This post is ugly

Hi, my name's Cristina, and I'm an idolater. "Of what?", you say? Of anything. Everything.

Here's something I posted yesterday on our "Life Together Group" (church small group) page on facebook:

"God seems to keep telling me in the last couple of days that I've forgotten my first Love. and i have this feeling He intends to strip some things away, so that I will remember that He alone is my portion. But I'm scared of what that means. I want to be free to love and serve only Him...but I'm afraid of the process hurting. I don't want to be paralyzed by fear, but that's where I feel like I am right now. Pray for me?"

This morning I got up, ironed two shirts for Casey, kissed him goodbye. I made my coffee, poured a cup of water, ate my waffle with peanut butter and honey (delish). I wanted to do anything but sit down with God and His Word. I wanted to run away. I wanted to hide somewhere, just like Adam & Eve did in the Scripture Casey and I read last night. Post-sin, they suddenly realized they were naked, and they felt shame. So they hid themselves. I can relate.

I made myself sit down and start reading Genesis. We are reading through the Bible in a year, chronologically, with our church fam. Read my five chapters, read the questions in our book that goes along with our reading, tried to think of some answers...tried to talk to God. "Okay, enough..." Got on facebook. Read something a brother had commented on what I posted yesterday. I didn't like it:

"The whole lost your first love thing is often because we've supplanted God. This question might be rhetorical, but what has stolen your heart? What you love more then Him is probably what he'll strip away. It's especially crazy to know that God is allowed to do that; not just with little things like owning nice gadgets or cars or clothes, but He's also allowed to take away our health and our loved ones and our income security and all our hope in this world. Ugh."

It was too true, and nothing that "tickled my ears", so to speak. Scrolled and scrolled and scrolled. Read a lot of stupid things. Read a few requests for prayer...tried to "throw up" a few prayers...half-heartedly. Went back and re-read that comment that I didn't like. Realized it's futile to ignore a truth about God because I don't like it. Thought about this sheet of questions I got while I was at a mid-year conference during my time in EA. It's called "Gospel Diagnostics".

"Gospel Diagnostics" is a fancy name for "20 ways of asking you the same question, namely, what are you worshiping instead of the One True God?" And, like I said, I'll worship almost anything, if I think it will bring me your security, happiness, distraction, comfort, warm fuzzies, etc. I mean, really...it's ridiculous. You want an example? Wait, I can't give you one, because I worship your opinion of me, and if I tell you what goes on in my mind, I promise you won't like me as much as you used to. At least, that's what I tell myself. But, since God just pointed out to me how absolutely insane it is to care more about what you think than what He thinks, I will share an example.

Saturday night, Casey and I picked up a couple of girls we've gotten to know through church to go to the Warehouse (if you don't know what that is, you should just ask me later to give more detail, but basically it's a big building where kids can hang out and play bball, games, etc. and hear about Jesus). Casey, being the more free spender of our family, was happy to buy them all kinds of snacks and then to treat us all to dinner at Wendy's afterward. Me, the very-much-saver of the family, is adding up how much we're spending the whole time. I know, I know, we were only at Wendy's...how much could we really spend? But, remember, this logic doesn't matter for someone who is a saver. Feeling we'd spent so much that we would now be in debt for the rest of the month, I woke up Sunday morning anxiously thinking about how much we'd spent. We visited a church with our neighbors. As they passed the offering plate, Casey asked if it was okay with me to just put the rest of the cash he had in the plate. Thinking at first that he probably just had a couple dollars, I was like "whatever, sure." But, suddenly, I remembered it was actually $14.00. "Why do you want to do that," I quickly asked him. "Just as a way of saying, 'I trust you, God,'" he said. Stuck in a place where I had to either show my true nature and demand that he not put the money in, or protect my image and pretend to trust God, I begrudgingly said, "Okay, well, do what you feel you should." In that moment, God pricked my heart. Stabbed my heart?... Really? $14.00? I can't trust God for fourteen tiny little dollars??? He owns the cattle on a thousand hills for goodness sake! And the hills too, as Tim Bowes would point out.

You know what? I don't really have a nice conclusion to wrap this all up, except to say, my heart is deceitfully wicked. God, cleanse my heart! I guess this is, really, just a confession of my true nature, and my longing for God to change me mixed with my fear of what that really means, and how bad that surgery might hurt. "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my flesh...who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that, the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (see Romans 7 and 8...I totally mixed up translations in here too...who cares...it's a good Word.).

Lord, set me free.