Y'all, Friday was my nineteenth birthday! It was really super cool. Laina made me cupcakes Thursday, and then Friday morning my parents took me to breakfast. I had one class after, but that was fine. After lunch we headed to the lake where we would be camping. That night they ( My G42U family) surprised me with a pinata AND my favorite cake (Angel Food with strawberries)! It was really great. We camped at the lake that night and then spent most of Saturday Canoeing and hanging out. The others did some swimming and cliff jumping, but I couldn't because of my week old tattoo, so I just sat on the rocks and read. I liked it :). Needless to say, I loved my birthday weekend.
Today was church, talking about being Jesus with skin on, and Bible Study (which I just got home from) where we watched "Fruitcake and Ice Cream" By Louie Giglio. Holy Crap. It was so freaking good.
Y'all, I get the whole grace thing. I do. But one thing I have a hard time with... is giving Christians grace. You see, I feel God coursing through my veins and the people who don't live for God at all, but call themselves Christians just... throw me for a loop. I mean, I screw up all the time, but at least I'm growing and learning. That's what my thought process is. But the thing is... grace is for all. Everyone. I need to get that to sink in.
Shalom, www.g42u.com
Wow! What a birthday! Wow! Like a dream!
ReplyDeleteTwo things I want to say about grace:
1. About the gift of faith.
2. About learning not to depreciate anyone.
1. As I said in another comment, I've been feeling an urgent call to try to promote more awareness and appreciation of the gift of faith. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God ..." As I see it, all the good that anyone can do, comes from that gift, and the love of God. Apart from that gift of faith, and love for God, whatever we do, no matter how strictly it conforms outwardly to the Bible, can do nothing but harm, even more so when it is done in the name of God and of the Bible, because it defames God and turns people away from Him. I can see that you know that already, from some of your posts.
2. If I understand what you're saying, I've had the same struggle learning to free myself from bad feelings towards people in my own faith community who don't appear to me to be trying at all to live up to it, much more of a struggle than freeing myself from bad feelings towards other people. I'm still a long way from being where I want to be with that. I would eagerly welcome any ideas or experiences you would like to post about that.
Alana, here are some of my thoughts after reading your posts from May 2012 on (in two parts because of the size limit).
ReplyDeleteContents:
1. Love, romance and marriage.
2. Good times with family and friends.
3. Lovingly admonishing each other.
4. Your father's salvation.
5. Managing anger.
6. Learning to never depreciate anyone, to be more kind, and to free ourselves from all ill will.
7. When you doubt your beliefs.
8. Your thoughts and feelings about learning to follow Jesus.
1. Love, romance and marriage.
I see you writing in some of your posts about longing for a man's affection and companionship, and about marriage (naturally!). I'm wishing, wishing that I knew how to pass on to you whatever wisdom Patty and I might have, from our 43 years of experience. Maybe I'll write some posts about that in my blog some time. I never thought of doing that before.
2. Good times with family and friends.
I love reading about your times with your family and friends, and especially the times with your aunts and uncles and cousins, because it brings back some of my own most precious memories.
3. Lovingly admonishing each other.
You wrote (typo corrected):
"So this is what I ask of you, Siblings in Christ, as you're reading my posts , if you ever see something that doesn't line up with the word of God, with kindness and the love of God, point it out to me."
What I would rather do is, if I ever see you forgetting about learning to love God and to follow Jesus, to give you some friendly reminders. Maybe quote something you've written about it yourself.
4. Your father's salvation.
I think it's a mistake to imagine that any of us can know who else around us is saved and who isn't, and I doubt that you would find any solid biblical grounds for imagining that. In any case, even if it were given to us to know who else has been saved and who hasn't, you certainly can't know that your father will *never* be saved, so even if you can't help thinking of him as not saved *now*, I see no need at all to think of him as "lost," and it seems to me that thinking of him that way might do him an injustice, and might needlessly impoverish your relationship, and what you can do together, for God.
Not being saved might not mean that a person has no knowledge of God, or love for Him, at all. It seems better to me to imagine that there is some glimmer of the knowledge of God, and some spark of faith, in every person, and to practice fellowship and collaboration with each person around that glimmer and that spark. I've seen more love of God, and more devotion to His purposes, in some people who call themselves atheists, than in many people who are reputed to be believers.
Another way to think of it is that when a person is saved, it purifies his *whole* life, past, present and future, and all the good he has done in the past becomes part of his service to God, if indeed it wasn't already. Can you see it that way, that all the good that your father does now might be part of his service to God if ever he is saved in the future? Then can you appreciate, value, encourage and support that, and share it with him, as if it were done for love of God, as indeed I think it might be, whether he is already saved or not?
I'm not saying any of that to reproach you. It's because of the love that I see you have for your father, and the qualities you see in him, and possibilities I see that you might be missing in your relationship with him.
5. Managing anger.
ReplyDeleteYou've written about your struggles learning to manage your anger. I've struggled with that too, most of my life, and I'm still struggling, but I've made a lot progress. I will say though, not to discourage you but to give you hope if you ever despair, that I struggled for many years with little or no progress that I could see. Some months ago I did a lot of thinking about managing anger, and I put some ideas in a blog post: http://betterconduct.blogspot.com/2013/04/value-of-anger.html
6. Learning to never depreciate anyone, to be more kind, and to free ourselves from all ill will.
I've also seen you writing about learning not to depreciate people, and learning to be more kind. Those are the exact two things I decided to focus on a few years ago, and again, my progress so far has been painfully slow. One of my ideas has been to role-play recurring situations, where I've been unkind or I've depreciated people, to practice and rehearse better behavior; and to do the same with situations like that, that I can think of, that might be coming up ahead of me. I've also done a lot of work on learning to free myself from all ill will, and I might have some ideas for you about that, if you're interested.
7. When you doubt your beliefs.
I saw one post where you seemed to be doubting all your beliefs, and despairing about it.
As I see it, everything that all of us believe is far, far from God's truth, and always will be, although as long as we are following Him our knowledge, understanding and wisdom will always be improving. What matters is continually learning to love Him better, and trust Him more; and the better we learn to follow His prescriptions, the better we and the people around us will be protected from being harmed by our misunderstandings and mistakes.
8. Your thoughts and feelings about learning to follow Jesus.
As I said, part of what appeals to me in your blog is your efforts and progress in learning to follow Jesus. From here it looks to me like God has granted you the gift of faith, and with it a passion for learning to follow Jesus. I'm interested in your current thoughts and feelings about what you see God saying that you can do about learning to follow Jesus. I mean for example praying, studying the scriptures and making efforts to learn to put them into practice.
Specifically, one thing I would recommend, if you aren't doing it already, is periodically to read one of the gospels, straight through, without putting any study guide or other literature between you and the scriptures. I don't mean in a hurry, in one sitting. I mean in whatever way might enable you to immerse yourself in it, as if you were gathered with some of the early believers, listening to stories about Jesus from someone who walked with Him, or who heard the stories from those who did.
Another thing I would recommend is to do your own research in the scriptures about social issues, and more importantly your own life issues like love and marriage, your father's salvation, anger management, changing your attitudes and behavior, what to do with your doubts, and learning to follow Jesus. Again, I recommend doing that without substituting other people's understandings in the place of your own prayerful research in the scriptures. You can easily find tools online to help you search in the scriptures.
I don't mean not to consider other people's understandings at all. I mean not to put all your trust in *any* of those, in the place of doing your own research. I hope that you've learned already that the views that are most popular, even in your own faith fellowships, are not always true.
Thank you, for your kind words and advice. I really do appreciate it.
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