Today was the last CCF meeting of the school year - a pretty informal one, one with simple acoustic worship and just some members of our committee sharing about their experiences during summer away from school. It was just massively encouraging because they were so honest about their experiences back at their home churches, about how strange it was and how shallow it seemed sometimes; how they felt distant from their church friends and stilted in their spiritual walk, as if they were wracked with thirst and unable to find any respite.
This is something I've been nervous about recently. As the year draws to a close, thinking about going back to my home church and fellowship is kind of weird and scary at the same time. It's weird because it doesn't really feel like home anymore, and it's scary because I don't want to fall backwards off the tracks (spiritually). There's such a lack of accountability and real conversation in many of our home churches, and it's discouraging. Our CCF chair compared this to the plague of locusts in the book of Joel, when the people were starving, the animals were starving, and there was not a single living plant that the locusts had not ravaged - not only were the Israelites unable to eat, but because of their dying livestock, they were unable to make sacrifices to the Lord and worship Him ("Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the LORD." Joel 1:9). Does it sometimes feel like it's so hard to get right with God, to worship at His feet, when we're in such dry circumstances?
That isn't an excuse. It says in Psalm 51:16-17: "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." Further on in Joel, the Lord confirms this: "'Even now,' declares the LORD, 'return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.' Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity." (Joel 2:12-13)
"Rend your heart and not your garments." Or, as my CCF chair put it, "God doesn't want your stuff, He wants you." We have to go to Him in prayer! What can we possibly do for ourselves in situations like these? Nothing. Any effort in and of ourselves is in vain. I say this because I've been there. Trying to do it on my own is tiring. It's like running on empty. It IS running on empty.
The end of this book is incredibly uplifting: "The LORD will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the LORD will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel. Then you will know that I, the LORD your God, dwell in Zion, my holy hill. Jerusalem will be holy; never again will foreigners invade her." (Joel 3:16-17)
Pray, pray, pray. The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. He is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. We can do everything through Him who gives us strength, but apart from Him we can do nothing.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
this is our God
Good morning! Or afternoon, I guess? Every Sunday I am just reminded of how blessed I am to be able to worship with my brothers and sisters without fear of persecution. We have a lovely place on campus where we're able to congregate, and it's something we're so, SO thankful for :)
Anyway - something I feel like I should share. The pastor speaking at our church is always very good, but today especially I just felt God speaking so clearly to me through him. The passage we went through today was Mark 4:1-20 (we have expository preaching at our church and so this is just where we happened to end off in Mark from last week) - the parable of the sower.
This parable is something I've probably heard hundreds of times, in various settings. It is only today, nineteen years after I set little socked feet into a church, that this has become real on any level to me. From seed scattered on a path and quickly eaten, to seed in shallow, rocky soil with no root, to seed among thorns and choked by the worries of the world, to finally, good soil upon which seed can bear fruit - I can clearly place seasons of life into each category. I don't know why, growing up, I thought these categories were kind of all-or-nothing - you either are, or you're not. Never before today have I seen it as a progression.
Something I heard today that is just so true - no one is BORN Christian; we were all seeds from the first category (v.15) at one point, dead in our sin and and with hardened hearts, an unsaved person under Satan's dominion. I was once this wretched being, unable to understand God's Word and rejecting His love.
Moving onto v.16-17, these are the seeds who hear the Word and immediately and joyfully receive it, but as soon as trials comes "because of the Word", immediately fall away. I, too, was once like this - after all, who wouldn't want to go to Heaven? Sounds great! Sounds like an amazing deal! Jesus came to save and now I can go to Heaven! But from WHAT was I being saved? Where is the conviction? In what way was I "cut to the heart", and where was my repentance (Acts 2:37-38)? It's very easy to praise God when we feel good and when life goes our way, but what about when everything falls in shambles around you? Am I still able to say "Lord, You are good, and I will trust in Your will"?
