breathe

this is how it feels when I

ignore the words You spoke to me

this is where I lose myself

when I keep running away from You

this is who I am when I

don't know myself anymore

this is what I choose when it's

all left up to me…

breathe Your life into me

—Red, “Breathe Into Me”

I’ve had something of a revelation today. It’s not a new thought or an original thought, but it’s still valid. Even profound. Here it is: it doesn’t mean much to call myself a disciple, which by definition implies submission to God, if I still pretty much live as I want to live.

Now I’m not talking about sex and drugs. I’m not talking about stealing or lying. Point of fact, I’m not talking about any of the “big sins”—neither the top ten (the ten commandments) nor the forbidden seven (the seven deadly sins). Not even any of the ones that make both lists. No, I’m just talking about submission, really.

Said another way, it makes no sense to call Jesus Lord and then live as though I call the shots.

I’m talking about decisions. I’m talking about priorities. I’m talking about the thousand things great and small that accumulate to form the sum total of my worship—how I live my life. What matters to me.

I realized today what a wretched mess my life becomes with me at the helm. I don’t mean that in any kind of a trite way, either. Seriously. I make a mess of things. Fast. Like the lines from the song quoted above, this is me when I try to live on my own…

Of course there is always Christian speak coming out of my mouth. I always sound and look like a nice guy. Almost always. I’m not talking about those appearances. I’m talking about being me. I’m talking about the condition of my heart. I’m talking about pealing away the façade I hide behind all too often and venturing to see if the man underneath can honestly call Jesus “Master”.

I’m talking about what to do if he can’t.

I want to level with you—a lot of the time I do things my way. Sometimes I pray about what I’m doing, sometimes I just do it. I typically have a “righteous” justification for my actions, especially the harsh ones, but that doesn’t really make anything righteous. I’ve come to realize that I need to submit more. I need to call Him Master more. I need to seek His will, His way, more. After all, I don’t really know what I’m doing.

So I guess,

this is me when I
confess I can’t do it on my own…

May His grace be manifest in me. God knows I need it.

qwerty

Okay kids, so I’ve been away for a while. I’m sure you’ve been worried. Probably called the hospitals and asked around to see if anyone’s heard anything. That or you lazily checked the blog once last week, yawned when you saw I haven’t been posting and haven’t thought about it since. Whatever. The point, dear readers, is that you shouldn’t worry about me—I’m fine.

Where have I been? Answer: long story. My chiropractor tells me that I have an inflammation in my back due to poor posture. He tells me this is because I look at the keyboard when typing rather than the screen. That's because I never learned to type. I asked my chiropractor about this because I was feeling a stabbing pain in my left shoulder and pain is rarely fun. Especially when it's stabbing pain.

Stabbing.

To fix the problem, I have to learn to type, which sucks. It’s slow and annoying and I find myself wanting to avoid doing things that require me to type (like posting to my blog) because I lack the patience to do it the right way.

Typing as I always have (cheating), I can whip out about 85 words a minute. Not bad. I’ve been working on this post since last Thursday.

But no more excuses. Even if it kills me, I will learn to type…and I will continue to post. Though the posts may be less wordy for a while. You know, just a month or two. And then back to my verbose, wordy, overly-expressed self.

You can hardly wait.