ANSWERS?

Thoughts after pondering for a Day:

DO I know the answers but find it hard to live them? Or do I not know the answers? Are they bad/hard answers? Good answers? Maybe good but hard to live, ridiculously hard to live? 

I'm thinking of the woman in Cambodia that is wrongly imprisoned because of corrupt government and her faith. I can't imagine the pain and suffering she endures daily?  And yet she has this faith. And yet we DO pray for her release. It cannot be that we are supposed to seek martyrdom b/c God only has martyrdom for us. That would probably, inevitably, lead to a different type of legalism- one where we made ourselves suffer for the sake of pleasing God... I fear i have leaned myself to this too much in the past. Sometimes now, or often now, i doubt that my current circumstances and all of my life and any of the 'un'happiness it has brought are negative consequences from me feeling that in order to obey God, i had to martyr my 'feelings, passions, or desires.'' Which feelings were right? The feelings of wanting to stay in Georgia in 2007 and live a completely different life and date this other guy, or the feelings that I was called to the city to minister to the people who lived around the Mahayana temple on Canal street- In the moment, it's hard to remember those feelings or how intense they were- which ones were more intense...all my rationale about them. So instead, I remember the feelings i denied and can be led to see current trouble and dissatisfaction and think it's b/c i martyred myself out of a warped understanding of what it meant to follow God, out of a sense that I I had to deny myself completely. But then, what I was doing was biblical- taking up a cross to follow Jesus, and it wasn't a completely bad cross. It was a cross I had affinity for and did desire. 

In the word, at the same time as we are told to deny ourselves, we are also told that God has crafted us each uniquely for certain things. In the simplest sense I mean that he does give us affinities to do His work. I know plenty of people who minister for God by following their natural abilities- they bring glory to God; they enjoy their work. This is true for me when I reach people through music and song.  God is glorified, and my love for singing is a large part of it, my love for singing for HIM. It is true that God's will and our affinities do line up. But apparently not always, right? That's why the story of Deitrich Bonhoeffer totally gets me....because he got to a point where he was happy to be in jail- actually he was happy in jail from the start, but he didn't TRY to get in jail. But when it happened, he was fine, even though his fiance was wiaitng for him on the outside and even though in the past he'd struggled with depression. He writes that he was fine in jail, even in the face of death. SO FREAKING WEIRD TO ME. I read that book a year ago, and I'm still trying to figure that out. 

So where is the line? Where is the solution? My answer poses more questions. Surely we can pray for healing of our sickness, but i suppose not at the expense that we get healed before it can teach us holiness, or at the expense of God's will? So do we pray just pray like Jesus, remove this cup, but a las your will not mine? I believe so. But then I hope hope hope he removes the cup. So in the mean time do i just keep going on, day-to-day, and try to find joy even tho the cup isn't removed? I suppose so. But what if one has the ability to remove the cup oneself it seems- How does one know when ones should and should not make such choices? I suppose first one must look to whether or not said choice is sinful. Two believers divorcing when their marriage was hard would be sinful. A believer choosing one job over another or to date one person over another or to be involved in one ministry over another would not necessarily be sinful, correct? I'm not necessarily trying to play the 'what if' game with every person's life as much as I'm trying to figure out how it all works so that I know what to do going forward and how to counsel people in decision making and seeking God. Because we have choices all the time and either choice can seem good and natural- just like Chambers writes on September 1st. So how do we know which ones to follow? When is my affinity God's gift and good and something I should follow (like writing music and singingl), and when is my affinity something I should deny in order to allow God to craft me into more holiness? 

i. dont. know. 

Thoughts after pondering another Day: 

 I read My Utmost for His Highest for September 6th, and then I read John 7:25-31. Something stood out to me. The people in this story don't believe Jesus is Christ because they are swayed from their logical and rational reasons about who the Christ will be. Then, there are some who DO believe that He is the Christ b/c they see miracles and logically and emotionally it makes sense to them that that is who He is. But then Jesus says that when we are relying on our logic and reason or emotion, it's not necessarily 'faith.' Blessed are those who don't see and still believe, like the disciple who Jesus loved in the book of John. 

