personal thoughts

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Why is our world such a mess?

I know why. It is me. This Christian life is always so difficult ... everytime you think you are doing well, it seems, you realize you have only just begun.

Right now I am struggling with God.

Speak to me. I am listening for your voice.

"Lord, I believe, help my unbelief." I think that sums me up pretty well.

I take comfort in what happened next for that tender father. Jesus ... reach out your hand.

So I am struggling with how to hear God's voice on specific questions ... how to hear his voice for guidance. How do believe for others ... encourage others to know the will of God. My wife is reading through Hebrews and pointed out chapter 3 to me today. One line really struck me: "Take care, brothers and sisters [this is key ... speaking to those in the church] that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." The context seems pretty intense and strong ... but it still speaks to me.

I am a thinker. I am reader of books. I feel I must take great care not to turn away from the living God. I am also thinking of the first paragraph from Bonhoeffer's Ethics "It is not about understanding good and how we might do that good that is important for the Christian ... but to know the will of God." This is a paraphrase because my copy is at the office, but it is something like that.

What is the will of God? How do I discern his will?

I have much to pray about.

Comments

Anonymous said…
What Candace said. I share many of these with you.

Someone recently said to me, concerning the will of God, that I should take note that all our life is in Christ. And because we have been given freedom, we are free to "live and move and have our being in Him," and make choices accordingly. The difference between honoring God with our choices and simply doing what we want, selfishly, is that we offer up our choices Eucharistically to Him. For all of our life is Eucharistic--this constant exchange of what He's given us, and us giving back to Him what was already His (just like the bread and wine at His table). The holy feast is perhaps an icon of how we should live the rest of our lives.

I'm still processing that. I wonder how Jesus calling the disciples fits into that understanding of things. But I suppose even then, in the call to become fishers of men, the disciples still had the freedom to say yes or say no.

I've also heard it said that there is no greater freedom humans can have than to freely submit to God entirely, Who is the very essence and giver of true freedom, and of Life itself.

Hmm...

I guess you shared some pretty thought provoking thoughts here, J. I'll stop rambling now!

P.S. Btw, what a great cloud of witnesses you have there in your sidebar.
February 10, 2009 at 4:29 AM
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