belief

"Open wide my door, my Lord, to whatever make me love You more.  

Open wide my door while there's still light to run towards..." - Aaron Weiss of Mewithoutyou

God has been teaching me to pray the last couple months.  Like...to REALLY pray.   I'd been in a place for awhile where prayer is honest and authentic, but it was more or less something to do.   I've been learning to pray with desperation and expectation, however.   God doesn't desire our lip service or our prayer quota; God desires our lives, our intentions, our hearts, our actions.... and I really believe God desires to see us live miraculous, amazing lives that significantly redeem the creation around us.   Of course, on our own, we are not able to manifest that, no matter how great our talents or gifts may be.   We need to desperately depend on God for this.  Furthermore, we need to learn to believe that God can do this in us and through us.  How many of our prayers do we honestly believe will be answered?   I believe that the majority of us would reply "few" if any.   I'm not blaming you or me for that; I'm blaming our church culture, which has been taught to be overly "realistic" and under "idealistic."

I just finished reading a book by Gary Haugen about human trafficking.   In it, he raises the question, "how can we believe something?"    He describes belief as something not limited to a personal expectation or opinion or persuasion... but as something that a person acts on, lives out.  If we believe in God - truly, passionately, and authentically believe in the God of redemption, justice, and significance - this belief must be proven in our outward actions and life, not just our lip service.  Otherwise, how much do we really believe something?

on a different tangent, i took a spiritual gifts inventory.  interesting results posted below.  if you want to take one, this seems like a halfway decent one: www.kodachrome.org/spiritgift

(25 is the highest score you can get) 

my highest gifts were faith (25), encouragement (23), poverty (23), music (23), prophecy (23), pastoring (21), helping (21), leadership (21), administration (21), exhortation (19), giving (19), wisdom (19), and apostolic (19).   pretty interesting stuff.   i think i agree with these results for the most part.