Awesome Tozer devotional

This rocked my world yesterday morning before work. I highly recommend. Favorite part is the first line, "The warmest hearts and the coolest heads anywhere at any time should always belong to the Christians." This is from Tozer for Today, a 366-day Devotional (click on it to see full view):

Love it when God interrupts me, part deaux

(part uno: http://urlme.cc/interrupt1)

my thoughts, "sweet mercy that was a dumb thing to say. why did I say that? dahhh I wish I hadn't said tha--"

"are you going to live in slavery?" (in God's still, small voice)

And then this verse came to mind: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery" - Galatians 5:1. Another good interruption from my circular thoughts that kept me up a few nights ago. This verse offers so much freedom. I love it.

Spirit of sonship

I've hit a slight case of, what doctors call, "writer's block." I'm just gonna push thru tho. Let's see how this goes.

As you may or may not know, LOST final season premier is this Tuesday. Am I stoked? Yes. In anticipation of Tuesday, I watched some of last season with some buddies of mine today, and one scene stood out to me. Backdrop - there's this dude named Sayid who used to be in the Iraqi army, and he's done some bad stuff (killed people, tortured people, ect ect).

Ben finds him as he's building escuelas in Santo Domingo, Habitat for Humanity style, and tells him that he is a killer. He defines Sayid, gives him his purpose. You can tell Sayid is super conflicted about it, because there he is building this escuela for kids, maybe trying to redeem his shameful past.

I think about Christians, and the name we can claim for ourselves. Those around us, even with great intentions, can attempt to define who we are, to name us. However, we can rightfully claim ourselves as God's children.

"because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "'Abba,' Father." The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children" - Romans 8:14-16.

And that's it. God calls us his children. It must have been life-changing for Abram when God changes his name to Abraham, meaning "father of many nations." In this one transaction, God confirms his covenant with Abraham and gives him his purpose. So cool.

The end.

God carries on to completion

A couple nights ago I picked up a book to re-read, called Jesus: The Stranger to Self-Hatred by Brennan Manning. If you haven't read it, and you struggle w/ that kind of thing, then I can't recommend it enough. It's on point.

So I started to read it again, and realized that I didn't need to. I had a moment of, Yes, thank God that that is not as much of a struggle as it was a year or two ago. And that's zero percent anything that I did, but 100% God bringing me through that, by his grace and his grace alone.

The following verse honestly never meant much to me, because I get impatient with the whole restoration process, but it's very real to me now: "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" - Philippians 1:6.

Thank God that he cares about us to continue working on us, like a potter molds clay, even through the storms of life.

Clarity vs. Trust

Just after reading a few preview pages from Ruthless Trust by Brennan Manning, one thing stuck out to me. This guy he talks about goes to Calcutta to serve and figure out what he is to do w/ the rest of his life, and he asks Mother Teresa to pray for him. What for?, she asks. For clarity. She responds: No, I will not do that. That's the last thing you're holding on to that you need to let go of. I have never had clarity, what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.

This is intriguing, because I can't count the number of times I pray for clarity, and have prayed over friends for the same thing. But, what if trusting God means accepting a certain lack of clarity. I think we all want clarity, but, I wonder if part of trusting God is accepting that he wants us to give up some clarity so that we can rely on him more, so that we can trust him more.

And if you think about it, why do we want clarity? I know I want it because I want to know what the mess is going on in my life, or in the lives of those around me. I want to have the knowledge of how something is going to turn out. I kinda feel like Adam in that way, I guess.

But that leaves no room for God. I don't need God if I have full clarity; he's of no use to me then.

So, instead of praying for clarity, I'm going to pray for the ability and courage to trust God.

Paul doesn't have it together

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do" - Romans 7:15.

and...

"So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law" - Romans 5:16-18.

Reading Paul's letters is a breath of fresh air sometimes (now) for me. "I do not understand what I do" and "they are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want."

I feel like Paul gets it.

There's this tension. These constant forces that directly oppose each other, and sometimes you end up not understanding what you're doing. I read that as, Paul doesn't have his stuff together and he's honest about it. I'm glad he's honest about it.

So, what then? What if we don't have our stuff together, and we're left with our hands out, palms facing upwards, saying, "I don't freaking get this." What then?

I guess we remember the truths about God. The promises.

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

There is now, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Am I "in" Christ Jesus? He is my redeemer, he is my Wonderful Counselor, my Prince of Peace, my Almighty God, my Everlasting Father, and I can call him Abba.

So I guess it's about perspective, right? When you do stuff you don't want to do, or not do stuff that you want to do, then at least there's an unstoppable Mighty Love that doesn't shift. And when we F up, to some degree it doesn't even phase God, because he doesn't love us based on how well we have our stuff together.

ect ect.

Or maybe I'm trying to find external stuff to explain things, when it's more a matter of self-control and self-discipline. That wears me out, because I begin to forget God's love and get upset about not having enough self-discipline and brute force strength to get my stuff together. And. it's. exhausting.

Hellen

I don't know why I do this, but when I'm in an airport for 3 hours I need to find ways to entertain myself, even if at the expense of others. You be the judge.

The following dialog took place when I was ordering lunch today from an airport. In order to protect the anonymity of all parties, I won't say which airport it was, nor reveal the name of the sandwich place. I will say however that it was one of the major airports in Charlotte, NC, and for story's sake, I'll make up a name of the place: Quiznos Subz.

me, "Hi. I'd like a small sub, the smallest size available please."

Hellen (I didn't catch her name but she looked like a Hellen), "We only have one size."

me, "Ok. I'll have a one-size sub then."

I wish this was the only time I pulled something like this, but it's certainly not. Far. From. It. The first time was back in 2007, on a Tuesday (not sure what day it was): Size Smoothie, Please. All in all, only 2 times I guess. And I wonder if I'm the only person I know who thinks it's funny. Her facial expression translated into words would have been, "you're an idiot." Ha.