not so bad after all.

It turns out that things are actually really good, really okay after all. even after telling her about it.

we're handling it in a mature way. thanks be to God, for His guidance and protection.

whatever happens we'll still be friends, and I think that's a good part.

thank you Lord for guiding us and looking after everything.

amen.

exhausted

Lord, I'm so tired out from trying to learn your wisdom and your discretion. I just am so exhausted, dear God, dear Jesus, dear Savior; I just want to lie down and rest in your meadows and by your waters, Lord.

So much pondering and striving, and i'm still so full of want, so full of craving for things i cannot find; my heart is ill because of desire that is not met, Lord, like it says in Proverbs.

Lord, there is something wrong with my heart, and I lack the wisdom to cure it, to heal, to walk easily and enjoy your burden that is light and your yoke that is easy.

I crave five things, Lord:

to be close to You,
to bring people to You,
to be someone who builds up others,
real fellow-servanthood with my brothers and sisters in Christ;

and a helpmate in this walk.

It looks like my heart is going to be ill, to break again, over the fifth, Lord.

Pent-up desire to be with a girl; to confess it to her directly; to know for sure that there is nothing there.

My heart is going to break again, Lord, but there's no way forward except through and past my own pain.

I need you with me, Lord. I need You, Father, to comfort me and be my friend and tell me what to do next, tell me where to go, tell me how to serve You.

This part of my life is ending, and I need you to hold my hand as i cry, and then stand up again and walk and run the race into the next part.

I'm sorry for not having wisdom enough to manage the past part; teach me Lord, your wondrous ways, the plans you have for me, and comfort me with your assurances of a many future uses you have for me.

it's like.

It's like you can never catch your breath.
You're always breathless.

You smile to yourself without control;
the thoughts come like naturally,
like rivers flowing in their streambeds.

Hopes spring up like flowers from the mud.
Anything, anything, just for a little more of
What you desire.

Whenever life's pressure lets up,
your longing uncoils up again.

If she is not there when you expected it,
something inside wrinkles and twists.
aches, curls up, tightens up.

Knowing there are others longing for the same person;
like little spears stuck in your heart.

Anything, anything, for a little more dose;
of the opiate that causes blissfully painful addiction.
To see her briefly is pain, but you want more anyway;
in her presence is an expanding heart;
outside of it, a aching one.

Will I ever show you these words?
Or will these longings simply fade away, without even the closure of dying.

The christian life; a life of opposing extremes.

The paradox of extremes must be tasted for it to sink into our understanding and our hearts.

We MUST burn ourselves up in our sheer efforts to fight to please God; we MUST also admit, daily, our complete powerlessness and inability to please Him except for the grace and power God makes flow into our lives.

Work out our salvations with fear and trembling, for it is God that works in us. What is this? This is a paradox! We live a paradox, and that is the way it is meant to be.

Every account by a saint, strong and enduring in his pursuit of seeking and pleasing God, speaks of this. This is the basic principle: that we live out lives of paradox. Some churches only teach one extreme; total grace without painful effort, or painful effort without grace to make it have more than a mundane effect. As a result, so many people lose their way; trying to walk the road of a follower of Christ with only one leg.

A strong Christian must live out both extremes, remembering that His understanding is beyond our understanding; His ways are beyond our ways.

Simply because it is difficult to understand does not make it false. If so, then faith has no meaning and only what we understand is real; and that is obviously not true - at the end of the day, we understand so little about the world.

We must trust in what the Word says, and do both. We need to sacrifice our whole lives to Him day by day. At the same time, we need to daily cry out to Him for his mercy and grace, because we are in essence powerless and weak.

The weak are strong; the poor are rich; we are both wonderfully created and recipients of the birthright, and the most horrible and unworthy of creatures, sinners to the core.

Live out the paradox. Take joy in being created wonderfully, and, at the same time, day by day, accept having contrition and brokenness and humility, because we are such terrible creatures - from which we have the wonderful gratitude of knowing the grace of the Son of God dying on the cross for our sakes.

CARZ!!!!

Made by running 1000 replays of racing down the same track at the same time.

Mesmerising.