It's really hard to write about some things without sounding really up-tight and better-than-thou, or conversely too flippant or insincere. How can I convey to people my values and the things that are really important without giving them impressions that will turn them off to it? It's certainly a relevent challenge, something I would love to overcome someday. I think Donald Miller does this very well in his books. He talks about God, but is still very real about his own raw human-ness. I want to write like that someday.
But as I've been talking myself through my frustration with people who think they know too much about what they beleive, I think I'm figuring something out. I guess I always thought the problem was with people who make big leaps of faith to beleive in God and the Bible (good thing), and then just start deducting things from there in a if-this-is-true-that-must-also-be-true kind of way (bad thing). Like, well, I beleive in God, I beleive in the Bible- the Bible says to keep the Sabbath day holy- THEREFORE: I will not play cards on Sunday. When really that seems like the biggest leap of faith of all of them, except this time the faith is in your own ability to translate the scriptures correctly rather than in outside revelation.
Does this make sense? What I'm realizing is that our faith shouldn't be in our own ability to translate the scriptures correctly, it should be in God's ability to establish the truth through the scriptures. If I say that we can't know something for sure so we should stop trying to enforce our standards on other people, then what I'm really saying is, "I don't think God made that clear enough for us to actually beleive it." Sometimes that might be the case, but most often it's not. The Bible is completely sufficient to guide us through our daily lives, with no exceptions. I can know what I beleive and stand for it unwaveringly. I like that.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
"Might I have a lock of your black tresses?" "But I don't have any black dresses!" "I meant your hair."
Some things I've been realizing...
1. I have no right to complain about my job. Not only am I extreemly blessed to even have a job right now, but this is a good job that pays well, suits my schedule perfectly, is very low stress, doesn't involve any questionable situations, and keeps me fufilling the God-given ordinence of work five days a week. My co-workers are nice, reasonable people who don't swear or anything like that.
And with that, just because I'm not having fun doesn't mean I have a right to be miserable. I need to stop viewing life as a hay ride designed for my enjoyment. I need to stop determining the value of experiences by how much I enjoyed them; I want to take myself out of myself so that I don't even think about it.
2. It is not my place to question the future. God will work things out. I have all these doubts about weather I'm doing the right thing in going to New York (did I mention I might go to New York to be a nanny?) or not going to school, but really I have come to the place in my life because of different circumstances and even when those circumstances had to do with my own failures, they MUST have been for a reason. I just need to keep pushing forward, making decisions with the best wisdom and judgement I can find at the time, and trust that God will guide me even through my faulty human choices.
I guess what I mean by that is that even though I don't know if God wants me to go to New York or not, I really want to go to New York and by all appearences it looks like the oprotunity of a lifetime, so I should go. I shouldn't sit around hemming and hawing, waiting for a flashing red sign. Same with other decisions in my life. I'm so reluctant to move, sometimes, I'll just sit in these ruts doubting and worrying. Really I think it should be simple to follow a path that is upright and sensible, without needing to hesitate around every corner. Although prayer is enormously helpful and a very good thing, too, because somehow I'm sure God will make everything clearer.
3. Jacob-inspired: Prayer is a tool. I never use it as a tool, I use it as a way to communicate with God and as a spiritual dicapline, but not really as a tool. I mean, I will pray that God would help me in this task or that task or keep me safe or that he would make me more like him, and I do pray for my friends in a general way, but I don't think my prayers ever have much real faith in them. Take my family, for instance. We're not perfect and a lot of times we're downright disfunctional, and it occured to me (when Jacob pointed it out, haha) that I never really beleive that I can change things with prayer. I read the story of David and Goliath last night and I was really astounded at the amount of faith David had. To say with such confidence that he KNEW God wouldn't let his armies fall... I could never say that. I wish I had a sliver of that kind of faith in my prayers. I can only imagine the difference it would make if I did.
4. I've also been thinking about my perception of God, because I've been reading through I Samuel and sometimes I feel like I've been slapped across the face because of the God that I find there. He seems totally different from Jesus or the loving God that is described in the Psalms. He commands the Isrealites to masacre whole communities, right down to the babies, and once he turned his back on Saul and was going to utterly destroy his life just because of one mistake. I know it's justice, but it throws me. It really really upsets me. I find that I don't want to serve a God like that and a lot of times I'm not serving a God like that, I'm serving someone who is all love and wants only peace, the God of the hippies.
