Brief

I'll blog more later, but i just wanted to write a quick post and let those of you who actually read this that I feel like I am getting some stuff straightened out. It feels good. Feels new and yet familiar. Things seem better with me and Kerianne as well. Not that they have been bad lately. We had a pretty rough go of it for a while there but once this stuff started becoming a little clearer, i felt that tension lifting. Now that I am getting direction a little bit, i feel it lifting some more. Well, sorry this is so short, but i want to go to bed. I'll write more shortly.

~Drifter

Are you Jesus?...Or am I?

So, I have been thinking alot lately (along with some very close friends) about what the church is supposed to be. I think I have come to a few conclusions:

The church is the hand of God on earth. The church is human beings fumbling through everyday life in an attempt to carry on Jesus' work. The church is telling people that without Jesus, life is hollow. The church is you...the church is me. Therefore, I have to ask myself "what am I doing?" What affect do I have?

You see I am very hard on the church. I get pissed about the formulaic, production Christianity that I see up front on any given sunday. Someone is generaly talking about life principles, or steps, or programs. It feels cold, it feels passionless, it feels less than human. But i so easily forget that the church is just me. It is just a bunch of men and women trying to figure it out as they go, just like me. What grandiose answers have I come up with? Where is my plan to live jesus out in my life? Where does the rubber meet the road for me? The answers are simple..."i'm not sure", to all of the above.

For so long in my life I have been cynical and bitter towards the "church". "Church" is simply a place where people congregate together to learn about how to live their lives better. I hated that, the fact that "church" has been taken from a living thing to a structure with 4 walls and a roof. But that is not what it is supposed to be. Church is you, church is me.

Listen, we have been called to be Jesus to people. We have been told to consider others better than ourselves, to clothe the poor, to feed the hungry, to care for the orphan and widow, and to visit the prisoners. Be kind, and merciful, and caring and compassionate. We have to be everything good to everybody. In a word, we must love. We have been charged, not as a group but individually to love others as Christ loved us.

This morning it was flipped on its head for me. I was reading a book, and it quoted the passage in luke (i think) where jesus is separating the sheep from the goats and he says to the good sheep, "When I was hungry you fed me, when i was in prison you came to visit me...". To the bad goats he says the reverse, "When i was hungry you gave me no food to eat...when i was in prison you did not visit me". The punchline?..."when you did this for the least of one of these you did it for me...When you rejected the least of one of these you rejected me". Horrible paraphrasing, I know, but there is something big here that i have missed. I am supposed to be Jesus to the people around me, but the people around me are also Jesus to me. I have to love like Jesus loved me, and I have to love the people around me like they were Jesus. That is really scary. But make no mistake about it, I am the church. That is my task.

How could i be so blind?! I am sitting on my butt complaining about how the church is sitting on her butt! The church is to archaic and produced to reach peoples hearts...and therefore i pledge a bitching session until she wakes up and becomes more affective and relevant. This is ludicrous! So instead of letting this bitterness for the inactivity of the church totally paralyze any potential I would have for the Kingdom, I am going to do something...I am going to BE the church. I just gotta find out how I can do that.

P.S. Know that this is not a shot at anyone else's ideas or journey. We are all on different journies and I respect that. Any hostility you see in this post is directed inward for getting caught up in nothing for far too long. Peace.

~Drifter

Making a Comment

Click on the number beside the Title of the Post to leave a comment.
Ex: Who Got Served? 1
(click on the "1")

Who got served?

I have been thinking about where I can serve, lately. No, not waiting tables. I could never do that. I would find it impossible not to make fun of the guy on the first date scenario. You see them, all awkward and stuff, and part of me wants to break the tension so that they can have a good time and the other part wants to up the anti and increase the pressure to see what comedy will come out of the situation. It's the angel/devil scenario. Do something like whisper to the guy (in earshot of course), "Hey....... we got it unplugged...took three guys and cordless drill, but we did it...just thought you'd want to know. (look at the girl, smile, slap the guy on the back) This guy packs one hell of a punch, let me tell ya! (whispering again to the guy) Nice going, she's hot!"
Mu-Haaha-haahaa-haahaaaaa!

Whoa! Blown of course a little there. Oops. Anyways, serving in church...or something. I know that it will basically force me to talk about God and give me a sort of springboard back into journeying with him. There is other stuff that i can do in the mean time. I know I can study my bible (which i will), go for walks or something (which I will), and pray (which I do), but it is really hard to get the motivation to start this stuff.

