I'm Back...

Ugh, back again. Blogging is low priority on my scale right now- trying to juggle work and preparing something to say this Sunday, and I'm doing poorly on the latter. I've got plenty of ideas, I just need to sort them out.

-What am I so apathetic about being a Christian? Probably a combination of doubting/questions, particularly an absence of a physical God "Lording" over me, my own sin nature (DEFINITELY). I've been reading through another section of "Mere Christianity" that's been helping me to get a better perspective.

-I've been teetering between two extremes: (1) Burning out while trying to live the Christian life on my own efforts, and (2) Not really knowing how to practice faith in God. What does faith involve? Just sitting and waiting? Invoking God's intervention through prayer? How much is God's effort, and how much effort should I be putting into following God? Where's the balance?

-C.S. Lewis related the junction of faith and effort to the two blades on a pair of scissors.

By attempting to live the Christian life on our own efforts, we will fail time and time again. But that's fine- that's part of the design of Christianity; we are SUPPOSED to fail with our own efforts! God leads us to those moments so that we might finally admit that we can't do it alone, and begin to have faith that God will work instead. Our faith will then lead us back to working for God. We'll probably never know specifically what we do for God, and what God does for us- the two should be intertwined, God working in us.

The keys are to (1) Search out enough truth so that a seed of faith can begin, (2) When we begin to exercise that faith, God will begin to root out our sin nature and self-centeredness, often by frustration of our own efforts. But we MUST be willing to go from academic, church-pew understanding of "Gospel theory" to testing it ourselves, making it "Gospel fact". (3) When we inevitably come to the end of ouselves, than we see just how lousy, sinful, worthless creatures we are. How can anything we do be seen as pleasing to God? (4) It is then that we need to say "God, do with me as You want to." In surrendering to this point, God can then finally work (until we hit the problem in #2 again, and the cycle begins again.)

There we go. I'm heading to bed.