Sign o' the times

I don't really know who reads this blog, which on one hand is a little disturbing since I have little doubt there's a lot of "I know that guy, and he was a jerk to me, so how can he be talking about Jesus on here?!" stuff going down--but on the other hand, it's also a part of me holding myself accountable. People who knew me in past years, however, are probably surprised that I don't spend much, if any time addressing politics and current events. Not so long ago I was something of a political junky; I was relatively active in campus politics, even serving a term on SGA at my undergrad school and taking part in College Republicans both there and at UNT, I listened to a lot of talk radio and spent a lot of time blogging on political matters. But this blog, relatively new compared to my previous efforts, contains little to no political content, and I'm in something of a mood to address why that is.

I became somewhat burned out in terms of dealing with political issues I would say some time between the 2004 and 2006 elections. My side had ostensibly won, but I was unhappy with the direction I saw the country and my party going. Fired up going into the elections, conservatives had become apathetic and the party leadership was more concerned with establishing some sort of permanent majority with (R) behind it than being actual leaders--putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. I was also struggling to understand why I should care about particular matters that to some seemed crucial. Why should I care if some school or courtroom posts the 10 Commandments, or if a particular state legalizes gay marriage? Not to say that I didn't or don't have opinions on those, but they didn't strike me as things that required major cultural battles. In short, I had come into the knowledge that political views of any kind, no matter how logical or right they might be, had nothing to do with achieving any sort of real joy or fulfillment in life.

When God pulled me back in that day in November of 2007, when He grabbed me by the proverbial collar through Matt Chandler's voice and said "You are going to go here, and you are going to bury yourself in Me among these people," God revealed that of course those things were unfulfilling--they could never be. If I clung to earthly matters as though they were crucial and eternal, as though I was the one in real control instead of God, all I would succeed in doing would have been to frustrate myself. I don't have my old blog up anymore, but I do recall posting things to that effect, that I didn't see how things could end up in a good place. The world is certainly becoming a darker place, as wars, famines, diseases, political oppression, enemies foreign and domestic, and quite simply the pure wickedness of man grow with each passing day. I was brought up listening to those who preached optimism, but I had forgotten that it is not in man that such optimism should be placed.

"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet."--Matthew 24:5-7

"Aslan is on the move!"--Mr. Beaver, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Placing my hope in man simply confirmed what I knew about the Bible and God--that is, that this world is sinful, and that it will get much, much worse before it gets better. But even as things grow dark God continues His great work, breaking down doors to faith in places once thought inaccessible to Christianity, not through war and cultural suppression but through love and mercy, and the faithful work of those whose own hearts were changed by the Gospel. By trying my hardest to battle purely on man's field I put myself in an indefensible position--man, as is his nature, will naturally seek out the easiest way, the least opposition. Even when man chooses the harder way, he only does it so that he may come out the other side able to boast, and that rarely ends well.

I still consider myself a conservative. I am deeply troubled with the idea that the President wants to transform huge chunks of the economy into subsets of the federal government. Anyone with the ability to observe can simply look at other countries who do the same to know that it cannot succeed. Raising taxes has never worked and it will not, no matter how you justify it. I will stand up in a moment and say that I oppose his plans. But I will submit every word to the Word, remembering that even the leaders I see as ultimately destructive are established by God--not that I cannot vote against or oppose them, but that I recognize my losses in elections are for His reasons and the greater good of all things. That raises a lot of new and hard questions, but if I trust God, it means I have to trust Him even in those moments where it seems like everything is going wrong.

I will also oppose those on any side who attempt to use the Bible as a weapon to support a particular political agenda. C.S. Lewis spoke against this in Mere Christianity; as soon as you make the Bible a means to your end, rather than living your life for God and seeking Him as the center of all things, you go very, very wrong.

This doesn't mean I will never express political viewpoints, but it does mean that I'm not here to rant. The truth of the Gospel is first, and everything else, especially myself, is secondary.

