This past weekend I had the blessing of spending time with the Men's Leadership of Springfield Faith Center. I have been running around with that crowd for a bit over a year now and I don't understand always why they keep me around. I struggle, a lot. I never quite know what I'm hearing from God and my faith is tested on a daily basis. After chatting with one of the elders from the church that happened to be on the retreat, I still was struggling to identify why I was there in the first place. If you're waiting for me to say I had some great Revelation and now speak to God constantly, that's not what this is about. This is about one part of one of the sessions that hit me in the face like a Hollyfield uppercut.
David Wilkerson is a pastor in New York city that after 50 years of preaching God's word, now pastors to pastors, encouraging them to renew the passion for Christ. He started by preaching to inner city gangs and has led many of them to the Lord. In a message about anguish, his heart broke. Christ experienced true anguish on the cross. At one moment he raises his eyes to heaven and cries out, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I've heard this described to me as the moment when the weight of all the sin of all of man for ALL TIME was set on his shoulders. Think about all the hurts in your own life that weigh upon you so heavy, of all the things that you've heard even the most spiritually attuned men and women do in their own life. Take all those and roll them into a ball and set them on the shoulders of one person. Do you think he felt anguish?
In Pastor Wilkerson's message, through tears and obvious turmoil he shouts into the microphone about the lax attitude that has fallen on so many of the so called faithful in this day and age. I live with a family that many of them have turned away from God. They will claim to pray, and they might yet, but I don't see in their own lives the connection with God that I see from some of the common people standing in line at the Homeless shelter. In their comfort, my family has forgotten to worship the one that created them.
I am one of the lax Christians that has forgotten what true faith is supposed to look like. This has caused me to be negative and most of the things that I approach the elders about, the questions I ask, they are negative collections of pessimism that I can't quite escape from. I see people getting comfortable and I can only wonder if I've picked up the mood of the church that has moved into religion and away from God. I am deeply filled with empathy, moods rarely escape me, and I used to feel the pain of people so greatly that there are movies that I couldn't watch because of the kinds of pain that the characters had to endure before the end. Some of my favorite movies had parts that I needed to skip over because of one scene that the hurt on the face of the actor was so great I couldn't stand to watch it. My heart broke for that person.
Where did that manner within me go? Like a switch, I turned off the things within me that opened me to deeper feelings of someone that they would hide from the world, but can't hide from God. By the Holy Spirit, I was so attuned to how someone felt that on the surface they could look one way and I could tell that deep within them, hidden from the world, they were suffering. At some point, I turned that switch off. I stopped caring what others felt and I stopped suffering with them because I was told that it isn't the right thing to do. I look at my family and I can see the suffering within even on the outside, and yet I can't feel how they feel. I don't know what to say to them to get them to fight for their own hearts.
My manner changed and I have a new anguish. I hurt for myself. For the things that were once so simple for me to do, I have lost them. For my family that I see struggling to come to realization that just because they turned away from a Godly life, it does not mean that they don't still need God. I see the hurts on them that can be fixed by God, creator of all things. I suffer watching them fight to keep their heads afloat and I can't stand that they don't see at least a little joy that comes from following and worshiping the King of Kings.
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