• Day 2: Careful What You Ask For…

    March 14, 2006

    I said in my last post, “here’s to hoping that the rest of my prayer times for the week are born out of either spiritual brokenness or joy…” I got door one.

    The details don’t really matter, the fast of the matter is that I feel broken for a number of reasons. My prayer time today was spent on a long run down Oakland, one of the most beauiful streets in Pasadena. Mainly I focused on my brokenness and asked God that nagging question, “Why?” “Why this and why that.” I was pretty well able to supply all the stock answers, but they were of little comfort.

    I spent a while voicing my displeasure with the way God was running things, especially in terms of my life. I questioned His faithfulness and love, but He didn’t have much to say. I managed to pray for a few people who are a current source of frustration, but even that might have been pretty selfish.

    At odds with myself, I decided to just try and start thanking God for different things. First I thought about stuff like food and shelter, then family and friends, then health and athleticism, but then something changed.

    I started to thank God for my story, for all the different roads He has been down with me and all the exciting things I have gotten to see and do. I thaned Him for where I’m at and even for hard times that I have been through in the last year and a half. I thanked Him for what lies ahead, even though I am having trouble trusting Him and so much is unknown. I do have so much to be thankful for.

    2 lessons to be learned here. First, there really is something to be said for having a thankful heart, it has an incredible ability to change your whole attitude and outlook. Second, this post is not a devotional intended to leave you with the impression that I chose to be thankful and that “fixed” or otherwise alleviated the brokenness I feel. It didn’t. I am still angry, disappointed, sad, and confused. And this is that special place where I think ones relationship with God and their place in Christian community are supposed to converge in a miraculously redemptive and life-restoring sense.

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    Posted in: community, prayer

Recent Comments

  • Robert said...

    1

    That’s a great story to share. Thanks!

    I find a similar occurrence when I get confused or otherwise find myself feeling broken. I used to work myself into week or month long ruts living each day in a cloud of negativity and self-doubt over the smallest of things. And often the smallest of things would start it off. If it were at all bad for me, I’d faithfully blow it out of proportion until it fed back on itself over and over.

    Trying to find anything positive to focus on would eat away at the cloud around my head. My problems were still there, and many still are from time to time. But now I could drain the bloated significance I had placed there from my problems and put things in perspective. Finding how God was at work in the midst of things and being surprised that He was, in fact, doing a great many things that I couldn’t otherwise see has been quite amazing.

    All that to say, having a thankful, appreciative, or even just a neutral, non-negative heart can work wonders. :)

    03/14/06 3:42 AM | Comment Link

  • Joshua said...

    2

    Yeah, and even when being positive doesn’t change things, God still is. Learning that this is encouraging is laborious, and not often comforting. But the fact remains, when people die, when winds rip cities apart, when humans cut each other to pieces with knives and guns, when poor children starve to death, God is.

    We need to learn that this is an encouragement.

    03/16/06 3:01 PM | Comment Link

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