On Christ the Solid Rock

1. Be honest as you examine the way you live. What do you look to as your "solid rock"?

This is a difficult question from where I sit right at this moment. I want the answer to be Jesus, I am striving daily for the answer to be Jesus, but let's face it – the foundations of my life are still pretty sandy. Perspectives shift around like slippery river rocks under my feet, and I find myself falling. I look at the waves instead of at Jesus, and I start to sink. It's a regular occurrence. I don't think that makes me unique in any way – it's the common lot of fallen humanity – but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. I still look to myself for control of my circumstances... but I am trying to look to Jesus when things feel like they are falling apart. And to thank Him when things go well. And to repent for my seemingly incurable need to rescue myself from my own mistakes (and sins) and to control my life when the world seems set against me.

2. How would your living be different if Christ really were your "solid rock"?

Here are two verses I've been meditating on lately:

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer." 

 ~ Psalm 19:14

"For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble;
he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock." ~ Psalm 27:5

Christ beneath me. Part of St. Patrick's Breastplate. Standing on the rock. David doesn't say, "I will find the rock and climb up onto it." He clearly says, "He will lift me high upon a rock." God will raise me up to stand firmly on the promises and reality of Jesus. He's dwelling in me, He's reaching out to me, He's around me, and He's beneath me. How can I sink if I'm standing on the Rock? 

On a concrete level, how does this truth make my living different? Slowly, haltingly, stumblingly. How did I put it in the worship guide last week? I "keep calling out, persistently believing, faithfully listening, actively seeking" his presence in my life. It's a journey, with Jesus beside me, a trek through the wilderness, together. It's waiting for the Lord, listening for his voice and responding with prayer, even when I feel abandoned or cut off. It's asking the other people in my life to pray with me and for me (I'm pretty sparse on the "praying with me" part, but I want it; I just need to learn how to ask), so that we can encourage one another when the trek seems endless, when we're up to our knees in the mire of our circumstances, so we can run and not grow weary and catch each other when we start to fall. That's what I want. I'm remembering to start and end each day with prayer. That's a start. I'm intentionally examining the "words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart" and trying to keep my focus in the right direction. Because the journey is pointless if I'm just going around in circles. I have to be headed toward the destination God has designed for me.

Waiting is hard. I don't know what's supposed to come next. I don't know what I'm supposed to be when I grow up. I feel like He must have a plan – a big one, a major change, one that's going to make all this suffering and all this profound change in my life make sense. I feel like I'm in limbo, unsure whether to forge ahead, to "kick against the goads", to be proactive, or whether to wait patiently for God to open doors, to trust that He's got it all under control and will work things out in His timing. 

I'm still trying to figure out how repentance works into every corner of my life. All of you have said, at one time or another (and not far in the distant past) that you don't hear enough repentance from me. Last week Christian preached on how the "way of repentance" can make you miss God. I admit confusion on just how the whole repentance thing plays out in the real world. If the gospel is "Repent and believe," I think I'm still missing it a little. I ask for forgiveness for my sins and stupidity, but still have trouble believing that God can forgive me when I know that I'm going to fail Him again. And again. I can't live up to my own standards. Which brings me back to the Rock. I have to learn to trust that my identity is in Jesus, and that He is with me – above me, around me, beneath me, within me – and that He loves me, Jeni Adams, world without end, Amen.

The World's Best Security System

1. Where do you tend to look for security? What gives you your inner sense of well-being?


Tripp makes this set of questions easy for me. He's got me pegged. He lists a bunch of typical places people seek security (relationships, careers, and the like), and then says this:
"Or maybe you have no security system at all. Maybe your days are a cycle of concern, fear, and dread. Perhaps you hyper-analyze every decision you make, and you brutalize yourself with doubt after you make them. Perhaps you look with regret at past decisions. Perhaps you give yourself way too much credit for the development of your story."

That about covers me, don't you think? Where do I tend to look for security? For many years, I looked to myself. It had been pretty clearly established inside my head that I couldn't count on others – others betray, others abandon, others die – but I made a plan for my life and seemed to be doing pretty well at pulling it off. I saw my need for predictability, for control, but intentionally picked a life path that would make that nearly impossible to attain: a life with no job stability, because it also meant a life with no consistent relationships. If I needed a break, I could fall off the radar and come back at my convenience. I could reinvent myself with every tour.

But then I failed me, and I didn't know where to look. So I started to self-destruct. Yes, I looked to God, repeatedly but never consistently. It was too hard to keep eye contact. And I continued to slide down. The Cryders broke my fall, and inevitably I started looking to them to some extent for my security as well.

I'm not sure I remember what an inner sense of well-being feels like. I still don't really feel Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or whatever, in me, although sometimes I feel Him near me. I still mostly feel lost, although my seeking has become more persistent. Usually, the silence is deafening.


