Waste Your Life

This guy I know (well, kind of, he speaks at APU stuff a lot, but I don't actually know him) named Andrew Gaines said once, "Waste your life getting to know God, doing what he was doing, and praying what he was praying." When I first heard it, I liked it, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you exactly what it meant, aside from the obvious implications. I couldn't have really articulated why he called it a "waste".

It was almost a year ago that I heard him say that, and I think I'm finally starting to understand what he meant.

As I make my way through this semester, I feel bogged down by all that is expected of me. Graduate, do well in your classes, make something of yourself, have a job, maintain relationships with people all over the country and with the new and old friends you have here in Azusa. Too many things to keep track of, if you ask me. The tough part is that, while all of these things are good, and mostly necessary, they leave very little time for what I would much rather be doing: seeking God, spending hours upon hours in his word, listening to him, talking with him, talking about him. I'd so much rather be using all my time to seek him.

I want to "waste" my life on Jesus. Sure, all these things are important for me in order to do what I want to do in the world. But what good is that if I don't really know God? Don't get me wrong, I know God, I have a relationship with him, but I'm no longer satisfied with the shallowness of it. I want to dive so deeply into the character of God that I get lost in the world. That it appears as though I'm "wasting" my life on this Christian thing.

But I don't know how to reconcile what I have to do in order to be effective in what God has called me to (finishing college, for starters) with what I desperate want to do (seeking God above all else without feeling obligated to do other things, i.e. homework).

It's a dilemma I have no idea how to solve.

What's really exciting though, is this new series my church just started. We are going through the book of Hosea. I was so excited before it even started, and I'm ecstatic after the first week. If any of you have read Redeeming Love, it's that kind of radical love story. I think God is going to teach me what it means for him to be my lover through this series. An intimate, passionate love that I haven't really experienced yet. I'm excited.

I'm pretty sure it will only fuel my desire to waste my life on Jesus.

Unanswerable Questions

In trying to help Africa, have we merely imposed our identity on them? We say we are trying to lift them out of poverty, but why have we made poverty the enemy? Why is our way of life preferable to theirs? Perhaps it is us who needs to be taking notes from them.

I know the different arguments, the different things we have to offer them: the value of the individual, longer life through medicine, food security, education. No one in western culture ever questions the value of these things because they are so ingrained us as things to value and promote. But why? Have we merely lost sight of the value of the alternative: the value of the corporate body, embracing death (even at a young age) as a natural and good part of life.

Perhaps our desire to impose our culture and standard of living on the rest of the world is us trying to justify that standard of living. A basic capitalistic principle is that an economy can grow, and everyone benefits from it. We are trying to grow it so much that our ways no longer seem exorbitant. Everyone can and should live as we do right? It’s what’s best for everyone, we say.

Well, I’m not buying it. So many of the things we assume are just that, assumptions. I’m waiting for someone to show me real justification for all the work we do abroad in developing countries from a biblical, scholarly perspective. Not one that says “Hey, these are good things I value, where can I find them in the Bible?” With that as the starting point, you can find anything you want. But what I really want to know is can a Bible scholar with no agenda come to our conclusions about development on his own.

Honestly, I don’t know if we will ever know. Scholars of the Bible will always have a culture they are assimilated to. They will hold values and ideas necessary to exist within that culture, and they won’t be able to see a world without it.

Disclaimer: These are my questions, my doubts. I still want to do what is called development work. To inspire people to be as good as they can be. But I can’t help but think of all the questions I can’t answer and haven’t ever heard anyone else try to answer.

Life Alone

I don't have anything particularly brilliant, insightful, or entertaining to share with you today. It's been a good holiday season, spending time with my extended family. I'm the only one in my apartment and it's been nice. I've gotten to take my time settling in, unpacking and not feeling like my explosion of stuff is annoying or in any else's way. I've cleaned basically the entire apartment. I don't think I've ever cleaned this much in my life. But it's good. It has made this place feel like it's mine and not someone else's house that I'll be living in for the next four months.

What I really wanted to share, though, was about Elijah, you know, from the Bible, 1 Kings. I was reading my bible this morning and I read the classic story of God not being in the wind, earthquake, or fire, but in the gentle whisper. (Technically, it doesn't say that God was in the whisper, but Elijah's reaction would tell us otherwise.)

This time of life has been an interesting one for me. Graduation is quickly approaching and EVERYONE, it seems, is required to ask me what I'm doing after I graduate. I don't know the answer to that question. I don't want to talk about it with people, whose opinions I don't want. I thought going to DC would help me answer all these big life questions, but all it did was give me more.

What Elijah has to do with my life, right, that's my point. Ok, well, I've been waiting for God to show up in an earthquake. I want something big and definitive. It might be crazy, but I'll be so sure of it that it won't matter if it's crazy. Unfortunately, as Elijah's story show's us, God doesn't always act in big earthquake shaping ways. The small whisper that has been spoken to my heart for about a month now is to go to some latin america country for a few years. It's small, gentle, not in any way a sure thing. But what is my faith if I never act in a way that requires it? I'm trusting that this whisper is God, that he will guide my steps down a path he's already prepared for me that I simply cannot see yet. The story of Elijah was just what I needed.

Thank you, God, for giving us your word that it might speak to us just as we need it to. Thank you for the way you whisper to my heart and show it what is right before my rational mind recognizes it. May you continue to grant me a willing heart and spirit to pursue you wherever you take me. I love you, Daddy. Amen.