From My Journals... Ramblings From My Heart...

Photo courtesy of Monique Tremblay

 I am burdened as we start the New Year. I feel the church is passive. I feel that we as individual believers are passive and apathetic. I feel a burden to prayer and consecrated living more than ever… and I am not talking about religion or pious legalism.

What are we really living for? What is our purpose? To walk with Him. To have a relationship with Him that is real and personal! Not to “make it” or to have significance in this world! That search for significance is a bug that somehow I have been bitten by, even with my strong Christian upbringing. If Christ is “all and in all” as Colossians says, then why do we live for such shallow things? 

I feel so ashamed that I have lived this past year (and years!) more for my own pleasure and comfort than in joyful abandon to God. Sure, I’m committed to God, to a vibrant walk with Him, and to the ministry to which He has called me. But looking at the saints of old like Hannah Whitall Smith or Jim Elliot … am I really? Looking at the saints who were persecuted for their faith, who lived (and even today live) under the constant threat of being arrested, imprisoned, beaten, or in some other way persecuted… am I really that devoted to God? Looking at my prayer life… do I pray for myself? To be relieved of sufferings or even for wisdom more than I pray to be humbled myself or pray for the souls of the unsaved or for the walks of my fellow believers to become more passionate?

What does walking “in His steps” really mean? Do I have any idea what it means to ask in everything, “What would Jesus do?” And then to do it? I feel my heart is apathetic; not just the hearts of others at church! I must be the change I would like to see in the church. I must not judge the next person, but allow my own passion for Christ—that which He alone can awaken in me—to shine through to inspire others to the same calling. It has nothing to do with my own efforts to "do better." I must merely yield to His Spirit in me!

If Christ is to be all, what does that look like in my daily life? How much more time in prayer would I feel compelled to spend—not for formula’s sake, not for show, not to look or feel more spiritual, but because I feel so drawn to spend the time with my Lord?!

How many more tears would I shed at the mere feeling of humility before my Lord? Not tears of grief for myself because of my sufferings and trials or things I dislike, but tears of humility, realizing that I’m the last one worthy and the first one grateful that He would even deign to walk or talk with me! That He would even desire to be intimate with me! That He would go to all the trouble of coming to earth and living in this painful world just to show me that He cares about the feelings of my infirmities! That He would even go through the beating and scourging and the awful death of crucifixion just because He loves me! Little me! A nobody who became somebody only because of Him!

God, grant me a heart to know You more… truly in a real, personal, and passionate way! Not just platitudes and pious prayers coming out of my lips, but a genuine grateful heart that understands more and more every day what Your Son did for me! That the things of this earth would grow strangely dim in the light of Your glory and grace!

If I only knew and understood the depth of what He did!