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14 de Febrero 2008
Memoir - Chapter 7: Where is God in all of this?
Note: This is part of a larger series. Start here to read the whole thing.
In July of last year I wrote:
Lord I need you today. I want to feel your presence in my life. I want to know your love. I want to hear your voice showing me where to go and what to do. I feel the despair of Psalm 42 today. I long for my God. I say why have you forgotten me? Then comes rushing in the answers. Some voices say “You don’t deserve to hear my voice because you haven’t been disciplined enough” other voices say “don’t you see the way you’ve been lead and cared for and protected all these years? Is that not voice enough?” But the truth of Romans 8 speaks into the lies of the first answer. I will never be good enough for your love. Will your promise of no condemnation be kept for me today? The second statement is true enough, but Lord, I want more! I am grateful for all the ways you guide and protect. But I feel myself to be merely floating, never really passionate for you and for your work. I feel myself to be existing, not loved, cynical not engaged, distant and not dearly loved. You know this has been my life long feeling and so this is not some “Dry spell” but is this the normal experience? Lord I ask and I do not hear your voice answering.
There grew in me after that moment an anger – a challenge to God. Why are you silent? Why is there so little demonstrable change in my life? I’ve long wanted God to show up in a dramatic way that would expose my need for him in significant way, producing some transformative catharsis. My following has always been marked by the frustrating lack of God’s presence. I’ve always wanted God to break down the walls of my heart, and give me a powerful demonstration of his love.
I did not expect him to take my request so literally in October.
What I really wanted was the powerful experience of God’s love expressed to me in such a way as to clear my life of what might be inconsequential and motivate toward true discipleship, that would fill me with the boldness of true love, that would enable me toward risky love of the radical sort, that would help me to focus on what was really important and urgent in this life.
Or maybe I’ll put the whole issue more naturalistically, in the words of Steve Jobs:
I’ve looked in the mirror every morning, and asked myself; if today were the last day of my life would I want to do what I’m about to do today. Whenever the answer has been no for to many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectation, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure; these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I’ve found to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart.(Stanford Commencement Message – June 2005)
So I experienced the physical trauma – the sort you might expect to shake things up – the sort you might expect to produce the sort of cathartic experience I have long desired. I experienced a near death experience – the kind you read about and hear that changed peoples lives.
But facing death has not given me the clarity of vision or purpose, it has not shown me the dead weight, or the true calling. Being saved from near death has not given me a deep and renewed experience of God’s love and transforming power. I feel very much the same crusty and lukewarm man. It has not produced in me the cathartic experience I yearned for. And so I’ve remained angry at the absence of God in all this. I think you’ve heard that in my words.
| By rob | 9:30 PM
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