this is going to be a random assortment - a jambalaya, if you will - of thoughts that have been collecting in my head but are only now making their way into blog format. i'm not sure if anyone even reads this anymore, but i know i need to start using it again, if for nothing other than the pure discipline of identifying my own thoughts enough from time to time to try to explain them to others. so here goes ...
amazing grace. just watched the movie last night. never knew the slave trade was the origin of the song. totally blown away by wilberforce and his humility - took my mind to the passages our church has been teaching on ... "have mercy on me, a sinner". seems he didn't forget that, even in victory.
schemes. been really convicted lately to not forget there is an enemy who schemes against our hearts and souls. our weapon is prayer and to be honest, i'm pretty lazy in prayer. but lately my heart has been so encouraged by the Spirit to remember i'm not fighting against the flesh and blood and daily in-and-out struggles. the fight is how my heart responds to those flesh and blood struggles. and i'm not really the one fighting. i am the one who needs to turn to the One who will fight. Who am i turning to? myself or my God?
which brings me to my next link in the thought-chain. self. self is a four-letter word. and i really should treat it like that more often. again and again i rely on self. ugh, this is sin. just think of how many things we extol as a culture that are all about self. self-reliance. self-sufficiency. self-esteem. self-assurance. self-inflation. self-promotion. self-regulation. you might be thinking, "hey, this or that isn't a bad thing just because it has the word self in it." my point is not that all things with the word self are inherently evil, but seriously, if you really take the time to think about how MUCH we extol self, it gets rather nauseating. and here's why. we start believing we really are self-reliant, self-sufficient. let me change the pronoun here. I start believing that. I forget to rely wholly on my Maker.
the box. we live in a fast, demanding, expensive corner of the world. we've had some unexpected turns the last few months, and you know the saddest part is that i came home from our trip so determined not to just put it in a box with a pretty bow and look at it every so often with comments like "wasn't that such a lovely trip? ... why yes it was ... and what a lovely bow on that lovely box ... sigh ... ". gross. life was real then and life is real now. it's time for me to start connecting those dots. i plan on taking that box down and unpacking it more. i need to take that box down and unpack it.
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- brooke mardell
- ... through her mind, through her heart, through the words on this page which will lead through the crazy and the serious and the fun and the mundane
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Reading material for the journey
- - Let the Nations be Glad!, by John Piper
- - Paul’s Blog (otherwise known as the Book of Acts)
- - Revelation of God among the Unevangelized, by Christian Reese
- - Rumors of Another World, by Philip Yancey
- - Running on Empty, by Rick Anderson
- - The Apostle, by John Pollock
- - The Great Omission, by Steve Saint
- - The Servant Leader, by Blanchard & Hodges
- - There’s a Snake in My Garden, by Jill Briscoe
- - Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell
4 comments:
In case you were wondering, people still do read your blog. And people are still praying for you even though you're not on a trip around the world. Don't get so down on yourself.
I'm in the same boat of being selfish and my life being about me. But I have been re-learning lately that those feelings of guilt or frustration aren't from Christ. I just have to get it in my mind that the only way I can do anything good is if I let Him take control. That isn't easy for me, so after a short period I end up doing the same things again. Its good that we serve a merciful God who continually forgives, cause it looks like I may be struggling with these things for a long time.
Know that you're thought of and that you're not alone.
isn't it funny that my first response was "hey, i wasn't being down on myself" ... in order to protect my self-image ... ha, i'm laughing at myself right now. irony.
true - guilt, frustration - NOT from our Father. i just never want to get comfortable or start agreeing when the world around me starts telling me it's all about me.
thanks for reading/writing :) - you're a good friend, timmy.
I don't want to accept what the world tells me either, but I do think that God created us with the ability to have feelings. I don't know if God would have allowed us to have all kinds of feelings if they weren't okay at some point or another. What do you think about that? It kinda just popped into my head and seems like it could be true. There is probably an argument or two against it, but I'm just curious what someone else thinks.
By the way, I didn't think that you were just getting down on yourself. I connected with what you were saying and I wanted you to know that I feel the same way quite often.
well, we're created in His image - i've never really thought that meant the fingers and toes image, but that our hearts and souls and emotions are reflective of our Creator. think about the universality of some of our emotions - women in every culture respond the same to certain images or stories, and all want to be beautiful and lovely; men in every culture want to be strong and respected. with such different backgrounds, those kinds of things scream "reflection of the Creator!" to me. but, we are also in a fallen world. bottom line, we never see God condemning someone for getting angry or mad or annoyed - look at david, paul, etc. so we often condemn ourselves for feeling things that he never condemned people for feeling. but, with those examples in mind, we need to also pay close attention to what they did with those feelings. i think that's the key. david would express his disappointment, selfishness, despair, anger ... but would always always always turn it back to being about God and not about himself. it's like he would talk himself into Truth - or, as we've been studying at church - he would "preach the gospel to himself".
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