Why I am (still) a Christian pt.2

When I made my first post about my testimony (found here) I thought that was the “be all end all” personal testimony post. That I would not need to add anymore of it. How very wrong I was. As I was thinking more about God’s saving work in me, I realized that I did not give God enough credit (as in ALL of it) for it. If I remember correctly, I put down that I became a Christian after reading the book of Job. However, if I think about it, Who the heck becomes a Christian after reading the book of Job? Outside an Almighty Sovereign God, I believe strongly that I would not have accepted Christ by reading Job, especially after reading that God allowed Satan to basically do whatever to Job (outside of killing him).
If you recall, my very last post (until this one) was one about how I felt like I haven’t moved anywhere. That I felt like I was stagnating, and wasn’t growing (rather Jesus wasn’t growing me). So, recently if I do not run away like Jonah (by the way for a time running away does work) the Spirit will make me feel the weight and angst of my sin (translation: He’ll completely blow me up). He will also make me feel the weight of His calling on me (which I still believe is to be a pastor, but that calling still fills me with great fear. I may give reasons for in a later post…if I didn’t already). Basically this whole summer, the Spirit has been making me feel the weight of His holiness, His goodness, His justice, but most importantly He has been making me feel the weight of His Grace and Mercy. And what a wonderful, heart-breaking, chest-pounding (in a broken tax-collector kind of way) thing it is. It is horribly convicting, because I feel like my heart is on the verge of breaking some days.

Psalm 42 says
“As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God,
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food
Day and night,
While they say to me all the day long,
Where is your God?
These things I remember,
As I pour out my soul:
How I would go with the throng
And lead them in procession to the house of God
With glad shouts and songs of praise,
A multitude keeping festival.
Why are you cast down, O my soul
And why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
My salvation and my God
My soul is cast down within me;
Therefore I remember you
From the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
From Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
At the roar of your waterfalls;
All your breakers and your waves
Have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
And at night his song is with me,
A prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
Because of the oppression of the enemy?”
As with a deadly wound in my bones,
My adversaries taunt me,
While they say o me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
And why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
My salvation and my God.”

I love David. He gives me hope for me, because in all honesty, sometimes I feel like David does. He feels the weight of his sin, sometimes he feels like God has abandoned him. And even though his heart feels down cast, he will continue praising Jesus.
And so, even if my heart is downcast, even when I feel like I am stagnating. My one and only Hope and greatest security blanket (figuratively speaking) is to know that God is good. I may not know why I feel the way I do, I may not know where He is bringing me, but I know one thing, and that is God is Good, and in His infinite Goodness, He will bring me out of this with a greater Joy, and a deeper spirit of worship of Him.

God help me, because I can’t make it on my own.

Hansen