December 3, 2013

• HOLIDAY?! WHAT HOLIDAY???

  I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. My Thanksgiving was perfectly awful. In 7 days, Monday to Sunday, Thanksgiving week I worked 89 hours. Thanksgiving was a 7 hour day, so that was by far the best. The average day was 15 hours, and two days back to back were 16 hours. I feel most fortunate to still be found among the living. I could handle 80 hour weeks when I was 20, but that was 30 years ago! I am incredibly anxious for my life in retail to come to a close. I am burned out beyond even my ability to believe. It is certain that I now have an implacable and deeply ingrained hatred of all things retail. Once I leave retail that door shall be absolutely closed. There will never be a time in my life I will look back on my years of retail torment with any kind of nostalgia or longing. The road ahead of me must be incredibly harsh indeed for God to have placed me in retail. I suppose God needed to put me in a job I would hate worse than whatever he was going to call me to do in ministry.

  Actually I rather like the call of God on my life. I could simply never see myself doing what God has called me to do. I've avoided God's call like the plague not because there was anything wrong with the call, but because there was something wrong with calling me to speak to the Church. Who would listen to the likes of me? The unfortunate thing is I've fairly proved that Christians don't listen to anything that comes from me. God's call is awesome, it's God's people who won't or very probably can't hear. Now that sounds a bit disparaging, but hey, I can only talk about what I've seen and experienced.

  I've come to the unfortunate conclusion that God's people can't hear. When the Bible talks about believers hardening their hearts I never really understood what that meant. I know now what having a hard heart means. Hardness of heart comes from Christians doing ministry their way rather than seeking hard after God's way of ministering. The way Christians minister to hookers, porn addicts, gay and lesbian people has been to strive for laws like DOMA, picketing, marching against, and politicking. God doesn't stand against sin, God overcomes sin. When Christians act like the world it hardens our hearts against God. Instead of reaching out to prodigal younger brothers and sisters we either accept too much or we condemn and reject. God isn't in either approach, and even though the "merely human" approach is doomed to fail, every time, still Christians think "merely human" ways work. The unfortunate truth is "merely human" ways of doing merely serve to harden the hearts of believers, and God is not served in the least. Those who serve God serve a God who overcomes the world, its "merely human" ways, sins, and brokenness. God doesn't need the ways "mere" humans go about ruining and destroying everything they touch. God's ways are the only ways God honors and blesses.

  Do you know when Jesus teaches the parable of the farmer who scatters his seed? In one part of the story Jesus speaks of the ground which is too hard for the seed to sink in. The hard packed ground is the ground which has been used as a path. If a farmer wished to reclaim the hardened ground for planting there was very little which could be done, other than striking the ground to break off the hardened top of the soil. Farmers in the time of Jesus soujourn had to take long and thick poles which they would use to literally pile drive the hard soil to break it up. Once the hard top was finally cracked and broken up, the soil beneath could be plowed up. Pounding on hard hearts will, unfortunately, be the same kind of very difficult, mostly fruitless, work. But hey I've already tried to talk God out of the call, so now I will simply answer and go where he says go. Fruitless? That's his problem, mine is only to obey. I hope my fellow Christians aren't as hard to get through to as I was!!!!!

  • 9:42 PM
  • 4 Comments