This is a quote I heard in a sermon a while back and have been pondering it ever since. For the last several weeks I have felt a sense of plateauing in my spiritual life. When I first rediscovered my passion for Jesus Christ I felt as a small child, that everything was different, new, and exciting, and then I plateaued.
One of my frustrations with friendships is when it becomes one sided, you are the only one putting anything into it. At first all is going well and then after a time you feel as though you've discovered everything there is to know about the person and all of a sudden the friendship begins to dissipate, to dissolve as it were. All of a sudden you are the only one putting any time and energy into the friendship. I actually had a relationship like this once. I always felt more or less like a burden, like he'd rather be doing anything else but spend time with me. I wonder sometimes if Christ doesn't feel the same way about my relationship with Him?
Curiosity leads to life. Can this be true of one's spiritual life? For me to have a meaningful, joyful spiritual life it would make sense that it would require a certain amount of curiosity. We are called to have child like faith. Have you ever watched a group of children? They are full of curiosity, everything is different for them, and they are excited by it.
Unfortunately I as an adult tend to get sidetracked by other things in my life and lose my sense of curiosity, awe and admiration of my God. A relationship with God becomes another duty I have to perform. Nothing terribly special. So I wonder then, if I intend to have a meaningful and joyful spiritual would not require at least a certain amount of input on my part? Does it not also require a sense of curiosity, almost of expectancy, what is God going to teach me today?
Friday, December 28, 2007
Unconditional Love
I've always had a little bit of a problem with the concept of unconditional love. Not so much believing it exists, more accepting it to be true for my self. It is hard for me to fathom why anyone, or any god, let alone the God, would love me unconditionally.
Scripture states in Romans "there is none righteous, no note one." I suppose it is for this reason that I feel as though I must somehow earn unconditional love. However, if in fact it were possible to earn unconditional love, it would no longer be unconditional. Working for something places a condition on it.
So I guess for me the question isn't so much does unconditional love exist, but how do I accept unconditional love? This is a kind of love I am not used to receiving. This is Christ like love that doesn't care how much I screw up, it is still there. The kind of love that I am use to seeing is an if then kind of love, if you do these things then I will receive the kind of love I so desperately desire.
Yet once again it relates to the need for approval. I often make the mistake of confusing the two because in my mind the two are the same. Approval equals love. I know this is not the case, but it is something my mind has difficulty separating. So here's the thing, how does one separate these things?
Scripture states in Romans "there is none righteous, no note one." I suppose it is for this reason that I feel as though I must somehow earn unconditional love. However, if in fact it were possible to earn unconditional love, it would no longer be unconditional. Working for something places a condition on it.
So I guess for me the question isn't so much does unconditional love exist, but how do I accept unconditional love? This is a kind of love I am not used to receiving. This is Christ like love that doesn't care how much I screw up, it is still there. The kind of love that I am use to seeing is an if then kind of love, if you do these things then I will receive the kind of love I so desperately desire.
Yet once again it relates to the need for approval. I often make the mistake of confusing the two because in my mind the two are the same. Approval equals love. I know this is not the case, but it is something my mind has difficulty separating. So here's the thing, how does one separate these things?
Consensus Belief System
Typically I sing tenor, however for church I am singing alto. I have a bit of a strange method when I sing for choir, I must be surrounded by loud voices. I do this because when I sing in choir, I follow whoever is loudest regardless of whether or not they sing my part.
As I was singing in choir tonight I realized how similar this is to the way I live my life. When it comes to how I act and what I believe, I tend to follow whoever is loudest. Unfortunately this has led to me where I am currently.
I tend to live by consensus. Confidence is a non issue. I can be confident in something, but if I think someone will be offended or in any way give indication that they disapprove I do one of two things, hide it all together, or make a strong attempt to.
I'm reminded of the scene from the movie Runaway Bride. I seem to come back to this movie a lot. Anyway, the scene is about the middle of the movie when Ike accuse Maggie of not having a mind of her own. In a nutshell, he has just described me.
Fact is, I don't have a mind of my own. My mind is shaped by those around me. The annoying thing is that I want desperately to have a mind of my own. So how do I find my own mind, while still having the mind of Christ?
