It's been just over a year since my last post. This is mostly due to the lack of an inspired topic, hopefully I've got something now to share with you!
Over the past year or so I've gone through many ups and downs, nothing short of life itself. While I've been waiting for God to guide me and direct my path I feel looking back that I was quite reluctant to actually follow any direction. Not that I had a falling away or any type of major struggle, I just found myself in failure after failure. So many things had gotten in between me and the intimate relationship I once had with God and the desire I had to keep it alive. The realm of failure seemed to cover not only one aspect of my life but so many areas; grades, grad school, friendships, relationships, self confidence, church, and most of all I failed at seeing what my importance as a Christian meant. Was I following God as close as I could? I can remember countless times in which I thought how out of place I was. Some days I felt as if I should be somewhere across the world doing who knows what, but just being completely reliant on God. Other days I felt as if I should quit school for a semester and give all my effort into rebuilding my church. Then other days I chose to not think about anything really at all. There was obviously a major role conflict between me being a full time student, part time youth minister, and a full time Christian. The failure seemed to set in when my prayers became only prayers without action from my side or steps taken in any direction. That's where my self confidence took a dive, mediocre grades set in, relationships and friendships slowly diminished, and the feeling of bitter uselessness snuggled its way into my daily routine.
This past summer was planned out to be the greatest summer I could think of! I finally had a youth group with 5 or 6 showing on a good day. I wasn't signed up for summer classes, I was as open as my mom's refrigerator door when I first get home to visit, and as free as the food inside of it. I was right where God wanted me, He opened this summer for me to surrender completely to and for His will. So I titled the summer theme "Fearless". Zoe group had cd titled Fearless and track with the same name. After listening to it, it's what I wanted to be!! So appropriately enough, that's where I came up with the title. I wanted this summer to be Fearless, I wanted to pack it so full of trips and projects and those fearless moments of breaking out of the everyday Christian lifestyle and move into a much more edgey, disciple like lifestyle, but not just for me, for the teenagers. It was a summer I intentionally planned too much so that God wasn't limited and that most of all the members at Palisades could see Him working as never before. The summer approached, and I lost two kids. They moved away to Louisiana with almost no notice. One child I had been mentoring and bringing to church, I lost contact with due to cutbacks in his family, including cell phones. In a matter of a couple weeks I go from 5 to 2! that's enough to do almost everything I wanted. God is still in control and He will prove to be faithful,, right? A few weeks into the summer I get word that one of my two has to go to Panama for the rest of the summer and will be back by the time school starts.... He's still gone. So I've got one teen left. Not that I'm upset about the lack of teens or that I only have this one, but all the planning and excitement, the preparation and money turned into false hope and what felt like failure on my part, though I had nothing to do with everyone leaving the way they did. I just couldn't fathom the thought of all of this happening in the fashion it happened. I ended up going on only two of the trips planned. A mission trip to Nashville with my one teen which was rockin!! and a second trip to Nashville by myself. I gave my summer to God at the beginning of it. That was the point of the theme, living fearlessly by the spirit God has so graciously blessed me with. It just didn't turn out how I had envisioned. Why would God give all of this to me, then do His thing and mix it up? I can't say that I was angry with God, just confused. A time where I was completely free from all distraction and finally ready to gain that which I had been so longing for, I wasn't feeling very blessed, used, directed, or successful.
That story is to kinda segwey into what has recently been on my mind, and the things that have taken place. The title of this blog is "Should have prayed for cupcakes.." for a reason, I promise I'm getting to that.
