Be still...

So busyness  has started for me. This week I have officially started working 20 hours a week with my parents and in less than a week that will be coupled with 15 hours of school work and interning duties at First Baptist Church. Needless to say I am going to be on the go from about 8 until about 6 pretty much every day.

It seems that through the hustle and bustle of my life, I always have to compromise things. One thing that I have found easy to compromise is silence. I realized how accustomed I have become to noise in my life: TV, radio, ipod, computer, talking, xbox. In fact, if I am sitting in a silent room I always feel awkward and always want to interject noise that I deem necessary. (On a side note, this drives my sweet fiance crazy because she is very content with sitting in silence while I always feel the need to fill it).

What is truly disappointing is the fact that within all of this noise, is the voice of God, and I often tune out the voice of God to listen to other ultimately meaningless noise. In the 46 Psalm, we are commanded by the Lord to "Be still and know I am God". I am never still. I never even give myself the chance to be still. It's honestly one my biggest struggles. But as the psalmist writes, God desires us to be still. Because honestly sometimes God does not always speak through lightning bolts, thunder and big events. Sometimes He speaks in a still, soft whisper. And I don't want to miss Him when He whispers.

-DBM

And I choose obedience...

"Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power of say, Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of a man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or worst of his material, will stand naked." -C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity

I believe that a simple fact of life is that we as humans have a strong tendency to lie, cheat, and steal to get our way; in other words: we are selfish beings. And the reality of it is that when you strip away psychological material, for example phobias, from our inner being, our basic morality can still be, and often is still tainted. Yet another reality is that we, beings of tainted morality ourselves, deem it appropriate to judge others according to our own view of a higher standard. Even when our higher standard is a standard that we tend to break ourselves.

As C.S. Lewis notes in the above quote from Mere Christianity, perhaps some of us have made so little use of good heredity and upbringing. Good heredity and upbringing, things that I do not necessarily think should be condemned, have become something they were never meant to be: pillars of judgment.  Myself, being blessed with good heredity and upbringing, have no right to use that as means for my own personal gain or as standards upon which I can judge others by; especially those who have not been given the same heredity or upbringing.

But still I judge. Still I am wicked. Still I put myself on that pedestal and I judge. But the fact of the matter is that while I am judging, I am also building up a psychological make-up made of skin and bones. I am building my own wall of pride and self-righteousness. One day I will stand before my King, psychological make-up gone, stripped naked, left feeble, and He, being righteous and just, will show me my sin. Yes I know full and well that Jesus my Savior has covered my sin with his own blood, shed on the cross, but that does not mean that my King with utter the humbling words I so desire to hear: "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

Obedience is the key for being a faithful servant of my Lord and my obedience to my King should be shown in the inner renewal of my mind. As Paul states it in Colossians 3:10, "Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your creator and become like him".  Putting on my new nature does not mean sitting back and judging from my pedestal. It means being proactive; it means taking steps to change my judgmental tendencies; it means more of Him, and less of me.

DBM

Why Burn, Poor and Lonely...

And so this begins. As I approach this, I approach it with peace in my heart. You see, 4 days ago I went from being "in a relationship" to "happily engaged" to the most wonderful woman in the world. As you can imagine, there are many emotions that come with the excitement of getting engaged. But through it all there is one emotion I can clearly identify with a this time: peace. My heart is at peace. I know this is where God wants me to be right now and I know God has big things in store for me.

But with peace often comes complacency. And with complacency comes luke-warm living. And the fact of the matter is that I am a perpetrator of luke-warm living. Although that is not my heart's desire. In Matthew 5,  the Word of God says "No one lights a lamp and then outs it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your Heavenly Father." Luke-warm living causes us to burn, poor and lonely. It causes us to cover the light that we have found in Jesus Christ. Our responsibility as followers of Christ is to shine bright, and shine proudly.

My heart is at peace. But I want to burn, rich and majestically. Not poor and lonely.

DBM