Burning Ones

OK, we’re going to be doing an experiment tonight called brevity. We’ll see how I do.

God has been highlighting an extremely simple thing to me lately.

I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

I’ve been gripped with an understanding that I am a sinner, and that I always will be. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather be a tax collector beating on my chest saying, “God, HAVE MERCY ON ME!” than to have all the pomp and glitter and self-assuredness that comes along with being one who is righteous. I don’t ever want to look at another human being like there anything less than I am. This shouldn’t be hard, because as far as I’m concerned, I am the worst of all sinners.

God is relentlessly kind to me. Unceasingly kind! He will not stop giving me grace. And every time I tell him that I’m not worth the price he paid for me and that I’ll forget him in the next five minutes, he sits with me as I weep and puts his arm around me. And then I go and forget him. And I don’t publish his glory to my friends and I don’t tell of his mercy and forgiveness to everyone I see. The fact is, I am the worst of sinners because despite God’s relentless kindness towards me, I still find it in me to snub him at every turn.

Part of my journey right now is allowing that to have it’s perfect effect in me. If I realize this, that God himself will never stop loving me, despite my failures and my out and out spitting and vomiting all over him in my sin and destitution, then it drives me to say, I don’t have to be ashamed. I’m not disqualified by my sin today. I’m not disqualified because I have a terrible capacity for lust or because I loose my temper with my wife or because I become prideful around other Christians or because, secretly, I really think there will come a time when I don’t need God anymore to be worthy. God remembers that we’re dust! Our sin is always before him. We don’t shock him, we shock ourselves! This allows me to run to God when I snubbed him a moment ago. And I don’t need to understand why he let’s me do this! I don’t have to chide him and tell him he’s giving me better than I deserve and that really, if he would take another look at me, he’d send me to hell like I deserve and remove his grace from my head and allow my sin to be revealed to the world where I would be mocked and ridiculed and crucified like I should be. I can’t just rest, easy in the fact that he’s chosen to love me, and I can’t do a thing about it.

I love him. I’m weak, and I’ll forget him in 5 minutes and trade his glory for the works of my hands or some even more worthless thing. But right now, I love him. With everything that I am.

Well, I almost had a perfect blogging record save for last Sunday :-).

This week I learned how to knit and use my sewing machine- so I’m knitting (or rather finishing) a scarf that Tim’s mom had started for him before she died, and will shortly be hemming Timmy’s pants.

We went to Texas Roadhouse last night with my family and I’d probably give it a 7/10. My brother, who didn’t know that you were supposed to throw your peanut shells on the ground, turns to me and says, “Jess, this place is really dirty, hehe. The poor girl who was bringing us our food had just given my dad his plate and the whole tray of food fell and smashed to the ground. Beans, steaks and broken plate pieces everywhere! She looked really upset but we were all trying to assure her it was ok, haha.

So it’s all decided- we’re going to Kansas City in October! From the 7th to the 14th- YAY! We’ll be staying with Alex and Jaclyn for most of the trip- it’ll be good to be right across the street from the prayer room and seeing them.

For a deeper update I still have no idea what’s going on with me or what’s wrong, or what I am doing wrong. I still feel like I don’t understand the core of Christianity or God or what He’s doing. And sadly, I think I’m still offended at Him for not giving me what I wanted. I always sing that Misty Edwards song “Baptize My Heart” with the lyrics “I don’t want to be offended, no, I don’t want to be offended, when it’s all coming down” with such a determination that I would never deliberately be offended at God. Well, here am I, deliberately offended, and the moon hasn’t even turned red.

We’ll be going to the leadership summit while we’re at Kansas City, and I’ve never been, but Tim says there’s a time where their prophetic team prophesies over you… and I’m secretly hoping that some random holy man will be able to tell me everything and I’ll be all fixed and ready to go :-) Haha, my theology is horrrrrible!

So if any of you want to pray for me I would be most grateful :-)

So I feel a million times better. Nothing has really changed I just feel much more confident that God might love me (which makes me feel like I got the whole love-of-God thing figured out, which is evidence enough that I know less than nothing). I also find that I understand a little bit more how much God values failure. He doesn’t give a lick about it. So I am just going to continue to fail until I die and will happily do so. He really can’t expect anything more of me.. it’s how he made me. Silly me! And all this time I thought I was made to be perfect.

I’m still trying to figure out how to “feel” like the ash that I am without being depressed about my sinful, hypocritical nature.

I felt very foolish this week when my aunt, Lynn, offered me a job at her after-school daycare from 2-6 during the school year. I was very excited about the offer, and even though I wasn’t sure whether God wanted me to do it or not I was ecstatic about the risk of being wrong, probably being wrong, and then failing. But it would be ok and I wouldn’t beat myself up about it because God actually might love me.

