I'm Just Me

Lately I've been feeling a bit... small. Misunderstood. Grumpy. Irritable. Far from use in the Kingdom. I wrote the following as an exercise some time back when I was in a similar place. I'm posting it now so I can bring it up often in these days of myopia and reread it until the light of the truth of God's love of and call for me blind me from myself and give me clearer vision again of the life offered me. The life I, on my best days, find myself even now walking in. The life that extends into eternity and finds its source in Jesus Himself. Here's the confession and the promise...

And I'm just me. I'm not a spiritual giant. I have no special real estate on God. I'm often irritable, grumpy, and unloving toward others. Mostly because I often fail to fall into the wild, crazy, furious love of God in the face of Christ who has come so far in pursuit of me. But even that doesn't keep me from His love. I'm not always passionate in seeking after God - often lukewarm and displeptic. I don't spell everything correctly. I sometimes don't make sense when I talk. I get confused, weary, jaded, and cynical. My teeth aren't as white as I want them to be. I am skinny and not well-built. I can be exceptionally lazy. I tend to whine and complain when comforts I feel I deserve somehow pass me by. My mind can be a haze of jaded and cynical thoughts, usually resulting in biting judgementalism toward others. I can lie and steal and hate. But somewhere, down beneath all this that makes me a broken and fallen human being, deep within my core, dwells the Living God, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End, who, in all His annoyingly and life-giving persistent love makes all things new. He heals and restores and rescues and brings life again. Even in me. One day I will be like Him. But that hasn't yet been revealed. I’m on my way, but I haven't made it yet. Not yet. But it’s coming. And one day He will take my hand, and pull me up, and all that I once feared that wouldn’t happen and dreaded that would will melt away and all these illusions I’ve held to will fade into the eyes of my God as I peer into His glory. A glory even I will share in. A glory generously poured out for me, so that I will know life. And in these days between now and then, I get to participate in that Something Big. I get to love like He loves. I get His eyes when He wipes mine with mud. I get to live big and live free because, even though I am so far from perfect, I am His. Forever. Promised. Sealed. Delivered. I get to know God and let that be my greatest and truest desire. Whom have I in heaven but Him, and what else could I desire here? And when all is said and done, that’s all I’ll be able to hold to anyway. And that’s so much that I won’t have room to hold onto anything else. Amen, and come, Lord Jesus.

A Confession and a Plea

There’s a lot that I need to process, to unpack, to bring up into conversation with God. Some of it I already have. Some He has brought up with me. Some I have faced through unavoidable circumstances, reminding me of what Frederick Buechner said about God speaking to us through the daily events of our lives. But now, I’m not even quite sure where to begin.

Maybe this is the best place to start… Jesus, what… where do we go? What do you want to speak to me? What do I need to hear?

Richard Foster says that we should pray about whatever it is we and God are doing together. And so it’s here that I have a confession. I’ve bought into the subtle notion that there’s not a whole lot Jesus is doing here, with me, in and with and through my life and marriage and home, that the real work of God is out there somewhere in major ministries and movements. Of course, that flies in the face of Paul’s revelation that we are to be conformed to the image of Christ, “predestined” – destined! – to that end. That’s our destiny. More that that, it goes against the very present reality and promise of the Evangel, that God is here, engaged, inviting me to live life, and live it large. Not meaning to go out there somewhere, but to “come,” to be home with Him, to pursue and seek Him, to learn the new language of the New Way, to be conformed to His image and transformed into His likeness – by His grace and to His glory.

I’ve been seeking the Lord God on a particular decision, needing so much to hear Him say to go either this way or that, and I’ve been frustrated and angry for not being able to hear Him speak. Is He silent on the matter? Am I unable to hear Him? Is there too much warfare or noise pollution around me? In the midst of these looming questions, my wife broke in with a brilliant thought last night: “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question. Maybe God doesn’t want you to ask which way to go, but rather what His heart is for you.” The implication is, of course, that His heart for me is where He wants me to go. It leads me to the freedom to follow Him wherever it is He’s going.

And so I need to hear from you, Father, not about next month or the one after that. Not even about tomorrow. I need to hear Your heart for me. I need to lean close to hear Your heartbeat. Help me hear You. I am Your sheep, and I hear your voice. I am Your servant and son. What’s more, I am Your friend in whom You confide. Reveal to me what You are doing and what Your desire is. Reveal Your heart for me. Show me the way, Jesus.

Amen.

Welcome Home!

When it's all said and done, I'll stand before the Living God and He'll ask me, "Did we know each other?" When that's asked of me, I want there to be a glean in His eye, and a widening grin come across his face before we both burst out laughing, He runs to me and knocks me down with a tackle-hug, looks me square into my eyes with that soul-piercing, all-knowing, all-loving intensity of His, and says (barely, before He starts laughing again so hard He can hardly get it out), "Welcome Home, my dear friend. Welcome Home! Come, enter into the joy of the Kingdom with us."

And then life, real and full, will begin...

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