day 24: light

i took a step of faith today, a step out of my comfort zone and went to a small group. 

it was . . . good. to be amongst believers, to share, to pray, to encourage and challenge, I can't believe I never went to a small group in college. but it's okay, I'm here now.

-

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

dark is a natural state, in the same way out human nature is where the flesh finds its comfort. it focuses on the self and looks within to find only darkness.

light is active. you don't 'turn on' darkness to remove it, but you turn on the light to drive the darkness away. and in this light we see the things that were in the dark.

the light shines on the things of my life and casts shadows for me to hide in. the light is not meant to judge what it shines on, but only reveals it for what it truly is. 

light is truth and God has revealed the truth through His light and now this light shines on this heart, revealing what was once hidden but now stands before Him to be surrendered. 

be not a candle Lord but a floodlight.

day 23: step 2

"which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me."

I know what suffering is. I rarely know why.

and I get so stuck on figuring out the why that I miss what comes after, what comes through suffering:

relief, rescue, joy, refinement, morning, redemption.

stop giving into the quicksand and start running through it.

God, let this heart rejoice for You are good.

God, let this heart be thankful for You are good.

suffering comes and goes but the joy of the Lord is everlasting. there is no season for joy, there is only a lifetime. hop in the current.

day 22: the double edged sword

this book is hard; it's making me think and I can't think at night so I'm probably going to have to reread this before moving on but for the sake of the blog project (bloject) I'll scribble out what I can.

"try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself"

suffering is a part of life.

but suffering is not life, conversely, Joy is a part of life, but it is not life. and whatever aspect of life I want to mention, ultimately, it is not what the definition of life is.

a game is where someone wins or loses, but if winning or losing is what a game is, then there would be no point in continuing the game ever again once a winner or loser is found? a game is played because it is a game. (this sounded better in my head)

life is lived not to seek joy, not to seek suffering but to exercise the free will given to you, then experiencing the vast selection of emotion coming from your choices is secondary. some seek pleasure, victory, peace, power, and it is in their ability to do so through their free will.

God gave free will as a gift, maybe not even a gift, maybe it was built into our design. when the creation finds his freedom and his voice and uses it to glorify his Creator instead of chasing life's sensations, maybe that's what He's waiting for still.

it'll make more sense later.

reminder

For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

FOR THE SAKE OF CHRIST ONLY. STOP BEING DUMB AND BE CAREFUL.

day 21: fumble

fumble: fake humble.

"true humility is 'not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less.'"

I am still struggling God. 

I think what was said to me is true: too much of whatever humility you're trying to achieve is killing the person God is making you to be. 

you can't reach humility, you have to live in humility. bottom up not top down.

Lord be my balance. remember me so I can forget myself. slava bogue, so that every praise shall be turned back to you. help me to see how you see me, to see grace through Christ's disgrace. not looking up or down on myself, but straight ahead to you and you alone.

day 20: enemy

know thy enemy

when i crave the christian bubble where this life is supposed to be bright and sunshine and spotless in God's light (which it is) and choose to ignore that the devil is actively working just as hard as God to claim this heart, faith collapses like a castle built on sand.

satan is real; there it is. He is powerful, deceptive, manipulative, traitorous, toxic, and even though he is not as strong as God, it does not take a lot to fool a human.

Pain is real, hurt is real. satan uses pain to hurt us directly and sometimes he uses it and makes us believe God is not there, that He is the one hurting us directly.

i was mad at God. impatient with Him. i felt rejected and ignored; unloved. but just like the most obvious plot twist in the history of plot twists, i see satan. how he took everything good and just barely touched it to make it die. and i sit in brokenness of what I used to have and the divide between what is good and what is bad has never been more distinct.

know thy enemy, then know thy God.

satan celebrates in our collapse, and reveals his doing and claims his victory; but he often celebrates too early. christ died, subject to satans greatest power: death. and satan rejoiced in the torn veil and the darkness, only to be wiped away and made powerless through the resurrection. and it is this resurrection that i also partake to not only join in its grace and glorify God, but to render satan powerless.

satan beat me and wants me to believe that he beat me, and to forget that it was never my fight to begin with. God is a mighty warrior, and He is fighting that fight for me and He's been trying to urge me to step aside and let Him take care of the deceiver. I surrender in this fight, because I was being stupid and prideful and thought I could do it.

but i don't wave a white flag, i wave a race flag; and God rushes in to fight for His people


Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven—if there was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.


just as I am forgiven, I will forgive. just as I am loved, I will love. just as I know satan, I will know my God.

i can't lose a fight that was never mine to fight,
so God do what You do.

day 19: start

He says to me "I still choose you"

and I asked Him "why"

"because I love you"

true.

day 18: one

for an audience of one,

worship, sing, pray, give, weep, praise, love, serve, live, and pursue.

day 17: ty

great is thy faithfulness

day 16: surrender

"Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in."

