Don't feel like rewriting all of this and I just sent part of it as a message to my best friend half way across the world so I'll copy and paste it. Welcome to my thought process this weekend. And some of it's a repeat of past blogs but hey, I can never learn a lesson once so here you go....
I have been considering a lot the authority of the Lord. And when I do, frankly, it pisses me off . Bad. It breaks my heart. You know those things where you realize it shames the cross? Yeah. Reading Jim Elliot's journals I just realized, there is no fear of the Lord. People use Him for His benefits and then don't submit to His authority at all. They live for themselves and their appetites as long as its within the "proper Christian bounds." They rationalize away as much as possible so they can live with one foot in the world and one against it all the while having no jealously over guarding the fellowship with the Spirit. After all, sins break fellowship with the Spirit. If we cared about that relationship we wouldn't be so quick to ask "how close can I get to the line before it's bad?"
People want to follow God and still live for themselves. I suck at this and realize I haven't been living this way. only to a point on big things. But I am not focusing my day on fellowship with the Spirit. I don't wake up going, How can I love, honor, and serve You today? What is Your heart today and how can i please You? I go and "do" things for Him on my own strength and ability that look really pretty all the while let my "doing things for Him" pile up so much that it looks great, and my intentions were good, but visibly it looks like fruit when the reality is my roots do not go down deep. The weight of my relationship with the Lord is on service and acts and they are not flowing with LIFE that comes from the vine but rather my own gusto.
I have been considering two things I read. One talks about how some will have Christ cheap. They will have Him without the cross. But the price will not come down. The other is from either Amy Carmichael or Elisabeth Elliot And they were saying that we romanticize the cross and make it this feel good emotional love thing of Christ. And it was. but we limit it to that. We leave Jesus on the cross and ourselves on the throne when those need to switch putting us on the cross and Him on the throne if we want any sort of depth. At least that's what I took away from the quote. Powerful isn't it? That is exactly my relationship the last couple months. I am so focused on just doing good in everything I have going on and keeping up with it all and I have lost the depth. And somewhere along the way I lost the intimacy leaving me with the world's superficial things. Romans 1:1-2.
I don't want Christ cheap. I don't want Him part way or mostly. I don't want settling. I want what Ed McCully wanted. I want to give myself to Him with reckless abandon. One of Jim's prayers when he was 21 was about how he gains so much from being with the Lord but he fears the Lord gains little from being with Him and how he wants to do something big with his life not so he can gain high station but so his life can be a testimony to the value of knowing Christ...What is the testimony of my life? What does my life reflect that I truly believe? What does it reflect is of most importance to me? What truly holds my heart and affections? Life's to short to short and I want to quit wasting my time pretending like I'm not doing just that.
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