Passing Glory

Glory was the topic today in church. We are to glorify or make weighty God in our lives. This idea seems so simple. God is obviously to be glorified. I read the bible and ask myself frequently how did they do it? How can people physically and spiritually encountering Christ deny his glory? I see it 2000+ years later how did they miss the glory that was right in front of them? However, for all of their power and majesty glorious things including God often get ignored.
I read an article about a man playing the violin in the subway in New York. He played for a while as people passed by. He received some money but not much. Very few people even slowed in passing him. As it turned out he was the best violinist in the world and he was playing a $3,000,000+ violin. He was playing a concert that night. People were paying several hundred dollars to come and see him. The sad part is that they could have seen him for free if they had only slowed down and witnessed a glorious moment. He was not anywhere near the glory of God but even this sliver of Gods glory was ignored. I now see how the people in the bible missed Gods glory, how I miss it. We are like the concert goers. We respect glory and enjoy it, beauty is a desire for us yet we allow our business or a myriad of other excuses push glory into boxes. If it it is unexpected or inconvenient it gets ignored unless it is so powerfully presented that it stops us in our tracks. We, the concert goers, set time aside encounter glory yet we miss it when it's before us.
How often do we do this? How often do we ignore Gods glory right in front of us? Are we the concert goers? I am. I find myself preparing to see gods glory. I go to church and encounter him. I sit down at my desk at a prescribed time and experience his Glory in the bible. I seek his glory and relish the time I get to experience it. However, I miss it when it is before me all the time. I ask myself, would I have stopped to listen to the violinist play his beautiful music? Would I have recognized the beauty? I think no, and that saddens me. I pray for you and for me that we will begin to seek Gods glory outside of the obvious times and if you encounter beauty in your life stop and bask in it, for it may be the best violinist in the world showing you a glimpse of the glory of God.

Reformation, Obedience, Humility

I recently began a reformation of my heart. For some time now I have been busy at the business of dismantling my life with Christ. What do I mean? I can only begin to explain it, as I have just recently become aware of it. I suppose I will begin as early on in my covert mission of destruction as I can recall.

Sometime in the past 3 years I decided I was “the man”. I had figured out this Christianity thing and I had no more to learn. With what I had learned I was able to defend my faith, look and sound like a Christian, and judge others for how they were failing and I wasn’t. I had become a leader of leaders in Young Life and began the process of becoming a leader in my church. I had everyone fooled, including myself. For the most part I had quit reading the bible and stopped speaking to God. Here and there I would send up a prayer or refresh on some verses. I was a corrupted soldier in Gods army. He had raised me to the rank of an officer. I was leading others and giving orders to them. Only recently have I seen that the jig was up as soon as I went rogue. God had caught me demotions were in my future. I stepped down as a young life leader. I was “burned out” but this was not the fault of young life or my leaders or those who were leading me. I was like a car with no water in the radiator. I had stopped filling my cup and the portion of water I had set aside for young life was gone. I had enough to keep going with church and I topped it off here and there. I managed another 2 years before the recent realization that once again I was out.

 These past 2 years have brought much change and honestly a lot of heartache. My mother’s death has affected me in ways that I am still discovering all the time. Her death prompted a return to the well. For a time I returned to Christ I prayed without ceasing. Like a good soldier when the battle got to be too much I found shelter in my fortress. We are so blessed that God is willing to be that fortress even when we are rogue soldiers. As soon as the maelstrom calmed a bit I once again struck out on my own. However, this was different. I was now a broken version of myself. I was weighed down with sadness about my mom, worry about my dad, fear of who I was becoming, and almost from the start I felt lost. All the while god has spiced my life and has remained like the sun breaking through the clouds on a stormy day. He has continued calling me and ensuring that I never got lost beyond my ability to return to his bosom. A few weeks ago the clouds broke and I finally saw were I was.

 I was in the wilderness, I had wondered into the world. I now was aware of my brokenness again so I fought. I fought God and myself. I was aware of my need to return to the fold, yet the enemy ensnared me. A week ago, with the power of Christ I broke those bonds and ran home. It has been a week of repentance. I have been working through a study guide called the path of repentance. So far it has been very focused on obedience and humility. These themes have brought me here. I write this to chronicle the journey. These past three years have been not as bad they may seem in this story and in some ways they have been far worse. Suffice to say God and me have been wrestling and I am now pinned. Tonight’s lesson: In God’s army I am no longer an officer I am in boot camp, a private at best. I have a lifetime worth of lessons to learn. God is unfathomable I will never have Him fully “figured out”. I am not the man, he is.