It is hard to desire something that will improve your quality of life when you are not seeing results. I know you have to actually step out and do it to see results but, you know what i mean. The temptation to settle is strong in me. I'm lazy i guess. It's like going to the gym...I would have to drag my ass out of the ass groove that I have left in the couch after watching the 11 hour family guy marathon, and to do that i would have to move the 5 bags of chips, 7 empty beer bottles, bag of nibs, chocolate bars, pizza boxes, and scattered skittles and M&M's from around and a top my body before i can make the proper dismount to get up and go, and I REALLY don't want to do that...but if I can somehow do it, once I am there I am glad I came. Funny thing is, that realization won't make the battle any easier next time especially if it is spaghetti night!

Anyway, the realization that this stuff is good for me is there, but it doesn't make it any easier to start the process. I think right now it would be a colossal mistake to jump in with both feet. Baby steps seem more appropriate right now. So I have started praying again and talking to God a bit. Today I think that I will go for a walk and just process life.
I feel like this process will be very much akin to introducing a tranquilized animal back into the wild. At first I'll be wondering "Where am I?" and "Why am i here?", but hopefully i will eventually adjust to my new surroundings and slowly make my way deeper into the jungle.

The bombshell

I'm ruining my marriage. If this keeps up, it won't be long before I am just another statistic. Just another number. Hmmm. That's a scary thought. Something as pure and powerful and beautiful as a marriage amounting to nothing more than a number in the end.

I have been more irratable, more angry, more sarcastic and more cynical in the last month than I have in the last 3 years. Needless to say it is wearing on Kerianne. I don't know why I have been acting like that. I guess i was trying to make someone feel as miserable as i do. Ker has hung in there though. I have seen so much of what we said in our vows become tangible through her. But I still feel bitter about something...and it won't go away.

I spent some time trying to figure out why I have been feeling like this. The first question I asked myself was, "what am I actually feeling?" Not sure really. I feel like I am passionless, purposeless, and at times hopeless. It feels like life isn't exciting at all anymore. Like i am part of the global machine. I have my routine and i stick to it. No spontaneity, no spark, no life. I said to Kerianne the other night, "It feels like life has lost its salt... like everything that used to be bursting with flavor is now just bland." And that was it....life has lost its salt. That's how i feel. It has affected me in every area of my life. It feels like a room that only has so much air, and I have precious little left.

So what is this powerful, this incapacitating that it can affect my whole life? The answer is simple: It is God.
My flesh is weary and my soul is dead. God is the only thing that could affect my everything. My whole life. Hmm, this is getting confusing. I need to break this down into something my brain can understand. Here's how that looks.

Problem: Life has lost its salt
Symptoms: Dragging the ones I love around me down into my current state
Root Cause: Dying spirit.
Solution: ???

My spirit is dying b/c I am distant from God. I have gone way too far in my life and way too deep with God to go without Him for any length of time. Evidently it has been too long. At one point in my life I was very, very dependent on God for my fire. By "fire" I mean the thing that gets you out of bed with a smile on your face, the thing that makes you feel like you are actually good to be around, or have around, the thing that makes you feel like your existence is somehow positive, makes you feel like you have hope, a mission, a purpose. That is what i mean by "fire". God was good. He supplied me with that. At that time I could see no way of existing outside of his plans for me and, lived simply for knowing and getting to know God. It feels weird to even type that now. We have been apart for some time now. You cannot slowly drift away from the thing that gives you life and still expect to feel alive.
I feel like my minidisc player. When I plug it into the wall, it has an unlimited power source and therefore will serve its purpose and play music... the whole reason for its existence in the first place. But when it is away from the power source it runs on a finite, and limited battery for its power supply. It will only run so long before it is completely out of life and can no longer perform the function for which it exists.

That is me. Away from my power source and out of life. You don't go as deep into a relationship with God as i have (I'm not saying I'm a saint, but we were friends and I'm not going to water that down) and then walk away without feeling anything. Like any friendship gone astray, you feel it. You will feel as much pain as you had love for that person, and you will feel as dry as that relationship watered you. The more life you received from that relationship, the more life you will realize is missing. You feel like a spectre, a ghost. So you can imagine how it feels when you are friends with God, and then drift apart.

In a way this is an answer to prayer. I once prayed, "God, don't ever let me go. No matter what. I am giving you permission to override my free will. Don't ever let me leave you". I definitely feel that absence now. So I need to repair a broken relationship (with this realization God has already started to mend my marriage...this weekend has been great...and it is only saturday morning).

I need to mend my friendship with God. He is the reason my soul ever felt life in the first place. The reason I love. The reason I cry. The reason I can be a good husband. The reason I get out of bed and feel like I have a purpose. I know i need God. It's time to go home.

Problem: Life has lost its salt
Symptoms: Dragging the ones I love around me down into my current state
Root Cause: Dying spirit.
Solution: Come back home to God.