A Sinking Feeling

I had a very powerful moment of despair yesterday. After an accumulation of sin, frustration, and and anger towards God through the past week, it peaked in a fervent prayer in our on campus prayer room.

It was a very first-half-of-the-psalm-David type prayer.

To summarize the very personal and complex situation, in that moment I had a very acute awareness of my own mannish depravity, and because of that a doubt had developed in my mind that I did not own the freedom from sin that Christ won for me. This was a deeply troubling thought. It went against all I knew to be true, but in that moment I could not comprehend why God, after all my pleading and struggling, could just let me fail so miserably time and time again.

In this moment I was a small child curled up in a ball, crying and begging for my Father to just make it all go away.


This feeling I was having was most akin to Peter sinking into the lake. I had begun to doubt God's power in my life and I was descending rapidly. I felt sick of treading water, too weak to walk, and condemned to drown.

Of course, I had prayed that day leading up to all this to meet me in my brokenness. I knew I wasn't going to get myself out of this. So of course the prayer room wasn't empty that night; a loving brother was there to minister to me.

There was a frightening moment when this brother was praying for me when I could not feel the presence of God. The air around me seemed to get colder. My heart just felt a dull pain, like an empty stomach. For a few minutes this lingered, and it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life to experience the feeling of myself separated from God. I know in retrospect He never left me, but that's just what it felt like. It felt like hell.

At this point I knew what true depravity meant; what true despair felt like. Earlier I had equated despair to failure in the seemingly insurmountable task of being perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect, but true despair is being separated from God. Separation has nothing to do with the progression of the heart but the connectivity of the heart. Naturally God tugs us in one direction or the other, but that only happens when He has a tight hold of our hand. At times it may seem like we've just been holding on to Jesus' hand as we tread water for years, but it's that embrace that matters infinitely more than whether or not we are walking on water.

After that prayer I felt normal again, which by comparison felt spectacular in that moment. I am still not content with where I am on this journey, but i will continue to find joy in God's presence no matter what. On top of that, I have a greater understanding of the other side of salvation. After feeling that hellish absence of God, my desire to save people from that has been strengthened considerably.

There are far too many who are deep in despair and I cannot stand by idly knowing what that is like.

Daniel

Playful Struggle

I'm currently locked in a bit of a tug of war between my designed desires for God's great plans and my worldly impatience and overall lack of perspective when it comes to time.

To be perfectly honest I don't know why that is playful.

I am still very much a child in that I want it all now. Even if my desires have been (more so) shaped to God's will it seems my expectations as to their execution and timing has yet to mature. Unfortunately, it's not one of those instances where I can put it off as a childish virtue, can I? If anything it torments me and frustrates me, and only once I realize that this angst is a result of my desire for God's will do I laugh at the shear irony of it.

It's like a sinful pursuit of heaven, being this impatient. As oxymoronic as that may sound I believe it to be true, for what other description is there? I desperately pray for patience and peace as I seek after may creator's designs for me, and I take joy in the fact that even when God has you on the right road, he'll redirect your pace and posture until that is perfected, too.

Cross Country

If by the grace of God there is anyone who ever stumbles upon this blog (and I mean by the grace of God, as I have done no work to promote this blog at all) please visit the main blog for my project this summer: Cross Country

http://crosscountryblog.wordpress.com

Myself and two friends will be traveling across the country visiting many churches and ministries to learn what God is doing in America today. You can enter into the learning experience with us bu following us during the trip on our blog as well as viewing the full length feature film documentary we will be making on the experience.

Above all else, be praying for us, that this work be glorifying to God and above all else serve His will.

-Daniel

Content

"I have learned the secret of being content in every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength."
Philippians 4:12-13


I thank God he's blessed me with this secret. I don't know how he taught me or when, and I probably could not put it any better than the author above, but he's blessed me. Any time when all other circumstances tell me I ought to be broken down and beat up, he has given me strength.

But it's never quite that simple is it?

In reflecting on my spiritual growth, I could not help but to notice how content I could be at times. Truly being thankful for what God had blessed me with and serving him without complaint. The thing was, I got caught up in the thankfulness and obedience, and I forgot to ask for more. I filled my prayers with praise, repentance, and requests for others, but rarely for myself. In some sort of twisted humbleness, I chose to avoid "inconveniencing" God and sought after contentment.

I am really starting to think that's not what this passage is about. I am really starting to redefine what I should and should not be content with. Since I ought not to put my desires into things of this world, how could I want more than contentment? This world cannot truly give me "more" nor do I really want the "more" it claims to offer. Contentment then, living in plenty or want of the things of this world, is indeed a virtue.

Contentment with the things of God, however, is living in denial of what God offers us.

Has anyone reached the limits of God's blessings? Has God put a cap on how much he wants to give us? Is Jesus only willing to be our friend up until a point? Is God's influence in our life limited by us or him?

In this case, I don't believe contentment is a virtue. In this case, I pray for holy discontent. I pray that I do not stop asking for more. I pray that I never think I have enough of God. Every offer he's ever made has never been bound by the limits of this world. All the promises and all the gifts, distributed as he sees fit, and but do we really think we can exhaust him of what he desires to give?

God grant me joy at every point of this journey, but may I never be content with how far I have come.

In Every Face I See

One thing God has really put on my heart is to try to see Him in each person I see. It's something I'm not very good at. I pass by a lot of people each day. I forget a lot of faces and I notice the clothes, the styles, the bodies, and the swagger. I've come to notice lots of interesting clothes, and the styles can sure catch my eye. I've even come to see the attitudes and the personalities people reflect in their walk. It can be fascinating just to discern as much as you can from something as simple as a stranger's walk.