Joy in the midst of battle

I've been going to the men's Bible study at church Tuesday mornings, which means much earlier mornings on Tuesday, but it's been very good. We're doing a study from John Piper's Desiring God network, called God Is The Gospel. Part of it is watching Piper speak on the subject at hand on video, and in the days leading up to the day we come together we spend time individually with workbooks answering questions on particular aspects, which helps prepare us more for what he's going to speak on. This Tuesday he was speaking about prayer, about its role in the life of a believer and what it is and is not supposed to be. It's a hot subject to be sure, whether you profess to be a Christian or not.

One point he made is that scripturally, prayer is the equivalent of a radio in the battlefield--we are, as the Bible mentions frequently, at war with an enemy that is not flesh and blood but is spiritual, and one that has an advantage in that we were born on the enemy's side and therefore have a natural bent towards going that way. In prayer we are constantly deferring to our Commander for instructions, for truth, for the way through especially in those times when otherwise our natures would lead us astray. The problem (especially in American Christianity where we've been conditioned to believe that the war we're involved in is over some sort of external morality rather than over our own hearts) is that as he put it, we've turned prayer into a "domestic intercom." We're not submitting our lives to God and seeking His direction in prayer, we're calling the bellboy to bring us some room service because things are a little uncomfortable. One thought that struck me, and that I thought would be good to dive into here from both the Word and from his writings would be: "How can you preach 'Christian hedonism' and then turn around and say that our lives are war? How can we be enjoying God when we're fighting?"

These aren't mutually exclusive concepts. On the contrary: what we are fighting for, is joy itself, and I'm not just saying that because it's the subtitle of the Piper book I'm reading right now, "When I Don't Desire God." As Ephesians 6:12 says, I'm not fighting against external physical enemies, even though it would seem that there are many--but no, those who are indifferent or even hostile to Christianity are those who I'm called to love and carry the gospel to, not fight as though it's me or them. My battle is "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." It is also, as Paul says in Romans, against myself:

Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Cognitively, I know that the joy I experience in closeness with God is far, far better than anything else. The moments I have tasted that joy have resulted in real growth and transformation as I have desired in prayer for a long time now. Yet a big part of me is still tied deeply to earthly things--whether they are explicitly sinful, as in lustful desires or pride as I wrote about yesterday, or just things I have used to kill time over the years. Even now as I write this it's hard to not want to stop in the middle of it to check Facebook, or go eat something, or just randomly wander around the web, let alone the temptation to venture into the darker parts of the Internet.

The thing is, though, even if I become this perfectly disciplined church boy who loves nothing more than putting on my finest clothes and singing hymns in church, is that the solution? Certainly not--for one thing, a church service is not the wholeness of life in God. Besides, I don't wear suits to church (though maybe I will one of these days...just to mix it up). Likewise, if I did nothing but sit around absorbing theological texts and memorizing Scripture, would that mean I was leading the life God intended? Again, not at all (though in their own ways those things do stir my affections for God, but they are also areas that I must always submit to Him because they can also become prideful things for me: "Oh, look at me, I'm so smart reading these big books and whatever the current cool author is among people at the Village." I want to be reading them because God's leading me to do so, not to make myself look churchy.)

So: what the hell am I supposed to do? If even the good things in my life can be twisted, and in fact I am fighting tooth and nail every day so that I may experience the joy of God's presence in my life in spite of the fact that my heart still desires what is wrong, what am I supposed to do about it? How can I fix that?

I can't.

The more I wrestle with it, the more I'm forced to the conclusion that all I can do is what I'm doing, but continually, every day: going to God in prayer, asking Him to heal my sinful heart; seeking Him in the Word; I have to be watchful for what enters my mind that it doesn't lead me to selfish and sinful lines of thinking, and of what I allow myself to ponder, whether it's an image that will drive me to lust or an incident that will result in me being anything other than the servant of those around me. All these things I must do through difficulty, because they don't come naturally. I am also thankful that I don't have to do them alone. God has put me in a house with two other men who are likewise pursuing joy through battle, and in a church full of the same. God has brought us together for encouragement even when the enemy strikes--even when we are the enemy.