16 days, 227 pages just to be reminded what has echoed these past months: surrender.

people dont want to surrender; it means that you lose. when your back is against the wall and your end is near, you surrender in order to have a chance at life. and God has slowly ripped apart the walls I hid behind brick by brick so that i stand before Him, humbled and found guilty of all the wrong i have done, exposed with no more escapes.

there is no such thing as an identity based on Christ. it is an identity with Christ, of Christ, and for Christ. there is no self; there is only a soul engulfed by glory and grace as soon as you decide to call upon the name of Jesus and accept His love and His cross.

I tried to balance it. Balance a life in this world while pursuing God. But truly, you cannot serve two masters. if you want God, you have to take all of Him. There is no portion; there is only the fullness of His presence. The less life I hold onto the more of heaven is placed into my hands.

when I first started to read this book, I wanted to come out a leader. "readers become leaders" as p pae said to me. but instead of empowerment, i found conviction. instead of confidence, i found humility. instead of filling my cup, i find myself pouring out and emptying the remaining drops of the person I once knew as myself.

i'm not a leader,

i'm a servant.

god continue to ravish this heart

i dont want to get better,

i want to be changed.

day 15: "nice"

'Why drag God into it?'
"You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognize their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self satisfaction is shattered."

gottems.

remember this moment.

remember where you are right now, hanging off the edge of the bed because Lucy is napping in the middle of the mattress as she always does and you don't want to bother her.

remember this moment of conviction, strangling the guilt and shame you've tried to hide from God all this time

remember why you're here. because youve taken goodness and twisted it to feed your ego and fake humility

remember how you've always challenged God to a fight but now youre in the ring with Him and you can only blame yourself for this spiritual beat down you are about to receive

and remember that He has forgiven you, and also He loves you very dearly and you will come out of this a little better than before because He has refined you a little bit more.

but for now,

Lord hit me as hard as you can.

day 14: cost

"the only help I will give is help to become perfect. you may want something less: but I will give you nothing less."

slowly I am realizing.

that although perfection is so far from me, He intends to get me as close as possible.

I just wanted His help in tiny slivers of my life. I asked for rain to quench my desires but instead He sent a flood and completely and violently swept them away.

how could I ever ask of God to limit his power for my sake? why would God give only a portion when he longs to pour out everything?

with the same furious heart that desires my heart, God will remove everything that does not work for His glory.

the renovating house. one day a palace for my king. God you have stripped me down to the foundation, but this too will be dug out and swept into the sea. we can go deeper God.

day 13: difficulty

"Christ says 'Give me all. I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good"

all this suffering, God, all I've been through. all these games and hurt and pain and confusion oh Lord

it was all just me hiding and running away. putting the guilt and anger into meaningless things when I was too scared to accept the reality of the cost of Christ.

I hoped you wanted to renovate; but instead you demolished.

I hoped you wanted a compromise; but instead you demanded surrender.

I hoped you wanted to take just my son's away, but instead you took my everything.

you can cut grass and pretend that one day wheat will grow, but unless you are uprooted and resowed, you can never have wheat.

I wanted the walk of a devoted disciple, but I didn't want to lose the world. I wanted to enjoy this world, but not lose my faith. nothing in life I wanted more but to hear the voice of God for myself, but I didn't want to put in the effort. a lukewarm Christian with a flawed sense of salvation is all I really became.

Christianity is meant to be hard, but the yoke of Christ when you truly decide to throw off the weight of the world is where the peace lies.

and I'm still throwing the crates of the world overboard.

"and there are strange exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in nature will begin to come right. the bad dream will be over: it will be morning."

day 12: pretend

"the three personal God, so to speak, sees before Him in fact a self-centered, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human being. But He says 'let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son."

"God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one."

