some thoughts, catching up, and lukewarm

some thoughts: running faith is so much harder than running cross country. i guess it's a lot of the same principles, but when it really boils down to it, some one can be crazy amazing at running cross country and still have a dead faith. cross country involves denying yourself - keeping yourself from rest and comfort, involving a lot of physical fatigue, stamina, and pain. faith involves denying yourself in different ways. faith in God means denying yourself in every possible way - isolating yourself in the world, refusing to let yourself be better than others, refusing to let yourself even be good enough. the fatigue and pain are not physical, but spiritual, a whole different game, one that can hardly be seen sometimes. and if we are living in both the physical and the spiritual and yet the world only sees the physical realm, then spiritual fatigue and pain could translate to social, political, economic, and perhaps even physical ridicule, discomfort, and failure.

i was thinking in church today that i had gotten way too comfortable in everything i've been doing and that i should try to go out for a really long run so that i could get myself uncomfortable again to start trying to remember to deny or disown myself. and i found that...running cross country doesn't exactly have that much to do with running faith and life, though cross country can teach many of the same principles: the importance of always going forward, continuously pressing on, the importance of using and supporting others because no one should have to run alone, the importance of knowing yourself and how you run and why you run and that success is relative. but the real race that i should be running, the bigger picture - is faith.

in the same way, following the laws in the world isn't exactly necessary to fulfill spiritual laws, but following the laws that govern the world teach much of the same principles. how, even if we can't understand certain rules, they have been put into place to protect us, and once we do understand why they are in effect, we can proceed with our own developed caution, because we have outgrown the laws (because who should really stop at a red light when nobody's there to see it?...some people say God sees it, thinking that God will condemn those who break driving laws, but do you think God's really going to care if you break man's law? i think 99.9% of the time He wouldn't care... it's really supposed to be about His law).

catching up: we've been back in town for just over a week, and...things have been okay. i'm still looking for direction. i think i might volunteer at the PGA championship coming up here in Tulsa, selling ice cream for a local charity, as well as enjoying free admission to watch guys like Tiger Woods. or i'm thinking i might go back to the TV station where i interned and see if i can work for them.

as a smaller youth group, we met last Tuesday and Thursday at my house to try to keep the fellowship going, but still, things are sinking back to the mundane, and we have to know that God is there rather than relying on feeling and spiritual highs to remind us that God is omnipresent. but things have still been okay. Friday night was great because there was grace to get into the Bible and read a lot, around Joshua and Ecclesiastes and Hebrews, and this morning was great because Lisa and Sam spoke about what it means to follow God and let Him lead and let Him move us around and cut off certain things that we love so that He can rebuild them with His own things...what it means to really give Him control of our lives. so... i'm really just sorta waiting. waiting for the next step, waiting for college, waiting for Windermere. hard to believe the summer's already past, but God really did answer all of my prayers. i'm psyched up for college, ready for new beginnings and to meet new people and...for my faith to be tested.

lukewarm. i have noticed that i haven't really written much of anything, not nearly as much or as frequently as i used to write during the school year. and the thing about school was...it's kind of a downer. it forces me to need God. because if my life is school, then it's not God, and i want it to be God, because school is lame and...well, God isn't. so if i go through a really rough week, a bunch of tests and failures and stress and workouts, then i'm really gonna feel like i need God, especially if i didn't get any kind of God during that week, if it was all schoolwork and business. this could be called cold - because i have a lot of problems and they're stupid problems. problems like homework and social worryings and extracurricular activities and whatnot that probably don't have too much eternal relevance. a lot of people say that you feel God the most in the storm, in the cold. when everything seems to be going wrong, that's when you can feel God the most, because that's when you truly know you need Him.

on the other hand, if my life is like a mission trip, with the whole youth group in Marquette, and we're really just seeking God out 24/7, it's really easy to stay God-focused. it's really easy just to sit down and talk to someone or pray with them or even just get together and lead a little Bible study or get into the Word or go down to the beach and have real fellowship. it's really easy to live a Godly life. spiritual highs, like being mounting up with wings like eagles. and this could be called hot - as in we're hot or on fire for God. because God is everywhere we turn and we can't get Him out of our lives and we wouldn't want Him to get out of our lives because we would realize a lot of our foolish ambitions and obligations and insecurities disappear or are rendered insignificant when God is in our lives. so you feel God in this place, this hot, in a comparable way as when you feel Him in the cold.

but the thing about the summer, sometimes, and what is so dangerous, is that when nothing is going on and you get stuck in a bit of stagnancy or laziness, you're neither hot nor cold. you're lukewarm, and that would offer a little bit of explanation as to why i haven't been writing all that much lately up here. this whole concept of being lukewarm comes from Revelation 3, to the church of the Laocedians. God says to the church that He wishes they were hot or cold, but they are lukewarm, and so they can't go anywhere, and He will eventually vomit them up, or something like that.

the worst thing that can happen in a race is that you fall asleep. because you can't really fall asleep and keep up with a fast pace at the same time. [you don't exactly go out and accidentally do the impossible...at least in a race of faith, you don't...alan webb accidentally broke the high school mile record by running in under four minutes.] in a three mile race, it is very common to start slowing down in the second mile, and to accidentally fall asleep in that mile, so that you don't go nearly as fast as you could. (going slow is even better than just slightly slowing down because you won't notice if you slow down just a little bit. even if you really start going slowly in that second mile, things are still relative, so you would at least realize this and consciously try to pick up your pace...staying conscious beats falling asleep anyday.) and when you start falling asleep, you are actually becoming lukewarm. you forget the importance or the urgency of the race that you're running, you forget where you are or how fast you can run or how much energy you should be exerting. you kind of lose consciousness, and though sometimes you can get mad or try to psyche yourself up, it's hard to pull yourself out of being lukewarm. it takes something. something outside of you - something like grace, a sudden spark of energy or moment of momentum or inspiration. or to get out of being lukewarm might take being broken...something that causes you to see how slow you really have become, that you are hardly moving or maybe even moving backwards.

anyways, this is the danger of being lukewarm. and if you are lukewarm, i don't really know what you can do to get out of it. sometimes it can only take God. this was the position that i was in for most of the summer and a little bit of the mission trip and i couldn't do anything to bust my way out of my lethargy, even after it felt like i had given my all. it was only God.