Till We See the Shore...
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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A World-Weary Wail
Meet me here today, oh God
I need you to embrace the weakness of this man
Who has become a little too world weary
Too jaded, too tired of trying to be a strong man
Why Abba, my Father, do things have the tendency
Of never working out as I planned?
Teach me to love with little.
Show me the heart of the only perfect man
Let it break for what breaks yours
Stir my affections
But don't forget the emotions at hand
The shackles of yesterday
The decaying of my broken body
Brother killing brother
Lover manipulating other
For such things wear my soul thin
To a point where I cannot function
Disabled by sin
I get tired of these words
For they limit what I seek to understand
Take me beyond these fences
Where inward groanings
No longer plague the heart of this man
Take these frustrated emotions
Use them to beat me into a good man
Help me to see what really matters
Then give me courage to take action
May I not be passive
Intentional to no end
Eat, drink, and be merry
I try to, every now and then
But it has become so different
Since I've tasted the suffering of this land
Now my heart is always restless
A weighty discontentment
I now know
For the truth of the condition of man is ugly
Simply put, it makes me inexpressibly sad
But my hope in you
Simply put, it makes me inexpressibly glad
Teach me to be humble
To be patient
To love and let live
But be not conformed
May I always be restless
Knowing that I will be judged in the end
"Meaningless, meaningless!"cries the Teacher!
Remember, remember, the end.
Thursday, 03 June 2010
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A Great Quote by Teddy Roosevelt
"One of the prime dangers of civilization has always been its tendency to cause the loss of virile fighting virtues, of the fighting edge. When men get too comfortable and lead too luxurious lives, there is always a danger lest the softness eat like an acid into their manliness of fiber. The barbarian, because of the very conditions of his life, is forced to keep and develop certain hardy qualities which the man of civilization tends to lose. Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail. Oversentimentality, oversoftness, washiness, and mushiness are the great dangers of this age and of this people."
~ Theodore Roosevelt
Friday, 21 May 2010
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Currently
Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
By Philip Yancey
see relatedFrustrated with God
Sometimes, with fear and trembling, I question my salvation. I often feel anger and frustration toward God and catch myself growing cold and distant toward Him. Although I wish my relationship was God was one of pure joy, that is not the truth. I experience negative things in this relationship, which arise out of pain, disappointment, and frustration. It would be silly to think I can hide such things from an all-knowing being. I know that he wants me to discuss these feelings with Him, but I've done that many times before. I've prayed for so many things that weighed deeply on my heart. And many of these things have gone unanswered, and to further my disappointment, many of these things turned out for the worst.
I realize this post sounds terribly pessimistic, but I'm just trying to be real and honest. I do believe God has answered some of my prayers and I do recognize that I am blessed in thousands of ways. But at the same time, I am not going to hide the darker side of things from God in the name of false piety. The feelings are real.
There are dreams that never came true and have a feeling may never come true. There are loved ones and friends who never seem to change. There is that home run ball that I often prayed about smashing over the fence but it never happened. There are girls that I never did find the courage to express my feelings for, even though I prayed that God would give me the courage to do so. There are insecurities that always seem to be nagging at me, physical problems that sting like a thorn in the flesh, and sin that I always seem to be coming back to.
In my spiritual walk (perhaps a better word is struggle or even better -- fight), I reached a point where I was just fed up with it all. I was tired of not being able translate my ideals into actions. If the Spirit resides in me, why does it feel like I'm not making any progress? Why does my spiritual walk seem so cyclic? God, why don't you listen to me? Don't you care?
Probably one of most frustrating feelings of my human condition is that of helplessness, especially one that revolves around the inability to change. For example, sometimes I desperately try to muster up courage to face a fear, but I can't do it. It's as if I lacked the capacity to change myself. Indeed, this feeling of helplessness leads me to pour out my heart to God, but what am I supposed to do when I reach a state of learned helplessness, that is, I accept my inability to change and that nothing can be done to remedy the situation.