I'm still working on this surrendering thing. it's funny how people always say they're trying to surrender like it's a simple activity that they decide to do in a split moment. surrender is literally to give up, stop resisting, and give in. who ever wants to consciously accept that they lose?

truth is, I didn't surrender by choice: I surrendered because I am overwhelmed. God has struck down my idols and wiped out my cities while I tried to stop Him from destroying everything I've built up.

then He finally reaches me,

but instead of grabbing me by the throat and ending the life of a sinful man, He embraces and tells me, "finally."

Ive learned through this whole surrender process that the more I let go the more I let God fill in the blanks. and there is so much more to give up still.

and I can't understand. how can God know exactly who I am and call me a Son? how can he know how broken and useless I am and still choose to want me and look at me as if I was already something more than nothing?

yet, I have been forgiven. and I have been loved.


truly, truly, truly, grace is a gift.

day 11: infection

"If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, peace, power, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them"

honestly, i received what i sowed.

i put my trust, my efforts, my patience, my allegiance into things I knew mean nothing at the end of all this, and yet the temporary shallow joy i got out of it kept me fiending for more. and in the season of harvest i come to realize that there's no fruit to be seen.

you have to learn to listen to the words you tell others.

life is ugly. this world is ugly. and this ugly infects the hearts of those living a life in this world and who give in to this notion and in turn we become ugly.

people truly are horrible things. i myself am one of those. this is truth. but there is a greater truth, that there is nothing that God cannot revive and sanctify. Are things holy because they are holy in nature? If this is true then we as ugly things can never be more than what we are. Thank God grace is not dependent on our character.

i let myself become infected by the world because it seemed easier. i thought i would be more happier, maybe feel like im growing up for once. how horribly wrong am I?

i have decided that my life is not meant to be easy (for now hopefully). my life is not meant to be beautiful (for now hopefully). my life is not meant to be happy (for now hopefully). but its been designed and chosen to be a testament of God's goodness and glory, that despite these factors, He is faithful, and that He has a plan, and He's still working. I choose to believe, because nothing else will ever come close.

i planted garbage in the ground and the earth spit it back at me.

but its just a season, and just as they go, they come.

Now is a season to plant again
now is the time to prepare
to bloom.

day 10: qt

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

2 Corinthians 7:10

i am completely overwhelmed and overcome

but this time not by life

but by the breath that give me life. 

lord break down me more and more

what a feeling, what a God. 

day 9: faith

"...after a man has tried his level best to practice the Christian virtues, and found that he fails, and seen that even if he could he would only be giving back to God what was already God's own.

In other words,

he discovers his bankruptcy."

So this is what it is. This is what it feels like.

I am jealous of those who have a testimony where they can say "at this point, I met God." What a luxury it is to pinpoint the pivot of their life.

Faith for me has been a process that is still not complete and most likely, will never be complete. Bankruptcy isn't being impoverished; bankruptcy implies you had wealth before, and then lost it all.

I did have wealth, I believe I was at one point in my life, truly content with where I was (maybe a little bit bored, but nothing to complain about). Slowly, then suddenly, I lost it all. I look back at the past couple of months and it was all complaining. I look back at these past blog posts and feel so much shame but at the same time I remember the hurt and the bitterness I was going through and I keep myself from deleting because I want to remember where You have taken me and where You will take me.

But anyway, complaining. Every day I was complaining. Complaining to everyone, to everything. Now I don't complain, because there's nothing to complain about. Because I have nothing.

It's weird, I think this might be the first time I've felt this. A feeling of having nothing. It's not just that I have nothing, it's now I deserve nothing. Everything I've had in my life is nothing I deserved, it was given to me for whatever divine reason.

I deserve nothing, because truly, truly, truly, I am absolutely nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I hear it all the time now. I am nothing. A nobody. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

At first I thought it was the devil so as soon as I heard that I shut my ears and I yelled back in defiance (and mostly cursing).

But after I admit defeat, and just collapse into a sad pile of blubber and bones, I heard the second part to that whisper: 'kevin you are nothing, but I am the everything that takes nothing to make something.'

not the most eloquent way of saying that, but it worked.

God made Adam from dirt. I'm already at least 2 steps above dirt, so i can only imagine how far He will take me.

oh right this is supposed to be about faith.

i always thought faith as something on the opposite side of reasoning. Faith is something you cannot see right? If you can't see it, then you must sort of imagine it?

