last night was the first tuesday in a while that i dropped by RWC’s tuesday late night prayer meetings. i didn’t stay too long but in the short time i was there i retreated to a room on my own w/ a guitar because i found the bigger room with everyone else a bit too distracting… and the music was weird… (jeremy’s fault… but not his fault it was on shuffle). it’s been a while since i went to a room on my own and pulled out a guitar and just worshipped… and about half-way through i wished i could’ve shared that time with others.

two passages i meditated on tonight:

Psalm 131

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.

Ecclesiastes 5:

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words.

When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear.

maybe i’ll talk to pb about my issues w/ how tuesday is progressing. i wrote a bit about it last week here.

in other news i got my ESV study a day early! its great!

what i love about tuesday is plainly what i said before… “it’s just sweet time w/ god”. but as more and more people come out and as i’m overhearing people’s prayers (i’m not being nosy… there’s no way that i CAN’T hear them… i often wish there was), it’s hard to find that atmosphere which is conducive to repentance, meditation, reflection, and rest. i feel like when a lot of people get together to pray at rwc, there’s always this sense of mission like “we gotta be a light to the world and save the world from satan and his allies!” and there’s nothing really wrong w/ that. yes, i think there’s a time for intercession for our family/friends/church/community/city/world/dogs/cats/goldfish/etc. it’s juat that it’s NOT ALL THE TIME. i think of the mary/martha story: sitting at his feet, or doing work for him. both are important but i think one should precede the other. we can’t go out on mission w/o being filled first. and we can’t be filled unless we go to the source. i wonder if martha was “busy” so that she would not have to face up to jesus. perhaps this general obsession with saving the world is something that looks good but is really just a cover up from our inability to come before god and just be still… maybe… anyway, just thinking out-loud.

eventually i had to find my guitar and go to a separate room just to be away from the noise and sense of tension i felt in the room. i took my guitar into an empty room and just prayed and sang songs and just got some sweet time. it was nice. like… really really nice. praying, singing songs, making up song-prayers. i realize now that i might’ve been loud… my voice sounds a bit coarse so i guess i was loud… oh well i dont think i cared about volume at the time… i figured the volume of the other room would drown me out.

when i finished in the other room and came out i started getting my things together to head home. as i was doing this i noticed the other room went very very quiet and i think i heard pb closing off on some shpiel… i didn’t get to hear the content of what he said but it ended up w/ steve leading people into a time of worship… and as i stood there outside the door watching, i had a smile on my face bc my mind just kept thinking, “god, you answer prayer very fast”. while i was in the other room, i prayed for the people in the main room that they would learn to rest and just enjoy god in their prayers. i was intent on leaving but as i was stood there watching i decided to just stay for a bit and worship w/ them. it was so sooo nice. as worship continued i sensed the tension in the room change from restless-busyness to enjoyment, rest, and praise. when i eventually left (in the middle of one of the song) there was definitely tension in the air but it had a very very different flavor than when i left the room the first time. it was a tension of people wanting to sing more because our bodies aren’t able to express fully the joy we have when in his presence. a tension that wishes we had bigger voices, bigger hearts to give more glory to our god. i left the office happy tonight.

at tuesday night prayer meetings, i just want to meet with god. not ask him to change the world. but i want him to change me. ask him to talk to me and meet with me and listen to me. i’m happy i was able to do that this week. goodnight.

i’m a robot.

i do nerdy things. i play with computers all day. i code for fun. i develop websites at work. i run linux and open source software on my desktop and laptop. my girlfriend calls me a robot.

likewise i deal w/ the world often in a very linear systematic way. the analogies i make in my head (and sometimes come out) usually are very uhhh… nerdy. i look at my room like a fragmented hard drive… i know where everything is, it just takes a while to get to them. someone else (and sometimes me) organizing my room is like dropping the drive and i though things are “orderly” theyre like lost clusters. if i have a lot of tasks to do, i imagine myself being an OS managing time resources and doing tasks round-robin… or if i’m asked to do a task, i think of all my dependencies as parameters that need to be passed into a function (that is… me) in order for output to come out… blablabla this paragraph is too long. i think you get the point.

unfortunately this robotic way of doing things got transferred to my normal daily life… with real human beings! and humans are messy, inconsistent, unpredictable. very unlike my nice robot friends and functions on a computer. i often expect clean-cut input/output from people. just plain raw facts and actions based on how things actually are and i forget that w/ people it’s rarely that way. this past week i pretty much got hit left and right w/ rebukes and talks about why this robotness is failing.

after many talks and lots of self reflection i finally decided (well more like felt compelled) to get down on my knees and pray: “God humble me and give me a heart”. i think God was waiting to hear that from me because he sure answered fast but i know i’m still a work in progress…

i need a heart.

originally i was gonna end the post right up there but i just realized i sound like the tin man in the wizard of oz. okay thats it!

something pb said prompted me to pray for the sins of our church…the main topic i think pb asked us to pray for 5 or 6 times… he just stated it in 5 or 6 different ways, but to me as i was praying it was just one topic. and what i was praying for was that we would know god. all the specifics pb brought up like “lack of faith”, “building our identity on something other than him” or “tiredness of leaders” and so on all came back to “knowing god” for me. here are some thoughts i typed onto my phone bc i couldnt find a pen around:

• we know how to LOOK LIKE we know god, but we don’t know god. i don’t think i need much explanation here.
• we don’t know that our god is a god of promises. god’s promises come through his word and we know that what god says will happen. when god says he’ll take care of us we don’t really believe that. when god tells us that he is good we know it but we don’t believe it.
• the next thing is almost cliche… i almost don’t to state it but i did write it down, but i’ll expand a bit on it: we don’t seek God, we seek his gifts. i think too often we seek to have certain gifts of the spirit more than seeking to know god more deeply. we seek the gifts of tongues or of prophesy but do not seek the knowledge of him and his love.
• not thats its totally automatic but i think knowing him makes the other specific things that we prayed for come more naturally: community, missions, freedom.

in brief that’s about it.