Listening in the Silence

I don't know about anyone else, but I have a really short fuse when it comes to waiting on God to speak to me.

There's something about waiting that's just repulsive... I guess I wouldn't consider myself a waiter (not the kind that bring people their food, although I can't see myself being able to deal with rude people well enough to work that job either). Maybe it's because we're here in good old America and we don't have to wait for anything, so we just get used to having what we want when we want... But I've learned something about myself through times I've had to wait; I just can't stand waiting.

God brought me outside into my yard today to have some time with Him. I didn't know why... I just felt like that's where I was supposed to go. And when I feel things like that, I normally begin to churn out thousands of expectations for what that time should look like: "Oh man, it's probably going to be something crazy that He's going to show me..." or, "Oh man, he even gave me a destination! He must have lots of things to say to me today..."

I went out there, sat down, and heard nothing.

I saw a bird next to me with a big juicy bug in its mouth. It squawked at me a few times, then opened up the old gullet and swallowed it whole. My mind was racing to try to figure out what it could mean. I finally parked at "Careful, Tim. Let's not try to be that guy and make something out of nothing."

I walked into the backyard and saw a rabbit taking shade under the long shadow of an overgrown bush. It stood still as I watched it. As I stood there watching, the thought entered my head, "I don't think I'm going to hear anything from God today."

That's never something I like to hear when I finally end up taking time out of my day to try. Doesn't always do wonders for your morale to push into that time tomorrow either.

My mind began racing. I was reminded of a conversation with a good friend a couple days ago about what happens when we are listening but God's not speaking. We discussed at length how we had both recently experienced times when we went out of our way to listen for God, but came away with nothing (or seemed to, anyway). And I have wondered about that place ever since, because it seems that that is the place He wants to address.

First of all, I think God likes being silent with me sometimes. A friend of mine one time at a bible study had us all find a place to lay down in the grass, and he told us not to pray. He said, "just be with God." I still remember that, and it was called to my mind today. It was as if God said, "You don't have to hear anything to be spending time with me." I wonder why I feel like I need to feel productivity all the time?

Secondly, I spend a great deal of my life chasing after whatever will make me feel good. I don't like to admit it, but I really do (you probably do too, get off that high horse).  I have also noticed that at times I give up on listening to God quickly because it doesn't feel good to wait. I hate realizing things like that... It pretty much means I'm chasing after my own pleasure instead of making even my time with God about God. I think I'm really good at making the relationship I have with God all about me. And that's not congruent with His vision of how His people were meant to live in relationship with Him... actually, it's not even congruent with what we know about the way earthly relationships work. My definition of love is caring about someone else over yourself; putting their needs before your own. Only caring about what makes you feel good is Old Way living, as Larry Crabb would say. It's not love, it's selfishness. Love is me thinking about God's desires instead of my desires (Thinking about and praying for God's desires is a really powerful thing...).

There's something extremely intriguing to me about continuing to listen for God's voice when He is being silent. I think He likes it. I'm not super into that love language stuff, but if I had to guess, I would guess that our undivided attention is one of God's love languages. It means we stopped caring about us for a second, and now we care about only Him and what He might be doing or thinking about or caring about. That seems like something that would catch His eye, doesn't it?

So there I sat today, giving God the love offering of alertness for his voice in the silence. I'm convinced that God likes it at least as much when we sit reading or listening and don't hear anything as he does when we are listening as he is speaking loudly and clearly... considering we don't control whether he is speaking to us at all, past our own listening. God is the one in control of when God speaks. We can definitely shut him out if we try hard enough (God is a gentlemen, as I've heard it put), but when we are willing to listen, we are putting the ball in His court. And when we hear nothing, there's no way He is saying, "Oh no, I had a message for you but you MISSED it... ahh, well you blew it and I can't do anything about it now. You pretty much suck at this." Instead, I imagine Him saying, "Dang, look at Tim today. He's still listening even though I am remaining silent. He must really care about what I have to say."

There is a part of me that'd rather be in that situation. There is something really holy about it.

 Therefore I can leave my silent time satisfied with having been a watchman, alert for the possibility of His voice, knowing that God was honored and accomplished His desires for me today.

That makes the waiting much more worth it to me.

Lamentations 3:24 - "I say to myself, 'The LORD is my portion; therefore, I will wait for him.'"

