Letter to a friend

Wrote this stuff in response to a friend's blog entry. some if was semi-intelligent & perhaps worth sharing, so thought I'd post it here....


Some random thoughts (not sure if you were looking for responses to your questions/rants or if you were just venting. Sometimes I find venting way more effective than the answers to the questions).

A) How many know what they're doing?: I'm one of the others who doesn't know what I'm doing & feels constantly like I'm pretending to be an adult. Mind you, you've seen some of the collection of G.I. Joe's at my house, so you know how badly I'm failing at the adult gig. I have a 'career' and a house & everything & I still don't know what I want to be 'when I grow up'.... not sure I really want to grow up either. I was sort of hoping to make some plans for this year (go to greece for two weeks). Now with my dad's heart problems, I'm pretty sure none of that's going to happen & so don't know any of my tomorrows.

I think we grow into this tension (i.e. two opposite things co-existing & pulling against each other) of learning contentment & to enjoy our perpetual 'now' while also being caught longing for something just beyond our grasp... at the end of our days we may have slowly, gradually have moved our 'now' to look like our dreams, or we may end up someplace far different and, if God is gracious(which I hear that he is), far better than we could've dreamed. Ultimately we find all those dreams that drive us crazy have really been a longing for heaven, a longing for union with Jesus...

B) The middle questions: the rescued/dead cycle is a normal one, or at least one that I & many others have experienced ini our spiritual journey. You go through this place of revelation where you understand another piece of who God is & it's brilliant & beautiful - you feel like you're alive for the first time - like you've never really seen the world, or never really breathed before. It's incredible & marvellous, like falling in love & then, slowly, as the euphoria passes, the emptiness sneaks up on us & ambushes us & suddenly we're thrown into this pit of despair & desolation & we don't know which direction is up or who we are or who God is &, well, really we don't know anything for a while. it's the cycle of consolation/desolation & God brings it to us for a few reasons - well, many reasons, but I can think of three off the top of my head:
- 1) He reminds us not to take Him for granted: Sometimes we forget that He is our source for everything, our sustainer, the One who is love & the Joy-bringer/Hope-giver.... sometimes we forget that He isn't the vending machine in the sky or Santa claus. It's mostly when our 'love' for Him is really a selfish looking after ourselves. We love Him 'cause of what we can get from Him, or we show love to Him 'cause we have a problem & need him to help.... & so He responds to this by 'removing' Himself (i.e. making himself feel less real/tangible/present - He never leaves, He just feels like he has). And our hearts feel His absence & we hate it & start to choke on our longings & ache for HIs return... (this kind of gets described poetically in song of songs/song of solomon chapters 2&3)
- 2) the dark night of the soul: He wants to mature our love, wants to help us realize that we love Him not 'cause of what he does for us/gives us, but for who He is. As you'd want a lover to love you for you instead of for some image of you or because of how you make them feel about themselves, so too, God wants to be loved for who He is. And so there are times where He will 'remove' Himself (again, He's right there, we just can't feel him the way we normally do (though note that I don't 'feel' him for the large majority of my life)). It's one of the most torturous experiences of our existence & the most confusing, but our love does come through stronger & more mature - Song of Songs chapters 5&6 describes this painful process
- 3) He wants us to lose our 'idols': Often we worship an image of Jesus that isn't really anything like Jesus - we have this picture in our head of who He is & how He operates & it's based off of how our parents treated us or what people have told us & it makes God look all petty & mean & vengeful & ready to smite us when we don't live up to expectations. Since Jesus/God is different than this image, He'll often do stuff that is unexpected both 'cause its what he wants to do & 'cause it messes with our screwed up expectations of how He should be reacting. When this happens, we often panic 'cause we're not sure if our 'god' is real. Really we've just been worshiping this false image of 'god' and we have to throw down that 'idol' and get to know the true heart of Jesus. That one's painful 'cause we have this crisis of faith & a hard time releasing the false image.... and usually have to kind of experience healing for the damage done by the false image.

But yeah, if what you're going through doesn't fit any of the above, well, still don't worry 'cause the renewal/death cycle happens a lot... it's like the changing of seasons - we have summers & winters in our lives... some people are like evergreens & sort of press through regardless of the season, but most of us are more 'deciduous' (the trees that lose their leaves - not sure if I've spelt it right) and we go through the times of growth, lots of life with branches green, then we blaze into fall with brilliant colours, only to lose all that once made us feel alive or brilliant & we experience the 'death' of winter, only to wake renewed again in the spring...

I don't understand exactly why the cycle is there/is needed, but I just know that it exists (same thing that I don't understand why women bleed every month, but there is a cycle of life/death in that, too, that is a mystery to me, 'specially as a man).

