It is this love relationship on which I recently wrote which God continues to expand in my view.

As of late, God has built a new awareness into my life. He has layered on understand and new perceptions in rapid succession. He has been revealing to me what I should be looking for in a wife.

Woah.

Wait a second, what does this have to do with anything I have been writing about? Let me disclaimer this post by saying that I am not seeking a relationship right now, that's not where my mind is, in fact, as you read hopefully you will understand how much I'm trying to ignore the idea of a relationship until God throws something in my face.

I have been earnestly seeking God. This is only by His hand, for I have no skill in this as a very broken man. But He is always faithful, and I have been reaping blessings through the Scripture, Godly friends, and general revelation. As strange as it may sound, the more I have been seeking Christ, the more I have been coming to understand marriage. God started to show me simply things, but in His flawless light. Things that don't sound extraordinary, like that I should never been looking at any feature in a possible mate other than the extent of their personal devotion to Christ and the similarity of their heart to His.

I haven't been studying marriage, or looking through Scripture specifically related to it. But daily I receive a new perspective on how much more my relationship with Christ is than a marriage could ever be. Marriage done properly is a very vivid shadow of what our relationship with Christ is, but also a very poor shadow of the extreme nature of this relationship. The emotions we have about other people in romantic relationships are the ones we should be strangely close to having about Christ. Every poor blind human scouring the earth for someone to fall in and out of love with is truly a being seeking back the lost King of His heart. Every perfect romantic fairy tale or movie plot is really a shadow of a much greater relationship meant to be had with God.

A perfect marriage, which we don't really see often, includes most of the attitudes and feelings we should have toward Christ. But the most exquisite marriage is no match for the greatness of what God has dreamed for us.

So to truly be Christ's bride, I should treat him as I would if I where someones wife.

This has been a strange but empowering perspective for me recently. I don't mean acting feminine in any way, I am actually continually striving toward manlier manhood. But I do mean looking at life as if every decision affects both myself and the man who is leading me. It means learning to submit in every single situation, so that my opinion doesn't determine the outcome. This new perspective has me making disciplined decisions to devote things to Christ, because He has to be my priority for this relationship to work. I'm sure there are so many other analogies that don't come to my head immediately, all of which are equally valid and revealing.

So I try earnestly to live my whole day, every day, thinking about the relationship I have committed myself to in salvation. The perspective that is so transforming in creating a healthy marriage is exactly what is needed in creating a healthy life with Christ! And this relationship must always take priority over any human one. A marriage is only designated by God, not something we should be looking to for personal gratification.

So even though I have been learning alot about marriage, I am at the same time becoming more cautious about stumbling upon relationships. My blinders are up, and I am hoping and praying that only a miracle could bring them down.

But it does stand true, if I ever want to be a good husband, I have to learn to be a great wife.

At the Gathering this week, God spoke through a friend into my life. This is pretty much the norm.
He said, basically, that God is not desirous of what we are able to do for Him. While our talents, abilities, and areas of expertise are definitely valid to be useful, God is not looking for us to be figuring out all the great things we can do with those talents. He wants us to be faithful in being useful where we are. This was ice water in my spiritual face.
I have been trying to discern God's will for me among the torrent of various options and possibilities available as I settle back in at home. I have been seeking God's face in this, and looking for interesting or cool possibilities. But I don't think God necessarily wants me to look for the neat ministry I was thinking I might be equipped to pull off. He wants me available to do what he wants.
So I put the ideas I have been mulling over off to the side, and I looked for ways that I could be selflessly serving the needs that God was trying to fill. I found the opportunity before I totally realized I was looking. So God gave me the opportunity to serve Him in a more lowly, less skill/talent oriented fashion, and it was a great blessing. To do a more lowly job is a great way to truly experience God's will.
It is amazing however, how easily we can do something humbling with a prideful spirit. How does it work out that we can serve God in a hole somewhere and then brag about how humbling it was? So perhaps we find ourselves in one of three positions.
In the first position, we are unwilling to do what God would have us or blind to what the is. We do nothing of true benefit in this category.
In the second, we see and follow through with the service of God, and it is good for us and molds us, but we see it at face value, a work and stretch that grew us.
But the third, this is the greatest, to live in simple love relationship with God in a manner that yearns to be only working in the hole on the other side of the world. A love relationship so real that serving God needs no fruit whatsoever, because its just for Him, and His satisfaction is the only fruit we would see anyway.
A friend told me a story recently about a man going to heaven and coming back. I think we have a common feeling sometimes about this type of Lazurus story. We wonder, how could this person who has seen the presence of God stand to come back to earth once more. But when this man was asked about this, his response was that to be so overwhelmed with adoration for God only loans itself to be unwavering in doing whatever He could possibly ask of us.
I once had one of the most worshipful experiences of my life standing at the end of a steel press in a factory, praise God for his glory! I don't see this as something to brag about, but something I desire. I want to be contented to work in a deep hole without the knowledge of any other being aside from the Lord. I want that love with Him to break all fleshly desires for anything else!

