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.