Jonny Heart: Missing Something?

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Missing Something?

Today I had an awakening. While driving a friend home the matters of a previous relationship came up. She had just broken up with her boyfriend and even though it was for the best, she confessed a sustaining love for him. As she continued her story a previous experience arose with several of her friends and the summer intern. She went over a discussion that they all had and how they fell into each other’s confidence and revealed their struggles of their lives. Now because of my lack of understanding of women I’m not sure but I think she may have wanted to have a similar conversation as the other night, but with me. While she was telling this story some of the things the intern said made me wish that I could have the ability to council like he did. He called them out on issues unknown to me and because of his tact he was able to help the girls. I wish and pray that I may be as effective as him some day.

Yesterday my father had his men’s Bible Study over so I sat in on the study. The chapter out of their chosen study material covered divorce. What started as a common discussion broke into a counseling session for one of the men who happens to have troubles in his marriage. Taken back by the severity of the situation I did not know how to help him or what to do even. I know that I am only 20 and at this time lack the education that would help but even still, I wanted to help him and try to solve his problem.

If anyone in the world has read any of my past blogs they know that I am going into the ministry and will most likely council several people in my life. For these two examples I feel as if I failed them in some way. Either not being there as a friend or not knowing how to handle the situation I missed two wonderful opportunities to minister and shepherd. Failure in situations that arise such as these two force me to wonder if I am cut out for the ministry. Are my insecurities getting in the way of my pastoral future? I don’t know.

I can recall several failures in my past such as, school, relationships, or sinful desires. The fear of failure lingers on several minds. People try to run from their failure and get caught in an endless abyss of disappointment. And I guess the question on my mind is will I fail in my service to God as a minister for his bride? Is there something that I’m missing that could help me be a better man of God? Some days I desire preaching and others I’m terrified of it. Did I miss God’s call to something else? These questions remain in my head and can shake the foundation of my reality. It comes down to, do I really want to do this, and am I missing something?

So for two years now I have continuously been praying for God to prepare me for the path that I have chosen; to train my mind for servant hood and my heart for compassion. I made a promise to God that this is what I will do, and I WILL NOT break that oath. Lord, help with my insecurities and shortcomings and work on my heart and mind to transform it into an effective servant for your kingdom. Amen.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Have you given any thought to the fact that the very experiences you are saying you failed in ARE the training God is bringing you for future reference.

I remember a Catholic Priest in Chicago who wrote a book on 10 easy steps to raising children. I always thought it rather presumptuous of him to write such a book since he had never had the experiences for which he was writing.

You do not lack the desire, the love or the compassion to help. The only thing you may be missing, God will provide. That is education and experience. Believe me, the latter will be more helpful and important than the former.

If you ask the Holy Spirit to lead you in those situations, be careful, He will.; July 3, 2007 at 10:25 PM

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Quotes from my Senior Patron

-Clive Staples Lewis-

"The Love of knowledge is a kind of madness."

The Problem of Pain

"We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which he will not be satisfied until it has a certain character."

Mere Christianity - (Pg. 31)

"This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies."

The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis (Pg. 31)

"What would really satisfy us would be a God who said anything we happened to like doing, what does it matter so long as they are contented? We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, liked to see young people enjoying themselves, and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, a good time was had by all."

"If we wish to be rational, not now and then, but constantly, we must pray for the fit of faith, for the power to go on believing not in the teeth of reason but in the teeth of lust and terror and jealousy and boredom and indifference that which reason, authority, or experience, or all three, have once delivered to us for truth."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 139-140)

"It is not reason that takes away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other... Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your ganging moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know by experience..."

A Grief Observed - (P.g. 9-10)

"I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with toothache, thinking about toothache and about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 7)

"It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 32)

"In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth-only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over the pre-war wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the same about religion."

Mere Christianity - (P.g. 56-57)

"Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something mush harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person-and he would not need it."