The hope of all

Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must law down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor--that is the only way out of our "hold." This process of surrender--this movement full speed astern--is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person--and he would not need it.--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, ch 4: The Perfect Penitent

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.--Romans 15:8,9

"Repent" is a word that pretty much everyone even only peripherally aware of Christianity, at least in the West, is aware of--often, because you hear some crazy guy on the street corner shouting it while wearing a sandwich board sign opining that the end of the world is nigh. But it's a key word, perhaps the key word to a believer, as it is the beginning of forgiveness and the birth of hope and faith in our lives. Through repentance we come to love--to experience God's great love for us, to comprehend that this love is completely unwarranted yet offered in spite of ourselves, and through that, to loving God as He calls us to, with every ounce of our being. From that we become men and women who love those around us, even those we don't know, and those who have wronged us.

Repenting is something I've had trouble with since I was a kid, and it certainly hasn't gotten easier as I've gotten older. You have the things you do in life, good and bad (at least by the typical cultural definitions) and over time you start to look at those things as a part of you. The problem is, those things for me stopped being supports in my life--they became anchors, dead weight holding me down, frustrating me, inspiring me to spend lots of time looking backwards at my youth and glory days, and worrying about the future and what it would bring. But the idea of letting go of anything seemed contrary to what I should do to survive. What were those things? Well, there were a lot of different ones, and God is still revealing things to me, but a few big ones: my participation and achievement in the world of drum corps, my continuing education and my career in general, and the big one: my independence and self-absorbtion--or in a simpler term, my pride.

Since I was a kid I've been very independent. I am the stereotypical "first child" (which is good, since that's what I am), charging out headfirst after whatever it was I was pursuing. But it became something I made more than it was supposed to be, and in the end I used it to make much of myself, and little of God. So over the course of several years, God slowly pulled my supports/anchors away from me. My participation as a staff member with a couple different junior corps, which to me was supposed to lead to a fruitful career running a hornline, led instead only to frustration, and I have not felt God move my heart to similar participation since then. I was forced to leave school in a combination of academic and financial failure, leaving me worried about the long-term consequences for my career; my only performing work was coming as a member of a band with a history of turmoil and headed for more--and at that time God began to convict me of exactly how sinful I was. I was somebody who had been brought up with a foundation of Christianity, who understood it cognitively and believed it, but my heart had not been substantively transformed by the Gospel. I was still living in sin.

The biggest realizing in the course of repenting for me has been that you're not simply repenting of a list of actions (though for most it starts there). What I am repenting of is the state of my heart. My heart lives in dire opposition to God, to submission of any kind let alone to Him. It is, as Jeremiah 17:9 says, "deceitful...and desperately sick." And there is nothing of my own strength that I can do about it; even if I manage to be "good" in the sense that I don't do what is culturally or even biblically considered bad, that accomplishes nothing. The law brings only conviction, after all; it does not bring commendation to those who manage not to break it, and in all likelihood doing so would simply make me a self-righteous hypocrite, just as selfish with what God gave me as I would be if I was buried in some other sin.

Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.--Luke 17:33

Jesus lived, and died, as a man who had surrendered his whole being to God. Of course, he was able to do this because he was God, and therefore was aware in full of the joy that comes with being in His presence. But that is what makes God's mercy a twofold act of righteousness: 1) God is merciful on us because He allowed His Son to absorb His wrath for our sins, and 2) He gave us a model for what it truly means to submit and live for Him. There is so much more to it that I seek to understand, but I do praise Him for my salvation, and for bringing me to a place of submission, to where I could understand that loving my own life above Him was only a guarantee that I would die completely, but in surrendering it to Him I would find real life as Jesus demonstrated in His resurrection. I crave more, I need more, but at the same time I am satisfied that He will show me in due time. I take joy in that longing, in that desire for God if you will, because it is the only desire that leads to the true fullness of joy, rather than ultimate disappointment and frustration.

Make it stop

A "Friends" movie?

Really?

Whose heart needs to get staked to let this terrible show finally die?

Heart matters

Every day in the course of reading the Scriptures and praying, I am forced to come back to the question of how seriously I take my sin. Not the external actions, but the demands of my heart to do those things, the bent in my nature that drives me towards the things that hurt me and pull me away from the fullness of joy in God. The only conclusion I can come to is that I don't take it seriously enough. I have been more successful in battling it of late, but I still fear living in true openness and confession of what I struggle with even though I know, on every level, what sort of joy is set before me. I'm writing this perhaps as more of a reminder to myself than anything.