What I haven't learned to do well is see their walk with God as they pass me by. I don't beat myself up over it. It's not a normal thing to do. It would be so presumptuous of me to sit on a bus and spiritually analyze someone I've never met. Maybe it's that fear that I'd be judging them that stops me. I never want to judge. Somehow I've connected in my head the idea that trying to look at people in a spiritual light is some form a prejudice.

No doubt that doubt and that risk persists even with the best of intentions. I barely have a clear view of my own spirituality, let alone trying to see it in those that pass me by.

But it's different somehow. I don't feel this calling is to spiritually gauge people so to speak.

It's a call to see that at their core they are spiritual people. It's a call to recognize that God knows that person, whether as an intimate father or a father longing after His distant child. God wants me to recognize that. To Him they matter just as much as me. He wants me to see they are living, with all the pains, joys, and complications that living entails. He wants me to see that they are dying, whether it be just a fading of time or a starving for lack of Him.

It makes me think of an oddly appropriate analogy. Some movie was done in clay animation, but a few shots were digitally created. Thing was, they need to digitally add the fingerprints to the computer models so they looked exactly like the clay models. Without that tiny detail, the computer images just were not convincing. People could tell they were not clay.

If I don't see God's fingerprints on each person I see I don't truly see them. Those images I have of each person I've randomly passed is incomplete without them. I've grown so accustomed to just walking by, never thinking twice, but never noticing the little details that make each person real.

That's just it. They're not real without Him. If I don't look at each person with my heart fully acknowledging God's presence in their lives, I look right through them. It would be judgmental of me not to see that.

mio devo 2

Deuteronomy 33:26-29

After undergoing so much stress, so much pain, our bodies reach a point where they are on the verge of breaking down, and it becomes so hard to really see God's goodness in our lives. We've all had those times; moments when our refuge doesn't seem to keep out every arrow and every chilling breeze. Moments when we find ourselves waiting for our help from heaven to arrive. Moments when we can’t help but to ask where our shield and helper has gone off to.

After experiencing one of the toughest days of my life and seeing so many others dear to me carrying heavy burdens, I looked back to this passage. It contains some of Moses’ last words to the Israelites, and to this "warped and crooked generation" he blesses them and affirms them of God's goodness. More often than not, we can turn to a passage such as this and see the familiar promises of protection and salvation that, in probably the greatest tragedy of many life-long Christians, we have become desensitized to.

God has something more to say.

He opened up my eyes to something very important. Amidst all the promises of goodness and faithfulness, He left instructions:

“He will drive out your enemies before you, saying, ‘Destroy him!’”

“Your enemies will cower before you, and you will trample down their high places.”

When evil occupies our lives and wages war over our souls, God commands us to be the ones to destroy and trample it.

Just as Moses spoke to the nation of Israel then, God speaks to our Christian community today. When evil is raging amidst the lives of our loved ones, God will equip us to fight it out, but we must fight the battle. God will receive the glory for delivering our enemies into our hands, but that cannot be done if we do not go to war against them.

Fight for your brothers and sisters. Each one of us endures great pain, and some are deeply entrenched and losing hope. God has already given us all we need to help them. He gave us mouths, so encourage each other! He gave us arms, so hug each other! He gave us time, spend it with each other! He gave us hearts, so let them break for each other! He gave us our lives, die for each other! In this way we can destroy the sorrow that weighs so heavily on our souls. We know when our brothers and sisters are in pain, and it’s at those moments when we must act.

God’s goodness only fails to enter someone’s life when someone else doesn’t love them the way God commands them to. He is our shield and helper and glorious sword, but we must still be that arm that wields it.


God Bless

Daniel

mio devo 1

"Jesus did not answer a word" - Matthew 15:23

Matthew 15:21-28

Sometimes the hardest part is waiting for an answer. Sometimes the deepest pains are those that simply come from silence. We spend much of our spiritual lives waiting on God, begging for an answer and pleading for help. The woman in this story knew what Jesus could do. She may not have understood the salvation that He offered, but as a mother with a child in suffering, a man who was working real and tangible miracles right where she lived was an answered prayer.

So as she called out to Jesus, the loving God made flesh, He did the same thing he always does: something that doesn't make sense. The one sent to heal the sick was ignoring the cries of the needy. Not only that, she was persistent to the point that the disciples wished to send her away (verse 23). To dig it even deeper, Jesus' next two replies can reap even more confusion. He goes so far as to equate the Canaanite woman to a dog!! Jesus is basically saying that you are not worthy of my healing, and how much more demoralizing can it be to hear that from Him?

Of course, not is all as it seems. After the woman still persists, even after all that waiting and denial, her daughter is healed because of her great faith.

Not because she was worthy.

Not because she was Jewish and was God's people he was sent to save.

Because of her faith.

In that perspective, we see what Jesus was getting at with all this; he was testing her faith. He first kept silent, then rejected her, then rejected her again, and only after all that did the king of mercy answer her pleas. He knew how far she was willing to go to save her daughter. He knew he was going to heal that girl. He knew that this woman's immense faith would someday be a testament to all of us who wait for an answer from above.

I relate. I want answers from God, but I'm getting silence. I want direction, comfort, affirmation, instructions, healing, wisdom, passion, and I want them now. So often though, my cries are met with a similar response, but just as in this story, Jesus is just waiting.

I can't help but to try to imagine the agony in Jesus' heart as he waits. The pain it brings him to have to push this woman and us just a little bit further. He knows it's the best thing for us; to sharpen our faith and strengthen our resolve, but in His heart he is longing for the joyous moment of healing He has planned from the beginning.

Faith - firm belief in something for which there is no proof

When there seems to be little chance of aid, that is when our faith is strongest. In the moments of God's silence we can glorify Him the most.