I'm tired, and not just because I stayed up late playing Halo.
I'm tired of acting like I have it together. I'm a nutcase. I'm insecure about most everything. I feel like I'm a fraud living someone else's life and I will be busted at any point now.
For that matter, I'm tired of being insecure. I have a hard time seeing how blessed I am to have the life God has granted me. I have a great family/friends, a good job, I don't live in a place where I should fear for my life every day..... why is it so hard for me to be happy with that?
I'm tired of idiot drivers that don't realize they're idiots. How hard is it to NOT be in the left hand lane if you're driving the same speed or slower than people to your right?
I'm tired of people feeling like they have to fill the void of breaks in conversations.
I'm tired of handing things over to God only to take them back the next month/week/day/hour/minute. Why can't I give up control? I do give up control, but it's only when I'm tired and beat down mentally. It seems that I only want to pass the load over to someone until I feel strong enough to carry the burden again.
I'm tired of the hot weather. When the heck is it going to be fall?
I'm tired of being tired.
2 comments:
I feel like I've had four major steps forward in coming closer to God. The first one happened in high school, specifically at Young Life. It was there that I feel like I had the gospel explained to me for the first time. Big step number two happened in college when I actually put my faith in Christ. Number three was seminary, where over two years I feel like I learned more (academically speaking) about my faith than at any other time before or since.
The fourth one came not too long after I lost my job in ministry. It was a combination of a few things, but what I learned was both the simplest lesson of all and (I believe) the most profound truth concerning my relationship with God. And it was this: The gospel.
I'll explain. I've known what the gospel is since step one in high school... we are sinners, we deserve eternal punishment, Jesus came and lived the life we couldn't and died the death we should have died so we don't have to. Because of that I am forgiven and am now a member of God's family, a new creation. I learned the gist of all that back some 14-15 years ago.
What I've learned in just the last couple years is that the gospel is not something you accept once and are done with. It is something that now pervades the life of the believer, and meditation on what the gospel means is probably where the rest of my growth as a child of God is going to come from now until I die (and probably on after that).
Now let me get specific. When we try to "act like we have it together", why do we do that? We do it because we don't want other people to see that we don't have it together. And we don't want other people to see that because their approval has become too important to us. And their approval has become too important because the gospel has become less important. Because we don't rest in the knowledge that we are loved and accepted, totally and fully, by Jesus, we feel the need to be accepted by someone, anyone. And not only are we totally loved and accepted by Christ, he loved us and accepted us and DIED for us when we didn't deserve it. Actually, when we deserved the exact opposite. So with Jesus we can't try to act like we have it together - he knew a long time ago we don't have it together. And he died for us anyway.
The gospel applies to every aspect of our lives that is broken... and at one time we knew this. But since then we think now we just need to "grow in Christ". We do, most definitely, but it isn't something we do of our own power. It never was intended to be. We shouldn't forget the gospel after we're born again, thinking that now we need to really work at being a better person. We grow by relying more and more on Jesus' power and on what he's already done for us. We need to take ourselves back to where we were before conversion and say "I'm helpless without Jesus". And say it over, and over, and over...
Thanks for being honest, Kenan. That's being real and doesn't take nearly as much energy. It's scary being real b/c we're risking a lot, especially rejection. But being who you are is a hell of a lot better than acting like someone else. We like you better as Kenan than anyone else anyway.
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