Light pollution.

Anyone who lives in New York City will attest that it's extremely hard to see a good starlit sky at night. Needless to say, there's tons of artificial light that reduces the contrast between the darkness of the night and the stars. All of the light that people have created competes with that of the universe. Of course, if one objectively compared the feeble amount of light that we conjure up with the brilliance of the trillions of stars in the universe, there would be absolutely no contest: our light is as nothing. But it's closer. It helps us do what we need to do, and so we get by without the natural light by substituting it with our own. It's much duller, but if we had never sat under a fully lit starry night, we'd never know the difference, so we don't know what we're missing out on. Besides, our light is easier to control. We can adjust the intensity, turn it on and off when we like... we can't do that with natural light. Sure enough, the greater light rises in the day, and the lesser and its companions at night... but we cannot control nor adjust it to our convenience. Artificial light it is, then. In fact, there is sometimes so much artificial light, that there's something called skyglow, when a city seems to be glowing or emitting its own light. When did we grow so accustomed to the artificial light and forget that there's a vast expanse of lights out there, if only we'd take some time away to wait for our eyes to adjust?

It must truly be pitch black for the best views of the stars to be seen. How willing are you to get away from every source of artificial light you've depended upon? Sometimes we find artificial light; as in a street lamp. Other times, we create it, as with a light switch. Either way... there is something that cannot truly be seen until all sources of artificial light are left behind.

What would happen if we turn off all of our lights and douse our fires? What would happen if we stopped down and around and simply looked up...? We probably wouldn't see anything at first. But we know they're there; the stars don't go anywhere. They don't appear one night and then cease to exist until we see them again. Neither existence nor appearance is dependent on our actions.

Look and we'll see. Seek, and we'll find.

"Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord..." - 2 Corinthians 5:1-6

The flesh is so impossibly fickle.... I love when I enjoy times of closeness with God-- when I feel Him near and His love abounds. Yet if experience has taught me anything lately, it's that these times don't last very long. I suppose the right thing to do would be to focus on the now and just enjoy my time here up on the hill. But the bittersweet reminder persists: I'm filled to be emptied, and tests are sure to come again soon. If nothing else, I feel so frustrated at myself; frustrated at this stupid jar of clay, this earthly tent that refuses to remain at a constant nearness to God. Why must we go on this crazy roller coaster ride? The Word tells me that it's all achieving for me an eternal glory that far outweighs all of the tribulations (2 Co. 4:17). It's so frustrating to know that I can't always be near to God (even though He is always near to me...hmm.) as long as I'm in this tent! But it's all drawing me closer... I guess it's ironic in itself: God uses those troughs and valleys to bring me closer to Him, and here I am complaining that I want to stay here...

How amazing that even the most liberal outpourings of the Spirit in this life are but a deposit; a sign and a guarantee of the things to come!! Oh Jesus... come Thou quickly.

What is worship that has not first endured days and nights of long suffering? I'm beginning to question if I really knew what I was talking about when I sang songs of worship before I saw testing. How did I know that God was faithful when I hadn't endured anything that would direly necessitate His conferred strength and grace? I hope this does not discourage any new believers to put off worship until they've been through something... but I hope it encourages believers not to shy away from pain, loneliness and drudgery when it comes. It's through times of terrible testing and long droughts where I feel like I am doing nothing for God that my song of worship finally begins to make sense. For how can I believe what I sing about God's grace being completely free, about how I don't-- can't-- earn God's favor when I've never been at the place where I know I am completely incapable of pleasing God with my efforts? What does it mean for me to thank God that He is always there when I've never known the overbearing loneliness of having no one else around?

I can't help but imagine that at one point I probably prayed for God to give me a song of praise like that of David. In fact, I have complained inwardly that my testimony was not dramatic enough... that it didn't fully embody the grace that God affords us. I'm beginning to realize that it's not just by redemption from flagrant and egregious sin; for that is only the beginning. There, I suppose the melody and lyrics are written. But the enduring power of the Spirit is given when the honeymoon fervor dies out... and my devotion is really tested for what it is. Can I endure at once long periods of what feels like my utter uselessness to God and His seeming absence? For any uselessness I had before might have been covered up by the passion which He so often endows at the initial homecoming of His newly adopted son. But now that is gone...and what's left but a child stricken with his ineptitude, and who looks around and sees his Father less and less? But the believer who makes it through trials such as this (for it isn't a singular occurrence in a believer's walk) is the one who knows what he sings about when he worships. For in that place of loneliness and despair, the believer realizes it is his inability to repay God in any way that makes the all-knowing love of Christ so much more divine, so much more beautiful, so impossibly supernatural and inescapably arresting.