Well, I might have led her onto thinking I was going to accept so when I actually prayed about it and got a very clear “no” I panicked and called her up and told her that I was sorry that I couldn’t accept the invitation due to the fact that I don’t have a car and thus my commitment would be lax. Well, she told me she could possibly let me use her car.

Buggers.

::shakes fist at God::

So I called her back after a huge debate about it with Tim (who convinced me that it was actually wrong of me to lie) and I apologized for lying and asked her forgiveness… and told her that I had prayed about it and didn’t feel right about it.

Now, this has happened MANY times before in the past where I’ve “blamed” God for not “letting” me do something. Everything from working for my grandmother for a day, eating dinner with my family and going to college. So this may add to their “Jess-is-in-her-own-cult” list.

This week we’re watching the Ambrose (Jaclyn’s parent’s) dog. His name is CJ. CJ is a Jack Russell and looks a surprisingly lot alike Alex and Jaclyn’s dog. It’s been going ok.. a few minutes ago he just totally freaked me out by biting me (and I swear it’s because I wouldn’t give him any of my ice cream, even though Tim begs to differ), and barking at me. This made me think irrationally and the next thing I know I’m calling Tim a stream of curse words because he won’t take care of the dog while I’m trying to write my blog.

And then I cried and stormed off into the bathroom and took a 20 minute shower.

But we made up. And then I cried some more because it turns out he was so worried about me he sat outside the bathroom and waited for me because I had locked him out and he was afraid I was hurt.

Tomorrow the Visher family (Dad, Katie, Christina, Jesse, Jesse’s parents) are coming over to barbeque and swim. And with that said, Happy Labor Day.

Tonight I’d like to take a few quick minutes to think about how impersonal the web is and how much easier that makes it to share dark parts of yourself in an unvulnereble way. Not necessarily a good thing, so far as I’m concerned.

I found myself looking at some of things that Jess and I have written in the past on this blog and I realized that I would barely be willing to talk with most people (including very close friends) about some of this stuff. It’s got nothing to do really with my opinion of people. It’s that when you’re talking with someone face-to-face, you’re faced with an ugly reality that you’re exposed. There’s no way to turn off a person. When you get involved, you’re involved till the bitter (or sometimes very sweet) end.

This begs the question, is what the web is doing to my ability to interact with others a good or bad thing. On the one hand, issues that I have long kept secret are coming to the forefront, and one might say that this is a good thing. Indeed, anyone of my friends that read this blog now have the opportunity to bring issues up with me that I haven’t had the heart to bring up with them. On the other hand, I’m using an impersonal medium like a Blog to communicate deep issues of my heart to them. This too, is no good.

Now, in the beginning what the blog was supposed to be is an easy way to keep all the people that I want to keep updated updated. In the end, this is a good thing, because with the size of our social circles growing, it’s getting to be impossible to keep in touch with everyone personally. In that way, blogs foster communication between people who would otherwise not really be able to communicate on a regular basis. In fact, news on the blog might even encourage people to communicate with each other.

Despite this, there are millennia behind us where maintaining a huge, distributed circle of friends was simply impossible. The fact just came down to people not having the time to maintain personal relationships with more than a few people (relatively speaking). In that sense, a communication medium like a blog both helps and possibly hinders. I can communicate more things to more people more easily via a blog than I have ever been able to before. In theory, there is no limit to the amount of people who can subscribe to our blog and hear what’s going on in our lives. This is scary and cool all at the same time. However, am I truly communicating with people, or am I only making information available for consumption? I’m not sure.

I’m not at this point, advocating a reduction in the size of our circle. I’m merely trying to think about the wisdom in having 600 Facebook friends and a blog that is mainly about informing people about our lives which also happens to be our main way of communicating with everyone.

Anyway, I want to get off the computer now, as I’m trying to quit using the darn thing so much ;).

What do you think? Has the web degraded our ability to have authentic-human relationships? Thoughts in the comments!

So let me give you a timeline of my life as of late with the help of some quotes from Manning’s “The Ragamuffin Gospel” :-)

Well, I’ve come to the horrifying realization that I’ve never been happy in my life. Oh, sure, I’ve been happy with things, but I can say with a dour pride that I’ve never been content. And although so much of me wants to now say, “but God’s given me contentment! Amen!” it would be a lie and I’m more miserable than I’ve ever been.

