motivation

I feel and know my heart is ready and open for faith, for a love that I have never given into before. But I feel like I have to be very careful about the way in which I seek for this. I was greatly impacted by the influence God has had in a friends life, causing me to become curious and interested. But all the while it seems as though I am changing my heart for the acceptance of someone else. How do you ever let go if on one end you want to seek and find a higher purpose for yourself, but on the other end you realize someone has had a great impact on your beliefs and may be part of the reason why you begin to question and reasses your purpose and beliefs? I feel like I can't truly lose control if I'm trying to control the way in which my desire or reason for a change of heart for God appears to someone else. It's difficult. Someone I care much about and deeply respect has put a lot of things on my heart. And I know what I want is to feel and experience this unwavering love and presence from God. I feel like finally I was exposed in such a way that something clicked. Something was different and I was able to see Christianity in a positive light. I feel something greater than religion, more impactful for me than the Catholicsm of which I was raised, and a positive influence of God on my life. I guess I've been spending a lot of effort worrying about how my motivations appear from the outside when I know deep down inside it's me who is searching for a greater purpose, a greater love, and a greater power than I will ever have alone.

The devil tries to give us a kingdom without a cross, without sacrifice. Jesus is the sacrifice for the real kingdom. And we hold the love of Jesus and God in our hearts, everywhere we go. This love is not restricted to a physical place. We carry this love in our hearts and it is exemplified when we gather together to praise Him.

Forgive Me, Save Me

I pray that through You I may allow myself to lose control. Please give me the STRENGTH to trust in you all of my days. I don't know quite where to start for I have doubted your presence for so long. Time and time again you have brought people of Christ into my life and I have turned the other way, never seeking you. But today I am here. You have continued to seek me and today it is I who has completely chosen to come to you. Forgive me for my doubt, ridicule, and disloyalty. I was raised by your faith and values yet somewhere through the years I selfishly took credit for my personal capabilities . Submitting to a life of personal conquest and searching for happiness in people and possessions over the glory of God. I have become bitter at times, dissapointed and dissatisfied, self righteous and unaccountable. I pray that you forgive me for these ignorant acts and continue to show me your mercy and grace. I am very thankful and feel very blessed for those you have put along my path and those who I have yet to meet along my journey. Thank you for never giving up on your children.

Forgive

Thank you. Thank you for saying something that was difficult to say. Something you knew I wouldn't take well. Something that until this day, months later, I didn't understand. You were not trying to degrade me. You were not trying to hurt me. You were simply stating how you felt and today I understand. Today I can look past the hurt I felt, the anger, the disappointment. Today I realize that what you said needed to be said. If you hadn't thrown it in my face I probably would have missed this opportunity to take a deeper look at the life I'm living. I'm sorry I held resentment for so long. I'm sorry I was angry and cold. I'm sorry that I didn't forgive you even though I said I had. It hurt, I won't lie. It hurt like when your biggest secret, that which you'd never want another to know, is revealed. I didn't want to face it. I didn't face it. I covered it up with anger and resentment. I told myself you were heartless. I asked myself how could someone say such a thing? Who were you to say such a thing? But I understand now. You said it for me. You said it out of love. So thank you. Thank you for knocking the wind out of me. Thank you for making me take a second look at my life's purpose. For if I have no care for my own soul who will have care for me in time to come?

Acknowledge

A couple years ago I tried to read a book by Sam Harris called The End of Faith. Never finished that book. Yesterday I finished the book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller. I had that book for less than a week and couldn't put it down.

Here is some of what it revealed to me:

Emptiness of Natural Selection:
Evolutionary biology tells us that everything we think and feel occurs because it is those thoughts that allowed us to prevail. Thus those who felt love and beauty only feel that and see it because their ancestors did. And those thoughts and feelings are part of our biological makeup that allowed us to survive natural selection. So what they are saying is we only feel love because it assists our survival and it is a trait that was passed down to us for survival.

This is a very sickening view to me. To think that love and beauty is only for our ability to procreate. To think that everything we think and feel can't really be trusted because we are only realizing it in order to continue to fill this earth. So if this is true, how can we trust anything? How can we trust anything that even scientists reveal? Aren't they being contradictory? How can they even trust what they believe to be true? If there is no God then one would believe that all things are inexplicable, like your disbelief in God... so therefore how can you go on using your rational judgments if they cannot be trusted. The very basis for proving that God doesn't exist contradicts the ability to believe in anything at all.

