Costumes, Candy, Christ, and a Kitten.

Sometimes I think that we live life like a big Halloween night of trick-or-treat mastery. We all work so extremely hard at creating these incredible "costumes" so we impress other people (including God Himself) that we should be the ones to get their "candy". Basically, the better trickster I become, the more treats I can get. We get frustrated when other people get more candy, become ashamed of our masks and try our darndest to mimic the mask that "they" have. We want their candy, or the most candy, and will stop at nothing to satisfy that longing. Face it, you don't get candy by showing up at someone's doorstep in your everyday clothes. How long till we stop being ashamed of our true selves, and start being ashamed of having to always be something we are not? I wonder if God is not more pleased when we just show up as who we are? Whether we are happy, sad, excited, depressed, fat, skinny, addicted, clean, content, desperate, or whatever.

I took a gamble tonight and let Ando watch The Passion with me tonight. That's such an emotionally challenging movie. It moved Anderson, for sure. Some of you may disagree with letting an eight year old watch that. I felt that it would be good to help make the story of what Jesus did for Him touch a more real spot in his heart, and it did. He's old enough to understand, and still innocent enough to be moved. As I was watching Him being willingly beaten for me, it made me think harder about whether He can be trusted with my life. I mean, admit it. The older I get, the more and more I realize that the common denomenator of all my sin is that I would rather control the outcomes in my life more than I want to lean heavily on Him. Oh, don't get me wrong. I lean on Him for things I can't control, or that don't really matter right now. My forgiveness, heaven, presidential election, world peace, death, are all things that I can trust His strength and sovereignty in. However, I sing a different tune when it comes to my daily minute-by-minute satisfaction. Lieing, lusting, the pursuit of "feeling alive" are all things that can bring immediate satisfaction, and I know that He doesn't operate nor define things the way I do. If I'm honest, I'm more convinced that I would do a better job at being god in my life than God Himself could do. If I didn't believe that, I would live a life of faith continually. Alright, enough of the emotional bleeding. His grace covers even that, and so does His sovereinty too. I believe that wrestling with these things is Jesus growing Himself in me more. That's faith to some degree, so that's a start. We get so concerned and worried about abusing grace and freedom that we don't even get close to it in reality. We're so afraid that we are going to miss out on something that we SHOULD do, that we don't ever stop and listen to what He wants to tell us.

But through it all, He's growing inside of me. My life doesn't shock or suprise Him. My failures don't obliterate Him or His delight in me. He delights in me! He doesn't delight in my discipline, my spiritual chores, nor my "moral muscle". He delights in me. His kindness leads me to repentence...true repentence. My shame leads me to be angry over certain sins. My pride leads me to be frustrated over some of the other ones. I'm not sure much of that is real repentence, for me at least. True repentence is me admiting at His feet that I need ALL of Him with ALL of me. There's a difference between being a broken vessel and being a self-made vase. He finds more glory in the brokenness. It's just that we hate it, because we have to admit then that we don't have what it takes to do it ourselves, outside of His working it in and through us.

The Lord has burdened me recently with the concept of the reality in a life of faith. My prayer is that maybe He is beginning that work in me and my hope is in that HE will be faithful to complete it. Can He find glory in my frustration? my failures? my addictions? my successes? my victories? my selfishness? my attempts at love? Yes! Yes, if it drives me to lean in on Him more. Is His strength measured in my developed strengths? No. Is His strength made perfect in my disciplines? No. His strength is made perfectly perfect in my weak weaknesses. A weakness is not a one time failure, it's a life struggle. There's something at war within me, that His strength is gaining victory over. Every so often, He walks the floors of my heart and takes a whip and drives out all of the things that I've let settle into my life that shouldn't be there. He kicks over tables legalism and self-reliance, and opens the cages of addictions and defeat. I'm His temple and He scourges it clean, because He delights in me. I enjoy knowing that He is so concerned for me and that He has the controlled strength to know exactly how much I can take and goes not one inch further until His time is right. Help us live with grace towards each other, holding tight to the hope that our faithful Groom loves us dearly and doesn't hold our adulteries against us any longer.

Oh, and I guess the kitten will stay. Abbey wins. Updated score...Abbey 107 vs. Matt 2, but who's counting?