This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all … if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. 1 John 1:5, 7
Well, I wish this were more positive. I like to stay that way, but today I’m being really honest and transparent with you guys and gals that read this. Mom, I think you’d be proud of me for doing this; you say that I tend to live in and desire utopia. This is a far cry from that in my dearly beloved Papa’s eyes.
Well, perhaps you won’t think what I’m about to write is quite so dark … BUT sin is sin and that’s definitely been sadly within. I don’t want to beat myself up ‘cause Papa and I have already talked about these things, and He’s graciously forgiven me. I just know that I need all who read this and who’ve been changed and washed in His Son’s blood to pray for me. If I don’t abandon myself into my very loving Papa’s arms and just rest there, then I know I’m gonna fall into the trap of self-pity and depression because I have a heart that yearns so strongly to be like and please my Beloved. I just can’t swim with the guppies; nope, I gotta plung to the bottom of the deep end of Dad’s pond where you can hardly touch or reach the bottom unless you swim with all your might and get His help too.
I know that many people in my past could basically only see me as this seemingly good person who could do no wrong. I think it (the misconception) continued throughout my school years. It was never true, but I was not fully honest with myself then and hid such dark sin better than I knew. So, I’d like to be the first to shatter the “goody-goody” image of myself if you weren’t already aware that that is not me.
Alright, I will get on with exposing the sin that has plagued me lately. (For those who like things short, I’m sorry that the reality of who I am is that usually I’m wordy and truly enjoy the long versions of stories best. Thus, four paragraphs were written to get here.) I have struggled with not being selfish or more specifically getting my way. I really want to serve the Chinese people, but either because of culture or because they see me as a guest and not simply a friend, then I am not getting to serve them as I’d like. Perhaps all this has to do with Papa also wanting to teach me new things too. This dilema/sin has really been bothering me like a lot though.
Secondly, I have been struggling with worrying. I have seen Papa provide for me in amazing ways, but I have been worried about money. Shenzhen is expensive, and most of the other places I’ll be going to are expensive too. I have enough for this part of the trip and all the other spots along the way. It is my flesh just screaming out, and I gave in to the sin of worrying. If only you guys could be here to see how responsive Papa is to my prayers and your prayers for me; it is AMAZING and Him just being Him!
Third, I have been anxious. That goes along with what’s above. I also see this in how I react to the Chinese driving. I don’t want to worry anyone (especially you Mom and Daddy) who is reading this, but the truth is most of the driving here is very bad. My friends would tell you the same. Sometimes, especially on the bus, it makes me sick too because it’s very jerky usually and driving like that makes me easily car sick. At times, I just have to close my eyes, pray, and not look at the traffic any more. I actually pray very often when I’m on the bus, in a taxi, or just walking for other reasons though. I don’t think I have much “street smarts” but all that I do have comes alive often when I simply walk down the street over here. Even when I walk on the sidewalk I can easily be hit by a car or bicycle of some form (there are many here that don’t exist in the USA) if I don’t take a few seconds to often look around me.
Fourth, I have struggled with pride. That is a three-fold problem for me. First, there is abandoning my will for the will of the Chinese people around me. Like I said earlier, I want to serve more but am not able to do so as I’d like. It also comes out in other ways. For instance, my thinking can be pretty bad because there are so many ways of doing things over here that are not wrong but are extremely different than how they’d be done in the West. I remind myself of that a bunch over here. Then, in regards to pride, there are days like yesterday where Papa just decides to keep humbling you. I didn’t react well at all to that. I didn’t like feeling foolish. I shouldn’t have reacted that way over something so trivial as picking up this yummy banana pastry with chopsticks and failing three times … but I did. I should have just seen it in the moment as an opportunity to let others serve me and enjoy Papa and his desire to teach me. That is the kind of heart and reaction that I hope and pray for next time He decides to humble me.
Lastly, I really struggle – like pretty much several times a day – with having a pure mind. I want to, REALLY want to, have a pure mind, but I put junk into it before I was a Christian, and I didn’t expose those mental struggles until much later. No wonder my years of mentally longing for someone to help me didn’t come to pass; no one knew of the struggles because they were locked in my mind! I challenge everybody to be careful what you watch on tv or in movies, what you hear music-wise and language-wise, and to simply never even touch or in any way seek out pornography. Listening to that wisdom would’ve helped in the past and to some degree not cause some of my battles now. I don’t know why, perhaps to test my faithfulness, but this struggle has been much harder lately. An old, dumb temptation (which I am too ashamed to name specifically) keeps coming up in my face after so long of not being there. I haven’t fallen to it. I just don’t want any of these temptations to keep being so pesky like those little gnats that just won’t fly away when you’re so tired and trying to fall asleep.
I think that about says it all. Hopefully no one still has those false conceptions of me if they’ve read all of this. I sure hope not! For me, it’s like I told my amazing and insipiring friend Christopher recently … I just wanna be real with people now and love on them and not have them think of me as the old Amanda. I never was that person in truth, and I’m certainly not that person now. Hopefully, by grace and out of concerned love and boldness within a friend who spoke deep, necessary truth, I’m becoming a down-to-earth lover. I still most definitely loathe sin, both mine and yours, but I do hope to love you better through it as Jesus would than I’ve done in years, months, and days past.
I wanna be in the light as you are in the light. I want to shine like the stars in the heavens. Oh Lord, be my light and be my salvation ‘cause all I want is to be … in the light. (dc Talk – “In the Light”)
… the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. 1 John 2:8
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