Since returning to Kentucky, the highlight has been attending a house church locally called The Gathering. I knew about this group coming back, but I really wasn't prepared for the great depths to which the Lord is moving with this community.

I have friends who are much better at friendship than I am, and they had been faithful while I was gone to keep in pretty regular contact with me. You know who you are. So coming back into the area, I knew that my group of friends in Bellevue were getting pretty involved with discipleship and had partnered with a group they where pretty familiar with in Ft. Thomas, even though I didn't really know any of these people.

God is intense! He faithfully moves upon us when we seek His face. It is so refreshing to have such authentic community!

This week I felt kind of like I had receive a laundry list from God. But it was great, exactly what I needed and was ready for. I felt like every point made by those present was something I had to respond to with an "oh yeah, I should really start living that out" mentality.

One of the largest things that God keeps rehashing these past few days is that my love relationship with Him should be my only true priority. All of the so called "blessings" we have in life are ultimately most often simply distractions. I was discussing this over coffee with a friend last night. Neither of us are really coffee drinkers, definitely not Starbucks junkies. But there we where, for the purpose of growing together in Christ. Is it weird that we both drank tea at Starbucks? I was afraid they might kick us out... But as we where talking about how perhaps we should rethink our definition of blessings, since most of the things we call blessings are just big distractions, God brought Philippians 1:22 to my mind. Now I think many Christians automatically recognize this "To live is Christ, to die is gain" passage, but I had just read it that morning, and had specifically realized that I still have never been sure of what "to live is Christ" could possibly mean. It sounds like bad grammar or deep philosophy, maybe both. But I had never really come to grips with that term, even though I had thought about this issue before.

But here is the truth. The only satisfaction and sustainance in this life is Christ. To use a Tozer analogy, God gave man all things to bless him, then man sinned, taking God off of the throne of his heart and continuously trying to replace Him by utilizing these various blessings as throne substitutes. The things which bind us are perversions of those things given us by God. To live is Christ. Therefore, to live is to experiance a constant love relationship with God, to be constantly pushing aside the broken blessings the world is holding up in our faces. To live is Christ. All else falls ultimately into the category of distraction. The only thing I should want is Christ's intimacy and the ablity to serve Him in what He asks of me.

To live is Christ.

To live is Christ!

I took a break from writing on here... moved home, got readjusted, renewed the friendships I have missed so much.

Then came the holidays.

So as I sit here typing on the day after Christmas, I am amazingly broken. "Dang," your all saying to yourselves, "I was totally blindsided by that negativity factor in this post." The truth is that I have spent the holidays thus far with many friends and family, and the majority of the time spent has been a delight. I have been so amazingly blessed by God with great close friends who are an amazingly Godly influence in my life. I have friends who I really do consider family, people I care about so dearly. God be praised for His glory seen in His people.

But there is a great anomaly that exists. I do not understand what the root of this is, but it becomes more evident this year than any prior. I am heartbroken and devestated that there are Christians in my life who steal away the hope and joy that Christ plants in me.

