You turned me into somebody loved.

I'm a little bit pathetic this morning. And I hate it.


Read Oswald and 1 Corinthians 1, but there's no heart behind it. I've been trying to lay my heart out before my Father (in my mind it looks like Mom's pie dough rolled out on the counter). It just feels thin, bland, and sticky. There's very little color to it. No one would want it in that condition.


And then 1 Corinthians reminds me that God didn't choose the noble, the wise, the graceful, the attractive, the perfect, or the do-gooders to bear His love note to the rest of the world. He didn't pick the ones with 4.0s, the ones who never have an angry thought, the ones who have never broken a rule (or even a nail). They wouldn't have been good messengers, and God knew it.


Instead, He chose me, and He chose you. He chose the meek, the mild, the humble, the tearful, the ashamed, the foolish, the rebellious, the silly. He chose the ones who can't follow the rules to save their lives, the ones that mess up and can't seem to learn from it, the ones that are tired to death of trying to be good and just sit down in the mud and give up.


He did it so we can't brag on ourselves. I'm not a perfectly baked apple pie. I'm icky, sticky, salty, crumbly dough on a countertop that won't roll out and won't let go of the pin and refuses to slide into the pan. I never do the right thing twice, and I rarely do the same thing twice.


But you know what's cool? It's ok that I'm messy. God takes me just like this, and then He uses me! That  second part blows my mind: even as akimbo and tousled as I am, He sometimes lets other people see His glory through me. Talk about humbling. No one knows how insignificant I am more than I do - and yet my Father knows me inside out, and He lets me help Him.




Dad,
Thank You for a morning to reflect on how much You love us, and how desperate You are for a relationship with us - You take us even as dirty as we are! Thank You for making us Your little children, for picking us up when we fall down, for kissing our wounds and making them better, for seeing further than we can, and for dreaming bigger dreams than we even dare. Help us to love You! Amen.

Slowed to a crawl.

I dislike Mondays. It's not that I have anything particular against the day itself, but the percentage of things that go wrong seems to be statistically higher on Mondays. Today has been no exception. And the majority of the things gone wrong have been my fault, which is just plain frustrating.


I have been drinking up Needtobreathe like cold water today.


I am more happy than I've been in a very long time. I am making plans with the man that I love. I'm financially stable. I love my crooked little house. But something's been under my skin, a tiny reminder. And Oswald, of course, put his finger on the splinter: my purpose is slipping.


He says, "The vision Paul had on the road to Damascus was no passing emotion, but a vision that had very clear and emphatic directions for him...Our Lord said, in effect, to Paul - Your whole life is to be overmastered by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but Mine...Paul was not given a message or a doctrine to proclaim, he was brought into a vivid, personal, overmastering relationship to Jesus Christ...There is nothing there apart from the personal relationship. Paul was devoted to a Person not to a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ's, he saw nothing else, he lived for nothing else."


It's not that the place I'm in right now is bad - by no means! I've been waiting, praying, asking my whole life for this place. And it is here. It's just hard to remember that, despite feeling like I've been given all of my dreams in one year, my true purpose is relationship with Jesus. It's hard, but I have to ask myself, "If everything I have now were taken away from me tomorrow, would I still pursue Christ?"


I'm afraid of the answer.


I don't want to be afraid. I want every confidence that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing" will be able to sway my heart away from the love of my Father.


Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.