2008
09/01/2008

On the water…

0

I have had a great time this summer spending time with the Lord in the mornings on the lake. The routine has been getting up around 6:30-7:00am getting on the water quickly, Arrowhead for coffee and a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich, and then off to a spot to read, pray and memorize. I have spent most of that time memorizing Colossians 3, listening for God and trying to relearn how to to pray in the spirit and develop a prayer language.

The memory work is relatively easy and just comes from consistent effort. Learning a prayer language has been much more challenging. I spent most of the summer asking God for the gift, and the last few weeks speaking sounds. I don’t know what they are, mean, or even if they are real. After having talked to Keith and Paul and others about it I just decided to keep on speaking and see what happens. I honestly don’t feel particularly like the Spirit is speaking through me, or that something is happening other than normal sounds that don’t make sense to me. I definitely haven’t felt the release feeling that I have felt in other places where I have been broken and yielded myself, or in dreams or at times when I felt like I was going to speak in a tongue.

This has been a good opportunity to simply trust. I don’t know what is happening, I just know that I want to be fully yielded to God, I believe this gift is available to all, and it takes our initiative to cultivate. I’d like the feeling to go along with it because that makes things easy, but where is the faith in that. Faith in Jesus is enough, I’m going to continue to speak in faith.

I am going home quite full from this time with the Lord. He also gave me a word while I was out through a Bebo song called Walk Down This Mountain. It is about Peter and his experience at the transfiguration where he was wanting to create houses for Jesus and Elijah and Moses. He wanted to stay on the mountaintop. I find this to be true all the time in my life. I want my mornings on the lake to last forever. I want to stay in places where I have heard God speak, felt his presence, or been in sweet communion with someone in His presence.

However, as great as those times are and as filling in the spirit as they can be, the daily battles and plays of life are played out in real time, in the work world with employees and clients, in families with parents and children and siblings, in churches and other organizations, and with my neighbor every day. Staying on the mountain wasn’t an option for Christ, Peter, James & John, and it isn’t an option for me today. I need to remember this frequently. As Henri Nouwen said, “nothing conflicts with the love of Christ like service to Christ”. If I’m not careful I will make mountaintops my life and my life irrelevant to my faith.

Time to walk down the mountain.

GSR

07/05/2008

“nobody cares about you after 25″

1

That’s a big statement. Honestly it disturbs me. I have this understanding that I think is how followers of Jesus are to operate and this doesn’t fit. This was a statement that Trent said while we were talking Tuesday night. I got a lot out of our time with Trent. He’s a great example of a guy who is living a great life following Christ. But that statement bothered me.

It’s not that I disagree. I asked him if that is the way it is supposed to be and he just said “that’s the way it is”. I think in practice he is right, Trent’s a realist and I think that is reality.

But it doesn’t mean it has to be that way. To tell the truth, I still want to be cared for and care for others. I want to be loved and to love. I’ve heard a local say for a long time that in the final analysis the thing that matters in life is who we love and who loves us. Now that sounds more like the way of Jesus that I know. It also sounds like what I want.

I recently spent some time with a friend and mentor who was encouraging me in the faith. I was talking about some particular relationship issues that I was dealing with. It’s been a a painful situation and has produced a lot of struggle in me. Very early in the conversation I was struck that the root of the problem was simply that I wasn’t loving the other parties.

Dallas describes love as intending the best for someone. This seems like a simplistic way of viewing love, but as definitions go I think it stands nicely. When I look for the best of the other person I am willfully looking for what is best for them and that is truly what we all want isn’t it?

When I realized the position I was in I was able to change my attitude and realize that the problem was that I was really looking out for my best and not the best of the others in the relationship. It doesn’t make it easy but it does make it clear. Clarity means a lot.

So what does this have to do with the fact that nobody cares about you after 25? For me, it means that I will stand against that reality as is currently is. I still want to be loved and to love deeply. That takes a lot of effort and time and energy. That takes extra-ordinary effort really. But it is more of the way that I want to live than any other way.

When Jesus said “love your enemies” he wasn’t saying that as a punishment or consequence to being a Christian. It isn’t that when you’re a Christian you have to do these difficult things that no one on earth would really want to do. He is saying that loving others is the best way to live. Period.

I want to be a man like that. At 25, 45, 75 or 105. I still want to love and be loved. I’m going to do it.

Greg