A few more notes:
AngelRho wrote:
It's not that I'm a bad person, it's not that I didn't follow the Spirit's direction or obey God or seek a closer relationship. It's just feeling a ton of conviction, looking back on my life, wondering WHAT HAPPENED that got me in as bad shape as I am, a strong desire to get even closer to God, and to be a better example to my wife and children on what it really means to live a life of faith and obedience.
I think what happens to a lot of us, or at least any time I'm a little too 'at leisure' it resulted from me spinning my wheels a little too long and getting nowhere. I've learned something about motivation - its a currency, we get it in fixed amounts, and its a bit like if you blow your paycheck on all kinds of things, even if self-help, but can't pay the rent - your in trouble. Similarly with motivation it needs very careful direction and management.
As far as sticking with things whether it was college, whether its been the 4+ years of martial arts, or whether its been the times in my life where I was serious about weight lifting or even making music, I realized that I had to teach myself how to fall in love with the process. Martial arts or anything else where I publicly started off as a beginner all the more I had to expect myself to suck at first, expect nothing more nothing less, give it full humility, and even keep giving it that even as I got better. Ultimately I didn't even want to worry about the belts, I just wanted to enjoy it class by class. So far so good.
AngelRho wrote:
Obedience is the answer, though, and I've learned that rather than complaining about being hungry/thirsty, we should be thankful that God is faithful to supply our real needs, whether physical needs or spiritual needs.
With certainty. Part of the biggest challenge, whether this or whether in the case of Buddhism, the challenge is cutting through our own static - what we'd call 'iniquity', things that distract us or offput us from connection.
AngelRho wrote:
The Israelites were led into the wilderness to wander for 40 years, and the point of the wandering was to humble them and help them recognize their total dependence on God alone as demonstrated by the manna.
The hardest thing to imagine is doing something equivalent of eating oatmeal pancakes and almost nothing but that for 40 years.
AngelRho wrote:
People want the physical appearance, want to know the big secret, and so on. I just want to say, "stop looking at the outside. Work on the inside first. Work on your soul...or rather devote yourself to giving your WHOLE being to God and actually allow God to work on you. Everything else--the physical things, the good things you think you see--will follow. But as long as you are fearful and keep holding back on your willingness to live by faith, you will never get what you want.
There was this and I can't remember which paragraph you said about people giving lip-service but not being willing to put in the internal work; sometimes its that but I often think the current culture, whether secular or even inside a great many churches, unfortunately gears people toward an external God and an external frame of reference. Once people stop thinking that looking inward is somehow dodgy, dangerous, possibly even Satanic, I think things will come around once its actually made a cultural priority again.
04 Feb 2013, 6:20 pm