I’ve been having a sequence of dreams where I am punching Tim over and over again in the face because he does something that I find offensive and don’t understand. Tim is a symbol for Jesus in most of my dreams and although a part of me finds it quite humorous that I would be punching Jesus in the face, a bigger part of me shudders and I am filled with both fear and remorse.

God gave me the dream to help me realize that I am extremely angry at Him because I don’t understand what He’s doing. And that’s where I am right now: angry.

Here’s the quote. Somebody finally knows what the hell I’m going through: (I’ll be adding in comments between paragraphs).

“Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if it is only personal discipline and self-denial that will mold and perfect me.”

For the past year I have sacrificed so much. So much. And I’m not even talking about the fact that I quit college (for God) and will refuse to work without an OK from God (for God). I’m talking about the days spent fasting, praying- which reminds me- did you know I would spend ten hours in the prayer room without a break? That’s how freakin’ hardcore I was. I spent three hours every day speaking and singing Scripture over myself. I spent hours and hours reading my Bible and other Christian literature I thought God was leading me to. My dialogue wasn’t “I read X amount of chapters today,” it was “I read X amount of books of the Bible today.” I made humility my goal and tried to live the Sermon on the Mount the best I could. I did everything and my pride is still just as big and I feel just as hopeless.

To continue…

“The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing. In this curious process God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for the morning quiet time.

Our eyes are not on God. At heart we are practicing Pelagians. We believe that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps- indeed, we can do it ourselves.”

I started to be completely miserable when Tim’s mom died and my whole glorious and “radical” routine was put on hold.

And then I realized that it wasn’t put on hold because it had to be. It was put on hold because I didn’t want to do it anymore. I’d much rather watch Will & Grace, Sex in the City, Friends, Nickelodeon, Charmed, Law and Order, and crappy edgy PG-13 movies that shaped our American culture into the whore it is today.

“Sooner or later we are confronted with the painful truth of our inadequacy and insufficiency. Our security is shattered and our bootstraps are cut.

Once the fervor has passed, weakness and infidelity appear. We discover our inability to add even a single inch to our spiritual stature.

There begins a long winter of discontent that eventually flowers into gloom, pessimism, and a subtle despair: subtle because it goes unrecognized, unnoticed, and therefore unchallenged.”

I had a dream around the time that Tim’s mom died where I was outside of my house and it was warm but, oddly enough, I saw a patch of snow on the ground. When I told Tim about it he got a word from God that “winter was coming.”

I thought he was talking about a time in the wilderness in which case I felt honored and haughty because only really big, radical Christians go into the wilderness. But I was wrong. I am in a winter of discontent. I am filled with pessimism, despair and complacency. I just want to watch TV. Leave me alone. A couple weeks ago I had a dream of me standing in the midst of full-winter. I woke up and understood that this wasn’t a wilderness that I had expected.

“It takes the form of boredom, drudgery. We are overcome by the ordinariness of life, by daily duties done over and over again.”

Ugh. I’m so bored. I walk around my house aimlessly because I am so bored. I feel meaningless, pointless, purposeless and only worth what I can do.

“We secretly admit that the call of Jesus is too demanding, that surrender to the Spirit is beyond our reach. We start acting like every one else. Life takes on a joyless, empty quality.

We begin to resemble the leading character in Eugene O’Neill’s play “The Great God Brown”: “Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living of the earth and the sky and the sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?”

Something is radically wrong.”

I’ve threatened God so many times: “you know? I could just drop this whole thing and take up paganhood.” And with how much time I actually give to God I don’t think my life would look a whole lot different.

There have been moments where I really felt like I was making progress, even in this depression. And then it all gets abruptly taken away (no doubt by God) from me and I’m left with me again. I’m in this stupid sick-cycle-carousel.

So, in my bitterness, all you Christians who are so proud of yourselves because of your sacrifices and how much you give: you’re in for a rude awakening, and I pity you from the bottom of my heart

However, I do seem to have, deep within me, a dark flicker of hope somewhere.

I have very few words to say today.

I just read one of the most beautiful things I have ever read and it was penned by my Sister in memory of my Mom.

It has been sitting in my inbox since July 21 and I had not been able to force myself to read it until tonight. I’ve looked at in my inbox many times now, sometimes for many minutes, with the mouse pointer hovering over it, shaking because I knew that what lay within would be painful for me to read. Finally, I read it.

I’m so proud right now of my sister’s faith and strength in this and her willingness to confront reality head on with sometimes only a finger clinging to the rock of our salvation. I want that kind of faith.