2. What are the things that you need to say to yourself when life seems unpredictable and/or dangerous?


"You are not secure because you have control or understanding." Once again, Tripp says it for me. Because those are the two things I want: control and understanding. We usually think of understanding as a good thing, but it keeps tripping me up in my walk with God, because I confuse understanding with faith. I get tangled up in trying to comprehend it all instead of starting where Jesus says to start: "Repent and believe." All the understanding in the world isn't going to save me. It's only by God's grace that I have any hope.

My need for control... it seems practically hard-wired into my personality, and I don't know how to fix it.  Let's be honest: I can't fix it. So what do I do with it? Offer it up to God, repent of it, and give control to Him. That sounds right, but in practical application, no matter how many times I try to set it down before Him, I always seem to snatch it right back up again. It makes my brain hurt. It makes my heart hurt. Trapped in this box of an apartment on the second consecutive day of rain, I feel trapped not only by my geography but by my circumstances. I do overanalyze every decision I've made, brutalize myself over my mistakes, wonder how this can possibly be God's plan and not something else I screwed up. How else could I have landed here? And how can I fix it? And we're back at the start.

So now I have to go confess again, repent again, offer this life that I don't understand and can't control up to God again, knowing that I'm going to fail. It all makes me feel tired, and trapped. Don't get me wrong – this is a good day, a good week, but answering these questions brings out the ugly truth, that I remain trapped inside myself, feeling like I'm slowly disappearing; that I still haven't found this freedom that Jesus promises to those who follow him. I just have to believe that when I fail (again and again!), God does and will forgive. Again. And again.

Feeling Loved

Where do you actually FEEL most loved during the week - by God, by others?

Christian asked me this question over the weekend. I keep reflecting on it, but am not sure what to do with it. It ought to be obvious... but it's not. I feel loved in the Cryder household, just by being included. Because I know you all accept me just as I am (although I still perversely feel the need to earn it... but I'm working on that). I'm happy just to not feel like I'm in the way, to not be incessantly self-conscious. For me, the "feeling" of being loved is just being able to be myself and not have to prove anything.

Where does that fit it in on the God level? I think this ties in with the sermon on Sunday about missing God through trying to be good. If I can't even measure up to my own standards, how can God ever accept me just as I am?

I have seen grace in action in the past weeks on the human level, and I'm trying to translate that into a clearer comprehension of it in my relationship with God. But I don't honestly know where I feel loved by God during the week. I still mostly feel like He's trying to break me. And maybe that's exactly what He's doing. Love doesn't always feel like love. And I'm certainly no expert on what it's supposed to feel like, even if I could trust my feelings. And we've been over that part...

Bible Reading and Prayer

Christian, thank you for calling me yesterday morning to come help Malachi. I'm sorry I couldn't stay at the shop. I was already on the edge – it has been week of sadness emotionally, a lot of which is easily explained just by hormones, although some of it is more complicated than that – but when you asked me if I'd taken the advice you'd given me... twice... (to re-read my "Spiritual Breakthroughs" blog), and I realized that it had once again never occurred to me as soon as I left your house... it pushed me over the edge, and I didn't want to take the chance of crying at the boat shop. I just felt like such a loser, for failing to do such a simple, clearly constructive thing. I don't know what's wrong with me. How can anyone help me if I can't remember what they say? 

I don't know where to read in my Bible, and I don't know what  to pray. I keep trying to read the Old Testament stories as Marilyn suggested, but keep getting bogged down, and am not understanding what I'm supposed to learn from them. I have that Bible-reading insert with the highlighted parts, but it just seems daunting, and I can't seem to get started and concentrate. 

As for prayer, I keep trying the A C T S formula, and I get lost before I ever get 30 seconds in. My prayer life has never been particularly good; I got really encouraged last summer when I started learning to pray with someone else, however pathetic my attempts may have appeared, but without that support, I'm back to a standstill. I think that needs to become a priority in my life; I don't know who to do it with, but I think I need someone, at least occasionally, to try to pray with, as well as pointers on how to start conversations with God on my own.

On a positive note, my reading and prayer haven't just "fallen by the wayside" – before I got involved with you guys, these things just never crossed my mind. Now I really want them in my life... but wanting doesn't seem to be enough. In fact, since my "gospel epiphany" a month or so ago, I've wanted it even more, which may be why my lack of success, my spinning my wheels, feels particularly frustrating just now.

I need support in my reading and prayer, and I don't know what questions to ask, how to ask for help. I should have asked sooner. But to be honest about how my brain still works, I didn't want to admit how much I was still struggling, in light of the fact that God really is working. I didn't want you to be disappointed in me or think that my breakthrough wasn't really real. It was. It is. Which is why I need your help to keep moving forward. Advice? Please?