my bully desire
this week has had zero productivity. pourquoi? je ne sais pas.
i've tried to do some work, but there's something unfulfilled in my heart that really isn't letting any other desires find fulfillment. qu'est-ce que c'est? i think it has everything to do with my desire or hope to find joy IN God alone, and not the many things I claim to do FOR God. This desire is dominating the playground of tasting good food, accomplishing h/w, enjoying all my friendships. Despite all of this, the most interesting thing in all of this is that I'm pretty confident. I have periodic moments of frustration.. in fact, i'm a little frustrated right now, and I was straight-up angry an hour ago. I think the confidence (that the bully will be satisfied and become more like a loving teacher) comes from some things running through my mind:
-a song lyric i just heard today, "because I'll never hold a picture of the whole horizon you have made", "makes me wonder, who am I... and great are you."
-that Jesus was silent during his suffering until God the Father turned his love from Christ. Then Christ cried out in affliction, and gave up his soul. What was it that made him so secure in God's love, and to value it above all else, even to the effect of his own death?
-that i find it so hard to live IN the gospel, instead of just theoretically believing it.
I think a lot of ppl who read this blog can identify with what I said, so feel free to add your thoughts.
posted by amac @ 9:11 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Ah yikes; that first paragraph rings too true for me. It makes me want to stop writing and get back to reading. I've been wondering lately (and by "lately" I mean for the past.... 3 or 4 years) how is studenthood actually something I do for God's glory. (The alternate question, of course, is, why am I doing it if it's not for that reason but that's not logical enough for me.)
What's the answer, Amac?
"Living IN the gospel" is an interesting concept to me. It reminds me of the numerous passages I've come across here and there about dying to the self, dying to the world, carrying Christ's death in our bodies, being new creations.. and it's not something that I really get. I wonder if it's just something that was formed gradually in me so that I haven't noticed over the past four years.
If what you meant was living as if the Gospezillio was alive and dynamic - living as if it made a difference and compelled me well then I would understand that this is an unfortunate NON-reality of my life that I was just thinking about today. Why doesn't the Gospel excite me or fire me up most days? How can such a thing stay bottled up?
Those are my lengthy thoughts. Do your worst.
Jess these aren't answers so much as thoughts you've sparked.
by "studenthood" are you talking bout h/w, marks, interacting with peers...
never thought about why studenthood glorifies God. my thoughts are that being a student is not something like going to a mall. It's not something we just up and do. It's a lifelong endeavor, more intense at some times than others. Everyone goes through studenthood.
This being said, how does it glorify God? Col 3:17 tells us to do all things by and for Christ. We should seek to excel in this area of our life. that's THE answer Jess... or maybe not. if you think otherwise, we'll fight.
your second paragraph is a reality in my life. it's so incredible how much i suck at responding to the Gift. at the same time, it's pretty amazing that this is the reason we were given the Gift. We can't produce joy in Grace. We should be thankful, but we can't, we're sinners. Our sinful nature will battle with the gospel in our hearts until we die, then we're free to unbattled joy in God.
piper has a good chapter in "When I Don't Desire God," called The Fight For Joy Is a Fight to See. I'm just about to start it, should be good.
Hmmm.. I guess I'd better go on a hot date with Colossians 3:17 then... I'll do that in a minute.
Although it's usually rather tricky respond to any question in theology with "THE answer" I think you're probably right in stating something absolute and irrefutable there. (I didn't even realize at first that I had asked for "the answer"... that was totally rhetoric/saracastish since I thought there was no easy answer.)
Instead of "studenthood" I could have said "academia" or "post-secondary institutional studenthood" or basically "being a university student". In the broader sense you mentioned I fully agree and I like the sounds of it.
I like your paragraph on the Gift. It's tricky and delicate and altogether humbling. Rock on.
Mark Noll has argued that the reason evangelicals do not have more influence on academic thought is that, not seeing such things as immediately glorifying to God, we do not push Christians to fallow higher education. The end result is secular control of the flow of scholarly thought and information.
Luther pushed the idea of doing all to the glory of God to the extent that he saw even dish washing as an opportunity to glorify God. In this sense all work, if governed by a Godly intent, can, on some level, serve as an act of worship.
I think this is a tricky notion to comprehend. But, at the same time, if we see God is all present, then how can we doubt His ability to manifest Himself even through the smallest of tasks? It boils down to a trust thing in a lot of ways.
Ah good old Luther
that's my boy, even dishwashing...
ok im gonna ask it
HOW does dishwashing glorify God? Because I absolutely hate doing it!
Maybe that's just it! Maybe the fact that you're doing it despite your hatred is what's glorifying God. It's like saying, my personal happiness is worth LESS than seeing you pleased. .. No? Isn't that like... what you'd need to tell youself if you were being burnt alive because you would not recant your faith? No? Yes? Am I way off?
that's cool ryan. i wonder how dishwashing glorifies God. i don't think clean plates reflect much of God (though maybe in some ways..). it probly has more to do with a character thing, like being disciplined and not a sloth. and if ur doing them for someone else, u show love.
doing them even though u hate them is cool... shows good willpower. but i think it's better to do them because you enjoy what ur accomplishing, like the fact that you're demonstrating discipline, or helping someone. it also makes the act more enjoyable. problem is we can't just decide to be happy when we wash dishes. It's a change of heart that God produces, as the gospel works its change it us. So washing dishes with a smile is a supernatural event... unless u just like washing dishes.
all this talk reminds me of the last chapter in A.W. Tozer's "The Pursuit of God" and he talks about the sacred-secular antithesis that goes on in our Christian life.
"One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas --the sacred and the secualr. As these areas are conceived to exist apart fro each other and to be morally and spiritually incompatible, and as we are compelled by the necessities of living to be always crossing back and forth from the one to the other, our inner lives tend to break up so that we live a divided instead of a unified life."
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