In the back of my mind, I knew that I could not reject God. He has always been my hope of better things to come. I would come back to him, but at that moment, I felt little love in our relationship. I was tired of trying to be hyper-spiritual in hope that it would make be a better person. If God is truly God, then only he has the power to change me and give me those desires and motives which I can't find. But truthfully, even if I recognized those things brewing in my soul, I doubt I was in a place where I would act upon them. To put it bluntly, I felt abandoned by God, which in return, made me feel like crap.
Is spiritual consistency possible? To some degree, I think the Christian walk will always be cyclic whereby spiritual renewal is followed by an attempt to translate ideas and passionate fervor into action and finally, a storm inevitably comes when God gives us an ego check and forces us to recognize our state of utter helplessness, total dependence upon him. We must see that we truly are beggars all, so that in our weakness, he can be strong. Less of us, more of him.
Pastor Tim Keller explains what I'm trying to say pretty darn well in the following passage:
"We think we've learned about grace, set our idols aside, reached a place where we're serving God not for what we're going to get from him but for who he is. There's a certain sense in which we spend our entire lives thinking we've reached the bottom of our hearts and finding it is a false bottom. Mature Christians are not people who have completely hit the bedrock. I do not believe that is possible in this life. Rather, they are people who know how to keep drilling and are getting closer and closer."
So how does a follower of Christ find joy in this process whereby we never seem to be able to get in touch with our authentic selves in relation to God? I don't think I really know the answer. But when I look at Scripture, I know that joy comes from the Lord, that his mercies are new each morning (Lam. 3:22-23), and that he asks me to trust in him with all my heart, to lean not on my own understanding but to acknowledge him in all that I do, and he will take care of me in the end (Prov. 3:5-6).
So like Job, after offering up some pretty irreverent lamentations, I came back to a place of simple faith and humbled myself before God and said, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know" (Job 42:3). I recognized my lack of understanding was not an excuse for a lack of trust and once again, attempted to do that which I was meant to do as best I can possibly do, while praying for a child-like humility whereby I could find delight in the little things and find joy in everyday life.
Friday, 05 March 2010
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Currently
Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters
By Timothy Keller
see relatedFavorite Quotes from Counterfeit Gods by Tim Keller
I'm a pretty quotatious guy, which probably annoys some people (stop hating), but I love how a few sentences can pack a punch and I enjoy sharing them in hope that others will take something positive away from them. So, since I have "me time" tonight and it's the beginning of spring break and I'm a bit of a nerd, the following are some of my favorite quotes that I came across while rummaging (not really reading) through the book Counterfeit Gods by one of my favorite teachers, preachers, and thinkers - Tim Keller:
"...I argued that if you are so afraid of love that you cannot have it, you are just as enslaved as if you must have it. The person who can't have it will avoid people who would be wonderful partners. The person who must have it will choose partners who are ill-fitting to them or abusive. If you are too afraid of love or too enamored by it, it has assumed godlike power, distorting your perceptions and life."
"'You're nobody till somebody loves you,'" went the popular song , and we are an entire culture that has taken it literally. We maintain the fantasy that if we find our one true soul mate, everything wrong with us will be healed. But when our expectations and hopes reach that magnitude, as Becker says, 'the love object is God.' No lover, no human being, is qualified for that role. No one can live up to that. The inevitable result is bitter disillusionment."
"The gods of moralistic religions favor the successful and the overachievers. They are the ones who climb the moral ladder up to heaven. But the God of the Bible is the one who comes down into this world to accomplish a salvation and gives us a grace we could never attain ourselves. He loves the unwanted, the weak and unloved. He is not just a king and we are the subjects; he is not just a shepherd and we are the sheep. He is a husband and we are his spouse. He is ravished with us -- even those of us whom no one else notices."
