Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it

Last week in church we sang the hymn Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing, and I wrote down the title in my phone meaning to write a post on it last Monday.

These words jumped out at me while we sang,

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.

This is something I’ve talked about before, but it hit me pretty hard while singing.

This is true of me. No matter how many times I’ve come back to God, I still seem to find my way away from Him again.

Little did I know though, that I would experience that very thing over the next week.

I can’t explain what happened.

I wouldn’t even know where to start.

I just entered into some kind of dark tunnel all last week.

I didn’t read my Bible.

I didn’t pray.

I didn’t do much of anything.

Just kind of shut down, and shut people out.

I didn’t want anything to do with even my own family.

Didn’t want to see my wife or my kids.

Didn’t want to leave the house.

Just wanted to curl in a ball and disappear.

The hard thing for me this time, is that I don’t know why.

Most of the time I can point to a situation or event that triggers these episodes.

But this time I really can’t think of anything.

One day I was feeling pretty good and the next I was spiraling downward faster than I have in a while.

All I know is that I woke up Saturday a little before noon and realized that I’d missed half of my son’s birthday and the things that my wife had planned for it.

In fact I woke up to an empty house.

I don’t know why, but this snapped me back to reality.

It’s not like everything went away right away.

I still don’t understand why this happens sometimes.

Maybe I needed a reminder that I can’t do this on my own.

That I’m not a good enough writer on my own to really do anything with.

That I truly need God to help me along the way.

Without Him, I seem to become a blithering idiot really quickly.

He withdrew from there

In Matthew 14, when news reaches Jesus of His cousin John the Baptists death, the first thing He does is very much the first thing I would do. He withdraws from where He was. He hops in a boat and tries to find a place to be alone.

This is exactly the way I am when things get to be too much. I need to be alone to process things. To pray. To collect my thoughts in a quiet and calm place.

But unfortunately for Jesus, in this situation, He is met with all of the people who had heard where He was going.

I think I would have jumped back on the boat and told them to take me somewhere else.

But Jesus had compassion on them.

It’s right after this that two of the most told miracles of Jesus happen. He feeds the 5000 people who have gathered to see Him. Then after finally getting some alone time, He walks on the water to get to the boat with His disciples in it.

I have no idea how Jesus could be that patient and kind. I wish I could be as compassionate and kind when things don’t go the way I have planned. I guess it means I have a long way to go.

A little laughter is good for you

I realized that some of my posts lately have been a little serious.

So, I thought I’d share something that made me laugh during my bible reading today.

The Bible plan I started after Easter had me reading in Ezra today as one of its four tracks.

I’ve found that with the craziness of having a kid run around while I’m trying to read it’s a little hard to concentrate. So I’ve been listening to an audiobook of it while I read it.

Today, while in Ezra 10, it was going through a whole list of names.

I realized that this poor guy had to sit in a room and read off these names one after another.

I couldn’t help but laugh at this image.

The voices in my head

This might be a hard post for me to write and may not even make much sense when I’m done. But I hope that others can get something out of it.

Last week was a really hard week for me. I’m not even really sure why or how it all started. But I can tell you that somewhere in there I started listening to the voices in my head again and, maybe more importantly, believing what they had to say.

For most of my life, I’ve dealt with depression and one of the things that comes along with it for me, is an issue with self-doubt.

I’ve never really believed that I was very good at anything, and no matter how many times other people tell me I am I still find myself falling back into the habits of doubting myself and thinking that I don’t matter.

Most of the time I can handle these voices and put them in their place. I can see that they are just trying to keep me from doing anything with my life.

But last week the voices got really really loud and I had a really hard time blocking them out.

If you asked my wife she could tell you that I probably seemed a little off. I stopped wanting to be around other people and just retracted back into myself.

Looking back on it now, I can see that I was overreacting to everything. Getting mad at the kids for little things. Snapping at my wife for some perceived slight.

These voices told me that nobody really cared what I had to say.

Plus who was I to tell anybody anything about God?