The pain is so great, though, and quite honestly I don't want to deal with it any longer... yet one quote comes to mind, from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew:

"My son, my son," said Aslan. "I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another."

Safety net

What do you do when you know that there's someOne there who holds all the power in the world; when you know that that same Person is always pushing for you? There is a Saviour... His Name is Jesus, and He will do what He said He will do. It doesn't seem like it will happen; there are so many promises, so many things spoken over my life, and none of them seem to be working out. If anything, it seems like I'm working backwards...and even what I thought I already had I'm losing... God said I'm going to have a ministry; He said I will operate in the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit; He said His favor is upon me; He said that I am clean, I am righteous, I am His child, subject and friend.... None of these things-- let me be clear, none of these things seem to my perception to be true. But I will believe that God is going to be faithful to His promises.

...And even if nothing else comes to fruition, I still have the one thing: that Jesus loves me dearly, beyond I can ever understand...; that there is a God in heaven who is always good, always faithful, always wanting me and making that way for me to be with Him.

I am loved by God, and no one can tell me otherwise. I can't offer works nor faithfulness, faith nor action...cleanliness nor contrition. I've failed and failed and failed... and all I can do now is accept the fact that God loves me still; relentlessly, irrationally, and unconditionally.

A mystery.

Every time I die to myself and come back to life, there is still work to be done. The whole point of being crucified to myself is that I do not come back to life. Yet still, I find myself making requests for me, considering me, focusing on me. What does it mean to die to myself? How do I go about daily life being crucified every moment to my own impulses and desires? I realize, in any event, that I focus on myself a lot. I subconsciously gauge the probability of a prayer being answered by the amount of prayer that I...well, pray. I'm sure it's important that I pray persistently, but... I don't believe my focus should be on what I'm contributing.

I have so much to learn...! I know that God is the one who acts and saves and delivers and heals. But still I live with the mentality that it's what I do that directly effects everything that goes on. As crucial as prayer is, my words are not what sets the captives free. Oh God that I would die already; that I would stop constantly looking inwards at what I'm doing to contribute, and instead cleave to You. When I look inwards and fret about my performance, I get worn out and discouraged. But I believe that when I finally get to fix my eyes on You, and begin spending all of my time praying with You instead of performing for You, that prayer will be unlocked. Then, I believe, prayer will become at once joyful service and profound intimacy for and with You.

Nowhere to go.

So I feel like I'm beginning to climb out of this incredibly deep trough. I know it may be a sort of a strange sentiment, but I'm not too crazy about it. I don't want to come out of that experience just to be restored to the status quo. If I'm going to be brought back up, then I want to be brought higher than where I was when I left off. If anything brought me through that fire to begin with, it would be lukewarm and compromising religion. Oh, God, enough! Enough of the vague impressions that I receive once in a while! Enough of the times that I get to share about you, only to find myself digging up things that I've only heard other people say! Enough of this secondhand religion!! God let me see You for Yourself! Let me experience Your miracles! If I'm going to be a Christian, let me be all the Christian I can be, because I know the world is empty and transient. My flesh kicks and screams and quite honestly does everything possible to resist You, but God I ask for Your Spirit to come do a work in me. No more of the abstract and distant teachings of God... train me to seek hard after Your face and Your life! God forbid that I return to the half-hearted Christianity that I lived before! I do want, Lord, to have a relationship with You; wherein I wake early in the morning to spend time with You; wherein I weep and pray and fast for the things in Your heart; wherein my attitude is aligned with Yours; wherein everything I do, I do according to Your will and in Your Name! Lord, You know my desire, yet You know how much I don't desire it as well. You know how easy it is for me to blow my time on TV and internet distractions; how easy it is for my thoughts to wander away from You, even while praying. You know how I sometimes run away from the prayer closet. Oh God, I want the relationship and the spiritual blessing, but I don't want to starve the flesh. I know I don't deserve it... but I ask for Your hand to change me.

Through the prophet Ezekiel, You spoke to a people who ran after everything but You. Lord, I am no better. I may have thought in the past I was, but I'm not. At the advent of an opportunity, I run after the world. Yet You promised to give Your people an undivided heart... a heart to serve and seek You and You alone. God I ask that You might follow through on Your promise right now. I don't mean to be melodramatic... but to an extent, I feel like I will die if I go on like this.