So I thought back to Adam and Eve, and there came an epiphany. From the beginning, from DAY ONE, we have been a people, a race, driven by logic and feeling- what led to Adam and Eve's sin other than their feelings and disbelief and logical understanding of the snake...?? Nothing. So at our best, this is all we are- nothing more than ourselves, a people driven by this logic, emotion, rationale, nostalgia, regret, fear, passion. 

So it stands to 'reason' that if God is to use us ever to fulfill His plans, He must work with a very flawed ppl who move on such limited fields of perspective. It stands to 'reason' that is would be quite impossible for any of us to 'follow' His will perfectly and not be swayed by these things. That must mean that even though we ARE swayed by logic or emotion in our actions, He STILL accomplishes His plan and will. Maybe this is why Proverbs says that a man devises his way but the Lord directs His steps. 

We are a people who will always make mistakes and ponder with regret. We lack the ability to live on the plain of God's knowledge and understanding and sight. 

So we must rely on spiritual "truth" that tells us that God is sovereign and guides in all things and that no thing can thwart His plan: no disbelief on our part, no sin, no mistake, no doubt, no wrong prayers, no wrong seeking. To live and to rely this way is an act of fighting, and the greatest battle is to keep that faith and not to give into believing there is no God to obey or no reason to listen to the "rules" of scripture, or that God's guidance of us is based on our ability to know how to pray, what to pray, what to accept, what to give up. It is a fight NOT to take the reigns every second of the day and follow every inclination of our hearts. Instead we pray and beg His guidances that we might know which affinities to deny and which to nurture (like my example of music being an affinity that brings Him glory). We must trust He will do it because we don't know how to do it ourselves. That's just who we are. We lack it. This is such a great challenge I think I may spend my entire life wavering on it and barely keeping my balance. Perhaps that is why He says the way is narrow. This seems to foolish, to seek this narrow way, based on what I SEE around me and FEEL. So I suppose since it seems foolish to think this way and seek God anyway, it must be very wise. 

Lastly, I thought that since we have His spirit, we have some hope. Without His spirit, we are nothing more than a short-sighted, off target people who are swayed by whims, confused, giving into suffering, trusting their deceitful hearts. But with the Spirit, we can be guided by Him. This is perhaps how He guides us? But then what about non Christians, how does He guide them since they lack the spirit? Perhaps he guides them the way he guided Pharaoh- when he hardened his heart. God uses them still, but they have no relationship with Him and no ultimate fulfillment or true joy. Everything that brings them satisfaction is a fleeting thing of this world.

So I suppose, if I were to 'try' to 'attempt' to answer any the questions posed in the previous post, I would say that it must be fine to pray that the suffering leave. It must be fine also to pray that He changes us to be able to accept or embrace or rejoice in or even overcome the suffering. But when it comes to choices sitting before us, how do we know what to do? All I truly know is that the above musings are biblical- truth, correct? So I will trust Him and seek Him and see what happens. We must do the job directly in front of us, large or small, doing it as the next thing in the will of God. But we must not think that the world hinges on our performance or our ability to do that. We must know that God will move us, more than likely, and that that is ok. We must seek Him in our decision making and not look back with regret, only look back to learn from mistakes if we see them. We must trust nothing can thwart His plans, and that no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. We must, at all cost, evaluate and consider and do all within us not to sin. But then look at Deitrich Bonhoeffer: He involved himself in a plot to murder Hitler. Murder is a sin. But the choice He made as an act of will following God, on the attempt to save an entire race. Rahab sinned by lying about the spies in her home. Perhaps following God is not as black-and-white as we want to make it. If we can make it completely black-and-white, we can control our destiny and know that we are doing what's right and will be fine. If we place our lives into a hand of a God we cannot completely understand, we have to trust Him to justify us...by faith.

All of this leaves me in a state where I have nothing from which I derive pride. A state where the things I once derived pride from have been atrophied. I believe this means that God has atrophied these things down to humility because there HAVE BEEN times that I DID FIND pride and satisfaction in things and felt I was controlling them and controlling them well, thus, I was justified and worthy. So humble is where God wants us because then we recognize that HE is greater than us and that we are made to WORSHIP Him, not just to find happiness. But 'happiness' can be found somewhere along the way in worshipping Him I think. The irony is, I don't think any of us will find happiness so long as we are looking for it. 

Narrow...narrow...narrow is the way. A fine line. It's so easy to veer off and not even know we have veered off.