I’ve been watching this youtube video off and on for the last month I think and I don’t know why. Maybe because it displays to me through the preaching, the words, the music, and the cinematography the true awesomeness of Christ and truly it does. The message is powerful and every time I watch it the question, “Do you know Him?” seems to resonate with me. To the point that just the other day while in prayer I was asking it of myself or of the Lord really, “Do I know You? and, “how many of us who call ourselves Your Children really do? How well do we know You?”
Like I said, I’ve been thinking on this a lot lately. Maybe because I feel like when it comes to the life of Christ I’ve been missing something. Maybe because when it comes to my life looking “Christ-like” it doesn’t really feel like I’m measuring up. Maybe in certain Christian circles I might but, I’m not really concerned with certain Christian circles. What I’m really concerned with is what God thinks of me, what God wants to do with me, and where I’ve failed to see. I mean, I can go to church, read the Word, I can do and say all the right things, which is fine, but then, why do I still feel like I’m missing something?
I sat in Easter service today. I sing the songs, I hear the message, but then, “what?” I apply it to my life. I read books, I pray, but lately I’ve grown tired of praying the same old things. I grow tired of the monotony and then I find myself asking God, “God, I’m missing something. I know that I am. I’m living the mundane and I’m tired of doing the same old things.”
I watch this video; clips of the life of Christ and Christ lived a radical life. Not easy, not here to tell us, “I’ve come to save you! Now go and live a life of ease and mediocrity!” If this is my mentality – then God help me, because when I look at the life of Christ, when I really listen to the words He preached, and many of them were not easy, I realize. I realize where I’ve missed the mark. I realize how I’ve grown in my own complacency. I realize, “God, there is so much more about you that I really do not know,” and yet, I realize that I want to. I want to know so that I can what? live “the abundant life?” No. I want to know so that I can live a “radical” life, the radical life I believe God calls all of His Children to. The question is; when He does do we hear Him and do we even want to?
Jen,
I’ve been in a similar “phase’ myself of late. Perhaps the answer to our question (No, not “What is the Matrix?) is… to just be still, patient & and content in knowing that He is the Lord.
Grace and peace.
[...] what’s new on the mind of fellow blogger/bloggett Jen of WalkTwo this evening. Jen’s posted her thoughts on feeling as though she’s doing the same old mundane things. Earlier in the [...]
Hey Christopher,
He is the Lord and I know that, but I guess maybe my own spiritual funk is coming from “what am doing with that?” How am I making the fact that I know He is Lord the preeminent of my life? I don’t know, phases and funks I think God allows for a reason. Lately, I’ve hit a wall. Not in my relationship with God but I think with myself. I’m literally looking over the past seven years of my life and then asking God, “what am I doing?” Because for me, I feel like I’ve missed something. I feel like I’m not living – not the life I should be – in His eyes. I don’t know, maybe I’m restless. Maybe I’m tired, and a part of me feels like throwing all to the wind and then just jumping! Because I’m not giving enough away, I’m not living out loud. I’m too safe or too easy, and I see all these people hurting in this world and then I have to ask myself, “and what are you doing?” Not enough. I don’t want to play it safe anymore. I think, I look at the life of Christ and I go, “God you weren’t afraid to rub elbows. You weren’t afraid to say it exactly as it was. You were who You were and for that You made no apologies. And yet at the same time You had this infectious way with people. Because despite all of Your demands You loved them. You loved them because You saw in them everything You ever wanted for them in the first place – who they were meant to be.” And honestly, when I look at it, I think that’s what God’s desire has been since He took my place and died for me. He made us “to know” Him and in every human being that’s what He wants back, that’s what He wants to restore – that relationship. The thing is, we got this thing called sin that comes inbetween us and Him. So how do you take the sinner and rightly relate them to God as they should be? Only Jesus, only Jesus can do that. So… (and sorry I know I’m being long winded) when I look at the life of Christ and say, “I know I’m not getting it” the radicalness of it – what I’m not getting, or what I know isn’t ablaze in me as it should be – is the passion. The passion and the power to preach Christ and how He and only He has the power to transform a person and their life… even a person like me:) I guess what I’m tired of, what I know I’m tired of (in me) is the mediocrity because I know… that isn’t any of our calling.
Anyway, thanks for listening, Christopher. I know even when we’re in the “funk” God is moving! God’s blessings!
~Jen
Hey there long-winded one, you sound like you have a lot of passion for Christ right now.
No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.
~Fight Club
I’m a big movie buff – love the quotes! And inregards to my “funk” God and I are working on it:) Talk to you later Christopher!
~Jen
Apparently it’s a big desert were walking in because it extends all the way to IL where I am. I had breakfast with my Pastor a few weeks ago to share my struggle. He made me feel much better when he told me that he has been in his own ‘funk’ lately too. Whoa! who would have thought that the Pastor has dry spells? Then he suggested two things:
1. Perhaps God brings us to the desert to make sure we can hear him and to make sure we are listening. Perhaps this time in your walk is about having God set his next plan before you.
2. He also brings us into the wilderness to see if we will keep showing up to meet with him. Sometimes it’s simply about obedience and not about excellence.
God is Good. May HE alone set his path before you and lead you to the gate.
God Bless,
Jeff
Hey Jeff,
Good to hear from you and sorry to hear the desert has extended all the way to IL too. Good points and reminders you made though. It reminds me (or God does when I am in the desert) to base nothing on how I “feel” but rather on who I know Him to be. It doesn’t matter whether I am restless or uncertain or uneasy, what matters is that when I do feel this way that I bring it all into His presence and attempt to leave it at His feet. I think what it comes down to is more trusting. Leaning on the Word, which reveals the character of God, and not on how I’m feeling.
