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.