I'm going to go in a different direction with this week's blog than I thought. IT saved the best for last. I started the blog for this week before reading the last 2 chapters of IT and I've got to say above anything else these two chapters really hit me hard. Craig rightly addresses the crux of the issue here...that if our ministries/families/lives are to have IT then WE (I) have to have IT. If we don't have IT then how can we possibly expect anyone else to have IT?
I want IT but don't often have IT. I've been a part of IT and know what IT feels and looks like. I have high hopes and expectations for the Church Universal, WLA, my family etc. Often I talk big about how things should be but don't live up to my own expectations. Frankly I can't live up to my own expectations. I don't experience IT to the degree I want to because I don't have IT right now. I NEED God to do this in me. And so to have IT is to have God with me, working in me, and through me. To experience that I have to be committed to pleasing God first and foremost. So often I'm looking to please people...to have a slick, well put together morning when I should be looking to have the Holy Spirit moving in power. I'm not repenting of wanting to do things well just of wanting to do them well in order to look good.
Sometimes I'm more in love with the Church than with Christ. Craig told his story of coming to this realization and it hit me square in the face. That's me at times. I want the church to be great more than I want to know Christ and more than I want people at the church to know Christ. It's a painful realization and it's not always true but sometimes it is.
So the question for me is how do I get to the place to allow God to consume me rather than the church or anything else consume me? Craig proposes we pray in three ways which have been helpful to him and I'm going to adopt. The rest of the week will be dedicated to looking at these three prayers: stretch me, ruin me, and heal me.
My question to anyone out there this morning...is Christ your first love or something else? If He is not our first love then IT is likely not close by.
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This goes with what I was struck by in Mike's sermon on Sunday (I know you weren't there, but I also know you are on the "in" when it comes to that stuff). He said our lives are defined by what we love most. Or what we love most defines our lives. Would others looking at my life say "Wow. Without a doubt she loves Christ most because look at the bulk of who she is and what takes up her time and fills her conversation"? I doubt it. I don't know what they would say defines me, but I'm sure it wouldn't be Christ.
ReplyDeleteThere is a song we sang when we churched out this way that had a bridge that just over and over said "More of You and less of me, more of You, Jesus" and that is the trick right? Finding out how to be full of Him and not so full of myself. And yet be "me" enough to actually do something with what He is doing in me.
Loving Jesus first. It is absolutely the right thing to do, the obvious thing to do, and in some ways the easiest thing to do. In other ways it is the most painful, terrifying thing. Take up your cross and follow Me. Those are not soft instructions.
Sorry this went on forever. I suppose I could go back and edit my comment to make it more brief, but I'm not going to :-) Thanks for the reminder. Well said.
I'll never edit comments here. Well unless I get hit by a spam bot for some inappropriate pills but let's trust that isn't going to happen.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing Barbara!