Tuesday, June 24, 2008

God Has Been Showing Me

God has been showing me some things lately. That I am inadequate. That I don't have the right words to say. I mess up all the time and I really have no idea what I am doing. But, you know what? I think that is exactly where God wants me to be. I don't have to try to have it all together. I don't need to have the right words, when I preach should be using God's Word and not my own words. I am really trying to be honest. I am trying to embrace my sense of unworthiness. I am absolutely unworthy. Don’t ever try to undermine your unworthiness, because if you’re okay without Him, you don’t need Him. If somehow we deserve God’s grace, then somehow we don’t need God’s grace. If we aren’t that bad, God’s grace isn’t that amazing.

Philippians 3:
7But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

When God changes your life, you don't forget it.

Pastor gave my Sunday sermon an A. ("It isn't an A+, but it isn't an A- either." Thanks, Pastor. That helped me know what to change to make it better.) I think he liked this point: "To walk with Christ is to walk as those who have been raised from the dead."

P.S. To continue, I want to think about that point a little more. I haven't been living like that. I have been living lately like I am just about as close to being depressed as I can without people actually saying, "Man, you look depressed." (Overlook the fact that I am not a man.) I need to take a step back and look at how I am living. I have life.

Also, nothing makes a trip more real than holding the plane tickets in your hand. I mean, going to Africa always seemed like such a distant thing. It is less than a month away. I have my luggage, but I am not ready. I am nervous and unprepared. And yet I am somehow excited and anxious.

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