"Or take a boy learning to swim. His reason knows perfectly well that an unsupported human body will not necessarily sink in water: he has seen dozens of people float and swim. But the whole question is whether he will be able to go on believing this when the instructor takes away his hand and leaves him unsupported in the water - or whether he will suddenly cease to believe it and get in a fright and go down"

faith can be unreasonable to the world, BUT TO YOU, faith is a firm foundation. Faith is the rock on which you stand on and God is your fortress. my faith was always based on something I had to let go of reality and pretend that it was real. no wonder i never got anything done.

faith is reality, and thus, faith is based on reality. it isn't something you need to be stupid for (you might act stupid because of it) but it is something you need be empty for, and i pray to the good lord, please tell me im empty now.

faith :

"it is the change from being confident about our own efforts to the state in which we despair of doing anything for ourselves

and leave it to God"

day 8: charity and hope

"There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise."

When you chase a feeling, depend on a feeling, give everything to keep this feeling alive, in the end what are you truly holding on to? You've been grasping a fistful of sand and when it all eventually trickles out you wonder if there was something else you could have been holding on to.

But when you invest your life into something substantial, something just a little bit more than an emotion, you find that you're on the right path when God multiplies the blessing. Like digging and digging until you strike water and what was once empty is now full of life.

For the longest time I was so fixated on making the right decision, and to be honest I still am, that I dug myself into the dirt with my head in the sand waiting for instructions that were never meant to be given.

You can read all about it, but if you're not practicing it, then you're not learning. Just do it.

Just do it.

Take the risk, get hurt, fall down,

but never stay down.

Get up, do it again, fall better this time.

"Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did."

i've convinced myself many times of the things that I'm not that I actually was, more importantly, i've convinced myself even more times that I am something that I am not.

but there is one thing that needs no convincing, and that is that there is hope within Christ. I keep hearing about it, seeing other people experience it, losing their lives over this "hope." I don't know exactly what it is, but that is something I want to fall and hurt myself for. over and over and over again.

before I forget

God,

just as you have violently pulled everything apart

you are gently rearranging everything into place.

i feel sad over the losses, but it's so strange to be at peace with all this.

I guess you can say i'm

sad-isfied.
.
.
.
god please don't take my brain away.

day 7: pride

"As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."

Humble pie. The manna of high school youth group. The consequence of getting too ahead and indulging in yourself.

God will give you a large serving of humble pie.

Nothing made me more scared, still I think, eating humble pie is one of my biggest fears. But why? Because humble pie threatens one's pride and pride is the great root of all sin. Pride is what caused the devil to oppose God, pride is what makes us put our own desires in front of God's. Pride is saying, "you know what God? I got this, take a step back." This is pride, and now I realize how prideful I had become in my actions and my words and my attitude.

I feel like God's will and my will haven't aligned even though I'm asking for it.

that's because of your pride

I feel so burdened and burnt out from everything

that's because of your pride

I feel like I'm never winning in life and I'm taking all these Ls.

that's because of your pride 

I feel like -

it is your pride. 

People kept telling me 'you are capable,' from the closest to the most random. They're not wrong, but I wish I heard that as 'you are capable because God is capable.'

I thought I had a handle on things, but when everything fell apart, I questioned God as to why he gave me these hands and this heart if everything I toil for just dies?

Pride.

It is pride that made me think that these hands were to be used for my own purposes. It is pride that led me to believe that this heart was made for something other than God's glory. That any part of me was greater than any part of You.

"The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble - delightfully humble..."

fire up the oven Lord, I'm ready for some pie.

day 6: forgiveness

today i went to another church for the first time in my life. god you are speaking to me the same message no matter where I go, no matter who I talk to, no matter the state my heart is in 

and I have no other response but thank you.

///

"I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms."

To be able to forgive your enemies is to be able to love your enemies. And to love your enemies is ... 

hm

To love your enemies is to love them, and to love them is to love oneself. Oh, love each other as you do yourself. So to love another is to first, love yourself, who was first, loved by God. 

I don't like many things about myself. Yet, this is my life and I love my life. I may not like the choices I make or the roads I travel, but I love my life. 

In the same way forgiveness from God is reflected in His love for us: "not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves. for there is nothing else in us to love...", in this same way, I must love and forgive others. 

It is easy to see and listen to and even join in hate, in a worldly sense it can be justified. But those who believe are called out to be set apart as well, and this cycle of hate-hate-hate cannot run free, we have to stop. 

Be brave, call out hate and drive it out with love, don't ever let yourself sit silently and listen to hate again. It has to stop. 

