as a follower

guess i wrote this in two parts. second part's better, first part might be a bit boring.

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back in Tulsa for Acquire the Fire, and it's a great feeling. this week just seemed...difficult. i don't know what was going on. today being friday, i had an 8:30 class. went to sleep around 4 and don't remember my alarm going off. but my alarm was set for my 8:30 class, so i ended up missing my 10:30 class as well. and then i headed off to Tulsa at 2:30 instead of going to my 2:30 class. so it's great to be back in Tulsa. i feel like i need a vacation.

things are a little weird. walking into Acquire the Fire, in the Mabee Center, is like walking into a stadium full of youth group kids shouting and screaming for God. shallow or not, you can feel God move in that place. the grace is tremendous. i can walk in there, forget about the entire week, and pray and feel very close to God regardless of everything leading up to that moment. and yet... i don't know. it was very nice, but i feel almost like i'm missing something.

i want God to be real to the people there. i want change to be real, and i think so often, people just go and take the altar call and feel guilty for a while until the hype wears off and they get back to their lives. i want there to be a shift of priority, a shift in paradigm. and even for me, i don't want to feel the greatness of intimacy and grace to pray and then simply go back to worshiping God from afar with a dwindling prayer life. i want to re-align my life to His, to remember that Christianity isn't about chastening myself so i can appear more Christian, it's about letting go and, in love, pursuing God, the result of which will be chastening, but even the chastening to purity isn't the purpose of the Christian life.

i remember the way things used to be...i had problems. i very literally needed God, it wasn't just something i did. it was something that changed the way i lived my life, that offered me refuge and kept me from having to worry about everything and having to appease everyone. when i had problems at home or in school or with myself, God was still there. i came and went in His presence as i pleased, and eventually, i just started staying with Him wherever i went, because things were easier. i had purpose, i had reason. i didn't have to worry about fitting in because it was only what God thought. i didn't have to worry about A's on absolutely everything, because grades didn't dictate salvation. that was God's gift, not my own accomplishment or failure.

i think i sorta forget that sometimes. that God changes so that our problems don't really affect us anymore. because i still have problems with family sometimes, and i have problems with myself. and the solution isn't just trying to chasten myself to make me feel better.

i don't know. it's just frustrating sometimes. it does take patience, longsuffering, perseverance. sometimes i want to run away or just give up on it all. but i wouldn't let that happen to my friends in youth group. i wanted to grab someone today and tell him he just had to believe. he just had to press on forward to God, because he was so special, so loved, so anointed, that he couldn't live his life without God. he couldn't let his life go to waste. he just had to love God, he had to do whatever it takes to get right with God, so that he is okay. so that he can taste eternity and relevance and beauty everywhere he turns, even in the difficulties and the deaths.

i guess in the same way, it is important to love yourself. don't let your life go to waste. don't let yourself miss out.

i don't know. we just need change. i told God i wouldn't worry about it, but i find myself worrying about it. our youth group is becoming lukewarm. i want our youth group to emanate the Spirit, to drink deeply of it and desire it and to be so in love with God that it would be like empathy and suicide with the world. it would be unworldly. but that is for God to do and for God's timing... i guess i can still pray about it though.

things are difficult.

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man, i just want to believe in God again. that He'll change everything. that there's nothing He can't do, and His love knows no end and knows nothing greater, and He loves us, so He'll break through to us. that as He has given everything away just to know us, that offer is still there, and He's gonna be glorified and He's gonna be pleased no matter what, even when we screw up, if our eyes are turned to Him in the end. He is the very definition of love. the sacrifice He made on the cross, that is our hope, and that is what keeps us going, even when we know we're gonna fall short. because we have God's hope in us. and even when we fall over and over again and are persecuted for His name and go through difficulties that we can't even verbalize because we can be so distraught, we will have everything we could ever ask for. so that absolutely everything we do is His, because we cannot be disappointed nor upset when He really takes hold of our lives. God is completely worthy to be invested into wholeheartedly, to run after dangerously, and He is unlike anything we have ever seen. He is out of this world, greater than our lives and larger than our imaginations. He is so great that He alone sustains us, and so great that we will spend the rest of eternity simply trying to take in His majesty and His beauty, but we will never catch our breath.

i want to believe God will make everything right, and even if He doesn't change the things i want to be changed, I will see, in the end, that all of this is some how justified, just as He is just. i want it to not even matter about me, but it must be about Him. i want things to be the way God wants them to be. i want each day to be new and exciting, i want to take so much joy in hearing His name and to see that other people love Him. i want to take so much joy in the advancing of His kingdom, going to campus ministries and small group Bible studies and playing the piano in front of people i don't know because it is a proclamation of His beauty rather than mine. i want eyes off of myself because i'm nowhere near as fascinating as He is.

i want things to be like this. the way God would have it. so that He could wrap me in His arms for forever and i could lose myself in Him. so that i wouldn't have to struggle with the things i make myself subject to - the cares of this world, the lusts of this flesh, the burdens of competition and pride. knowing that whenever i turn my eyes to God, i will find His gaze right back at me, filled with wonder and love, saying "you don't know how much I love you. I love you so much you just don't even understand." and for me to not even care about what i look like or what kind of condition my life is in, but to run recklessly past the barriers and the safeguards and give my life over to a Savior, a Redeemer, a Deliverer, the One, the Only One.

this i ask of God. so that life would change. with each day, it would change. even going through the tough times, the desert seasons, that i would still be captivated. i would still hold fast to His promises, knowing i haven't been abandoned, but rather that i am being chastened and prepared for His kingdom, to His glory, for He knows what He is doing and He is making me more like Him. He is taking me out of my flesh and setting me up for righteousness - His righteousness. He is ruining me for the world and for daily life so that I am stuck with a perfect God who will give me more than i can imagine.

it feels like this way of desiring after God is very risky, very dangerous. it also feels like this might be the way to do it. wholeheartedly. dependent. needing God, without reservation.