Smeagol is Free!
A hermitudinal view of...stuff...


5.16.2006  

Garbage Man?

*Sigh*. What a doozy. My life seems to have been given wings to soar over the past few weeks, and with such flights of fancy, I feel as though this journey I'm on has suddenly taken topsy-turvy turns of swooping delight and petrifying fear, all at once. I won't lie; my heart is afraid. I see Jesus, for He's still very much there. Yet it looks to my quaking heart as though the path to seeking Him is one I'm not quite ready for, filled with uncertainty and daunting fears, one I'm not certain I'm strong enough to traverse.

When I was talking to Gary a little over a week ago, he told me I needed some clarity, some time to really think things over and ponder what the LORD would really have me do. He also said something that really hit me: whenever we go through times such as these and ask of the LORD to speak to us, we often need to stop and think back to what the LORD has already been telling us. God has already been speaking; have I been listening?

I keep thinking back over the past days and weeks. I can't help it, especially if I'm to listen to wise counsel when I ask for it. One thing I find that continually stirs my soul is the thought that I'm here at Boyce College at all. Still more, why I'm here at Boyce: to prepare for ministry, a life of preaching God's Word.

Wow.

The very thought causes me to weep. Of all the half-baked and ill-conceived numbskull ideas and moronic notions ever to sweep the world, John Letoto being entrusted with the precious truths of God's Word often seems to me to be the most numbskulled and moronic of them all.

But there are times when this is not the case.

I would've been The One Picked Last. Always was, growing up. I was the kid who stayed in his room all day, read tons of books, but never really liked going to church. Mon even gave me the "Couch Potato Award" one year, for my reputed lack of movement. Seriously. (I sometimes find the ways that my family shows love to me to be greatly ironic.) Through it all, I thought of myself as lacking in talent. That was something my brother and sisters had. When it came to drive and ambition, Lisa, Monica, and Mary took the lion's share. Never did anything leadership-ish in school, precisely because leadership-ish types of things were for one type of people: leaders. Me, a leader? One to whom others would look for guidance and vision? Hah, preposterous!

So it comes as a great (and quite honestly, sometimes temptingly bitter) irony that I'm here. Not just here physically, mind you, but here with my heart. In those rare moments of lucid vulnerability, I realize with great fear and excitement that talking about Jesus is exactly what God made me for.

Why fear? Because I never wanted this. I didn't ask for it. If God made it so I could go home right now and be a garbage man for the rest of my life, I would do it, I would bolt. But you know what? I can't. I just can't. Paul wrote about being commpelled by the love of Christ. George Matheson wrote about it in that wonderful hymn. It's the same thing, I believe, that keeps me here. As much as I think this is all so ludicrous, that I of all people should be chosen to tell others about my LORD, He won't let go of me. And you know what? I don't want Him to.

The excitement is there because I see preaching God's precious Word as being the most important thing one could ever do. Preaching His truths, shepherding His flock...what more could I ask for? Nothing. And why? Because I find that when I speak to others about the LORD, my heart soars. I forget that anyone else is in the room. I'm taken in beyond the veil, into the holy of holies, and it is there that I behold the glory of God in the face of Christ. And you know what? I live! I behold the LORD better than Moses did, for I have an Intercessor, One who brings me into the presence of the Father with all the rights and privileges of a son, the same rights and privileges of the Son!

When I speak of the glories of Jesus, my heart soars. I was made to do this. I can't ignore such a clear, uncomplicated call. But oh, how large a task is set before me! That's why I fear, that's why I question. It's precisely because the task He's set before me is so breathtakingly beautiful, so achingly glorious, that I fear. I wonder if I'm cut from the same cloth as those that have gone before me, if perhaps that cloth that is being fashioned into the mantle is, as John Piper terms it, soaked in the blood of the Lamb and singed with the fires of hell.

*Sigh*. I have nothing to offer the LORD, that He should choose me. Yet, here I am. I can't go away, either. I won't. He won't let me. If all I can accomplish is, by the grace of God and the working of the Holy Spirit, to stir the soul and touch the heart of man, I would count myself blessed beyond reason.

posted by Bolo | 1:05 PM
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