Forgiveness is "to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good." 

start. 

day 5: love

[104 - 114]

tba

day 4: backwards

"for the longest way round is the shortest way home"

sitting on the tiled floor of a Haitian missionary's home, huddled in a circle around two lights, flickering in and out like a troubled mind trying to fall asleep. a rocking chair with broken arms and a stray nail needlessly hammered down by a hydroflask to no avail, a fan on each side of the room rotating to bring air but you wish that it would break its gears and stay fixed on your sweaty head.

He says, "how long will you crave Spiritual milk?"

so I decided, this is the foundation you will build upon. no more breaking down, no more lock in ugly tears. no more resets. you're done being a kid, time to grow up.

so on this foundation I built a home. the experiences made a frame. the convictions the windows. my joys as paintings on the wall. my fears and guilt as the lock on the door.

but one room, for myself.

I sought growth for the sake of growing up, not because I was ready. because I was tired of people looking down on me, sick of people wondering why I wasn't the man they expected me to be. why I wasn't the Christian they expected to me to be.

you are not a grown up because of how much of life you are able to carry, but maybe it's how much of life you can strip back.

I promise you God what I have done has been out of love for your people and for you, but the trophies sit toppled over in rust. let them blow away, what is the worth of holding on to them?

"people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed"

there is no shame in starting over. if there is, I don't care anymore.

give me a hammer so I can tear down this heart myself. from the roof to the foundation, there is nothing of this old house I hold on to anymore.

starting over.

day 3: free

"because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having"

God, why have you made me so weak and helpless?

because in your weakness my power is made perfect

when a bodybuilder lifts a heavy weight, no one is truly impressed. they may admire the physique or display of physically fitness, but in the overall picture it's expected and no one will keep a significant memory of that moment.

just as a strong man displays strength, so does the sinner display how far man has fallen away from God.

but when a sinful man chooses goodness, to break away from what his definition says that he is, that is in lack of a better word: a miracle.

so you are free: free to choose to live up to what they say you are, mediocre, underwhelming, or whatever they want to call you, or you can choose to deny yourself and what they want you to be and take up a cross and live to the beat of a new heart.

here's where I was wrong, I'm not someone who needs improvement, I am someone who needs to surrender. to unlearn pride, bitterness, hatred. to let the soul die and pay the price for my mistakes.

"only a bad person needs to repent, only a good person can repent perfectly"

I know how to love, because I was first loved by Him. I know how to show grace, because I was first shown grace. I dont know how to surrender, but God the father did not surrender for me.

God the Son did.

imagine a man, able to suffer and die, aligned with the perfection of God, choosing death in order to conquer it in glory.

this is a miracle, this is God's strength, this is all of the above.

this is perfection.

"the perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because he was God, but were possible only because he was God"

 and now we are free.

day 2: goodness

what makes something good? what makes something bad? WHY DOES THIS QUESTION KEEP COMING UP?

"it is no good asking for a simple religion. after all, real things are not simple... If we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple"

I want the easy way out, in everything. Zero ambition, zero determination, the sad collapse in the face of any struggle. only picking battles that I know I can win, avoiding the challenges because I don't want to get hurt...  let me stop there before I reach the word count with reasons why I suck.

when you constantly build your life wide and not deep, there is no reason to be surprised that the slightest rain shreds your paper reality. and in this conviction emerges the realization that even in religion I had built out and not in.

all I've been praying for is simplicity. a straight answer, an actual voice from God. I When God answers you, he says: yes, no, or not now. I cried out, God God why do you keep sending me "not now" replies when I need an answer.

You misunderstood, it was never a "not now," it is no.

Christianity is NOT simple, life is NOT simple, God is NOT simple. How can you explain physics using your ABCs just because all you know is the alphabet?

Fun fact: this world is completely stupid and utter chaos. My very existence is everything and everyone including my own pancreas is trying to kill me. but despite this madness, you find a sliver a truth.

And this sliver is faith: to understand and accept that this cruel, unrelenting place we call home has been overcome by a force greater than  life itself, and a portion of this power resides in you.

God is a mighty warrior and Christianity is a fighting religion. Yes life is meant to be difficult (and everyone who says otherwise is a liar) but you yourself are meant to survive and in surviving you will glorify God.

