preached at church today.
asked me to preach awhile ago, and I was very reluctant. Not because
I don’t like preaching; I actually really enjoy public speaking, and preaching makes me feel alive inside. I
was hesitant to preach because I wasn’t sure if I was in the best
place. Since coming back from the race, I’ve been up and down and all
around. Re-entry has been weird, mostly because I tried to ignore it.
Right now, I feel… I’ve been using the word ‘discombobulated’. It’s
just a good word right now. I’m not sure how much of it is re-entry,
or what, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. The point is:
discombobulated. I am discombobulated.
and a red rider beebee gun.
Which
is fine, I guess, but… I just came back from a mission trip, I
shouldn’t be questioning God’s existence, right? Or his goodness or
his love or his purpose? I certainly shouldn’t be struggling with the
sins that I’ve been struggling with for years, or, at the very least,
I should be making more of an effort to not sin.
So
I do this thing where I rattle off my ‘credentials’ and ‘sins’ to Jesus.
that I can be a real jerk who would rather go to just about anything
else but God these days. I don’t list off the credentials to make
myself seem good to Him, I just want Him to be aware that I’m really
inexcusable. It’s like the step above confessing sin, you know? I’m
going to to make sure that He gets all the things I’ve done that
should
have ‘fixed me’ by now, so He gets just how much of a brat I really
am.
So,
I’m in the middle of this with God, and then He says:
you don’t get it. You don’t really get just how much you don’t
measure up, even without the obvious sins in your life.”
suuuuuuuck.
what you really don’t get is why. You see your choice, and
maybe some of the battle leading up to it, but I, I see everything
leading up to that choice: pain from your past, unhealed wounds,
lies you believe, my enemy’s attacks. You don’t understand the ways
that you’ve been hurt, the walls that you put up, the things that you
are in the process of being healed from… and some of the things you
don’t even know that need healing… Anna, you really don’t get why
you screw up, but I do. Every teaspoonful of grace you give yourself,
I give you buckets”
Hebrews
10:14 says: For He has made perfect forever those who are being made
holy.
My sermon was about this in relation to
missions (real surprise there). To sum it up: I think that we are
missionaries, all of us, even if we haven’t left America. I don’t
think missions is formulaic, because God isn’t that way. I think
missions is just an overflow of a life that has been saved by grace.
I think missions is the response of a heart in right relation to God.
When we experience Him, it just seems wrong to hold it in.
confusion and selfishness, depravity, and whatever this stuff is that
I’m going through, I know that I know that I know that He is what the
world needs. It’s like the more I experience grace, the more I want
to give it. The less I think I deserve it, the more I realize just
how much we all need it. I still feel like I have more questions than
answers these days, but I’ve realized that, somehow, my foundation
has become strong. I’m not ‘missional’ based on feelings, it’s just
become my identity. I’m not really working on all the answers,
because I don’t think I’m supposed to. Sometimes, it’s just nice to
have the freedom to ask the questions.
