Conversations

I’m finding the simplest way to diverting my focus in prayer is turning my awareness from Him towards myself. It is to keep myself watching my own mind and trying to produce feelings in respect to the prayer in which I’m praying. When I am expressing repentance and walking into forgiveness, to start manufacturing feelings for myself of forgiveness. When praying for boldness, to discredit my prayer unless I can produce some kind of courageous feeling to hold the coattails of my prayers. It is an attempt to assess the value of my prayer based on the intensity of emotional response I feel post-prayer; never considering how the internal feelings related are subject to my current physical state or whether or not I am tired, sick, or well.

What is the object in which I am directing my thoughts and concerns, my requests and needs, my hopes and my dreams? It is a composition of genuine and ridiculous invalid ingredients. It is the influence of culture, people, scripture, experience, my own person, and unknowingly long list. What would it look like, how would my intimacy shape if I could consciously order my prayers as not what I think He is but as what He knows himself to be?

I want to set aside all my thoughts and images, or at least, fully recognize their natural subjectivity and completely develop confidence in the external, invisible Presence with me in the room.

I want to find this unaffected nakedness in prayer.

In or Out

A professor of mine once got me thinking about cliche phrases and words. Ever since that conversation, one particular phrase has been somewhat bothersome to me "God showed up".

Last night I stood in the shower, the place of best thought, I debated the idea of the trinity and the way the church has taught it to date. My thoughts shifted to how the Spirit is portrayed in the Old Testament with more emphasis on the Spirit coming on people for power and transformation and leaving as the focused task was completed. Then it occurred to me, this ancient paradigm of the Spirit coming and going in and on our lives, this is how we treat the Spirit today.


"God showed up" - did you think it wasn't on His to do list today? I was promised years ago that my God would be with me and live in me forever. I am convinced that He does not come and go in my life just as I come and go in a room. I treat him as if I need to entice the spirit to come.

If the Spirit is living in me and with me, is it not more of a matter of him coming, but rather letting him out?

I do not have to work for the attention of my Father. My identity as a son cannot be taken from me. I need to start living from being a son instead of competing to be a son.

I do not have to compete.

Clarity in Chaos

My life has lately resembled that of one who is unsure and confused, thoughts without order, a mind of chaos without rest. Feeling confident of things and in a moment experience completely opposing desires, motives, and thoughts. It is a roller-coaster of internal expressions. I've always been one who has loved going to church. Ever since I was young, church was the highlight of my life. I was unconcerned with what was going on or who was going to be there, if I could get in the front door, I wanted to be at church. There was no rhyme or reason for my fascination with church, it was simply a place I loved.

In the last few months I have begun to feel as though I was a young boy again, just loving being at church. Although my reasons and actions different. It is the only place where I experience rest from the barrage of confliction. If there is even a chance that Jesus is going to be there, it is all I want to be in that place. I have found the only place of clarity among the chaos is in the Presence. It can only be described as the place where I feel as though I fit in my own skin. It is the only place where I have felt unwavering confidence in decisions, desires, and motives. This is the result of rubbing shoulders with that which is wisdom; this is the result of Him reminding me of His goodness.

If there is one thing I am convinced of, it is that the more time I spend in the Presence, the better my life is.

This creates an interesting tension in my life. The more time I spend in His Presence, the hungrier I am to get back into it. I leave entirely satisfied and fulfilled, yet wanting so much more. I am learning to live my life from the Presence.

I want to forget how to live without Him.

Erasing

Still mulling over the same issues previously written about, I found my self reviewing the notes I had taken in my phone's notepad. I came across this:

Fear is an awareness of what I am lacking. Fear invites the spirit of confusion. Every problem's solution we see lives inside of us. My external feelings do not always correspond to my internal reality. Learn to cultivate a thankful heart in the midst of fear. Do not let circumstances control me, a kingdom mindset is not controlled by circumstances....the kingdom is unshakeable.

I am thankful for what I have experienced in the last three years.

