three weeks' travel

there are a few things that i want to be true in my life.
here is a list i wrote on a plane somewhere over the pacific ocean.
because lists help me to arrive at something like clarity.
something like resolve.
something like control.

before i riff off about how much of a control freak i am, the list:

everyday, pour out my soul.
everyday, treat it as my last.
everyday, dwell in His presence.
everyday, seek to truly know Him.
everyday, abide in Jesus.
everyday, learn to love Him more.
everyday, believe that God treasures me. enough to die.
everyday, accept that I am His child. that He is Abba.
everyday, lean into His story. with every passing breath, seek to magnify the overwhelming glory of Grace.
everyday, speak the truth in love.
everyday, consider others better than myself.
everyday, die a little more.

-

so. there's my list. i also jotted a few more things down, including 'delete facebook'. impressive, isn't it?

i think the reason why i like writing lists so much is that for an hour or two it lets me entertain the possibility that soon i will be the person i want to be. it's a satisfying feeling of catharsis. it's kind of like drawing out the splinters of all the things i dislike about myself, and in doing so, i shape something of an intellectual construct that is 'steph'. one that i am happy with.
(so much of me is entangled in mere thoughts inside my head. unfortunately, so little of it translates into how i actually live. which, in actual fact, means that who i think i am (how i perceive myself in my head) is not who i actually am (how i live life). but because i see myself as the kind of person who would pour myself out for the poor, for example, that perception of myself obscures the reality that i actually don't.

which kinda sucks.
a lot, actually.)

a few days after i wrote this list, i looked back on it. and felt sad. disappointed with myself.
i added:
'everyday, repent. because i can't do any of the above.'

i want so desperately to be rescued from a lukewarm life. i want to be ignited with His crazy, reckless love, so that i would delight in ruining myself to love all people radically. that He would show my what that looks like in everyday life. that He would give me His delight in pouring all of me, the best of my resources, out in love - for those who cannot return it.

but the way i try to fuel that is totally wrong. i try to do it with my own self-discipline. which, for starters, is a pretty hopeless thing to depend on. i don't have much self-control. i either go cold turkey on something, or figure that since i've already given in, i may as well indulge a little more.

about the same time as a lot of this was coming to a head (i've been thinking through this for about.. 8 months now), i had churning over in my head the realisation that i find it very difficult to believe that God loves me. like, i know it intellectually. but it's like i have a very stubborn metaphysical membrane between my head and my heart. i know everyone does, but mine seems to be more problematic than others'. or maybe they're just not letting on.

i've said it before, but i find it easier to see myself as someone who God tolerates to use as His agent on earth, than i do to see myself as His child who He loves with unconditional love. i just can't seem to get past the reality that i don't deserve it. i get past it in my head - i know that when i look at Jesus, there is all the evidence that how i feel is wrong. but my stubborn heart hasn't quite bought it, apparently.

i was reading don miller's 'blue like jazz' about this time.

it's ridiculous. i ought to not be surprised anymore. but it was actually absurd. every night, i would journal about a struggle in my heart. and the next day, the next few chapters i would read would drive a nail right through the heart of the same struggle.

at one point it was so ridiculous that i was laughing to myself on a bus from montreal to quebec, to the bemusement of the man sitting next to me. it's almost as if this man that i had never met had somehow conducted a secret reconnaissance into my head and heart and written down notes.

i like the way he writes. it makes ideas feel real. i think that's liberating. i often get trapped inside my own head.

i'd like to share a few things that came out of that week.

that i really want to fall in love with Him. so that I might live a radical life, fueled by love. not self-control.

that i really want to pursue living life in a way that demands faith. to everyday find myself in situations in which i desperately need Him to come through. to find myself on my knees, crying out to Him for help.

that to receive the gift of God's love enables me to love Him in return. when you're in love, you desire to obey. a person in love will go to lengths that self-discipline could never. sigh.

i live what i believe. if i don't feed the poor, i don't believe in justice. if i don't tell people about jesus, i don't believe in the importance of life-changing truth. if i don't die to myself and consider others better than myself, i don't believe in love.

that you're only really refined to love selflessly when it's hard to love them. dying to yourself isn't exactly comfortable. stop seeing relationships as an investment for which i expect my love to be returned. be freed to just love them.

it's all God's. how am i using it?

if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

that self-absorption is something you have to fight against actively. like swimming against the current.

that making every breath count isn't something i am capable of.

that when Jesus returns, i want to be gazing upon Him or serving Him, not be engaged in idle talk or activity.

that pride makes me resist being unconditionally loved by God in a way that my heart and soul accepts and responds to.

that it's pretty freakin' hard to love selflessly when the people around you aren't. but if you pour yourself out for their needs, they won't need to look out for their own - which makes it easier for them to love selflessly.

fakeness is intolerable. in myself. in others.

that i need to spend some time figuring out whether You love me because of something in me, or because of Your character. and that just as i wrote that down, i felt that God loves something in me, not because that something is lovable, but because of His character. and that doesn't mean that He loves me out of principle as a forced, obligatory sort of love (which i think my heart still believes) - but it is His character that enables Him to love me ... and love me for something in me. i want You to show me this, please. i baulk at it.

i realised that it hurts God when i don't accept and return His love. this happened when a person i was with was brushing me off, at a time when i was trying to consider others better than myself, trying to die to myself, and praying for His love to lavishly pour myself out unconditionally - not dependent on whether they receive my love. it was then that i realised that the most hurtful thing about that situation was that the person wasn't accepting my attempt to love her. granted, my love wasn't pure. it was probably littered with false motives etc. but as i was writing this in my journal, a small voice hit me like a rip in the ocean: the hurt i was feeling was nothing compared to the hurt that God felt when i didn't receive His love. receiving it wasn't just about the aforementioned falling in love to obey. it has fundamental implications for our relationship.

i asked that He would revolutionise my heart to genuinely consider others better than myself. but i realised that i had been going about that via self-deprecation. and i think that had subversively diminished my capacity to feel loved - and from feeling loved, having an abundant love from which to pour myself out. denying myself needs to be done without rejecting God's love. i need to receive His unconditional love so that I can love others unconditionally.

i would like His eyes to see evidence of His grace in others.

i am a glory thief.

please shine through this weariness. for Your glory.

i've realised of late, that when i picture myself five years into the future, i want to be living a radical life. then i finally twigged one day a month or so ago that that kind of life doesn't just happen. because if i just let life happen to me, it will be much the same as it is now - flavoured with compromise and apathy.
Kierkegaard said that you should define life forward and live it backward. basically meaning that if you have an idea of where you want to end up, start making decisions in the present that are consistent with that trajectory.

don miller articulated a similar sentiment when he said something about wanting to live the life that you would see in a story, wanting to start being the person you would see in a compelling character.

i find that really helpful.

-

i'm pretty amnesic when it comes to convictions.
i find it hard to believe that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in me. in fact, i find it hard to believe a lot of things. i intellectually accept them. but i don't have faith that they are realities, not just ideas.

'i believe; help me in my unbelief!'

Holy Spirit, have your way.

enough babble.
for now, at least.