Wanted - a Shedding of Pretenses

The following is something which I wrote a few years back, but it is more true to me now than even it was then.

It seems that most people, Christian or not, end up having small vision, small dreams, and, consequently, small impact in this world, because they hold onto this "life" too tightly.

Each man or woman, by necessity, will by degrees do one of two things: clutch desperately to what they think they have earned or deserve in this life, or lose his or her life, for His sake, and in doing so find their true self.

Those who understand this truth, and proceed to live it out, are fewer in number than I once thought. Like John the Baptist, who knew and acted: "He must increase, but I must decrease". Or Mary Magdalene, who never pretended to be worthy to wash Jesus' feet, but knew there was nothing but rags to lose, and infinite purpose to gain.

I now believe, at the risk or pretension, that most never live. Few are the number that hold so loosely, who have even once known the touch of the Father as they spread themselves before Him, stripped bare of hindrance, and with joy can proclaim, "It is well with my soul; O my Lord, it is well".

YHWH, help me find these people, who wish to live as I do.

A youth pastor parody

This isn't so much in-your-face funny, more like "Ugh...I think I know this guy" awkward-funny. It's especially revealing that some people don't realize it's a pardoy...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTn8FDoKBL4&feature=channel_page

Enjoy.

Social Anxiety

Now that the semester is over, I feel finally able to sit back and process a little. These times are good.

I know that sometimes I will hide behind a very structured schedule, and life, to avoid down time. I guess I've come full-circle, since I used to be neurotically anti-social and heavily sought out alone time to avoid others...now I'm more likely to spend my time neurotically hopping from activity to event to class to avoid being alone.

Yea neurosis!!!

Some of those close to me know (some don't, or at least didn't...) that I have dealt with some form of anxiety disorder for all my adult life. I don't make a huge deal about it, since it's something like 40 million adults in the US that find themselves in a similar boat. In fact, I used to think that "anxiety disorder" was just a clinical term that we make up.

It's always so much comforting to know that your seemingly unexplainable, irrational physical symptoms and emotional crises has a name...plus it's a lot easier to say, and saves us all some time.

Which is why, when my god speaks of my becoming a new creation, when He says that "creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay, and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God...", that it means a great deal to folks like me.

Which is why following Christ, for me, is hardly a crutch to help me through life, as some have claimed. I've never understood that argument, and dispute it more now than ever. The Jewish concept of redemption, and I would argue, the Biblical concept, has as much to do with today as it does eternity.

On my best days - my most confident days, the days where I truly feel connected to something deeper than myself, the days where I know the lives around me are better because we share something - on those days, I can literally sense the new creation taking shape, and the old begins to fade.

Days like today...like Paul emotes so eloquently in Romans 7, the old creation is not completely gone. Some days, it is as if redemption takes a back seat. I want nothing but to be left alone, and the wall grows thick. I don't want this, I know it isn't rational or right or anything resembling who I have become...yet here it is.

"Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, the help of my demeanour, my God."-Ps 42