confessions, pt 2 + 2 Hours (EDIT!!)

If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. -1 John

i had a long night. i talked to billy and sorta got psyched up and then i went outside and talked to God, sorta. for a while, it was just me singing songs, which is easier than actually having your heart changed. and by the end, i think i had at least taken a step in the direction of God. the air was cold and the grass was bouncy, and the stars were so much bigger than my imagination. and yet God was still watching me. and i didn't deserve it, i felt like a "retarded rock." and i still didn't deserve it, but i asked God to put a desire for Him in my heart... and i continue to pray this will be what happens.

this is from an e-mail i got yesterday after i sent this post to someone:

"God alone saves your life. i can't save it, you can't save it. and God's in the business of saving lives. i mean, think about the crazy amount of "coincidence" it takes for someone to finally accept Jesus into their hearts? and how much did it take for you?" and the answer to that is...i wouldn't have been able to help it. finding God wasn't my work...it was my pleasure, it was my salvation or liberation or answer. but it wasn't my work. that's the last thing it was.

"go, and know that you are saved. saved...by grace and by the love of God the Father. you can't save your own life - that much is certain. you cannot save it. i mean sure, there is some active part of faith that's involving...but when it comes
down to it, you can't save yourself. God alone can save you, and know that He will...for His glory. and for His love to you."

and these 2 hours... well, we underestimate grace. i'm just gonna try to keep my eyes on God. and confess...

there's this feeling you get at the end of a track workout, when you have pretty much laid it all down and you stop caring about your workout and all you want is for everything to be okay. you see, it stops being about us. it stops being about being better. because even if you were better, you're nothing without people to share it with. and...at the end of the day, when you look back at how you spent and presented yourself, you don't care how much you got done or how good you are. you just want to feel someone's embrace that says "i care. i saw you. i cried when you cried and i rejoiced when you rejoiced. you don't have to worry about being good enough for me. everything's going to be okay."

you had to have been there. at the conference championships, after i ran my half mile. that's the only thing i would have cared about. someone who would let me fall asleep on them and rejoice with me.

--ORIGINAL--

i thought i was going somewhere, but it doesn't feel like it anymore, at least today. it feels like i'm not running anywhere or for anything. i'm not running for school, because school is kind of a joke. and i'm not running for running, because...well, i'm not even running anymore and i don't have that much reason to be. and i think, in all the truthfulness that i have discovered today, i was running to be remembered in the youth group. that's why i get selfish, right? and it's great, because i don't even have that anymore. i'm not the popular guy. and now i'm selfish, so it makes sense, doesn't it? i placed my value in social economics. and when i'm not one of the guys talking to the girls, cause us guys now talk to girls, i get selfish because i would have to compete for attention and i don't want to compete. because today, it feels like none of it's enough. God isn't enough. that's what it feels like. and even though i have billy and ruth who says i look cute and my mom and mike and lisa and chris chou and all of these other people who would die for me and would say they really respect and admire me, and even if i have God on my side, the Creator of the Universe, looking down on me saying "you've stolen My heart," it doesn't feel like anything.

it feels like it's perishable. and that's completely wrong, but i feel it. when we went down to Mexico City, we worked with this pastor we called Dr. Cary who pastors all of these churches and fathers all of these orphanages, and he said he wasn't always like who he is now. he said he used to be a drug dealer, one of the biggest and most feared names in Mexico. he had a huge house on the side of the street, which is a big deal, because those cost a lot. and he used to run - he actually ran in the 1984 Olympics in Mexico City for the Mexico team. and he said when he gave his life to God (i'm not sure what prompted him to do that), he said he knew it was either all of this fame or anonymity. and he picked the anonymity, because it meant that he might know God.

i was reading Ecclesiastes, because Mike mentioned that if we wanted to know what "all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your mind and all of your strength" really meant, we should read Ecclesiastes. so i started reading yesterday, and it's talking about King David's son, who is pretty much the smartest and richest guy ever, in the history of everything, a little like Dr. Cary. and all of these works - he keeps comparing them to grasping at the wind. it reads pretty well, like a poetic monologue. he talks about all of the different things he used to quench his satisfaction and how he went through all of them trying to find something to spend his life on, and at the end, he calls them all vanities. futilities, absurdities, frustrations, nonsense. he says it's grasping for the wind.

well, i haven't gotten to the end, but i'm thinking he finds God and then he knows he has to give his life to God because his life is nothing without God as a Savior. because he says, he has all of this wisdom, all of this power, all of these possessions. but it doesn't make a difference.

So I said in my heart, "As it happens to the fool, it also happens to me, and why was I then more wise?" Then I said in my heart, "This also is vanity." For there is no more remembrance of the wise than of the fool forever, since all that now is will be forotten in the days to come. And how does a wise man die? As the fool! -Ecclesiastes 2:15-16

so, the question is...what will i do? and the answer...i don't know. i've got big things coming up, not to mention i can't say that i'm right with God anymore, and pretty much everything i'm about to face will fall apart if i'm not right with God. and what's tough, is that i have to genuinely want to be right with God for the sake that i owe it to God or for the sake that He deserves my life, not because i care about all of these things i'm about to face. i have like 2 or 3 hours coming up one of these nights...2 or 3 hours to maybe save my own life.