Doubts.

"Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties?" 

((Vaclav Havel))

As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace to you!" But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see." 

((Luke 24: 36-39))

I'm a natural doubter. And not just when it comes to spiritual things. If it's possible to doubt something, I've probably doubted it before. 

I doubt whether people really care about me, and whether I'm worth caring about. I doubt that my friends and family will be there for me when I need them. I doubt whether authorities have my best interest in mind. I doubt whether people actually like me at all. I doubt my ability to succeed at new things.  

Probably the most terrifying doubts I've experienced, though, are doubts about God. I've spent way too many nights plagued by "what ifs." I've lost a lot of sleep over it. I've spent a lot of time reading my Bible, reading blogs and books about it, and praying to God that he would help me to overcome the doubts I have. It's really scary sometimes. Until this year, I never experienced such intense doubts, and I've pleaded with God to take them away. Faith has not been an easy road for me, especially this year. 

To be completely honest, I still have doubts sometimes. And they still scare me. But God has taught me things through them. He's still teaching me things. One thing that I've learned is that sometimes a greater degree of certainty can be produced by times of doubt. Having doubts and overcoming them is a really good (albeit scary and sometimes painful) way of figuring out what I really believe and why, and whether this faith I profess is worth what Jesus asks of me. 

The other big thing I've learned is something that I've known intellectually all along, but never experienced until recently. Ever since a couple of years ago when I decided to recommit my life to Christ, I've been told that in my faith I should not depend only on my feelings. I agreed intellectually, but up until this year faith was generally an emotional experience for me. But as time went on, the spiritual high of recommitting began to wear off a little. I think that's when I started experiencing doubts. I'm a person that's driven largely by emotion, so when the emotion behind my faith started to weaken, my faith weakened with it. God has shown me that faith is often going to be a choice rather than a feeling for me. Sometimes I don't want to read my Bible or pray, but God wants me to be faithful in those things even if they're not a mind-blowingly emotional experience every time. I just need to accept the fact that I am going to go through spiritual deserts sometimes, but it is still important to remain faithful to God. 

Tonight at the Unite prayer event, I was finally able to have a more emotional experience with God, and it was amazing. You know on a really hot summer day when you're extremely thirsty and all you can think about is getting a huge glass of cold water, and then when you finally get some it just tastes incredibly good? That's kind of how it felt. I know that faith is not always going to be an emotional experience for me, but it was good to really  feel it for the first time in a very long time.  I've been so up and down, so discouraged lately; a night of praising Jesus with my brothers and sisters was exactly what I needed. I feel refreshed and excited for what God has in store for me. I'm just so thankful for how God met me tonight. All night, I feel like He was telling me to remember. Remember the good things God has done in my life. Remember the bad things He's brought me out of.

 When doubts arise, remember His faithfulness. 

Can't Go Back.

Sometimes I really don't like looking at old pictures and scrapbooks and stuff. It's fun to look back on good things that have happened, but it also scares me sometimes. I just get overwhelmed with the fact that there's no going back. I mean, it's a pretty elementary thing considering we haven't invented time travel (yet). Life just feels so much shorter and so much harder when I realize that if I miss a moment or an opportunity, that's it. There are no do-overs. Whether I like it or not, every human is on a one-way trip to the end of their earthly lives. I don't have anything really profound to say about this. I just was looking at an old picture and started thinking about the past and the future and the fact that I have no control over time. It keeps on moving and I can either move with it or miss out on life.

Generations come and generations go, 

   but the earth remains forever. 

The sun rises and the sun sets, 

   and hurries back to where it rises. 

The wind blows to the south 

   and turns to the north; 

round and round it goes, 

   ever returning on its course. 

Faith

"Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible" 

((William James))

It is impossible to go through life without faith. I never thought much about this until recently, but faith comes in many forms and they don't all have to do with any kind of religion or god.

We as humans have faith in lots of things. There are basic things that we all trust to just be. When is the last time any of us questioned whether gravity would fail us or whether, after all these years of staying in its place, the earth would suddenly crash into the sun? Or whether the stars and moon would appear at night and the sun rise in the morning? Or when we sat in a chair wondered whether this time it would disappear unexpectedly from beneath us as soon as we lost sight of it? Or when we take a breath, whether the next second the oxygen will disappear from the air? These are things that I don't normally question. They are just things that always work the way I expect them to. I have faith that these things will continue to happen. 

We have a lot of faith in each other, however misplaced that faith may be. I mean, this might sound really pessimistic, but the fact is that anyone we meet could be a really bad person out to steal from or hurt us. But we interact with strangers all the time, and have faith that the person's intentions are good. Or when driving, it takes a lot of faith to trust that all those other metal boxes speeding down the road at 60 miles per hour won't spin out of control and crash into us. 

I don't know. I haven't got an profound conclusions to draw from this. I've just been thinking about how so much of life is based on faith, but we usually only consider it faith if it's in a religious context. But faith is an essential part of life. 

Judgment

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you"

 (Matthew 7:1&2)

Something that I've been feeling really convicted of lately is that I'm a much more judgmental person than I realized. That's not something I like to admit. Of all the bad things I could be, judgmental is the one I would least like to be...but God is showing me that there are subtle ways in which I have been judgmental and not realized it. 