The third group (v.18-19) of seeds are described as being sown among thorns/worldly worries and materialism, which come in and "choke the word, making it unfruitful". For the longest time, this was my life. This described my life perfectly. And the saddest thing is that I never even knew. I thought I was doing alright, but my life was devoid of good fruit and full of earthly cares - money, popularity, looks, parties, boys. My heart was muddied with earthly things instead of with "things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God" (Colossians 3:1). As Jesus says in John 15:4, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." I burned myself out, trying to do things my own way and with my own strength. My service in the church either became an obligation or was for the wrong reasons. I did not love. I was selfish. I lived like one still bound by sin and shame.
And finally, the last group of seeds (v.20) fell on good soil and was fruitful. How do we become good soil? Again, growing up, I thought that some people were just somehow "good soil" - like how I grew up in the church, and therefore I must be saved and be one of these seeds falling on "good soil". How I wish I didn't grow up with this kind of a false understanding of His Word! It really is all by God's grace that I, selfish and misguided as I was, became saved. In Romans 3:12 it says "All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one," and in James 1:16-17 it says "Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." Every good and perfect thing is from God; apart from Him we can do nothing. It is God who turns our sinful, hardened hearts of stone into new, living hearts of flesh; in Him we become NEW CREATIONS. No one is born with good soil in their hearts; it is God who turns the rocky and infertile heart into one with good soil upon which the seed is sown and bears fruit. When I think about this, this verse comes into my mind again: "Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" (Matthew 19:26)
As God continues to reveal the truth of His Word to me and as I begin to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to worship a Holy God, the meaning behind Jesus' words become clearer to me when He said, "The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." (Matthew 26:41b) Again, as Paul says in Romans 7:24, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" When I heard the first verse, I used to think that it meant something like, oh, I'm tired and can't wake up even though I want to. Literally. I kid you not, that was what I thought the verse meant. But as I am beginning to take seriously God's call to be courageous and fight the good fight of faith against sin and temptation, more and more I'm beginning to feel that this verse is referring to the human condition itself - my soul desires with everything I am to love God the way I am commanded to - with all my heart, strength, soul, and mind, but my body and fleshly desires claw at me and will not relent in trying to pull me away from this Holy God. Indeed, what a wretched being I am.
Sounds like such a downer post, doesn't this? But I think the amazing thing is that as I'm beginning to realize the implications of worshiping a Holy God and coming to realizations like the one above, God is drawing me closer to the truth of His love. In all honesty, I don't know what love is. I've heard much about it, I use it all the time in daily language (although I'm trying to stop :P), but what does it actually mean? What does it look like or feel like? I dunno. This is why I find it so difficult to understand the love of God as it is preached in churches. I think for most of my life I just accepted that "God is love" and "He so loved the world" and whatnot without really understanding what love is. I'm still not sure what God is telling me and showing me these days, but for the past two weeks or so I've really felt a burden to dig in the Word and find out where God is demonstrating that He is a God of love and to see for myself what it looks and feels like. It's kind of funny, because I've recently also been challenged to lay my desires for romance at Jesus' feet and learn what it means to have Him as my first love and to give Him my entire heart. Is this what it feels like to be pursued by God? This uncertainty interspersed with a very real desire to know Him and feel His love, these little glimpses of what He's like and how He's working in my life at this very moment.
Okay long post is long. All I can say is that God is faithful and can be trusted because His Word is good, and is so, SO worthy of everything we have. He'll take care of you.
Anyway - something I feel like I should share. The pastor speaking at our church is always very good, but today especially I just felt God speaking so clearly to me through him. The passage we went through today was Mark 4:1-20 (we have expository preaching at our church and so this is just where we happened to end off in Mark from last week) - the parable of the sower.
This parable is something I've probably heard hundreds of times, in various settings. It is only today, nineteen years after I set little socked feet into a church, that this has become real on any level to me. From seed scattered on a path and quickly eaten, to seed in shallow, rocky soil with no root, to seed among thorns and choked by the worries of the world, to finally, good soil upon which seed can bear fruit - I can clearly place seasons of life into each category. I don't know why, growing up, I thought these categories were kind of all-or-nothing - you either are, or you're not. Never before today have I seen it as a progression.
Something I heard today that is just so true - no one is BORN Christian; we were all seeds from the first category (v.15) at one point, dead in our sin and and with hardened hearts, an unsaved person under Satan's dominion. I was once this wretched being, unable to understand God's Word and rejecting His love.