Dreams and God's Voice

God has been communicating with me in some unconventional ways recently. It's actually starting to freak me out a little bit. Sometimes in a good way... and sometimes... in a freaked out kind of way.

I know it may sound crazy, but I've been having some dreams. Dreams that I wake up from knowing that they mean something.

I'm not sure that every dream means something; I've had some weird dreams. I once dreamed that I was being chased around the outside of my house by a giant baby on a tricycle. And this was not just a normal baby... the baby that was chasing after me was the egg-shaped baby from whatever the opposite of "hit cartoon series" is, Histeria. I was terrified.

 Now you are almost certainly saying to yourself, "What in the world is Histeria?"

 To quote my good friend Kent Oglesby, you would be exactly right. In fact, I hope no one I know besides me is using up brain space on that show. I don't care how infinite brain space is.

Assuming you have no idea what I'm talking about (a safe assumption),  all you need to know is that one character on the show was basically an egg with a baby's face and arms and legs sticking out, on a tricycle, and that it has haunted my dreams quite literally. Thats what I get for watching that show MAYBE one and a half times (my friends tell me I have abnormally clear recall of old TV shows from the 90's. They all say, "Tim remembers everything that happened to him in fifth grade." It's a blessing and a curse). And this isn't the kind of "I've only watched this show like once" that you say in second grade to keep people from knowing you watched Barney 4 times that week, although I definitely had my share of those moments... (not that I ever watched Barney...) This is an honest to goodness "I can't believe i put one episode of this show into my head and now it is chasing me around my house."

I'm pretty sure if that dream meant anything, then it was probably "Don't watch crappy cartoons anymore."

I am by no means a dream expert. Some of my friends hold fast to the idea that God speaks frequently through dreams, and some of my friends are less inclined to think about dreams like that. I just don't know a lot about this kind of thing. But what I do know is that this is one of the first times I have felt like God had a message for me in a dream. I've also been feeling like he wants me to share the experience. He likes to speak to His children. And we are really really good at explaining him away.

 I am going to describe two dreams, so bear with me.

A few weeks ago I had this wacky dream about aliens coming to Earth and trying to befriend humans. These little guys, who were trying to convince everyone that they were nice aliens, were able to crawl into a person's head and make him/her feel intense pleasure. But in doing that, one would lose control of his/her body to the alien until it crawled back out. The aliens were trying to convince people to come back to their home planet, where they could feel this pleasure all day long if they wanted to. I remember having a really bad feeling about them. I knew something wasn't right.  In my dream, there was a group of people who wanted to go back with them, believing that they would make good on their promises. Long story short: there was a big battle between the army and the aliens (the people who were trying to go back with them were fighting on their side), their ship narrowly escaped away into space, carrying the people who had agreed to go back with them, never to be seen again.

Creepy and weird. I was incredibly weirded out that morning.

As I recounted the morning to my friend Pua Coffman, she said, "So do you think it means anything?" as if that's just something normal for us everyday weird dream havers. Which, maybe it should be... That's why I pay Pua to be my friend.

A few days later, I had another dream.

This dream was significantly more disturbing. This dream was about a child molester trying to trick a little boy and a little girl into getting into his car. He was dressed up as a fairy (weird) and he was telling the children that he needed them to help him rescue a princess and save the world. The little kids, who had a love for adventure, were buying it... they just didn't know any better. They began to follow him away, and as they got closer to the car, another man showed up, also disguised. One man said to the other, "Let's leave the girl and just take the boy." I ran to stop them, but before I reached the children, I woke up. And when I woke up, I didn't know what to do with myself. But I knew that the dream was from God, and that it was linked to the first one.

 I got in the shower, incredibly frustrated with God. He was trying to speak to me, but did it have to be like that? "Why did you just do that, God?" I kept asking, over and over. I just couldn't stop thinking about it. 

Finally, his answer came: "This is the kind of damage Sin does to my children."

The dots quickly began to connect between the dreams. There was a sense of something foreign, something evil, extending an invitation to the naive, an invitation that seemed to be a source of life but was something... destructive. There was also a sense of permanence to the consequences involved; things that can't easily be undone.

And to make it personal, the "let's leave the girl and take the boy" line just had to be thrown in there. It kind of felt like that was supposed to be me.

