On the edge of faith and belief....

“God works through different people in different ways, but it is the same God who achieves His purpose through them all” 1 Corinthians 12:6 (PH)

It is not the job I expected, nor one that I suspect that I will particularly excel at, but it seems to be the job that God has made me wait for eleven months for before presenting it to me late one night as I perused Linked In, one of my network sites, and discovered a fact that I had missed in the ten months of really working the networking syndicates….they have a job section. I send in the ‘online’ application, honestly answering that I couldn’t pass a street test if required for employment (I have been in A2 since July and still am a newbie). They called the next day and we spend the rest of that day and the next chasing each other on the phone.

Thursday, phone interview….Tuesday, meeting with the Hiring Manager and a race to the Secretary of State for a Chauffeur license and driving record copy….then dropping the application off, with the quickly snapped ‘passport’ quality photos, at the “Taxi Officer” of Ann Arbor Police Department, Officer Clock….

Monday, a call from Officer Clock saying he needed my chauffeur license copy. When I brought it in, he asked me to wait and came back with my application approved. A paid cabby license later and I’m officially licensed to be a taxi driver in the city of Ann Arbor. Tomorrow I call Betty and let her know I can attend training starting on Monday coming.

This is not what I was expecting…..ministry job aside.

There is no grace period here, no cushion of mercy that should I fall upon this ‘face for radio’ mug that will not cause further damage. I spend all of my funds on the licensing, running around and such…..I’m literally 180 miles from empty and there are some mighty bills due by mid-month. I had to go out and get pick through some ministry’s clothing bank for some work pants….they didn’t have any shirts…..and I can only hope the car maintains for a few more months until I can get it fixed. If for some reason, any reason, I can’t make this job work…….it is going to be a pretty big crater when I crash.

Not the beginnings I expected either……..dreaming aside.

It is no surprise to me how my secular life has followed my spiritual one. As one continued to fail, so did the other. I have come a long way from where I was six and a half years ago, when on Valentine’s day, God truly opened my heart and all the nastiness that a dying heart can gush out. He started me on a journey that day, a journey that has not ever worked out the way I imagined it would from the moment I surrendered; one that still twists through the valleys and the swamps of this wilderness with amazing dexterity and suddenness. Some would say I appear to be no further along that I was on the blustery February day, but I know that’s not true. Some would say that I’m worse off now that I ever was way back then. Maybe, but then one could say that Christ felt the same way when He hung on the cross and cried out to a Father that turned away from Him. Maybe I am worse off, but then that simply makes me that much closer to the prize.

As I have learned to subsist on a meager shadow of what I once earned, I have mirrored a meager fare in the spiritual life as well….slowly wearing off the edge of desire to be in ministry service in God’s church. As I have let go of those things I wanted above all else when I was employed, I began to give up those things I wanted above all else in the spiritual as well.

I should not be here in this place…….in all honesty.

As my beliefs have strained to the breaking point, both in my professional and spiritual abilities, I have let them go…..snapping them against the cruel taskmaster of faith and reality…..and they haven’t come rebounding back. I stand here on sheer ice, in both worlds, waiting for the breaking tearing that will signify my doom where my faith dies and my professional ability prove inadequate to the task.

I am at a point where I cannot encourage, sustain or support myself anymore, both in the spiritual and the secular world.

I am at a point where God has the clear opportunity to use this ‘different’ job to show me a ‘different’ work to do for Him…..

The job has changed, the life has changed and even my faith has changed……

But He stayed the same.

How many times.....

“Then Peter came to him and said, "Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother who sins against me? As many as seven times?" Jesus said to him, "Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times!” Matthew 18:21-22 NET

“How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?”......the great Bob Dylan croons in his song, “Blowing in the Wind,” “How many times must a man look up, before he sees the sky?”

It is the answer that we may never know the answer to, yet it came up in the conversation earlier this week with a dear brother in Christ over coffee.

“How many times,” he asked, “is enough before you consider ‘due diligence’ to be done?”

My mind immediately conjured up Matthew’s verse….”How many times??”

Common teaching in the day was that you have to forgive someone three times before you can ‘ethically’ call it quits and be considered exonerated in the community. Peter added a healthy number, a little over double, to his quip figuring he’d ace the exam before he even got the question. And he failed, miserably. Jesus basically told him that he wasn’t in the ballpark; far from it……there is never an ‘end’ point to forgiveness.