God... please... for an undivided heart of devotion to You. In the name of Jesus, that You would be my one and only desire.

Tired.

I'm really tired of blogging how I feel lately. Really, really tired. Every day seems to be getting worse. I am realizing how capable I am of sounding emo, but frankly, if I'm going to blog, I might as well blog what's on my mind, plain and simple.

I don't remember ever feeling this crappy since I've been saved. This summer, I've willingly wasted so much time on TV and internet. The past few days, I've given in to sexual temptation, too. I suppose I'm blogging about it just to remind myself in the future how it feels to have gradually stifled the spiritual desires and replaced them with worldly ones. There's a fire in me, but all it's screaming is "emptiness." I feel like there's turmoil raging inside me, but only to tell me that I'm empty. I feel there's an experientially unprecedented distance. I don't want to sleep. I don't want to pray. I don't want to read. I don't want to watch TV. I don't want to do anything. Is this what it feels like to reach rock bottom? Is this where God swoops in, at my point of nothingness to fill me with everything?

I don't know. I don't want to go back to the world. It'll just be the same screaming emptiness, just that over time I'll begin to stifle it, and soon I won't notice. But I don't want to spend my lifetime doing things that I don't actually enjoy and aspiring to goals I don't actually have. Maybe it's God behind this feeling. Maybe that's what those characters in the Bible meant when they asked God to leave them alone; that the nagging of the Spirit would cease, and they could lead normal lives.

What would I ask God if He were here right now? God, what is going on? What is this feeling in me? How are You going to do everything you said? Why is this happening? What should I be doing? How should I be reacting? What are You thinking? How can I know You? Who are You? What do I do?

The last two questions are the two questions that Paul asked Jesus when he met the Other on the road to Damascus (see King James Version). I heard a pastor talk about how important these two questions are... and that throughout the rest of Paul's life, he continually asked these questions of the Lord: "Who are You, and what will You have me do?"

God, if You're going to do this...You have to do it all. I have no desire, no ability, no resources, no willpower... nothing. But Your Word and other people say that You knew this when You chose me, so now... come through.

I was greeted upon arrival to church this morning with a curious sight: what looked like a garden hose trailing down the stairs and off into the kitchen, chairs piled upon tables, and an exaggerrated variation of a smell reminiscent of rainy days on the bus, or prayer meetings with poor air circulation. The church basement had flooded.

All of the carpeted rooms were turned into marsh. Rain water (which, incidentally, in NYC, is not even very clean to begin with) had seeped through whatever orifice or medium to get inside, and it brought many friends that it met along the way. The result was something between what you find in an elementary schoolchild's water color cup (the one he's supposed to dip his brush in after every used color) and snow after it's been "processed" by car tires. But alas, we had to have service, so the towels and the buckets came out, and the stomping and wringing began.

Eventually, we came to the point where we couldn't wait any longer, and we started service (which, incidentally, wasn't so bad, in terms of the smell of damp carpet). Soon afterwards, we got back to work. There was the CM room, the EM room, and the room next door... Thank the Lord for Mary's husband David, who first came up with the idea of raking the water out. And as if showing us a method that was three times as efficient as our old method wasn't enough, he also came up with the idea of using the chairs to shovel water out. Then we thought it'd be even better if we had people SIT on the chairs to push them down while we shoveled, getting more water out. In the end, it felt like more of a day at a very, very dirty water park.

It felt really good, though. It was painful work at times, but I felt so blessed by the opportunity to serve God in this way. Ironically, I serve Him as a leader of His people, yet it felt good in a different way. I think a big part of it is that preaching and leading takes so much prayer and effort... I suppose I didn't have to agonize so much over what message to give and how to give it; I just had to grab a towel, stomp, wring, repeat. It's not the most noble reason to enjoy physical service, I know =P

I thank God for it, though. I feel truly grateful that we were given the opportunity to just roll up our sleeves and get to work (even though we may have to do it again soon, at the rate it's still raining right now...).

Thank You, Lord for what happened today in Your house. Only give me the same zeal to take care of the spiritual house that You started to build in me... that if one day I should come with a purpose to worship, and I find something that might get in the way, I will waste no time in deliberating, but roll up my sleeves and get to work. And when You, or someone You send comes along with a better way, let me not be so proud as to spurn correction, discipline or construction. Let me cast away the towels and buckets, and pick up the mop handles and chairs. God, come; open my eyes to see the damage done, to see the problem areas and the hindrances, and give me the spirit to obey and do something about it.