And if this were true it creates a pretty empty existence. Explain then why anything in this world matters. "There's no actual purpose for which we were made- we are accidents. If we are the product of accidental natural forces, then what we call 'beauty' is nothing but a neurological hardwired response to particular data. You only find certain scenery to be beautiful because you had ancestors who knew you would find food there and they survived because of that neurological feature and now we have it too.... Love too must be seen in this light. If we are the result of blind natural force, then what we call 'love' is simply a biochemical response, inherited from ancestors who survived because this trait helped them survive."

But: "Regardless of the beliefs in our mind about the random meaninglessness of life, before the face of beauty we know better." We have an appetite for something greater than the explanation of life as merely the outcome of random atoms in the universe. This appetite or 'blessed longing' is something we will always fee the absence of until we let it fill us with the "joy, love, and beauty that no amount or quality of food, sex, friendship, or success can satisfy. We want something that nothing in this world can fulfill." That something that we are longing for is a major clue that God is real.

Right vs. Wrong:
So referring back to the above argument, how can we really know what is right vs. wrong if God does not exist. If all that matters is our survival than why are we as humans any different from any other animal in nature. Wildlife depends on hunting and killing for survival, some of which occurs within the same species of animal. But we as humans don't agree with this. Killing another human being is wrong. If all that matters is our survival and what it takes for us to achieve the most success for ourselves, then where did our conscience come from. Why would the average person even think twice about hurting another person in order to make it to the top if our entire survival is based on the theory of natural selection? This is because it is not the case. There is something else out there controlling the universe, the world, our lives. "If there is no God as one may believe and everyone has just evolved from animals, why would it be wrong to trample on someone's rights? Why are humans considered different from the rest of the natural world so that they are not allowed to act as the rest of the animal world?"

Because we have innate feelings of wrong and right, of moral obligation. "We also have an eradicable belief that moral standards exist, outside of us, by which our internal moral feelings are evaluated."
- example: If a woman spends her life fighting for the rights of women and believes she feels these rights are deserving based on social views of her time and place, than how can she have the right to place those views over the non-western world and their present societies. "If all cultures are relative, then so is the idea of universal human rights, so how can I decide to impose my values on this culture?"

"If there is no God than all moral statements are arbitrary, all moral valuations are subjective and internal, and there can be no external moral standard by which a person's feelings and values are judged." But "We are all equal- Man is but man, before God we are all equal. Before God!"
Human rights have no basis outside of God. How would we be able to trust our views of wrong and right if there is no God and instead in accordance with natural selection? We wouldn't. We wouldn't be able to really trust that "napalming babies is bad" and that "starving the poor is wicked." The fact that many nonbelievers continue to justify human rights in their minds explains that He is still shaping our views even if we don't want to accept it. He is giving us the knowledge of right and wrong, giving us a moral conscience. If one lives in a secular world but continues to make distinctions between wrong and right, then it is the heart that knows God exists even if your real world intellect is stuck in the secular mindset.

If nothing is larger than ourselves and our entire being is based on our personal success, what happens when we have achieved all that we can achieve? "This pointless litigation of existence before an empty bench... which, of course, is another way of saying- despair." But many live with the belief that it does matter the way in which we lead our lives yet it is in no accordance with a higher power or our life after death. What does it matter then to know and do right over wrong? "If the Bench is truly empty," what does it matter because the world will be over before we know it and no one will be around to remember what you did in your life, nor will it matter to you how your life affected others.

Life has beauty and meaning when we accept that there is a God who has given us inherent dignity because we know He exists. Acknowledging his presence is the first and most important step.

the playwright

I like this:

"Lewis gives us another metaphor for knowing the truth about God when he writes that he believes in God 'as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.' Imagine trying to look directly at the sun in order to learn about it. You can't do it. It will burn out your retinas, ruining your capacity to take it in. A far better way to learn about the existence, power, and quality of the sun is to look at the world it shows you, to recognize how it sustains everything you see and enables you to see it."

"Look at what the sun shows us."

(Don't expect to see god as a common object, obvious to our eyes.)

"If the God of the Bible exists, he is not a man in the attic, but the Playwright. This means we won't be able to find him like we would find a passive object with the powers of empirical investigation. Rather, we must find the clues to his reality that he has written into the universe, including into us."

