All for You

Last week ended very well, and the weekend was fantastic. Thank You for that.

Right now, I'm facing a challenge that seems to come and go throughout my life. It's not a bad thing, and I'm not complaining. What I'm saying is come help me deal with this. Throughout my everyday life, I've got things that I'm responsible for. And I want them to go well. Classes, tennis, Exodus, a marriage, a family, things like these. I don't think there is any way in which success in these areas is a bad thing.

But sometimes, my desire for success in these areas takes me away from You. For example, this weekend my wife and I got away. Went up to Michigan, stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, enjoyed one another's company and relaxed. It was a really great weekend to focus on the relationship that we have with one another, and it went really well. But I didn't focus on my relationship with You very well.

I can hear Your answer loud and clear, and it would have been awesome to have this conversation before I went away with my wife. Integrate You into these other desires. When focusing on my wife, we probably both could have focused on You. It would have sharpened our connection with one another even more. I mean, we prayed together, but think about what couples devotions or even just talking about our relationships with You would have done to bring us closer.

Of course, You are kind of an awkward topic to just bring up. And if things aren't going well, or one of us is feeling distant from You then... it is really hard to talk about. And that's with my wife. What happens when I try to integrate You into the tennis team, and no one cares.

But I know how You work. I've seen it before. If I ask You to be there, You will be there. You are always looking to be with us, make Yourself known. You are scary powerful, and so I pray that You enter these situations and show us Your favor. But right now, before I forget or do anything else, I want You to be the focus of these specific desires of mine, these areas of my life. I want them to be all for You, and then You can define what success means within them as You work among us.

1. My marriage.
2. My family.
3. Exodus.
4. Bethany Christian Tennis.
5. My classes.

Be the center of each of those areas. Be my affirmation and my end goal. Take these things of my life and "let them be ever, only, all for Thee."

Humanity's Dryness or Your Blessed Stream

Convicting passage today that I read Lord.  Convicting but a little bit sad I think.  It is from Jeremiah 17:5-8, and really much of the rest of the chapter and those chapters that follow.  Basically, it says that those who depend on humans for their strength will be like bushes in the wasteland.  But those who count on You will be like trees planted by streams of water, quenched and continually renewed.

I am struck by how completely descriptive this passage is, and dead on.  As someone who thrives on affirmation and support, this past winter has been very dry and lonely for me in the area of religious strength.  I feel like I've had very little affirmation of the religious ceremonies I was in charge of, or of the way that I was pursuing You, or of much about myself in general.  I didn't have help in these areas either.  As a result, I felt dry (and I'm still fighting this battle in many ways).  I felt in every way like a bush in the wasteland, parched for water, brittle in every limb.  I felt like criticism would snap my dry branches, like a bit of flame would set my whole self on fire because of my lack of life and water, and I also felt easily influenced (that is to say, like a tumbleweed, pushed about by all the winds.)

It seems to me that we should be able to rely on human support.  The love of my wife, the cries of joy from my son, the steadfast friendship of my Exodus friends and pastors... but we can't.  And it's not even that these people in my life weren't trying.  Some of them were.  But we all get to times, as humans, where we don't know the right words to say, we don't have enough time, we're distracted by our own problems, and we remove ourselves from that to help with the refreshing of others.  We also have times where, to borrow eucharistic language, we are not be poured into by others so it is really hard to pour out.  So we fail each other.  I'd like that to be different.

It occurs to me that the proper way of things, that we even teach in Exodus, is that God  fills us, then we pour into others.  I have certainly wandered this winter from my times of being filled by You.  There are so many ways that You renew me, from the wonderful words of Scripture, to works of art composed of You, to simple times of prayer and reflection, or even the prayers here on the site.  

Remind me daily to live in Your affirmation, and to live next to Your stream.  I am going to need strength in the days and weeks to come, please provide this.  Speak to me, speak through me.

Lent: Day 15

So, I really must take this opportunity to praise You Lord. Yesterday I wrote how I was feeling a lack of worth in the things that I do, and it was causing me to have all sorts of shame and doubt. So, yesterday I jumped on the elliptical machine for my normal hour run, and I turned on a Mars Hill podcast. In the teaching, the preacher (Tim Green) was noting what one of his friends said about when the devil attacks you with the things we do wrong, the ways we are worthless, and so on. My ears perked right up, because, as I've said, that has felt like me. How did he say we are supposed to respond?

"That is irrelevant."

It doesn't matter that I fail a billion and one times throughout my life. I am God's son and he is pleased with me. It's amazing how this takes me all the way back to this past summer, when I was reading Sacred Rhythms, and Ruth Haley Barton suggested in the book that we should each develop a breath prayer, that we say throughout the day. It can be calming and encouraging. So, I prayed about that one day while I ran, and the prayer I came up with was, "This is my son, I am well pleased."

Like a dope, I gave it up after a week. I always do that. It's fun and exciting at the beginning but so hard to follow through. So now here I am almost a year later needing that exact prayer. You know me well...and today I am full of praise for that!

Your son,
Matthew.