As I was singing in choir tonight I realized how similar this is to the way I live my life. When it comes to how I act and what I believe, I tend to follow whoever is loudest. Unfortunately this has led to me where I am currently.
I tend to live by consensus. Confidence is a non issue. I can be confident in something, but if I think someone will be offended or in any way give indication that they disapprove I do one of two things, hide it all together, or make a strong attempt to.
I'm reminded of the scene from the movie Runaway Bride. I seem to come back to this movie a lot. Anyway, the scene is about the middle of the movie when Ike accuse Maggie of not having a mind of her own. In a nutshell, he has just described me.
Fact is, I don't have a mind of my own. My mind is shaped by those around me. The annoying thing is that I want desperately to have a mind of my own. So how do I find my own mind, while still having the mind of Christ?
G. R. O. W.
Ok so you're probably wondering why these letters are capitalized and seem to be some kind of abbreviation for something. Part of my training through Child Evangelism Fellowship included training in using the Wordless Book. The last page of the Wordless Book is the green page. When you teach it, the dialogue goes something like this
"Now that you've accepted Jesus as your saviour there's a few things he wants us to do help us get to know him better. This green page reminds me of that, it reminds me that I need to GROW. Because the Bible says that we need to "grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Now on this page there are four corners, and there are four letters to the word grow, so each letter reminds me of something I need to do in order to grow in the knowledge of God. G stands for Going to church, R stands for Reading the Bible, O stands for Obeying God's word and your parents (parents obviously love this one), and W is kind of a big word but it stands for witnessing, which means telling other's about the love of God."
obviously that's a quick version of how one would teach the green page, but there you have it. So why am I going off about some page in some book that you really don't care about? Over the last month and a half I have made immense progress, leaps and bounds. When I think about where I was not that long ago, and where I am now in my spiritual life I am grateful and amazed at the saving power of a loving savior. However, it would seem that my spiritual life has once again plateaued. Now I don't mean that I have lapsed into sin or anything like that, what I mean is that I am no longer seeing any tangible evidence of growth. So what am I doing wrong, and how do I fix it without becoming a legalistic Christian? Part of the problem with me is that so much of the time these things that I have mentioned as being tools of growth were held up as a legalistic standard that if one didn't partake in, one would be considered a heretic and shunned. I'm not kidding you. I remember on one occasion getting in trouble at a school I went to because I was doing my devotions in the evening, rather than the morning, because I have issues getting up early enough in the morning. So I guess what I keep coming back to is how important are these rituals that Christians are required to go through? And, is it possible to be a joyful Christian 100% of the time?
"Now that you've accepted Jesus as your saviour there's a few things he wants us to do help us get to know him better. This green page reminds me of that, it reminds me that I need to GROW. Because the Bible says that we need to "grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Now on this page there are four corners, and there are four letters to the word grow, so each letter reminds me of something I need to do in order to grow in the knowledge of God. G stands for Going to church, R stands for Reading the Bible, O stands for Obeying God's word and your parents (parents obviously love this one), and W is kind of a big word but it stands for witnessing, which means telling other's about the love of God."
obviously that's a quick version of how one would teach the green page, but there you have it. So why am I going off about some page in some book that you really don't care about? Over the last month and a half I have made immense progress, leaps and bounds. When I think about where I was not that long ago, and where I am now in my spiritual life I am grateful and amazed at the saving power of a loving savior. However, it would seem that my spiritual life has once again plateaued. Now I don't mean that I have lapsed into sin or anything like that, what I mean is that I am no longer seeing any tangible evidence of growth. So what am I doing wrong, and how do I fix it without becoming a legalistic Christian? Part of the problem with me is that so much of the time these things that I have mentioned as being tools of growth were held up as a legalistic standard that if one didn't partake in, one would be considered a heretic and shunned. I'm not kidding you. I remember on one occasion getting in trouble at a school I went to because I was doing my devotions in the evening, rather than the morning, because I have issues getting up early enough in the morning. So I guess what I keep coming back to is how important are these rituals that Christians are required to go through? And, is it possible to be a joyful Christian 100% of the time?
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