And yeah, the biggest struggle of all our faith is "who is jesus?". He's the central figure of our faith, the one we're suppossed to be in love with & we sort of don't trust Him 'cause, well, we've had a lot of people tell us who jesus is or tell us that they represent Him & they seem to talk/act completely different to the Jesus the Bible seems to talk about. & then, since they supposedly 'know' more than we do, we start to doubt ourselves & doubt our relationship with Him.

I know that our faith is supposed to grow in community - to grow with people who can encourage/challenge us, but sometimes it's much easier to figure out who God is on our own a bit - it's also dangerous 'cause then we start to make Jesus look like us & start to turn ourselves into 'god', but yeah, at least in those places we're only dealing with our own crap that screws up our image of God instead of everyone else's crap plus ours....

The stuff God promises is unbelievable - it's too good to be true (or as some authors have penned it, too good NOT to be true). God is, according to 1 John, LOVE & yeah, our whole concept of love is a bit suspect & we have these ideals of what 'perfect love' is, but it's so frightening 'cause we long for perfect love, but are so afraid that perfect love doesn't exist or, if it does, it won't accept/want/love us.... & we have this fear 'cause we've been rejected/hurt by lots of others that have told us they loved us (or at least that's my issues/struggles). & so God keeps trying to convince us that He loves us & we keep holding Him at arm's length 'cause we're scared that he's going to let us down... sometimes we do the 'preemptive strikes' and try to 'dump' Him before He can reject us, but it never really works 'cause He's real, real persistent in His love for us.

So yeah, just know that all of us fight with these feelings. the book "the divine romance' talks about this or you can just read through most of the Bible - Jacob's life in middle to end of Genesis is great for this battle thing. Job is another great one to read through about the battle with believing God's goodness - or Elijah's rant/wanting to kill himself in 1 Kings 19.

C) Are you really saved/can your faith be smothered that easily?: My response: Yes to the saved, no to the smothered thing. Now, if you talk to enough people, people will tell you one thing or another. I can't say anything to 'prove' things to you one way or the other or anything to alleviate your fears... but yeah, it really comes down to getting to know the heart of God. Read through the gospels (matthew, Mark, Luke & John). Really try to listen to the heartbeat of jesus & understand who He is. Try to read it with an open heart - not reading it from what others have told you that it says - try to read it all with fresh eyes, to let God show you His heart & let you know His love for you.

I'd love to be able to walk you through the big picture of the Bible - especially the Old Testament & God's relationship with Israel. In Genesis, humanity rejects God's love & aligns themselves on a self-destructive path of chasing all that is not-love. From that point on, God starts to work His master plan to win back His bride, and so God 'births' a nation named Israel through Abraham, isaac & Jacob & then calls them out of Egypt through moses & leads them to a land to be their home through Joshua & then sets them up as a nation through David. From that point on it is this tug of war, this love/hate relationship where God comes to Israel saying, I want to love you & be your husband & for you to shine the light of my love to the world & Israel sometimes responds in love & light, but often responds in selfishness & prostitute themselves to many other lovers & so God (like in Hosea 1-3 or Ezekiel 16) pleads with them & tries to woo them back to Him, sometimes He removes His presence/protection (see the answers in B), all the time he's trying to win them back & they keep rejecting him & so finally Jesus comes to earth, takes on flesh in order to walk in His bride's shoes & to give a face & hand to His love for them & they, as you know, reject Him, kill him & then he is raised from the dead, His blood being the sacrifice for their sins & his new life being offered to them freely.... and then yeah, Israel kind of keeps rejecting Jesus, but there are prophesies in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Revelations, Zechariah, etc. etc. that all talk about a day when God will redeem the nation...

& yeah, all through the Bible there is this picture of a God who has this relentless love that will not stop, will not cease loving us. With our salvation, He is the author & finisher of it. His grace covers all our sins, his blood covers all of our past, present & future. You chose Jesus in the same way that a bride chooses a husband. He asks for your heart & you took a risk & said 'yes' and, as with any relationship, you likely really didn't know what you were getting into & now you have a lifetime to learn & grow through the ups & downs of a spiritual marriage. And, even if you find a happily married couple (which is more rare now), you can see that there are times when people go, "I'm so happy about this", but there are also other times when people say, "wow, I can't believe how hard this all is".....

...and yeah, on the flip side of your choice, God picked you for salvation, chose to woo you to Himself & He continues to woo you over & over & over & over again....

Part of the reason your faith can't be crushed so easily is that God will keep it alive. Even if you tried to shut it down, He wouldn't leave & it would drive you bonkers. His love will not let you go & the persistence of His love, described in Romans 8, will endure - that nothing will separate you from His love, not death or live, angel or demon, things present or things to come, etc.....

but yeah, long replies to decent rants. Hope some of it makes sense.
Hang in there,
Kirk