WHEW! Nearly half of my Junior year over, and it'd been great. Busy and work-filled (not a good filling for a donut, btw) but great. I'm learning so much and it's continuously cool to see how much everything bleeds together.
Anyway, the real reason I'm back writing is that I have a lot on my mind. My accountability/small group of guys is going through Wild At Heart by John Eldredge. My mind recalls back when my youth group started to go through it, but we didn't finish. But since I've picked it up again, or as it really is bum my suitemate's copy, it's been sobering and challenging. Tonight I read the 3rd chapter about the question haunting every man. That question? "Am I a Real Man?" and "Will I come through...even when it gets tough?"
I've asked that a lot. I've struggled with self-value a lot. As Eldredge talks, I've boiled it down to my personality. But he also says that everything we need as men is inside of us, that God's put it there. Much like Easter Eggs on DVD's. They're hidden things on a DVD (an extra scene, pictures, alternate ending, etc.--just really cool stuff): they're already there but we don't realize they are until we stumble upon them or go to somewhere (websites) that tell us how to find them. Well, there's no website to tell me where the manly things in me are, but there's a book and a Savior. There's God and His Word. That's the best I can come up with.
It's been really sobering to really look at me. It's sucked and it continues to suck like a vaccuum to say I want the real me to show yet consistently keep doing the same actions, the same sins, over and over again; "I do what I don't want to do and I don't do what I want to do." Oh the tension!!
All I can do now is be humble enough to say I have no clue what to do. I know that God knows what to do in me to mld me into the person and the man he calls me to be. I've been living as the person that I'm comfortable with and the person/man society sees as acceptable.
God, fill in the places that are unfilled, make the rough places smooth, as you state in your Word. I know your promises Lord, and I know you enough to know that you fulfill your promises and don't just make them. I trust you now more than ever. I'm scared out of my head right now, but I know you go before me, I've got the lantern and You've got the map....
---You know, it wouldn't have been that much more to spring for a Garmin. Okay, I'll be quiet and hold the lantern :)---
May there be peace in our lives, may there be strength in us that is not our own. May God take over. May we hold the lantern and find joy in it. A man we make is a fallen one, but the man God has in mind is glorious.
The thoughts of a person who wears many hats. Drummer, Worshipper, Comedian, and Encourager begin the list but in no way complete it. This blog is about my daily walk with the Lord, the good and the bad, and my journey of setting aside all of my other hats for the best one of all, a crown with glimmering jewels, a captivating shine, and inscribed with the words "Follower of Christ."
