Undignified

Today I read Psalm 150, that wonderful psalm urging me to praise God in pretty much every way - with cymbals, with lutes, with stringed instruments, with flutes, with dance, etc. I love it! It makes me feel so excited about praising God.

My most memorable meeting with this psalm took place sometime in high school, at a Christian summer camp (for those of you are familiar with it, it was an Awana camp). Most of the adults running this camp were rather conservative, strait-laced individuals; there was a way things ought to be, and they wanted everything to be done with the right amount of order and decorum. So there were either explicit or unspoken rules for everything.

I was on the praise and worship team that year, and there was an unspoken rule that the music we played should be more traditional than contemporary and rather on the slower side than the faster. Naturally, being young and full of energy and passion (and also being slightly rebellious but not wanting to do anything actually wrong because we were overall good kids), we chafed at this expectation at times. The song that embodied this feeling for us was "Undignified" - which I hadn't heard before at the time but which I liked, and still like. For someone like me, who tends to want to maintain a proper order and appearance for things and for myself, it is a really good encouragement to trust God, set aside pride, and risk living my life wholly for Him. It's rather a crazy song, though, and the powers-that-be at the camp didn't look upon it very acceptingly.

But we thought of Psalm 150, and how the writer says to praise God with dance, and all kinds of instruments, and clashing cymbals, among other things, and we thought to ourselves, well, we'll just read this psalm before the song, and then they'll see that we have a Biblical foundation for it so we won't get in trouble. But who should read it? To make the whole thing seem even more acceptable, we asked the pastor that year (each summer a different pastor spoke) to read the psalm. And did he ever read it! He was an old-school Baptist preacher, with a bit of a Southern accent, and he read that psalm in such a way as to highlight those things, with volume and passion and intensity. It was amazing. We had no clue ahead of time that he was going to read it like he was at a revival meeting! Anyway, it was the perfect introduction to our song, which all the other campers loved, and we didn't get in trouble (although some of the adults most definitely seemed rather shocked by the whole affair!)

So now whenever I read Psalm 150, I hear a deep preacher's voice booming out the words, and I feel the excitement beginning to build in my chest, and I hear the music starting while he was still reading, and I see all of us going crazy. And I wonder if anyone else who was there still remembers that, and still wants to live a life full of praise for God, sold out for Him even if it means looking foolish to those who don't understand. Was it all emotion, carried away and lifted up in the beat of the music, or were we grounded in a deep and genuine love of God? My prayer is that it was the latter, and that all of us who were there will continue to praise God with passion and learn to follow Him with humility.

Sunshine and rain

I am Paul's sunshine, and he is my rain. And together we bring forth the spirit of our marriage, the beauty of our togetherness, which is our rainbow.

While an analogy like this could quite easily refer to children, this one represents the more intangible products of our love and commitment to each other (time, and the observation of those outside our relationship, will reveal what those products are. I don't know how clearly the sun or the rain can perceive the rainbow they create). Together, we are more than the bare sum of our individual personalities and skills - we create something new, just like the rain and the sun together produce a rainbow. Both are wonderful on their own; both are needed on their own. But together, they make something which is also wonderful, and which brings joy to the heart and beauty to the world.

My hope is that Paul and I, through our marriage, can also bring wonder and beauty to the world around us.

Sisters of Life

Reading the Touchstone Mere Comments blog this morning, I came across a link to a very encouraging article about a group of nuns in New York City who are providing a home and resources to unwed mothers, as an alternative to abortion. They give them a place to live for up to 6 months before the baby is born and up to a year after, which allows the women to study or work and gives them the support they need during a time that could otherwise be extremely hard both emotionally and financially.

Anyway, it is really awesome to see an example of people living out their faith in selflessness and commitment, making a profound difference in the lives of others, so I thought I'd pass it along :)

Needs

There is one sense in which it is good to think about our needs - to realize we have them and that we are, thus, dependent on God for everything in our lives, regardless of how greatly we wish we could dictate and control it all ourselves. This honest recognition and admission of our needs helps us to be humble before God, and eats away at our pride.

There is another sense, however, in which it is not good to think about our needs. Meeting our needs should never be as important to us as meeting the needs of other people. I most definitely don't live up to that! But I desire to do so. To set aside my own needs (and even more, my wants disguised as needs) to focus on meeting the needs of other people in my life is a goal worth pursuing, I think.