I think it's so important to get out of this rut of viewing God as one thing or the other. C.S. Lewis talks about this in the Screwtape Letters. We need to pray to someone that is REAL, instead of someone who is a picture on a wall or a vauge imaginary creature floating way up in space. The more I realize how little I really know about that person, perhaps the more I will realize that he's real, that he's actually listening to me and to thousands of other people at the same time. My expectations of him are based on something, and that something has to be sinful because they are false expectations and God is perfect.
5. This isn't so much a realization... but I'm stick of just talking about making a difference. I want to start something that sends money to somewhere important once a month. Any ideas?
1. I have no right to complain about my job. Not only am I extreemly blessed to even have a job right now, but this is a good job that pays well, suits my schedule perfectly, is very low stress, doesn't involve any questionable situations, and keeps me fufilling the God-given ordinence of work five days a week. My co-workers are nice, reasonable people who don't swear or anything like that.
And with that, just because I'm not having fun doesn't mean I have a right to be miserable. I need to stop viewing life as a hay ride designed for my enjoyment. I need to stop determining the value of experiences by how much I enjoyed them; I want to take myself out of myself so that I don't even think about it.
2. It is not my place to question the future. God will work things out. I have all these doubts about weather I'm doing the right thing in going to New York (did I mention I might go to New York to be a nanny?) or not going to school, but really I have come to the place in my life because of different circumstances and even when those circumstances had to do with my own failures, they MUST have been for a reason. I just need to keep pushing forward, making decisions with the best wisdom and judgement I can find at the time, and trust that God will guide me even through my faulty human choices.
I guess what I mean by that is that even though I don't know if God wants me to go to New York or not, I really want to go to New York and by all appearences it looks like the oprotunity of a lifetime, so I should go. I shouldn't sit around hemming and hawing, waiting for a flashing red sign. Same with other decisions in my life. I'm so reluctant to move, sometimes, I'll just sit in these ruts doubting and worrying. Really I think it should be simple to follow a path that is upright and sensible, without needing to hesitate around every corner. Although prayer is enormously helpful and a very good thing, too, because somehow I'm sure God will make everything clearer.
3. Jacob-inspired: Prayer is a tool. I never use it as a tool, I use it as a way to communicate with God and as a spiritual dicapline, but not really as a tool. I mean, I will pray that God would help me in this task or that task or keep me safe or that he would make me more like him, and I do pray for my friends in a general way, but I don't think my prayers ever have much real faith in them. Take my family, for instance. We're not perfect and a lot of times we're downright disfunctional, and it occured to me (when Jacob pointed it out, haha) that I never really beleive that I can change things with prayer. I read the story of David and Goliath last night and I was really astounded at the amount of faith David had. To say with such confidence that he KNEW God wouldn't let his armies fall... I could never say that. I wish I had a sliver of that kind of faith in my prayers. I can only imagine the difference it would make if I did.
4. I've also been thinking about my perception of God, because I've been reading through I Samuel and sometimes I feel like I've been slapped across the face because of the God that I find there. He seems totally different from Jesus or the loving God that is described in the Psalms. He commands the Isrealites to masacre whole communities, right down to the babies, and once he turned his back on Saul and was going to utterly destroy his life just because of one mistake. I know it's justice, but it throws me. It really really upsets me. I find that I don't want to serve a God like that and a lot of times I'm not serving a God like that, I'm serving someone who is all love and wants only peace, the God of the hippies.
I think it's so important to get out of this rut of viewing God as one thing or the other. C.S. Lewis talks about this in the Screwtape Letters. We need to pray to someone that is REAL, instead of someone who is a picture on a wall or a vauge imaginary creature floating way up in space. The more I realize how little I really know about that person, perhaps the more I will realize that he's real, that he's actually listening to me and to thousands of other people at the same time. My expectations of him are based on something, and that something has to be sinful because they are false expectations and God is perfect.
5. This isn't so much a realization... but I'm stick of just talking about making a difference. I want to start something that sends money to somewhere important once a month. Any ideas?
