with fear and trembling...

I just finished with one of the more interesting nights of my life. I would say coincidental but I don't believe in coincidences, so I'll just tell my story and let you hash it out for yourself.

I've been discontent lately...okay so the last 4 years or so...with my faith. I realized in Spain (I went with Campus Crusade to Granada for two months) that my faith was not a mature one, that it was a faith I gleaned from my parents...but at least a faith that got me through the hardest stuff in my life...seriously, without God, I wouldn't still be alive. So anyway, maybe I'm just lazy but I've been spending the last few years really humming and hawing about my faith - going to lots of different churches, being discontent with anything that didn't live up to the meat & potatoes I got at the little church that met in a mall basement in Granada and I don't know that I'll ever find that again, at least in America. But I'll keep looking. I told Kyle tonight that I feel like spiritually I've been asleep, just kind of drifting, being aware of my ebbing and flowing discontent but not really knowing what to do about it. I'm no longer satisfied with what other books or other people have to say about my relationship with God, what rules I should follow (like reading my Bible and doing a quiet time every single day) in my own relationship with God, relationship with Kyle, etc. I don't want to read any more books on Him, I want to be all up in His business and get to know Him like, you know, personally.

This feels really really ridiculously weird to be writing, because maybe I had this picture in my head that people think I'm some big Christian but I think God has just humbled my heart and said, "dude - seriously? I mean, there's no fruit. You know it, I know it, so quit kidding yourself. Come on over and sit here on this couch and let's have a talk." (by the way I heard a long time ago that God talks to you the way you need to hear it, so I figured it would be okay if God says "dude" and "totally" a lot.)

So anyway, there's kind of the back story. What happened a couple months ago is that my friend Casey invited me & the hubs to go to church with her and her husband and I bailed. Repeatedly. So I moved to Austin for this internship thing and heard that there's podcasts from the church, so I downloaded one and sort of listened to half of it but never really got committed. So then a couple days ago (yesterday maybe?) I went into iTunes to download a movie (The Other Boleyn Girl - SO GOOD.) and bam a podcast from The Village Church popped up. Random - this had never happened before. Tonight I decided to listen to it and it really (surprisingly? Maybe not...) hit all my little nails on all their heads. In like, a creepy, only-God-could-do-this kind of way because check it out: the title of the sermon is "Godly Discontentment." I was all hey that's me but you never know, these tricksy pastors could be talking about anything.

But no, I'm pretty sure this guy has been spying on me and then downloaded the sermon on my computer because it's time for me to wake up.

The sermon is all about 1 Timothy 6:11 where Paul is basically laying right out some beginning steps to exploring that discontentment in God. He says to "flee the riches of the world and to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and gentleness." There's a LOT of all those things I've been struggling with, especially at work, and definitely in my own life. The pastor talked about contentment not equaling complacency and talked about how sometimes a relationship with God is seen like how a guy and a girl start dating and the guy does all this over-the-top stuff like write poetry and give flowers and whatever to win her and then when they get married he stops pursuing her. In the same way we sometimes get lazy and think WHEW I'm saved! Sweet! Now I can relax! Not the case. The dude went on to talk about how this discontentment comes from God and he talks about Philippians 3:12 where we haven't already gotten there, we won't get there until we're reunited with Christ, but in the meantime to always be reaching forward and then there was verse 15 which totally got my attention - that word maturity. So...whoa. Some people aren't going to see it like this at all, but it's like God knows I have been discontent,knows that I want, pray to be closer to Him but have been unclear as to which direction to go in...and then I started looking back on this year - this whole turning 25, not taking crap from folks, figuring out what I stand for, doing the triathlon, being away from Kyle and working towards this goal of internship where every day I am creating my own theories and philosophies of music therapy - and it's like, I needed all that to be going on so that when I heard all this, everything would almost audibly SNAP into place. This would be the second time that I've been humbled by the thought that God might actually be paying attention to me. Weird. If you want the story of the first time, let me know and I'll tell it, because it's pretty funny, but kind of embarrassing.

That was the biggest part that freaked me out the most about the podcast - there's more about how we can forever change people just by loving them and remembering the confession of your youth etc. etc. but the main thing is that I've not been jarred awake, which I think is funny because (you can ask Kyle) if you wake me up the wrong way I get crAnky, but that I've kind of been in a process of waking up over the last couple weeks/months/years. There was another thing I found cool - the pastor referenced something in Phillippians where it says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling...like, it's really okay to do this and have these questions and make your beliefs your own because it's God working through you, wanting you to be more mature and own your faith. I like that.

Funny, the things that'll happen to you on a fast. I hadn't meant for it to be a religious thing but it looks like it was the right time for me and this weekend somehow the clutter has been cleared enough for everything to make sense. Weird, weird, weird. So okay step 1 be nourished in the Word of God - get back to reading and diving in, maybe find a church, maybe find other people to talk this stuff over with (preferably over some coffee or maybe even a beer) and then step 2 put it into practice. I have the feeling I'll be on step 1 for awhile. I have a lot of digging to do.

So yeah, crazy night.