Trust and Obey

Tuesday January 4, In the year of our Lord 2011

My House Back in Caronport Saskatchewan

Returned from trying to debate with God, 10:00 PM

Weather = Calm, Cold, White, + Overcast

I have been wrestling with trusting God and obeying Him. It's been an interesting night with ups and downs. I went out to pray and didn't come back until me and God worked some things out. The following is the result of that conversation.

Trusting God has got to be the absolute hardest thing in the world, especially when He tells you to hand over territory that has a host of habits and fears that you have lived according to your entire life. Well, the truth of the matter is that those fears and habits did not create us, do not define us, have never and will never own us, God did, does, and always will!

Well if God created us, defines us, and owns us then why is life so hard sometimes? Because we don't listen to him and do our own thing. Life gets hard when we live outside of God's will until it becomes unbearable and we start to ask God what he's doing (or not doing) up there.

But I have prayed and listened and prayed and confessed and believed and my temptations are as powerful as ever! This is true, but God is faithful even when we don't understand. God is God and God is faithful, He promised that he will never allow us to be put into circumstances where we absolutely can not help but live outside of God's plan for our lives.

"No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."

1 Corinthians 10:13

Therefore the onus is on us to trust and obey. God is God and He already promised that we would never be put into a situation where we will be hopelessly overcome. But some things have taken hold of us and seem to be impossible to break away from. Fears, Habits, Lies, Desires, things that have become ingrained with who we are. Until we believe that we can overcome them then we do not have faith in God. The true faith decares that

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Philippians 4:13

Ah, but I remember trusting God with this issue in the past and nothing came of it. If God is faithful and if he gives we the strength to do everything then why doesn't He just snap his fingers and do what he promised so that I can get on with my life and not have to spend hours of agonized prayer over this or that thing. Damn it, why does it still have to be so hard? Because I am deeply stubborn and want very badly to be good on my own terms and run my own life. My goals are frustrated because they are my goals and mine alone, not God's. God said that he would give the desires of our hearts and we foolishly think this means on our own terms with wealth, success, and a life of comfort for ever and ever. We must give God our desires, then he changes them and we want what He wants which is always better than the pathetic Happy Meal Toys we thought we wanted in the first place. God needs me to let go and allow Him to call the shots. This is me being plain disobedient. I need to obey God.

But I feel so tied to the past and don't have enough faith to hope for the future promised. I look back on life and this issue is just a line of failure and I don't even know how to hope any more. This is when we choose to trust God at a very basic level, we trust that He is God, that he is Good, that he Loves us, that he will not leave us, and that he can do the impossible, specifically the impossible that I didn't think he could do. Then our broken and battered trust is divinely strengthened and extended beyond the impossible into God's country and the invincible future.

So then, God is Good and knows all of our needs even better than we do and gives us exactly what we need right when we need it. God makes sure that we are never in a situation where we can be hopelessly overcome but always provides a way for us to stand. He has given his life's blood so that we can do anything in Christ. When our vision fails and we run out of faith he will supply us with adequate faith. All that we can really do in light of such a God who provides everything, is all powerful, works for our Good, and knows us far better than we know ourselves is to trust and obey.

We must trust, because the initial trust to take God's hand must be chosen. We most obey, because once God reveals his will to us we must choose to act on it. God can nudge us, poke us, twist our arm, or give us a swift kick in the pants, but obedience is a choice that we must make on our own.

Whenever we fail it is not because of anything God did or did not do. But this can make us feel useless like complete crap. Great, I failed, and it's all my fault... AGAIN! God's love for us is everlasting, it is higher than the sky, deeper than the sea, and reaches out to us. God will never leave you or forsake you. He will always love you and will never ever ever ever leave you ever, not matter what. He knows that we are weak sinful human beings and that we will fall short over and over. But he picks us up gently and says "I love you," and lovingly shows us the future with Him and says "it will be alright." In that moment we can choose to trust him or choose to sit in the mud feeling sorry for ourselves, wasting time and opportunities while God patiently waits for us with a new change of clothes.

One might be tempted to ask what the point is if all we will ever do is continue to fail and never be able to trust and obey God fully. Well, part of becoming a child of God is that you grow to love your Father. You grow into maturity. I am sure that I will disappoint and fail my future wife many many times over the course of my life. Should I then never get married? God created us for life, a full life, full of fullness. He created us to drink deep from the source of life, Himself. As the Pslamist says "those who trust in God will never be put the shame." That God would continue to seek us in our fallen state, buy us and wash us with His own blood even though we were already His by right. This speaks of the incredible divine love of God and His power and great joy of redeeming all things.

So there we have it. All we can do is trust and obey.

