Maybe There's A Loving God

Maybe There's A Loving God

By: Sara Groves

I'm trying to work things out
I'm trying to comprehend
Am I the chance result
Of some great accident
I hear a rhythm call me
The echo of a grand design
I spend each night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars in the sky

I have another meeting today
With my new counselor
My mom will cry and say
I don't know what to do with her
She's so unresponsive
I just cannot break through
She spends all night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars and the moon

They have a chart and a graph
Of my despondency
They want to chart a path
For self-recovery
And want to know what I'm thinking
What motivates my mood
To spend all night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars and the moon

Maybe this was made for me
For lying on my back in the middle of a field
Maybe that's a selfish thought
Or maybe there's a loving God

Maybe I was made this way
To think and to reason and to question and to pray
And I have never prayed a lot
But maybe there's a loving God

Maybe this was made for me
For lying on my back in the middle of a field
Maybe that's a selfish thought
Or maybe there's a loving God

Maybe I was mad this way
To think and to reason and to question and to pray
And I have never prayed a lot
But maybe there's a loving God

And that may be a foolish thought
Or maybe there is a God
And I have never prayed a lot
But maybe there's a loving God

Cut the Crap

I'm overwhelmed. You know those moments when your mind just can't take in ALL that is laid before it. I just got back from a Winter Camp that my church puts on every year. The speaker, Brian Howe, is a graduated student from my church and he had some pretty interesting things to say. This winter camp was like none that I've been to before. It was tangible...if that makes any sense. The verse that we referred to all during the weekend and what the "theme" essentially was, was Micah 6:8: He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
This is a verse that would normally not JUMP out at me. Not until to dig into it. I don't know where exactly I'm going with this blog...okay, here's what I'm trying to say. NOT IN A NUTSHELL...Okay, so this weekend Brian talked about God's heart towards the poor and the broken. He talked about God's calling on our lives to stand up and defend those who can't defend themselves.
Justice is not something that is normally "intriguing" to me. Usually MERCY is. See, I can totally see myself hugging orphanes and comforting the broken, but defending them and standing up for them?! That's something that I'm uncomfortable with. Even though to me that's a little shameful to admit, it's true. Justice is a touchy word for me for some reason but what I can say is that I left this weekend inspired if nothing else. Inspired to DO SOMETHING. I'm so SICK of always talking about doing stuff and never doing it. Now, I'm not someone who will go out courageously and spontaneously start doing stuff. I have yet to determain whether maybe that isn't how God wants me to be. I've held that as a comfort blanket. The catchy and blindly comforting "belief" (if you'll call it that; I call it bad doctrine) that God won't make me do anything that I can't do or that I just flat out don't want to do. THAT IS NOT THE TRUTH. Matthew 19:26---"Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.' "
Of-course God is going to ask you to do things you don't want to do and that you are unable to do. But IN CHRIST ALL things are possible! Geeze. I'm talking to myself right now as I write this.
Brian made a point though this weekend that stops me dead in my trail-blazing steps and humbles me...there is such a thing as a "social gospel" people who go out and change things, who go out and care for the world but forget all about Jesus. I DONOT want to be someone with an agenda to change the world, I want do be a person who has a passion for Jesus' name and whose heart burns and aches for the things that Jesus' does. I want THAT to be my response when people ask "Why are you doing this?" But another thing that Brian pointed out or rather that God make evident to me through the weekend and now as I'm writing this is the truth that I need the Holy Spirit and I need to be replinished of that strength every step along the way. I've got to rely upon God alone to change the world. This passion for him comes in daily submission to HIS will and HIS ways. He desires for me to read his word and meditate on the truth of it. To bring everything to him in prayer and thanksgiving WITHOUT anxiety. To die DAILY to myself. This takes on alot of different facades in my life. Everything from what I think and say to how I treat my family and spend my time.
Like I said before, I come home inspired to CUT THE CRAP and start living out my faith in Jesus instead of just talking about it.

Broken pieces

People's lives are falling apart at the seams. Friends who I love are slowly dying inside and the light in their eyes is fading. The cheer in their tone no longer is guinuine. I'm grieving over what once was and the state that people are in right now. I hate change. I really do. I mean, I say that I like it because it makes life interesting but the truth is I hate relational change. I hate that I can't call the same people up and pour my heart out to them and that they have fear and doubt and pain. I hate that I can't do anything about it or rather that I know I shouldn't, that I need to allow God to heal them. I need Jesus. We need Jesus. My heart crys out in prayer for these people I love whose lives are not what they used to be. Maybe that's okay. Maybe that's God's will right now. We need Jesus, that's all we need.