God, change my desires. All day long, my thoughts are filled with longings of the flesh; not necessarily bad longings, but fleshly ones no less. I know that many of them are God-given, for man is a physical being.... but I ask that the desires of my heart would not be for them. I can only ask this, because I cannot forcibly change any of it myself. Let my heart breathe after eternal, not temporal things. Let my eyes see the spiritual, not just the physical realm. Let my life be given all to You. Even now, there's a great portion of me that would rather take back these requests. God, turn me upside down and empty me out if need be, but cast me deeper into the things of God, that the shore of this physical life will eventually disappear.

In Jesus' Name.

when Faithfulness is not enough.

Job and his friends knew all about faithfulness. In terms of wealth, there was no one like Job. And judging from the personal friendship that he had with the three visitors, they were probably of high standing as well. Job in particular knew about the faithfulness of God. He led a blameless life, and interceded regularly for his family, and God blessed him with immense wealth. Yet there was something more to learn; there was more of God that Job knew not.

Honestly, the book of Job confused me like crazy. First of all, it's written in Hebrew poetry, which, as a comfortable speaker of the English language, I am not familiar with. Second of all, it's translated roughly into modern English, which, interlingual syntactical and idiomatic differences accounted for, is still confusing. Now combine that with seemingly repetitive and uncommonly snarky sarcasm, and I just don't know what's going on for most of the book. Yet I remember one time when I spoke with a friend who was going through an intense trial regarding her family. She didn't know why God, in His faithfulness and compassion, was allowing such pain and tribulation to go on in and around her. At the time, I had no idea what to say. Why does God seem to perpetuate pain? Why, as Job asks, do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper?

At this time, a reminder of God's faithfulness is not enough. Job's friends insist that God is faithful, and that if Job repents of his sins, his fortunes would be reversed. And while God's faithfulness is undeniably real, it does not answer the question that burns: Why? It cannot simply be a matter of open sin, Job lived a blameless life and stood by his integrity even as it came under attack. What Job and his friends needed to learn through this was the wisdom of God. When suffering goes on for so long without a seeming answer from God, the question is "WHY is this happening," not "HOW can I endure?" The answer, then, is that God is infinitely wise.

God sees things so very differently, and He works everything out for our good in the end; it just doesn't always seem like that at the time. I can go through periods of torturous dryness and not have a clue why I feel like the heavens are brass and my prayers are dissolving into thin air, but God knows. He doesn't just know that I'm going through it, and how to get me through it, and how to get me out of it... He knows why it's happening, and He knows in His perfect plan how it's going to work out for my good.

Oh, that we could see that God is infinitely wise in all His dealings, and may that true revelation knowledge lead us into worship and ultimately nearer to Him. Oh God, for trust that remembers You are both faithful and wise!

Burning.

"There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight-- why the bush does not burn up." - Exodus 3: 2-3

When God sets something on fire, it does not burn up. When man, or anything natural, for that matter, sets something on fire, sooner or later, the fire is either put out, or the thing it is burning is reduced to ashes. God forbid we try to start a fire by natural ways; the work will either extinguish, and it will show for the fraud that it is, or worse still, the people we ignite will burn up, and lives that could have been used mightily by God are now, instead, embittered towards Him.

God, when we are faced with unsaved souls, or with friends in need of counsel, or with our own struggling and parched spiritual walks, may we not resort to the ways of man to ignite a fire for you. May we instead cry out to you with a faith that knows You are the only Answer; that You alone can set something on fire, and not have it burn out; that only the Holy Spirit can bring true salvation, true revival, true relationship.

I preached last Sunday about the inner life. I mentioned how it takes devotion to maintain that connection with God... and only now am I realizing the full weight of such commitment. There's a poem that goes

Two natures beat within my breast.
One is cursed, and one is blessed.
One I love, and one I hate,
but the one I feed will dominate."

Every day is a struggle to try to feed the blessed... yet I keep feeding the cursed one at the same time! All that's happening is that the two are receiving more strength to "beat within my breast." Oh, that the flesh would die! But it has such a nasty tenacity to survive. It clutches at every opportunity for food, manipulates both reason and will to be pandered to. Truly, truly only God can destroy this flesh. Only the resurrection power of Christ can change the heart. No amount of anything will do... I need God's grace just to deny myself every day... to pick up the cross and follow Him.

God...for grace. According to your love, Lord... grant me grace.