You know the funny thing about it, though? If I don't first recognize my own need for repentance and for God's grace, I will never be able to focus thoroughly on the needs of others, because only His grace can give me that power.

Death and life

I think that my mind dwells too readily on death. Sometimes when my heart is full of pain and weariness I think about my own death, and it seems like a doorway of hope into a world of beauty and light. Other times, when my heart is full of need and fear, I think about the death of the people I love because I dread losing them. The slightest thing can go wrong in a schedule and my mind will wonder if they've had a car crash and I'll never see them again - or they can go in to the doctor for a cold or a minor problem and I worry that they'll have cancer or some other incurable disease and I'll have to begin the long process of saying goodbye. Anyway, I don't know if it's altogether good to be thinking of death so much, at least in the ways in which I think of it. Death isn't something either to be sought out or to be feared, I think.

To seek death is to forsake life - to deem all that life holds insufficient and worthless, to spurn the plans of God, to declare oneself the ultimate authority and power while simultaneously feeling utterly helpless and insignificant. It is the fight - the last desperate stand and even the apparent victory - of pride and the desire for self-sufficiency against the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of life and the unconquerable and undeniable faults and sins in oneself. It appears courageous to take that step into the utter unknown, but it is equally a cringing mournful fear of the perceived pain and hopelessness of life.

To fear death is to be attached to the comforts of life at the expense of the greatness of life. It demonstrates a willingness to remain half-human, absorbed in trivial pleasures, blinding oneself to the breathtaking visions and dreams of life because of the risks they entail. It is to see a narrower world than that which exists in reality - to see only the separation for a time and fail to see the reunion of eternity, to acknowledge only the pain of today and not the joy of forever. It is to think, in incredible pride, that one's own pain and suffering in this moment outweighs all the other purposes for which God is calling a person (oneself or another) out of this world.

In both cases there is a lack of trust in God and an attempt to control one's own life apart from Him. Neither reflects those timeless words of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippians: "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." He did not go wildly forth seeking his own death in his own timing, because he knew that God had a further purpose for his life here on earth, and likewise he did not limit what he ventured for the gospel in fear of the possibility of death. He risked death because he wanted to live for something greater than himself.

Knowing the holy

"I see them in my imagination, celebrating in the public squares, when everyone about them has forgotten the difference between a celebration and a debauch. I hear them singing together, when everyone else has forgotten that there is anything to sing about. I see them cheerfully being themselves, men being men and women being women, with their gangs of children hollering about them, climbing trees and getting into everything, as they should. I hear them pray in solemn unison, while the world looks away abashed. Then they laugh with real mirth in their hearts, while the world looks askance in envy.

The churches may collapse into social clubs or philanthropic dispensaries or rubble. These men and women will have real communion, and will love their neighbors in truth. They will know the holy."

- Anthony Esolen, The Unquiet Men, Touchstone Magazine

There is as good an encouragement as any I know to hold true to the faith in the way we live, even in the midst of the world's decay. We don't need to conduct ourselves according to the ways of the world around us - we can choose to live instead in a way that honors God, because we know God.

Simply joy, part 2

"In the midst of my anxieties within me,

Your comforts delight my soul."

- Psalm 94:19

That's a pretty good picture of joy, I think. Even as he struggles with fear and worry, he finds delight in his heart because he trusts and rests in the mercy and comfort of God. He may not be completely and wholeheartedly happy, but he does have a deep happiness rooted in his relationship with God that wars against the sorrow and anxiety brought on by the misfortunes of life and the sin of himself and others.

Remembering the greater reality, so often obscured by the small disjointed pieces of life we observe every day, gives us a foundation for lasting happiness, deep joy, and secure contentment; it allows us to be happy - truly and authentically happy - in the worst of circumstances.

A small illustration of Paul's awesomeness

Last Wednesday, Paul and I made separate plans for the afternoon and evening. His plan was to go up to his parents' house to pick up the things he needed for guard duty that weekend, and then get a haircut; my plan was to go to my doctor's appointment and then stop by Walgreens to refill my thyroid medicine.