I don't really have such a problem with judging people who have different beliefs than mine. It's pretty easy for me to realize that people who don't believe the same things I do and worship the same God I do are obviously going to have a different set of standards to base their lives on. It's the people who are of the same faith as me that I am more critical of.

See, sometimes I think that I know what the right decision is in particular situations, and I fool myself into thinking I know what God would want. If a fellow believer makes a decision that's different than what I would have chosen, I sometimes like to think to myself  "I may not be perfect, but I would never do that..." This attitude is just so, so wrong. I guess I just never quite realized what I was doing until now. When I was reading Matthew today, it just really hit me when Jesus said "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." I felt as if he were saying it directly to me. 

The thing is, I don't know everything. Shocking, right? Who am I to say that I'm right and other people are wrong? That's just pure pride.  But it doesn't even matter if I'm right or not. That's not the point. 

God has lavished so much love and grace upon me...who am I to deny others the same love and grace? God blesses me so that I can in turn be a blessing to others. It is not my job to judge. It's my job to love my brothers and sisters and build them up, even if they fall sometimes. 

God has given me so much love, it's time I started pouring more of that out on others. <3

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.

This world is a dangerous place, and life is a dangerous adventure.
As much as we like to think we have some degree of control over our lives, the truth is that we really don't. There are so many circumstances that we can't control.

We aren't even in control of whether we live or die. There are so many things we do nearly on a daily basis that could end our lives if even the smallest thing went wrong. For instance, driving or riding in a car. Even if you do everything the right way and are extremely safe, who's to say that some other driver on the road will be as careful? What about natural disasters? Lots of people die because of them, who's to say it won't happen to you or me?

This might all come off as really pessimistic and morbid, but I promise that's not at all the point I'm trying to get across.

The point is that the world is a dangerous place over which we do not have control. Why should we pretend that we have everything under control? Why is it so hard for us to admit our weakness? Only then can we realize that deep down we need and want God to be in control.

This is a struggle I face. The closer I get to graduation, the more it bothers me that I don't know what is going to happen to me after I graduate. The future is something that really scares me. But why can't I just realize that I don't have that much control over it anyways and learn to place it in God's hands? He's really the one who should be in control, anyways. He may not promise an easy and comfortable life, but he does promise abundant life. I might not always understand or even like the places He takes me, but those places will always surprise me by being so, so much better than the places I would have taken myself. God has demonstrated this in my life a ton of times before, and I'm pretty confident that He will continue to do it.

It's like every time I feel like my life couldn't get any better, God leads me somewhere else that seems scary at first but turns out to be really wonderful. Every time I tell God what my plans are, He pushes me to follow His instead. And you know something? When I listen and obey, my life becomes fuller and better. I come out of it with no regrets at all. Every time.

So maybe it is a dangerous business, going out your door. But it's also an exciting and fulfilling one, if you are willing to go to the places God calls you. 

Openness

 Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!
(Ecclesiastes 4:9-10)

 

I'm really bad at being open with people. I know that. For a lot of reasons, I have trouble trusting people enough to tell them things about myself. There's stuff in my life that I just don't talk about because it's not fun to even think about. I don't mean that to sound depressed or whiny, because I really am blessed and I know that. But in the past, I have made unwise choices about who to share the hard things with and it has ended up hurting me in the end. But that was before I really started following Christ. Before I had friends who are, too. Now, I have friends that I'm pretty sure I could trust enough to be open with them about things. So why am I not doing it?

It's really starting to get to me. I'm really starting to realize that my relationships will never get deeper if I'm not willing to share things.

Aside from the fact that it's bothering me, I don't think shallow relationships based mainly on laughing a lot and having fun (which are definitely good things, too) are really what God wants for His people. How are we supposed to support each other along the way if we're not open with each other about our struggles? I've known intellectually all along that God did not intend us to go it alone in our faith. But as time goes on, I realize more and more that is really is nearly impossible to stand strong in faith without allowing yourself to support and be supported by others.

So...that's really what I've been thinking about for a while now and I just wanted to share. I don't know if other people have been feeling this too, but I really think God is nudging me to start being more open. It's going to be so hard for me, but so worth it.

Idols

I was flipping through channels a few minutes ago and came across a music video on MTVU that looked interesting, so I stopped to watch some of it. I think it was supposed to be people talking about what music means to them. A couple of things said in the video really struck me.

One girl said "Some people believe in God; I believe in music. Some people pray; I turn up the radio."

A guy in the video said "Music is everything to me."

I mean, people say things like this about music all the time. I've heard it lots of times, but I've never really put too much thought into it. These people are worshiping the creation instead of the Creator. Music is their idol.

Before I start to sound judgmental, though, I have to admit that I sometimes do similar things. Not with music, but with other things. I'm probably too attached to my precious collection of books. I probably put too much of my identity in the fact that I'm a student, in my major, in the group of friends I'm part of, in worldly things that really mean nothing.

I don't have a hugely profound conclusion to draw or anything, except that I (and lots of other people) would be way better off if we would stop worshiping and putting our identity in things that don't matter and start to find our identities in Christ. For some reason hearing people say those things about music just hit me this time, and I wanted to get some of my thoughts out.

I'm not sure what I'm really trying to say in this post. I guess I just felt really bad about how those people had made music such an idol in which they find their identity and their life...what kind of life is that? It just seems kind of empty to have music be the main thing you believe in and find comfort and joy in. Music is good--but the one who gives the inspiration for its creation is so, so much better.