This wasn't just a lesson to be deflected onto a friend. "So and so really needs to hear this." This lesson was for me. It's funny (not haha funny, but 3 legged dog funny... as my dad likes to say) how easy it is to lose an opportunity to be changed by deflecting a lesson away to someone else in my mind. Even though that person could need to hear whatever God is saying, there is a reason he's saying it to me.

My thoughts and prayers into these two uncommon run-ins with God have culminated into a question: 

What's at stake?

What's at stake when I choose Sin? What's at stake for people living in sin, for ten years, for 10 months... for 10 days? What am I getting myself into by walking willingly into this destructive place? 

The metaphors I was given answer that question in a way I don't want to think about. But God doesn't call us to ignorance. He desires that we gain greater understanding of the truth. What is at stake? The mangling of our hearts... the disfiguring of our Original Design... that's what's at stake. 

John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

1 Peter 5:8 Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

A few of my friends have recently expressed disinterest in God... they say "Why would I want to take that path? All it does is tell me things I can't do. It just looks like a bunch of rules and regulations." And why would they take that path when they see no life in it? Meanwhile, life without these "rules and regulations" looks so free, so inviting, so life giving. I completely get it.

This is one of the Enemy's most cunning and effective lies; making freedom look like captivity, and making captivity look like freedom.

We think we are gaining freedom... but we are losing it! This is why I sin! I sense life and freedom in my choices, and I follow them away from Christ. I follow my idols away from my source of life and true happiness, because they look like the very things I was made to desire from God. And... I am walking into future emotional and spiritual scars that aren't necessarily going to go away easily. Ugh.

"But in all that God's purposes are NOT defeated. His plan is NOT destroyed. He is able to not only cover over the multitude of our sins and mistakes, but weave them into our stories to create something beautiful." - Lee Cottrell (After I explained my dreams to him)

Thank you God, that you are a master weaver, and you can weave my mistakes and my scars, no matter how disgusting, filthy, perverted, or evil they are, into exactly what you meant to create from the beginning.

Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose.

The Source

I've had a lot of time to think over the break. I have, for the past year, been thinking about writing a book about all of the things I feel like I have learned about who I truly am, and about the way I resemble God, and about the things that I was made to be and to do. The needs that I have had that I don't understand... The things that scream out from a deep place in me that I haven't explored yet... those are the things that I am incredibly interested in.

I am fairly certain that for each of us, some of these deep, unexplored places are the same. We all share certain desires: we all want love to some capacity, we all want adventure to some capacity, we all want to bring something special to a group larger than us. But I am also certain that we each have special places, unique to our own Original Designs, where our passions burn in a way that is different from those around us... Unique things within us that set us apart, that cause us to desire a road we don't see other people on. And that is scary. For some, that burning inside cries out to us for newness and excitement. For others, intimacy is the only thing that really matters... and finding it. Some of us are willing to give up everything to travel the world, while others never leave our hometowns as long as we had a steady job and a meaningful, intimate relationship. And neither is wrong... it's what is inside us. Maybe sometimes we misinterpret what we truly want... but the things we yearn for we should never feel sorry for.

Everyone has different preferences and things they find themselves wanting to do... But I am certain that whatever it is that we see on the outside runs much deeper than that. I believe that the hidden engine of each human being is made up of a unique set of heart motivations and deep needs that we don't understand and don't know how to fulfill.

I live in my own brain for most of the time. And those things are what keeps me thinking all day.

(So if you see me wandering down the hallway with a confused look on my face... just let it happen.)

I learned a ton about myself by finally getting the courage to look deep within what is really happening when I get out of, say, the movie Avatar, and feel like there is a stake in my heart because there was something in that movie that I couldn't have. I realized that there are things in me that don't just come alive, but begin screaming when I choose to connect myself with a story that has a specific recipe, a few certain special things that my soul is dying for... Which, those specific things don't make tons of other people feel the same way. In fact, I know plenty of people who thought that movie was kinda stupid. But that is what I'm talking about. That just means they have different passions. Nobody is just not passionate. Because God is super passionate and we were made in his image. My manifestation of that image just so happens to be all about some adventure... at least what I know about it right now. And the way that Avatar pressed my buttons is unmistakable. Really, a ton of movies and books do the same thing. Avatar is just the first one that came to my mind. It's not just because it was a good story. There were themes, elements from it that I just wanted to have... to be involved in. I didn't want to be blue (or did I...?). I just wanted what was there on an elemental level. There is something about a beautiful new world, a dangerous, exciting new way of life as opposed to the mundane normality of the weekly grind, all combined with some sort of mysterious romance, that just had something inside me doing backflips when I left. And these weren't the sappy love kind of backflips (unnecessary defense of my manhood? maybe). It didn't feel good. I knew there was some aspect (or aspects) of that dangerous love adventure that were unavailable to me. And every time throughout my life a story with the right recipe came along, all that would happen. And let me tell you, it sucks.

