Despite having professed Christ for most of my life, the older I get the more I realize how unstable and insufficient my understanding of Him is, and my understanding of what His life requires of me.
I'm not discouraged--I'm not--but I am uneasy. I've been encouraged to disciple, and, in principle, I agree that those who have been longer in the faith ought to seek out the younger, the weaker, and help them to grow. Ought to offer encouragement, a listening ear, a strengthening hand. It's nothing particularly complicated.
And yet, it is.
God's been working some things out in me over the past year: soul-deep stuff, not fodder for a blog, things I've carried for as long as I can remember. I don't really know what to do with any of it. I don't say this to complain: I have my weekly call with a dear friend for accountability and fellowship, but I'm suddenly feeling the lack of something I didn't know I was missing. I have no mentor. I don't know how to disciple when I'm so in need of discipleship myself. (I don't know what to give when I feel I have nothing to offer. In all honesty, I feel like God could do a lot better in choice of instrument than to use me. Lord, work it out.) I don't know how to process the revelations in my heart when I'm floundering in the midst of it, perspective-less.
Then, too, somewhere along the line in this religion-saturated realm of the Bible-belt, I've acquired a degree of cynicism, of unwillingness to show my weakness, my brokenness, to others. Especially others with leadership labels. I've done it before, and been burned. So has everyone. The Church is made up of flawed people, and I'm not leaving it just because the perfect work of Christ isn't fully manifesting in everyone. I get that. I get that it's not an excuse. But--in the spirit of candor--it's still there. I don't know how to overcome it.
Encouragement: the One in me is greater; He's the One who overcomes. That's fact. That's proven. That's gospel.
And it's what I'm holding on to.
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