God is going to do a new thing

I realize that I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been extremely busy and have not been afforded the time to write anything other than schoolwork. That said I figured it would be nice to take a break and post a few brief thoughts.

It’s been an amazing journey over the past few weeks. God has picked me up from my depression and then threw me into the fire in which he has been working on my heart. I didn’t just need to be picked up, I needed to be rebuilt. God’s been doing a lot in my life and while to get here I needed to force myself through the pain of realizing where I am, and the pain of brining up my past, God has been faithful and carried me through. He has also provided me with numerous friends and mentors who have reached out to me, for which I am very grateful.

My whole story may never really be told to everyone, there are a select few who know of the demons I battle every day, but God has been working on me because for the first time I am letting Him. I am letting Him take away the pain and I am giving up control. I’m a guy who likes to be in control. I carry myself with a high level of discipline. I eat right, exercise 4-5 times a week, do all my homework, and maintain a strong moral code that I expect myself to follow. This causes me to feel like I have a sense of control over my life, and the hardest thing is realizing that no matter how strong I am and how good I am, there are some battles I will always lose.

God can win them though; He can take the pain away and give you strength. For years there was a part of my life I thought I could fix, but lately I’ve realized that some pain is just too great for me to lift on my own. It will be a continuing journey, but know this: God is going to do a new work in me. God is creating a new man in me, someone who is stronger, calmer, and full of His love. 

Week 6: Fear of the Lord

Today FCA is taking part in Week 6: Fear of the Lord.

I wrote about fear of the Lord once, and am surprised to see that it is not the most popular topic on this blog or in conventional thought. While searching for a song to open up my meeting I could not find one, we like to think about God as a Savior, as a Father, but not something to be feared. It makes sense doesn’t it? Who wants to dwell on the fact that we should fear God, but really we ought to.

I’ve been plowing through Leviticus (rather slowly to be honest) and one thing that really stands out is that God is something to be feared. He is not to be taken lightly, God is to be taken more seriously than anything out there. Not a comfortable feeling huh? Well there are a few ways you can take what I just said and run with it, so let’s take a look at what fear means.

Am I speaking of the fear that gives you nightmares or makes you feel unsafe? No, God is a protector and there will never be a moment when you are under His hand that you fear for your life, that’s just not how it works. So what is this fear I speak of? Think of the feeling you get in the presence of a lion, or a thunderstorm, or a sunset. You feel this overwhelming sense of awe at the beauty before you, but you take it seriously. A lion, while beautiful, is not pedestrian; it is wild, unpredictable, awesome, and potentially dangerous. It reminds me of the quote from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, one of the kids asks a beaver if Aslan is safe and receives the reply: “Safe? Of course he isn’t safe! But he is good.” It is the same with God, God is by no means safe, but He is good.

My school is running some sort of 12-hour thing in the chapel that claims you can encounter God while He is here on earth. My first thought was something akin to humor. As if the God of the universe can be told when and where He can appear on earth. God created the cosmos! Do you think He listens to man when he calls, or does God appear to us when and how He wants to. It’s a dangerous trap to fall into, when you start thinking this is a pedestrian affair you start missing the point.

We will be taking a look at Psalm 111, which ends on the verse “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.” If you choose to follow God and approach Him with the proper standing then you are wise. If you fall into the cycle of thinking God is a distant and non-living entity then you will find yourself following a dead end. 

Week 5: Praise the Lord!

As promised here is Week 5: Praising God.

Relationships are a two way street, there is no such thing as a relationship in which only one person puts in the effort, those aren’t relationships at all and they quickly die out. Our relationship with God is exactly the same, He reaches out to us through various methods but we must return he favor if we hope to have  relationship with Him.

I think the most basic and common way we reach out to God is through praise. You always hear that word thrown around through church lingo and whatnot, but what does it really mean? Think about it for a minute, what does it mean to praise God and how do you praise God? We looked at Psalm 42 and Psalm 150. Both great psalms, and both approach praise from completely different angles. Psalm 42 talks about praising God through the pain, about putting hope in God “As the deer pants for water so my soul thirsts for you O Lord…” Psalm 150 is about praise as a form of rejoicing in all God has done, it is an all-consuming joy that expresses itself through music, dance, and love.

Our focus on the lesson was to look at how we praise God from both angles, David shows us how he does it so how do we do it? In joy I praise God through words, I write and express my joy with others. I share my joy in a warm smile and cup of coffee I take the love God gave me and I share it with others. How about when things are bad, how are we meant to praise God when we are in pain? I find this to be especially pertinent as there are many things about my life that I have a very good reason to be upset about.

