Faith. Nothing I have particularly figured out.

Sometimes I wish I knew who was reading this. Because, right now, I imagine sitting across from you, maybe at a coffee shop (right now I am at a booth at Starbucks) presenting you with My Utmost for His Highest, to March 15th, and saying, "Read this. And I will tell you a story."

But I am not actually where you are. Therefore I will merely recommend you find the March 15th passage of My Utmost and I will scrape out tidbits.*

This is how Chambers begins: "At the beginning we were sure we knew all about Jesus Christ, it was a delight to sell all and to fling ourselves out in a hardihood of love; but now we are not quite so sure. Jesus is on in front and He looks strange: 'Jesus went before them and they were amazed.'"

Oh, man, God. You know just how I feel. Just what dismayed me. Today, it seems, I was wrestling with that exact, exact thing. "It was a delight to sell all and to fling ourselves out." I seem to look back longingly through a tinted window into the way I had operated, completely out of zeal and love for the Lord, being aware of the Gospel. I did feel like I had it all firgured out, and now---hardly. Sometimes I am not sure if it is worth it---or what it is, exactly.

Chambers continues, "At first I was confident that I understood Him, but now I am not so sure. I begin to realize there is a distance between Jesus Christ and me; I can no longer be familiar with Him. He is ahead of me and He never turns round; I have no idea where He is going, and the goal has become strangely far off."

And just a minute ago I was reading Jason Gray's blog. Here is something he wrote:

“It’s an important idea to me, that – as G. K. Chesterton has said – our Christianity should look 'less like a theory and more like a love affair.' Sometimes I think we’re in danger of making our faith solely about intellectual assent to the facts of who Jesus was/is."

That is me. It is ironic how the more I try to fit God into a box (not necessarily learn more about him, but exactly to 'figure him out') I get frustrated. I do not understand. The more I try to rationalize things out, the more amazing it is. Now I do not believe it makes sense that God would, first, know me. After that, that he would love me. And then the strangest thing of all: that he would come down, become nothing, be despised by man, be hated, and suffer. (Isaiah 53, Hebrews 12:3) Jesus operated under human weakness. He preached the Beatitudes after pulling an all-nighter. (Luke 6:12) I take that for granted. So many ways I try to minimalize his love, when everything about Jesus shouts, "I love you in a way that is painful and foolish."

Chambers: "Jesus Christ had to fathom every sin and every sorrow man could experience, and that is what makes Him seem strange. When we see Him in this aspect we do not know Him, we do not recognize one feature of His life, and we do not know how to begin to follow Him. He is on in front, a Leader Who is very strange, and we have no comradeship with Him."

Gray: “I’ve wondered: We seem intent on protecting our hearts from God – knowing that to give him true, unlimited access to our hearts is to risk having our whole world turned upside down. Though Jesus is called 'The Prince Of Peace' we suspect that he is a disturber of the peace as well – at least of the false, half-hearted, varieties of peace we try to create for ourselves with relationships, job-security, money, etc. Instinctively we know that it’s a risky venture to get too tangled up with God…
“So do we intellectualize our faith in a subconscious attempt to keep God at a safer distance? It’s a thought worth reflecting on, I think…”

Keeping God at a distance. Do I realize how painful it is to see him suffer? I do. I do not think I realized it before, but it really is, because in my humanness it does not make sense. That is the danger, I have found. Faith is the answer to it: understand that is is beyond understanding. The closer I get to that kind of grace, the real kind of love that Christ displays on the cross---the more painful it is to my flesh, to my selfishness and desire to possess, to grasp everything, to make things manageable.

The other day I was at the library and happened upon A.W. Tozer's The Pursuit of God at their booksale. Twenty-five cents. Here is what he says in a chapter entitled "Apprehending God":

"Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there"

Chambers: "The discipline of dismay is essential in the life of discipleship. The danger is to get back to a little fire of our own and kindle enthusiasm at it (cf. Isaiah 1:10-11). When the darkness of dismay comes, endure until it is over, because out of it will come that following of Jesus which is an unspeakable joy."

That is what I do: I try to create a little fire of my own, because I am just impatient. Do I need to understand? No. I know what Christ has been in my life in the past, I have received abundant, abundant blessings that come, undeniably, from the Lord. I have seen God enter through the reasoning and conversation of my own mind. Sometimes he completely breaks it, blows my mind.
So I know those things. God, you have proved to be everything your Word says you are.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old receoved their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible...These all (men and women of faith) died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland..." (Hebrews 11)

I claim that. Hopefully this was helpful to you.

