Good Read

I am almost finished with a book that I started on Monday. If I had more time, I'd have finished Tuesday. It's called "Searching For God Knows What" by this guy named Donald Miller. I'm having trouble putting my finger on my feelings. I don't want this to be one of those situations where, I'm mad at the way things are going in my church so I'll subscribe to anything that's anti-what-my-church-does, but I have to admit it has me reeling.

I feel like we've lost it. We're repeating the sins of the Sanhedrin and expecting God to work within all of the legal boundaries we've set for Him. We see the crazy list of rules the Jews came up with in the early church, and then God shows up and they want to tell Him He's doing it wrong. But we do the same. We're waiting for Him to free us of the world we live in, but we don't want to be obedient and do what He sent us to do. We want to condemn sin and cry foul and blame it on contemporary music and homosexuals and insist we can't have church in chairs, we need proper pews, and if we don't have three hymns and a sermon with three points, and an offertory, then we haven't worshipped. (Don't get me wrong, I love hymns, and I think you can crank some real emotion out of the more somber ones...)

Have you ever been so excited about something that you couldn't raise your voice enough to cheer like you really really wanted to? Like a goal line stand in a crucial football game, or a 90 yard touchdown against Texas? Have you ever shown that kind of excitement in church? Yeah, me neither.

I cannot put enough emphasis to show the emotion I feel behind these words: WHY NOT????!!!! Where is the passion? Where is the intensity? Don't give me that crap about how sometimes God just speaks in a quiet voice...I already know that. But sometimes He doesn't. Sometimes He's in the thunder. Sometimes a flaming bush. I feel intensity in my marriage, and certainly a passionate love for my kids. Have I failed in not showing God that kind of love? Doesn't He deserve a last-second national championship touchdown kind of love? How much would it suck if, on a beach, one lover raced across the sand to the other, while the other just stood there waiting?

You think I'm confusing sensational excitement with love. No, I'm not. I am comfortable in the Abba Father warm affectionate love. But sometimes I feel like I just want to express myself louder, as one victim of The Fall who occasionally feels really excited about the fact that I've been saved from paying for it. I fear I have been holding back, not accepting the fact that God is PURSUING me and wants a relationship with me. One of the points of this book is that God doesn't act within formulas, but more in a relational way. Take a marriage for instance: signing a piece of paper and going thru some steps will make you legally married. But some things have got to change about my singleness if I want that marriage to work. It's not like signing an insurance form and then driving like I want. It's about focusing on the marriage and working at it. Giving myself up daily and enjoying the love of my husband. Working out my salvation.

Yes, I'm familiar with grace. That doesn't give me permission to "not worry about screwing up." Paul said that we don't test grace and use it frequently because it's there. Instead we try, we make an effort to love Him back. All He asks is our obedience, and He desires our love. Like we hope that some day, our kids who require our love will one day return it, free of selfish need. ( I don't care what you think...your kids have to learn to love you apart from just being a parent, and it means more that way...) When did you realize, if you have by now, that you would love your parents if they weren't your parents??

So this is how I "stew". My whole outlook may change tomorrow, and I may find peace. But I hope that soon I understand how to wrap my brain around how much God loves me. I don't have to understand it, I know. I just want Him to know that sometimes my heart is full of love for Him, and I feel helpless to express it, and wish that I would do what I know He wants me to do: to free that love up for someone who needs it.

Sigh. This is why people with ADD take Ritalin.

My doc said I didn't have to....