You forgive as many times as you have to forgive, without fail.

Otherwise, the limitation you impose on another is the same you’d have imposed on you, which we all know is not even close to the necessary ‘coinage’ to buy our way out of the debt of repetitive sin.

Even the definition of ‘forgiveness’ implies that it ‘resets to zero’ so that we would in effect be forgiving for the first time whether it was for the third or fiftieth time. Forgiveness is a decision to relate to another as if the wrong done to you had never happened.

And too often, we fail at even coming close to true forgiveness.

But isn’t that how God has forgiven us? Isn’t that how we are called to forgive others? And, if the possibility of being redeemed by the blood is IMPOSSIBLE without forgiveness, isn’t it safe to say that forgiveness can be switched out for the ‘other’ fruits of the spirit or characteristics that Christ tells us to expect in our faith, in our homes, in our communities and our congregations? Things like love, joy, peace…..”

How many times are we to exhibit that to our friends, neighbors, congregational members and community?

Seven times?

We should only love our neighbor seven times before we ‘give up’ on them and mark them off the evangelism list?

We should only love our spouses through seven rough times before we feel justified to withhold that love?

We should only bring joy to a widow or a single parent once or twice before we consider the resources of the church to be properly expended for them?

We should bring peace to the restless a handful of times before our mission is fulfilled?

We should only be in relationship with someone until it is no longer convenient to our lives?

After all, the Great Commission says, “Go and preach the Good News for a few days, making a few disciples of all you’ve been taught……”

Doing that which is good is not good in excess, right? And, after all, we only get a few opportunities to live sin-free before we are discarded into the ‘mistake’ pile.

Unfortunately, the current and the past church models (read post-Acts church here) are inherently human and therefore run with human assumptions and expectations. Many of these fall far beyond the scope and the breath of the Gospel intent and description.

Seven times anything in the modern church is a very hard thing to see replicated in anything that requires forgiveness and restoration, or entry into the messy lives of people repeated times.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, the models used are working…..churches are building grand buildings in which to house the worship, educational, outreach, children’s, youth and various vehicles and conveyances that once hauled everything to and from a temporary rental location.

They have acres of land cultivated and amazingly tranquil for those long walks pondering the visage of God.

The church down the road from me, a mega-sized church across from another denomination’s mega-church, is like a beacon in the sea of nighttime darkness…….spot lights and other lighting blaze against the night as the church lies locked up, waiting for the staff to arrive in the morning and be about the Lord’s business.

The Crystal Palace……Saddleback…..Willow Creek…..Mars Hill…….

Hundreds of thousands flock to these leaders and hear the Word preached, sometimes it’s even the Word of God rather than a remix of their own version of what the Bible says in the postmodern, emergent sense.

And yet, when the multitudes walk out of the doors, they are blind to the very mission field that starts inches from its thresholds.

But, my opinion on the state of the ‘Christian’ church and the leadership isn’t something new, it is the same as it was a year ago and a year before that.

What’s changed is my opinion of the human factor in the model of God’s church. When humanity comes to do ‘God’s work,’ it is instantly corrupted and hopelessly flawed.

The best intentions last for a while, the purpose and mission statements are actually believed and lived for a time. Then humanity takes over and we get the success stories of Willow Creek, Northridge, and others. Even then, some of these megas seem to stumble along in the truth somehow for a time….but the corruption of establishing and implementing a business model for a God-endeavor always gears the heart towards human ability and God leaves the building.

But, you forgive seven times seventy and fight alongside the remnant to bring the congregational body back on task for what God has purposed the church and its members for.

You forgive the slights, the disappointments and the hurts because you realize that humanity even in the corporate sense of the word is corrupted even in the best of circumstances and we all are limping towards the prize, the final destination of those who believe and have confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Maybe that is where I’m hung up at and why in this desperate and frightening time, I want to tuck into myself and curl up in my room, far away from the world and its darkness, far from the sinfulness of those whom claim to be perfect and isolated from the one thing I know is truth even as my faith struggles with this fragile humanity…..that God is God and I am not, that Christ is King and died for me and that the knowledge imparted of the Absolute Truth of the Way cannot be denied.

Seven times Seventy.

Forgiveness, loving, hoping; any fruit of the Spirit I believe can be inserted in the place of forgiveness….and still the verse and intent is the same.

And yet, we question how many times we have to ‘endure’ something before we can escape it; love, relationships, heartache, pain, suffering and a montage of other ‘things’ that plague us in this life.

