No not the song. What is love, really?
I have really felt lukewarm as of lately. Lukewarm as in just ordinary. I never wanted to be just ordinary for God. I always wanted to do spectacular things with my life. I always wanted to change the life of others through God. Well I have found that I have been doing the exact opposite of that. I have been all about myself. Yeah sure I might help a neighbor out, work harder at work, fight for my marriage, attend church on a regular basis, do things for others when the opportunity presents itself, but I haven’t been TRYING. I have let things come to me instead of being a driving force. I want to be more radical. True love is not being willing to give up your life for another but actually doing it. I am notorious, along with a million of other Christians, for saying it, but not doing it.
I prayed last night and this morning that God makes something in my life happen to where I have a chance to change my life completely for him. For him to do something so I can have a way out of being about myself but all about him. For a way, if he so desired, for me to sell all of my things and go live poor and use all that I have to feed the homeless and tell them about Christ.
I am trying to decipher what he wants me to do. I know, maybe I shouldn’t read into it, but just go and do it. Unfortunatelly my problems are not that simple to solve. Try to decipher wether God wants you to live a life as a husband when you are already married or if he wants you to sell all of your posessions and go live poor when that would mean leaving your marriage. I don’t know. I hate having to wait. Maybe I’ll write a blog soon about waiting, and how it drives me crazy. Either way, please pray for me, so I can make the best decision for God.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Francis Chan when he was asked if he thinks God calls him to live a radical, crazy life: “It’s not that this lifestyle should be crazy to us. It should be the only thing that makes sense. Giving up everything and sacrificing everything for the afterlife is logical. “Crazy” is living a safe life and storing up things while trying to enjoy our time on earth, knowing that any millisecond God could take your life. To me that is crazy, and that is radical. The crazy ones are the ones who live life like there is no God. To me that is insanity.”
Michael Johnson Said:
on February 22, 2009 at 4:59 am
Mladen,
First of all, I love Chan’s “Crazy Love” …it’s amazing. And so are you. Listen (or ..uh, read) these words I’m writing to you. God, who is infinitely self-fulfilling, who lacks nothing in any way, has designed and created you. He’s taken His own hands and has sculpted each part of you, writing not only your body, but your very mind & spirit into being. You are purposed to be here, brother. Some would say to fight, and others to say to discover that God has no limit on what He can ask of us.
Think about it…what do we contribute to God? nothing. What do we do for God that God needs? nothing. What can we offer up to God that He finds valuable? nothing. He already has everything, that’s why He is truly self-fulfilling. He got onto the Israelites, not because they were sacrificing wrong, they were doing everything just fine, but what had gone wrong was how they began to perceive their works and God. They started to believe with the world, that God needed the sacrifice. He sharply responded to all of His faithful: ïf I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world is mine..If I were thirsty, I would not tell you for the world is mine.”
Mladen, I say this brother because we get caught up. I’m on that list too. I get so caught up in feeling that life is too short to wait, because obviously if I haven’t figured it out yet, then it must be God telling me to move on. I like that word obviously, because at some point, the world seeps in, brother, and we start to believe that our lives are too short to wait much longer because we don’t want to be spinning our wheels and wasting years of our lives.
I don’t know what God has designed for your life, Mladen, but if you are truly listening and waiting for God, He will never disappoint you. He seems to wait to the very last nano-second and then rush in…He does this because at that point, no one else, not even the mythical fate can take the credit for what Glory He brings into our lives.
I love you, Mladen. I pray for you and for your wife very often because I feel your heart beating loudly for Christ and justice and love and life all the way over here. I admire your internal resolve and strength. I admire your weakness. I admire your character, even with all its flaws. We will never be perfect on our own, Mladen, but it’s important for us to recognize that and to love each other, lifting one another up in the times that are good and bad…because honestly, there isn’t a difference to Christ. He just asks that we love all the time.
I’ll be waiting for that blog on waiting. LOL…I NEED IT!!!!