Quick thought

I was just thinking and I realized that the few really spirit-filled people I know just go when God calls, and they don't hesitate to listen... they're just out doing God's work among any and everybody... 


And then I thought about people like me who sit back and critique everyone to death. Critiquing the method of spreading the Gospel, wrestling with questions, and problems, and just feeling completely defeated by the fact that I'm not outgoing, I'm not having an impact for Christ, I don't know anyone who will be willing to come to church with me. . I want to be someone who nonchristians and normal people want to hang out with... I do NOT want to encapsulate myself in this Christian bubble and render myself useless to a culture that needs people who understand them. 


My point is that even though working through the hard questions of being a Christian is good, I hate that it's so much of a drain on me that I don't seem to be getting anywhere. I feel lost when I see how several really spiritual people I know just live their lives completely..... Jesus-ified... and the questions of "how is best to reach Bible belt Christians" and any other tough question you can come up with doesn't hold them back... while it holds me back. What do I have to do to become more outgoing, to get people to come to church with me, to even want to bring others along? I spend my whole week thinking about me! I'm sick of it.


I read a quote in Blue Like Jazz today. Glad that finally something hit me hard.


"If I don't introduce people to Jesus, then I don't believe Jesus is an important person."


It's true. And I hate that in my heart I just don't care enough about it to change it. I hate being the type of person who started walking with Christ only to start living out my passion for Him years later. I hate being the type of Christian that people point at and say, "How typical."

Why God isn't boring

Well they showed you a statue, told you to pray!
They built you a temple and locked you away...
Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay
For things that you might have done.....

-Billy Joel, Only the Good Die Young

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The world looks on the Christian faith as boring. Now, we don't combat "boring" with "hip", though that's certainly a step in the right direction of being culturally relevant. We combat "boring" with Christ. If your church has lost its appeal to the world, consider that maybe we've lost the cross as the center of what we do. 

I just felt like tonight that I ought to make a point, and it relates to the song I quoted. The worst thing we could do is make Christianity a "Looney Tunes" religion, complete with angels and clouds we can sit on, and lots of mahogany harps. I don't know ANYONE who would wanna live anywhere like that. God did not incarnate himself, Christ, in human flesh to come and die so that we would think of him as a distant, boring God! I'm tired of bored faith, I'm tired of not bringing people into my church, I'm tired of being dominated by my routine and my wallet! I don't want to be another cheap American Christian! Our faith here in the States is pretty shoddy. If you think you know persecution, just drop yourself off in another country and talk to me in a month. Let me know how you feel. We don't have to deal with jack-diddly crap. 

I'm not saying I have all the answers. I just know that if I were Satan, I would try to make God (and everything that gives you strength as a Christian) to seem some sort of very distant, ethereal idea that you kinda go "yeahhhh...." about in your head but you never really connect, you never really understand, you never really *click* and become convicted of how your life needs to change! Just go ahead and take the VITAL things of God like his salvation, spiritual aid in the form of angels, and the Holy Spirit (which, need I remind you, is literally the King of the Universe inside you), and we take those things and we make them vague, glossy, pretty, Hallmark-card material that never is PRACTICAL and REAL enough for those things to come through for us. You let our friend die, our mom get hit by a drunk driver, and see if that kind of flowery, distant faith comes through for you. I guarantee you you're going to blame God, or worse, you'll keep quoting sentimental cliches like "Think happy thoughts" without having any REAL support or relationship, AKA, Christ. It's not a relationship if you holla at your boy only when life hates you. And so we put John 3:16 and our flowery Christian propaganda on our coffee cups without understanding that as sinners, we have blood on our hands but there is real, concrete help here for us. Don't fall in this trap. 

Ok. So as material beings trying to understand an inmaterial God, that problem is naturally going to happen. But there are things we can do so that we aren't singing about "feeling the brush of angel's wings" on Sunday, and yet Monday night, our distant view of a boring Heaven with harps (who plays THOSE?) isn't stopping us from having sex with our girlfriend.

1) God is not a robot. He has feelings, he wants a relationship with you (in other words, he's not just a homeboy you can tell off and he won't care). He burns for your loyalty. PRAY that unlike the sinners in Romans 1:26, he won't abandon you to your ignorance, but that he will continue to beat wisdom into your head until you care enough to spend time with him. Pray that the "passive wrath" of God won't befall you. More on this to come later.