Critical Mass

I've learned something important about myself this summer: I don't want God nearly as much as I say I do. During the school semester, it was easy enough to fool myself, since I had more responsibilities and less time. That way, when I spent a certain amount of my time with God, I didn't notice how scant it was, or how poorly focused I was because, naturally, my time and attention was divided. But now, during this summer, as I have nothing else to do, practically every day has come down to a decision; will I spend my time with God, or not?

Of course I want to spend x amount of time in prayer and Bible reading. But I also want to do things that the flesh enjoys; Facebook and TV. So much time is wasted... and so when it nears 11 o clock or so, every night, I say, "Enough." I then spend however much time with God. But as a result, I'm going to sleep later... waking up later... and basically, the flesh and the spirit are trying to expand in my life, and there are only 24 hours in the day. My life is reaching critical mass.

Day after day, I waste so much time pandering to the flesh, away from God. Sometimes I feel like I'm running away from the prayer closet, running away from God's people that need prayer, running away from issues that God may be desiring to deal with in me. And as each minute is wasted, it's becoming more and more obvious that I really do not live up to the grandiose confessions of how deeply I wanted to know God that I made in the past. It's dumb because I know, at least in my head, that there is nothing more worthy than to be cast completely upon God, to live to Him and to none other. Yet when it comes to the minute-by-minute way that I spend my time... it's clear that that knowledge has yet to reach my heart and will.

I need God. Now, more than ever, as I face a lifetime in the shallows of the things of God, I need the Holy Spirit. I can (probably erroneously) assume that eventually, down the road I will shape up if I continue like this now. And then I'd come before God with the knowledge that I could have known Him, pleased Him, served Him so much more. Oh, God forbid it, please....

God, I feel like my situation is hopeless. I feel like this flesh will always be weighing me down, and that I'll never really break out to love, serve, and know You with all that's in me. Forgive me for all the times I deceived myself, and thought I could deceive You. I can't do anything without You; I can't love You, want You, know You, serve You; nothing. Oh Jesus, help me. Your Word says that Your love reaches to the heavens... so I plead that love, that You might hear my prayer and work out in me everything You purposed to do.

In Jesus' Name.

what the brother forgot.

We don't have to be prodigal to be a son. Eventually, in our spiritual walk, we pass the point of constantly returning to the Father's house after a season of rebelliousness. Eventually, we become faithful residents- sons, in fact, in His house. We begin to take up the responsibilities and callings of a Christian, as it were. But God forbid that we take on any further likeness to the elder brother!

I don't believe Jesus is saying that corruption and pride are inevitable in God's service. Surely, we have to deal with and expunge those things from our lives, but it will not remain forever; not when He perfects us. The great thing to remember, and the thing I believe the prodigal son's brother forgot, is sonship. We don't need to have the weight and guilt of open sin in order to run into the Father's arms. Every day (and, on THAT Day), when we rise and when we rest, we can run into the Father's arms and find acceptance, forgiveness, love, peace, and Jesus Himself, just like the prodigal son did. It is irrelevant how much work we have done, or have not done; it is irrelevant how hard we have stumbled, or how strong we have walked. In other words, God's grace, attention and love are exclusive to neither the longsuffering faithful nor the recently repentant. If only we would run into the Father's arms with a heart of meekness and surrender, God, by the blood of the Lamb, will not turn us away.

oh, for the strength of the elder, but the heart of the younger!

God does not play favorites.

I was wondering... why was Moses punished so severely for his sin of unbelief? Moses was so faithful, so powerful, so humble and so...chosen. There was no one on earth who knew God and spoke to God like Moses did. And yet because of the disobedience and sin chronicled in Exodus 20, he loses that blessing of the land overflowing with milk and honey.

I thought less, however, of the Israelite community's punishment. Yeah, that's what you get when you don't have faith in God's spoken Word! Go wander in the desert! Yet... when it came to Moses facing the same consequence, I wondered that God was not more lenient. I thought, Moses has so much favor, he's been so faithful, he's so humble, doesn't he deserve... more clemency? But that's just the point... God has no favorites. He is above all of the ways of man, and acts with justice and love in harmony. Moses did not receive special treatment, so that the Israelites wouldn't stumble (further) in seeing God work that way; and truthfully enough, God doesn't favor one over another because the one worked more faithfully. To express that would be an injustice and misrepresentation of God's character and His unfailing, unconditional love.

A great thing is that Moses did not stumble either. In humility, he knew that he was nothing before God anyway... He must have grieved over his exclusion from that blessing... but the Bible says nothing of bitterness towards God. Incidentally, this man had something that I believe surpassed the material blessings to begin with: his unrivaled, unshakable, intimate relationship with his God.

oh God, to know You and Your ways more!

