Reconciliation

I usually like to shy away from using loaded Christian terms, but then I get to that place where I accept that it is there and used a lot because it holds a lot of Truth. If Truth is what I'm aiming for, we're gonna talk about reconciliation.

That's part of reconciliation, I think.

As I'm still searching and lingering on the sentiments of my last post, I continue to be bothered by myself, and I am increasingly aware of how much this is not a part of God's plan for me except as far is it will drive me away from sin and toward him. I haven't been called to frustration, resentment, complacency, apathy, jealousy, or any of those other things that I seem to be constantly trying to fight off to the eventual point of my submission to their evil wiles. I get these ideas of what's right, and then I like them a lot and ride them out as far as they'll take me because it's generally self-satisfying. A most recent example of this is how I have decided that my academics don't really matter. I use reasoning like, "It's just not my thing. My passions and interests lie elsewhere." While that might be true, it's still really stupid to deny that I am, nonetheless, at college. Whether it interests me or not, I am supposed to be open to learning, respecting the time and energy of my professors, and striving to be successful in this place that God has very clearly put me. Instead, I've been fighting and justifying my oppositions with startling consistency these past four years. I've let myself put in less than half the effort required for most of my classes (as a defensive mechanism from actual intellectual failure), and it's finally posing a threat. I'm failing a class that I need to pass in order to graduate.

But I'm not supposed to have even let it get to this point. Another thing I've been coming to understand is that life really isn't about pushing the boundaries until they break just so that I can frantically try to repair the rupture and try not to touch it again. There's more to this sing-song "trust and obey" concept than a little 6-year-old and now 22-year-old Katie can understand. I was always "the stubborn child." I questioned everything, and I resisted most things demanded of me. Now that I try to use this same attitude with God as I did with my parents growing up, I see what little effect it has as I keep trying to resist God's commandments. He's not going to bend the rules for me just so that I can live by my sacred idea of freedom to be me. Fortunately, he's been trying to bend and break this very rule I've made for myself. For this my heart breaks in two ways: first, because I know how disobedient I've been and, second, because this is as real as God's love has been in my limited understanding.

Trust and obey; you'll receive peace and hope.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

-Romans 5:1-11

I need to stop these fruitless and futile efforts in trying to reconcile all that God stuff with my own ways, because I've already received reconciliation for even these fruitless and futile activities in which I dwell. I can't just sit around questioning this love, joy, and peace that is always being offered to me. I'm fighting all the wrong battles and winning all the wrong rewards. I don't like the idea that I could just be typing all of this right now and turn my back on these convictions in just a few days, and I know it's all a choice formed by my own attitude and perspective that so desperately need to be nurtured through Scripture and prayer.

What I need is a place to start. I need to fill in these holes that spiritually plague me: being prone to loneliness and "needing" someone or something to hold onto, wanting to be right and know what's right, needing something new and different to make me feel alive.

Why I shouldn't be lonely and frequently "needing" worldly fixes:
"The Lord is my portion," says my soul," therefore I will hope in him." The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him." -Lamentations 3:24-28

The Right that I should care about:
And Jesus said to [his disciples], "To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that 'they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.'" -Mark 4:11-12

The new and different that I *should* be striving for to make me feel alive:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. -Romans 12: 1-3

Excuses of my own depravity aren't enough to keep me from my calling. I am to be righteous, because that's part of the prize of salvation. God has already called me to be his. Now (and many nows from now), I must walk forth in obedience.

(Lastly, I'm making this parenthetical to say thanks to those whose faith has been such an inspiration to me that I have been broken: Claire, Sadie, Suzannah, Noelle, Gillian, Sarah (those are just the ones with blogs), my parents, my grandparents--just to name a few. I encourage you all to keep up the Good work.)