2) The Pentecostals got at least one thing right: the Holy Spirit is worth listening to and communicating with. As Christians we are linked by blood and spirit to Christ, and his Father's very Spirit lives inside of us (if our hearts really have changed to love Jesus more than ourselves at all, that is). If this isn't amazing to you, you've clearly blown a fuse. So call me crazy, but if a God beyond Creation's comprehension gave me... um... HIMSELF to live inside me, that's worth going more nuts over than a bunch of mere people playing a football game. I have no idea where our passion is, that we can get so flustered over stuff like sports, and yet just feel reluctant to "get into it" when worshipping God when we all know he's real. I think about the times that I've felt distracted and disengaged in church, seeing later on that day as I'm yelling at a football game on my TV that my interest isn't really so much with God as I thought.

3) Prayer is your way of proving to God you care. He already knows what you're gonna pray... pray anyway. The only point in a sovereign God asking you to pray is that it proves you actually care to spend your time on him. He's not up there going "Sorry can you repeat that? I had 15 thousand angels trying to tell me stuff all at once and I didn't catch that." You can dare to believe in God's power. He is beyond anything we even know.

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I am in seminary now. I have to labor and sweat to "want" to spend time with God in a relationship context instead of a textbook context. What is wrong with my heart?! Don't I know how much I need God? Don't I remember how depressed I was on October 29, 2007 when I was saved, and how terrified I was of the loneliness I felt? 

We all need God to come through for us. We're all messed up. Any sinner like you or me can see that. Just please, I beg of you, fight to remember the intimacy of God. Remember that he's right here and he wants you.

A Hopeful Crossroads in Life

Hey! So let me share what's going on in my life right now. From the start, this blog was supposed to be me revealing to you everything about me in my brokenness so that you will see (God willing) what it looks like for a sinner to stumble upon the flattering grace of God and remain humble about it. That's what it feels like... flattering. I don't deserve this love, guys... it flatters me that God cares about me.


I'm handling seminary online fairly well. Subtract the late-night Call of Duty sessions and add S.O.A.P. in the morning (see bottom of post), and thats what God wants of me, I know. 


The crossroads I speak of is this. I am growing sick of being known as "the downer" and the withdrawn kid who remembers painful memories more than the good ones. I have realized that I am at a point where I'm asking myself, who do I want to be? I think I started realizing this after listening to John Mayer's "Who Says". 

"Who says I can't be free, from all of the things that I used to be? 

Rewrite my history... who says I can't be free?" 

Everyone wants that! I'm emotionally needy, I'm vulnerable, and I'm aware I need God because of how wicked I am. I battle myself every day... and 99 percent of my problems are only problems because of how I respond to them. So I ask myself, can I really live my life letting this stuff get me down? Can all this really keep me in chains? How much longer can this really go on? I have hope in God, I know he comes through! I really don't believe that my life will be dominated by hopelessness much longer!

So I'm sick of staying in this position. Turning to what is wrong in me, I want a different life. I'm still a spoiled little white American Christian brat who loves money and attention. It's gotta stop. It's nothing but rot in my heart. God has changed SO much in me but he also calls for action, for obedience, and procrastination is NOT obedience. I want to see myself characterized by several things: 

• Giving money to my church so WE can have increased ability to bless our community.
• Not being tossed to and fro by my emotions, but instead tossed to and fro by the Holy Spirit. 
• Making real friends, and being deliberate in giving them my time. 
• Listening to God all day because I love to... not because it might make me "good". 
• Being aware that I can choose to make people happy or sad, and that others' emotions matter too... not just my own. Narcissism doesn't only come in obvious forms.

I love you guys. I'm real quiet, and socially withdrawn, and I really don't wanna be that way. I hate it... I want so much to spend time really getting to know my friends and anyone who desires that too. Help me get to know you, k? Don't think I'm not grateful for all you do. :) -G

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Afterthought. I plan on attending the S.O.A.P. meeting at Bojangles tomorrow morning at 7, Bojays on Arlington with Randy and JoMo, oh you know it, it's gonna be sweeeeeeeet

Actually it's going to be a really intimate time with God as I admit, in a spirit of chagrin, that I don't have it all together...  and as I ask him to please reveal more of himself to me in the Word. That's the point of the Bible... to learn more about God. Why am I so arrogant to claim to know the point of the Bible? Well, I'm not... but the Bible is all about God. Life is about nothing more than his glory. Whether you live or die, you will serve to show how utterly powerful he is. He has already won. So, if you want to know more about this God who wants your loyalty, ask me what times there are S.O.A.P. meetings and I'll let you know. I think it's a wonderful idea from a wonderfully different church who just wants to stay loyal to God out of the sheer joy of it.