God: the Burden

"A couple of blog posts ago, a non-believing friend posted a comment that still haunts me with its accuracy.  He asked if I even enjoyed being a Christian. He said my portrayal of Christ “comes off like an advertisement for being abjectly miserable, oppressively guilty and constantly confused about your every act and thought”.  My first instinct was to delete his comment, or defend myself or justify my heart.  But that would have been pretty ironic since the post was about fighting the temptation to do such things.  sneaky God.

The reality is – my friend is right.  So much of the time my life testifies that I believe Jesus is real and true, but not necessarily good; not sweet; not exciting and delightful and a source of unfailing joy.

I am an inaccurate picture of the sweetness of my God.  I make Him out to be a burden.  May my dear and precious and faithful friend Jesus forgive me.  May He redeem my heart so that it can reflect that He is indeed better to me than life.  I pray that my hardened heart may be softened.  I pray that my inabilities in this area may lead me to worship a God of such sweet grace."

~http://www.fabsharford.com/?p=602  [bolding mine]

oh, so true.  There's so much I could do, so much I could say, so much I could experience if I weren't a follower of Christ.  And sure, those things might not be worth anything, but sometimes the fact that I cannot do those things feels like a burden.  Intelligent design is a burden to uphold (although I suppose it's not really crucial to uphold).  My current walk with celibacy and homosexuality is a burden.  Oftentimes, I and everyone else (non-Christian) around me get the thought that the God whom I serve is the propagator and reason of that burden.  That He Himself is the reason I must suffer.

But in truth, he is "better to me than life."  

I pray that I could always believe this myself... and that it could be painfully obvious to everyone around me.

Did I say already that I love Fabs?  God is speaking truth through her.

Worship of Self?

". . . When I sing worship songs on Sunday I am filled with joy.  But how can I tell if the joy I feel is a result of the glory of God that I see rising up in front of me or if it’s a result of seeing my own worth lifted up – being the object of His affection.

In Religious Affections, Edwards quotes this:

“There are such things in [our faith] which, when a carnal, unhallowed mind takes the chair and gets the expounding of them, may seem very delicious to the fleshy appetites of men.”

Gosh.  That makes my heart skip a beat.  There are great doctrines and truths written in the pages of the Bible that even if I cared nothing for God I might feel my heart quicken at the sound of them.  Someone who doesn’t love God at all could be filled with joy at the sound of the wonders of all He has done if they were at the center of those things.  I cannot imagine any more devastating realization than the thought that all of my ‘worship’ for God and all of the affections I experience for Him are ultimately worship of self.

This isn’t designed to make you panic, it’s just designed to make you test your heart.  There is only one person I know who finds their security fully in the greatness of God.  And the great news is that His righteousness is wrapped around me.  He is my refuge in the moments when the darkness of my heart causes me to tremble.

The goal of tracing our joy back to its source isn’t to make us feel bad about ourselves.  And if it results in that kind of discouragement it’s probable that we’re finding our confidence in the flesh.  The goal of pressing into these things is so that we can fight to put our worth and value in Christ alone.  The heart that is found in Him experiences more joy than the heart that runs after any offer of temporal security tossed its way."

~http://www.fabsharford.com/?p=576

I love Fabs.

50th Most Populated State!

I found out today that my high school is performing The Laramie Project.

I think I'll always find it haunting/freakishly ironic/hand-of-God-all-over that I was born in Laramie, Wyoming, the place where the infamous case of Matthew Shepard took place, where a boy was killed because he was gay.

It gives me chills.

Perhaps the LGBT community is part of my life's calling.

Or perhaps I'm just concluding that so I don't have to think that this struggle is as senseless as it often feels.

Still Rocking my Thoughts

The message Johnny shared for the spring break trip.

"People say the cross is a sign of how much man is worth.

That's not true.

The cross is a sign of how depraved we really are, that it took the death of God's own Son.  The only thing that could save a people like us was the death of God's own Son, under the wrath of His own Father, paying the price, rising again from the dead, powerful to save."

So what do I have to show for my faith?  Am I, as 2 Cor. 5:17 states, "a new creation"?  Has the old passed away and has the new come?

Hmmm.