So I was coming out of the store with my medicine and only to find, to my dismay, that my car wouldn't start. I turned the key and it beeped a little but nothing else happened. On top of that, my cellphone was dead so I couldn't call my parents to come jump the car for me (Paul would have been too far away anyway). Fortunately (I am so thankful that God arranged the timing of everything this way, which is a story in itself), a lady driving through the parking lot saw me pop my hood open and asked if I needed a jump :) So I was able to get home, but because I was so worn out and not thinking very clearly, I didn't drive around long enough to recharge the battery and my car promptly died again as soon as I parked it and turned it off.

But at least I was home! I plugged in my phone, called Paul, and proceeded to unload the whole story of my day upon him, to make sure that he would have jumper cables to start my car up in the morning so I could get to work. And you know what? After his haircut and after driving all the way back from his parents' house, he went to AutoZone, confirmed the death of my battery, bought me a new one, and installed in my car for me! He didn't complain about having to run an errand for me, even though it was pretty late at night and he'd been out all day, and he didn't procrastinate at all about getting my car fixed, because he cared about me so much and wanted to make sure I would be able to get home again from work the next day.

Isn't he wonderful? I am so blessed to have such a caring and servant-hearted husband :)

A beautiful thing

It is a beautiful thing to witness the glorious God of the universe faithfully fulfilling His promises in the small and seemingly insignificant life of one of His children.

"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars which You have ordained,

What is man that You are mindful of him,

And the son of man that You visit him?

For You have made him a little lower than the angels,

And You have crowned him with glory and honor." - Psalm 8:3-5

To enumerate all the wonderful promises He has made to us, His people, would take far more space than one little blog post could hold, and far more time than I have on a Sunday before church! But they are there in the Bible, holding forth hope for us to cling to through the pain and joy and craziness of life.

Pleasing or trusting

In rereading Truefaced (since I haven't yet returned it, and am delaying doing so as long as possible...), one of the ideas that jumped out at me was that the path of Pleasing God is not the best one to take. That contradicts pretty much everything about the way I live! I try so hard to do everything right, to make God and other people happy with who I am and the way I live, and now this book has the nerve to tell me that I'm going about it all wrong?

When I think about it honestly, though - when I set aside my fear and pride long enough to listen to what the book is saying, and take the time to look at my own life without becoming defensive - I am forced to admit that it is right. Ultimately, living to please God first and foremost leaves me empty, unfulfilled, feeling like my life is meaningless and like I am a complete failure, because as long as I strive to please God on my own, as long as I try to eliminate my sin by my own power to earn His approval, and as long as I attempt to win His acceptance by my earnest efforts to obey His commands, I will keep failing. It simply isn't possible to accomplish those tasks in myself, without His grace.

What is the alternative, then? According to Truefaced, the other path to choose is that of Trusting God. Trusting God with my imperfection and sin means trusting Him to love me and be delighted in me as His daughter despite those things in my life, and trusting Him to have a plan to cleanse and renew me of those things. That can be really hard sometimes, when I don't feel worthy of love and can't imagine how He can keep pouring it over me with grace, or when I feel trapped in the same struggles I've had for years and don't see how His hand is at work to sanctify me.In the end, though, it is worth it. Trusting Him brings peace and joy and contentment to life, and even better, it brings a deeper knowledge of and intimacy with God. When I'm trusting Him, I'm free to truly receive and experience His love and grace and power, and I'm free to respond authentically to it. What more could I desire?

Risking the leap

Sometimes life seems like a wager. We don't know anything with certainty, and yet we constantly have to make choices about out thoughts, actions, and beliefs. We can amass piles of arguments and evidence to support what we say we believe, but our verbalized creed doesn't always match what we really believe in our hearts about things like who we are and how the world works and whether or not there is a god. It is tempting sometimes to give up and just live life however we feel fit at the moment, because we can never really know for sure what's right anyways - but on the other hand, we tell ourselves, we only get one life, so we don't really want to waste it. It can be stressful to deeply want to know what reality truly is and how we ought to live in it and to be faced with the realization that there is no way for us to know these things beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But you know what my answer is, to the doubts and the shadows and the uncertainties? Bring it on!

I'll take the dare.

I'll risk the leap.

I'll chance the odds.

