A few random and unrelated thoughts this week............
"I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God." (Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller) As I pondered this quote by Donald Miller, I connected it to the notion of blessings. Let me rephrase: "I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to plunder us with the struggles of life, but to lavish us with misguided fancy blessings that paralyze us into a state of comfortable Christianity surrounded by white picket fences. Our spiritual ignorance misguides us with the false belief that to be blessed with money, a happy family, well educated kids and a beautiful home means that we are in God's good books. If the devil can sink man's mind into the desire of comfortable and alluring blessings, he will prevent and distract his heart from engaging God. You see, this "engaging" requires sacrifice and to get outside of the comfortable boundaries of our self envisioned Christianity that is often habit filled rather than spirit led. Our spirituality should never become a matter of habit, but rather a source of being.
I am the problem. I often catch myself addressing the many man made add on's to our faith- the many layers of Christianity that make us lose sight of Jesus- our cornerstone. I blame authority, humanity, America, the modern Church...... Ultimately, I am the problem. I am a person who is awake to the functioning principles within my faith, therefore, I must stop looking outwards to people and problems of the world, and start to face myself. "The problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest......I wondered what it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere I go being reminded of myself" Here is a question that demands desperate honesty: "Do I believe in the urgency of the gospel and the Kingdom cause, or do I just want to be known as a spiritually active person.?" Am I a servant or am I a self-seeker? Am I trying to get people to agree with me rather than to meet God? C.S Lewis stated: "I can not crawl one inch outside my proper skin...." My thoughts go as far as me. It starts to become about the Kingdom the moment it stops being about me. What I believe becomes not what I say, but what I do.
Now comes the dilemma. With the intentional pursuit to live outside of myself and to seek to be better for God, I actually continue to focus on "who I am" than on "who He is." It is still about me and how good I look before Him. "Being better" must be a natural spiritual process within our pursuit of "who God is" rather than the goal. Not sure if that makes sense outside of my head. I do not want my relationship with the Lord to be one in which I want to impress Him. I do not have daddy issues with Him. Rather, I want to talk about God as if I talked to Him on the phone that day.