We never question however, how many times we can ask forgiveness for our sins.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for this whole ‘Christian community’ thing because I’m one of the broken, the stupidly confused that just don’t ‘get it,’ or that 'needy' one that just won't ever be happy with what comes his way.

Why?

I’ve hit the brick wall one too many times and finally brain damage has set in. Slamming my head against the wall, confused by the old nature that quails before the new and frightened by the decisive alienation that has happened too many times in "God's Church" where it is a judgment before mercy, condemnation before grace. Where the counter is going over into double or triple digits in the bean counters clickers.

Community is the greatest thing I fear in this ‘family’ of God-fearing people because it is that very ‘community’ that has caused me the most damage. Or maybe I’m just too damaged for such a community and invariably trip over their well-intending feet.

You leave yourself transparent, you are beggin' for a hurting.

George Mueller said that when God is ready to invite you into the things that He is doing in you, around you and ultimately through you, you experience a ‘crisis of faith’ where the beliefs that you have existed with for however long suddenly aren’t enough to reach that next step and so, in the absence of supporting evidence, you have to stretch yourself out on faith and faith alone.

A few of my friends say that God is doing something in my life, prepping me for the next major step in the purpose……

The majority say I’m neglecting my responsibilities; to my family, my community and my God.

And I want to throw in the towel…….

How many more times am I going to be at this place; between the reality of my beliefs and the impossibility of my faith, a finely sharpened point that I can balance upon ever so briefly before I fall; one way or the other…….

It is possible that Dylan was part prophet when he lamented that “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind….”

Fading......

As I look back upon the last forty-three years of this life that I have lived and step into the forty-fourth, I am amazed. Amazed at the meandering path that hasn’t ended well before now despite the pitfalls and crevasses that have spanned its girth……amazed that the life lived wasn’t truly lived, or least felt like it was truly embraced in the warmth of living, until six and almost a half years ago.

Amazed at how much further I have come in that shorter span of time lugging the baggage garnered from the lifetime of living. Amazed that, as I have come close enough to the fire to be forever burned in its flame and still have that desire to love, in the language of the poet, “without knowing how, or when, or from where…straightforwardly…..”

There has been far more darkness, sin and shame in this life…..yet I am mostly aware of its joys and graces, interlaced with the mercies and hope that makes the twine of its length stronger than the sorrows and broken dreams that lie coloring its outer surface. There has been more disappointments, not only in others but in myself (far less in others than myself, I should probably say). There have been too many opportunities ruined by my own selfishness than properly utilized. There have been more relationships squandered than ever were properly grown.

Yet that pesky hope remains, driving me into the sure folly of human interaction and into the realm of assured rejection. Yet it remains.

And once again in the ignorance of that hope, I grasp for the straws of those things that I desire for eternity; love, faith, joy and peace. Knowing even as I grasp them the assurance of their departure once more at the end of the day when the light passes into the horizon of the day and once again the night of human depravity once again grips at the strings of my soul. Even though, it is the infusion of that hope, unblemished yet by the touch of humanity but still fresh with its ordained Godliness, that propels me into the daylight that once again breaks the inkiness of dark night that has bound me in its arms for another time.

I should cry all the time, speaking sorrows untold and unknown in the polite circles of this world, and prove beyond the shadows that hide momentarily in the corners from this sun the reality of humanity’s hopelessness. I spent too many of these forty-three years doing so, proving it to be something more than mere humanity can hope to overcome, and yet, I stand here, forty-three and two days into this foolish journey and ease my weary bones down to the fire….as twilight falls and the shadows begin their play, telling stories that need to be told in the darkness that bore them life and the harsh glow of the light that brings them into sharp focus.

“In this part of the story I am the one who dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you, because I love you,”

We have made love to be a foolish, mortal thing even in the arms of the church, of the faithful who gather around its tepid firelight against the coming darkness of the world.

We have arranged the love of its Chief Priest to be an exercise to be discussed and strategized in the quietness of the hallowed halls of our sanctuaries and devices of faith so that the enemy cannot hear them. Yet ignoring the fact that the enemy knows our plans outright, well before we can even reach for the shuttered doors of our hidden places and throw them wide to greet what we think are the tired masses waiting there.

We discover to our dismay a landscape devoid of life, no masses waiting there for our reach and only the crickets to sing praises for our arrival.

