Faithful in weakness

If you read my last post (yes the one before the 2 videos...although those are funny and not to be missed!), you would have quickly found out that I've been pretty angry with God lately. I like to think that my anger with God has just been in the past few weeks, but if I'm to be completely honest, I've felt some bitterness towards him for quite a while. Sure, it comes and goes, but I think that it's been there for a while--just sometimes hidden by other things.

So today it would be suffice to say that I wasn't all that stoked about going to church. I had decided last night that I definitely wasn't going to the morning service and I was going to take advantage of sleeping in (of course, whenever I plan to sleep in, I can't and I was up far earlier than was planned...but I digress). So this afternoon rolls around and I decide that I'm going to go downtown to this coffee shop/cafe that I really like to work on some things that I've been needing to do for a while (ahem...write follow up letters for Africa...ahem). My friend Angela meets me there for dinner and at this point I'm still somewhat contemplating skipping evening church and just staying at the cafe. Well since Angela was with me, I kind of felt like I had to go to church....so I did. And now I'm sitting here thankful that I went. During the whole service I felt like God was having a private conversation with my heart--speaking directly to the questions that I've been asking for a very, very long time.

Anyways...let's see if I can put this down in a somewhat comprehensible form.

Recently, someone told me that sometimes my faith can seem kind of over-the-top. I remember looking at that person and saying "Huh. That's funny. Because I've been faking it. For a while." And I was being completely honest. I had come to a point where the gospel no longer felt alive to me. I was feeling (and to be honest, many days still battling these feelings) that God had abandoned me and that no matter what I did, it wasn't good enough.

And I'm still battling with all of this. Daily. Hourly. From the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep.

But I want to quit faking it. I want to be authentic. So here it is. Take it for what it's worth...maybe it'll still be "over-the-top" for you. But for me, this is real. This is admitting that I struggle. That sometimes I fake it because I don't know what else to do.

So how does that tie into tonight's service? Well...I'm getting there...I think. (It might take me a while...so bear with me. Grab a coffee. Settle back. Take it all in.)

It started with singing tonight. I've found that I connect in two very distinct ways...through music and imagery. And music has always been my favorite part of worship. So we start singing "This is My Father's World" and I remember one line in particular sticking out to me: "This is my Father's world, why should my heart be sad?" I remember thinking, "Gosh. How true is that? If this is my Father's world, then I have no reason to be sad. He has already claimed victory." But of course, life is hard sometimes and knowing that Christ has already claimed victory doesn't always seem to make up for the sadness and pain we experience.

So then we move on to some other songs until finally we started singing "Lord Have Mercy." I've sang this song a thousand times. But tonight it felt like it was my anthem.

"Jesus I've forgotten the words that You have spoken,
Promises that burned within my heart have now grown dim.
With a doubting heart I follow the paths of earthly wisdom.
Forgive me for my unbelief, renew my heart again.

Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy on me."

And I just sat there, soaking it all in. The struggles have seemed so strong that in the midst of it all, I've forgotten the Promise that is already mine. The passion that drives my heart is gone. And I feel so in need (and so thankful) for the Lord's mercy. That he hasn't given up on me and that he won't give up on me.

So we're not even to the sermon and I'm already feeling immensley overwhelmed with Truth.

And then our guest pastor/speaker gets up to deliver the sermon. I begin to zone out a bit until he starts to mention things about prayer and anxiety. And then with my interest sparked he goes on to speak the Truth that my heart has been longing to hear. And I'm also convicted of several things. First he tells us that we often feel anxious because "we don't believe the truth of God's fatherhood that's presented to us in the Gospel." We don't see God as a loving father so instead we live like orphans having to prove ourselves.

Sidenote: The verses that were being covered were Matthew 6:9-14 and Matthew 7:7-11. Chapter 6 is the Lord's Prayer and Chapter 7 is the verses about asking, seeking and knocking and it will be given to you and the verses about how if your son asked you for bread would you give him a stone? Of course not, so how much more will God provide. Okay back to the story...(and this is me paraphrasing what I heard tonight and what I was thinking while hearing it. I wish I were this wise to come up with this on my own. But I'm not.)

So of course at this point I'm sitting there thinking..."Okay, so the verses say that if I ask it will be given to me, if I seek I will find, and if I knock the doors will be open, so why the heck don't I have anything I've asked for and why the heck do I feel so stinkin' abandoned by you God?"

And then the pastor says this: So the verses say that if we ask for fish we won't be given a serpent (we'll be given fish, of course), but what if what we ask for sometimes is a serpant? Of course God is not going to grant us a request that would put us in danger. What if what we're asking for seems like a good thing, but in reality would be nurturing in us a love for worldly things and leading us away from faith and into self reliance and unbelief.

Wow. Hmm. Yep. It's starting to come together for me. How many times have I said to God "If you would grant me just these few things then I would have all I would need." Well that's funny because if I would have all I would need I'd have no need for God. Not exactly the way He's intended it to be. In fact, I think the way He's intended it to be is that all we would need is Him.

But that still leaves a lot of unaswered questions for me. I mean, why the heck would God make all these promises to me (to his people) and yet leave me feeling like he hasn't fulfilled them?

The Already and the Not Yet.

That's where we are living. Christ has Already conquered this world but his Kingdom has Not Yet come. So we're left living in the Gap. (not the clothing store, unfortunately...). We're left living somewhere between this place of reality and the Promises that are already ours.

So what do we do when experience these times of living in the Gap? Often we swing like a pendullum from one response to the other. We go from Dispair--giving up and quitting because we must be doing something wrong to Determination and Moralism--taking things into our hands and doing it in our own strength. In Despair our hope is lowered and we become cynical becaus "it hurts to hope in the face of continual failure." But in Determination we do whatever it takes to fix it because we are convinced that if we push through, try harder, and be more, we will achieve that hope.

But in both of those instances we're turned away from prayer and away from reliance on God. We've either given up or we've decided to do it on our own. And the thing is...maybe God is making us weak. Yeah. Maybe he's making us weak because it's only in our weakness that we have the need to come to him in prayer. "If life is hard, you feel weak, helpless, overwhelmed--stop thinking you're doing something wrong. It just means God is working." Christ longs to be our Father, but to be fathered we have to recognize that we have need that only Christ can meet.

So at this point I'm getting it. But at the same time I'm thinking, "How the heck do I live in the Gap?" And that's the thing...it's only through reliance on Christ and through prayer that I can live contently in the Gap. It's in my weakness that my faith is refined. It's in my weakness that my faith is turned from fake to authentic. It's in my weakness that I don't have to try so hard and prove myself. "Jesus lost his sonship so we could gain ours." Our salvation is secure when we claim Christ's moral record and not our own. I don't have to be an over-the-top, intesnse rule follower. I don't have to have it all figured out. I just have to accept what is already mine through Christ.

So that's where my heart is tonight...I'm longing for God to answer my need and give me all that I ask. But of course, I know that I ask for serpants. A lot. So I'm thankful that He's loving enough to deny me of these things.

And it's a battle. I know that tomorrow morning I'll wake up and all over again I'll be questioning where God is, why my heart is hurting, and when he'll provide the desires of my heart. And all over again I'll have to remind myself to go to him in prayer trusting that His Promise remains and He will provide.

Thanks for reading along, friends.