OBEY ME!

I don't know about you but the idea of obeying someone really grinds my gears.

I hate, HATE, the idea of having to take orders from someone. There are always times that it comes into play, like if you are a student you obey the teacher. But even then you can choose not to and fail your courses if you want to I guess.

It's the idea of someone telling you how to live, where to go and what to do that really gets to me. This feeds into my desire to be the CEO and not the worker of any business I work in. I want to be the boss, I want to dish out the orders, I don't want to take them!

And I know that this isn't a unique trait to me. It seems to be a major problem with everyone in Gen iY (the next generation after Gen Y). I am a Gen Y'er but can totally relate to this desire to control my own destiny and not listen to anyone else who may tell me what to do.

Typical traits my fellow control freaks are disrespecting of parents wishes, knowing more than the teacher about what is good for me, not paying any attention to government or the laws that they might set, ignoring how annoying my music may be to my next-door neighbours/fellow passengers on the bus/anyone in the general vicinity.

(Random aside: why do people listen to music on public transport on speakers instead of headphones??!!! Do they really think that everyone else wants to listen to the latest rap/dance/hiphop/pop that they are into?! Come on people, they are PERSONAL sound systems!!)

But getting on with the topic....

Recently my amazing father-in-law bought my hubby and I our first car. Problem is it is still four weeks until I sit my license so I am not actually allowed to drive the thing yet. I did anyway. For the first two days of owning the car I threw the rule book out the window and experience freedom. 

Then Luke had a crisis of conscience and told me that we really shouldn't drive anymore illegally. Apparently breaking the law is bad. Apparently God isn't really for that either.

Kill joy.

The thing is I agree with Luke (and God) and I shouldn't be driving illegally and would have a fit if anyone of my friends did it. The thing that pissed me off was that someone, in the case the LAW, told me not to.

I have serious authority issues.

I usually don't bring it up at job interviews.

So I got to thinking:

What is it about obeying that annoys me so much?

And it's not just me! I know that YOU (yes you, reading this right now) have moments where obeying isn't exactly your forte. I know that there have been times when you have thrown the rule book out the window too. Maybe you didn't drive illegally, maybe it was eating more sweets than your mum said you could. But there was a time when you didn't want to, and didn't obey.

So if you are a Christian how does this rebellious nature work when we are dealing with all matters Godly?

This desire to not obey, to be in control, is the BIGGEST issue that separates us from God! Back in the Garden of Eden (whether it was metaphorical or not) the issue was that humanity not only wanted to disobey  God, but they wanted to BE God. To call the shots. That's why the serpent says to Eve "nah, you won't die you'll just be as smart

as God and know everything" (CSW (Christine Susan Welten) translation)

The tower of Babel was about people wanting to be God, to control the world. Abraham gets Hagar, instead of Sarah, pregnant because he tries to control how a prophecy will be fulfilled. Saul gets kicked out of being the king because he does all the sacrificial stuff himself instead of waiting like God had told him. Israel as a country repeatedly refuses to obey God and ends up in exile with the Temple destroyed.

The Bible is FULL of people who couldn't find it in themselves to obey God. And these are people who saw God walking with them in the garden, as smoke on a mountain, as a pillar of fire, and angelic messengers. They had all this cool stuff happen and they still slipped in obeying.

It seems to be the major failure of humanity.

Only Jesus obeyed God 100% and even then he prays, that, if at all possible, what had to happen could be cancelled. 

So if we have this amazingly huge flaw that all of humanity suffers from, what the heck are we suppose to do about it??

Well, I don't know.

Truly.

I think that it is about prayer.

It is through talking to God, admitting our failures and our desire to control (and how badly we do it!), and saying "I want you to be in charge" that we learn to actually let God be in charge.

Even praying that we want God to be in charge in a sense is obedience. We are obeying the command to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. We are saying in effect "I don't know how to do this, but I am trying." We are letting God in and giving him the authority to start changing our hearts.

It is about listening.

In prayer we start to learn to hear God's voice instead of just our own. It takes time and practice to know God's voice in amongst all the other noises in our world and prayer is massive in being part of us being able to hear it.

If we are listening well to God then we will feel when there is a conviction for us to change something. We begin to hear and recognise the call to do something, go somewhere, help somebody. And we learn to respond with "YES" when we hear it. We begin to obey the voice of God as we learn to listen for it.

It is about talking.