I lived my life like this for twenty years.

The next step for my heart (I don't always like to use "Christian vocabulary" because honestly it doesn't make sense to everyone... but I'm just going to call it my "heart"), after being exposed to these elements that caused the "heart screaming" to ensue, would be what I just now decided to call the "consolation" approach. I would just decide to try to get as close to that story as I could. I knew something was heartbreakingly out of reach in my own story, so I would gravitate to those other places where I felt the things that I wanted.

But was it? Is it truly out of reach? Is that the only option? I eventually began thinking about what I claimed that I believed. If God is everything that I want and need and more and all that stuff, then why do I find myself longing after other places and other stories? It just can't be that God made the world like that... the "consolation" can't be the way it was intended from the beginning.

I don't believe we have to live like that anymore. Not after what God is showing me about my Original Design.

Something about me is drawn to things like joining with a group of like minded people for an epic purpose. I am mesmerized by an epic struggle between a hero and his enemy, the fate of something huge hanging in the balance, where at the same time there is also an intimate romance growing. An adventure story intertwined with a love story. These are the things I began to observe when I looked deep into myself.

It turns out, God made me for this. Go figure.

And yeah, it's not going to look like an adventure all the time. God has spent the last 2 years of my life proving to me that this is actually my story. Because I think the enemy is good at convincing me that my real story is the opposite, that God's not really offering anything I actually want.

What do you want at your core? Could it be that God has actually made you for it?

What if there was hope that what you wanted at the deepest part of you could really be satisfied?

That's why I've been prodded by my own curiosity and my own Original Design to begin to write a book about Original Design. I am scared of saying that because I kind of don't ever finish anything. But after creating 15 pages of notes over the past year of my life, I felt the call to start it this weekend... amidst all the other voices I constantly hear that I'm too young to really know anything about the world, that I don't know enough yet, and that I'm full of crap and wasting my time.

It's going to be a really hard journey. An adventure, perhaps. But adventure is my middle name.

I will leave you with this excerpt from the beginning:

what is it in a brilliant movie, or a good story, that awakens that eerily familiar screaming in your heart? you know what I'm talking about. I’m talking about the hollow longing left after something deep in your heart connects with another story for some reason, whether it’s a fantasy story or someone else’s life, and is ripped away like an old band-aid that’s somehow retained too much of its stickiness when the story comes to an end. Why can’t that be my story? Why can’t this be real? maybe you haven't ever listened to the screaming. it just seems to cost too much. this is because to notice it fully you know you would have to come to grips with the pain of unfulfillment. but is it there? can you feel it? maybe you remember it as someone remembers a dream... something you werent fully aware of and chose to forget... but the screaming won't stop screaming. you can try to shut it up. you can try to cork the open bottle it is coming from. you can stitch the gushing wound back up. but it will catch you off guard again one day when you become vulnerable. it always does. and when it does, once again, you have the deepest hunger from the deepest pit of your heart screaming for something. are you brave enough to listen to that instead of running from it? are you bold enough to enter the most hungry place of your soul, without knowing for sure whether it can truly be satiated? what if you unleash a monster, untamable by anything in this world? but... what if you find something?

The deepest part of our hearts will only scream for what we are made for.

Understanding My Freedom

Recently, my thoughts and prayers have been consumed by the idea that it may be time for me to refine my understanding of the idea of "spiritual discipline."

What got me thinking about this is when a woman named Susan on permanent staff at Cedar Springs asked a group of the interns, "What do you think about when you think of the word discipline?" When I think of that word, the first things that come to my mind are the not things I want to do... but the things I have to do. Disciplines are the things that you have to do sometimes so that you can do what you want to other times. They are the type of things that you are supposed to do because if you don't... it isn't good. A discipline is kind of like going to the doctor; you don't really want to, but you know you need to do it at some point and you'll be glad to get it out of the way. So that is what I told her. And as she began her response, I could tell that she thought much differently...