"I ask you to put on Christianity like a pair of spectacles and look at the world with it. See what power it has to explain what we know and see."

____________________________________________________________

This perspective really intrigues me. To parallel what God shows the world to that of what the sun shows us, but for life itself is really amazing. God is like the light for our hearts, our souls. When we take off our individualistic spectacles and replace them with ones that see the world through the eyes of Christianity, that is really something. To not look for God as an object, but find him through his clues. I think this means his miracles. His people and how they effect you. His love. But I'm beginning to understand that that is something you do have to seek. You have to want to accept it, allow yourself to accept it. This could come as a slap in the face. This could be when you realize that you don't have it all together and that's okay because there is something that does and there's a specific plan for each of us. It's when you really let go, and not only say it but truly trust it. Feel yourself accept love unconditionally. But how do you feel that? What do you have to do to feel that? Is it prayer? Worship? Does it change overnight? One day you accept God into your life and the next you feel overwhelming love automatically? What happens? What does it feel like? When do you feel it? I want to feel it.

Conclusions

We cannot put our faith solely into people. They are bound to disappoint and we will eventually disappoint them. People fail our expectations. Maybe we expect too much from them. But what is it to expect consideration, kindness, at the least the energy it takes to communicate like a human being who has a heart. Is that too much ask for? The biggest reason why I know faith solely in people is impossible is because we disappoint ourselves. I disappoint myself often with things that I cannot do or accomplish, but the worst is when I put faith in someone knowing full well that they are only human and yet when the outcome is not what I expected or desired, I am still upset. That is what is most disappointing. That is when I realize that God is greater than anybody on this earth and we will never even compare. We can try to live like him, to be like him but we will always fail and that is acceptance in itself. It is to realize that I am not that powerful. I don't have what it takes but I have an open heart to put my faith into that which will never disappoint. That which will give me the strength I don't have standing alone. We all are weak. Our accomplishments occur by the grace of God. Wow, I don't think I have ever allowed myself to truly admit that. I've never let go of the control, trusted the process, or wanted a guiding heart. Why did I think I had the answers, the knowledge, the understanding, the power? Who am I? I'm a nobody.
A book I read said that hell is when you can no longer give or receive love or happiness. That alone sounds worse than any fiery pit I had envisioned in my dreams. For hell is reached when God gives you that which you most desperately asked for, freedom from himself. Freedom from that which created love, happiness, that which created us.
But with that said and as my understanding and desire to find the love God is said to share develops, why is it so easy for me to show my passion for another human being than it is has ever been for our creator. I can get so wrapped up in a relationship, in the broad sense of the word (the interaction/ connection of two people) and develop high expectations so quickly that are almost always unsatisfied. But truly, until now, I've never really looked elsewhere for the love that I want and never really receive from a human being. Until now I mocked those who worshiped that which they claimed gave them everlasting love. Until now I was never so desperate. Never so disappointed with outcomes.
In terms of romantic relationships, all be them few, I feel that most of them have been marked by disappointment. Either I couldn't give or receive something I was searching for. Something I thought could be achieved through a human relationship. And it was usually I who made the final decision to be ready or done, to continue or to move one. Until recently this was the case. But recently one has stumped me. I didn't get what I wanted or thought I wanted. I didn't have faith and thus I was not right for such a relationship. This made me do a lot of thinking. I've thought about who I am, what I stand for, what my life's purpose is. I couldn't think of very much. What is an education, some dreams for my future. If life is only what we have on this earth then why should it matter the costs we take to obtain what we want. But if what we have on this earth means little, but the actions we take will follow us forever, than the life we lead should not be an individualistic one.
Now this rejection hurt and the realization that I stand for little was quite painful as well. It hurt more than not feeling physically desirable enough, than not feeling intellectual enough. This was something I had chosen. I had convinced myself of beliefs or lack of beliefs. I had caused my own emptiness and that caused this new relationship to evaporate any chance of romance.
But my dilemma is the fact that this has definitely made me take a deeper look at my life and make myself vulnerable to a love I have been longing for. But I want this for myself. I am thankful for the eye opener that such a heartache has showed me but I realize that I also have to know I am loved to truly give love. With that said I am on the journey, seeking a faith in God and laying forth all my sins. This is the beginning of a long walk, but for once in my life I am truly and honestly hungry.