When I'm face to face with sin it pulls at me. It's not unattractive in its way--after all, why do something if it doesn't appeal to you? Whether it's lust in thinking about a woman or wanting to look at pornography, pride in asserting my own will over God's or desiring to be a king instead of a servant to the people who are around me, or any of the other myriad of sins that my heart would or does perpetrate, I see the appeal at the time...but even in that I see the danger and the result. I know where it will drive my heart and my mind, and what sort of person I'll become in my actions--not one I am proud of by any means.

When I surrender to my sinful nature instead of fighting it, I become a man filled with fear--not "Oh no, God's gonna punish me now cuz I was naughty," but just the fear of everything in life. Fear of the loss of control, fear of the loss of--well, anything and everything. It becomes almost a level of paranoia, of me trying desperately to hold onto what's not really mine in the first place. When I surrender I find myself pulled away from God--not pushed away, but that I pulled myself away in my own pride. Every step of the way from there is marked with frustration and anger, and even in those times when I'm just wandering in the desert and I try to pray I just can't find the words. I end up feeling like I'm just saying stuff to try to make myself feel better.

Let me clarify: this is not "I committed a single sin, so therefore God has cast me out." What I'm describing is where I have discovered myself after allowing myself to enter a pattern of repeated sin, and tried to salve the pain of it with more of the same. It's where I brought myself, and where God rescued me from by His Spirit, convicting me, moving me to confess and be open, reminding me to be open-handed with all that I have because it's not mine. I thank God that he pulled me from that place. It's in meditating on this and on the fact that my salvation has not one bloody thing to do with my own goodness but instead rests entirely on Christ, on the cross, that I find the greatest peace and strength in my life.

When I do focus on this, looking down the road to God and hoping for Him above all things, I find myself able to understand why Paul said of the fruit of the Spirit, "against such things there is no law." (Gal. 5:23) If I want to throw myself into all the stuff that feels good now that's always an option--but in those things I am putting myself back up to judgment by the law, and in that there is absolutely no hope of passing. I cannot grow closer to Christ while I seek in my heart and through my deeds to do and think what is wicked.

The closeness with God I find in the Body of Christ, the deep longing in my soul for more and the delight I want to take in him is what I crave more of, on a level I can't put into words that would adequately describe it. I want to be the sort of man who in all things fully fits the concept of the title I put on this blog. It's easy for me to take pleasure in God when things are good and I'm working and can pay my bills. As terrible as the idea sounds, I pray that God will mold me into a man who can be faced with the greatest loss of his life--whatever that may be--and in that moment find his greatest joy, his only real joy, in knowing that God is still in control, that His hand is still guiding everything and that there is nothing that happens no matter how difficult or painful that does not work for the best. I don't know what that is going to look like in my life...I have to be honest, I'm afraid to find out. But that is the sort of man I know I want to be, more than anything else, and I pray for the strength to know that day and to know on that day that God is great, that He is good and does good, and that He is more valuable than anything.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:15-23)

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
"Where is your God?"
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God. (Psalms 42:1-6)

Let it be the end

There is a particular course of events that I haven't gone into detail here about, nor do I plan to. Those close to me know what I'm referring to; if you don't, I'm afraid you'll have to stay in the dark. It involves people I was once close to, and my prayer is that regardless of the outcome tomorrow, that it would be the end of this. Here's what I posted last time around, I think it's still fitting.

Father, as I sit here on the eve of what I hope will be the end of a lot of frustration, I pray for the ability to forgive. I don't want to be hanging on to bitterness anymore than I want those who have caused it to hang on to it. It hurts me and eats at me, and I want to give it to You, to leave it at the foot of the cross and go forth into tomorrow and beyond forgiving and forgiven--not in a sense of smarminess and a desire to show up anyone, but in genuine love. I ask that You let Your Spirit stir in me and bring me to that genuine love...without Your strength I am a frustrated, bitter man angry at the world and the people around me because I don't have what I want. With You I find that none of those things I want are as desirable as You, and in You I find real peace.

