I love you, God
Things have been odd. I am really tired of explaining and deconstructing and struggling. God gave us a brain to consider our decisions carefully. He also gave us a heart to cast weight on our decisions. I don't want to make decisions just based on what I've been told, what I believe out of habit, or what i've been socialized in. I want to make desicions based on who I am. Who I am will have to be founded in who God is. God made us human, heart and mind and soul. All are involved in this decision process.
So with regards to my mind. It IS possible to overdo it. Like i have all of last year and last week, all mind, no heart or soul. The Summer served to remind me that I have a heart. After sacrificing every relationship in my musical for the sake of professionalism, after being told that I can no longer maintain healthy normal relationships with my devouring quest to consider and understand, after being called to live a life that is alive and not just safely on a balcony of christian rethoric, I break.
I am offered a chace to live with my heart and my mind. And this reminds me that I have a soul. Yes it is new. And it is precisely that it is new that i realise that my old conduct of belief and faith no longer logically stands. So my mind fails, and my faith (which has so been wrongly placed in my intelligent understanding of God) takes a new turn. Is there God here? Why not? So I am challenging my intellectual beliefs, taking this risk in the hope of a more organic, more integratedly real relationship with our God. If my understanding of our God who is never changing cannot stand in a new situation, I would like to test that understanding, and make it flesh.
Admittedly, prayer is not my forte, it does not come naturally to me. But for the past week, I have spent more time on my knees then ever before. I pray. I pray so hard that God will
reveal his will, I pray that he will guide me, for his wisdom, for his face. I have been reduced to praying child-like prayers, prayers like "if it is your will, do this, or do that". I constantly struggle with my motives, as i still am doing now and will always be. And I bring them to God, my confusion, my fears, my desires. I have prayed for the strength to do his will, for the sight to see. I fear my ability to delude myself. So I pray that God will make it undenaiably clear.
If there are three things I know about God, it is that:
1. He is never-changing. The same yesterday, today and forever
2. "as the heavens are higher then the earth, so are my ways higher then
your ways and my thoughts then your thoughts."
I can only say then, that I can never say with confidence with regards to decisions like these, what his will would be. He is heart too, and is not OT legalistic.
And finally, what I know is that as God is holy, so he is gracious. And it is upon this grace that I fall upon to find holiness. I am broken, bruised, utterly confused and paralysed. No way I could make a proper decision no matter how much consider or how much of a concerted effort to think. I can only pray. So in my confusion, and inability to think, I pray. I couldn't just say no myself, the motives would have been wrong. I would not have done it out of obedience of my relationship with God, but becuase I would want to LOOK like a good Christian.
"Hannah, I think you worry too much about whether or not you do enough for God. That's not the point."
~ Mother
I saw the father side of God. How precious!
You're right. This is new. And i'm finding myself and God despite that. I don't want my God to be safe. I am not rejecting my up-bringing or the wisdom of my faith. But God matters more then all that.
Peacefully,
Hannah
Things have been odd. I am really tired of explaining and deconstructing and struggling. God gave us a brain to consider our decisions carefully. He also gave us a heart to cast weight on our decisions. I don't want to make decisions just based on what I've been told, what I believe out of habit, or what i've been socialized in. I want to make desicions based on who I am. Who I am will have to be founded in who God is. God made us human, heart and mind and soul. All are involved in this decision process.
So with regards to my mind. It IS possible to overdo it. Like i have all of last year and last week, all mind, no heart or soul. The Summer served to remind me that I have a heart. After sacrificing every relationship in my musical for the sake of professionalism, after being told that I can no longer maintain healthy normal relationships with my devouring quest to consider and understand, after being called to live a life that is alive and not just safely on a balcony of christian rethoric, I break.
I am offered a chace to live with my heart and my mind. And this reminds me that I have a soul. Yes it is new. And it is precisely that it is new that i realise that my old conduct of belief and faith no longer logically stands. So my mind fails, and my faith (which has so been wrongly placed in my intelligent understanding of God) takes a new turn. Is there God here? Why not? So I am challenging my intellectual beliefs, taking this risk in the hope of a more organic, more integratedly real relationship with our God. If my understanding of our God who is never changing cannot stand in a new situation, I would like to test that understanding, and make it flesh.
Admittedly, prayer is not my forte, it does not come naturally to me. But for the past week, I have spent more time on my knees then ever before. I pray. I pray so hard that God will
reveal his will, I pray that he will guide me, for his wisdom, for his face. I have been reduced to praying child-like prayers, prayers like "if it is your will, do this, or do that". I constantly struggle with my motives, as i still am doing now and will always be. And I bring them to God, my confusion, my fears, my desires. I have prayed for the strength to do his will, for the sight to see. I fear my ability to delude myself. So I pray that God will make it undenaiably clear.
If there are three things I know about God, it is that:
1. He is never-changing. The same yesterday, today and forever
2. "as the heavens are higher then the earth, so are my ways higher then
your ways and my thoughts then your thoughts."
I can only say then, that I can never say with confidence with regards to decisions like these, what his will would be. He is heart too, and is not OT legalistic.
And finally, what I know is that as God is holy, so he is gracious. And it is upon this grace that I fall upon to find holiness. I am broken, bruised, utterly confused and paralysed. No way I could make a proper decision no matter how much consider or how much of a concerted effort to think. I can only pray. So in my confusion, and inability to think, I pray. I couldn't just say no myself, the motives would have been wrong. I would not have done it out of obedience of my relationship with God, but becuase I would want to LOOK like a good Christian.
"Hannah, I think you worry too much about whether or not you do enough for God. That's not the point."
~ Mother
I saw the father side of God. How precious!
You're right. This is new. And i'm finding myself and God despite that. I don't want my God to be safe. I am not rejecting my up-bringing or the wisdom of my faith. But God matters more then all that.
Peacefully,
Hannah
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