I miss my mother terribly. I miss her oh so terribly. And I love her. I love her so much…

For My Mom - My own paltry contribution to the memory of my Mom

I’ve found myself asking that question more and more lately. The reason is because I feel very defeated at the moment. I feel very much like I tried my very best to give it all to God, and I asked him to help me where I was deficient (which I was convinced was just about everywhere), and at the end of it all, I got nothing. I had a few small victories here and there, but at the end of the day, I would sit there and struggle in my sin and be begging God to take the trial from me, admitting that I was not strong enough to overcome it on my own, that I would resist it as long as he would back my will up with means to accomplish that will, and then a few hours later find that I had failed. Again. Over and over and over again.

But I would get back up and resist again, as best I could, after my fashion (which as far as I could make it was formed from a Biblical model). I would resist and then fail, resist and then fail, resist and then fail. And suddenly, I realized that I was resisting less and less, that I was getting more and more tired, that I was starting to lose faith that God would ever step in and “take this cup from me.” This past Tuesday, I broke down completely, and when I encountered temptation, I found myself saying words like this. “What’s the point? If I resist now in a few hours I’ll have been broken and I’ll have given in. Why not just give in immediately. I’ll hate myself just as much for doing it now as I will for doing it then. I’ll be just as disappointed, just as depressed, that I failed one more time, if I fail now or then. I’m through, I’m not even going to bother God (who obviously doesn’t have a plan to release me from this anyway) with my little pleas for help. I’m just going to give in.”

So I did.

Notwithstanding the fact that a great majority of the above statement is a lie (God does have a plan to help me overcome my sin, I would be (and indeed I was) more disappointed in myself if I gave in without a fight than if I just gave in without trying, etc. etc.), it seemed to make sense at the time. I was tired. It wasn’t only late at night, but I was emotionally tired. I’d been struggling deeply for awhile at that point and, like I said, every time I stumbled I seemed to not stand up quite as straight again, until I was finally walking along almost doubled over, just waiting to hit the dirt again. When you’re in that state, words and thoughts like that make a lot of sense. It doesn’t seem to matter (at least not to me) how much I quote the Bible or ask God for help or attempt to “just decide” to do the right the thing. You just feel the inevitability of your sin and it breaks you in half. You feel the enormity of your wickedness and it breaks your will to fight against it. Anyway, that was last Tuesday.

I was at church this Sunday and I decided to read through John. It had been a little while since I had picked up that book and it has always brought me comfort. John’s unique view on Jesus and his words almost always bring me great comfort and refreshment. I got to verse 5 and God told me to meditate on it for a little bit. I’ve always liked the verse; “The light [Jesus] shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” However, I had always taken it very abstractly; the light was God(Jesus,Holy Spirit), the darkness was Satan and his forces. I’d never seen it in a personal light. However, as I was thinking about it, I realized quite suddenly that the darkness was the darkness in me as well. The darkness was my own sin and wickedness and evil nature. And then it hit me, my darkness has not and will never overcome the light that is now in me thanks to Jesus Christ.

It may seem like a simple revelation, maybe even a thought that all baby Christians should be intimately familiar with, but some how I had either missed or forgotten that no matter how dark I am at any given point, Jesus shines in me, and his light cannot be overcome. So, I’m going to take comfort in that fact, and attempt to hope in the grace that God has for me; that he was willing to cause his son to dwell inside of dirty, disgusting, dark me. And the very fact that Jesus is there is a guarantee that I will always have light in me, somewhere, even if I have done my best to hide it.

Thank you Lord, for putting your light in me. Help me to feel its presence always, that I would not allow myself to be disqualified when I become aware of the darkness dwelling inside of me as well. I love you, Lord.

Hey there everyone,

Well, another Wednesday. It has now been 3 days since we said goodbye to Alex and Jaclyn and I think it’s beginning to sink in that they really have gone. It’s really weird realizing that.

So, I guess I’ll get right to my point which is this. I feel very deeply like I’m running on empty. I realized after my Mom died that somewhere along the way I had stopped having a simple being relationship with God and had begun to have doing relationship with him. And of course, as time had gone on I had forgotten more and more what it felt like to be in a relationship with him that is any other way.

When my Mom died, everything in my life went on hold. I no longer was doing Monday Night Prayer, I was no longer doing Thursday Night Youth Group, and I even missed church 2 weeks in a row. As all that activity passed away, I realized that I was desperately hungry and empty on the inside, and had been for quite some time. I had only been distracting myself by all the doing.

The terrible thing is that now that I’ve realized that (it’s been over a month), I can’t seem to get back out of it. It seems like for every time I sit there and try to make a good decision, I always do what I don’t want to do. And not in a way that quoting Paul makes OK. I’m not talking the high things, I’m talking about just your normal every day stuff, liking talking with God for a few minutes or reading a passage of scripture. I seem to be so overcome with a general malaise that I no longer seem to be able to work up any energy to fight against my flesh.