Part of the thrill of living lies in the seeking for truth, and part of the excitement of loving lies in the striving for knowledge. This life is about yearning and questioning, seeking and asking and searching. Even in our relationships with other people there is no way to fully know the other person and no certainty that what we think we know is true - but part of the joy in loving them comes from getting to know them more deeply and truly. So with the philosophical and theological questions of life: there is no way to fully understand the world and God and humanity and all the countless aspects of how all things work individually and relationally, and there is no certainty that what we think we know is true - but part of the joy of living and asking questions comes from ever discovering more and more about the truth.

Simply joy, part 1

All too often we equate following God with unpleasant duty through which we must drag our protesting selves, with tedium and dreariness from which we enviously eye the forbidden pleasures of sin. Life isn't always rainbows and roses - in fact, it is often quite full with sorrow and pain - but this caricature of what it is to follow God is so wrong and unfair that it makes me more angry than I can verbally express.

To know God is to know joy, and in His presence is fullness of joy. He pours out goodness and love over us, and crowns us with blessings far beyond what we need. Just think - the first miracle Jesus did was to turn water into wine at a wedding feast!

"This is not a case of people starving, as when in the wilderness Jesus fed them, or of disease and suffering when He in love delivered them from it. This was a simply a superfluity, a luxury; they had no wine, and what does this mean? - for it is a sign, and must signify something.

That God created man not merely that he should endure existence, that he should drag through life, but that he should rejoice; that there should be a happiness, a festivity, a gladness within him; not only that he should be reconciled to his existence and have what is needful, but that he should feel within him a music, a rhythm; that he should be able to say, It is a joy to live, He hath crowned me with loving-kindness and tender mercies" - Adolph Saphir, quoted in Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson

The lies that creep in unawares

Lately I've been thinking about how what I take in mentally, emotionally, and spiritually affects what I believe, how I think, and how I act. It makes sense when compared to my physical state of being - if I eat too much meat or fat, my stomach feels sick; if I eat fruits and vegetables and beans, I feel healthy all around; if I eat too much sugar, my blood sugar spikes and crashes; if I don't eat enough, I get tired and shaky; and so on. What I put into my body affects how my body feels and how well it works, so it is logical that what I put into my mind and heart affects how they feel and how well they operate. I just never really thought about it that much.

But if I listen to songs like "I Am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel, it makes me more emotionally closed off than I already am, and it makes me want to be independent and self-sufficient in a negative relationship-less sort of way, while if I listen to songs like "Voice of Truth" by Casting Crowns, I gain confidence and faith in God and have more joy and optimism to face the life before me.

This is why I think a lot of the books I read in the formative years of junior high were so unhealthy for me. These books were rightfully classics, in many cases, but they were bad food for my mind at that point in its development, like alcohol would be for a child. But I didn't know that then. So in the years when I was starting to figure out what the world was like, and wonder what the purpose of life was, and discover who I was and what I wanted for my future, I was reading books about the futility of life - books that portrayed pleasure as the only good and showed the emptiness of seeking and obtaining it, books that showed life as a prison of despair that killed any hope or dream or love that dared to be born at all. And all that I took in went into my mind and my heart and filled it with half-truths and lies that unnoticeably became part of the way I viewed the world.

God, please let me fill my heart and my mind with your truth and love and hope so that all these falsehoods that I have believed - both the ones whose source I can identify and the ones that snuck in from some unknown place - can be washed out of me, so that I can build my life on the things that are real, the things that matter, the things that have eternal significance in Your kingdom. Thank You for giving me eyes to see so that I can start meditating on the things that are good and true and lovely and pure and be vigilant against the deceits and snares of this world.

Not knowing

My sister brought up a really good question Wednesday morning when I was talking with her briefly online. Well, she didn't actually pose it as a question in so many words, but it was a train of thought that had no conclusion, which is essentially a question :)

Basically, she wondered how it was possible to have a relationship with God when there is so much we don't know about Him. As in, how can she get up in the morning and have a conversation with Him when she's been up late into the night wondering about His very nature and character?

That's a hard question. But I want to turn it around. How can she hope to learn more about His nature and character if she doesn't get up and have a conversation with Him? If that seems harsh, think about what it would be like if God were just another human being. You could stay up all night with your mutual friends discussing His character and nature - wondering whether He is trustworthy, whether or not He loves people, whether or not He is merciful or just, and so on - but if none of you are really sure, or you all have different opinions, than honestly the best way to get to know what He is like is to interact with Him.

