'Wake up, Joshua.' I'm up.
Lately, God has been talking to me a lot about 'waking up'. Not necessarily as in an early morning rise from slumber, but more like the 'Wake up, Neo' Matrix type of arousal. The references and reminders have been everywhere for the last week or two (it seemed to be the focus of tonight's prayer hour at church as well).
I was at a mini-get-together with a few friends from high school at my friend's mentor's house on Saturday. I hadn't seen the mentor and his wife in a while and we started having some small talk conversation. You know how that goes; ease in with simple questions, bear some awkward silence and head-nods, then re-attempt the strike-up with a '...Sooo, how has...' phrase. Good times. They're great people though and it doesn't take long to get past that. Anyway, in the process someone asked me 'What do you like to do in your spare time?'. Easy question. No problem. I should be able to answer this one and keep moving the conversation along.
Not quite. I opened my mouth to answer and then it shut. I tried again, and looked around like an idiot, but still no words. At this point, my brain clicked on and had a conversation aloud with me. 'Hmm, good question. What exactly do I like to do in my spare time anymore? In fact, what spare time? Heellllooooo...? Is there anyone with a life here?'. How have I spent my time?
Allow me to articulate the situation:
It's as if large chunks of my life, years, are just densely fogged hazes reflecting memories of autonomous motions. As if I were sleep-walking and not fully aware of life. The realization of these ambiguous blocks often results in a sobering gaze of nostalgia, frustration, and remorse; wondering why and how time has passed by so effortlessly and without bearing more fruit.
Ah, but God in His sovereignty... He revealed to me the source of the problem two months ago: Sin. Wait! Before you think this is going cliche, keep reading. I believe you'll be enlightened.
See, I've learned that sin {definition}, while seemingly unpunished in the immediate, is a slow-stabbing, waterboarding, coma-inducing assassin. Over time, it forms cataracts and drains light from your eyes, causing them to grow dim. Your life and all of its potential slows to a crawl and congeals. Everything becomes normalized, with no thing outweighing another, as if a glacier traveled the course of your priorities and desires. Illusions and slight-of-hand become the norm, inevitably fooling you to believe that down is up, up is down, precious metals are dirty coal, and dung is a fine-meal. You fall asleep. It's a deceptively peaceful euphoria that makes time and the rewards of enduring its tests escape from you; they run with a gait measuring days, weeks, months, and years. And since you decided to drive your own life rather than let the {real} Architect take the wheel, you could easily follow the tangent of any one of life's dangerous curves and plummet off of a cliff. Sin steals your gifts and talents, shelving them and packing them away with lies for labels to devalue them. It perverts efforts of good into selfish ambitions that exemplify Romans 7:15-25. Your time, talents and treasures - everything meant for service to God and given as gifts from The Same - rot until you are left barren.
In my case, I had spent so much time of my life in sin that the realities of this fatal sleep were all too common. The natural response is to make futile attempts at righting yourself. Isolating yourself from certain people, coming up with routines to keep you on track, making oaths to yourself and/or God {be careful!}. Even non-Christians do it. Just take one look at the New Year and all the resolutions and promises it brings. Of course, it's been my observation that the majority of those solutions and promises derail quite quickly.
If you haven't noticed this effect in your own life, look closer. Closer. Keep going. Zoom and enhance. Interpolate non-existant pixel data from a low resolution image to show the face of the cluprit, just like an episode of CSI. Now do you see it? Yeah, I told you - it's a quiet ninja indeed. So what's the solution? How do we wake up? Paul answers that in Romans 7 as well.
If you seek God, His Kingdom, and His righteousness without ceasing, He'll give you a wake up call, draw back the curtains, brew the coffee, turn on the music, full-hand slap your bare-back, toss you in the shower, and wake you up! Re-read that Romans 7 scripture above. Similar to the Matrix, He will 'free your mind'. And while your body may still be bound to a fallen world where deception and lawlessness abound, He gives you both the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.
That wake-up call can be a number of things. For me, it was a true experience of God disciplining me a couple months ago, causing me to lose the trust, friendship, and possibilities thereof of someone dear to me. For others, it may be a close-call, sudden epiphany, or whatever. However it comes, it's up to you to catch it and wake up! You have to respond to the blinking green cursor on the screen. And I'm betting you'd be surprised just how many wake-up calls He sends us...every day. I've learned that you shouldn't be bitter with God for His discipline, but rather, thank Him for loving you enough to do it!
As for me - I'm awake now. That's no boast in myself. No. There are so many things God has done for me that I simply can't take credit for even if I tried. I do boast in Christ's complete work for me, though. And that's what I know empowers me to accomplish every desire, dream, and vision He's given.
Strange? Possibly. Long blog entry? Definitely. But I've learned, especially in the last 2 months, to trust God's dealings with me. If He wants to use the Matrix as a learning tool, by all means - I'm so glad He talks with me at all!
My cataracts are gone. Hindsight isn't the only thing in 20/20 anymore. Every day gets better. Efficiency goes through the roof. Opportunities aren't overlooked or mishandled. Skills are perfected. Favor is lavished. I'm up. Praise God.
"I'm somewhere in the future, and I look much better than I look right now."