The past month or two has been highly oriented around conflict and how to deal with it. I've obviously had my conflicts, but maybe I was looking at them all wrong. I had forgotten how I used to tell others and myself that trials are just opportunities. Coping with conflicts and failures became nonexistant. I was a conflict. I was standing between my prayers and God, just aimlessly throwing up pleas for guidance, for strength, and for chances at proving my faith only to intercept them. I wanted so badly to be that hardcore disciple of God. I wanted to be the Paul who said "I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection..." I wanted to be the one he described when he talked about running the race full speed. I wanted to know what it meant to sing praises while imprisoned. I wanted to be the one selfless enough to stay in jail after an massive earthquake shook all the prisoners free. I wanted to be like the man named Gaius, whom John writes to in 3 John. Every moment of my life I wanted to be completely consumed by the love, power, and gratification of God. A few thursdays back I went to see and meet Donald Miller. Don was on tour for his latest book " A Million Miles in a Thousand Years." He's exactly how I imagined him. I showed up late to get a ticket before the show, and when I walked into the church in which he was speaking I saw this man lying on a couch. I had no idea who this man was, but he looked sick. I asked him if he was ok and if I could get him anything, he just lifted his head, put on a childish smile and told me " No thanks, I just need a nap,, being on the road wears you down so much." Little did I know,, I had been talking to the Don man! I intorduced myself just to make sure, then stayed and chatted for a few minutes. For the rest of the night he knew me by name. Well, his main topic was "your story being completely God's story". One of the major themes was conflict. HA! Exactly what I need!! Is God good or what?! I don't think I even blinked. I was sitting on the edge of my seat with all ears, attention, and celebrity shock directed in his general direction. The biggest thing I took away from him that night was that conflicts are so inevitable. But we live in a time where we try to knock them out with 7 step processes, and trying to find our best lives now. In reality, our conflicts mold us into who God wants us to be. Remember that quote earlier about trials being opportunities?.. that came straight out of Don's "blue like jazz". He's so right, the conflict we try to avoid only shapes us into something so grand and divine, why would we run from it?..well..its conflict....
Here's where the cupcakes come into play...
Later that evening I was so pumped about meeting Don, I didn't have class the next day, and my roommates all wanted to hang and go out and stay out late. Why not!? We all split but eventually met at one common place, it was a bar. I had old friends and roommates there, then my current roommates showed up, it was a reunion. The place was packed, there were pool tables and foosball tables, but nothin was open. It didnt need to be, i was about to be quite occupied... While sitting next to one of my buddies a member of the opposite gender, who seemed to have been at this place for a while due to the absence of clear thinking, stumbling and slurring, climbed her way into the stool next to mine. Thinking nothing of it, I mean I was in a bar, i continued talking with my friend. Well this girl kept trying to get my attention, a tug on the sleeve, tap on the shoulder, a nudge on my chair... i turned around and asked if i could help her. Well, to say the least, i couldn't help her. A few failed attempts at a conversation with me made her angry i guess and she left. Moments later, I guess she forgot, cause here she came stumbling back. Now remember i was on this superChristian high. I took a moment and thought, man,, What would Jesus do right here. (Man, who would have thought those bracelets would come to such good use!??? ha). So i actually turned to her and began having a conversation with her. I asked her about these tatoos she had on her arms, where she was from, what brought her to birmingham.. all of the superficial questions. She just answered them one by one after lighting cigarrette after cigarrette. It became very clear as to what i was suppose to spend the next hour doing... She had just recently moved to Birmingham from North Carolina where she has a 6 year old daughter. Shes trying to get a degree and graduate so she can take care of her daughter by herself. She has little to no real friends here, or back home. She's a widower whose husband was murdered. She was so tired of everyone feeling sorry for her and just wanted an actual friend to talk to her like normal. When i asked how old she was, she told me it was her 25th birthday and that she was spending it in a bar with one other girl she knew... my heart sunk. I should have stopped right there and prayed for cupcakes. I wished so badly that I could help her feel important, as if she mattered. I knew she mattered, she mattered to me, she mattered to God. I'd only heard about these things happening in stories people tell, but this was actually happening, i felt helpless, unprepared. The whole conversation had been geared toward making her feel loved. If i could give anything, i was sure gonna sit there and let her talk all night long to someone that would that would listen. I thought, wow, God is actually using me, this is actually happening. This is not by coincidence! After another while of talking she finally asked what I did, I told her i was a student and a.. then i hesitated for a moment to think of the best possible yet honest answer i could give her for the next answer,,, youth minister. I said it. I was afraid to scare her off, the last thing i wanted was to make her think i was tricking her and was gonna try to force a bunch of religion on her. I was right, she was in shock. I think it was good shock though. I think she sensed the sincerity in my words, whereas i had no idea where my sincerety came from. Turns out she used to be a firm believer, but fell away do to some personal problems with God. We talked it out, she left, i'll probably never see her again. I'm certain though that God's gonna harvest more in her life through the seed He helped me plant.