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
just because I'm loosing ground doesn't mean I've lost
I am really really lonely right now. I can't explain it. I feel different after that sleepover, like I've been keeping myself to myself for so long I forgot what it was like to feel other people's emotions and to let other people share some of mine. But I still feel like we only barely touched the tip of the ice berg, like there's so much more that I want to ask everyone about and so, so much more I want to say about myself.
Suddenly I feel ridicilously restless, like I have to figure out some rhyme or reason to the life I'm living. I'm so confused. Everything that has happened to me is just laying back there in my past in all of these confusing peices and I want to know how they fit together. I'm not at peace with anything that's happened, I want to dig it all up and think about it and disect it until I find some semblence of meaning in it all. It couldn't have just happened for the sake of moving me furthur through time, right?
The most recent stage of my life has been this new development of common sense, where I've actually become totally okay with living a normal middle class existence, going to church, homeschooling my kids, spending all my time cooking and cleaning, having to work hard at marriage just to make it work. Everything I always told myself I'd never become, I'm just accepting in myself now. I hate it. I want to run with reckless emotions and really LIVE, not just keep plodding along. Is that an adolesent pipe dream? I guess most people think it is.
Eah. It's all just blood and gore from here on out, this drive in me for drama and angst. Why am I like that? I used to be okay with pouring out my deepest heart and soul into the written word and now I tell myself it's stupid, and it is because it's always so dramatic. Nobody knows who I really am. I don't even know who I really am. I don't have an identity, I just float around and interact with people to the best of my ability. I'm so sick of it.
Ahhh. Sometimes I just want to sit down and throw a huge temper tantrum and I want everyone to see it and come running. I want to cry and cry and cry until I can't anymore. Instead I just sit here and stare at a computer screen and struggle with feelings I can't capture.
I am SO tired of being non-distinct. I really want people to notice me. It's like what Caitlyn was saying. But maybe this is how it starts again, just by bleeding everything onto the page and not deleting it in the morning. We'll see how it goes.
Suddenly I feel ridicilously restless, like I have to figure out some rhyme or reason to the life I'm living. I'm so confused. Everything that has happened to me is just laying back there in my past in all of these confusing peices and I want to know how they fit together. I'm not at peace with anything that's happened, I want to dig it all up and think about it and disect it until I find some semblence of meaning in it all. It couldn't have just happened for the sake of moving me furthur through time, right?
The most recent stage of my life has been this new development of common sense, where I've actually become totally okay with living a normal middle class existence, going to church, homeschooling my kids, spending all my time cooking and cleaning, having to work hard at marriage just to make it work. Everything I always told myself I'd never become, I'm just accepting in myself now. I hate it. I want to run with reckless emotions and really LIVE, not just keep plodding along. Is that an adolesent pipe dream? I guess most people think it is.
Eah. It's all just blood and gore from here on out, this drive in me for drama and angst. Why am I like that? I used to be okay with pouring out my deepest heart and soul into the written word and now I tell myself it's stupid, and it is because it's always so dramatic. Nobody knows who I really am. I don't even know who I really am. I don't have an identity, I just float around and interact with people to the best of my ability. I'm so sick of it.
Ahhh. Sometimes I just want to sit down and throw a huge temper tantrum and I want everyone to see it and come running. I want to cry and cry and cry until I can't anymore. Instead I just sit here and stare at a computer screen and struggle with feelings I can't capture.
I am SO tired of being non-distinct. I really want people to notice me. It's like what Caitlyn was saying. But maybe this is how it starts again, just by bleeding everything onto the page and not deleting it in the morning. We'll see how it goes.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
I thought this was potentially life-changing...
From Stepping Heavenward:
Question: How shall I offer my purely insignifican actions to God; such as walks, visits made and received, dress, little proprieties, such as washing the hands, etc., the reading of books of history, buisness with which I am charged for my friends, other amusements, such as shopping, having clothes made, and furniture. I want to have some sort of prayer, or method of offering each of these things to God.
Reply: It is not necessary to make great efforts nor acts of great reflection, in order to offer what are called insignificant actions. It is enough to lift the soul one instant to God, to make, a simple offering of it. Everything which God wishes us to do, and which enters into the course of occupation suitable to our position, can and ought to be offered to God; nothing is unworthy of Him but sin. When you feel that an action cannot be offered to God, conclude that it is not appropriate for a Christian; it is at least necessary to suspect it, and seek light concerning it. I would not have a special prayer for each of these things, the elevation of the heart at the moment is sufficient.
