Thinking out loud

It's so difficult at times to live in a country where no one cares about anything but themselves. I am one of those people so much of the time. Its like being at an upscale party where everyone gorges themselves on food and wine, pretends to know the host, and talks about how benevolent they are. But its worse than that with the Christians. We talk about how people compare their morality to one another and will be judged according to Christ, but we are the same way. We judge one another and think ourselves to escape judgment. We compare our Christianity to other versions and lift ourselves up against the less advanced, so that we have something to fill the hole that we wish the love of Christ would fill.
I have claimed the name of Christ for 8 years now but for the majority of it have been very very slightly different than the rest of the world. I hang out with Christians. I understand high level doctrine. I can counsel and have wisdom (a small amount, as it turns out). I read and pray for 15 - 30 minutes per day (this one really makes me better than other supposed Christians). I have shared the gospel a few times and handed out 40 tracts or so. And as I look out at the masses I don't have compassion and view them as sheep without a shepherd. I see them as notches on a ruler against which to judge myself as good or bad.
And yet when I look at the word of God and am serious, or when I'm on my bed at night and God brings to mind better things... I think about the life of the early church and the apostles. I long for rivers of living water to flow from Jesus, through me, to others. I long for true intimacy with Christ, the love of God that makes obedience like breathing. I want my heart to beat for Jesus and call him Lord and mean it. I want his desires to be my desires. I want to pray and believe they will be answered, then see them answered. I want to read and have the words jump off the page. I want to suffer with Jesus, putting my flesh willingly on the alter to love those he loves, so that I can also live the resurrected life he has given me.
By the grace of God some of this has begun to change. People I despised I suddenly long to have them know the Lord. Entertainment that I clung to for rest and joy now seems like a thief trying to steal those very things. My every free moment it seems I just want to be alone with God in prayer and his word, and let that flow into my relationships with believers and the gospel. I love the life he has given me, finally, and I would beg him to never let me walk away... but he is the one who has promised never to leave me nor forsake me, as well as to be faithful to me when I'm faithless. He is able to draw my heart to himself, as I am firmly in the palm of his hand. He has brought me this far and I will recoil in fear and sin again and again, but his grace has brought me this far, and his grace will guide me home.
Truly obedience can't be coerced by any man or sermon. I should try only to coerce a person to know the love of Jesus and that his call to obedience is that of the call of a lover to stay a while.
I feel like speaking this way isn't permissible any longer in our advanced society. Weeping while worshiping, praying on your knees, singing the love of he who first loved us, and following him with everything you have; it seems to get the reaction of David's wife as he danced before the Lord. I would rather be naked and fruitful than sophisticated and barren. Help me Lord to not care what people think, because like everyone else, its my default setting.

8 As when a hungry man dreams, and behold, he is eating

and awakes with his hunger not satisfied,

or as when a thirsty man dreams, and behold, he is drinking

and awakes faint, with his thirst not quenched,

so shall the multitude of all the nations be

that fight against Mount Zion.

 

This reminds me of video games/movies. Temporary fantastical relief to our itching sense of purpose and wonder, only to groggily wake up and find that we itch a little worse. 

John 7:7
The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.

Jesus was constantly losing followers and having people turn on him because of what he said. People sought him out because of his incredible love, and then abandoned him because of the truth he spoke. I don't think I should seek to ostracize people or blow them up needlessly or anything like that. 
But man, Jesus had less friends than most people, and less followers than most preachers, and I don't think that's a coincidence.  
If Jesus was around today how many Christians would follow him as he is telling them to sell everything they have, pick up their cross, and follow him? Would I?

Mediocrity and Effort

Make every effort, Peter says.
The Spirit of God is in us to change and control us, but we also have to make every effort. God draws near to us when we draw near to him.
How much time is spent just twiddling my thumbs waiting for God to change me, meanwhile I do nothing for him. I don't pray fervently, I don't read with a burning desire to know him, I don't assume he will use every minute of every day, I don't believe him for much of anything or grab a hold of his promises with all I have banking on his word being true, even true for me.
Its clear from the bible that God didn't save me to be mediocre and accomplish little, yet I accomplish little. He wants me to decrease so he can increase. He wants Tyler to die so Christ can live through me.
He has joined me with him in death on the cross, that much is done.
But I spend much time holding onto the last bastions of myself instead of just purposing to lose the war, and surrender every encampment that waves my own flag.

Glory and Obedience

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. - John 17

Jesus didn't glorify God by being satisfied or content in him. In Gethsemene he was worlds away from contentment. Not to say there weren't mixed emotions, it says "for the joy set before him he endured the cross." 

But often I think of the Christian life in terms of learning more about the grace of God and that will propel me into obedience, as Paul says that the love of Christ is what compels us. I don't believe, however, that you reach a magic day where Christ's goodness overwhelms you to the point that you are a puppet and his mercy the puppeteer; all things obedience now coming as naturally as breathing, for even Christ was tempted in all manner as we are today. 

But when you think on the grace and love of God it spurns you on to decide to obey. And then, during the times of difficulty and blindness even to God's goodness, you are able to go on because you remember your commitment and you remember the times you looked on the face of God and laughed, incredulous at his delight in you. 

Anyway isn't it a two way street? Love and obedience? Doesn't John 15 say that we will experience the love of God as we obey, obedience being loving one another?

I think God is excited and delighted as a father when we are delighting in him. But he gains no extra glory from it. Rather, the world sees his glory (thus "he is glorified") when we obey. But not only obey because that's not all Christ says. He says, "having accomplished". 

Not starting the work of God and then running out of steam, but finishing to the end; completing the course marked out for you, as Paul did. Christian men talk a lot and discuss and debate, instead of putting their nose to the grindstone of really loving people. Spurgeon says to let the sinners be damned only with our arms wrapped around their knees, bathed in our prayers, with us proverbially blocking the path to hell as best we can. 

But what do we do about it? "My life is the gospel to this dying world." And then in parenthesis, "so I don't need to open my mouth, or spend real time loving and meeting people where they are at, I have sermons to listen to. After all, I can't encourage someone else if I myself aren't encouraged."

Prayer

Why do I not think of what deserves to be asked for, before even beginning to pray?
Should I go into a store, as Spurgeon says, without having in mind what it is I need?
And why do I pray halfheartedly for a thing, and without it being resolved, move on to the next?
I must learn to stop and fervently pray for someone until I'm convinced God will save or deliver or mature them, until moving on to the next.
When I hear stories about people praying through the night and getting 3 or 4 hours of sleep, because they count prayer as immensely more valuable... I look at my own schedule and know that things have to change.
My heart and attitudes toward people have been affected by my prayer life, most of all my heart toward God.

Heaven

Reading Revelation it is interesting to see how Jesus speaks to the churches in the first few chapters.
There is a discussion of what is going well, or what is going poorly, or both, and then an encouragement to "conquer" and then the promise of a reward.
Sometimes the thing to conquer was persecution, and other times just their own fleshly desires.
I find with myself that persecution definitely has come and gone in my life, though it has been very mild. Mostly the thing that needs conquered in my life are my fleshly desires. 
It is comforting to know that Jesus is compassionate and that he loves us and rewards us even for the obedience we offer that he himself works in us. Like the hymn says, "why should I gain from his reward, I can not give an answer".