Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Outward Inward
My first instinct is to apologize for not updating these past six days (almost an entire week! ^^;;) but upon further reflection I realize that the impulse carries with it some questions that should first be answered: What am I apologizing for? And to whom am I apologizing?
It's pretty clear to me that any apologies I offer here would be for missing a post, and not a devotion, and that I would be apologizing to any readers of this blog rather than God.
So while I still believe that this blog is an excellent tool for facilitating accountability and consistency in my devotional life, I can see now that I cannot rely solely on this blog to make me a better Christian, so to speak. Although the blog trains me to keep doing the things I need to do to grow (the outwards, external things), it cannot help me to develop a heart dedicated to God, or a will submitted entirely to him (inward things). I mean, the blog doesn't do much good if I end up doing devotions for the sake of being able to post here rather than for the sake of growing closer to God.
It's the same thing with the Applying the Message class. Even though it's great that the class provided me with motivation to stay awake and to listen to sermons, I have to move beyond that and listen for God's word to me in the sermons, rather than just listening for things I can talk about in class.
Not that I'm going to drop these "outward" disciplines or anything, but I'm finally starting to get the idea that I have to work on my God-consciousness all through the day, and not just at night around devo time, or on Sundays during the sermon and class. And that's going to be incredibly difficult. I mean, just looking over the past week as an example I can see that I didn't even succeed in thinking about God around devo time (considering I skipped them on the days I didn't post), much less while I was hanging out with friends, doing holiday stuff, and starting school again!
There's a lot of stuff going on right now for me too. I've got to work really hard to bring my marks back up after a horrible first term; I've got more volunteering stuff; there's a short term mission going on this summer that I haven't even thought about yet; and I was hoping to have formed the softball committee in December, and it's now January! I don't know if this exactly has anything to do with what I was talking about before, but basically I feel like there are so many areas that I want to devote more time to right now, and I'm totally scared stiff that I'm going to fail in all of those areas some way or another.
I'd like to say that I can put God at the top of the priority list, that I'd be happy if I only managed to grow more in trusting him &etc., but I know it wouldn't be true, at least not right now. If it was necessary I'd probably choose to sacrifice devos and church time to bring up my school marks, rather than vice versa. And that's very sad for me to have to admit. In spite of all the stuff I've been learning in the past while, I still haven't sorted out the very fundamental issue of putting God first. Maybe I'm more aware of my failings in that regard, but I don't think I've even started to correct the situation in any way.
Anyway, that's all I have to say today. Oh, except that it feels really strange to do devos in the middle of the day.
My first instinct is to apologize for not updating these past six days (almost an entire week! ^^;;) but upon further reflection I realize that the impulse carries with it some questions that should first be answered: What am I apologizing for? And to whom am I apologizing?
It's pretty clear to me that any apologies I offer here would be for missing a post, and not a devotion, and that I would be apologizing to any readers of this blog rather than God.
So while I still believe that this blog is an excellent tool for facilitating accountability and consistency in my devotional life, I can see now that I cannot rely solely on this blog to make me a better Christian, so to speak. Although the blog trains me to keep doing the things I need to do to grow (the outwards, external things), it cannot help me to develop a heart dedicated to God, or a will submitted entirely to him (inward things). I mean, the blog doesn't do much good if I end up doing devotions for the sake of being able to post here rather than for the sake of growing closer to God.
It's the same thing with the Applying the Message class. Even though it's great that the class provided me with motivation to stay awake and to listen to sermons, I have to move beyond that and listen for God's word to me in the sermons, rather than just listening for things I can talk about in class.
Not that I'm going to drop these "outward" disciplines or anything, but I'm finally starting to get the idea that I have to work on my God-consciousness all through the day, and not just at night around devo time, or on Sundays during the sermon and class. And that's going to be incredibly difficult. I mean, just looking over the past week as an example I can see that I didn't even succeed in thinking about God around devo time (considering I skipped them on the days I didn't post), much less while I was hanging out with friends, doing holiday stuff, and starting school again!
There's a lot of stuff going on right now for me too. I've got to work really hard to bring my marks back up after a horrible first term; I've got more volunteering stuff; there's a short term mission going on this summer that I haven't even thought about yet; and I was hoping to have formed the softball committee in December, and it's now January! I don't know if this exactly has anything to do with what I was talking about before, but basically I feel like there are so many areas that I want to devote more time to right now, and I'm totally scared stiff that I'm going to fail in all of those areas some way or another.
I'd like to say that I can put God at the top of the priority list, that I'd be happy if I only managed to grow more in trusting him &etc., but I know it wouldn't be true, at least not right now. If it was necessary I'd probably choose to sacrifice devos and church time to bring up my school marks, rather than vice versa. And that's very sad for me to have to admit. In spite of all the stuff I've been learning in the past while, I still haven't sorted out the very fundamental issue of putting God first. Maybe I'm more aware of my failings in that regard, but I don't think I've even started to correct the situation in any way.
Anyway, that's all I have to say today. Oh, except that it feels really strange to do devos in the middle of the day.