As for visits, commissions and the like, as there is danger of following one's own taste too much, I would add to this elevating of the heart a prayer for grace to moderate myself and use precaution.
Question: How shall I offer my purely insignifican actions to God; such as walks, visits made and received, dress, little proprieties, such as washing the hands, etc., the reading of books of history, buisness with which I am charged for my friends, other amusements, such as shopping, having clothes made, and furniture. I want to have some sort of prayer, or method of offering each of these things to God.
Reply: It is not necessary to make great efforts nor acts of great reflection, in order to offer what are called insignificant actions. It is enough to lift the soul one instant to God, to make, a simple offering of it. Everything which God wishes us to do, and which enters into the course of occupation suitable to our position, can and ought to be offered to God; nothing is unworthy of Him but sin. When you feel that an action cannot be offered to God, conclude that it is not appropriate for a Christian; it is at least necessary to suspect it, and seek light concerning it. I would not have a special prayer for each of these things, the elevation of the heart at the moment is sufficient.
As for visits, commissions and the like, as there is danger of following one's own taste too much, I would add to this elevating of the heart a prayer for grace to moderate myself and use precaution.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
joyfull all ye nations rise, join the triumph of the skies
This morning everything seems to be magic. Driving to work with my dad, the whole world seemed so silent and small, with every twig on every tree crystalized in the snow and ice like we are living in a world made of glass. It is wonderful to be happy just because you are alive, not because of anything going on in your life. That's what true happiness is, isn't it? It can't have anything to do with your circumstances, because those are constantly changing.
It seems that there are only rare periods in my life when I really trully want to live for God, and this is one of them, but I'm very afraid that if I stop talking and writing and praying about it for a few hours I'll forget about it and go back to living for me. That's how weak my heart is... it's so discouraging. I once heard a pastor say that the older he got, the less detached from the world and focused on heaven he became. That sounds like such a beautiful thing to me, to actually want to go to heaven with everything in you. I still can't see myself really wanting to spend that much time praising God. It sounds exausting. I wish that I had that kind of love for him and that he was that REAL to me.
Do you ever feel like God isn't real? Like even though you pray to him and read about him and talk about him with your friends all the time, the whole concept of the gospel is so big and radical that it's hard to accept that it actually did happen, at a certain point in time in the history of this very world that we live in now? I wish I beleived in Jesus being born by a virgin and dying on the cross and comming to life again the way I beleive that Pompey crossed the Rubicon and Cleopatra was the Queen of Egypt, but there is always this element of mystery that I stumble over. I have a hard time with mystery. I want things to be laid out, black and white. Sometimes after I'm done praying I try to wrap my mind around the fact that I was just talking to the same God who spoke to Abraham and Job and Isaiah, but I never quite can. It's a scary thing, and I'm sure that if I ever was able to understand it I would pray quite differently.
*sigh* It's amazing just how far I always have to go. The one thing I already can't wait for about heaven is never having to deal with sin again. To actually feel even my thoughts and my motives being good and clean and perfect all the time... I doub there is anything more wonderful than that.
It seems that there are only rare periods in my life when I really trully want to live for God, and this is one of them, but I'm very afraid that if I stop talking and writing and praying about it for a few hours I'll forget about it and go back to living for me. That's how weak my heart is... it's so discouraging. I once heard a pastor say that the older he got, the less detached from the world and focused on heaven he became. That sounds like such a beautiful thing to me, to actually want to go to heaven with everything in you. I still can't see myself really wanting to spend that much time praising God. It sounds exausting. I wish that I had that kind of love for him and that he was that REAL to me.
Do you ever feel like God isn't real? Like even though you pray to him and read about him and talk about him with your friends all the time, the whole concept of the gospel is so big and radical that it's hard to accept that it actually did happen, at a certain point in time in the history of this very world that we live in now? I wish I beleived in Jesus being born by a virgin and dying on the cross and comming to life again the way I beleive that Pompey crossed the Rubicon and Cleopatra was the Queen of Egypt, but there is always this element of mystery that I stumble over. I have a hard time with mystery. I want things to be laid out, black and white. Sometimes after I'm done praying I try to wrap my mind around the fact that I was just talking to the same God who spoke to Abraham and Job and Isaiah, but I never quite can. It's a scary thing, and I'm sure that if I ever was able to understand it I would pray quite differently.
