doing something with what you've got

So a week away from the snowfall of the century here in DC and I'm still trying to sort my life back out. Someone told me today that the Blizzard revealed everyone's true nature. I sort of hope that isn't the case for me, because I definitely have been slightly (or a lot) insane over the past two weeks. Thankfully, I finally got to go to church on Monday night. 

We're in the middle of a sermon series on spiritual disciplines and the past two weeks our pastor has been talking about the importance of Bible study. It's a common mantra at Frontline that what you hear in the 30 minutes Todd Phillips (our teaching pastor) is preaching each week is just enough to make you dangerous, but little else. This week he made a point that's really stuck with me: God may withhold revealing additional truth to us if we've failed to do anything with the truth we're given. 

He referenced the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, where a master goes away and entrusts his property to three of his servants. Two of these servants take the master's money and increase it two fold, while the third buries his money in the ground out of fear of his master.  After the master returns from his journey he is pleased with the fruitful servants and displeased with the "slothful" servant. 

This passage is ripe with application and analogies, but to tie it back to what Todd said, the master was displeased with the servant who hadn't done anything with what he'd been given. I've been spending a lot of time this week thinking about the Biblical truths God has clearly revealed to me, even just over the past nine months. God has entrusted me with far more than I deserve, and revealed parts of His character to me that I previously haven't known. I've learned a lot, but I can't confidently say I've been entirely diligent in applying these truths. 

What good is knowing truth if it doesn't change you? I know that my life goes a lot better when I'm applying God's truth in my life, and worse when I don't. So why must I constantly be like Paul in Romans 7, doing what I do not want to do--or worse, wanting to do the things I know I should not want to do, all the while having the audacity to continue to ask the Lord to reveal more of Himself to me. I can't quite imagine what my life would be like if I'd already been faithful in applying the truth He's shown me during the 20 plus years as a Christ-follower.

There is so much I have yet to apply, but there is one big truth in particular that comes to mind that God has revealed to me over and over again the past few years that I have yet to fully embrace and apply in my life. So this month I'm abandoning Facebook and gchat to focus more on this truth and how to make it manifest in my life, and how, when I apply it, it allows me to "share in my master's happiness."

are you afraid of the dark?

I never thought I had huge issues with fear. I'm not scared of rodents, or things that creep on the ground, or the dark, or getting lost, or people I don't know, or heights, or small tight spaces, or big crowded spaces. What I'm finally realizing though is that while I may not fear all of those tangible things. I definitely fear intangible things. Well one intangible thing. I fear losing people in my life that I care about. Not in a morbid "they just got hit my a bus" sense, but in an "oh they don't like me or need me or want to know me anymore" sense. I was talking about this with one of my friends today and she mentioned that it makes sense that my greatest fear would be tied to my greatest gift--loving on people. 

I guess it makes sense. Satan isn't going to waste time attacking me in something that I already suck at or just don't even care about. Instead he's going to sucker punch me by telling me I'm not a good friend, by convincing me I'm selfish, and by making me feel like all of my relationships are either about to fall apart or already failing. It's startlingly easy to get caught up in these irrational, silly traps. And the only way I can defeat this fear is to surrender it to the Lord over and over again, sometimes once a day, sometimes once a minute. The times when I don't surrender my fear of losing people I care about (or maybe a better way to phrase it is being left by the people I care about?), it starts to consume me. For an instant, it even makes me wish I loved the people I love less so that it wouldn't hurt so much when they pull away. It makes me wish for less of one of the greatest gifts God has equipped me with. Kind of astounding. Got me to thinking that must be something akin to what God feels when his children push him away, how much it grieves him when we're disobedient or focused on anything apart from Christ. 

Anyway, no huge revelations here. Just a good verse to tie it all together...

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love." I John 4:18. 

more on love

So I've done a pretty good job at convincing myself I'm "good" at loving on people. To a certain extent, it's true. I tend to lean towards grace. I tend to be generous. I tend to be self-sacrificing to a fault in my friendships and relationships. In particular, when I'm letting the Lord fill me up, I seriously overflow with love in a way that probably seems manic to people who've never experienced the real and living God. Still, a couple of weeks ago someone pointed out that at its most basic level, the true manifestation of being a self-proclaimed Christ-follower is the process of a lifetime of pouring out and expecting nothing in return. We're all screw ups and no one deserves anyone. That's the beauty of the freedom we have in Christ--a freedom to love beyond measure because we're loved beyond measure, free from being consumed by the guilt of the continual, unavoidable screwing up. I understand the Biblical concept of being poured out like a drink offering and that the source of it all is Christ. At the end of the day though, for the most part, I still want to be loved back by those I choose to love, no matter how much I tell myself it doesn't matter. Does this mean I'm not letting God fill me up enough with His love? Does it mean I'm not loving God enough or trusting Him enough? Can't really wrap my head around an answer to those questions.