Jam’s birthday was in October and she wrote two things in that time:
- a short 3-pager on struggling to make a brave decision and obey God’s leading, and
- a 5 minute birthday testimony to share with the 70 odd youths over a zoom service where she had to hint around the relationship that didn’t work out with someone else from church (ohh church relationships are very tricky indeed), but how God remained faithful to her despite everything.
They were very encouraging and heartfelt and I’m quite inspired by the articulation of self in words once again. Although I don’t have the weight of delivering a testimony of any sort in the same way as Jam did, I kind of want to recollect myself, for myself. In any case, I scarce have a testimony at the moment. The work-in-progressness of things remains thus.
I’ve been taking more backward glances into the mirror that I have turned away from. I want to write down what I see.
I have been dulled. I feel it in my spirit and there is no going around it. I compare myself (if that’s ever possible) to my younger self, my 23 year old self, for example. And all I can feel is, I have been dulled. My spirit no longer rejoices or burns for the things of God, for God himself so brightly or passionately or joyfully as it used to. It is no longer so alive, so sensitive, so troubled by sin (which even then, I used to be so dull about). I’m no longer even as bothered that I am in this place as I might have been before. Yet now, I’m writing it down to set it in front of me, to see this clearly, to acknowledge it, really, and do something about it.
Now what?
It’s funny because as I come to this realisation, Jam sent me a prayer she came across on Instagram along the lines of “God, don’t let me be comfortable at this distance from you. Don’t ever let me be comfortable or unbothered being this far from you”. We can drift and fall behind here and there, but dear God, let us never be okay with that.
It’s like God knows. Wew.
I’m pretty sure this didn’t happen overnight. I’m pretty sure I know how this happened and how I wasn’t committed enough to redirect myself uprightly. I’m trying not to blame others around me though I feel, objectively, it had some bearing on dulling me. Psalm 1 warned me enough so it’s nothing new that I’m calling out.
I dulled because I turned away from the mirror because I didn’t like what I saw it calling me out on. Rinse and repeat.
In this season, I really did try to love people more, in the sense of not just loving people who agreed with me or I felt gratified to interact with, but people who were different from me, whose world I may not fully understand, to love before I judged and avoided. To love.
But maybe it could only go so far because I was trying to love as God loved, with my head, rather than loving as God loved, from a heart that has received and fully accepts the vast, crazy love that God himself has lavished upon me. The heart that has experienced the depth of sin overwhelmed by the depth of God’s love can love better than any head.
Loving others isn’t wrong. But there wasn’t enough God to anchor me. And loving people without God, going around them and what they understood as love, I think it dulled me.
Today, I saw someone in church who triggers a lot of impatience in me. I don’t know him very well or personally, but he triggers me because he and his group of friends live life godlessly and I don’t mean that judgementally, I just mean that they live just like that, without god. I get angry sometimes because in short, I feel like they are trampling on God’s grace, on the free gift of his broken body, knowing the truth yet living as they do. It’s a very spit-in-the-face imagery I get, flipping the bird. But it’s also weird to be in church standing before God and brooding over your brother whom God also created and loves deeply, so I mused to God, dear God, how can I love this person who I feel treats you like a joke honestly etc. etc.
And of course, in God’s loving graciousness and gentleness, he prodded me to remember (nothing new, once again really) that everyone’s levelled before the cross. No one is more or less sinful than the next person before that cross; we are all the same, sinners in need of saving. That applies to me too. If you think that only he mocks me, remember that when I was carrying the cross, you were among the mockers too. Are you jealous that I’m generous in my love? Are you grumbling because the workers I hired in the last hour and the first hour are paid the same wage? What gives me the right to gate-keep God’s love (and subsequently my love) from certain individuals? Am I sifting out those who are considered worthy to come to God and those who are not? (lol yes oops)
And then, if I’m gatekeeping my brother from being here, it is because that human fleshly double standard part of me has also gate-kept his love from myself. I’ve stopped myself from receiving what was meant to be undeserved. I have disqualified myself from accepting what was meant to be a gift.
Revelation. But also again, yes again.
Not that I didn’t know that. I haven’t been seeking or resting in God’s love. Because I have not yet repented to rest in God’s love. In sin, God’s love looks too good to be true, a scary spotlight that brings out that which you don’t want to see or deal with. Yet, in receiving it, unmerited, truly undeserved pardon, and welcome and light, such that we may not be weighed down but encouraged to pursue good.
Reminders on gatekeeping. We aren’t suppose to be clean enough to approach the throne, but humbled to see our needs that much clearly and to receive that which is free. The stewardship comes after, not before. After.
Superbly grateful for the friends, absolute saints, who bring out the spirit in me which delights in God. I want to be that person all the time, intrinsically, and I think being around people who want the same and bring that out in each other will slowly just start to make that second nature. I just really like that.
I used to be more intentional with myself, with others. I’d like to say I used to be more loving but I don’t think I was ever really good at it.
Just convicted to. Pray. Pray for others instead of grumbling against them. Pray pray pray.
Marble Fragments 