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but i wanna be one today…centered and true…still i’m singing, spirit…take me up in arms with you…

this is where things stop being polite…and start getting real…

lately i’ve felt so wrapped up in the mundane…and i can feel it getting to me…i’ve been really wore out in heart and mind…not so much because of the fact that i’m doing too much…but because of the feeling that i’m not doing enough of anything that really matters…it’d be easy to just say it’s an attack by satan…but does he really concern himself with the mediocre matters of every christian?…i think too often we give the guy too much credit…that or we’re trying to take the blame off ourselves…it’s probly more of the latter because i think the problem lies within me…in my doubt that God can do something incredible with my measly offering of a life…

that God can actually take me as i am…and use who i am…and actually get glory from that…that’s incredible right there…i mean after all…he did make me who i am…so the only way he’s going to get glory from my life is when i’m actually living as he created me to be…i think i’m finally getting that into my head…but it’s a hard saying…and i’ve had a steep incline to traverse to actually realize that…that God can use me…and he can use me today…i don’t have to conform to some blurry set of rules…to some perceived standard until i can start glorifying God…i think i’ve finally gotten to the place where i know that will never happen…i’ll never get there…what a defeated life that would be…knowing that you’ll never get to where God wants you to be…what a defeated life i’ve lived so far…it’s time to start being me…

which is all well and good…but if i’m gonna start being myself…then i’ve got to figure out how much significance i need to put on the place dreams and aspirations should have in my life…i really believe that God gives us dreams (not the nocturnal kind) for a reason…so why then are so many of us seemingly “trapped” in lives that we can’t stand living?…i’ll be honest…my dream is not to be an engineer…gasp!…it never has been…so then why am i doing this? why am i sitting in front of a computer for eight hours a day, five days a week?…why, you ask?…because it’s “stable”…because it’s “safe”…because it’s “more marketable”…because i got this job a week after i graduated…because it’s what everyone tells me would be a good way of making a living…the responsible side of me sees and recognizes that and for the most part agrees…the adventurous side of me doesn’t want to settle for everyone else’s expectations though…i love music…i love film…i would die to make that my living in some form or another…but it’s a risky undertaking…the odds would be against me…and going down those avenues definitely isn’t all that ”marketable” in ohio…

so what now? wait for God to drop something in my lap? sometimes he’s gracious enough to do so…cuz he knows i need that every once in a while to spur me on…but there’s this thing called faith that God is longing for us to have in him…and it really isn’t faith until we step out on our own and follow where we feel he’s leading…after that comes a truly amazing thing called grace..it covers all the humanness and flesh that we sometimes throw into the whole mix…see, i think we get the two reversed alot…we’re perpetually waiting for God to blind us with his shekinah glory and lead us to the promised land…but he’s waiting for us to make the first move…he wants us to have faith…if we draw near to him…then he’ll draw near to us…

so now comes the time when i’m ’sposed to talk about how i’m gonna do things differently this time…but i’m not just gonna sit here and make some committment to “make up for lost time”…or “change for the better”…i’m not going to make some valiant effort at glorifying God…which is where i think alot of us really set ourselves up for certain defeat…we’ll just fall harder the next time…i’m going to try to do a better job at surrendering…which is kind of an oxymoron if you think about it…surrender is really the absence of making any form of an effort…except giving up…the only thing i can do is give up trying myself…and surrender my will to his…it’s not something i can just do once and live off it the rest of my life…this life is a war…it’s gotta be a daily thing…actually…it’s gotta be a moment by moment thing…it’s called “walking in the spirit”…

and you’re raising the dead in me…

 


######Note: This post is from a very old Xanga blog of mine. A very, very old blog. In fact, it’s practically a museum. Be sure not to touch any old references or links. You won’t break them, they are most certainly already broken.

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Ryan Straits


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Ghost States

The art of the in-between

   Oct 19, 2004 Home Oct 28, 2004