"enemy occupied territory - that is what this world is"

you don't understand a lot, but really,

that's okay.

you're not supposed to.

day 1: reality

Suspend God just for a moment and look at the evidence first. Your world, is it the result of precise measurements and calculations and a stroke of good timing or is it the product of paint splatters and a dream? Is God a scientist or is he an artist? both?
-
"and as for decent behavior in ourselves, I suppose it is pretty obvious that it does not mean the behavior that pays"

"it tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous,or difficult it is to do"

You can't argue that people should do the right thing because it's just "the right thing to do." In the same way, you can't be mad at how you're feeling just because things haven't worked out for you. You binded joy and goodness as a package deal and let's be real no one told you to do that. How many times have I asked you God, is it possible to do good and feel this horrible?

Yes.

But in the same way how you reason that joy and goodness are not always simultaneously experienced, neither can you categorize suffering with goodness. For goodness is not defined by the emotion you feel afterwards, but goodness is the objective and absolute truth.

Sometimes discovering the truth hurts, sometimes it comforts. But I can promise you, if you seek comfort first in the pursuit of God you will receive neither comfort nor know the truth.

These past months, I was looking for peace through comfort and now my well has run dry. But seek restoration and be quenched not by comfort that comes and goes, that grows and dies, but let truth which is constant and eternal and everlasting dig deeper and draw out the waters that will never let you thirst again.

Do not mistake comfort for peace, but peace is the understanding and acknowledgement of who you are and where you are in the very moment. You cannot understand if you do not know the truth.

Okay wait.

Stop.

You're acting like you finished. You didn't. You literally just started.

You don't know God. Really, you actually don't know anything.

(yet)

This is okay.

"the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay"

You don't know God, but you do know that there is something within that is urging you to keep choosing goodness, even as your flesh dies. 

follow this trail.

we call this,

a good start.

day 0: the moral law

"the moral law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys" (10).

"the most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs" (11).

Realize: there exists, instinct. What separates you from the pig or the bird, the ant or the lion? These are animals with instincts which also exist in you.

You were created by the same hands that sculpted the life in your world, but it is the breath of the creator that sanctified you, that sets you apart for a greater purpose.

Now realize, this very breath that sets you apart now gives you power over instinct. To follow your strongest impulse and survive, or to listen to the whisper of the other impulse that tells you to lay down your life.

This is freedom.

This very breath has established what is the moral law, a law emerging not from customs of culture but from the truth in which you are trying to find.

When people question what you do, you have no problem attributing the "good" you do as to your own personal derivation of the moral law, but the "bad" you do is quickly diverted away from your compass and happens not because you are by nature a corrupted person but because  of other things: I'm too ______, he/she deserves it, I deserve this, etc.

Look at the "standard" you tried to live by, that you've convinced others to believe you live by. The standard you use to compare others, to elevate yourself on some sort of moral high ground and to humble yourself before others.

Look at it.

Now throw it away.

You can't live by your standard anymore because you have chosen to live not to the patterns of this world but by the truth; this truth that has always been in you and this truth that will set you free.

"progress means not just changing, but changing for the better" (13).

day 0: preface

"the hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in. for that purpose, the worst of the rooms (whichever that may be) is, I think, preferable" (xv).

"... God is well aware of 'what a wretched machine you are trying to drive,' and asks only that you 'keep on, [doing] the best you can.'" (xx).

How long have you waited in front of this door?

Waiting... waiting for what? For who?

Instead of waiting for someone to walk you through this door, why not just try to do it alone? Peter was right; having someone to spiritually challenge you constantly is truly a luxury, a luxury you were lucky enough to experience just for a moment.

Yes, you don't have that luxury anymore, mourn for a moment and realize that the next best person to challenge you is yourself. You were lying to yourself, thinking that you could find the satisfaction of your soul by running in circles. But regardless of what you did, you didn't waste time nor energy, because all of the struggle and ripping of your heart has led you to this moment, to this place, to the winding and unmarked path that is God's will for you.

Hello God, I am a wretched man. I am so far deviated from your perfect design and poisoned by what makes me, me.

Hello God, this is me giving you my best. It's not much, and I must admit, even I am disappointed in what I can offer to you. But this pathetic excuse for an offering, coming from an even more pathetic person, is given to you from a most desperate of faiths, a faith that pleads with you: to take what little I have for an unfair exchange for an encounter.

_____ after _____

what can i even _____

regardless, you pray and you praise and you glorify

no blanks for those.