人生行路 — The Journey of Life

It didn’t really dawn on me that today is the last Sunday of 2007, but the chaplain mentioned it at the worship service tonight. Time to reflect, but in a different way than I usually do.

Rereading Joshua Harris’ Boy Meets Girl last night uncovered a way of thinking I’ve been stuck in ever since giving my life to Christ. Simply put, I tend not to forgive myself. Okay, let’s get more specific than that. I don’t like to forgive myself.

Harris calls my bluff, though. It’s a form of reverse pride. My refusal to forgive myself is me telling God that my standards are higher than His. Let’s face it: God’s standards are pretty darn high, which makes it even more amazing that He offered His Son to undergo anguish, torture, and death on a cross so that we could meet that standard.

With that said, here’s a very short summary of 2007.

• political blogging
• mall preachers
• reaching out
• struggling with repeated sins
• leading Midshipmen
• ship selection
• 24/7 prayer
• goodbyes
• commissioning
• MacBook
• stashed life
• more goodbyes
• legal officer school
• re-meeting an old friend
• final goodbyes
• flight
• stashed in Sasebo
• leading a flight detail to reporting aboard the ship in [location, sorry].
• adjustment
• Sasebo
• bike trips
• apartment hunt
• having to earn respect
• conning
• OOD inport
• small boat adventures
• camraderie
• personal wars
• finding a church
• first guitar
• firefighting school
• The Lighthouse
• connections
• humiliation
• underway
• diplomacy
• shore patrol
• small boat crush hazard
• more conning
• figuring out how to lead worship
• NJPs
• powers of attorney
• dirty looks
• keeping the fervor
• inport
• shore patrol
• another guitar
• The Lighthouse, again!
• Sasebo
• complacence
• screwing up
• mercy
• grace
• more leading worship
• screwing up
• leading worship solo ashore (tonight)

What a ride. I felt like my worship tonight was something of a culmination of these things and more. I don’t know what’ll happen one year, one day, or one minute after I post this. What I know is that God is there, and that His Son’s blood really makes it all worth it.

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.

~Isaiah 6:1-7 ESV

Wow.

This article is written for future publication on PurityPeople.com. More articles to come later.

Back in high school and college, I was the computer geek without any “luck.” Now that I’m in the military and am living on a large piece of steel and haze-gray paint in the middle of the ocean, the whole dating game from back in college has taken a back seat while I work on other things. I’ve found myself with an outside view of those years through which God is teaching me is that He isn’t going to tolerate us just sitting around waiting for Him to get things done for us. In fact, if we’re not getting things done for Him, such a demand is the height of arrogance.

Let me tell you about the first experience I had with the concept in college. There was a certain girl who went to high school with me, or perhaps more properly, we went to the same high school. We didn’t know each other very well, but apparently she in her desperation had developed a crush on me. Eventually she gave up on kind of hiding it, though I could tell from the countless phone calls and times “hanging out.” She was a non-believer, and I knew that things would not work out between these two people whose values did not match. I tried to call it off, and it wasn’t happening.

Long story shortened, I opened my email one morning to find a suicide poem. Immediately I call 911. She’s OK, but she’s overdosed on painkillers. I find out a few days later that the doctors were amazed that her liver wasn’t fried with the amount she took.

Then I made one of the stupidest decisions in my life. While there was little chance of dating, I still abandoned her friendship out of a false sense of self-preservation. It was clear that God wanted me to be at her side helping her out, and I ignored the call.

Is there any more evidence God needed to determine that I was fully unqualified to handle a dating relationship? I flipped the bird at God, and turned my back on a friend who needed my help.

Oh, and then I got addicted to porn and masturbation. More on that in another article.

What are you doing while you’re waiting for romance? Do your actions reflect that you’re ready, or are you just wallowing in self-pity like I was?