"So some suffering can clearly be God’s will. It isn’t necessarily the suffering itself that is God’s will, but rather, in a fallen world, following the will of God will generate suffering in our lives. In fact, there are two things that are always the will of God and always dangerous in a fallen world: telling the truth and loving needy people. In fact, if my life of following Jesus doesn’t feel dangerous, I should probably pause and check to see if it’s Jesus I am following...Doing what Jesus does, telling the truth and loving needy people, is inherently unsafe in a fallen world of lies and selfishness."
-Gary Haugen (taken from Discerning God's Call)
I realized that the more I try to live like Christ the more alone I become. It is so strange. I mean, sure I have great friends, but to have those friends that share that same mindset as me, that is where I fall in being alone a lot of times.
When I look at people who are not christian, they do not live their lives as such, their lifestyles do not appeal to me. However, when I look at people who are christian, who apparently do the christian things (going to church, reading their bible, etc), I realized most of their lives do not appeal to me either. Both lives are so boring to me. lol
Non-Christians live serving themselves in their "pagan" ways, while Christians live serving themselves in their "Jesus" ways. Both ways are exactly the same to me. Like the story Jesus told of the Prodigal Son. (Luke 15:11-32) Both sons were sinful, the one who left his father to live a life of crazy fun in sin, and the other who stayed and worked for his father and did all the right things. The sinner and the religious person are both sinful to the same degree. They're not seeking God, they're seeking their self. They are seeking what they want, they are just conveying them in different ways.
I like what David Bainerd says, "I love to live on the brink of eternity" in reality, if you truly believe in God, and in living as Jesus lived, then your life here is not suppose to be a life of luxury. We aren't here to live in a way that makes us "feel" comfortable. We are not suppose to follow the American dream. We are suppose to follow God. I mean goodness, if you're going to claim to call yourself a Christian, then you are claiming you are a follower of Christ, no matter the cost.
C.S. Lewis quote, "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this."
I don't know about you, but God is changing my heart. I don't want to settle here.
Ever since I was a little girl, I always sang songs to God. I use to sing songs to him while I made my bed in the morning skipping around my room. I use to pretend I would be dancing with Jesus when a happy song came on. It was so childish.
I could never really feel God, nor could I feel Jesus. As I have grown up, and as I have faced some rough spots in my life, I still haven't felt God. Ya know what though, I realized this year, what faith is. I realized what it means to have faith. To have faith means you pray to someone you don't know if they are there or if they are listening, yet you still pray and you continue to pray even though you don't see anything changing. My prayer life has become so much a part of who I am. I don't see changes in anything or anyone else, however, I see a lot of change in me. One way I relate to C.S. Lewis, "I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me." I know the God I pray to. I pray to the God of the Bible. I pray to the God that in the Bible, slaughtered hundreds of people, I pray to the God that in the Bible He slaughtered His Son on the Cross and then raised him from the dead, I pray to the God that gives and takes life. I pray to the God that has allowed evil to exist and I have no idea why, and I cannot even wrap my mind around it. I pray to that God. It is crazy, how praying to that God, praying to the one who created Heaven AND Hell, when I pray to him, the need flows out of me, when I can't help but just beg him for mercy and grace and peace I beg him to answer the prayers that go out to my loved ones, I cannot tell you how free I tend to feel. I am not in bondage to anyone else but Him. To be a slave to that God, is better to be a slave to any person here on this earth, and even being a slave to myself. Whether the Ancient Hebrews made Him up, whether the Jewish Jesus freaks were delusional and crazy, it does not change the fact that by copying how they live their lives, by holding to the beliefs that they held that it works. It works!
When it comes down to it, you have the decision to make, are you going to be a slave to other people? a slave to yourself? or a slave to God? Are you living to please that person or many people? Are you living to please yourself? or, are you living to please God?
I cannot tell you how amazing it is to live a life pleasing God. It is so hard, let me tell you. To please God, to enslave yourself to Him, I have learned and am learning how to love, how to forgive. It hurts to live for Him. Like Gary Haugen says, "loving needy people and telling the truth is unsafe in a fallen world..." why do bad things happen to seemingly good people? because we're fallen! Our world is a mess.
It is so crazy how people still have this mindset that by following Jesus we are in some way changing the world. Jesus followers thought that Jesus would save the world. This world is past from being saved. We aren't here to save the world, we are here to be saved FROM this fallen world. It is the same fallen world that is was centuries prior to now.
I mean in the story of Genesis when God says to Cain, "if you do what is right, will you not be accepted? but if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Even right after the story of the fall of man, and man being cursed, the next chapter displays this dialogue with God and a human. The first dialogue of God speaking to a man since He cursed them in the prior chapter. What does this God say? He is basically advising Cain! He is advising him to save himself from what is around him, sin, fallenness. RIGHT AFTER He curses them, He advises them. If God in this ancient hebrew text was thought of as mean, uncaring, tricky, deceitful, then this verse would be extremely inconsistent with that belief. Yet the ancient hebrews, when they told this story, it was to display man and God. God IS good, man IS fallen, and God wants to save man from His fallenness, but man has to cooperate with God and His goodness. THAT is the story of the Bible, that is the story of the God of the Bible. Amazing.
"Christianity doesn't come by gritting your teeth but by falling in love." -Richard Foster
I am in love. When you find love, you tend to be in love, no? Human love just doesn't suffices for me. Of course I love to be loved by humans, and I love to love them, but it is not what motivates me to live. I don't live for their love, nor to love them. I live to love Christ and to show that. That is how I am able to remain hopeful in the most trying of days, in the most darkest moments of my heart, and facing the deepest struggles of my past. The only way I get through those days without my heart hardening is by knowing Christ's love.
I keep going back to Corrie Ten Boom's story, it is so inspiring. I love when her sister responds to a woman in the concentration camp cabin who says to her, "how can you believe in your God when he allows THIS" and she says to the woman, "if only you knew his love." Do you know his love? Do I know his love today? His love is the only love that gets me through the days of feeling unloved, worthless, angry, judged, unfairly treated without lashing out against it, or hardening myself so I cannot feel. It is only his love that can keep my heart soft and yet have to face the heartbreak of the chaos around me. I don't know about you, but I want to be enslaved to His love.
God bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment