"Narrow is the mansion of my soul.
Enlarge it, so that You can enter.
It lies in ruins.
Repair it.
I know and confess that You will find corruption there that is offensive to Your eyes. But who else shall clean it? To whom can I cry except You? Lord, scrub away my secret faults. Save Your servant from the power of the enemy. Since I believe You, I call to You, Lord, for You alone know.
Haven't I given testimony of my sins to You? Haven't You forgiven the wickedness of my heart? I don't argue with Your judgment, for You are Truth. I fear my own self-deception, for my corrupt heart lies even to itself. I offer no defense against Your judgment, for if You, Lord, kept a record of sins, who could stand?"
I re-read a part of "The Confession's of St. Augustine" and this particular passage really stuck out to me. This guy lived 1600 years ago, and the stuff he thought about God was so profound that it's still getting published. In this passage he is dealing with his sin. He is trying to come to terms with his insufficiencies in the face of a perfect creator and savior. It seems to me like if I walk with Christ long enough at different times the perfection of God in all His aspects from the viewpoint of my sinfulness if overwhelming. In light of that, a relationship between me and God is completely irrational. God is so much bigger, greater, absolute, complete, perfect, loving... than I give Him credit for. There is so much more to God than the cross. There is more offered than a ticket to Heaven when I die. I am so preoccupied with the forgiveness part of God's love that I forget about the abundant life part that comes too.
Yes I am a sinful person and need God's grace to cover my transgressions, but God offers me much more than forgiveness. I think there is more to being a Christian than just being forgiven and living a life full of jobs from God as a response to His forgiveness. If that where all there was to it, I would still gladly live that life, but think there is more to it. I think there is a practical side to God's love that is more prolific than granting us admission to heaven, more personal than empowering us to go do His ministry, more relational than me asking for things (forgiveness, grace, help, a new car...) and Him giving, there is more to it than that.
God has chosen us to be the method he reaches people through, but that's not what I think "abundant life" is about. Doing ministry is possibly a prerequisite for abundant life. It may be that by involving myself in God's Master Plan I unknowingly set myself up to experience God in a unique way. "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ." - Philemon 1:6 Being involved in what God is doing is definitely essential to having a close relationship with God. The Christian faith is not meant for remote monasteries, but for the world. I am called to look at Christ, but live in the world. Mark 16:15. And I can do so without fear of failure or rejection because Christ has overcome the world. John 16:33 It seems to me that if I can cast my trials on Christ, with faith, He can overcome them easily.
I look at the heroes of the faith (Hebrews 11), and I see a lot of them as having abundant life. One thing that they all had in common was a close relationship with God. In spite of their personal failures they are able to enter into an intimate relationship with God. They are able to share in His heart. As they become closer to God, He replaces their heart with His own. This is revealed throughout the old and New Testament in prophets and disciples. I want to be about praying for God to transform my heart, to build in me the desires that He has for my life. I want to see the world through His eyes and not my own.
One of the essential qualities of "abundant life" has to be a close relationship with God. But how does that work? I am the kind of person where I have accepted Christ into my life, and I pray, and do stuff I feel like God is telling me to do, and try to live life inside of Christian parameters, but somewhere I have missed something. I have not developed a close friendship with God. Yeah I do a lot of stuff and Christ has grown in me a ton in the last 5 years, but really am I a "friend" of God? Some parts of my life say I am close to God, and at times (especially lately) it has felt like God is near to me, but in general I feel separated from Him. I don't have the kind of relationship with God where I walk around seeing everything with God. I see lots of things with a self-centered mindset. I want to be in tune with what God is doing every day, not just in times of crisis.
I am not even sure I understand how being a friend of God should work. I feel like prayer or communication with God has to be a big part of it, but there also has to be an element of tuning yourself to hear what God is saying back. Friday at leadership we listened to a sermon by Corrie Ten Boom and hearing her talk about her faith made me want something like that. Like any relationship I think it takes a lot of effort to build and maintain. Perhaps even more-so because I am so prone to turn from God to other things. However, in spite of my shortcomings, I have to believe that God wants to know me intimately, to share life with me. I am convinced that there is a passionate interest in God's being that wants us to know who He is. All of recorded history points to His Son's death on the cross, there has to be more to that than just a stamp admitting us to heaven.
In Corrie Ten Boom's case she is absolutely reliant on the provision of God. Her reliance upon God for all her practical needs as well as her spiritual needs has built a relationship where she understand God's character better than most. She KNOWS God because of her extensive experience and reliance on exclusively who He is to sustain her. Because of her relationship with God she has experienced a great freedom from the burdens of this life. She has effectively cast the yoke of this life onto the Lord and learned to live in the freedom Christ bought for us both here and eternally. She experienced life to the fullest, her cup overflowed, she lived abundantly.
I think the first step to experiencing closeness with God, and through that, "abundant life", is coming to terms with my brokenness and need of a savior. I think embracing my weaknesses is the first thing I can do in learning to become reliant upon God. Casting the burden of my sin on Christ is key to experiencing the full life He bought for me. I have heard a lot about surrendering to God, but I may be finally experiencing what that is supposed to look like. At the very least I want to try to offer my everything. In my limited experience, if you try your best, God tends to meet you where you are. So I pray that I try my best, and God meets me in that.
Narrow is the mansion of my soul.
Enlarge it, so that You can enter.
It lies in ruins.
Repair it.
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