I wouldn't have married Paul if I'd just heard about him and talked about him with other people. Yes, a lot of them would have said wonderful things about his nature and character, but I wouldn't have been convinced that they were true unless I had spent time with him personally, getting to know his heart and being able to observe his love, compassion, and wisdom in action. I think it's similar with God. I have to interact with Him and get to know Him personally to grow in my certainty that He is who He claims He is in the Bible: a good God, a righteous God, a God of love and mercy and grace, who is infallibly faithful and true. And as my personal relationship with Him grows, so does my confidence in His character and nature. No skeptic's question could shake me now, because I know Him so deeply and thus trust Him without reservation, just as I know Paul so deeply and trust him so much that no one could make me question his faithfulness to me (it wasn't always this way with either God or Paul - trust - which is faith - takes time to grow).

It was the collective mound of evidence that led me to start wanting to get to know God intellectually, and the hope of peace and love that led me to start wanting to know Him emotionally, but now that I know Him it is He Himself that keeps me wanting to know Him more. My faith is grounded in reason and a search for truth, and can provide a reason for itself, but it is centered on personally knowing God and His love. And so while discussing and debating His attributes is a very good thing to do - it sharpens my mind, challenges my faith, and opens my eyes to truths I'm missing or lies I've believed - the only sure way to get to know Him is to spend time with Him like I would spend time with anyone I wanted to get to know more deeply.

My answers... or thoughts... or preliminary half-thoughts...

So if you remember, in my last post I posed some questions and promised that I'd give my answers tonight. Well, now it is tonight, so here they are, such as they are :P

I definitely agree with the first paragraph I quoted earlier. I have seen in my own life the suffocating effects of trying to dominate every area of my life with pure reason - it doesn't work, and it leaves me feeling like a failure because I am unable to completely get rid of the emotions I don't approve of. So it is interesting to me to think that maybe these emotions (even the ones I can't stand!) have a God-given purpose and I should learn to use them, together with reason, in my life. I can see how feeling things fully and honestly can bring more richness to my life - the richness and wild beauty of passion to complement the structure and order that reason provide.

My problem is finding out how to balance the two practically. Either I'm trying to live without emotion, just by reason (which leaves me feeling depressed because I fail), or my emotions burst out of control and reason seems to completely abandon me (which ends up hurting the people around me without resolving anything). I prefer the first option to the second personally, but it isn't great either, and it turns out that it can hurt other people too because they feel shut out of my life. So I've been endeavoring to obtain more of a balance in this area.

One idea that has been really helpful with striving for balance is that of emotion serving as a sort of guidepost to my heart and beliefs. That way, I can use reason to figure out where my emotions are coming from and what they are trying to tell me, and based off of that joint conclusion I can decide how to move on from there. For example, when I wake up tired and can't seem to get going in the morning (say I'm half an hour behind my ideal schedule), I can get extremely angry or sad. Like, calling myself mean names, slamming things around, hopelessly crying kind of things. It's a bit excessive.

But instead of calling myself a failure for feeling this way and trying to ignore all that emotion and stuff it back in, I could try to figure out why this little situation is causing me to respond in such an extreme way. What is the root cause of my anger and sadness? What false belief have I built into my heart that is making my emotions be so out of whack? In this case, it's the belief that I have to be perfect to be loved and that self-discipline is the key to that perfection. So when I mess up in some little area of self-discipline - like getting up on time even after a bad night - I take it really hard because it says to me, "you don't have self-discipline at all, and you're not perfect, and so no one is going to love you." Instead of trying to get rid of the emotion, then, which is merely the symptom, I need to get rid of the false and hurtful belief that lies at its root.

I'm just starting to try to think this way, but I believe it could be quite helpful :) What do you all think?

Emotional and rational beings

"...neither emotion nor reason is supposed to be king. People do not work that way. God did not create a higher us and a lower us, a ruler and a subject. He just created us. Reason and emotion are so totally intertwined and interdependent that anyone who tries to separate them will end up with spiritual dwarfism, never attaining true maturity or emotional fullness.

"God made us emotional and rational beings. The two go hand in hand. They support, define, and clarify each other. Emotion and reason together are what make us complete and make our lives full...