*sigh* It's amazing just how far I always have to go. The one thing I already can't wait for about heaven is never having to deal with sin again. To actually feel even my thoughts and my motives being good and clean and perfect all the time... I doub there is anything more wonderful than that.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
he's gotta wear his goggles, cuz the snow really flies...
Well here I am at work, in a mall that is virtually deserted, having been here since 5:50 for the mad rush of Christmas shoppers we were expecting before all of this wonderful snow came! I say that cheerfully because I am working on not complaining, haha. But it's actually not that bad because I'll get off at noon instead of three like usual.
Lately I've been:
-looking for a new job
-reading Stepping Heavenward
-studying small portions of the Bible instead of reading a chapter a day
-not Christmas shopping
-getting very very sick
-racking up a horrendous phone bill for my parents with long distance calls to Black Diamond
-eating way too many Christmas cookies
and many other things I'm sure which I'm just not remembering right now.
and I've been thinking:
-I am really not cut out for sales. I LOVE helping customers when they come to me; trying to help them find the perfect phone for their needs and watching them walk out of there happy is a great feeling. But I hate trying to stop people who have a totally different agenda and force them into buying products witch they don't really know if they want. So I am not selling anything here, which is putting me on the fast track headed for getting fired. Thus the new job search.
-So much of goodness is acting. The girl in Stepping Heavenward (which every girl here really has to read, if they haven't already) is constantly telling her journal how much she hates certain circumstances, or what a hard time she has dealing with things, and she seems like someone who is barely a Christian or really struggling in her faith- but then she mentions other people who tell her what a saint she is. So I realized that the truth about people is always much darker than how they appear, and that a good deal of sanctification is being able to control the bad things in us and not give them any victory over us.
-Pastors are very, very inteligent people. It amazes me how they can take just a few verses and find heart-wrenching meaning and convicting application out of them. So I've been taking church notes in my journal and then choosing one passage from the sermon to study all week, and it's been amazing because these deep, deep truthes are actually working their way into my understanding. For example:
Lately I've been:
-looking for a new job
-reading Stepping Heavenward
-studying small portions of the Bible instead of reading a chapter a day
-not Christmas shopping
-getting very very sick
-racking up a horrendous phone bill for my parents with long distance calls to Black Diamond
-eating way too many Christmas cookies
and many other things I'm sure which I'm just not remembering right now.
and I've been thinking:
-I am really not cut out for sales. I LOVE helping customers when they come to me; trying to help them find the perfect phone for their needs and watching them walk out of there happy is a great feeling. But I hate trying to stop people who have a totally different agenda and force them into buying products witch they don't really know if they want. So I am not selling anything here, which is putting me on the fast track headed for getting fired. Thus the new job search.
-So much of goodness is acting. The girl in Stepping Heavenward (which every girl here really has to read, if they haven't already) is constantly telling her journal how much she hates certain circumstances, or what a hard time she has dealing with things, and she seems like someone who is barely a Christian or really struggling in her faith- but then she mentions other people who tell her what a saint she is. So I realized that the truth about people is always much darker than how they appear, and that a good deal of sanctification is being able to control the bad things in us and not give them any victory over us.
-Pastors are very, very inteligent people. It amazes me how they can take just a few verses and find heart-wrenching meaning and convicting application out of them. So I've been taking church notes in my journal and then choosing one passage from the sermon to study all week, and it's been amazing because these deep, deep truthes are actually working their way into my understanding. For example:
1. The Peace of God surpasses understanding. Philipians
4:7
2. As Christians, our lives should look different after
salvation. Ephesians 2:1-10
3. It is my duty to be content in my circumstances. Hebrews
13:5, not to mention the entierty of Jonah (sunday school) and Job 34 (morning
worship).-Who needs Christmas presents anyway? Really, I did that last year.
-There is nothing fun about being sick when you're 19 the way there was when you were 9. But I like to think that when I'm better I'll enjoy life that much more.
-I am very loud when I talk to Christina on the phone. And Jacob and Raeshell constantly contradict her in the background.
-I would like to eat nothing but carrots and perhaps a candy cane for the next week.
-It is very annoying how blogger formats this post.
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