February 17, 2008
Dear Lord Jesus,
Thank You for the sure knowledge (more than “sense!) I have that You are with me always – all of You! Amazing!
It seems like my mind is so full of stuff but when I sit down to write about it my mind just goes blank. Does that mean it’s just “my” mind? Not thinking Your thoughts? I guess… No, I know! a lot of it is “me.” Old habits die hard. Please help me.
I have been thinking about all the planning and setting up I have done for Home Ec and French… and thinking, “Well, at least if I move on I’m leaving behind something for the next person to follow”- But of course they might have their own – probably better – approach! Oh well, I don’t know if I’m going anywhere anyway. Of course, I also don’t want (“my” feelings, at least) to go on with “school teaching” anyway, at least not in the “traditional/ mainline” sense… But who knows? Maybe You want me to anyway… Well, if You do, please help me to follow You in it instead of always (habitually!) just “falling back” on “what I know how to do” – the whole course planning/ lesson plan/ curriculum requirements/ etc etc thing… all the stuff, that, frankly, turns my stomach… Lord, it just seems to me that this can’t be what You have in mind… and yet it is so accepted… by so many “leaders” … including “good Christians”… but it seems to me that You are supposed to be the one and only leader.
Lord, it seems like we are just so overloaded with “rules” and “policies” and really, micro-managing, and it seems to me like if we were really living Your life (okay; had You livng Your life in and through us!), we wouldn’t need all that micro-management because then maybe he kids would see and know You – You as reality, as their friend and Savior and all – and things would be so different… wouldn’t they? I mean, we’d love to live Your life in relationship with You and with each other… and everything we’d do would then be centered on You, Jesus! right?
I mean, I know that lately, with The Shack and So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore? and all, I’ve been seeing that about “the church” but it seems like I’ve been seeing it all about “school” and “education” and “learning” for a lot longer… maybe You used the one to help prepare me for the other? - anyway, I just can’t seem to get into the whole “Christian school” thing… especially when it seems to be more and more like the regular system… but, You know, there are a lot of “fine Christian people” who really “believe in it”… and who support the “buildings” and “programs” and all in a big way… and make me wonder sometimes how I could think so differently than they all do… I mean, they believe they are following Your Will… well, maybe they are? Maybe You just are really creative and You use lots of different ways to reach different people … “be all things to all people in order to win some”??? (Didn’t Paul say something like that?)
Just read this in the anime/ manga book about Jesus: “What you know is not nearly so important as how you live!”
Okay! Thank You!
__ wrote… “[we] were talking the other day about not calling things meetings or Bible studies or saying to come or not to come if it is on a Wednesday at 1 pm or just any day, etc, etc. it’s all great, but by trying not to, we are doing the same thing as we used to. I think it is okay to plan some things. I don’t think God is opposed to that. When we let the time, place, and itinerary be our guide, then I think we are in trouble. Even still, He can work through that… always has and always will!”
…….. email to a friend….
I read the other day that “It’s easy to take the person out of the system, but not so easy to take the system out of the person” … and I’m afraid that’s me, a lot… old habits die hard… But oh, I do want out… if God wants me out, which to me has become the most important thing… sometimes I get so confused, wondering if the way I think and feel about things is really from God or just me… Slowly, I am learning to walk one moment at a time, and trying to really notice what He is doing around me, and trying to just walk in that instead of worrying and wishing and wondering…
Well, one thing I’m sure learning is that just because people aren’t “church” oriented, doesn’t mean they aren’t moving toward (or even already walking with) Jesus… seeing Jesus in them, even if they aren’t totally sure about everything (who of us really are sure about everything? Seems to me like often those who think they are most sure, are often knowing about, but not knowing personally…)…. Maybe getting our relationship on track with Jesus first is most important… because then when He leads us into relationships with His body, His bride, His church (!) we won’t be so likely to get distracted by the human systems and stuff that have gotten mixed-up with it…. So many of us were brought up to be churchy, and to know about Jesus, but never really got to really KNOW him, because we were too busy dashing around “doing things for him” you know…
___ wrote” O boy do I have ideas about things but I wouldn’t do it without being ‘sent out’ from a body that is moving together in a fresh move of God for the young people and sends me out with lots of prayer covering, and where there is a team that WORSHIPS before they make a move, worships together and prays until they are flowing in God’s anointing, until they are flying out as a team together on the Wind of His Spirit, and not laboring in the flesh or under the mistaken idea they can do it by hard trying.”
And I wrote….Do you think that exists? I mean, it seems like that is a lot of what God wants, but it also seems like every time it starts, it doesn’t take any time before people say, oh look, that really works… so let’s make it our way of doing things… and you know, everyone elses ways are wrong, because our way is obviously better… and next thing you know people are taking what was really from God, and claiming it for themselves…
I mean, aren’t God’s ways ALWAYS fresh, and it’s when us humans get a hold of them that we tend to try to fit them in a box, turn them into rules and policies and stuff, and then they get all stale, and then we’re looking for a new “fresh move” … so how do we avoid that, how do we stay in the freshness of God? It seems to me that’s where really, really being friends with God, really, really being in moment-by-moment relationship with Him, really, really coming to KNOW him, to live, abide in Him and Him in and through us, His Spirit totally living in us, and everything we do, think, are becoming HIM IN US… and He is so creative, so He keeps doing His fresh things in fresh, new ways, but we like safety an security so we grab onto something that seems “to work” and we stop just moving along with Him and “settle” …
But you know, I want “adventure” and I’m getting pretty sure that HE IS ADVENTURE!!! And that He isn’t “safe”… like in Narnia, when it says about Aslan, that “he isn’t safe! He isn’t a tame lion!” … Strangely, being in Jesus is the safest, securest place we can be… yet it is the freshest, constantly changing, creative, most unexpected, most adventuresome place at the same time… And I do totally believe that God uses the church (the body, His family) that way, the way you just described, only it seems like the enemy is totally fighting that… but Jesus said we’d be able to do everything He did and a whole lot more… but it seems like we are content to NOT be what He said…
Oh, I just LONG to be there, walking with Jesus every moment, hearing and obeying His Spirit and living in HIS LOVE and really, really knowing Father… and yes, I would like to be part of His family like that, and maybe He IS leading me there, and I am finding them, only it’s just a couple people here and there a lot of the time, and so often it’s not in the building/ organization… and yet just look at what he showed me “at church” last Sunday… so I see that we can spend too much time and energy in maintaining the building and the programs and paying the preacher and stuff… so that a lot of the time we don’t even see Jesus there among us.. and yet when I saw Him there, he was happy! Not with the program and stuff, although there were moments when the music really was worship… but He was happy with HIS CHILDREN, HIS BODY, HIS BRIDE, HIS CHURCH… Oh dear God, please, please help me see what YOU SEE!
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