I have been overcome this week by the difference between the way I live and the way I want to live. I listen to stories of friends who have lost their homes due to flood waters, who have lost family members due to disease and war, who have lost love due to sin. I nod, I pray, I say words of comfort - as is befitting someone assigned to this role. I believe all the words I say.
Yet in my life, I am paralyzed by fear over lesser things. My mind is filled with questions and doubts: "Will we have enough? Are they okay? What if I fail? What is next?"
Everyday I watch those who do not make claims of great faith live lives that demonstrate great faith. And I am humbled. I watch those whose lives have given them an emotional kick in the stomach that would leave me broken and huddled in the corner of some dark room, and yet they get up and go on and pour their lives out for others.
I do not doubt the love of God, or my salvation, or my calling, although I understand why folks doubt those things. Instead, I live every day with a sense of nagging disappointment in myself. By this point I thought I would be further along on the journey. I thought the insecurities of my adolescence would be a distant memory by now.
I know that in one sense this is a spiritual issue. There is an Enemy who desires to distract me from the work I am called to do. And I know that if I would only spend less time thinking about myself, and more about the God who loves me, it would be better. I know that.
And I know that God uses broken people to reach broken people.
Lord, forgive me for trying to pretend that I am greater than I really am. Forgive me for twisting and turning and perverting the faith so that it seems okay to hide our true selves from those with whom we are called to live in community. Lord, forgive me for making it seem, in words and actions, that I am anything other than a man still in need of a savior.
Lord, forgive me, a sinner.
Love you, Mike! Isn't being human an amazing condition? We live in this limbo stage between the Kingdom come and still coming. Between Acts 1 and Revelation 21. The truth is greater than our minds can comprehend, and what truth we do comprehend is much more than we've been able to lead our hearts to truly believe.
ReplyDeleteWe have an ambition for the entire World to know the love and power of Christ for their lives, yet we see in practice that we are not applying it's power to our own daily living.
Growing up in the Church in this particular era of it's existence, I've become a lopsided believer. I've had so much doctrinal knowledge crammed into my head and spilling out my ears, but have spent a much smaller fraction of time and energy actually leading my heart toward it. We've had good preaching with weak community. Struggling to change that now.
Thanks, Brady. Good words.
ReplyDelete