I was at a mini-get-together with a few friends from high school at my friend's mentor's house on Saturday. I hadn't seen the mentor and his wife in a while and we started having some small talk conversation. You know how that goes; ease in with simple questions, bear some awkward silence and head-nods, then re-attempt the strike-up with a '...Sooo, how has...' phrase. Good times. They're great people though and it doesn't take long to get past that. Anyway, in the process someone asked me 'What do you like to do in your spare time?'. Easy question. No problem. I should be able to answer this one and keep moving the conversation along.
Not quite. I opened my mouth to answer and then it shut. I tried again, and looked around like an idiot, but still no words. At this point, my brain clicked on and had a conversation aloud with me. 'Hmm, good question. What exactly do I like to do in my spare time anymore? In fact, what spare time? Heellllooooo...? Is there anyone with a life here?'. How have I spent my time?
Allow me to articulate the situation:
It's as if large chunks of my life, years, are just densely fogged hazes reflecting memories of autonomous motions. As if I were sleep-walking and not fully aware of life. The realization of these ambiguous blocks often results in a sobering gaze of nostalgia, frustration, and remorse; wondering why and how time has passed by so effortlessly and without bearing more fruit.
Ah, but God in His sovereignty... He revealed to me the source of the problem two months ago: Sin. Wait! Before you think this is going cliche, keep reading. I believe you'll be enlightened.
See, I've learned that sin {definition}, while seemingly unpunished in the immediate, is a slow-stabbing, waterboarding, coma-inducing assassin. Over time, it forms cataracts and drains light from your eyes, causing them to grow dim. Your life and all of its potential slows to a crawl and congeals. Everything becomes normalized, with no thing outweighing another, as if a glacier traveled the course of your priorities and desires. Illusions and slight-of-hand become the norm, inevitably fooling you to believe that down is up, up is down, precious metals are dirty coal, and dung is a fine-meal. You fall asleep. It's a deceptively peaceful euphoria that makes time and the rewards of enduring its tests escape from you; they run with a gait measuring days, weeks, months, and years. And since you decided to drive your own life rather than let the {real} Architect take the wheel, you could easily follow the tangent of any one of life's dangerous curves and plummet off of a cliff. Sin steals your gifts and talents, shelving them and packing them away with lies for labels to devalue them. It perverts efforts of good into selfish ambitions that exemplify Romans 7:15-25. Your time, talents and treasures - everything meant for service to God and given as gifts from The Same - rot until you are left barren.
In my case, I had spent so much time of my life in sin that the realities of this fatal sleep were all too common. The natural response is to make futile attempts at righting yourself. Isolating yourself from certain people, coming up with routines to keep you on track, making oaths to yourself and/or God {be careful!}. Even non-Christians do it. Just take one look at the New Year and all the resolutions and promises it brings. Of course, it's been my observation that the majority of those solutions and promises derail quite quickly.
If you haven't noticed this effect in your own life, look closer. Closer. Keep going. Zoom and enhance. Interpolate non-existant pixel data from a low resolution image to show the face of the cluprit, just like an episode of CSI. Now do you see it? Yeah, I told you - it's a quiet ninja indeed. So what's the solution? How do we wake up? Paul answers that in Romans 7 as well.
"What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!Some may think this is a weak answer. Others may argue that they have tried Jesus, with all they have, but it didn't work. I can say that many times I tried to seek God wholeheartedly but still continually failed to escape sin. Oh, but that's the beauty of it all. To those that argue the answer is weak, the Bible clearly states that God uses weak things to shame the strong. To those that argue they tried already to no avail, the Bible clearly states that this race we are on isn't a sprint for the swift or strong, but life is about enduring to the end.
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." Romans 7:24-25
If you seek God, His Kingdom, and His righteousness without ceasing, He'll give you a wake up call, draw back the curtains, brew the coffee, turn on the music, full-hand slap your bare-back, toss you in the shower, and wake you up! Re-read that Romans 7 scripture above. Similar to the Matrix, He will 'free your mind'. And while your body may still be bound to a fallen world where deception and lawlessness abound, He gives you both the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.
That wake-up call can be a number of things. For me, it was a true experience of God disciplining me a couple months ago, causing me to lose the trust, friendship, and possibilities thereof of someone dear to me. For others, it may be a close-call, sudden epiphany, or whatever. However it comes, it's up to you to catch it and wake up! You have to respond to the blinking green cursor on the screen. And I'm betting you'd be surprised just how many wake-up calls He sends us...every day. I've learned that you shouldn't be bitter with God for His discipline, but rather, thank Him for loving you enough to do it!
As for me - I'm awake now. That's no boast in myself. No. There are so many things God has done for me that I simply can't take credit for even if I tried. I do boast in Christ's complete work for me, though. And that's what I know empowers me to accomplish every desire, dream, and vision He's given.
Strange? Possibly. Long blog entry? Definitely. But I've learned, especially in the last 2 months, to trust God's dealings with me. If He wants to use the Matrix as a learning tool, by all means - I'm so glad He talks with me at all!
My cataracts are gone. Hindsight isn't the only thing in 20/20 anymore. Every day gets better. Efficiency goes through the roof. Opportunities aren't overlooked or mishandled. Skills are perfected. Favor is lavished. I'm up. Praise God.
"I'm somewhere in the future, and I look much better than I look right now."
posted by Joshua at
9:41 PM
1 Comments:
what's more exciting.. is that since He woke you up and brought you from where you were - you are empowered to walk beside others so they can do the same.
a revelation that starts a revolution.
i guess thats cool. hah. ;)
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