Love is not a static thing, nor does it hide beneath the trappings of our fragile attempt to emulate it. It cannot, for if it did, it would not be love but a wraith of the shadow it casts upon the landscape without light’s touch to throw it. Love has to be lived to be able to love, love without the living beat of its loving is a sad carcass of humanity’s failures and broken dreams.

Love wasn’t meant for such things, limited and sorrowed. Love is impossible, improbable and totally foolish in its dreaming. Love is everything, even in the absence of it. Love is there.

When we reach that point in our existence where love has become a wraith of what it once was, even in the poorly drivel of human’s excuse of it…..when we arrive there, we find ourselves at a cliff, staring down into the dark abyss of eternity. It no longer motivates us, but haunts us…….It not longer challenges us but beats us in endless repetition…..It not longer warms us but burns us with its touch.

When we arrive, it is there where love punishes us the most, with a haunting lullaby of enticement to believe it will come again. And we do, even as the haunting laughter of its rejection echoes in the background of our despair………

In the absence of love, what is there?

Love drove a man, a very special and important man, to leave behind the trappings and authority of His being….to deny Himself….to come to earth to live among us petty and foolish humans as one of us, with all the handicaps and hang-ups that we have…and yet, love drove Him to be the shining example of its expression in such fragility. Even as the world assaulted Him and trod upon His purer version of love, it was that expression and intimate knowledge of love that drove Him forward. It is that love that turned a Father’s eyes away from His Only Begotten Son, whose love drove Him to take on the sins of the world to become His and lose the favor of His Father as it covered Him.

And it is love that made that man, that god-man, rise from the Dead three days later………….

If you stare at the abyss, looking down into its depths and watching the swirling inky blackness caress the sides of the cliff……………look well and look long, for it is that which is what love is when love is absent and dead…..dark, and cold.

Love borne of a woman, treasured and caressed into sustained life by her breath and warmth may never be mine to visit with for a time upon this world and such sorrow is not sweet or manageable…..it is the lot I’ve drawn.

What makes me fear the most is that realization that what I thought was true love was nothing even close because it is that love that I attributed to my Savior and if that image of true love was true, then He cannot exist, He cannot be who He says and there is no love there.

So I struggle for the first time in this journey, among the broken mountains and foothills of this landscape, to pick up my feet and head…..to journey on. Because for the first time, I am afraid of coming to that crevasse where I’ll stand upon the edge and stare into the darkness beyond

And despair…………….

For love will have passed me by………..

This is my life....

".......shame of face belongs to us today—to every individual of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to our kings, to our rulers, to our priests, to our prophets, and to our ancestors. We all have sinned before the Lord and disobeyed him. We have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the Lord’s commandments which he laid out before us. From the day that the Lord brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt till this very day we have been disobedient to the Lord our God. We have acted carelessly, not paying attention to his voice. Clinging to us to this very day are the misfortunes and curse which the Lord prescribed to his servant Moses on the day that he brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt in order to give us a land flowing with milk and honey. We have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God as given in all the words of the prophets whom he sent to us. Each one of us followed the intent of his evil heart by serving other gods and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord our God." Baruch 1:15-22

Just a little historical note before we continue, Baruch is from the Apocrypha...books of the Old Testament included in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, considered deuterocanonical (added to the eariler canon). It is not certain why the term which means 'hidden things' was applied to these texts but they are considered less authorative than the other biblical books due to their late origin (c. 300 BC to AD 100). They are not included in the Hebrew Bible and most Protestant Bibles.

Some thirteen books comprise the Apocrypha: I and II Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (which is also entitled the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach), Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, the Additions to Daniel, the Prayer of Manasses, and I and II Maccabees. At the Council of Carthage (397), it was decided to accept the Apocrypha as suitable for reading and in 1548 the Council of Trent recognized the Apocrypha, excepting I and II Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses, as having unqualified canonical status.

Many early Church Fathers, Augustine among them, put these books on a par with the rest of the Old Testament and quoted them equally, even Jerome (who wanted to exclude them from the Latin bible he was commissioned to translate) often quoted the Apocrypha without distinguishing it from the Hebrew canon.

"Scholarly biblical criticism has shown the presence of the same literary forms in both proto- and deuterocanonical writings." D. H. Wallace concludes in his article Apocrypha, Deuterocanonical Books, "The Apocrypha have something in common with what came before them and with what followed them; they therefore act as a link between the Old and the New Testaments and so help us to understand both."