1. When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word,
   What a glory He sheds on our way!
   While we do His good will, He abides with us still,
   And with all who will trust and obey.
2. 
   
3. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
4. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
5. Not a shadow can rise, not a cloud in the skies,
   But His smile quickly drives it away;
   Not a doubt or a fear, not a sigh or a tear,
   Can abide while we trust and obey.
   
   
   1. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
   2. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
6. Not a burden we bear, not a sorrow we share,
   But our toil He doth richly repay;
   Not a grief or a loss, not a frown or a cross,
   But is blessed if we trust and obey.
   
   
   1. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
   2. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
7. But we never can prove the delights of His love
   Until all on the altar we lay;
   For the favor He shows, for the joy He bestows,
   Are for them who will trust and obey.
   
   
   1. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
   2. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
8. Then in fellowship sweet we will sit at His feet,
   Or we’ll walk by His side in the way;
   What He says we will do, where He sends we will go;
   Never fear, only trust and obey.
   
   
   1. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
   2. To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

The Oddity of Church Worship

Sunday January 2nd, In the year of our Lord 2011

Home for the Holidays, Saskatchewan

Just returned from Church, 12:32 PM

Weather = Warmer (but still cold) + Snowing

The other day I watched a movie with my family, To Save a Life. It is a Christian film geared towards the youth and follows the conversion story of a high school senior student. There is a scene in that movie where he ends up going to church and encounters what I thought was a stereotypical and rather 'thick' church culture. The Youth Pastor was upbeat, relevant, and had a personal connection with the student and you could tell that the protagonist

took this guy seriously. Then all of a sudden some random people came up and started singing some strange songs and everyone stood up to sing these strange songs with them. The newcomer's eyes dart about nervously as he stands up but doesn't sing. You can sense the tension as the camera pans around to members of the youth group, some are really into the worship, others are talking and laughing, the pastor's kid slips another some marijuana. He thinks this new church thing is a bit weird, but even weirder is that he knows that he believes this stuff more than some who have grown up with it their entire lives!

Having grown up in the church myself, I always loved singing worship songs to God. As a small child I would stand on my pew and proudly sing to the best of my ability even when I didn't know the words. Some of the words didn't really make sense to me though, but it was just part of church and I belonged at church with Jesus so it didn't really matter. Singing songs with lyrics like 'being washed in the blood,' 'set me on fire,' and learning an archaic dialect of English wasn't strange to me. However, the protagonist's girlfriend may have had something right when she said 'this is really weird, can me go please?' Now there were a host of reasons why she said this, she was very self-conscious, she didn't fit in with the church crowd, and she didn't know God or have the Holy Spirit in her heart at that time, but even though I could see these things, it struck me just how strange church worship is.

It's like the appetizer and desert of a high faluten meal and this restaurant insists that you have it twice over with every meal. The typical evangelical church structure demands that this be so. How odd. One might think that they were influenced by Pavlov in triggering spiritual responses to this proverbial dinner bell. I doubt the reasons behind this pattern are so trite though.

So what are the reasons behind it? I don't know, I haven't done any research, but I have a few ideas. Worship has always been an integral part of Christian community. Christian community without focus on Christ will eventually cease to be Christian. Early Christian gatherings were born out of Judaism which read the Psalms as worship during Tabernacle. So corporate worship has always been a part of Church and its expression has changed throughout the centuries. I also figure that good ol' Modernism influenced society so much to love things tightly packaged and efficient that Church proceedings were likewise effected. Look at your average service. Announcements followed by worship followed by special music (another very odd thing) / offering followed by the sermon followed by closing worship. It's a very compact and efficient machine, finely tuned so that if any one of its parts goes over by a few minutes everyone can tell. It has a certain mechanical charm to it. It's like a nourishment pill, a certain bite sized portion of spiritual nourishment that has had worship, teaching, prayer, and announcements to the community broken down into pieces that your average super busy schedule can handle without messing it up too much. The Church had adapted to and was conquering our Modern scheduled life. Then we became disgruntled with Modernism, the philosophers of our age told everyone that truth didn't exist, and now we hate rigid schedule especially in church.

But I digress. This isn't about slamming the church or how to 'properly do worship,' I just find it interesting how we got to where we are and how odd it is if we look at the whole thing from a newcomers perspective. In all times and in all places Christians try to do the best they can with the light and resources that God gives them. Furthermore, Christian work, if it is truly through Christ is (surprise surprise) done through Christ, and Christ redeems all things.

I once heard a very wise man who had studied Christian worship say that a mature worshiper can worship under any circumstances. How odd. How wonderfully thought provoking and inspiring!