Crouching at the Door

"The Lord said to Cain, 'Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted (or 'will there not be a lifting up of your face')? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for (or against) you and your must rule over it." Genesis 4:6-7

Oh, to be accepted by God. Oh, to feel accepted by God. My face so often falls like Cain when I screw things up or maybe I don't even screw things up but for some reason God doesn't bless me like He did last time. And I know so well that feeling of sin crouching at my door when i screw up, ready to condemn me and harass my mind by making me focus on the specifics of how I screwed up. God tells me to rule over this sin though. I have something that Cain didn't have though and that is Christ. I have the promise of Christ, freeing me from sin and condemnation. Still, I must rule over sin and condemnation with the promise of Christ and man is it hard sometimes. I screw up so often on my ship that when I am well acquainted with this feeling of not doing well. I'm trying to make my work an offering to God and so often it feels like it's not being accepted by God and I'm not being blessed in return.
Yet I have already received every return I could want in Christ. Far be it from me that I should respond in bitterness like I did as a spoiled child and run from my father and mother and lock my self in my room. I so often forget that God's posture of holding his arms open for me to come never changes no matter how much I screw up. I heard a sermon recently on a different passage in Genesis but he made the point that when a child sins, the parent never wants the child to run away but wants them to run to them. With God it is the same.

GENESIS!!

Hey brothers,

I am so satisfied in reading Genesis. I am excited to get to the 6th month, as well, to put the first five books together and see the connections. Reading has been going slow; I've been underway since the 17th, and I get back on Nov. 17, unless something crazy happens like Korea starts launching. I haven't been on here much, but I wanted to let you know that I am reading. I am so intrigued and always will be by the first 10 or so books of Genesis. Answers will not come in this life for some of my questions and might never come, though I excpect that they will after the ressurection. But I am satisfied in the position. I will write later with all of the intersting points I've picked out of Genesis. I'm sure that you have pondered many of them; many of them seem not to connect and seem very unbelievable; but I know the answers come together right now at a point that I can't understand. I just passed the point where the high priest of God, Melchizidek (sp?) broke bread and wine with abram. Its right before God's pledge and turns abram to abraham. I know that there are alot of postulations on the reason for this vers, but I really want to meditate on them; I think that they are important.

Pray for dave, my friend on the ship. His father is a pastor in Boston, and I don't know where he stands in terms of salvation. He says he's a christian and has a testimony, but there is no fruit in his life. I was suprised when I first heard that he said he was a christian. I pray for him that he would enter into true fellowship and truth of God's word. Please pray with me. God bless, and be encouraged. Big things on the way.

-Gus

This month...

I have been thinking and praying about it and I get no other book that comes to mind except Genesis. Let's go back to the begining. He have read so many references to the covenants and forefathers. Now let's study them. It may not be as easy reading as an NT book, and we will have to read more than a chapter a day, but I feel up for it..

Spiritual cobwebs and empty souls....

Reading Matthew 20-25 Jesus gives such amazing answers when He is challenged by the authorities of the law. He takes the questions and in many cases he redifines them. It just blows me away. Amazing rhetorical skill.
Some of his parables, though, have left me unsettled. They gave me this eerie vision of my soul with certain regions shiny and others covered in cobwebs. There have been so many places I have left in neglect. I have let the present push me away and allowed certain aspects of my soul fade into the past and disrepair. I love how openly Jesus shows the way will be opened to those of us who are on the highways: the good and the evil, the beggers, the workers hired latter on... us. It takes me back to Romans and shows the foreshadowing that Jesus Himself gives the scribes and Pharisees.
Yet, the words that he speaks directly to them ring true in my life: "Woe to you, David (America, Church), hypocrite! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others."
...and with my words I, like Jerusalem,"I testify against myslf." I hold the guilt as well as the accusing finger. But what I find so amazing becomes my hope. Whatever we do for the least of these we do for Him. "The least of these" now looks very different to me: Not the starving child in Africa. Certainly they need help. For me it is the person sitting next to me in class. It is that rich snobby customer that walks into work and wants me to do twenty extra things while still on theeir cell phone. It is the person I really don't like that needs my attention. The least of these includes ALL of these. I want to pick and choose my "least". For me it is so easy to love the poor and the needy, but to love the rich and mean and needy becomes so much more difficult. I think, in many ways, these are my tax collectors, my blind, my lepers who are crying out for friendship for love and acceptance and I walk on by piously and fail to be the Samaritan. I play piously. One good scribe and pharisee and rabbi I am. Yet I am the helf-breed. Thank God for a grace that covers my indifference and a Spirit that can promt me to ast even when I am uncomfotable.
Just some thoughts from the week.

