Bound

Thankful for a rich little 24 hours with a very incredible community. When asked to write the mission of my life in 3 to 5 words I simply wrote "Bondservant. Bound to Christ." Later, we were reminded by our gentle and helpful leaders that those of us who are very religious have to be careful about using religious language that has very different connotations to different people, even if its normal to us. As I listened, I started to sense that turning inward as I felt that they were talking about me. Now, there are many people in the group who are open and bold about their faith. But that didn't change my sense that I was there, frankly proud of myself for sharing and clearly speaking of how much I love Jesus without even considering how it was being received and what it may have meant to the other people who came from completely different home environments and belief systems. As my dear friend Lydia and I sat on a bench and talked and talked it struck me how easily I could share my faith with people and how hard it was for me to labor in prayer for people. I started to realize that there is something in me a little ashamed of the gospel and I try to overcome and overpower that by talking about whenever I can. I saw that I was so bound to christ in how I write and speak but what about my heart? Why this discrepancy between who I am in public and who I am in private? And I remembered a pastor getting up and asking who respects you the most? Who thinks most highly of you? Those who know you the best, most intimately, or those who don't really know you at all? And as we talked and as I asked myself WHY I felt the need to always bring up God I couldn't help but see how at the deepest level I had taken God out of the picture even in my proclamation because I wasn't even bound to him in seeing when to speak and when to be silent, I wasn't laboring over specific words for specific people, I wasn't asking who I was called to love on following the retreat...I was just doing what I thought worked best without even considering how he may lead me in a way and to say something I would never anticipate. And Lydia and I realized that IF we were internally bound to christ, if I was deeply bound to him in ALL my thoughts and ALL my actions that this question of being externally bound would no longer exist because the external flows out of the internal. There would be no mistake. There would be no question of the One I served, the One I loved. I realized that I love proclaiming being externally bound to Christ because it is so much easier than dealing with the nastiness of sin in me and the idols hiding, those pretty little idols that look like Christian things til I start to worship them more than God.
Oh Lord, I am sorry when my witness does not point to you. I am sorry when I love to proclaim light and hide the darkness in me, not letting that light I love so fiercely enter into the places where it would conquer the darkness I cling to. I am sorry when I take you out of mission and when I use conversations and relationships to prove my worth to myself and to you, as if I have somehow gained something when I am just using people to give me identity and meaningful that you already gave me in your Son. Wretched creatures we are Lord. Sheep. In need of a Shepherd. How much more you love the people I spent the weekend with than I could ever hope to. How sovereign you are, how able to proclaim. God help me to resistant the temptation to blanket the internal with the external, like how Adam and Eve pointed to their nakedness instead of their rebellion. But you are good. And you work through me, despite of me. I love you lord. Show me how to love. Show me how to submit to the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, who ALONE can save. How often I forget God. You came to save sinners, of which I am foremost. God, I admit that I don't really believe that statement, make to see how true it really is. I love you, my kinsmen redeemer. I need you. Bind me to you. I can't do it on my own.