Train Tracks and Rabbit Trails

I'm seeing a theme!

Sometimes God will bring a lesson - a recurring theme - into my life through any means possible until I finally stop to listen. It's interesting how much more pressing daily, earthly details can become when I don't want to change... when I get, well, comfortable. To be very blatantly honest, when I get lazy in my walk with the Lord.You always learn the most about yourself - and your sin! - when a sovereign God steps in and rearranges your life. It's in moments like these, when I feel the weakest, that my perspective is, once again, set right. I get lazy rather quickly. But now - I'm wide awake.

Well, it all began with a song. It often does. Music has got to be the best medium one can possibly use to get through to me. I turned on the new album by Sara Groves, not expecting to hear anything particularly revolutionary or life changing. It seems that He often works the most when we're not expecting anything - and this proved true in my life that day. She began to sing about someone going through the motions of the Christian life - someone comfortable. She sang about a walk that looked great from without, but was hollow within. A life that was all show and no joy. And, much to my chagrin, I recognized myself in the song. As conviction rolled in, I tried to shut the image out with everything else - anything else.

Yeah, that never works.

Next, he used a book. Out of mere curiosity (and for lack of anything else!) I picked up a small book that had been collecting dust on my bookshelf for months: the Dangerous Duty of Delight by John Piper. There I found a passage that would threaten the course of life as I knew it. He used the modern term "Christian Hedonism" to describe a right view of God, and a way of life that the great saints of the past lived out with passion (Hebrews 11).

...if Christian Hedonism is old-fashioned, why is it so controversial? ... It insists that joy is not just the spin-off of obedience, but part of obedience. It seems as though people are willing to let joy be a by-product of our relationship to God, but not an essential part of it. People are uncomfortable saying that we are duty-bound to joy... joy is an act of obedience. We are commanded to rejoice in God...Maximizing our joy in God is what we were created for.

In his book, Piper quotes two amazing men of God well worth quoting - and their words both opened my eyes and cut me to the heart. I know few who would not be!

God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified that if they only see it. His glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that He might communicate, and the creature receive, His glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God's glory [doesn't] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his delight in it. - Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World, 1759

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that the notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in te Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like and ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. - C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Therefore, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

I've realized now that the whole of the Christian life is based on healthy balances. To balance brokenness with joy, theology with action, great faith with works to prove it - and to keep these solely through a complete dependence on the One who created them. I think I often separate the realms in which I live: the mind, heart, and soul - the intangible - from the tangible, my body and daily life. In my struggle against "practicality", I have banished from my faith and thought life. I've learned to go through the motions - I've taught myself to be blind. True worship is nothing, though, if not a way of life. What if my heart was so focused on God that my first response to anything was to immediately go before Him in thanks and praise? It sounds like a 'given' - but quite honestly, that's not how I usually live. Living in a fallen world, I'm far too ready to sacrifice this closeness for the trivial, the light pleasures offered us here that in the end will offer no true, lasting satisfaction. Paul, I believe, had found out the mystery of choosing joy, and for this reason he rejoiced in all things: in all advancement of the Gospel, in his thoughts of fellow saints, even in his own chains. Wow.

I'm thoroughly convicted. I've been chasing rabbit trails for a while now, I'm afraid - preoccupied with earthly things, rather how my walk looked than how it really was. With God's help I hope to get back on track: to refocus on the goal of my life: making God famous by rejoicing only in Him.

"Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory." Colossians 3:1-4

Just Showed Up for My Own Life
by Sara Groves

Spending my time sleepwalking
Moving my mouth but not saying a thing
Hoping the changes would take by working their way from the outside in
I was in love with an idea
Preoccupied with how a life should be appear
Spending my time at the surface
Repairing the holes in a shiny veneer

There are so many ways to hide
There are so many ways not to feel
There are so many ways to deny
What is real

And I just showed for my own life
And I'm standing here taking it in and it sure looks bright

I'm gonna live my life inspired
Look for the holy in the commonplace
I'm gonna wake up and feel all that's honest and real
Until I'm truly amazed

I'm going to feel all my emotions
I'm gonna look You in the eyes
I'm going to listen and hear till it's finally clear
And it changes our lives

Oh, the glory of God is man fully alive...