True discipleship, what does it mean? What does it mean to come from a year of failures to a single victory that is so enormous, so glorious, so divine that truley nothing short of that victory matters? I'm not boasting because of good that i think i've done, but really, think about the times in your life where you've been so completely lost and all the sudden God taps you on the shoulder and brings you to a place, to a conflict so that He can mold you into something He needs you for. Think about the times you've doubted His divine workings only to find that all through your doubt, you found joy.
Ok... last section.... I was leaving lunch today in a hurry to pick someone up. But on my way out of the cafe, i had a 2 minute long conversation about dating and relationships with a set of strangers i had met only minutes before speaking to them. It was kind of a funny conversation really. It started out about how all the girls in nursing school are in relationships and none of them are really single. Then the girls talked about the lack of males and how even the low number of them had a significant other or just werent interesting. After listening for a moment, I felt a need to interject...Dating and relationships are both crazy. Trust me, at sometime in your life you have thought this, youve even hated the idea of either. They are both tied to the most terrible, lonely, betrayed, cheated, confused, yet glorious emotions we encounter. So i raise the question, are relationships stuipd like we say they are ..when we arent in one?? or are we the crazy and stupid people who always go back into them? (I'm not dogging them at all, just speaking in generalities.) think about it.. think of the last person you were with, there's probably more negative feelings towards that relationship than positive. And after we've sworn off women because they are impossible to figure out and crazy, and after we've removed ourselves from all contact with the male species because of their stupidity and they are crazy, we always find a way back. Essentially, we are the crazy ones. I dont really believe that though. What i do believe however, is that instead of us being crazy, we are strong. Our will, need, and desire to be with that person who we may not even know right now always finds a way to out strengthen our will, desire, or need to withstand them. We always find our way back into the realm of dating and relationships because we find that we are stronger than the hurt caused from the past and the overall let down from past expectations. No one goes into a relationship looking for the end. This can be said about God. After all the times we call Him crazy, confusing, and stupid. After all the times we may claim to never go back and swear Him off, we find ourselves falling back into His arms of love. He created a relationship with us, and though we have looked for so many ways to end it, betray it, and pervert it, He's fought that much harder to sustain it. He's created an everlasting convenant with us, His people. Jeremiah 32:40. God's relationship with us requires conflict, it requires hurt, and it requires submission. The apostle paul puts it like this when speaking of conflict and hurt.. When I am at my weakest, then i am made strong- 2 Corinthians 12. He also claims to be content in all situations-Philippians 4. And he also calls us more than conqerors, who can never be separated from the love of God- Romans 8.
When we truley desire to be the follower Christ calls us to be, theres going to be conflict, hardship, and confusion. I sometimes find myself in situations where I can hear God clearly, but I cant see where He's directing me. He's often just on the other side of the door. When i allow him to walk through that door and take me by the hand I'm going to be placed in situations of hardship, i'm going to be molded, i'm going to be purified, but im doing it all for His glory. Its going to hurt, but when we are standing on top of the mountain looking down, it is then we have seen what He's been trying to show us the whole time.
"For through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me." (Galatians 2:19-20).
i think this may be the answer. All my perceived failures, doubts, and troubles, i count as so, because that's how I've been trained to view them ,but as God looks upon me, I'm His precious child, His righteous creation, and most of all His possession. though I may have shortcomings and distractions, I'll always have a faithful God who works for the good of me because I love Him.