"Yeah, I wonder why we see discipline like that? Discipline is supposed to be freeing to us..."

Wait, what?

When I think "discipline," or even "spiritual discipline," I don't really associate the term "freedom" in there. If anything, discipline feels a little bit imprisoning. Often the only reason why I do some of the things I do is because I feel like I should.

I have lived a spiritual life infested with the word "should." I should be reading my bible right now. I should be praying in this moment. I haven't had a quiet time this morning. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something about that was not life giving... In fact, operating in that way sometimes feels down right imprisoning. And it seems to come from the subconscious realization that I don't truly want to read my bible right now, etc. at that specific time. I want to have some fun... or talk to someone. And then, realizing the fact that my desires are what leads me to action, my only play I have is to try to change my desires. "If I can just make myself want to do this..." We can be very cold and tyrannical to our own hearts when we realize that our desires aren't what they "should" be. It's kind of a losing battle... we can't tell our hearts what our desires should be. And honestly, "should" is the reason why many people are fed up with Christianity!

As we discussed this with Susan at our training time, the words "should" and "supposed to" popped up quite a bit. We talked about how it was hard for certain people (myself...) to get up in the morning and spend time in the word each day. I talked about how I felt guilty when I would get lost in journaling to God and then run out of time without having opened my bible. Susan would ask us why we felt that way, and our response was always something like, "because that's what you're supposed to do." Susan would counter with "Why? Who said? Who told you you had to?" I mean... I guess no one told me to.

What if I don't have to use a specific recipe for my relationship with God?

What if our raw desires, the things we want and love most, are the road map to intimacy with God? 

What if "spiritual discipline" is the logistical means to that goal?

As we continued talking, I began to realize some very important things about spiritual discipline: it wasn't intended to come from a place of "should." In fact, it seems as if it is designed to come from a place of "want" or "desire!" Elizabeth Dreyer says, "One can begin one's [spiritual] quest by attending to the desires of the heart, both personal and communal. The Spirit is revealed in our genuine hopes for ourselves and for the world." 

What if instead of spending time in the way I think I should spend time with God, I spent time in the way I desired to spend time with Him? Maybe it's okay that I journal to God more than I read scripture sometimes. Maybe going for a walk or a hike is a way to spend time with God. Maybe fellowship with two of my friends is something God loves too. Maybe the "quiet time rule" isn't a rule. Here is a quote I love from the book Sacred Rhythms:

"When we are in touch with our deepest longings, a whole different set of choices opens up. Rather than being motivated by guilt and obligation -- as in "I really ought to have a quiet time" or "I really should pray more" -- we are compelled to seek out ways of living that are congruent with our deepest desires. Sometimes this feels risky, and it often opens up a whole new set of questions, but this is fundamentally what spiritual transformation is all about: choosing the way of life that opens us to the presence of God in the places of our being where our truest desires and deepest longings stir. These discoveries are available to all of us as we become more honest in naming what isn't working so that we can craft a way of life that is more congruent with our deepest desires."

Am I really allowed to let my desires be what guides my time with the Lord? If so, what does it even mean to allow our desires to dictate our relationship with God? There seems to be a disconnect there. But I think the disconnect comes from the fact that we don't equate our perceived desires with the specific qualities of God that each of us specifically were designed to long for. We simply see what we want, and we notice that it isn't God. It's something else, like a story, or a girlfriend/boyfriend, or an activity we gain an identity from. But if we truly were made for God, then we logically should believe that God is truly what we want. So when we look at each of our idols, we are essentially seeing something that looks like something we were made to love about God. Therefore, we can look at the things we desire in this world to see clues as to the parts of God that we resonate with the most... and the parts he most wants to connect with us!

I know that often times when I feel condemned due to "should," it is because of my lack of faith that God put in me the heart framework necessary for my true desires to carry me into what God desires for me. And I think it is necessary to remember that there is both value and necessity in things such as scripture and prayer in the Christian life. But what if we don't have to contort the way we feel we were meant to live deep within us in order to have full, special relationship with God that lacks nothing? What if each of our relationships with God can be beautifully unique, natural, and fruitful?  What if the benefits of spiritual discipline, under it all, are our real desires? You can bet your bottom dollar that Jesus didn't "escape to lonely places to pray" out of sheer duty.

