Journal Entry | 2.20.2010

I wrote this on February 20, 2010 (hence the date on the title). At that moment I felt like God was impersonal and that I was using Him as some sort of tool to make me look better. Anyways, I figured out that God isn't to be made into some tool but rather we're supposed to have a relationship with Him and that's what I've been working on in my life lately.

An Impersonal God

Right now I'm laying in a sleeping bag getting ready to sleep on the ground of an infant playroom in some church.

I'm at a prep retreat for my mission trip to New Orleans during spring break. It's a little sleepover thing where we learn about what were doing and bonding with the team so it's not super awkward when we go down there.

All night long we've been sharing our stories of our lives. We made a time line of our walk with Jesus where we wrote down five significant events that impacted our lives.

I wrote down accepting Jesus in my life when I was seven, my youth group leaders in grade school, NLA, Baylor, and Bethel. I then had to deal with telling everyone in my group about it. I wasn't worried about it really but after I was done giving my little spiel of words I was disappointed in my speech. I was cliche and bland, made generalizations, and it was just disappointing to say the least.

Before I started writing this I was in the sleeping bag playing a card game on my iPod. I have won this game fifty times since the end of January which basically means to me I have a very boring uninviting life.

That's what I should have said in my little speech. That my life right now is a complete and utter boring mess and I signed up for this trip to jump start me living a better story. Or at least it was when I signed up for it.

Right now, months after signing up for this I feel very distant from God. Well, distant isn't the word. I feel lost, out of sync, stranded, and alone. I feel I have made my relationship God into a political self-help book God. That I'm just using Him as some big tool for me to write about and argue about. Jesus seems to have become impersonal to me or better yet I have become impersonal to God.

I've been reading about lifeboats lately. How we all seem to be trying to persuade everyone that we are worth keeping on the lifeboat and that they should throw someone else off when it starts to sink. We find our worth from those people and try to make ourselves look better through it.

I'm reading about how Jesus came in and said,"Who needs a lifeboat?" It's about finding our worth and love from God only and how that should be enough.

I never want to be considered some thoughtful person or philosophical writer or some creative artist. I don't want that to happen to me. But people tell me I am these things and I find worth in that so I try to personify that type of personality. Always seeming to ask the tough questions with the easiest of whim. Always contemplating life challenges and it's meaning. All I need next is a smoking pipe and one of those big leather arm chairs where I can sit next to a roaring fire and feel important as people come up to me and ask what life is truly about. Yes, I don't want that.

I would rather find worth from my personal God, my dance partner going through life together. I think that is about it. I mean, I like writing my thoughts online but I don't want to be considered some amazing thinker. Just a guy, living out his life, striving to be that beautiful reflection of an intimate Jesus who together are living a better story.

I have now just finished a chapter in a book about this. It is "Searching For God Knows What" by Donald Miller and it goes through his journey also.

Funny how things work like that.