"A final test works for everyone. Look at your most uncontrollable emotions. Just as a fisherman looking for fish knows to go where the water is roiling, look for your idols at the bottom of your most painful emotions, especially those that never seem to lift, and that drive you to do things that you know are wrong. If you are angry, ask, 'Is there something here too important to me, something I must have at all costs?' Do the same thing with strong fear or despair and guilt. Ask yourself, 'Am I so scared, because something in my life is being threatened that I think is a necessity when it is not? Am I so down on myself because I have lost or failed at something that I think is a necessity when it is not?' If you are overworking , driving yourself into the ground with frantic activity, ask yourself, 'Do I feel that I must have this thing to be fulfilled and significant?' When you ask questions like that, when you 'pull your emotions up by the roots,' as it were, you will often find your idols clinging to them."
"We think we've learned about grace, set our idols aside, reached a place where we're serving God not for what we're going to get from him but for who he is. There's a certain sense in which we spend our entire lives thinking we've reached the bottom of our hearts and finding it is a false bottom. Mature Christians are not people who have completely hit the bedrock. I do not believe that is possible in this life. Rather, they are people who know how to keep drilling and are getting closer and closer."
I love this guy's heart and mind.
Saturday, 16 January 2010
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Currently
Ocean Eyes
By Owl City
see relatedA Living Hope
I think I've reached a point in my life where I'm no longer restless about deep philosophical questions about God as I attend to them more out of interest rather than out of some perceived rational duty to prove my theistic belief. This does not mean that my intellectual pursuit of God has ultimately been of no value for the strength of certain arguments still provide comfort in the face of doubt and serve as a means to beckon others to the awesome reality of God's love for them. I really don't think that I can just stop believing in God. Unless someone were to show me the body of Jesus Christ or something else that was in-your-face obvious, I don't feel like I have the ability to muster up the willpower to dismiss my spiritual beliefs as being founded upon a bunch of lies. If you think this is a crutch, well read my previous blog entry por favor.
My heart knows a love that it is willing to die for, but more importantly, live for. I do not live for any hope of a romantic relationship, a big family, a successful career, or leaving some sort of lasting legacy. Such things are not bad things to hope for or intentionally pursue but rather, they are bad things to live for, that is, they are bad things to see as life giving because they lead to self-obsession. For sometimes we hope in things that do not come to pass or if they do become a reality, we realize that our hearts are still restless. When we get what we dreamed of, we ask, "Is this it?" For nothing compares to the greatness of knowing God and as St. Augustine writes, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee..”
Jesus Christ is a living hope, which means that such a hope is not passive. It is not a hope that is contingent upon your will power. It does not demand that you be charming, good looking, intelligent, or competent. Rather, it is an active hope that seeks you, finds you, and then refines you. No, I want to reword that last phrase. It is an active hope that takes a dead man and makes him alive forever more.
There are no means by which a dead person can win over the heart of God. It is God who gives life. It is God who saves. It is God who beckons us forward in the darkest of times. It is God who has lavished love upon us and calls us his sons and daughters. It is God who has promised to never leave us. It is God who never changes. It is God who loves me so much that he has forfeited glory to come after me. It is God who has found me and is sustaining me for "he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6).
At the end of the day, my heart finds a life-sustaining peace in the fact that God is still God who's got the whole world in his hands and those same hands that hold the world (as the song goes), hold my heart. God is big enough to take your heart and transform it, pushing you to do things that you never dreamed that you were capable of doing. Pray about it. For he will use you in weakness and speak to your storm.
TheSilenceHeals
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- Name: Jeremy
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- Gender: Male
- Member Since: 4/4/2008
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I am trying to be the best that I was meant to be. Everyday is a struggle to get overmyself, to need people less so that I can love them more. For my identity is not based on the need to be perceived as a good person but rather on God accepting me in Christ. And that reality is huge.
Pulse
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Have some ideas to blog about, but I can't seem to find the time.
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Feeling jaded. Hate this feeling. Yuck.
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It feels so good to know that I am just passing through this world into something glorious. I can't wait to see Jesus.
