Day Five : Hebrews 7-13

So I promised I'd share the ramifications of seeking God. Up untill friday things were pretty good, God was revealing Himself to me, reading His word and prayer was relatively easy and productive, and the daily stuff wasn't too stressful. Fortunately the weekend arrived and things became a tad tuffer, at times really tuff.


Was it because of DISCIPLINE?

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. (Hebrews 12:7 & 11)

When I (one who is being made holy) persue's the one (who is holy, and who is making me holy), stuff about me that's not too holy seems to confronted, and it wasn't comfortable.

On friday Julie and I attended a friends wedding, it was seriously beautiful. The couple who was married are very God gifted, and so are their friends. Their musicians were especially talented, their artists painted gorgeous stuff, they created incredible video's, and their friends and family spoke of them abuntanly well. They deserved this praise, they are a wonderful God fearing couple. But as Julie and I drove home that night suddenly we were both overcome with a sense of failure, stemming from the success of our friends. For Julie it was a questioning of her beauty, how she was valued by others, how creative and gifted she was, how good a friend she was. (as I read Heb 3:13 "encourage one another daily.. so that none of you may be hardended by sin's deceitfulness" I came to a new grasp of sin's decitfulness in the absence of encouragement.) For me it was that friend I ran into, the one who's radically seeking and serving God, the one I admire, yet I left that night and that friendly reuion with a sense of failure, jealousy and competition. As we attended church this morning the feelings grow stronger, as I looked at those gifted and serving God my mind threw insults at them, I mocked them in my heart. Later at the Global Day of Prayer at the RICOH, the people who were worshipping God all around me annoyed me, prayer became difficult.

Sin seemed to be coming to the surface, dissention seemed to be pooping it's ugly head with every moment. Julie and I sat silently through dinner digusted with each other's company, our conversation this weekend had been riddled with hot topics (our current OSAP debt, money in general, what to eat, what to wear, what to do, my driving, our lack of a potential summer holiday, and yet again the money convo...) Oh and I forgot to mention both evening's dinners happened to fall either in the sink or on the floor.

But God intervened... I couldn't sleep last night so I prayed, and it was one of those prayer times you hope never ends. Tonight after dinner we talked through these feelings, we blamed the brokeness on the one we don't persue, while claiming the blood of Jesus as our redemption. I read the rest of Hebrews tonight, I will not grow weary and lose heart (12:3), I will persue the discipline of God that I may share in His holiness (12:11), for without holiness no one will see the Lord (12:14). If I allow the sin to simply stagnate in my life, unverbalized, it prevents my transformation to holiness, then no one will see the Lord... How can I allow this?

13:5 "Never will I leave you;never will I forsake you"

10:10 "And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Chrsit once for all"

To bed I go, but with a renewed mind I will come to rest. As I close my eyes I can leave guilt with it's creator, I can claim sin's final destination, I can claim the work of the Spirit within me which will illuminate Jesus to the world. I am being made holy, and it's only been 5 days (I suppose it's really been like 26 years but who's counting?).