Life worthy of the gospel

What does it mean to live a life worthy of the gospel? It's easy to put a pat Christian answer on it but when you really start to think about it, you realize that it's impossible to do with out Jesus Christ. My attempts to live a life which I think is worthy of the gospel normally looks like this: Read my Bible EVERYDAY; journal everyday; check off every person on my list of people to pray for; not yell at my brother or dad; do everything my parents tell me with a smile on my face; enjoy church on Sundays, learn something and apply it; not waste my time; ETC. ETC. ETC. Okay, there is something wrong with all of this or well, rather something...missing. There is more to living a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus then just always doing what you should. Sin starts in your heart. I must say that often times when I feel like I'm "on track" I'm really far from it because my heart is divided and unrepentant. Fantasy rules my thought life and I'm not fully God's. Living a life worthy of the gospel has more about where my heart is at than what I look like (or feel like) on the outside.
I want to live a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is what I want. I cannot do that without Jesus Christ because he has to first put the desire in me. I can't muster up any sort-of desire and strength to do so on my own. Jesus has to be the one and if I do somehow feel the desire to be close to the lord and spend time with him it's only because God put it in me!! Praise the Lord for his mercy.

Long good-byes

I've got some pet-peeves. Some things that I suppose are universal but maybe they just bother me more then some. Two major ones hit me today and just upset me so much. But then again, it's nothing to get too worked up about and nothing that I good chat with the Lord can't settle. But, here they are:
*People who don't listen to what you say
*Quick and cold good-byes or no good-bye at all

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm a "closer" person. I can't stand not being able to have a proper good-bye with people. It makes me so sad. I don't know why other then to just say it's a "pet peeve" of mine. Also, I just cannot easily handle people who don't listen to what I have to say. I am NOT a woman of few words and I feel so loved by people when people actually listen to what I say and not blow it off or seem uninterested. I'm so fortunate to have people in my life to counteract the others in my life that are this way around me because I do have people who just flat out don't care about what I have to say...or if they do they have a strange way of showing me that.

Right now, I'm hurting over something I no longer have. I'm striving to NOT live in the past regarding this situation but it's hard because I feel like I've lost a part of who I was. There is a line in a really awesome Sara Groves song that always speaks truth into my life, it says: "The place I was can't hold the things I've learned". I can't live in the past. If I try and grasp a hold of something I fear is dying (relationaly speaking)all I'm going to do is cease to live. There is this song, also by Sara Groves, that I've been listening to often lately to remind myself of the truth that I've struggled to graspy over the past few months. It's called, "This Journey is My Own"...you may be able to guess what it's about. It's about trying to live your life for others and how all you gain nothing in that in fact you end up losing your life in the process.

See, I have this friendship and it's had a powerful effect on my life over the past two or three years. It's been a rocky relationship for sure but I've allowed it to form alot of my identity as a person and I've known all along that's not okay. Well, right now it's dwindeled (sp?) down to barely anything and my heart is breaking over what is no longer there. I miss what I used to have and the memories now sting me when they used to bring me joy.

I havn't made it to retrospect because the friendship hasn't died, it's just not what it used to be...and trust me, that's a good thing. This relationship was an idol and it was one that was very, very hard to put below the Lord in my life.

Here are the lyrics to "This Journey Is My Own" by Sara Groves...I'm clinging to the truth of this song right now:

When I stand before the Lord, I’ll be standing alone
This journey is my own
Still I want man’s advice, and I need man’s approval
This journey is my own

Why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
What does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life

So much of what I do is to make a good impressionThis journey is my own
And so much of what I say is to make myself look better
But this journey is my own

And why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
And what does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life

And I have never felt relief like I feel it right now
This journey is my own
Cuz trying to please the world, it was breaking me down
It was breaking me down

And now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Cuz I know this journey is my own

And why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
And what does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life
And you can live for someone else, and it will only bring you pain
I can’t even judge myself, only the Lord can say, ‘Well done.’

Oh, this journey is my own