A great thing to realize is that we cannot neither change a single moment of the past, nor guarantee a single day of the future, and that all we have to offer God is surrender of the very present moment. Many doubts and distractions begin with the thoughts: I did this, I cannot worship now; or, I can't possibly keep this up forever, who am I trying to fool? But God expects us to resolve neither past nor future; He dealt with one on the cross, and He holds the other in His hands. All we do is worship, now; obey, now; love, now. It is the simplest, yet many times the hardest thing to do.

God, help me.

"Just Because"

Lord, help me to not to anything "just because."

I have inundated myself in such a routine of things to do for You... that I no longer truly seek Your face. When I get down to pray, is it to meet with the living God, to intercede for His people and to spend time in worship that pleases His heart? Or is it just to assure myself that I'd gotten in the "prayer time for today"? I fear the answer to that question, yet I know it quite well. God, break me out of every routine for the sake of self-righteousness, for the sake of self-assurance, for the sake of... routine. Let every moment be a moment that I am seeking Your face with all of my heart, for You said that if we should seek Your face with all our hearts, we will find You. Lord, help me; replace this heart of stone with one of flesh; a heart that will beat and yearn for Your touch, Your comfort, Your presence, Your indwelling. I cannot bring it about of my own will, no matter how hard I try. I ask in the name of Jesus, knowing that this is His desire as well as mine, that you would come and fill my heart with love for You and Your people, that not another moment would be wasted in routine.

Thank You Lord, and I love You, hoping to love You more.

I remember watching a program on the Military Channel about WWII. They mentioned something about many of the Japanese soldiers being very undisciplined and disobedient. This was rather unexpected, because one might readily think of the staunchly resistant fighting force that insisted on fighting for their country, even in the face of catastrophic death tolls and industrial incapability. This, in fact, was the very cause of the disobedience. The firm adherence to the idea of the ultimate sacrifice for their country was that motivation for much of the disobedience of the soldiers. Many of them would be resentful at, or even outright disobey orders given by commanders that didn't seem patriotic enough. Driven by an adamant desire to give all for his homeland, many a soldier did what he thought was the most patriotic, the most courageous, and the most glorious thing to do. Commanders would have found themselves in dire straits for soldiers who would actually obey orders and be patient enough to partake in a move that might have mounted to an effective counterattack. While this alone cannot account totally for Japan's defeat, it certainly didn't help the nation as it struggled alone against the Allies. And it also teaches us a lesson, as well.

Isn't it easy to get frustrated and impatient when God Himself is doing something we didn't exactly have in mind? We read books and hear testimonies about great moves of God in places everywhere, and we wonder why we can't do things like that. No, we do more than wonder; we get impatient and resentful. But if only we could see through the eyes of the Commander who has seen every battlefield, spiritual and physical, since the dawn of time and before! If onyl we could trust in His battleplan.Waiting is long, and sanctification is grueling, while we ask questions like ""God, don't You want people to be saved?? Why are we wasting time??" But time is nothing to God, and He will act in His perfect time! Oh, but that we could truly trust in His plan, how much time we would save, not having to think of our own crazy shenanigans to save the day. God, give us patience and understanding to wait on You!

I am a wretched sinner who snubs his nose at anyone in whom he can find fault, and I stand before a holy and perfect God who looks on the lowly with compassion that surpasses understanding. What an irony; the one who is in a pit can't find an ounce of compassion in himself for those in similar situations, yet the God who cannot look upon sin would give it all to see us made free and whole. What else could possibly be worth pursuing? Who else could possibly be worth serving? God, take away this heart of stone, this misguided and confused life and replace it with a passion of a love for You and for Your people.

UGH. How many times have I sat/knelt/stood before God one night just out of habit; because I thought it was just the thing a Christian ought to do-- pray every day? How many times have I interceded just to avoid feeling guilty of negligence and callousness? How can I complain of dry eyes and an untouched spirit if prayer is, to me, just a chore, and not the time spent seeking after a God who holds the keys and mysteries of the world in His hands? If I were to kneel before God every morning and night and TRULY desire and hunger and thirst and breathe after His Holy Spirit, is there even the slightest chance that He would leave me dry for long? Oh, but that I would believe that God is a God who hears every word, knows every thought, and yearns to give the answers, deliver the bound, and save the lost! --headkeyboard-- God help me!

you will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart.
-- Jeremiah 29:13