College Again

I cannot seem to get away from colleges. I currently work full time for a college. I guess that fits since I have been in so many different college environments. I guess that college is still my life for a while only this time I do not know when I will be done. Here's to the college life.

Failure

Failure

I had failed. I tried once, I tried twice, I tried a third time. That’s the charm right??? Wrong. I failed again. Three times I had tried and three time I had failed. After that the opportunity to succeed at my task was forever gone. I had failed.

            Emotions washed over me tightening my throat and threatening to fill my eyes with tears that would overflow and run down my face. Neither action was allowed at that time, and I had to struggle to keep my throat loose and my eyes tear free. To do this I was pushing away my sense of failure to keep my emotions in check when my mind clicked into gear and I started to analyze.

What was it that was causing this emotion? Obvious answer right?.... Not quite. Failing was not the ultimate source but rather a trigger bringing something else….

Others. I had let others down. This was where the pain was coming from. My actions had not meet their expectations because they had been sub par. I struggled through these thoughts as I kept up my performance, my façade. Each thought brought anew a wash of emotion that threatened tears and a constricted throat. Then I heard it, “What about Me?”

This jolted me……. What about God?......  I was instantly challenged. I realized that I rarely cared as much about letting God down when my actions were subpar in His eyes, and I had failed Him. I cared more about failing those that I love more than failing God whom I should love with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength. What was different?..... Why did I not feel as bad as I did right now when I failed God?..... I do not have the answer to this last question. Some possibilities are that: maybe I love God less than others; or it might be that I have calloused my heart in responding to my sins; probably, it is a combination of both and much more.

One thing that I did know is that if I felt like this every time that I sinned that I would be less inclined to commit those sins. This conclusion caused me to pray to God asking Him that I would care as much when I failed Him as I did when I failed those that I love. This was my plea to Him to help me live a more sanctified life.

Now what about you?... Do you ever feel like me?... Do you take your failing God lighter than you do failing yourself or others?... Since none of us here are completely sanctified at the moment, I know that we are in this together.

So, we are going to take the next few minutes of silence to go before God and confess our failures, ask for His forgiveness, and request that He helps us to love Him more than all else. These are suggestions and don’t feel constrained to them during this time of prayer. My hope is that this time of prayer will help us to align our desires with His will. Let’s pray.

Long Term

An excerpt from Marriage Made in Eden: A Pre-Modern Perspective for a Post-Christian World by Alice P. Matthews and M. Gay Hubbard. This excerpt is changed a bit by myself for the purpose of getting across the flow of thought from the authors without you having to read the entire chapter. It is located on page 160 of this book.

"In an impatient culture a long term view can present a challenge. At the simplest level, meeting this challenge requires that God's people accept the fact that Scripture is God's story, after all and God has a right to tell his story his way and to expect his people to hear it from his point of view. To do this, the listener must lay aside, however reluctantly, the human bias toward centering the search for truth in the human self. In the present individualistic culture, it is difficult to grasp the reality that to hear God, his people must shift their attention away from what they want to hear and focus, instead, on what God wants to say. Shifting to God's point of view is good for the human soul, but it often proves to be a severe stretch for human egos. Sometimes, to their embarrassment, God's people discover that they are less interested in hearing God's case than in pursuing their own goals... God's people can be tempted to say, 'God, your story is a very fine one, but if you are not going to give me a formula for instant happiness, your story is not relevant to my life.'"

I liked what this had to say and figured that I wanted to save this and also allow others to read it.

Philippians 2:5-11

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Rambling about Gifts and Christmas