Repentance

So I was reading Matthew yesterday and I was doing it just to get it done. To Check It off. To make sure I wasn't slacking off too badly. So I stopped at Jesus' conversation with the Rich young ruler. I have picked up a philosophy major this semester...with one semester left. And I was taken back later in the day by the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's analysis of this passage in "The Cost of Discipleship". I found that I have been treating Jesus like a moral teacher. "How would you say, teacher, that I can best live? Oh, yes, I have done that..."Certainly there is so much said about moral issues, but the heart of things is our relationship with God and others. Love. I have been learning that Love is so much an act of the will. I have lived a life based on emotions and "feelings". "Lord, let me feel you now!"I pray. How selfish! I think my new prayer is: "Lord, help me to be faithful to you my love EVEN when I don't feel it. Conform my will to your love. You are the rock... make my will solid in you. "
My will in the relationship failed. It is weird for me to type this. I lost my love. It trickled down into every aspect of my life. Even to my affection for those I care about very much (and they will not know unti I tell them). I honestly was left turning around and leaving sadly... counting myself rich.
I was sitting in chapel and the word repentance was used. I lost track of all else that was said and became transfixed on that one word. People define it as a turning away from, renunciation of, and rejection of the action... but it hit me: For me repentance requires turning away from MYSELF. Turning from myself and turning towards the Face of Christ. As we walk away sadly, we are looking at ourselves not the Lover of our Soul.
Oh, to have a will that will not be shaken by my wavering emotions and feelings. (please know that I believe they are there from God, but I don't want them to be the final say in defining my relationshps. I don't want to be a slave to them... only to a will conformed to Christ.)

I'm done...

journal entry

I wrote this in my journal this morning as I was reading matthew, and now I share it with you:

Jesus saw the tax collectors, the sinners, and the prostitutes as the beloved. And the Pharisees said to each other, "why does your teacher eat with the tax collectors and sinners?" This is so applicable to our current disspositions. Follow this: the verb in this question is crutial. The verb is "eat". Though eating is somethign that we must do everyday to be nourished, it is also very intimate. What if you told your friends or family, "I am going to do homeless ministry." They would praise you for your piety and pray for your mission. You talk and listen to the "sinners". Or what if you said, "I am going to do prostitute ministry." Maybe a similar response with a bit of hesitancy. But what if you said, "I'm going to fellowship, I'm going to eat with some homeless guys, or some prostitutes for the next couple of days." In one sentance, in one word, eat, you have broken the superficial facade. They would no longer say, "good for you", but rather, "shame on you." They would say, "I guess you forgot the verse about being in the world but not of the world." And what do you say? Maybe we should remember this: "Those who are well don't need a doctor, but the sick do. God and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners." And then maybe we should say, "I have a homeless friend living on the streets and I'm going to throw him a party because I have a feeling that he hasn't had a party in quite some time."

... Those were my writings from this morning. I don't mean to be judgmental with the general pronoun "they" that I use. But I think that you see what I am getting at ... basically do the fruits of our faith produce genuine love and care for these people? And if our fruits aren't true love and care, but rather false piety, from where does that fruit come? I ask myself these things often.

God bless, and thanks for the encouragament.

-Gus