This sewage came flowing out of my spiritual pipes today as a result of things I heard in my class and in the sermon later at church. It's been backed up for some time and it needs to see the light of Day. It will stink for awhile and then as it dries, maybe it can be used for fertilizer or it will just dissolve into the landscape.
Quite a change from yesterday eh, when I thought the Holy Spirit was trimming my spiritual tree? Maybe I'm bipolar. Bad brain chemistry and not spiritual warfare?
Getting back to the point of this post though...
My faith is in question of late, or maybe for awhile now. I am not sure what I believe anymore. I can't pray in any organized way outloud or silently. I'm not sure it actually produces any good in my life or anyone else's. What I am able to do is close to what Jesus advised in His model prayer. I give thanks, pray for protection and a softening of my spirit; I might ask for some forgivness or pray for someone else. I am unable to do conversational prayer anymore where I just talk to Jesus or His Father. It's like we have nothing to talk about He knows what I think and where I am at and does not care. And I'm not sure it matters in the big picture sense anyway. I lack faith that prayer actually does anything. This from years of experience.
I have been a Christian for 45 years - or at least, I did the things that people do to become a Christian. I am sure that I believed it at the time or I would not have walked down into the water for the big dip. I may have discussed this before, but I remember thinking immediately after the event, "what now Lord?"
Now most people that choose the faith do not go there right away. There is usually a honeymoon period; a time of unparalleled joy, of feeling free or new. I never felt any of those things. I had no sense of the Holy Spirit's presence or an awareness that He even existed. Truth be told, I actually felt kind of bad. I still had my guilt. It was as if nothing really happened that day beyond getting wet.
I tried to make it work with what I knew and what I was learning, but I have never really felt comfortable in my Christian skin - if I ever had one.
I am, to this Day, unchanged in any appreciable way. In some ways, I am morally worse than when I was 14 years old. My mind and my body still wants all those things that should have died when I became a Christian. I am urged daily by my flesh to do these things. There is no sense in me of sanctification and by this time in my life, I do not see any possibility of me being a finished work of faith on Judgement Day. It's all just too late and I and I don't know if there is anything I can do about it.
Today, in class we talked about the possibility of obedience without love and mostly how nothing counted without the presence of love as a motivating factor. We also talked about how some people manage to fake the whole thing to get through life with their friends and family. Someone in class suggested that sooner or later, a Christian like that would get caught faking it. Maybe. You haven't caught me yet, probably because I'm an expert. So now I confess it. I do not know that I was faking. It's more like I have been going through the motions or fulfilling a duty. Like a Pharisee as it were.
A bit later, during the sermon, the preacher was talking about the resurrection of Lazarus and how Martha was having a problem with Jesus because He had not arrived in time to heal her brother and now he was dead. Martha could not let go of her displeasure with Jesus. She could not wrap her mind around the notion that Jesus could raise someone dead after four days. She could not let go of any of it. Until it happened.
This is where I am at. Despite all the assurances in scripture, nothing has changed in my life. I am as I was and have always been for the most part, and now I'm cynical and cranky too. I have not yet received the new life I was supposed to get and I blame Jesus for that. I used to blame myself. It was because I didn't do this or that, or because I did do this or that. I'm done blaming myself. I need to see some ressurection action in my life or I'm no longer going to buy into any of it. I hope He shows me something. I need something. I can't play this game any longer. I'm old and tired and close to the end. I need some hope. That's all I'm saying. Help me get my faith back! Or at least one that works.
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Be Gentle.