..passion

Where to start... I love Jesus and that love is all consuming. I forget sometimes how much I do love him when I get busy and fill my life with things other than him. But at the end of the day, when my heart is quiet and I come into his presence I really really do love him and that love is a longing and desire that is only quenched through him. The struggle that I am facing right now though is one of passion. I am a person of passion and the more I fall into a consuming relationship with Christ the bigger that passion becomes. It is like a ball of fire, deep within my heart that is always there and never satisfied. The moments that I feel okay with it are usually the moments when I am conveniently forgetting its presence in my life. It is the time when I stop and think that I become wrestles and my heart breaks and I want to cry because I don't know what to do with it. I am really frustrated right now. I applied to be an SMC because maybe that would be a good way to use it. Forest Home over the summer perhaps... But I don't feel satisfied and I feel as though I am scrapping things together to use my fiery ball of passion but they are not the things that it was intended for. What do I do? I have fallen in love with Jesus and yet feel ultimately stuck at the same time. Why would the God I love place so much burning passion in my body and then reveal what it needs to be used for. I know that I am designed to pursue and love God and others with reckless abandonment and that is all my heart desires. I fear that if I remain like this much longer I will cry a lot or just slowly suffocate the passion that is currently bringing me more pain than joy.

"But if we hope fore what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." Romans 8.25

..connection

I need a deep, deep connection in my life right now. I need uniformity in my faith and in my life and I need them to be completely one in the same. There is no room in my mind for a faith that is understood without the lifestyle that reflects that. If Jesus loved the displaced and poor of his generation, that is where his faith met his life and that is where mine should be reflected as well. If I continue to live a faith that can be verbalized but not necessarily seen in my life then I am the ultimate hypocrite and should not be viewed as a Christian. The purity of heart that I search for is only possible through Christ and it is through him that the things that I know and the things that I do and the person I am all become one. I want to be one in Christ, in every possible inch of my being. The more I die to myself the more of him I will reveal and he is unity. There needs to be an unavoidable simplicity in my life if I am going to call myself a Christian. I don't really know what I have been afraid of up to this point. Perhaps I look around and see what the standard of Christian living is and see it simply as a melancholy existence that is a quiet groaning of dissatisfaction. There is a discontentment in it that doesn't appeal to me and I don't want it. I don't want to grow up to be the Christians that I had modeled for me in my life. I want to be entirely different. My lifestyle will be different and therefore I will have a spotlight aimed at me, although I do nothing for the spotlight. It will focus its rays and expose every point of my life, even the ones that I desire to keep hidden just because I want personal intimacy in Christ. I need to become mature enough to withstand the spotlight and not melt under its scrutiny and ignorance. I need to live a life free of fear, because I know what the ultimate result of my lifestyle will be, and perfect love casts out all fear. I want to live in passionate, life consuming love; for God and through that love for God, others. There is so much simplicity in the life I want to live. Christ takes all of who I am, throws away everything that doesn't make him happy and fills me with himself so I am nothing but his. When people see me they should see a Lindsey who is peeling and crumbling, like the decaying wallpaper in a crack house kitchen, to reveal what is underneath- Jesus. Each day I should slowly, despite its pain, peel away more and more of my decaying flesh to be left only with Christ. There is nothing else to live for. Nothing else will leave me happy. Husband. Children. House. Wealth. Family. Success. Happiness. Fulfillment. Uniqueness. Nothing will leave me complete at the end of the day because I was created to be in a passionate, life-consuming infatuation with Christ, where all else is a distraction compared to the desire I feel towards him. Abba, help me fall into deep, borderless, wild, carefree passion with you. That is the only thing that will every satisfy me, ever.

..dry

From Friday on something has been missing. It's not God, he never leaves, but its my realization of him being here. Skipped bible reading after skipped Bible reading has left me with an entire weekend with very little God connection. He is reaching his hand out to touch me but I am not placing mine in his. The past days have seemed empty and lonely, devoid of meaning and purpose and joy. I have gotten sick to and I feel as though it is another weight to add onto the pile. I get selfish when I am sick. I become more conscious of my body and my own physical perdicament and have little energy to invest in others. Part of me says, you can't give anymore, you need to take a break and this is it. The other part of me says that you can do it if Christ is the one that gives you strength. I wish I was well so I could have the energy to read my Bible and talk with God but maybe he is just bringing me to the end of myself to prove that he is a shelter, refuge and friend, one that doesn't leave when I don't call for a few days. I also started my fasting last night and feel as if the experience might be totally wasted this week because it hasn't been about Christ and I haven't replaced food with Him. At the end of it everything comes back to grace. Grace that covers me for the sins I do and that I don't do. Grace that is willing to give me a huge, long hug after I have been out of town for the weekend.

..confession

This section on confession is difficult for me, not necessarily the confession part but the love part. It is difficult for me to love myself at times. Let me clarify, I don't sit paralyzed by fear or in self-doubt but I know how sinful I am and how much I need a savior. I continually thank Christ for his work for me and for loving me despite all the times I go astray. The part that is difficult is loving myself despite all of the reasons I shouldn't. The logical stream of thought that often flows through my mind is Christ loved me enough to die for me and all of my sins and he loves me still. Because he loves me and I am learning to love through him, shouldn't I love myself?

I struggle so much with this. What does loving myself look like? Is it self-righteous admiration or seeing myself through the glasses of Christ? Quezada makes the logical connection between confession of sin and the forgiveness of Christ, which is his love. He then connects the forgiveness of Christ as forgiveness that we should apply in our own lives, thus forgiving ourselves and loving ourselves. It causes me to wonder if I really have forgiven myself because that cannot be seen through my own self-love.

The part of this reading that I understand is releasing unrealistic expectations from my daily thoughts and life. I am learning to live in the moment, with a balanced view of eternity in the back of my mind. Lofty goals and extreme aspirations allow me to look to the path I can take to that point, my own personal strength getting me there. I devise plans for my life, slowly squeezing God out the more concrete plans I make. The releasing of unrealistic goals allows the faith that I have to flourish, not limiting it to confines of my own finite thinking.

I still haven’t reached balance in my life and while I know that I need to change, I am fine with not being perfect yet. I have been broken of my pride and shown my real and very personal need for Christ and for that I am thankful. I need to learn the other side of that experience and learn to love myself because of who I am in Christ, because if he loves me than there must be something special there.