I just thought the warning that Baruch gives in this apocrypha text was accurate for what the Christian church has become in the world today. It strikes me as prophetic in its utterance.

We have wandered far from our God and the blessings that He would have bestowed upon this nation and its people. We have sought out compromise and 'tolerance' to all things but those things of God and have developed an almost fearful adversion to addressing the sin in our lives and the lives of those around us rather than culturizing a 60s version of a lovefest in religious circles today.

But I'm not going on a discussion about the church and its problems; the church will alway have problems so long as there are humans in charge of it. When, and only when, we step back and allow God to be the focus and Jesus Christ the Head of the Church, then will the Church achieve the level of missional thinking and relational love that it needs to be an effective and power arm, leg, hand and feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, as it was meant to be.

Why bother? The Church will continue to do what it has done throughout the ages, progress further and further into a relationship with the world that has little revelance and truth in what God has said and did in this world.

I wish I could say that I've walked away from the disappointment that always haunts any dealing with humans, but I haven't. I've come to accept that there is no church truly following the dictates and lessons of Christ, for if it was......revival would be a state of condition not a mere word in the language. I've come to acknowledge that I will never be full accepted in whatever God has called me to do in that fellowship.

It no longer matters.

People will tell you they love you, no matter what, but then leave you in silence as you battle through the week. They will tell you that they want to be your friends, yet reject the help you want to give in the trials of their lives as they struggle. They will tell you that they will pray for you and forget as they grasp the hand of another with a connection that they need or want.

I can stare at the limitations that I have in my life and agree with those who say I shouldn't pursue a pastorship or utter a word on the stage of a church...for surely they, knowing my imperfections, would stand up and walk out of the 'hallowed' halls of the church of their making and declare me a hypocrite. I can look at my situation, missing the opportunities to be obedient in what God has provided me to do in His purpose, and declare myself unfit to do anything for God. Or I can take a page from Screwloose's lectures and apply it.

"It is in present time that a human's life is lived, and his ethics expressed in action. It is in present time that the human will must operate, choosing 'now' acts which set the course of his future life." (Will: Practical Paralysis; Screwloose lectures)

As I fail in some aspects of my life, I can be trapped in the sorrow of the moment and held nailed to the cross of other's makings by the decisional impact of their words. I can proclaim their version of me to be the most accurate and dispose of God's more pure, more honest assessment of me that I have become in the new life given to me under the blood of Christ.

I can listen to Christ's words and decide to follow them, even as I struggle to realize the full impact of being the man He wants me to be, the impact for the kingdom that He has equipped me to be and the warrior that He has provisioned me to be.

"If you continue in My Word, then are you My disciples indeed; and you shall know the Truth and the Truth make you free." John 9:31-32 KJV

My faith will never be arrogantly secure in what it thinks it knows and my beliefs will never be the single most motivation for what I do. It is rather simple, when I look at it through the eyes of Christ......in obedience I will walk even as in my humanity I fall.

I will continue to strive for that goal that is set before me, in the heavenly planbooks of the Almighty God. I will face trials and disappointments, rejection and selective love. I will hurt, I will bleed and I will sorrow.

And in that, I will know joy and peace, comfort and happiness, and love so complete that to realize it will mean to never let it go. It is my choice, it is my desire and it is my intention. Surrender of my will to the One who saved me and follow into the darkness where He would lead for the sake of those whom I was meant to testify with the brutality of my life.

As Switchfoot sings......

"This is your life. Are you who you want to be?"

That is who I want to be, a disciple yoked in the identifying yoke of my Messiah.
Following the Truth in my imperfection, perfected in the trials of this life.

Integrity of faith

"We say, then, that faith must not be inert and alone. Rather, it should be accompanied with investigation. For I do not say that we are not to inquire at all." Clement of Alexandria (C.195, E), 2.446.

I sit here alone, in this home that friends have helped make for me and two of my three children. Time to reflect and ponder the incalculables of this life, this place and the methods and means that have brought me here.

I sit staring at a photograph that was taken four years before my firstborn son, Malcolm, was born. You can't tell it by the photo, but my wisdom teeth had been removed in the middle of the night by an upset Dental officer who was on-call when the emergency happened. One of the wisdom teeth had gotten impacted or something like that....it was killing me.

Anyway, you can't really see the puffed up cheeks unless you really look.