"...Getting out of the box means living with emotion and reason working together, instead of having them jockey for top position. This balanced approach is the harder road. It requires that we never ignore what we are feeling - or what we are thinking. We have to search ourselves and the Bible to make each decision in our lives." - Matthew Elliott, Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart

What do you think about this? Should emotion and reason be used together, or is one more important than the other? If you agree that they're equally important, how does it change things to think of yourself as emotional and rational instead of just one or the other? Where do you struggle with balance, and what do you think balance looks like? I'll post my answers later tonight, but you should leave some of your own in the meantime :)

Rich, emotional, genuine passion: the unconditional love of God

What exactly is unconditional love?

Unconditional love is love that keeps on loving someone even if they hurt them, reject them, disappoint them, anger them, or even betray them. It is love that loves someone even when that person doesn't seem to deserve that love at all, or be worthy of it in any way. Rob Bell once said, "Agape [God's love] doesn't need a reason." (I read this quoted in Feel by Matthew Elliott, whose book inspired this post, so I don't know the original source.)

Does that mean that unconditional love has no regard for who the beloved is as an individual? If I love you no matter what, does that mean that your personality and actions and character mean nothing to me? More importantly, if God loves us unconditionally, does that mean He loves us as general amorphous beings, not finding anything special or delightful in the individual aspects of our personality, character, body, emotions, mind, or so on? If God loves me without any reason at all, then I am totally and utterly worthless in reality and in His eyes, and His love would seem to be more of a duty - or a way to make Himself look good - than a genuine, heartfelt, sincere love. And if that were true (which I do not believe), life would be so incredibly empty. Can you imagine living your whole life for God and never once receiving sincere love from Him? Never once experiencing His delight in you as His beloved child?

And yet that is the logical conclusion of thinking that God's love does not respond to or delight in anything in us. Have you ever thought about how He created you wonderfully, taking the time to form you before you were born, making you specifically as an individual in precisely the way that pleased Him? Have you ever read Ephesians 1 and wondered at how often God's pleasure is referenced? He redeemed us because He loved us with a love that delights in us and longs to find even more pleasure in us as we learn to walk with Him in righteousness and returning love. He compares His relationship with us, His Church, to that of a husband and wife, and He gives us the Song of Solomon to show us what that kind of love ought to look like. This is passionate love, delighting in the beloved, treasuring every aspect of her even as she feels unworthy to be so valued and cherished.

That is the love with which God loves us. He made us, and even though we are tainted with sin, He loves us each individually for the specific qualities that define who we are - that He gave to us. To put it very simply, VeggieTales had it right when they said "God made you special, and He loves you very much." All the worth we have, all the reasons God has for loving us, are things He gave to us in the first place, but they are still a part of who we are as unique beings. I mean, He created us, after all! But He loves each and every one of us as He created us, regardless (and here is where the unconditional part begins to come in) of how we have squandered or despised or destroyed the person He made us to be. Yes, He loves everyone - but He loves each of us as an individual because of all the things that make us the individual that we are.

He delights in you, you know. All the little things about who you are - the way you laugh when you see a baby smile, maybe, or your desire to protect the people you care about, or your joy in nature - bring Him pleasure, and He loves you because of them. He created you with those things according to His purpose, for His joy. You are His great treasure, for whom He died and with whom He desires to spend all eternity! And no matter how far you fall, or how many mistakes you make, or how long you rebel, or how hard you have to struggle, He will never stop loving you.

Wait, it's ok to feel?

Have you ever thought that emotion was sinful, or at least an irrelevant distraction from the important and significant things in life like love and faith and truth? I've always tried not to feel intense emotion about things, or at least to hide it if I couldn't help feeling it, because it always seems to get me in trouble! I've hurt so many people, including myself, with the anger that I feel; I've lost time and energy and been oblivious to the needs and joys of those I love because of the sorrow I feel; and I've alienated people and received their disapproval by expressing the crazy happiness and love I feel. It seems like I get a lot more approval from other people if I don't express or feel emotions, especially strong emotions. But then what do I do when I feel them? I can't be the only one who feels things so strongly that I sometimes think I might burst if I don't express it!