I want to be a joyful person, and have some much to hope for. Christ is always eternally faithful to us, and He shows himself evident in so many ways and through so many relationships. But why is it that when I go into secular family settings I leave encouraged by the festivities and goodwill among famly, and when I leave Christian family events I am exhausted and wishing I could see the purpose in it all?

The nature of this situation brings about a disturbing point, in that Christ's greatest commandments were to love God and then to love men. The New Testament also teaches that we should love Christians more greatly than others, and that Christ is seen in this action. So ultimately, the two greatest commandments are to love God and love Christians. But this doesn't happen.

I also realize that I am equally to blame in this situation. My heart is broken to know that I see this coming every time and yet fall into that sin of self-declaration and self-promotion. Oh Lord, please humble me so that I may truly serve you when my plan of attack is doomed from the start.

On a more positive note, its nice to have a healthy dose of reality when it comes to my personal fallen nature.

Oh God, renew my hope in Yourself alone, apart from humanity, and give me the strength to interact humbly and with Your glory in mind and heart!

These days ...
I feel like everyone I know is either...
Getting married ...
Or Dying.

I really hope that doesn't offend anyone.

I don't even really think I have any way to expound on these. It just seems like every week, someone announces an engagement. This is fine with me, I am overjoyed by this news almost every single time. Half of the time all I can think is "finally, its about time!" So this is a good thing, it just seems like it is everyone, all the time. Everything is shifting, a million little changes that don't effect me, but change the world around me, the one I interact in. Lives I invest in, changing without me.

And people die.

They always have. I even knew some of them. But now it seems like I know all of them. At least once every six months. That is way too often. And they're getting closer too. I have had 4 friends, even family from my high school graduating class lose their fathers from during high school to now. Yesterday my high school art teacher passed away. He was so healthy and full of life when I had him just a handful of years ago. I heard he had cancer awhile back but then I just fell out of the loop. Suddenly I find out that he is cancer free, but his body is so broken that its simply failing. And that is a morose picture of life in general. Fighting our hardest and even triumph leave a man broken practically beyond repair. It reminds me of Tolkien's writings. He built a world where even when good triumphs, there is an almost destroying cost. Frodo can't stay any longer.

I guess that's where I am. When someone dies, it changes everything. We're not naive enough to say that things were ever perfect before this, but at least there was an order. Now things we don't even realize and things we never thought would change because of this, change. Every relationship that interacted with or brushed closely to one of theirs is altered. How do I interact with so-and-so now? Some begin to move in an entirely different direction with their life, old friends completely irrelevant to the situation are slowly discarded for new directions. The family deck is shuffled, and no one comes out with anything that seems worthy of playing.

Will things ever just settle into place? It seems no matter the amount of time or the changing to accommodate the circumstances by surviving parties, everything remains unsettled. Like a snow globe that never goes still. Something is still not at rest long long after any novelty has worn away.

It was strange this most recent time. I really loved that professor. I haven't remained close to him or anything, we didn't have a closer bond than he did with other students, but he was just an authentic guy.

Authentic artist. One memory that surprised me because of how sad it was for me was thinking of a time when I watched him simply sketch. I was amazed by his skill, just thinking about how incredibly all those years had paid off. And to see the joy of a man who I knew most as a teacher, enjoying what he fought so hard to instill in me.

Authentic teacher. He wasn't anything other than what a teacher should be. A mature leader who was personally experienced in what he was teaching and invested in each student's success.

Authentic Christian. He wasn't some theologian or pastor. But he lived it. Sometimes I am so greatly more impressed by those who have their priorities first on Christ when He has nothing to do with their paycheck and would not naturally find His way into their daily interactions.

Its interesting, to feel this way. See, they never fade really. The deaths just pile up. I guess I've reached that point of adulthood where my memories will last, unlike thinking back to the fuzzy freshman or sophomore years of high school. Every time someone dies, its just added to the others. And they all feel fresh again.

So I have been very busy lately, and thus the lack of posting. But the story is that I am moving cross-country at the end of the week, back home. So I have a lot of things to do that don't necessarily include opening my heart up to you on here. Sorry.

Check out my wish list though...

Manly Stuff