Well, "Simply Seeking" isn't going to cut it anymore. My seeking process came to an abrupt halt this past week, and on WEDNESDAY, FEB. 10, 2010, I went for it! More on the events leading up to it in a bit, but I want to linger just a while on what I just wrote. I'm not who I used to be. I'm a totally new, totally free person. And all because I finally ran to Him, as our lead pastor is fond of saying, and I made it!
Man, it feels good to see that in print.
So, what does it take to go from a 30-plus year seeking process to the sudden embrace of God? It takes a Moment, which was the lesson this past weekend at Quest. But I'm getting ahead of myself. How I got to my own Moment is the main point of this particular rambling.
For the sake of brevity, I'll only go back to Saturday. (Oh, trust me, I could get back to the early eighties at least - and maybe the late seventies. But nobody wants that). I was already stressed out about work things from the past week. Saturday morning I had to go to a board meeting for a non-profit group I've been helping, and that only stressed me out more - donations are down, we're in trouble, etc. Then I came back home, to more stuff that's been bugging me... things like needing to get our house ready to sell or, at the very least, finding a suitable nursery space for our new daughter who will join our family sometime this summer. To summarize, I had a bunch of things pulling at me from all sorts of directions. Some of the stuff seemed so big as to be insurmountable, some so small it's hard to know why it even mattered - but the point was, it was all there. (Editorial note: it feels so good to see all that in past tense!)
We went to the Saturday night service at Quest, and heard Pastor Pete's incredible talk on having your Moment. Right in the middle, he said something that hit me in the face like a ton of bricks: if your spiritual life isn't going well, nothing else in your life will, either. Whoa. "That certainly sounds like me," I thought. There was a spontaneous Gospel clarification at the end of the talk, and for a second I got all excited thinking this would finally be my time. But no... all the way through, I just sat in my seat, absolutely, miserably despondant that I wasn't feeling anything.
Sunday night we came back to Quest for the Super Bowl party, a funny statement in and of itself as my lack of knowledge of anything football-related is painfully obvious to anybody who knows me. (Literally painful in terms of a Life Group flag football game back in the fall, although for whatever reason the guys still talk to me. But I digress.) Anyhow, I'm at this party and I meet up with a couple of guys from my Group. We were recapping the weekend's teaching, and I mentioned how bummed I was that I didn't feel anything during the end. At which point, one of the guys looked at me and said, "Do you think you have to feel a certain way?" I didn't answer. I also didn't sleep much Sunday night, because I couldn't stop thinking about that.
Now, up until this point, the inability to stop thinking about things had been one of my biggest obstacles. God was about to use that, though.
It was still rattling around my head Monday at the office. I couldn't stop thinking about the Revelation 3 door, where Jesus is knocking and all you have to do is let him in. I was thinking again about the wall I've built around my heart, that I've tried and tried to remove but couldn't.
I took a late lunch, and in the quiet of the breakroom I pulled out my Monday Bible reading. (I found an awesome reading schedule online back around the start of the year that divides the readings up by literary style, so one day is history, one day poetry, one day epistles, etc. It's a very refreshing change from the 'straight-through' variants I've tried in the past, which all ended in February somewhere around Leviticus.) Monday's reading was from Joshua, the big climactic battle scene at Jericho.
'Joshua and the Battle of Jericho' is one of those Bible passages most everyone is familiar with, right up there with the ark and the Christmas story and Joseph's coat. It's the stuff VBS is made of. And honestly, when I saw what was coming up for my daily reading, I was tempted to skip ahead to something 'new' to me. But I was curious to see how the NLT renders the story, and it didn't feel right to 'cheat' on my Bible reading, so I forged ahead.
After I finished, I sat back in my chair. A light had just flipped on. Even though I 'knew' the story, I'd never thought of processing it in a personal way (I rarely find myself in a situation where I'm storming an ancient fortified city). But suddenly from out of nowhere I saw the implications of what I'd just read in my own life. The 'wall' doesn't have to be a physical pile of bricks. The wall around my heart was just as real. In Jericho, Joshua didn't tear down the wall. All Joshua had to do was believe, and God tore down the wall. Huh. God can tear down walls if you just let Him? Double whoa.
It can't be that easy, I told myself. What about the Rev. 3 door? Then I got a very clear picture of that exchange between Jesus and me. I'll provide it here in handy skit form.
Jesus: (knocks)
Me: Just a minute!
Jesus: (knocks)
Me: Coming! How the heck do you open this thing? Where's my book? Ah! (Reaches for dog-eared copy of Door Operation For Dummies. Flips to page 46, "So you want to open a door?")
Jesus: (knocks)
Me: Almost got it! I want to let you in, but I don't know how to open the door!
Jesus: (slight pause, mid-knock) That's the holdup? Um, let's see... have you tried turning the knob? I used to be a carpenter, you know - I know a thing or three about doors. Just try twisting it and see what happens.
Just like that. Triple whoa. But still, I thought, that can't be all there is to it. I resolved to email one of the guys from Group to see if I had been going at the whole thing backwards - waiting to feel something to open my heart, yet not opening my heart until I felt something. When I came back to my desk from lunch, I had a short email from the guy I was planning on writing to, saying he just felt like he should check in to see what's up. I actually said "Oh, come on!" out loud in my office. (To which, I now imagine, God probably responded, "Don't make me drop frogs. I'll do it.")
And so, that's how it happened. A Moment when I realized, finally, that I didn't have to tear down the wall. A Moment where I realized that opening a door isn't as hard as I've made it out to be. And if that's it, I realized in the same instant, I WANT IN. All the people in my Group and otherwise who've stood by me through this seeking process, which must've been awfully frustrating at times - I want what I see in them. I put the word out to my Group that I wanted to talk with them Wednesday night after service. Whatever I needed to do, I wanted to do it!
And here I am. Or, maybe just as accurately, there I was. The end of a long seeking journey, staring out in absolute awe at the spiritual journey ahead. I ran, and I made it!
No comments:
Post a Comment