Sometimes life just feels...

Sometimes life just feels......... Crap.

I know, I know, you’re thinking, “There are people out there a lot worse off than you you know”. Or maybe your thinking, “Hey, You got a Beautiful wife, happy home, a bed to sleep in, a great job, food to eat.” Yeah I do have all that, and a lot more, I’ve got fantastic friends, two wonderful families, even an incredible God, who continues to blow my mind regarding to his astounding love for me. The list goes on and on concerning how good I’ve got it, and I don’t deny it. I’ve got it really good, but it doesn’t change the fact that sometimes life just feels this way. Maybe you can relate in some way, despite the blessed lives we all live, there is this ‘come and go’ feeling of melancholy or the absence of peace. It’s only subtle, but very unsatisfying.

I’m not writing this in an effort to bring some new wiz bang solution to this occasional feeling, the fact is, there is too much resource out there on the subject of personal freedom already. Sadly it only seems to work for the one lucky person who wrote it and a handful of others who it just happens to suit. I’m not trying to sound sceptical, there are some useful views getting around, but in the end, no one can truly know your personal journey but God, and in your relationship with him is the answer.

To be honest, as I write this, I’m not even looking for an answer. I just want to get this out of my tired mind and onto some paper in a hope for some clarity or quickened resolve. Sometimes I get trapped in this mind, thoughts just bounce back and forth between the walls of my head and they don’t seem to eventuate into much unless I talk them through with someone or get out the old journal.
I wonder if it’s my disappointment in my own actions that leads me to this emotional blowout. Maybe God is trying to bring some struggles to the surface he wants to set me free from, funny how we love to be free of things but whine the whole way through the process!!

If this is the case then let’s see, what could he be trying to rid me of? Hypocrisy, pretence, Pride, self-centeredness, lust, perhaps Anger. I feel comfortable listing these because I know they are not the sum of my being, they are merely a blemish on my father’s son that he is growing me out of in a process of love.

I once heard a saying in regards to Christians living in this world which said, “Its ok for your boat to be in the water, just don’t get the water in your boat. I find this a very hard statement to swallow as every Christian or group of Christians I know has a different understanding of what it is exactly that our boat is floating on, and what kind of boat we are in. I feel like I’m in a rubber dingy and the ocean is crashing down on me at a consistency so great I don’t have time to bail because I’m trying look like I’m afloat. Perhaps we could re-word that saying to read, “You will get water in your boat, but Gods in the boat with you, complete with food and a change of clothes that won’t wear out or go bad no matter how much water you let in, just be vulnerable before him and he will bail while you eat some roast chicken for strength!”

Here is a thought, why do I use worse language around my close Christian friends then I do around my work mates. My work mates speak in ways I wouldn’t replicate in a conversation with a sailor, yet I keep it clean in front of them. I know it’s not that my Christian friends are leading me down the wrong path, because they’re not. I wonder if it’s because I have been taught, or maybe I’ve misunderstood that somehow when I act holier than others or appear different to the “Heathens”, they will see God in me and seek salvation.

I’m starting to realise that all there actually seeing, is half of the real me, the part of me I feel most resembles a decent Christian life style.
Wow it looks even uglier on paper then when I just mindlessly live it!
As I write I am realising something, all these things I’m focused on are an outward expression of a religion. I’m living like a Pharisee! Doing thing’s outwardly while dying on the inside, maybe not to make myself look good for selfish reasons, but it’s still not who I am, and why would God want me to lie about myself to expose others to him? He doesn’t need that rubbish!

That explains why it is not a challenge to avoid glancing at an attractive woman walking down the road as I drive by with my apprentice plumber in the car, or with a friend or especially my wife. But find it so hard not to when I am alone. How can I expect to be satisfied pretending to have it together but truthfully having the same urges other people have and not having them under control. This issue is an internal one; no amount of external Acting can fix it.

Why is my appearance of Holiness on the outside often more important to me than my own relationship with God a lot of the time. I have really had things mixed up.
I probably sound like I am a real Crum of a man as you read this, but you should know, if you crossed paths with me before now, you wouldn’t have seen any difference between me and some of your most godly friends. The act is easy; it’s the reward for the act that is hard, hard to live with, because we know the truth about ourselves no matter how well others see of us.

So now I’m done.

I’ve been on an incredible journey the last few years. God has helped me to let go of so many ritualistic acts that were coming between him and I, and I’ve been coming to know him as a person, his heart towards me, and his truth in this life. As hard as it can be sometimes, I would never trade this journey for all the money, glory, success, and cheese you could offer me. I have backslidden write into the arms of God! He was at the bottom of the hill and I had been climbing it. When I fell it was the best thing I could have hoped for. Now I have a Father in God, not a philosophy.
I feel as though now, to continue on this journey to my Lords heart of love and freedom, I will be travelling further and further from what I thought Christianity looked like, maybe more in my heart then physically, but far away none the less.
If in this process I become so close to his heart that people see his love at work in me, then it will be without the pretence and falseness that has hidden my heart before and hidden God’s within me in the process.

I have no idea what this will look like in another year, or five, or ten. I only know that God will lead me; I won’t be lead by my own mind any more, or by others, but by his heart and mine. As I become myself in God, perhaps I will look like what I have been pretending to look like, but with the power of his love to validate me. I may look like a heathen to many, perhaps a saint to many more. This is not my concern any more. I just pray that this journey would become what he intends for it to be, an authentic love relationship between Him and I.

WOW, perhaps been honest from the start of this writing about life was just what was needed to get me to look at my own heart honestly throughout it.
How difficult we must make it for God to reveal his heart toward us when we are so caught up in trying to find ourselves in a mess of religion and feigning perfection that we continuously pass by our own hearts in which he dwells, longing for us to take a minute to realise He’s right in front of us the entire time.

I have to say, I feel a lot better having got all this out, it’s amazing how our minds can trick us into not listening to our hearts, where the answers are often found. I did not know all these things were my own feelings until I sat down and set my mind aside to allow my heart the room to speak.

I must apologise now, I know a lot of time and effort have gone into this production of Christianity called ‘Mark Greenwood’, but I must leave the stage now.
God himself is waiting for me outside in the real world, and we won’t be making any more theatrical stops until we get to where he is so eager to take me. A place called truth, just beyond Love.

Its official, I’m done with the crap that surrounds the core! God loves me so, so much. He loves me as I am and sees only my heart and who I am becoming. If he wanted me to be any different right now I would be. I am in his hands and his heart lives in me. And I am content where I am together with him. He loves me enough not to separate me from this up and down crazy life, but to carry me through it while we both enjoy the relationship that grows out of it.