We aren't meant to do life alone. Obeying stuff can be hard, particularly when it seems to be inbuilt into us to disobey. 

So we need to talk to each other about our struggles and failings. We need to be honest about the things we find hard to give up or start. We need to pray with each other and for each other so that we can draw on the strength of the community when we are doing something that we know we shouldn't but we don't want to stop.

It is about reading.

We NEED to read the Bible. We need to do this so we can know how God works, how God speaks, and what God says. We need to read it so we can learn what God's voice might sound like and when we have got it really really wrong. Because we don't always get it right and sometimes what we feel is right is actually not what is right.

Praying, listening, talking, reading.

Doesn't sound so hard, but it is.

But when we start doing these things we will start to see our lives change for the better. We learn to love God and others more, we become more humble and accepting of life and the rules in it. We learn to respect people and the things that they say and enforce. 

In short, we become more like Christ.

"Not my will Father, but your be done."

The On-going Saga

It just keeps going.

Since my last update on weight-loss there has been, and hasn't been, a bit to report.

I have been doing a no-carb diet that I have been told will restart my metabolism and get my body working again in eating itself. I have been doing the gym and Luke and I have given up all takeaways, fizzy drink (apart from those with no sugar), desserts (the biggest blow!) and any snacky things that are bad for us. 

The Result?

Luke has lost 5 kilos and I have lost nothing! 

AHHHHHHHHHH!

I cannot even tell you my frustration with this. I have no idea if any of you have battled the bulge but I tell you, to do all that work, to give up the things you love and then to have no result is so demoralizing I can't even tell you.

I keep telling myself that it is good for my insides to do this stuff. Apparently it is meant to be good for my mental health...not! It is far more depressing having to go to the gym for nothing than not doing exercise!

I have also been delving deep into my psyche (a scary and dangerous adventure) to try and figure out what my triggers are, where I trip myself up. I have been thinking deeply about why I like chocolate so much (if that isn't instantly obvious) and how I manage to sabotage myself.

And I have learnt something that I think is important enough to share with those out there in the virtual world who may also have the same issues.

I have learnt that I find this so psychologically hard because I have two different internal dialogues going on about the same issue.

On one hand I have this voice that is saying to me that I shouldn't bother. It says to me that there are so many young women in the world who are bombarded daily with messages telling them that to be desirable and happy they need to be skinny. It says to me that I sho

uld be a living example that says to them that you can be happy, you can find an amazing husband, you can be successful without being skinny. It says that I could live as an opposite of what the world says.

On the other there is a voice that says my body is a temple. I should be losing weight (and trying my hardest to do so) because of my faith in God and because I want to honour what he has given me. I want to live as an example of someone who perseveres in the face of insurmountable odds. I want to give hope to those struggling to lose weight.

So I want to be an example and give hope to people. A admirable thing I think but they are complete opposites to each other!!

I am going to try and pray my way through this one until I can figure out what to do. I still want to go to the gym either way but I don't want my life to be about focusing on weight, food, and exercise. I am lost and slightly confused and that will not help with staying on course with the hard work.

I need to figure this out. Thoughts welcome :)

What's the Big Deal?

Over the last few years I have been studying theology. It has been an interesting journey with many changes in thinking and faith that has at times messed with me, and at others inspired me.

Recently I have been contemplating the idea of tradition in the church. I don't understand the big deal around communion, meditation, liturgy, fasting and even at baptism!! Is this stuff really necessary? What is the big deal?

Perhaps it is because I am a child of my post modern generation that I don't understand this stuff. I understand the symbolism and things but are they traditions that are needed to keep the church alive and flourishing? If all we need is Jesus then why do we need all this other stuff as well?

So today I started an experiment. I decided that I would meditate and fast (only for lunch mind mind you at this stage haha) and see what happens. 

I have just finished meditating to the sound of Gregorian chanting. Now call me crazy but I had no idea how to meditate! I had to look up on the internet different forms of Christian meditation. It made me feel a little silly, but how else does one learn to do these things?

The first thing I noticed straight away is how impossibly hard it is to actually focus your mind. I was breathing slowly, thinking about Jesus, listening to the chanting (which is awesome btw, totes check it out!!) and then bam! I am thinking about what to make for dinner. This happened over and over again to my frustration. Apparently this gets easier to avoid as you meditate more but at this stage I feel like I have failed at simply thinking about God. I haven't, but I feel it.

