I've been confronted with a lot today - way too much for my brain to process it seems and yet here I am blogging go figure.
First of all Leaha put on the Mark Driscoll series on Ruth, about not settling, about love, compassion, service, about all that happens in our lives when we determine to set our own course or believe that God will honor us regardless. That He is Sovereign and good, but that our world is not good and we are not sovereign in any way shape or form. That while we are to pray for the other's, this world, our churches, that we are also called to be the answer to those prayers. In that if I pray for missionaries to go to X, maybe that is ultimately me.
Then on the way to 10th - Leaha put on the Tony Campolo series on the Beatitudes - that fundamentally living the life we are called to is in no way shape or form pragmatic - it is counter cultural, revolutionary, alternative - it's not North America, or more specifically the current state of the North American church - had me thinking about the Irresistible Revolution again - thinking again of how much attention a life like that garners, in the way that is bizarrely attractive - like I want to be like that - I want to be able to trust more, to have the faith that says I will go - I don't care - you don't owe me anything - no comfort, no security, no success.
And then Darrell talked about the second temptation - about our desire to have a conditional faith - an "I will believe you God only if you ____, "that we attempt to force God's hand. And that faith and prayer doesn't work that way, that God doesn't work that way - though we live that way - we believe that God is only good and loving if He does ____ for me - gives me a life partner, a good job, financial success, biological children...
And then, I was faced with a conversation now that well I just don't know how to process - trying to figure out if at our cores we see God very differently or if it's just the rhetoric that's different. Maybe I'm wreckless when it comes to my faith or maybe pessimistic not sure 0r maybe both - but I see the world through eyes that see hurt, anger and brokenness all around me and all I want to do is be a conduit for His love and I feel that every step towards my own comfort is adding a scale to my eyes, one more stone in the wall of my heart. Maybe that's wrong I don't know but I do know that God is sovereign and whatever the path, the outcome I will hold to it. I've been looking at the letters from Mother Theresa's life - the dryness, the depression, the doubt, yet she still served - for all intensive purposes that we see God never gave her anything - no intervention, no sign of His person and yet she served - she was compelled, she gave her life wholly and despite everything never asked for it back. That's the life I want to live - a life that says despite everything I held firm - despite failure, loss of dream, peace, family, finance that who He was to me never changed. I don't know if I could see Him any different, so when confronted with the possibility that someone else does, I just, I don't know.
I don't know a lot these days, but the funny thing is I'm getting to know who He is more.
About Me
- GF Girl
- I am slowly moving along on this journey - in the process I worry that I'm lost...
3 comments:
I am not one to tell someone else how to have a relationship with God. "Experts" try and tell you how to have the correct relationship with him, but if you listen to each one and try and do as THEY say, you will drive yourself nutts.
Anyway, this is a broken world, so it does not suprise me that when you look around you see brokeness. This is the problem I have with most in church, that have this belief that if you are christian life is happy, joyous, and free. I often wonder if these people worship the same God. He did not promise life to be easy, in fact Jesus said you will be persecuted for His name sake.
That makes me wonder if these people who having nothing wrong in their life or see nothing wrong in the world around them, only looking through rose colored glasses, serve, or know the same God.
I think we also see things differently because of our similar interactions with the church to the point where we both respectively have decided to look for other communities, mine a social justice oriented church/neo-monastic/community based - full of theology students and left wingers, and you've found a devoted interactive group of Christians at varying places on their growth. Both are remarkably different from the standard churches across North America.
Neither is right nor wrong - quite simply I just believe Driscoll is biblically sound and Osteen is lost in the warm fuzzies of his "faith." Then again the also represent their cities - Seattle, unchurched and urban, and Houston where an good person goes to church regardless of the state of their faith...
"Maybe I'm wreckless when it comes to my faith or maybe pessimistic not sure 0r maybe both - but I see the world through eyes that see hurt, anger and brokenness all around me and all I want to do is be a conduit for His love and I feel that every step towards my own comfort is adding a scale to my eyes, one more stone in the wall of my heart."
I've been feeling this way too - like my anxiety about being lonely, about being the "last one picked for hte kickball team" dating-wise, though biologically-informed, needs to not be the only part of my non-school life. That I can't use it as my excuse to do things, or to not do things, because ultimately i wasn't put here to develop my own freedoms and wants, i was put here to, as you put it, be a conduit for his love.
And even if God didn't exist, I'm the type of person who believes that the world shouldn't be about me - that it should be about others, about Us, about serving. I am finding that when I am most despondent about finding a mate and being lonely, that is when I most need a reality check.
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