I feel like I'm in a different place now in my heart than I was when I wrote that. I have a better understanding of what it looks like in my life to love my neighbor, and to bless those who persecute me, yet it's still a fitting moment to turn to God for strength. Whatever happens, I pray that He will let this be the end of this chapter, and the beginning of forgiveness and reconciliation.

I've written about this in private a couple times and that word keeps coming to me; I think there's a reason for that. Nevertheless, I trust God to do everything in His own time. I just hope that He does allow this page to be turned at last.

A steady course requires a qualified Pilot

Be not afraid when a man becomes rich, when the glory of his house increases. For when he dies he will carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him. For though, while he lives, he counts himself blessed--and though you get praise when you do well for yourself--his soul will go to the generation of his fathers, who will never again see light. Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish. Psalms 49:16-20

In estimating the credibility of the doctrine two principles ought to be observed. In the first place we must remember that the actual moment of present pain is only the centre of what may be called the whole tribulational system which extends itself by fear and pity. Whatever good effects these experiences have are dependent upon the centre; so that even if pain itself was of no spiritual value, yet, if fear and pity were, pain would have to exist in order that there should be something to be feared and pitied. And that fear and pity help us in our return to obedience and charity is not to be doubted. Everyone has experienced the effect of pity in making it easier for us to love the unlovely--that is, to love men not because they are in any way naturally agreeable to us but because they are our brethren. The beneficence of fear most of us have learned during the period of "crises" that led up to the present war. My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear.--C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Ch. 6: Human Pain

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother.'" And he said to him, "Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth." And Jesus looking at him, loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were amazed at his words. but Jesus said to them again, "Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God." Peter began to say to him, "See we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first."--Mark 10:17-31

A lot has happened to me over the course of the summer. Traveling and performing was a big feature for the first half; though slow recently, it's about to pick up again. I've been struggling to make ends meet and searching for jobs. I wasn't feeling very optimistic in the currently climate, but all I could do was pray and ask for patience, and trust that God would provide. He had already provided me with a new home and a landlord who understood the plight of the post-collegiate, as well as a family that loves me and a church family that has been there for me through my tough times.

God provided new work for me in the form of a job at Brook Mays, a store that has, in a sense, returned from the dead; formerly a huge chain of music stores, a run-in with a much larger store chain resulted in legal action and bankruptcy, but a new company has taken on the name and now I am working in retail sales at one of the stores. I'm out of the pizza game (seemingly) for good, which is fine with me; business had been dropping off and with it hours. There are other things going on with the music front, though I'm not at liberty to be specific. However, it's likely I'll have more news before the end of the year.

This summer has been one with a lot of pain and difficulty, and little time to relax and enjoy anything. Even times when I would go out to do something fun, it was always tainted by nagging concerns in the back of my mind about what bill I'd be missing a payment on next. I had to combat it by simply letting go--not of working hard, but of worrying, which is no simple matter. It has been a drawn out process involving what every other experience that trains one in faith does: prayer, studying the Scripture, and letting the Spirit lead me to an understanding of what God's doing and to provide me with a measure of the peace that passes understanding.

At the end of this what I have been left with is a deep and abiding desire for more growth, but also a concern for the future. I know myself, and I know how easily I can fall to temptation. If things go as they might, will success prove more destructive than the pain and frustration of being stuck with mounting debt and no apparent way out? Again, though, this is an area where I ought to trust God to do what He will to achieve His ends, but I wish I could simply elect to follow Him and have that be that. As Lewis said, I know full well when I am going to start heading back towards what I shouldn't; why does it take pain to drive me back? When I get hold of the wheel it is my tendency to steer hither and yon towards whatever part of the horizon looks the most attractive, even as Jesus stands quietly beside me, warning me of the rocks beneath the waves.

I pray continually for a renewed heart that is truly that of a Christian hedonist, one that takes its fullest pleasure in God and doing what is pleasing to Him. No matter what happens, I know that the work God does in my life will ultimately lead to that. I just wish, like any child waiting to be stabbed in the arm by the vaccination needle, that it didn't have to hurt so much.