.: the process of a lifetime :.

I must admit that the work of the Lord often times seems as a tremendous burden to me. Now I am not speaking here of those things that we set our hearts and hands towards doing for the sake of ministering to those all around us, but rather that which the Father is in the very midst of doing in us as individuals. It's that very labor which so frequently feels like such a burden to put up with. I mean, after all, what He has set out to do is to radically change everything that we are into something greater, something that is slowly growing closer to His original design (similar to that of the first beings before the all-inclusive Fall of Genesis 3) for our hearts and spirits. This is no small task! But I feel at times as if I may never see the process come to fruition in light of just how well I know my own stubborn will. And when how I behave once again falls so short of how I ought... well, therein lays the rub.

Time and time again, I want to silently lean over to the Lord and question Him of just how sure He is about actually accomplishing His will in my life (as if He doesn't already know my subtle strategies of resistance and flip-flopping). Yes, I too have desired (often in times of weakness or weariness) that He would simply wash His hands of me and just let me have my own way once and for all! Just to be able to live the so-called "natural" life - life completely handed over the one living it. This idea of the Spirit of God working in and through me, so as to transform every fragment of my possessed fallenness, is such a weight because it brings with it the responsibility to live, move, and breath in rhythm with it, rather than against it. But for me to do that would (at this stage in my 28-year-existence) require that I possess even a shred of love or even yearning for that way of living, one that seems so foreign to me, in certain spaces of who I am.

"Father God, how many times must I remind you that my spirit so often cares so little for fidelity to Your cause... that it remains so doggedly thirsty for fixes like safety and comfort and staggered doses of idolatry?" But then again, He probably already knew that... and maybe even (in all of His omniscience) took that into account when He set out with such grand intentions for His creation. It's just that the cry from the author of Hebrews 12:2 to "fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith" seems like a nice idea, but not quite so realistic in the company of so many other objects that capture our gapping stare.

Oh, if I could just set my sights on Christ and trust them to remain there... but I guess that would undo the need for desperate faith, wouldn't it?! And after all, the divine purpose of our Heavenly Father was never to create precise and unblemished machines, but rather relational beings that are whole on all accounts. I am a man who is far too consumed with the end product, living in relationship with a jealous God (jealous for me... for ME!!!) who cares far more for the journey. For in that process of partnering, moving, struggling, and yes, even failing, He is far more pleased with our togetherness than He is bothered by my necessarily deserving such. In light of that, I can surely rest in the fact that greater things are happening, beyond my making the Will of God come about in my life on my own terms.