Current Tunage: Mars ILL – Learning Me
“…still looking for who He’s called me to be,
Thanks for being there while I’m learning me.”

Well, it’s Tuesday. That means I’m in Bata… with my playlist on shuffle feeding me musical wonders.

While sitting in my morning Moral Issues workshop, I jotted down a few notes on the side. They’re basically just some residual thoughts that kept popping up in conversation over the weekend as I was sharing with people some of what’s been going on and what’s in store for me in the next while.

Essentially, these are the things which have worked their way to the core of me now, firmly rooted in after a couple months of painful regenerative overhaul. See what you think. I’ve broken it down into two headings: Prayer, and Humility. Both headings point to some of the key overarching attitudes that need to be alive in us, as believers: Dependence on Christ and Complete Trust in Him, Understanding Ourselves Fully, Understanding the Lord Accurately, and Walking by Faith and not Sight.

[Prayer]

1. Pray dangerously, all the time.
(ie. “No matter how much it hurts, no matter what it takes, make me like You, Lord.”)

2. Pray the things you never thought to pray because they seemed too “obvious”, all the time.
(ie. “Increase my hunger for Your Word, my love for Your people, and my dependence on You in prayer – enable me to ‘pray without ceasing’, to be ‘constantly in prayer’.”)

3. Pray according to God’s will (as revealed in the Scriptures, and as He reveals His plans for you – in accordance with the Scriptures – through the still small voice, the threads of circumstance He weaves, and the heart surgeries He performs on you daily) - expect and enjoy the results with thanksgiving.

[Humility...]

1. Is not thinking less of ourselves or diminishing the gifts and abilities God gave us, it is realizing what we really are – fallen, sinful creatures incapable of doing anything redeemable apart from God enabling us.

2. Is utter dependence on God from a broken and contrite spirit, expressed by saying “Help me!” (and variations on that theme) constantly in prayer, and lived by doing all the things that were once impossible for us in our fallen state.

(ie. Doing all the things that make us actually non-conform to this world/age; fearlessly sharing Christ, being God-centric and others-centric, ‘walking in paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake’, and ‘entrusting ourselves to a faithful Creator while doing good’.)

2 Corinthians 5:6-7 ESV (emphasis mine)
So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.

Pulling it all together, “walking by faith” is a holistic approach to living wherein our affections, placed fully upon Christ, cause us to well up in an endless action-producing attitude that says: “Lord, I will go anywhere you send me, do anything you command me, and be exactly what you require of me.” Implicit in this is the overwhelming recognition that such things are utterly impossible for us in ourselves (this is humility), and so this approach to living hinges fully on utter dependence upon God to enable us through prayer and the truth of His Word.

A final note, “walking by faith” is contrasted with “walking by sight”. We may not always see the Master Plan, but we can certainly grow and increase in our understanding of the goodness, holiness, faithfulness, power, and patience of the Master Planner. As we walk with Him, we stop only seeing His hand at work in retrospect and begin to, at certain times, see Him exercising His will all around us in our hearts and circumstances… and when this happens, we must continue to entrust ourselves to Him while doing good, not get bogged down in “Are you really doing this?” and “That wasn’t my plan!” or such things.

“I do not exist,” we faithfully insist
While watching, sink the heavy ship of everything we knew.
If ever You come near, I’ll hold up high a mirror…
Lord, I could never show You anything as beautiful as You.
-mewithoutYou “Messes of Men”