Most of the time, I show a little bit of my emotion and hide all the rest inside until a time when I'm alone or with people I'm more comfortable with, like my husband, and then let it all out. This is fun when it's a "positive" emotion like happiness or love, but can be really hurtful when it's a "negative" emotion like anger or sadness. I've lashed out at the people close to me undeservedly so many times in life, because I needed an outlet for the anger that I'd originally repressed. Is there a better way to deal with it than this? Stuffing it all in a bottle can't be the best solution when the bottle eventually explodes onto the people that I care most about in life, I think.

So it is with wonder, joy, and a bit of apprehension that I've been reading Matthew Elliott's book Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart. The title itself frightens me a little! It's like I believe that if I allow myself to honestly feel emotion it will inevitably lead to disaster, pain, and embarrassment. But is that belief really true, or just something I've been conditioned to think over the years? Elliott argues that God is both rational and emotional, and having been created in His image we are also both rational and emotional. One does not rule the other - they have to learn to work in tandem - and both have to be grounded in truth. They can both be used by God and they can both be co-opted by sin. Too often as Christians, he says, we teach and act as if calm dispassion and pure emotionless rationality are ideal, ignoring all the emotion that fills the Bible and is used even to describe the actions and characteristics of God. Instead of learning to repress and control our emotions, he suggests that we learn to understand and use our emotions in the way God intended. Even negative emotions can be thought of as counselors or friends that help us see problems in our beliefs, values, and patterns of thinking.

To me, this is a really new way of thinking. It kind of scares me to think of experiencing the power of emotion without the buffer of control. But at the same time it is so freeing. Can you imagine going through life without having to continually stifle that huge part of who you are, and instead get to use that part of you to grow spiritually and glorify God? I would love that so very much.

Come follow Jesus

When Jesus called the disciples, He didn't say, "Come, I want you to be world-changers, and impact the lives of millions of people, and found a new religion, and preach to people of different ethnicities and cultures, and face persecution for My sake, and die because of Me. Listen, and I will teach you My plan for how to become the kind of person that can do this, and then send you out to do it." He just said, in most cases, "Come follow Me."

Maybe that's all I need to be worried about in each of day of my life. Not, "Am I making the right education or career choice for the rest of my life, so that I'll be prepared for what God wants me to do?" or "What should I do so that I can have the greatest impact or change the world the most?", but "Am I following Jesus, in this moment, with these thoughts and these decisions?"

I like the scale of that - I can leave the big worries to Him and focus on the present, the tangible, the thoughts and feelings of the moment. And I like the intimacy, too, the way it forces me to think about Jesus and draw near to Him not at some remote point in the future but right then and there. He isn't a distant God who wants me to work for Him and please Him with my efforts over the sum total of my life, but a close and near God who wants me to follow Him as He leads each and every day.

Do I really believe that what I believe is really real?

A couple weeks ago Paul and I watched the first portion of the Truth Project and ever since then I've had the primary question from it stuck in my head. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Truth Project, it's a series of videos by Del Tackett about how the truth, particularly as revealed in the Bible, affects all areas of life. In the first video, he asks the question, "Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?" It's been bothering me ever since I saw the video. Actually, it didn't bother me much at first, but each day that goes by I seem to encounter it in my thoughts more and more frequently.

I guess the first thing it makes me wonder is what exactly I do believe. I would like to go through and really figure out what I believe and whether or not my belief in it is justified. But on top of that, especially when it comes to the things I know I believe and would hold fast to, it makes me wonder if I really believe it in the depths of my heart. If I really believed these things to be real - about the nature of God and the nature of man, at a most basic level - would my life be different than it is now? And how so? And if so, how can I make my beliefs real in a way that would impact the way I live?

I don't want to verbally claim a set of beliefs and not live them out, but I also don't want to live in a way because I think those who hold that set of beliefs should live that way. Did that make sense? I don't want to force my behavior to fit into a mold that I think it should have - I want my beliefs to be so real that they lead to changes in my behavior. And I think sometimes that those changes will be unexpected even to me. So I am going to set out to discover what I really do believe, and then I am going to endeavor to truly believe those things and to live out of them. I'm not sure exactly how to start, but hopefully I'll get somewhere even if it isn't in a very systematic way. If I can have real beliefs in a real reality (I know that sounds horribly redundant :P ), I think it will give me a lot more contentment and meaning in life. So here goes! I will let you know my thoughts along the way :)