break on through to the other side

So I had a breakthrough last night. I realized that I am saved not just in my sin, but from my sin. I am free of it. And one of the requirements of being free of something is not doing it anymore. And more than just forgiving sins, the Lord wants to help us free our lives from sin and live completely for Him. What I realized is not that I'm a dirty sinner. I've known that for years and years. What I realized is that I'm a dirty sinner by my own choice. I've been praying for release from these powers that hold me in bondage for a long long time. I realized about a month and a half ago that one of my major issues that I've been praying for freedom from and striving to free myself from it was not going away because I honestly deep down still wanted it there. I realized last night that I honestly deep down still want all of the sin that I'm involved in to stay right where it is. It's not a question of striving. It's a question of releasing. The Bible says that through Christ Jesus' sacrifice on the cross we can be made free from sin and be acceptable to God. He loved us even in our sin. And that is where I still am. Not because I don't believe I am forgiven, but because I won't give it to Him to get rid of. I've tried. I can't do it. There's no earthly way to be free from sin. But I'm still holding on. So my prayer today is that God would help me to just let go. To let go of everything. My life (easy), my wife (fairly easy), my finances (not so easy), my daugther (really really difficult), my music (fairly difficult), my sin (working on it), my time (this is one of the tougher ones), my apartment (I'm pretty anal about things, and yet still so irresponsible - hypocrisy you say? I know...bummer). I am not free of sin until I let go. I'm not even sure if in God's eyes I am washed clean until I step up to the cross and allow the cleansing blood to flow over me and just surrender.

Epistles study

Rob and I are starting a Bible study. We're going to be going through all the epistles in six months - Romans - Revelation. Should be awesome. I can't wait to dig into that stuff.

Evolution?

Maybe I was off on my assessment of the polar bear population in terms of how many generations it took them to evolve. This is incredible: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/06/06/news-to-note-06062009#one

declaration of dependence

These last few weeks have been exhausting. Every day is a battle. It seems like everything is kind of coming to a head now and I'm not sure what to do with it all. I'm being attacked with negativity and I'm letting it sneak back in to myself. I'm overwhelmed. I want to curl up in a ball and ride out the storm. To escape. To escape to a beach house on a small island far away with a hammock out front where it's perpetually dusk under the coconut palm trees. Sunset. Sea salt in the air, and the sweet smell of flowers blooming not far away. And my hair is sticking together because of the salt and sand. Sounds nice.

But that's my old nature. The Bible says I have been given a new nature, a new life, a new existence, and one day I'll be given a new body that can handle all those other things. But for now I'm stuck trying to live out this new nature in my present imperfect body with my imperfect mind incapable of thinking rationally and my imperfect heart incapable of loving completely and I just have to deal with it. I heard a saying a while back that has helped me and it has been getting me through this last week. It goes like this: "When the persecuted Christians in China pray, they don't pray that God will make their load lighter, they pray that He will make their backs stronger, and then they rejoice." I want some of that. I have prayed that prayer many times already. The rejoicing part hasn't quite hit me yet. But I'm surviving. I'm doing my best to encourage my wife who is under the weather and 8-1/2 months pregnant, counsel friends who need serious help, stay afloat with bills and insurance nightmares, grocery shopping, keeping the house liveable as far as hygeine goes (I'm not doing a very good job of this), keeping myself awake enough to go to work every day, and doing my best to prepare for bombardment at every turn. And this operation could never be successful without a strength that I in myself do not possess. A supernatural strength is what I'm holding on to and if I let go I will drown in this ocean of trials. But as the Lord lives, I will push on, because I know that's what He wants from me. This is character building time. It's not fun. It seems pointless. But it's not. Because when I come out of this, I will be that much wiser, that much stronger, and that much more dependent on the grace of the only Living God.

the hope in something like fear

So it's the middle of the afternoon on a warm yet comfortable day and the sky is caving in a very interesting way. It's not falling. It's not asphyxiating. It's almost like it's anxious for something terrible to happen, but not that worried because nothing short of God could do anything terrible to something as big and amazing as the sky. It's a strange feeling. I was thinking again the other night about the vision I used to have of a rope coming out of the ceiling when I would lie in bed and I would grip the rope and pull myself up and it wasn't so much a lazy man's vision of something helping him out of bed, it was more like a symbol of a beckoning hope that never failed. Anytime I was in bed this rope came out of the sky (not even the ceiling, whatever surface was above me). It was this entity that wanted to help me, to pull me out of whatever devastation I was in at the moment, my escape. Then one day after I had come to trust this hope, this vision, and I pulled myself out of bed with this rope and climbed it, up away from all the things that were tearing me apart and toward some blessed unknown, the end of the rope became a noose. It gave me the impression that the only hope I had, this rope, was suicide, death. Nothing would ever revive me from my coma, a sublime fear of the future.

Well the future has arrived, and I must say that it's not as bad as I apparently thought. I have come to know a greater hope than the rope that hung down from the sky, namely the Lord Jesus Christ, and I struggle greatly to follow Him daily. But all of the little things in life, in love, in marriage that keep me reeling with this feeling that there's more that I am missing, and more I could be giving, and so much less that I deserve. And I'm humbly here, sitting at an antique oak desk, deciding that my future will be better than my past. That I will from now onward choke back my feelings as well as my words. That the pride of my youth will be murdered and buried with the aborted fetuses of the present generation. That I will not react in such a manner as I have taught myself to react. Because of Jesus, and because it's a lovely, warm, time-spattered day, I shall replace my visor, wield my spar and live to fight another day.