I am thankful that I will only continue to learn, grow, and become stronger.

I am thankful that I have and will encounter my God.

I am thankful I have choices.

I am thankful I get to choose Him.

I am thankful.

selfish

Worry and stress have become staples in my life. I am fully aware of the possibility of living without such poisons, however I continually feed on them, with nothing to show for it. Fear is hiding at the root of my worry and stress, fear for the uncertain, fear for change, fear for complacency.

I have sat alone hour upon hour discussing, analyzing, begging, pleading, surrenduring my plans, my intentions, and my dreams, both current and future. It is in this where my fear grows; where there lies a great uncertainty in the union of my plans and His. I fear leaving behind the wonderful friendships, certain of gaining new ones and reviving old ones, but loving where I am and who I am with now.

More and more, I am realizing my stress and worry is in its essence selfishness. Taking complete ownership for things that have been given to me as if I authored them myself. Stress is the result of forgetting His goodness and the utter goodness of His plan and intentions for my immediate life and future. I convince myself that my plans and goals, as good as they may be, will not be achieved barring a significant change in my life. Simply:

i fear God's plan

I've worked 9/5 while living in a city I did not want to live in, worked jobs I hated, attended schools I loathed, all because I felt it was what I was supposed to be doing. Coming out of that, everything apart of me avoids returning to those places, those places of routine, complacency, and boredom. I know it will all work together for good, I know there are things that are coming that I cannot see, nevertheless these feelings of returning to a familiar boredom frightens me.

35 days.

Uncertait

Today was the completion of my first day as a college graduate. I am already sick of hearing the question: "How does it feel?" But it is inevitable when anyone realizes what happened this last weekend. It feels great to have accomplished, almost a feeling of arrival, coupled with the desire to want more; to want to learn more; to want to be more; not wanting to settle as achieved, but to achieve greater now.

It is also terrifing. I have all that was concretely planned for my life. Yet there are still things that I know that I will achieve and become, but a fear of not knowing how those will come about grips me. I have been working for this moment for so long, now that it is here - what is next? How do I bridge the gap of my dreams and future to my current reality?

I feel like a batter trudging from the on-deck circle to the batter's box, ready to swing but unable to see where the ball will go. I've been practicing for years, sitting in the dugout, watching, waiting for my opportunity; I'm working to find the balance in patience and aggressiveness. Thoughts of failure race through my mind, but everything that I am knows I am designed for success.

I know that I just need to rest and let the game come to me. A friend of mine said: "Rest is not the absence of activity - but the presence of peace". Provision has never been absent in my life, nevertheless, uncertainty still remains my biggest adversary.


I have been set up to trust.

Counterfeit?

Sitting in my class, faithfully discussing the intricacies of a language that is no longer in existent, inevitably we detour to a discussion on the character and nature of God from the ink on the page. Quietly I sit in the back, more focused on preventing my head from bobbing than engaging in the class, knowing the inevitable destination of our conversation. Slowly, but definitely the ideas return to the familiar place of what God is not, rather than what God is.

Agendas shift to proving what some label as from God, as expressively fake. Listening, I begin to wonder, are we more comfortable and more apt to focus on what we think we can prove is not God than what we know is God? I wonder why we are willing to limit the limitless based on our frugal minds and emotional experiences. I wonder.

The Almighty I serve has no limits. The Faithful I follow has never been known routine. The phenomenon who knows my name is unique in all that is Him. The willing pattern to base the another's experience on my own encounter as the drawing board for validation is a common but limiting cycle. I am unwilling to judge another's testimony based on my knowledge through experience. If all future actions of God can fit within my experience and within the comprehension of my mind, at 22 years of age, I have thus experienced all there is. If I find it necessary to throw around the labels such as fake or counterfeit because I do not understand, if this is all there is, I want out.

But I know that there is more. I know an argument cannot debate with an experience. I know an argument is only one experience away from changing the argument. I know my praise is not contingent on counterfeit, I praise when its real, I praise when its not.

I know.