Another thing I noticed is how relaxing it is just to sit for a long period of time (15 mins haha) without doing anything and just thinking about Jesus. It feels like a complete waste of time! I have so much stuff to be doing that I felt like I was wasting time instead of doing something productive. And yet I felt at peace, like deep calm, for the first time in I don't know how long.

I also realised that it does help focus you on God because you are doing it intentionally and that means I was actually wanting to think about my life, God's love, my sin etc. It really made me feel like I was connecting with God. I felt God's pleasure at the fact that I was just spending time trying to hear what might be said to me. Don't know if that makes sense but I really did experience something.

So phase one was difficult but ultimately successful. I intend to meditate daily for at least a few weeks to see what continues to happen so watch this space.

The fasting thing kinda sucks because I am hungry (!!) and I keep thinking about lunch and then remembering I am not going to eat any. This makes me sad. But apparently the feeling of hunger is there to remind you of God's presence and to motivate you to pray. There are stories of great things happening when people fast and real answers to prayer, so who knows what will happen. 

I think I will fast over lunch for a few days and see what happens again. 

The reason I am doing this stuff is not because I am simply trying to test it. I don't really like the idea of testing God so much. What I have learnt over the years is that tradition helps ground us in the story of which we are a part.

The church is not just about people today who worship God. It is about the last 2000 years of people who have sought to see God's face. What they have learnt is important. If someone started doing something 2000 years ago (and Jesus did fast!!) and that has continued then who am I to say that it is not good enough for believers today?

Tradition reminds me of the people who have gone before. There is a great cloud of witnesses who have walked our road in different places and who have learnt things that I may never learn if I don't listen to them. Just because I don't understand is not a reason to reject something. I don't understand how Jesus' death and resurrection really worked but I don't deny it because of that! There is faith that people know what they are talking about, that people are smarter and wiser than me that have figured stuff out long before I was even thought of.

Traditions help continue stories. Just like cultural traditions ground people in the story of their country and ethnicity, so church traditions ground us in the story of the Bride of Christ, the church. They tell us who we are and why we are and where we are going. They give us an identity and meaning.

There are traditions that I don't agree with however. As I am not Catholic, venerating Mary is something I find very hard to reconcile with Biblical text. I am not saying accept every tradition ever as gospel truth. They need to be thought out before being worked out. I have spent 5 years working through this stuff in theological training. It took me that long to decide to try any of them. 

Baptism, mediation, fasting, and communion all have Scriptural references, are all performed by Christ (and many others) and all focus on God as our provider, creator and sustainer. These things I am happy to accept, live out, and teach to others. But it took me a while to get to that place.

So I am not going to 'test' the traditions, or throw them out, but rather embrace them as something I can learn from, something that will give me greater insight into how the church works and the people that are in it. 

I will do these things because the church isn't about me. It is about a faithful people who walk together, learn of each other, and pass on their knowledge to future generations.

Want to join me?

My Oxymoronic Life (a freeverse poem)

Great is thy faithfulness echoes in my head as the light around me fades and the silence intensifies. My instinct is to flee into some make believe world of my own or another's making. It seems the hardest thing to be is to just be. And so I find myself in flights of fancy, subconciously trying to avoid a conference with my King. I hide from laying myself bare, knowing that you see beneath this epidermal mask through to the throbbing, beating, bleeding core that yearns to be known yet acts as if the antithesis of that is more desirable. Driven by fear my being shrinks from the touch of love as if it would expose, humiliate and take advantage of the weaknesses, the cracks, in my existence. Love terrifies me.

Though it is a solace that frees me from a captivity of my own making, I seek refuge in the dream that Hollywood abuses me in. The fantasy that prods and pokes at my not so perfect body, laughs at my failures, and covers up my wounds with sickly sweet smiles that cause cavities in my soul. This is what I run to. I hide in the world where everyone loves me as long as I am loveable and I play pretend over tea parties where we soak our minds in a brew of poison that I willingly swallow. It demands my all and I give it until I bleed green bills and gold and cry tears of the blood of young women who never did quite make it. All this to hide from love. An oxymoronic life that seeks the one thing that it refuses to accept.

Until caught in the arms of one who drags me kicking and screaming into the light. Who, despite my best efforts, will not let me go, will not give up. Quietly as a child I lie in those arms and allow myself to be rocked to sleep....that is until I decide to learn to run again.