Reform & Revive

 I fight with pride a lot. As I was telling a friend today: if you take a guy that is fairly smart, can put disparate concepts together, can talk well, and you make him a Christian, you get something very dangerous. He starts believing the press others say about him and begins to think he is much more mature than he actually is. This is me. My entire life people have set me apart for “something big for God.” Being able to understand and communicate even the deepest truths of God and His Word doesn’t equal maturity one bit. Seminary has certainly been showing me just how independent I try to be from God.

But nevertheless, something does resonate within me when I think about my place on the national/world stage. I feel like I’m being tailored by God for big, visible things out there in the world. I don’t know for sure what this means, and I’m fine with it not coming to pass, but I feel like I’m being prepared for a weight I could not bear apart from prior work by God.

But that’s not the point of this post. Now, like I said, I was grabbing coffee with that friend of mine - a friend who is quite visible on the national and international stage. But he’s been struggling with something recently that really struck me. He pointed out that no person ever used by God for really big things ever did it apart from great levels and displays of suffering. His problem was that he shirks from suffering while seeking comfort - the very thing that is antithetical to what he’s called to. I have a similar problem.

I’m only 22 and I feel like I haven’t suffered much. Some really dark family stuff, spiritual dark months of the soul, and severe emotional pains (loneliness and heartache, mainly), but really no classic forms of real suffering. Yet, in spite of this, God has given me a very developed theology of suffering and God’s Sovereignty within it. This terrifies me. I can not get away from this haunting sense deep in the recesses of my mind that severe trials lie ahead of me. So severe that God needs to prepare me now to survive the pains to come.

In one sense this reaffirms my desire to be well-known, influential, and in front of many people. On the other it sobers me, realizing (perhaps for the first time) what it means to “count the cost.” So perhaps all those that have been praising and building me up for big things in the future have actually been painting a target on my soul for the refining pains and trials of God.

So for those of you out there seeking renown, fame, and exposure. Know that if you really are doing it to God’s Glory, then no servant is greater than his Master, and you should expect nothing less than fulfilling in the body the sufferings of Christ, that His life might be seen through your death for your good and God’s Glory.

Entering in a new degree thereof
Against one’s will
I will be enabled
To live once more again

Ah, to live!

And give glory to the One who gives glory
To the meek
Of which
I am
Not

Yet . . .

Being thrust to moment to moment
In my life-long “awkward stage”
Into lives I don’t want to
But must,
and will,
for my will
Has been seized
And captured
By another.

Another so beautiful
All-wonderful
Satisfaction of satisfactions
Pleasure of pleasures
Joy of joys
Pain of pains.

Then one lost is now one found

Like the pink head
Of a plastic hippo
Whose heart is blue,
Whose unrenewed mind lies lonely at the bottom
Of a dirty garbage heap.

And the Renewed stands in silent reflection
Amidst the sounds of little children-
The sounds of an innocence they have not.
While dancing in circles swirling in safe adoration
Of a will they have not either

But may.  At some appointed time.

As I sit.
In this park.
On this day.
With these thoughts.
On this heart.
And this mind.

Contemplating the eccentricities of a life
Lived with purpose
in the Already But Not Yet.

10.17.2007; 14th and E. Carson, Pgh, Pa (if i wasn’t a calvinist, i’d hate women)

even among your heart’s great durress, you want to scream, shout and dance (huh?!) in your joy. this all-consuming joy that only shows its face in those dark hours. it’s those days when you are brought so low that there is only one to be reached out to, and in that great distress, that horrible despair, even, is the one who ordained that misery - those weaknesses - to fight for perfect glory. and in that is the great comfort.

five months ago in this very coffee shop, you scribbled down those words about all things being made new - from Death comes Life, right? right. and in these tragedies (or so we see them) lie our daily-mini-deaths. and borne out of those deaths are new mini-lives. and in the redemption from that death, to this life - what joy!

in deepest despair one cries out - and in that cry, there is sustinance - that greatest joy.

what foolishness: to look to the grandest times of sorrow + suffering with the strongest sentiment of nostalgia + yearning. don’t you taste redemption? it is near. and in fact, it is here. suffer again; there is no fear.

death begets life. sorrow begets only the purest of all joys.

and here you are, young + naieve. what grand tragedy have you endured? you are a fool to write such ugly words. you cannot fathom the heart-break of the most awful tragedies. how can you so boldly proclaim that you yearn for them? in those most tragic of kingdoms that you have found yourself (though they know nothing of the depths of some - or most, for that matter!) always sustained by the power borne of such weaknesses.

if you must boast and delight in anything, delight in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties. when you are weak, then you are strong.

Lord do I praise Thee at all times?  Is that Biblical, even?  What is worship?  That which declares and proclaims the Glory of God, through treasuring it, I suppose.  Could Creation then worship?  Could I, even when eating, drinking, and making merriment with fellow embattled saints come to treasure, declare, and proclaim all You Are, Say, and Be - Your Glory?  Your Manifold Perfection breaking through my leisure and feast and satisfactions to be ushered in as a herald to Your coming Kingdom already at hand?  Does this prose and poetry bring the Reality of You and Your Kingdom that much more into this world?  Is this the way you made us - made this system - to work?  This whole “Christianity” thing?  Perhaps obedience is worship.  Perhaps I must end this now and worship.  Command what Thou will, and give what Thou commands.

In love,
Your favorite.

Portable Bible-study with Mark Driscoll in the back seat of a VW Jetta: