| Adversity and my childhood. It never ends. The cute stories about the silver being refined just so and pulled before its marred...I feel like the stories are lies actually. I feel like I am hoping in vain. I am definitely at an impasse. A very large, flat, screaming-into-the-sky rock face of a mountain impasse. In every direction is adversity, and believe me, I mean every direction. The silence and the noise the blockades and the deserts...the brilliance of those exalted against God and the complacently faithful. Definitely surrounded. I wont lie and say my faith isn't shaken, it is. I am in the oddest place of my life and find that there is absolutely no one, not ONE human being who can relate to what I am going through. Not one. I draw near to Jesus and get hope, but as soon as I turn back to my life and I see the faces of everyone... its like I am looking into and through. I think they are surprised I can see so deeply, so clearly at times, just right through. And I have this mouth, thank God I'm His, I have this mouth that can set an ocean on fire, which in combination of what I see...well, its making life interesting. But more than anything I have this desire to speak His Life into every single human heart. But lately, I am empty. Dead. I can speak, but something is missing. Great overwhelming super discouraging hopelessness is a darkness drawn around me. And I dont think anyone is getting that, and honestly no one cares. It is beyond words fixable. My enemies are seeking to kill me inwardly, and they are succeeding. I am definitely dying in some silent way and I have a feeling it is permanent. Everything in the world is so pychologically defeating, it is a game-event-war-competition, and for what? Nothing. Nothing but to distract the self from the inner void, and to walk through life in pretense and false humilities and false grandiosities. No wonder marriage isnt marriage anymore, no wonder we dont understand "Covenant". I didn't, and come to find out it is the only essential thing that must be understood. And Im still having a hard time with the Love of it all.. Is that surprising? That (to know me) I would have a hard time with it? I think its the lack of locality...the Omnipresence, the wrapping of my thoughts around the infinite has always brought fear into the deepest places of my heart and intrigued me at the same time..to feel the infiniteness of my soul...reaching...beyond the boundaries of direction. When I was little we (my mother and I) were driving home from my grandparents one night and I was eating an apple. My grandmother had given it to me, and my mother was driving (I was too small at the time - though I did make attempts, but thats another story). I remember I could lay down on the seat next to my mother, my feet touching the door while feeling the heat come from the floor-heat-thing (you know). Anyways, I can remember asking her about God, and asking "Who is God's wife?", and "Where is God?" and "What is God doing?" And she was answering my questions. I think that was the best conversation I've ever had with my mom now that I think about it. Well the questions proceeded and my mom must have told me about the creation of the world and it led me to ask "What was God doing before He made everything?" She didn't know. And there was silence, and I can remember the sound of the road, the music, the warmth of the heater, the apple and the reverse of history (all that a 6 year old can know of history) and my mind went to nothingness, just God. Just God. Now years later I think that must be what He meant when Moses asked Him who he should say was sending him to Pharoah. "I AM." I've since had some experiences in my learning, in my prayer..and even my mountain climbing with this "I AM". I can see His presence all throughout my life, especially when no one else was "teaching" me. He just is. I remember lying awake at night in the earliest memories of my childhood and alternately imaging I was batman driving the batmobile (first covet) and praying myself to sleep, while talking to God and my stuffed animals, a tiger and a frog who names shall remain unknown. I remember praying for my grandparents and my mom, and my stuffed animals. I remember feeling God, if that makes any sense. I didnt know anything about Him, I just knew He was, and that in some unspoken untaught way that He was for me. All of my life He is has been there. And I think the problem I am having has to do with He is the most real in my life while I am surrounded by an immense facade, a facade that I am stuck in. To the greater degree that I have learned and studied I have found God exactly as I hoped Him to be, but I was not prepared to come to terms with the reality of wickedness that surrounded me. How can you? Its beyond comprehension and defense mechanisms to understand how we exist in such a great evil constantly and never face it. Philosphy, Logic, Theology, History, blah blah blah...these have set me forever apart from childhood. But, I still remember the boy, and in a sense I am the boy still. I realized that the euphoric feelings I remember of childhood, when all the trees were like skyscrapers and pinecones were priceless mystery that somehow we didn't grow up, but grew dead. Dead not from time, but something so wicked it is unbelievable. So now, I have the most amazing thing in the world, in the universe..and its not a thing, its not...it is, I mean..He is. He just is. He is a constant of Who He is, and What He is, and He is love...God is Love. When I read the Word I am spoken to. His Word speaks to deeply into my heart that sometimes I feel like I am the only one getting it. I mean, I know other people "get it", and theologians have filled our libraries with proof they know the book is meaningful. But I get it, and sometimes I wonder if I am not getting it in a way that is eluding a lot of people reading the exact same thing. Is that arrogant? Is that pious or holier-than-thou? Etc etc... Or is that the only lens through which they could look to see what I mean? Because the "get it" part is that I see myself in the leper, in the whore, in the demoniac that cuts himself, in the exile, in the one that would cause someone else to ask God, "How many times should I forgive this person?"