glossy God.

My prayers are getting crazy.

I'm rooting back through blog posts, and memories, and...ohhemmgee.

As I write this, I can see a brochure from Dallas Theological Seminary on my table--I was flipping through it this afternoon. I'm kind of scared of it. I'm afraid of glossy God paper. I sort of circle it every couple of days. Then I'll pick it up, by one corner, laugh nervously to break the tension between me and the paper-good, and crack a joke to God, something like "Well, they'd have no idea what hit them. Ha. Ha." Lame, I know. Not really even a joke. More of a truth. The anxiety keeps me from the top of my game.

So the DTS graduate catalogue mocks me.

Yet...why should it? I'm not who I was. And I get the right to change! I have license, and in fact, the greatest justification of all, to be someone new. To want new things, and to live different moments.

I was talking to someone a couple of weeks ago, I can't remember who now, and he was saying that he wanted to be a youth pastor, but felt an apprehension--why would he think he could be that? But then, he pointed out, why couldn't he? And, as I pointed out, if he truly felt a pleasure and "call", his hesitance wasn't only "bad" for him, but dangerous. If that's his plan, he's got things to do. Peoples' lives are marked for him to change. And by shrinking from God's gifts, and His grace, we not only harm ourselves, but others.

Sometimes, people seem to have the idea that God is a warm and fuzzy understand-er of our feelings of inadequacy and fear, and that passing up His directives are a victim-less crime. Neither could be further from the truth. Yes, He loves, and He understands, and He grabs our hands (like Lot!) and pulls us out. But I wonder (I am SO not qualified to be talking about God, really, so take with a grain of salt), if He's not quite so warm and fuzzy about this topic as we think. If at some point, He sees our apprehension for what it is: self-centeredness. And says, "Step. I told you to do it, and I meant it, and I love you, and I'm a wonderful God, but I am also a God to fear, and step. I said step."

I sometimes think that self-centeredness must be a most serious sin to a God whose greatest act of love was a death to self. He gave Himself fully to death for our lives. The very essence of our faith is self-sacrifice. Our unwillingness to give of ourselves must be so painful to Him.

I have found that when I'm afraid, or offended, or apprehensive, it's because I'm thinking too much of me, and not enough of Him, and His other children. That when I say "no" to an impulse or a pull, I lose not only my own growth, but I pain God with a couple of realities. Firstly, that I don't trust Him enough to move. That's a matchless remorse. Secondly, that I don't really care about the plan He has for others, and the role I am to play in those plans.

I know there's some debate around the issue of God's plan for our lives, and the detail with which that plan can be known and acted on, but I do believe that God is an intricate Creator. And though He sees all time, and knows all moments, there's a mystery wherein He lives our moments with us. I don't know how it works, and I don't need to, but I know that when we allow fear or anxiety to derail us from the direction we know to be His, there are victims. The girl who would have read your book, whose life would have been moved towards Christ. The man who needed a pastor who understood where he'd been. The kid who needed someone, just one person, to think the world of him like his Father does. And I'm not saying that God won't still work in those lives. That He can't spin your disobedience into something beautiful, regardless. But there are victims.

You know, we understand this in the physical. We get the math. We know that if we don't step out to support missionaries, they can't go be missionaries. And if we don't give of our money to support kids in Haiti, they will starve to death. But there's something seemingly less tangible about His will, and His way with regards to our personal call.

In a sense, our fear is our sin. We've been given a promise. When we live outside of that promise, we mess up His will. We lose our way.

I don't know what to do about that DTS brochure. It is a Will? It is a whim?

I'm praying for it. Praying for seminary along with all the other crazy, funky things I've found myself praying for recently.