The last 3 days gave me a stark view into our hearts my heart and God also gave me clarity on why I desire certain things in the house.
For the last three days, 4 of us from our house woke up earlier than 7:45 to line up for roughly an hour for a chance at $25 to use at an athletics outlet. I’ll admit, I was quite enthralled by the prospect. Over the 3 days I got $65 worth of stuff you could say. But even on the first day, it struck me how odd this was. Here was this thing, monetary and frankly mostly unnecessary as far as living supplies went. We would wake up early, line up for it, sit on the dusty steps of our gym building waiting for the doors to open and a weary looking man to hand us a printed colour piece of paper with some words on it.
I thought of how willing I am to wake up an hour earlier every day for the Word. To spend time with the Lord. I’ll be honest, I struggled with whether or not I should go to morning prayer meeting. What if I’m late for the sale? Everyone else in my house is going. Crowd mentality right? In retrospect I’m almost disgusted that it was even a partial struggle. And in the end, God showed his grace: the day that I obeyed and sought Him first in the day, things worked out. I mean that even after we finished prayer meeting and we went to line up, we were still in the top 25. Not to say that the goal was always the money but it’s that being obedient is more important. And so it makes me sad how much we’re willing to do for something so temporary and altogether superfluous and yet how much are we willing to risk for Christ, when the rewards don’t look as personal or as easily grasped and spent?
It’s almost as if a part of me is internally screaming like Levi the poet, “Repent!”
Concurrently with this observation and revelation, God gave me clarity in why I insist on the basement people cleaning the basement washroom or why I want them to hep in the cleaning in general. It’s not so much that I want to see the house clean. I can clean things. Heck, I would probably do it whether they lived here or not like the toilet and sink in the basement. But I realized it’s because I want to see them take responsibility of something other than themselves, to see that their is a worth in putting their efforts into maintaining this house. Or moreover as a general rule, it makes me sad when I see a Christian who has been going to church for a while and has not found any way to serve. And I don’t care if it’s in CCF or not. I couldn’t care less about that. But I want to see men serving, seeing the Lord’s work in other places, seeing the world for more than what it can do for them. Because service doesn’t always bring immediate joy and it often takes time out of a schedule. But when you do it for the glory of God it’s an evidence of an inward surrender to Christ. And that’s what I want to see. Thinking about it puts me in the “almost crying” mode. Or maybe that’s the sad bareilles music in the background.
But DGL gives me hope. More importantly, knowing that this is what God wants in men and knowing that He’s God gives me hope. Thanks for renewing a passion for men’s that frankly, I was scared had diminished over the summer.
The Unforced Rhythms of Grace 