I’m just a sinner. Look at your anger. How can you speak of God’s love with all that anger in you?

I have all of these ideas for things to do. hat I feel are what I’m supposed to be doing with my life. But yet I find myself doing none of them, because this doubt has built up so high inside me that I can’t see over it anymore.

I doubt that God really has any use for me.

I doubt that anyone is even paying attention to me or cares at all.

With all of this going on, I realized on Friday, that I couldn’t remember when the last time I had taken my meds was. So I started taking them again and realized that the voices in my head were just that.

Then I got some words of affirmation this weekend that people were listening and cared about what I was doing.

It was all I could do not to cry.

God heard my doubts and listened and answered them.

He who has ears, let him hear

After Jesus tells the parable of the sower, He says those words.

“He who has ears, let him hear.”

I’ve often thought this a very strange saying.

Wouldn’t most of the people hearing Him speak have ears and in so having ears wouldn’t they have already heard what He said?

But I realized while reading it this time that it doesn’t have anything to do with having real human ears.

It has to do with have spiritual ears and having them open to hear the things that God is trying to say to you.

After Jesus says this, His disciples pull off to the side and ask Him why he speaks in parables and doesn’t just come out and say what He is trying to tell the people.

But Jesus quotes from Isaiah where God is telling Isaiah that the people have closed off their eyes and ears and are no longer able to hear what God is trying to tell them.

I pray that God would open our eyes to see and our ears to hear. That He would help us to understand the things He is trying to tell us and that we might return to Him.

Lord I pray that you would heal us.

Heal us of our unfaithfulness.

Our brokenness.

That You might be glorified in all of the things that we do in your name.

But some were doubtful

After Jesus was resurrected and had spent the 40 days with them, He was preparing to go back to Heaven.

He told the disciples to meet Him on a mountain. The 11 came and met Him there that day.

Matthew 28:17 says,

“When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful.”

I love that this is put in there.

They really didn’t need to put it in, and really, some people would probably say that it shouldn’t be there.

Why would these people who have seen all of the miracles that Jesus has performed and lived with Him have doubts?

But I really do love that it’s in there. Because I have doubts.

For a time in my life I thought these doubts meant that I didn’t have enough faith, or that I wasn’t a good Christian.

But I’ve come to see that it is good and natural to doubt things.

It is through my doubts that I have really come to see God in a whole new different and deeper way.

Without my doubts along the way, I wouldn’t be where I am in my faith right now.

Of all the freedoms that God has given me, I think I appreciate the freedom to doubt Him the most.

Not that it should bring us further from Him.

But that through searching for the answers to our doubts, we might find the answers in Him.

Look up

Yesterday in church my pastor was talking about as the women were going towards the tomb they were looking down.

They were grieved over Jesus’ death.

They were scared of what would happen next.

They were worried about how they would roll the huge stone away.

Then they looked up and saw that God had already taken care of it all.

Jesus wasn’t dead.

God had a plan for what came next.

The stone was already rolled away.

We can get so focused on our own problems and pains, that we fail to look up and see that God has already done the hard work for us.

He’s already gone before us and moved the stone away. We just have to look up and see it.

As I was playing in the worship team yesterday after the sermon. Something told me to look up.

I had been so focused on singing the right words and playing the right chords that I was just looking down.

I looked up and right in front of me was my son smiling back up at me.

If I wouldn’t have looked up I would have lost the chance to smile at Max from the stage. He always asks me to smile at him while I’m playing and most of the time I forget. I just get so focused on the music.

Yesterday I looked up and saw the beautiful gifts that God has given me already.

A beautiful family.

A beautiful church.

A beautiful life.

Why would I ever look down again?

Lent day 47

I was trying to explain to Max this morning why we celebrate Easter, and it occurred to me just how crazy the whole story is.

Sometimes I don’t think we really think about how strange our stories are until we try to explain them to a child.

I found a book and read it to Max to try to explain the whole story. He knew parts of it, but hadn’t really put the pieces together yet.

