dead as a doornail; cessation of life; irreversible termination; 100% dead. This kind of death is a curse to any person who receives it, but truly it is the mercy of God.

If we ponder the tragedies of the world around us: starvation, rape, war, sexism, racism, homophobia – it is a mercy that we should die and not live in a state of perpetual sin-symptoms for all eternity.

This is why the whole world must die.

However, God never willed for the existence of humankind to cease. God set this world into motion knowing that it would falter and he declared that he would save us from the very “foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8).

Jesus was born as a human being – able to die, just like one of us – and he transformed the curse of death into the blessing of resurrected life. The best analogy I can use for this blessed-curse is pregnancy. Jesus was pregnant with the whole world when he died. “For IN Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) & “IN him ALL things hold together” (Col 1:17).

As Jesus willingly hung on the cross, I hung there with him. The whole world hung there IN him. How do we know it was the whole world? “One died for ALL, therefore ALL died … Anyone IN Christ is a new creation! The old has passed away; the new has come … God was IN Christ, reconciling THE WORLD to himself!” (2 Cor 5:14-19)

Hallelujah! Today is the day we died with Christ!
“Where, oh death, is your victory?
Where, oh death, is your sting?
Death has been swallowed up in victory!”
(1 Cor 15:55&54)

Death became our birth canal! Jesus is the “firstborn from among the dead” (Col 1:18) and we also “must be born again” (John 3:7). Many believe that being born-again is a choice or a decision that we make as cognitive human beings. But when a man and woman conceive a baby, that baby has no choice but to be born. The loving motions of the father and mother bring that baby to life. The baby does not create or birth itself. It was no mistake that John used the phrase: born again. Jesus knew he was carrying the whole world. He dove deep into death with the whole world IN him, and he gave birth to a resurrected, new creation!

After John speaks of being born again (chapter 3) he goes on to say that Jesus must be ‘lifted up’ to bring about eternal life. “For God so loved THE WORLD that he gave his one and only son” (verse 16). Then in chapter 12 he brings this phrase ‘lifted up’ to its climax in Jesus’ own words: “And I, when I be lifted up from the earth, will draw ALL PEOPLE to myself!”

This is why Jesus had to die!
“Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds!” (John 12:24)

On Easter Friday the world died in Christ and on Easter Sunday it resurrected. The world was reborn. And the world is still being reborn. And the world will be reborn. It has happened spiritually IN Christ and it culminates physically at the point of death. All who ever live will be touched by death. It is when we physically die, that we experience Jesus’ resurrection power at its fullness and our rebirth is complete!

We celebrate Easter, not just to bring to mind something that happened to someone else 2000 odd years ago! Easter is both a memory and future declaration of what has happened and is happening to the entire human race IN Christ. This is the Gospel! This is the Good News. This is Good Friday.