It harkens to my reading of C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain and his big point is that our world is flawed, that God is good but there are things wrong with this world that we cannot change. I wish I could change events in my past and people in my past, but I can’t. What I can do is praise God for the good, praise Him for bringing me into His light and reminding me of His love. So yes you can praise God through the pain, and that is often the most important time to praise Him.

I urge you this week to think about how you praise God, and I urge you to simply fall in love with Him. True praise does not stem from duty or obligation, it comes from love and adoration. I praise God freely because I am so overwhelmed with His love that I cannot help but to praise Him. We all have our methods and means of praising God, I encourage you to find yours.

Here’s a great song that exemplifies this, it comes from Psalm 150 and is sung by Matt Redman (one of my favorite gospel singers!) 

Joy through the Pain

I figured I should post an update since it has been a short while since I last wrote. For those waiting for Week 5 of my study on Psalms fear not, it will be up tomorrow. For now I need to organize my thoughts.

Surely I still feel joy, but at the moment a level of happiness is absent. I know full well that God is at work behind the scenes of my life, I know that He wrote this story and because of that I know that if I listen for Him I will find peace.

So great is the pain in my life and even greater have been my efforts to pretend it does not exist. Denial is a bad thing because first it takes away your peace of mind, then your joy. I have joy again, I can delight in God again, and I am facing my demons head on and know that with God’s help I will overcome. This is not my fight, my past is not my fight, it is God’s fight.

Where am I now? Honestly I don’t know, but I am at peace with that. I am laying my demons to rest one by one, and it starts with recognizing them and acknowledging they exist. This is of a highly personal nature so I will not (and may never) elaborate, but just know that no matter how people look on the outside, there may be incredible pain or a story you only see in movies on the inside. Many see me and make a snap judgment that my life has been easy all the way. Well, they’re wrong, and I could get angry and furious or I could see it as a story God had planned for me, as a sign that our world is deeply flawed but God has a way of working around it to bring us to Him.

I am still thankful to God and always will be, pray for me as I continue my journey in joy. This is not the old pain of ignoring my faults and drifting further from God into depression. This is the pain of growing up and facing my faults knowing that relief and peace await me once I master the storm.

Next Stop

The next stop in my great literary journey will be C.S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. Just having come from a period of five months during which I felt nothing pain and still bearing such scars, I feel it right that I examine what Mr. Lewis has to say on the subject. It's a short book, but with C.S. Lewis I take my time so as to absorb everything. Stay tuned for my thoughts as I read through and try to understand the human condition and suffering a bit more clearly. Being no stranger to hardship and struggle I have written on the subject numerous times, however all of my posts up to now respond to the pain of loss and pain of hardship, none respond to the pain of personal struggle or loneliness. It seems that a new thought process will be come a bit clearer as my break winds down. It's a great thing and something I miss, having a mind free to explore and stretch out a bit. At school I am so regimented and strict with what I do and think about that it carries over into my breaks. I miss those days where I could read some Lewis, then Augustine, and then the Bible (where it all comes from) and try to ask and answer my own questions. All the while cooking new recipes and playing baseball, of course!

Found by God

I just finished Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis. I remember walking through the cavernous “Powell’s Bookstore” in Oregon (seriously, the store occupies a square block of the city) and walking through the religious book section as a teenager who had lost his faith. I glanced down and saw a vast collection of C.S. Lewis books and picked up my small, slightly worn copy. I then devoured it in the back of the car as my family drove around Oregon on our visit to my family out West. Here I am again about three years later, still finding solace but of a different kind.

C.S. Lewis wrote something interesting about his faith, he wrote that God found him not the other way around. So often we talk about us finding God, how we need to search for Him as if He is hiding from us. Imagine that, God hiding from you! Look around, go out for a walk, climb a mountain, listen to a song, hug a friend and you will find God, my friend look around for God is around us at every moment! No, I did not find God, rather I ran from Him. For five long months I spiraled into a funk/depression/blues and I ran away from God, from responsibility, from faith. No, I did not find God, He found me. He put me in church and thundered His voice in my ear while pouring His love into my heart.

It’s a funny thing about faith, we always seem to think of it as a choice or a switch. As if entrusting the future of your soul was as simple as switching soda brands. Faith is complex, it’s ambiguous, and it’s all together miraculous. I did not choose this life, God chose it for me. He picked an angry, scared, sad child and threw him into the journey that has been the past seven (coming on eight!) years of my life.  It truly is nothing short of a miracle.

So wherever you may be, whether you are trying to find God or gave up, maybe instead of pushing yourself so hard try to think about it instead as allowing God to find you. Stop your resistance, stop the fight because it only drains you in the end. Let God find you and fill your life with joy that cannot be expressed. I always thought of myself as a decent writer, and even with all the words in the English language at my disposal I cannot even hope to express how I am feeling. No metaphor or allegory can express it, it is real, it is the feeling of being found.