I’m just going to be really honest here for a second and lay my mind out on the line. I’m really angry at God because I don’t understand why I seem to constantly have to motivate myself, and work something up in me, and create an urgency in me in order to be interested in him in any more than the usual walking relationship that I’ve always had (at least, ever since I’ve been saved) with him. I feel like God is totally able to fascinate my heart and captivate my soul and I don’t understand what he is gaining by leaving me so bored. I make no bones about it. I refuse to believe that I’m some how not asking the right way or not having enough faith or even that it’s not his will. There is just the simple fact that I ask for fascination and motivation and God, on a regular basis, just seems to think that I’m better off being bored and in anguish over the state of my life.

That being said, I want to add a caveat, then I’m going to go to bed. I still love God, and I’ve lost none of my faith in him. But I’m certainly going through a really hard time with him right now where he’s really not revealing anything to me about what’s going on and he certainly does not seem to be gracing me with his presence at all. That being said, Lord Jesus, Come! I want you so badly! Please, don’t let me loose that desire for you deep in my heart. Now God, come over me in love and purify my heart! I love you.

So long in fact, that I’ve forgotten all of my HTML entity references and all of my habits about how to do this…

At the end of the day, that’s probably a good thing.

I’m currently sitting on the edge of Alex and Jaclyn’s new futon with my wife lying down behind me. I’m less than 24 hours away from leaving some of the best friends I’ve ever had and, honestly, I’m a little scared about the whole thing. So much in my life has changed lately, and I’m just really not sure whether or not I’m ready to go through this too.

Just a quick recap for all who are unaware. My Mom passed away just over a month ago. It’s crazy even to think about that. Most of the time I feel like it happened decades ago in some distant past that I can barely remember, but every once and awhile it really hits me again and I just start to cry. I really miss her.

When that happened, I was just about to start work at my new job with the department of treasury. I started a few days late and after those days I really just turned around and said that if I didn’t start then, I didn’t know when I would. So life went on… as I suppose it has too.

All of my systems have been disrupted. Church in strange, Monday Night Prayer has been shotty, Youth Group’s been non-existent, work has become a full-time thing… And to top it all off, Alex and Jaclyn have now moved. Officially. Finally. For real.

I’m just starting to get the sense that this time isn’t like the others, and that when I get on the plane that’s headed for home tomorrow, I won’t be doing anything but talking on the phone with them for multiple months. That even when we do talk, the common bond of activity that we’ve shared over the years will no longer be there, and we’ll be sharing stories rather than sharing moments of interaction. That as much as I want to be, I won’t be involved in what they’re doing and as much as they may want to be, they won’t be involved in what we’re doing. I don’t know how I’ll hold up to the transition.

So, life goes on much as it has always gone on, full of it’s own comings and goings. I guess all I can do right now is just keep moving. I love my friends dearly, and I’ll miss them sorely; I’m just hoping that distant want curb either of those two things.

When Alex and Jaclyn first approached us and told us that they felt that God was calling them out to Kansas City, Alex said something that has not left me and has been my prayer through this whole process. He said, “I feel like God wants us to be closer when we leave each other than we ever have been before.” I said amen then, and as I look at how things are going now, I know… God answered our prayer.

Thank you God, for giving me the gift of friendship with these two people. May you help it to continue.

It seems to have been a rough week for me. I’ve been struggling to focus and get to sleep on time and all that stuff and it’s just been ridiculous. Lauren’s Graduation was a ton of fun but it certainly ate up a ton of time. However, it was still really awesome to see my cousins and aunt and uncle and grandad and other uncle and hang out with Jesse (for an extended period of time… He’s such an awesome guy! I’m so happy for Katie!) and my sisters and my dad (I missed my mom but I think she had a good weekend…). Anyway, it was just a ton of time.

Ever since then I just have not been able to focus at all. I haven’t really done any “work”, per-say. I’ve just been kind of futzing around. It’s really kind of depressing.

However, God has been good to me, as he relentlessly is. I’m so unworthy of his kindness and yet time and time again he just meets me in my quiet times with him and tells me how much he loves me and how much he approves of me and I’m talking I’m a wicked, sinful, ungrateful, no good, poor, pitiable, blind, and naked guy and he just loves on me all day long. It’s unreal.

So, that being said, no cool theological points this week. I’ve been struggling with God because I feel like I’m barely willing to do a thing with him, so I’m just trusting in his grace at the moment. There’s no safer place to be.