...and several other examples..bad ones mind you. But that is the same place where the Word comes alive for me, as I see myself in these characters and events and I pray, I ask, I beg at times, more times than I care to admit...that God would change me. And you know, I dont feel changed. I don't feel better, I dont feel Holy...I dont feel smart. I just feel like trash, honestly. Why? Sin. My attitudes, my thoughts, my words and my actions. There is not one day that I do not do something in some way that makes me feel like I have no right to pick up my guitar and praise God. This very night I was singing songs because I like to sing, but as I would come across lyrics that would convict me I couldnt sing. I felt my shame separating me from worship. God wasn't pushing me away, my emotional disposition was. These are the pieces of my life that make me wonder how many of us singing are worshiping, while the rest of us are only listening to ourselves. To speak of worship in terms of truth would make a lot of people very uncomfortable. I hate false worship. See, I have this thing that I hate dishonesty. If you lie to me I will most likely never consider you a friend. I will also remove you from life. Is that bad? It's my life. I hate lying, I hate people that dont respect me enough to be honest with me. How am I so ignorant that I should not be able to make my decisions based on true information? And do you know how many people lie to me? Heh. Its not a good life Im living. Anyways, I hate it in myself too. I hate not being honest with God. I have times in prayer that are unspeakably amazing. I've been on mountain tops in silences with God's presence where I could not speak. I tried and I couldn't, there was just nothing to say. Its...its not something you can fake. So, I dont want to lose that...I dont want to not have access to His heart. It's the only place I can go that is good, and safe and permanently mine. So the reason I started writing this was because my life looks so easy, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually it is one of the hardest places I have ever been in my life. I know how to make war for God, I know how to fight for God, for His people, and I definitely know how to destroy His enemies...but this is new...and I am in a frontier. I don't know where I am, and I don't know anyone who has been here. I am sure there are people that would love to think they understand...yeah, I don't think so. Just for some detailed particulars, Im pretty sure not. Vaguely, the enemy without and the enemy within and weakness in me are winning. I am ashamed of who I am, my attitudes. I am ashamed of where I come from, what Ive done or not done. I am ashamed of my nation, and the churches to the point that I dont even want to share the Gospel anymore. I am ashamed and broken, and yet still have the aggravating ability to momentarily act like everything is ok. It isnt ok, its fucking horrible...and it isnt going away. It is a perpetual spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical destruction and I see it everywhere, and I feel it, and I cannot get away from it. It is killing me. I have Life, and it is killing me just the same. I think, I hope...that I am outgrowing this planet. I hope that I am almost done and look back and tell myself I've done something..surely someone somewhere has been affected in some good way, and isnt that enough? This is my selfishness, this is my desire to leave and the let the pretensious apostasy choke itself to death in witchcraft and phoney bible studies and church services that couldnt "penetrate cool whip with a pellet gun". So, once again it is me and God and the heater-on-the-floor...and the only place, the one Person that I have in my life is Him. Its always just Him, and I am not ok with that, which is part of the struggle. I've no family except distant biological associations, and my mom. Im not sure if she knows yet what God was doing before He created the world, but I know she knows that I am going to find out. He is mine, and I am His. He is all I have. In the meantime, I am stuggling in this world, and in this flesh, and in persecutions and hatred. I hate being hated. I love people so much that I am crippled in the overwhelming hatred. Even as I write this just now I am thinking they will read this and use this and they will somehow figure out a way to use it against me. People that profess to be Christians in America and aren't getting persecuted are lying. It is as simple as that. Bold statement? Yep. I have endured and will endure these things..but just at the moment it is nothing but darkness and waiting, while my heart is catching all the arrows of someone else's cowardice. What's on my walls? Nails. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBvVOuABciU |
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