I think that’s the way most of us are. We have heard most of these stories all of our lives and yet don’t really seem to fully grasp them.

For me, I think, that has a lot to do with not spending enough time reading my Bible.

Over the last 47 days I’ve found the act of setting time aside to read the Bible and write a little about what I’ve learned to be an amazing way to actually digest what I’m reading.

I don’t know if I’ll keep up this daily writing thing from here on out, but I’ll try to get on a schedule that I can keep writing more often.

But through my daily reading and thinking on these things I’ve come to a whole new understanding about the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

I’ve come to see that the story of Jesus is still very much alive today, if we open our eyes to see it around us.

Each day before I read, I try to pray a little pray asking God to open my eyes, ears, mind, and heart, so that I may hear and understand what He has to tell me that day.

I think I need to remember that He speaks to us in our daily lives just as easily as our Bible study times.

Lent day 46

Holy Saturday

This is a strange day. If you think about the story of Easter, I think this day would be the hardest day.

You’ve been following this man around for a while now and you really thought He was the Messiah.

But now He’s dead and in the grave.

What do you do now?

Where do you go?

Are the Romans going to hunt you down and kill you too for following this man?

You thought He would save you and the country of Israel would rise again.

But now He’s dead.

How can this be?

We on this side of history, would tell them to just hold on for one more day. Things will change tomorrow and you will understand everything in a whole new way.

That’s easy for us to say.

But how are we when we are waiting on the things that we think God is going to do for us?

How patient are we when we wait for His timing in our lives?

I can tell you that I am horrible at waiting for anything.

I’m not a patient person.

I think, in some ways, that is the point of Holy Saturday. That we might learn to wait for God’s perfect timing.

That we would learn that His timing is not always our timing, but that His timing is perfect.

That even when it is the darkest in our lives, He is there and has never left us.

Lent day 45

As I was reading the story of the Crucifixion today, I realized that part of the reason I felt like I didn’t have anything to say yesterday, was because that’s the only way I know to be when confronted with the truth of what happened that day.

The fact that God sent Jesus to die for my sins leaves me breathless.

How can I stand up in front of the Cross and even think to say something?

All I know to do, is to fall on my face and cry, “Father, please forgive me.”

I know that I am so unworthy of the price He had to pay.

Yet I find that He was more than willing to do it for me.

What can I, a filthy sinner, say that can add to the work that God has already done for us all?

Lent day 44

Today’s been a strange day for me. I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve had a really hard time finding the motivation to do my devotions and to write.

This is the 44th day that I’ve been doing this in a row and today I just really didn’t want to do it.

It feels like I’m empty today.

Not that I don’t have ideas. Just having a hard time feeling like it matters at all.

I know that there are people who have read the things I’ve written and enjoyed them.

I just can’t seem to find it in me to care about it today.

I know this isn’t a great post. Just felt like I needed to share this today.

Plus I didn’t have anything else to say.

I’ll keep plugging away at this and hopefully will feel more up to it tomorrow.

Thanks for sticking with me through all of this.

Lent day 43

As I read Matthew 26 today focusing on Peter’s refusal of Jesus, I realized how many times I’ve done that very thing in my own life.

My dad’s a pastor and so I was raised in the church. But I started living dual lives for a while. I would be one thing in church, and then a completely different person at school or with my friends.

It was like I didn’t want them to know that I was a Christian, and for the most part, I really wasn’t.

I went through the motions in church. But mainly because I thought that’s what a good pastors kid did.

I would have still called myself a Christian, but the way I lived my life denied Jesus.

This pattern has followed me throughout my life.

At different times I’ve tried very hard to not let people know that I was a Christian.

I didn’t want them to think I was “that kind of Christian,” so I thought it best that they didn’t know I was one at all.

No matter how you look at it, I was denying Jesus.

The amazing thing that I found through all of this, is that even though Jesus has every right to deny knowing me, He’s always been right there with me.

He’s never left me.

He’s never denied me.