9/15/09

Have you ever had the moment where you didn't mind the wreck that you always fear you might get in?  The plane crashing, or something taking your life.  I feel as if I've been brought to this moment in life.  This hurts, I feel crushed, weak.  My tears have been my food day and night.  I've cried more than I ever thought a man could and have sobbed louder and deeper than I knew possible.  My eyes are dryer and redder than I wish them to be, and my stomach stays in continual knots.  I seem to be like the sky's outside, dreary, dark, and full of sadness.  My plans have not gone the way I thought they would.  I continue to see things get worse and worse.  I'm not sure how much more I can be broken.  My 20's have been rough, so much sin to give over to the Lord, so many tight grips on the things of this world.  My sin is ugly and only seems to get worse the deeper I go.  "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."  Job 42:5-6  Wether it's seeking mans approval, trying to take control of something that I don't own, namely my own life, fear of the next day, the next week, and the next month.  Fear of taking care of my family, fear that this is the way that I'll always feel.  Sometimes I feel as if I'm sinking and I'm trying to grab onto everything else but what God has for me to grab onto.  So much of my understanding of the Lord has changed.  It's what started most of this opening up, purging, disinfecting.  

Sometimes I fear my dreams for they usually have led to heartache, pain, and those tears I've talked about before.  Then I fear my lack of confidence, sometimes I don't know which one is from me or the Lord.  Taking this thing one day at a time is rough.  Working out your salvation is  a lifetime of seeing my sin and then turning and seeing the cross.  Sometimes it seem so simple, invigorating, and life changing.  Then other times it's like I've never heard the gospel before, or at least that is what my actions say.  The fulness of the gospel I can't say that I've grasped.  I still don't trust my God, my Savior like I want to or wish I did.  My pace is much slower than I want towards sanctification, much harder than I imagined.  This Christian life is not easy.  

Without the gospel, without Jesus, and the work of the Holy Spirit I would have run.  But when you've had all the things you found your worth in ripped from you, He is the sweetest thing to me.  I'm in need.  Extreme need.  I've seen myself as lacking.  I've seen my plans go extremely bad.  If I look off and try to project my faith on the next few months or years compared to the way that it has gone, I don't know where it will come from.  I'm learning about trusting God with the grace needed for today, and today alone.  If I look to far, even to the next day, I will be shortchanging God on what he can do for me, the grace that will be required, because my brain couldn't muster up the idea of that much grace.  "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted."   Job 42:2 

Moments like these make me hope for the day when this will all be over.  No more weeping, no more sadness, no more pain.  Fully in the presence of my King,  aware of his majesty and holiness only, not my sin.

I pray that I not try to muster up a plan to take care of myself, come up with my plan on how this will work, figure this all out, so that I won't have to live in the grace that God supplies, instead I'll try to use the sinful counterfeit kind that keeps me in my misery, my own strength.  Father, help me understand what that means.  I don't even know I know what that looks like.  Help me as a man give my plans over to you, my plans for my job, my family, and the daily time, into the hands of the sovereign God that wrote the script, knows the lines, and has seen the ending, more like created the ending.  Father forgive me for I have chosen someone or something else other than you countless times.  It saddens me to see my lack of faith in a God that has proven himself more than I deserve.  My problems along this path are far less than the sins I've committed.  I deserve much worse, when truly I don't deserve anything at all.  

Why I don't need to worry or be anxious about anything

Why I don't need to worry or be anxious about anything:

1.  Deuteronomy 8:3  "He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."

• God has a way of taking his people to the places where it looks hopeless, scary, and leaves us feeling like their is no way out of whatever situation we face.  That is the exact place God wants us to be.  He continually did this in scripture (Wilderness-manna, Crossing the Red Sea, Calming the storm )  How will this work, will we ever be okay, their is no way out...
• God wants our confidence to rest in him and him alone and this is the way that he goes about doing this.  If we were able to somehow offer up our plan, or our own way out, then we would take the glory and God would receive none.  He is jealous and not only deserves, but wants all the glory and will stop at nothing to make sure this happens in our lives.

2.  2 Corinthians 1:9 ( Paul speaking about hardships that were far beyond his ability to endure, "so that we despaired even of life"  )"This happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead"  Paul was delivered  from these hardships, but he did not assume that God guaranteed such deliverance in the future.

3.  There is no private ownership in the kingdom.  All is from God and all belongs to God.  We are not the owners of our material stuff; we are stewards, but not owners.  Owners are the ones who do all the worrying; stewards simply listen to the owner's desires and work to implement them.  Owners are responsible for the outcome; stewards strive to be faithful.

• Steward-a person employed to manage another's property, a person who's responsibility is to take care of something.  
• I struggle to view all as God's, that he is the owner of all of my things (talents, money, possessions, job, life, wife, children, time etc....)  I tend to think of it as mine but he gets to tell me what to do with it.  There in lies the problems, the tantrums, the anger, the frustration, the anxiety, the fear of doing something wrong, etc.....
• This being said, we have been given all things (paul saying having begun in the spirit are you perfecting yourself by your works)  since we have been given the kingdom rather than earned it, humility and generosity should be our natural responses.  

4.  Anxiety asks for more information so it can be prepared for the coming apocalypse.  It also asks for more information so it can manage the world apart from God.  

