daily

CBG: Hardened

May 8, 2020 — Leave a comment

Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come up and rain righteousness upon you.

Hosea 10:12

I wish integrity could always be felt. I want to feel genuinely and act from there. It’s as if an action can only be authentic if it’s motivated by a genuine felt experience. How often is this prerequisite an excuse for not doing, an excuse to skip out on things that make me feel uncomfortable, a justification for lazy covered up in the notion of “boundaries” and “self-care”?

Side: I am the biggest advocate for boundaries and I think it’s brave to draw them out. Do your boundaries honor your sense of worth or do they seek to make you feel more worthy? These are very close neighbors. Boundaries stemming from self-worth may feel uncomfortable, racked with thoughts of, “I feel bad,” “What if they think I’m…” However your self-worth will not be contingent on the response. On the other hand, boundaries that aim to impress your worthiness have whiffs of ego-building, self-centeredness and imminent fear of the recipient’s response.

Back to integrity of our actions: sometimes we cannot wait to feel before we act. What if our hearts are built on fallow ground? Are we going to wait for the ground to magically soften? Wait for someone else to tend to the plot of heart? Sometimes the only way to release our hearts from hardness is to act in love and do right. It’s refusing to let a hardened heart dictate your life. It’s taking action because even if you don’t feel the Holy Spirit at work, s/he’s at work. It’s a greater integrity than alignment between actions & feelings; it’s an integrity between actions & God in you. Break up your fallow ground! Throw down the rake hard. See cracks form. The season of tenderness is around the corner.

Prayer: God I pray for a tender and soft heart. God I pray for a dependence on the Holy Spirit when I feel paralyzed in my actions. God I pray for an integrity that is aligned with who you have called me to be: a child full of worth and purpose.

Character: Where are you seeking worth?

Grace: What does a tender heart feel like?

Day 22: EMO Woe

January 7, 2019 — Leave a comment

Exodus 16-18; Psalm 22

There are days that you are given the double portion in order to have a day of rest. We are given abundance in order to allocate well and plan for the future. That is as much a part of the story as trusting God for daily manna. We need to both trust daily, and take just as much as one needs daily, not more and not less, while being prepared for days when we cannot work and toil. Do we toil sometimes and never enjoy the fruits of our labor on rest days? Let rest exist. Let hard work exist. Let daily trust exist. Let interdependence exist.

Psalm 22 is super emo and desperate sounding. It’s often how I feel inside but I’m afraid to be that open about it. How can one be truthful with how one feels without feeling needy? As I’m typing this I’m in an emo mood. When you’re self-conscious about coming off too desperate or needy, you second guess asking every show of emotion. Or at least I do. Then I just become a bottled up bitter mess. So how can I be present in my feelings such as being forsaken and abandoned without making others eye roll? Do I need to care? Or is it presenting where you’re at in a certain place without needing anything from a human listener? I mean the best thing anyone can do when you’re so stuck and entrenched in your feelings is just listen. Because as you listen, you help unravel the blinders around me and pull me out of my woe is me. I never want to be in my woe is me phase but sometimes I’m there and your clarifying questions and care can help pull me back to the surface.