So today was Pastor G’s last sermon at CCFC (for the foreseeable future) and though it wasn’t his main point, one thing that stuck with me from the sermon was that I have all but forgotten my testimony.  Not the “Jesus saved me” bit, but the part where I believe deeply that God has called us to be his Body, his hands and feet in this world.  That our lives (my life) make a difference.  That we are saved and changed and that makes all the difference.

My love wrote that I told her she had become cynical.  But really, I was talking about myself, about how I locked away a part of my heart a long time ago, and I don’t even know how to find it anymore.  So here I sit on the hot 3rd floor of my house and I’m trying to write, to recapture a glimmer of what I lost.  I don’t even know where to look for it.  But please, God, I need to find it again.

March 9, 2003.  It was the last time I would feel comfortable speaking in front of my church.  I had been assigned to recruit folks to help out with the World Missions Committee.  I was downstairs, preparing at the last minute, not knowing what to say, when music drifted down from above.  Our congregation was singing God’s praise, and that was exactly everything I wanted to say.  I wanted to tell everyone that God was so good and that he loved this world and that you and I could be a part of his work.  So I (perhaps stupidly) scrawled just a few notes down and went upstairs to be a part of the singing.  I was called up to the front by J (who presciently noted that no one knew what would happen when I was called to speak in front of the church) and I poured out just a bit of what I was feeling, what I had been experiencing.  God is good.  It’s such a simple truth, and so inexpressible.  I like what G said today about how we can’t ever fully explain God so we say things that are true of him, but it doesn’t really convey what we mean.  I feel stuck in that myself.  God is good.  But I spoke about God’s goodness and his plan for nigh on twenty minutes.  I felt like God was speaking through me and I barely knew what I was saying.  But suddenly S was waving his hands at me and cutting me off and I was confused, I was a wreck, I didn’t know what had happened, what I did wrong, but I felt deeply ashamed and I had to run out of there.  I think no one ever knew how much I hurt that day, except perhaps K.

That day I lost something vital inside of me.  Some of the passion, some of what made me alive, some of what made me sing and dance and shout for joy.  And I think any good that anyone has ever seen in me since then is just a dim reflection of a dim reflection…  testimony to how good God is that one might have seen that and believed in it.

You’re still reading?  I really don’t know what I’m saying, as you can probably tell.  I’m just going to keep writing and maybe somehow the truth will emerge or maybe I’ll get distracted and go do something else.  That’s the way of the world.  It throws distractions at you, makes you  forget about what’s important ‘cause you always have to do SOMEthing.

N asked me yesterday if I was still going to the U people.  Many people have asked me that over the years.  I think it was a fundamental part of who I was.  I was so touched being among them, loving and being loved by them.  Did I do any good?  Maybe, maybe not…  but I know something spoke deeply into me that summer.  If God is true, he’s the ONLY hope in this world.  We’ve been trying to change the world for thousands of years, but it’s always the same old story…  evil resurfaces, is beaten back, but is never defeated.  God?  He could do it, and my faith says that he will…  and that we get to be a part of it.  In some ways we need to be a part of it because it is by the very act of changing the world that we change ourselves and become redeemed.  I know the theology is not quite straight there, but I’m just writing and not editing so tough.  Don’t worry; I still know what’s what.  I think.

How does hope become so shattered that you can’t find all the pieces?  I’m sure I’ve found some of it, and again, I think it’s the little pieces that I found that dimly show who I could become that T has seen in me, but I can’t seem to talk about it with her or with anyone.  It’s like G said today…  you’re overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty of everything and you get up to speak about it and it all comes out as blah, blah, blah.  I don’t think I’ve ever been quite able to articulate how beautiful the gospel is, save that one day, and I don’t even know what words I said.

So now what next?  I’ve got an amazing life.  Incredible wife.  Great job; not what I want to do forever but a good training ground for just about anything.  Good friends.  But…  there must be more.  If I get complacent, forget about the war, evil will rear its ugly head again one of these days and attack me when I’m not looking, not watching.  I know this is true.  I can’t keep living just like this.  We are made for so much more.

But what?  Back to the beginning again.  What is God’s heart for me?  How do I find it?  He says he’s put it in me.  Why doesn’t it feel like it?  Has it gotten crusted over, wounded, hardened?  I long to live out of the freedom of Christ.  To dream incredible, huge, awe-inspiring dreams.  To touch lives deeply.  And to do it all out of the knowledge that it is not me, but it is God in me that is so amazing.

I spent a year praying for two things to happen.  Or perhaps for two things not to happen.  But in both cases evil triumphed and I was left shell-shocked.  There was a part of me that got beaten down again.  Evil.  Again.  Why? People pray and pray and where is God?

I watched Prince Caspian last night with friends.  Although it wasn’t true to the book, there was a scene where Peter sat before an image of Aslan and just asked for a sign, for anything.  I love it because it’s real.  I know that God is real, and have felt it deep in my bones, but sometimes…  I just don’t know.  So I take things into my own hands because I don’t know how to balance acting using my gifts on waiting on the one who gives them.

So here I am once again.  God is real, but I don’t even know what that means for me.  Fresh wind, fresh fire, come upon me again.  Don’t let evil win again.  Give me the words to speak, and the ears to hear, and the mind to comprehend.  Let us talk and challenge one another and push each other to pursue God all the more.

For he really is good.  Or we are to be pitied more than all people.