It seems to me that, in essence, spiritual disciplines are a means to those desires. The spiritual disciplines come from our desires. I liken it to trying to play piano. I love music, and I love the way the piano sounds. I have an intense desire to be able to use the piano to glorify God. But I can't play it yet. So, currently I make time to sit in my room and practice. Sometimes it is fun, and sometimes it isn't incredibly fun, but to me it is always worth it, because it is really exhilarating to watch myself get better... I can almost taste it! Soon I will be playing the piano!

And maybe that's how it is...

Anyway, I have just found some incredible freedom in these thoughts; it has freed me from a lot of self condemnation. To quote Mel Gibson, "FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Romans 8:1-2: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

Galatians 5:1: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

Learning to Seek Clarity

So much of my life pulls me away from my Original Design.

So much of my life pulls me away from God.

          I am struck over and over again by the way I can learn something important, something genuinely special, and then live my life in a way that says, "I don't believe this is really true." God has been teaching me so much about the way he specifically designed me this year. So quickly, in fact, that I feel like I am Neo from The Matrix as he opens his eyes after having information uploaded into his brain and states with great surprise and not so great acting, "I know Kung Fu..." And yet, from all the things I feel that I have learned about myself and even about the people that live around me, I just can't seem to shake the feeling of dissonance that comes from not living each day out of that newfound knowledge of my identity.

         I have learned some beautiful things about my God in the past year... and most of them have come from God revealing parts of my Original Design to me. God has been meeting me in ways that I never knew he even wanted to. For a great majority of my life, I ran after the beauty I saw in awesome stories. I love stories. There is something about a great story that fills me with a sense of longing, a sense that I must find something like it but just don't know where to look. As an adolescent, I sought out stories that made my heart leap, and I would attach my heart as much as possible to a story in order to somehow feel as if it could be my story. I knew in my heart, but not my mind, that I was made for what I longed for. But I didn't attribute the quality I searched for to God; God was on one side and my longings and desires were on another, and they stayed distant from one another. 

          Over the past few years, God has taken those two "sides" and smashed them together like two big sticky pieces of Play Dough. He has begun to show me, among other things, that He chose for me to love stories in the way that I do because He loves stories. He is adventurous. And He made me that way on purpose not only because He loves the same thing (I was made in His image), but because God himself wants to connect with me in that specific way. Furthermore, He made each person with a set of things that make his/her heart leap, and that is where God wants to meet us!

          The most exciting part to me is that God is continually showing me more and more about that idea, which I like to call our Original Design. However, far too often, I have not been living out of this knowledge. In my mind, I believe that God is the summation of the longings I have always had. But if I believe that, then why don't I act each day out of that knowledge? I know for a fact that I am not alone when I say that I have observed inconsistent patterns of living out of this truth that I claim to know. Shouldn't I be living how I want to more consistently if I believed these things about myself and about God every day?

          One thing that I have realized is that I don't consistently believe these things about myself. This year, I have become increasingly aware of the struggle for truth that happens every day in every person's heart. If Satan is the father of lies, then surely his plan for foiling God's plan for us is to convince us to perceive ourselves, the world, and God in a completely false way. I have become painfully aware this year of how many lies I have been believing about myself and about God, and the effect each false perception has had on my spiritual life. If I believe I am insufficient, my actions will be automatically based on that perception. If I wake up believing God isn't truly the object of my affections (which unfortunately happens a little too often), then I am going to chase after idols all day. The problem is that most of the time, it isn't a choice... it is a matter of clarity. If I think one of my idols is what my heart truly longs for instead of realizing it is a shadow of something that looks similar to a desirable quality of God (and I am self aware at that moment enough to realize that in the first place), then I will act out of what I perceive to be true. If I truly believe that I am insufficient, then it is hard for me to "choose" to believe something different; the fact remains that the "evidence" seems to stack up to show what the truth is. Thankfully, I have had some great friends this year who have helped me work through the lies from my past that have piled up to make me believe this about myself. But when I hear a condemning voice that is telling me something about who I am, I have to realize what is going on enough to stop and ask God, "What is true?"

Clarity is of paramount importance.
God, what am I believing about myself or about You that isn't true? Well then... what IS true?


