Vagaries and Vantage Points

I have been in New Orleans for just over a month now and I believe that I have learned more [painful] lessons in this time than I have in the last year combined. James 1 is ever a comfort to me and never fails to remind me that, yes, this sucks, but it is good and I am growing and becoming more like Christ because of it...

In my last post, I talked about letting go of my notions of community. Not only have these thoughts gone deeper, but the chasm has opened wide and I now see a bigger picture that not only entails my community, but my life as a whole.
I sat down at a coffee shop yesterday for a while and listed all of the things that I feel that I "need" to feel like Rae. My list wasn't as superficial as I thought it would be--or so I thought.
My list:
Community
To be utilized well
Mental stimulation (ie. good conversation/music/art/etc)

Not bad, right? Well, then I went through the realizations from the last post--These are never promised to me. I have promises for good and joy and peace. But never a promise for the things listed above.
Anyway, so through this, I realized that He is bringing me to a place where all I need is Him. Well, that seems simple enough, right? Sure, all I need is God. That's what I thought before I embarked into this craziness, anyhow.
Now I am realizing that the stripping away of everything in which I once found comfort is the most ridiculous painful thing that I have ever experienced. My friends and family-a major source of comfort-are all 1,000 miles away. The internship that utilized me well and engaged me is no more. Even the ability to connect with God in nature has been taken from me, as it's incredibly difficult to see God in nature in the middle of a cement Island that is 8 feet below sea level.
So the question remains:
Where do I seek comfort? Because the fact that I feel that I am not me because of a lack of these things would reveal that it is not God from whom I seek my comfort. I heard a sermon today that shook me up a little bit. He talked about our short-sightedness. We desire things and He longs to give us SO MUCH MORE (If I could somehow relay the Southern Baptist accent in writing, it would make it so much more effective!). Everything in us wants our comforts and our routines, but Jesus has called us to GO (Matt. 28). We are not meant to be comfortable in this world, but only through Him.
The Holy Spirit should create in us a ripple affect--it should wake us up to desire that our hearts and our wills and our desires be crushed and that His replace them.

This then begs a question, though. I have the desire for my will to be crushed, so why doesn't it happen? Why do I constantly have to fight against myself to move anywhere?
Up north, I was often told that I had a servant's heart. The reality that this is nonsense has never been truer than what I see now in myself. A servant's heart does not just entail picking up the hymnals after the meeting or serving a meal at the shelter once a month. If that were a servant's heart, NONE of us would have any ability to live the life in Christ that we do now. A servant's heart cares for other people sacrificially. But what does it mean to live sacrificially? Here is the true message of the Gospel! A sacrificial heart lays down itself so that others may flourish. A sacrificial heart dies to its desire and its will and its need for the sake of the other.

This is the desire of my heart. I long to learn to love people sacrificially the way that Christ did. I long to learn how to die to my own will and desire for the sake of other's comfort and assurance that they are loved and cared for. And I realize that by asking for this that it will be granted to me because Psalm 37:4 reminds us that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us the desires of our heart. (Funny how the reality of that verse is that when we delight ourselves in the Lord, HE becomes our desire. Sneaky Sneaky, eh? It's the Catch-22 of falling in love with this God.)

The desire is there in me; the implementation is weak.

So the reality is this:
I long for comfort, but comfort cannot be found because He is teaching me about what it actually means to love the way that He loves us. He is teaching me what it means to love sacrificially. And that lesson begets no comfort unless comfort is Christ because everything that was once comfortable has been stripped away.
But in the lesson, the beauty of Paradise Restored resounds just a little bit more in this world.

It's all so beautifully interconnected.





Play by Play

-The job is going well at the Seminary's preschool, although it is, I hope, a stepping stone. I have an interview with a charter school this coming Wednesday for an Associate Teaching position, which would be wonderful. If you would pray for that, I would really appreciate it!
-I am now a member of Sojourn-Lakeview Baptist Church--I have never been a member of a church before, so this is an interesting experience and really only a couple of hours old.
-I got to visit with a great friend Andy Camann this weekend when he came in to town from Houston!


Growing Curves

Please also pray for these things that I am discovering or being shown to me:
I need to learn to be a better listener and to truly learn to show care for the people talking to me. I may intake what people are saying, but I do a poor job of relaying that. There is usually so much happening in my head that I sometimes zone out or shut down. This absolutely needs to change.
I also need to learn to slow down under pressure and make better decisions in that pressure.
Both of these things are not new discoveries, but down here in this context, if I do not learn to do them, major things are affected.
Please join me in praying for a change in me to be more like Christ in these areas--I appreciate it.