Anyway, hope for you also that the “rains” will show up… and soon:) God is good and He has a reason for everything! God’s blessings!
~Jen
Greetings. This is something that we all should ask on a continual basis. “Lord do I really know you as I ought to?” Our God is so awesome and his ways past finding out that even a lifetime of revelation would barely scratch the surface. Yet a daily prayer of miner has been a greater revelation and primarily a greater grasping of our great salvation. An understanding that goes far deeper than a doctrinal understanding and sincere heartfelt life-changing conversion. An understanding so deep that it literally changes how we view all that is.
Paul states it so well in Philippians where he counts all that the world offers as dung that he may win Christ. To have a revelation so deep that we can, in sincerety, say the same. As the old song goes “Take the World, but Give Me Jesus.” Maybe it’s asking too much, but I desire a revelation so deep as to render one “funk-proof” because it’s so easy to get caught in a routine. This is a needful post (I needed it) and I pray that all who read it will ask the Lord “Do I know you?”
Have a blessed day in Jesus.
timbob
Hey Timbob,
Thanks for stopping by. Your words I think are the crux of the issue; to have and keep the mindset that the prize is Christ. When the world and all it’s worries or temptations press in, to count everything as rubbish except to win Christ. I have to remind myself that God is the “vision”. That God is the ultimately goal. To have the mindset that if I have Him then what else do I need? If I have Him then I already have everything.
As a woman I think I can let worry overtake me and I know this is where God wants me, or wants to teach me to let go. I have to trust that He has a plan, knows the way, and has even put much thought into it beforehand. I think of this in my own life and even in the lives of others that I know who are struggling; of God’s providence. That when we go through struggles or difficulties and even when it seems things have gone awry God is still in control. He allows us to walk through difficulties for a reason; maybe to strengthen our character or resolve to follow Him irregardless of circumstance. Either way, what He keeps reminding me through it all though is this; “I’ve got your back!” and honestly… I’m glad:)
Talk to you later and God’s blessings!
~Jen
Jen, A devotional reading that I read this morning by Brennan Manning seems to touch on this a bit…
I want to make a bold, unqualified, and unequivocal statement: The key events of the Lent-Easter cycle – the death of Jesus Christ on the cross on Good Friday and his glorious breakthrough to new life on Easter Morning – are not merely a summoning, but an empowering to a life of reckless confidence regarding our past, our present, and our future. It is confidence and nothing but confidence that leads to love, to life, to freedom, to Jesus. The great German theologian Karl Rahner writes in his book FOUNDATIONS: “A person is always a Christian in order to become one, and this is also true of what we are calling a personal relationship to Jesus Christ in faith, confidence, and love.” A new possibility exists. We can be more than we are at any one moment. In Mark 11:22-24, Jesus Says, “Have faith in God…I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Do you see how far Jesus calls us to push our confidence? Believe that you have it already! “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.” Hebrews 3:14
…on a more personal note, you may not know how much your interest in my writing and the idea that you would have deemed it worthy of the Walk Two project meant to me. God never promised that we would see all the fruits of our labor while we’re here, but, instead has encouraged us to trust Him, live for Him, and rest in the confidence that He will follow through according to His will.
I, like others that have responded, also have experienced this funk of late and that is one reason that I felt the need to express the perspective that I’ve acquired regarding it. I think that, if I was truly living out God’s desire for us to Love others as ourselves and to Love and honor Him above all, that I would have less time to think that I should feel more. But, the truth is that we’re simply not going to feel whole or complete until His plan is complete. We can’t achieve it on our own and won’t achieve it until He comes and commends us for our faithfulness. =)
I hope you’re well.
Mark
One more thing…I wanted to add that some of my recent blog posts are somewhat relative to this topic if you care to check them out. =)
Hey Mark,
Good to hear from you and good words too! Never will I be complete or truly satisfied until I am completely with Him. I suppose in this life it is the striving to get as close to that as I possibly can; to Him, and to cast all else aside. It is a matter of putting all confidence in Him. It is a matter of believing God is who He says He is. To have that kind of confidence, belief, and relationship with Him to yes, be able to say to a mountain, “be removed!” and then see it cast into the sea. I think this is the kind of faith God calls and wants all of us to have but how few of us there are who have it. Most of us, including myself, are doubting Thomas’s I think or complaining Israelites still lost in the wilderness. Anyway, I suppose I am at a place that I want to have that kind of consistent faith; I believe God to be who He says. I take Him at His Word. There are so many promises in the Bible and I often look at it like a parent would a child, or a friend a friend. When we have a friend who distrusts us, or who doesn’t believe our word, it hurts our feelings. Could God not feel the same way with us at times? “Why won’t you just believe Me and that what I tell you is true?” Hmmm. I think on that a lot because without faith it is impossible to please God. Well, our walks with Him are always a growth process, I’m just wanting to get on with it; from water to wine!
But anyway, it was really good to hear from you and hope all well with you and your family. I have really missed my time blogging and being able to keep up with what others are blogging about, but as of right now God is teaching me other things just through life’s daily experiences. Nothing is ever a waste and everything He allows, He allows to form and shape us a little more each time.
Keep writing Mark… you have a talent God has given you to glorify Him and do keep in touch. God’s blessings!
~Jen