Hannah

*I will not tease you. Here is a link: http://www.myutmost.org/03/0315.html

probably the last post i will post this summer?

I suppose it is about time for another blog post.
I am really unfaithful when it comes to updating this blog. I will have five posts within two days, and then nothing for a month.

Summer has blown past so quickly. I can't believe it is just a week until school starts. In many ways, I am beyond excited for the school year.

Why am I excited for the school year?

In most ways, there will be nothing very new about this school year; I am still going to the same college, taking the (some) of the same classes, just more of them now. I will live in the same house and commute like the years before, and take the bus system.

God has really, really been trying to tell me something this summer, and now I'm beginning to really hear it.
And that is this: I cannot love people on my own, with my own strength and own love.
I can't. I am not capable of it. Does that make sense? It used to make sense to me, but I don't think I really believed it. I still thought I could do it on my own, perhaps with gospel "aids" and trying to "include" imitating Jesus into it.

It has to be completely His, and none of mine.

Right now it makes sense to me, because I can't imagine loving someone truly. I'm really tired of trying on my own, too, because on my own I don't even have the desire to have compassion.

Psalm 18:34-40
"Whenever God slew them, they would seek him;
they eagerly turned to him again.

"They remembered that God was their Rock,
that God Most High was their Redeemer.

"But then they would flatter him with their mouths,
lying to him with their tongues;

"their hearts were not loyal to him,
they were not faithful to his covenant.

"Yet he was merciful;
he forgave their iniquities
and did not destroy them.
Time after time he restrained his anger
and did not stir up his full wrath.

"He remembered that they were but flesh,
a passing breeze that does not return.

"How often they rebelled against him in the desert
and grieved him in the wasteland!"

I read that yesterday, and I wondered: How many times have I merely flattered God with my lips and literally lied to Him with my tongue? Sometimes the problem isn't that I don't pray the "right things," but that I don't really mean them; or, if I can't seem to mean them, tell God I can't and ask Him to change me. I know that I really desire to become what God desires me to become---but I can't seem to allow Him.
What needs to be, according to these verses, is that my heart becomes steadfast. I thought about that for a bit. Really, to be fastened in its stead. My heart has a place in Christ (yes, that Christ bought it). It has a place and needs to remain there, to live there, to belong there; the more it dwells there, the more it will become like God and shine with God's character, like the definition of love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

For this semester, Hebrews 12 has definitely become my theme.

Hebrew 12:14-15

"Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many."

And before those verses, the writer of Hebrews states, "In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood." (4) How far will I go? Will I struggle with perserverence against the flesh, or will I give in too easily too many times? God will give me the power to fight, the same power He used to raise Christ from the dead. Will I not accept it? Wouldn't that promise spur me on? And God ALWAYS keeps His promises.

Psalm 77:13-14 "Your ways, oh God, are holy. What God is so great as our God? You are the God who performs miracles. You display Your power among the peoples."

This school year...what I desire for my life is that I let God reign in it, not me. That I use His resources, not my own. I am weary of using my own strength, and I just don't have it to myself to love someone sacrifically, to feel compassion or empathy. The junk in my heart needs to be boiled out until all I can see is Christ.

Reign in Us by Starfield

You thought of us before the world began to breathe
You knew our names before we came to be
You saw the very day we fall away from You
and how desperately we need to be redeemed

Lord Jesus
come lead us
we're desperate for Your touch

Oh Great and Mighty One
with one desire we come
that You would reign that You would reign in us
we're offering up our lives
a living sacrifice
that you would reign that You would reign in us

Spirit of the living God fall fresh again
come search our hearts and puify our lives
we need your perfect love we need your discipline
we're lost unless you guide us with your light

Lord Jesus
come lead us
we're desperate for Your touch

Oh Great and Mighty One
with one desire we come
that You would reign that You would reign in us
we're offering up our lives
a living sacrifice
that you would reign that you would reign in us

we cry out for Your life to revive us cry out
for Your love to define us cry out
for Your mercy to keep us
blameless until you return

oh Great and Mighty One
with one desire we come
that You would reign that You would reign in us
we're offering up our lives
a living sacrifice
that You would reign that You would reign in us


So reign please reign in us
come purify our hearts
we need Your touch
come cleanse us like a flood
and set us out
so the world may know You reign You reign in us