It is a simple photo taken by all the military recruits, not just in the Navy, but in all the other services as well. It is to symbolize the transition from civilian to military, a rite of passage that has happened throughout this nation's history even before it could be documented in such a fashion. I look at that young man, twenty-three years old, and wonder where the passion in his eyes disappeared to, where the hint of happiness drifted away to and where the freshness in his (closed mouth, but still noticeable) smile went to.

You can see it in the eyes of that young sailor, the belief in the system that created the military might that helped protect a nation's birth and its journey through the painful growth years. You can see the patriotism that drove the young man to 'jump ship' on his civilian life and be something meaningful and powerful as a military man.

You can see a little bit of the father in that young man, there's a small photo of him in the corner of the frame (covering a tear in the photographic paper) that was taken at the USO in Hawaii when the father served. You can see the similarities in their posture, look and appearance, even though the periods in which they served are vastly different.

The father served in Korea and Vietnam, the son during Desert Storm.

I stared at that photo for a few hours today at this desk.......

A verse drifts across my thoughts as I ponder that fresh, crazily young man staring at me with a smirk about the absurdity of the photo....(trying not to smile so you won't see the red-bloody mouth). Robert McGee opens his book, The Search for Significance, with it.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Psalm 139:23-24 NIV

We know this verse, or at least the more largess picture of the chapter of 139....it is about the 'ever-present God,' who knows our every thought and the meaning in our words all before we even think to utter them....for we cannot hide from Him, even if we choose to and it is those who harbor 'wicked ways' that fills the psalmist with loathing even as he recognizes the 'possibility' of them existing within himself. He surrenders that hidden part of him to God, to thoroughly investigate and exercise those 'wicked ways' so that he may know 'permanent peace.'

How many of us truly surrender those hidden places to the light of God? How many of us go to our friends, our pastors and our congregations....those places where God's accountability is supposed to exist and pour our brokenness out, our fears and failures? We don't, because we know humanity will disappoint us and the church will destroy us if we don't appear to be making progress in the journey of believing in God, about God and life with God.

Much like that young man believed in the rightness of entry into the US Navy.....
Life has not happened the way that young man once believed it would......he had left that legalistic God presented to him in his youth behind...this was the concrete step into a future he believed he was entitled to, capable of and worthy of.

That was before.........

Much like that young man, reality has set in on my faith. Reality.....those impossibly high mountains that stand in the path that I have journeyed on these almost forty-three years. Mountains of painful childhood, ignorant adulthood and wounded fatherhood. Mountains of broken relationships, isolated love and rejected emotions. Mountains of inept financial management and stupid choices. Mountains that Christ said I could move with a mustard seed of faith.

If they haven't moved, then it would be 'christian' to assume that my faith is non-existent. Never existed, cut off at conception and born deathly still in the hospital of this world......burned in the incendiaries of the corruption it spawns.

After all, the great faithful....those who 'get it' walk confidently in their lives; yes, some even on days other than Sunday and when they boldly proclaim the purposes to which God has called them....they are surrounded by those who would 'help God' along with the plans......they don't want those 'chosen' to sit in the filthy and muck of this world for long.

After all, they can live vicariously through the abilities of the 'chosen ones.' God wouldn't leave someone in the muck and mire and require those 'benefactors' to sit there with them and learn from their sorrows or pains. Nope, if there was faith operating in that darkness, well....the God of Israel and Christians would lift the 'chosen' up and rinse him clean with the blood.

There wouldn't be any need to discuss the 'darkness' or the 'hidden wicked places' that haunt the faithful's life....to condone such utterances would be foolish and unwise. To be significant in the Body of Christ, one has to be seemingly perfect and totally silent about their broken hearts and disillusioned dreams. They cannot experience joy amid sorrow and peace amid chaos. They should know only the joy and blessings of being one of Jesus' saved.

Yet......faith remains within me for who Christ is and was, and the authority, power, wrath and love of the God who is His Father and by adoption, my own.

It is that faith that beckons me in this place where God has become silent and the fire burns smaller as the fuel is consumed and darkness encroaches.

It is that faith that has me prostrate on my stomach in the night, pouring my heart out to this God that I know hears, even as I recognize that I don't listen too well.

It is that faith that gets me up each day even as my humanity quails at the thought of another day spent in the agonies of this life.....dealing with 'my stuff',' as one mentor put it.

Sitting in the mire of my muck......

It is the integrity of my faith.