When Zach first suggested to me that I do this Discipleship program, he gave me "A Soul Running On Empty" as a sampler, mostly because that's how I felt at the time, and sought a change of heart. After listening to it once more this morning, three months later, I know I have some revamping to do.
As Zach himself wrote in an earlier entry, the focus of this study is supposed to be Jesus, and nobody else. I have learned so much about who he is, what he's done, and will come to do. It used to do nothing but get me stoked; yet in these last two weeks of this school quarter, I just haven't been able to get excited about him, or anything else for that matter. This sermon clued me in on the probable cause.
I've only been "focusing" on Jesus in theory lately: really, I've just been absorbing words about him, and hoping awareness would take care of the rest, while I ignorantly used up my hoarded energy on other things. I thought God would just magically zap me with energy through some means if I ever felt short. This hasn't been the case with just this program; it's been with other sermons, growth groups, and even reading the Word. NT really hit it on the nose:
“The Bible is there to enable God’s people to be equipped to do God’s work in God’s world, not to give them an excuse to sit back smugly, knowing they possess all God’s truth.”
I've been like a runner who decides run a race, reads a book/watches a training video about how to prepare for one, but then doesn't bother to do the healthy amount of eating and exercising needed. There's been atrophy in my soul, and I'm finding it hard to turn focus my energy on what I need to do right now, which is having a deep desire for Him. It's a simple problem---my roots have withered and are in want of renewal. Watching my friends play with Jumbling Tower blocks (a Safeway version of Jenga, if you will) the other night, I was reminded that anything that is built up is doomed to crash if the foundation is thinned out or disappears all together. And when the spiritual structure collapses, everything else collapses: this past week alone, a few things I held very dearly crumbled in my hands.
I need to go back and make sure my Jumbling Tower is built on THE Rock.
Because what is a relationship without the passion? What worth is the work you put into it if doesn't ignite the fire between the two?
Maybe I need to stop doing "work" and go back to the basics I keep skipping over. Like being aware of the gift that is grace and what it does for me. That sometimes I just need to be still and let him work, whether I'm at a peak or at a valley. Allowing the Bible to do what it does: give "energy for the task to which God is calling his people!" That with 57 simple words, I can ask for all that is really needed, and he'll provide it through himself. Knowing the key to changing my heart, and dispelling all other desires from it, is not in books, sermons, or good practices: it is God and God alone who can change it. That he loves me and wants me with him---that's what it's all about. A simple formula:
G0d=The Greatest Love=All I Need
Abba, I've messed up, I've filled myself with nothing. Can you help me desire you and leave room for nothing else, so I can genuinely pursue you once again? Please, come glorify yourself in my weakness.
In line with my last post regarding using Psalms as a prayer:
Psalms 51: 10-12
Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence
or take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation
and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Ben, first off, congrats on being in the last week of this study. (I think you are in the last week right?) Either way you are really close. If the study did nothing else but brought you to a place in your heart as your post above stated, well then praise the Lord! What a sacred place to be in. I so often struggle with the truth and fact that God wants kids and not so much servants (Luke 15). We can travel off to the far country and not until things go really bad do we come to our senses of how good the Father is. Or like a lot of us we might never go far from the Father and His house but serve Him faithfully and one day discover.....I don't know my Father at all! All the while living in the Fathers house. The Apostle Paul says of Jesus, "I want to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, I want to fellowship in His sufferings, I want to be conformed to His death." You can't learn those things in a book! You got to get out and give yourself away in sacrificial servant love to all who ask and all who are in need. When we serve Jesus reveals to us the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, and He conforms us to His death. I highly encourage you as a next step to find some place to serve! That doesnt mean give up reading and studying- may it never be! I just mean when you add the depth, passion, purpose, and meaning of serving to life Christ unleashes Himself in new profound ways!
ReplyDeleteBen, I totally hit this same point in the study. Coupled with all the religious studies classes, I came to a place of viewing everything about Jesus and not Jesus himself (questions life: what's worship? what's Paul really saying? What contexts are most important? What about the Reformation? etc...).
ReplyDeleteI completely resonate with Reid is saying: when we give ourselves away, we open ourselves up to the Spirit's lead in our life. We give generously because as Paul said, giving is a grace (2 Corinth 9). We give because we have received so much (every spiritually blessing according to Paul in Ephesians 1).
I totally agree when DJ says that a spiritual awakening comes through a lack of coveting. I believe he says "we give because it's helps others. WE GIVE BECAUSE IT HELPS US!" (emphasis added), which is at times a divine secret, but it's beauty is unimaginable. It is certainly intertwined with our weakness opening ourselves up to Christ's grace. True strength and wisdom is in the 'weakness' and 'foolishness' of Christ crucified. Moreover, life is found in Christ crucified who died so that we would live.
I don't know why I'm writing so many words, but it has substantially been on my heart to embrace weakness and inability, to graciously and thankfully accept Christ's grace (instead of attempting to be strong and adequate), and to give it ALL away whenever possible. Even though when it's truly removing myself from coveting, it's unbearably difficult. But that's probably a whole different subject!
"Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." - Matthew 10:39
As Paul says in 2 Corinth 12:6-10, all this 'life losing' is not done in vain. It's for the sake of Christ, hence the joy (complete joy!) in such obedience.
PS I love how God placed you in that conversation with Christian, Eric, and O'Brian tonight about religious academia.
"Ever faithful ever true, you I know, you never let go"