• Sometimes we are anxious about the future because there is no larger agenda that occupies us in the present.  Love, however, is an expansive agenda.  
• Trying to be prepared for the worst is me playing God, or trying to put myself in his position to handle it on my own apart from him.  Trying to be self reliant.  I don't like to be in need.  
• Self Reliance:  reliance on one's own powers and resources rather than those of others.  
• Your future includes manna.  It will come.  There is no sense in devising future scenarios now because God will do more than you anticipate.  When you understand God's plan to give future grace, you have access to what is arguably God's most potent salvo against worry and fear.  

5.  A withholding lifestyle means that we don't believe that there will be manna tomorrow. We don't believe we will be given enough grace. 

• Then the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not."

6.  We can't try to push the grace we have received for today onto the grace that will be needed for tomorrow.  This will only create worry and fear for we can't comprehend that I will receive the grace as needed tomorrow.  

• Are you worried about the future?  You are looking at tomorrow as if it was a final exam and you haven't yet taken the class.  Of course you panic at the thought.  But you haven't considered that you will go through the class before you have to take the final.  You will be given all the grace you need when you need it.   

7.  Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, everyone of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.  Psalm 139:16

• According to this verse God has planed my days even before I was.  He was there and say with his own eyes my unformed substance, my days are written, everyone of them (showing the emphasis of detail to the days of my life).  He formed days for me, specifically for me.  I don't know.  I couldn't tell you what the next few seconds will bring, yet he is already in tomorrow.  In him should I trust.  
• God asks me to live by faith in this, in him, his son Jesus, and his promises.   Romans 1:17
• Although it feels wrong, wired, and un-American to be in need to trust another's strength, trust in anothers way and work, it's the way God designed it to be.  Romans 4:3-5
• If there was another way it would lead to me gaining glory and feeling like I had something to do with it.  Romans 4:16
• Our line our heritage from father Abraham and on down the generations have been encouraged to do the same thing, so that Abraham would be able to be "fully convinced" that what God said would happen, would happen.  Romans 4:20-25

8.  We must serve in a way that God gets the glory, serve in the "strength that God supplies"  1 Peter 4:11

• We can not boast.  What do you have that you were not given?  Our very existance:  did you ask to be born.  Do you remember to breath.  All things are from the Lord our creator.  1 Corinthians 4:6-7
• We don't even know what tomorrow will bring.  Why do we talk in such a way that it is promised.  Even worrying about tomorrow shows how much pride we have...we think that we will have what we aren't in control over.  James 4:13-17

9.  Why do we not get to grumble?  Because our days are ordered up by God.  Good and bad, he allows or permits it all to happen.  All for our good, all for his glory.  No grumbling accepted.  Philippians  2:14

9/8/09

Christianity has not been tried and found wanting.  It has been found difficult and left untried.

                              -G.K. Chesterson

I haven't felt like I've gotten a full nights rest in sometime now.  We are back in Texas living with mom and dad.  We've moved everything we owned and have it stored in a 10x10 box with room to spare ( I love that).  I've had some contacts with other guys trying to help me get a job but nothing came about.  I did have my first interview during this time with Paycom.  I thought it went really well.  I was prepared and answered all the questions the way that I should have, and felt good after leaving.  I don't think there is anything that I would have changed.  It made me think about other times in my life when I did everything that I was supposed to do, worked harder, prepared, practiced, prayed for it to go my way and I ended up not getting the job, not getting what I wanted.  It's times like these where the sovereignty of God is what I have to trust.  I'm so grateful that God has shown me how he works, started to peal back the layers to how he set up the world to operate.  Without that I would be worse than I am now.  It's hard enough going through this life knowing and hearing about the sovereignty of God and his providence.  I know what it's like to feel like my efforts, my accomplishments, my activities should measure up and qualify me for what I want God to give me.  But he doesn't work that way.  And as much as I think he should, I'm glad He doesn't, for if he did I should be dead.  It's hard for me to get excited, to be confident in how I see this whole thing playing out.  I don't know, I just don't know.  I never would have chosen this path, yet its led me to know my creator more intimately.  Its led me to see life in a more spiritual way.  Its given me a sense of depth that most people never have in a lifetime.  Yet just as Chesterton said this is hard.  Most people would rather die a martyr, rather than live a lifetime for the kingdom and his prince.  It's just hard.  It's because the wickedness is there no matter how sanctified we are, it still stings, it still hurts, we still want to kick and scream when our plans and our ways don't work and don't make sense.  

If there has ever been a time that I started to realize staying in the moment staying in the day, it's now.  Looking one to two weeks let alone months down the road would bring me spiralling down and into a panic.  That is where most of my stress, fear, and worry live.  So I've started to see what Jesus meant by saying that tomorrow has enough worry of it's own.  Jesus never meant for us to walk this earth and use him like a genie, only talking to him, looking to him and leaning on him when we thought we needed him.  I"m learning I always need him.  I'm learning I will hate myself and this life if I try it alone.  I need him.  I need the body.  I will also miss out on the grace for today if I stay so far out from myself.  I will not glorify my father for all that will be heard is complaining and grumbling.  I'm the clay he is the potter.  I'm full of sin and deserving of death, EVERYTHING good that I get outside of that is by grace.  It's amazing how much I think I deserve and that my actions my works will gain me favor with our King.  No, NO NO!