          We have to ask this question more often and be ready to listen for the answer! A friend of mine says all the time that God is dying to tell us what is true about us, what our Original Design is, and we just don't stop to listen. I am inclined to believe her...

          It is a travesty that we don't believe what is true about us... that we don't even know that God has made us each with a set of skills and gifts that he plans on growing and teaching us to use for his glory. If the enemy can convince us the opposite is true, then we become no longer a threat to use our gifts to release the hearts of those around us. And each one of us has the capacity to fit like a necessary cog in the machine that is the Body of Christ. The Body needs our gifts, because God made it to need our gifts. Each day we live out of our Original Design is a day that the rest of the Body must live without a set of its necessary parts. So let's run after the truth!

John 8:31-32: "So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, 'If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'"

A Long Time Coming

This is definitely something that has been. (^^^^see title)

For the past year or so, I have been contemplating sharing parts of what God has been teaching me with the outside world via starting a blog. I've been hesitant, though, for a few reasons. First, I don't really read many blogs so I feel a little funny starting one. Second, there are plenty of blogs like this one, including one that my dad, Jim Branch, writes (it's http://jb-bluebookblog.blogspot.com, it's pretty legit). Part of me just felt like I would be writing similar but inferior things, and people could just go somewhere else to learn from smarter people. I know it's silly, but it's how I felt.

Recently, though, I have begun learning about who God made me to be. It is a lie that I have to be someone really important to be used by Him. He loves to speak through the most unlikely people. He loves the poor in spirit. The people he loves to speak to aren't the most important people, but the people who are the most needy. And recently, I think He has brought me to the point where I am just needy. And through that neediness I have gotten to be with God in a lot of special ways... and learn more about what He made me for.

God has called me to be a thinker. I am simply made that way. I may be a little spacey, I may get distracted by something moving erratically while someone is talking to me, and I may look like a total fool sometimes when I am looking for my keys when they were in my hand the whole time... but darn it, I am a thinker. It is because I live in my own mind for a large part of my existence, and that has its advantages and drawbacks. But I think that because I am someone who is constantly pitting ideas against one another in my own mind, a place to share the results of that mental sparring is a great way to contribute to the Body of Christ.

As I began to realize some key things about who I really am this year, I realized that writing is going to be something that I need to get used to if I am going to seriously exercise the full extent of the what He wants to pull out of me for the edification of the Body (and each person reading this, I believe, has a unique set of these things God wants to pull out in the same way). God has piqued my interest in the idea of writing for Him. And who knows what that even looks like. I am still trying to figure out how to unpack the word "writing" as it pertains to what in the world I might write about. But with the idea of "writing" came the idea of making a blog about the things I am learning about and discussing with God... and so here I am, doing something I never thought I would do.



Blogging's the thing I'm talking about by the way...


Recommended expectations

1. So I have a hard time a lot of the time with whether to try saying things in an eloquent way, or whether to just say the stuff I am thinking in the same way I would just talk normally. I will be doing both, maybe even in the same sentence. So you can probably expect some fun changes of writing style at random times in this blog.

2. One of the things I struggle with is inconsistency. I see patterns of it around my life. It is probably a safe bet that inconsistency will eventually find its way to this blog. So don't be surprised if there are like 2 posts in one week, and 0 posts in the next week, and the week after, and then 40 the next week... or something like that. Maybe not 40.

3. For some reason, I always end up trying to make jokes about things that are serious, which I don't really know how that is going to work its way into really serious and spiritual things. So that will be interesting. There will definitely be some awkward swings between serious things and joke things, most of which will be accidental. But not all of them. Definitely some of them will be on purpose.





All this to say, I am excited about offering up my special places of learning. I love the idea of partnering with other believers in learning. I hope that as I write down things I have been thinking through, it will help spark ideas and truths about who each of us were made to be, specifically and generally. I have a passion for the uncovering of the truth. And that comes out in a lot of the things I write. And although writing deep things for everyone to see isn't something I am always very comfortable with, I know that it's worth it, and that this is what God wants me to do. It is always so much easier for me to tell when God wants me to do something when it is something I don't really want to do...

I hope that anyone who decides to read this blog will find it sharpening to their faith. I think even if no one else does, it will be sharpening mine.

Cheers (I went to London this summer and so now I say that),

Tim