Moving onto v.16-17, these are the seeds who hear the Word and immediately and joyfully receive it, but as soon as trials comes "because of the Word", immediately fall away. I, too, was once like this - after all, who wouldn't want to go to Heaven? Sounds great! Sounds like an amazing deal! Jesus came to save and now I can go to Heaven! But from WHAT was I being saved? Where is the conviction? In what way was I "cut to the heart", and where was my repentance (Acts 2:37-38)? It's very easy to praise God when we feel good and when life goes our way, but what about when everything falls in shambles around you? Am I still able to say "Lord, You are good, and I will trust in Your will"?
The third group (v.18-19) of seeds are described as being sown among thorns/worldly worries and materialism, which come in and "choke the word, making it unfruitful". For the longest time, this was my life. This described my life perfectly. And the saddest thing is that I never even knew. I thought I was doing alright, but my life was devoid of good fruit and full of earthly cares - money, popularity, looks, parties, boys. My heart was muddied with earthly things instead of with "things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God" (Colossians 3:1). As Jesus says in John 15:4, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." I burned myself out, trying to do things my own way and with my own strength. My service in the church either became an obligation or was for the wrong reasons. I did not love. I was selfish. I lived like one still bound by sin and shame.
And finally, the last group of seeds (v.20) fell on good soil and was fruitful. How do we become good soil? Again, growing up, I thought that some people were just somehow "good soil" - like how I grew up in the church, and therefore I must be saved and be one of these seeds falling on "good soil". How I wish I didn't grow up with this kind of a false understanding of His Word! It really is all by God's grace that I, selfish and misguided as I was, became saved. In Romans 3:12 it says "All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one," and in James 1:16-17 it says "Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." Every good and perfect thing is from God; apart from Him we can do nothing. It is God who turns our sinful, hardened hearts of stone into new, living hearts of flesh; in Him we become NEW CREATIONS. No one is born with good soil in their hearts; it is God who turns the rocky and infertile heart into one with good soil upon which the seed is sown and bears fruit. When I think about this, this verse comes into my mind again: "Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.'" (Matthew 19:26)
As God continues to reveal the truth of His Word to me and as I begin to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to worship a Holy God, the meaning behind Jesus' words become clearer to me when He said, "The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." (Matthew 26:41b) Again, as Paul says in Romans 7:24, "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?" When I heard the first verse, I used to think that it meant something like, oh, I'm tired and can't wake up even though I want to. Literally. I kid you not, that was what I thought the verse meant. But as I am beginning to take seriously God's call to be courageous and fight the good fight of faith against sin and temptation, more and more I'm beginning to feel that this verse is referring to the human condition itself - my soul desires with everything I am to love God the way I am commanded to - with all my heart, strength, soul, and mind, but my body and fleshly desires claw at me and will not relent in trying to pull me away from this Holy God. Indeed, what a wretched being I am.
Sounds like such a downer post, doesn't this? But I think the amazing thing is that as I'm beginning to realize the implications of worshiping a Holy God and coming to realizations like the one above, God is drawing me closer to the truth of His love. In all honesty, I don't know what love is. I've heard much about it, I use it all the time in daily language (although I'm trying to stop :P), but what does it actually mean? What does it look like or feel like? I dunno. This is why I find it so difficult to understand the love of God as it is preached in churches. I think for most of my life I just accepted that "God is love" and "He so loved the world" and whatnot without really understanding what love is. I'm still not sure what God is telling me and showing me these days, but for the past two weeks or so I've really felt a burden to dig in the Word and find out where God is demonstrating that He is a God of love and to see for myself what it looks and feels like. It's kind of funny, because I've recently also been challenged to lay my desires for romance at Jesus' feet and learn what it means to have Him as my first love and to give Him my entire heart. Is this what it feels like to be pursued by God? This uncertainty interspersed with a very real desire to know Him and feel His love, these little glimpses of what He's like and how He's working in my life at this very moment.
Okay long post is long. All I can say is that God is faithful and can be trusted because His Word is good, and is so, SO worthy of everything we have. He'll take care of you.
"Sing to the LORD, all the earth; proclaim his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples.
For great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the LORD made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and joy in his dwelling place."
~1 Chronicles 16:23-27
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