I am disturbed.

I met a God who comforts the disturbed. I was disturbed and He comforted me. He whispered to my spirit, whispered sweet somethings in my ear. He loved me. I became comfortable. It felt nice. It felt warm, cozy even.

And then I met a God who disturbs the comfortable. I was comfortable and He disturbed me. Disturbed me to the very core of my being. Not for a moment or an hour....but a deep and sustained uncomfortable disturbance. He disturbed my soul. He reached in and started playing around with things. Re-ordering things. Lighting fires. Maybe even taking up residence.

That wee poemy type thing is by Rebecca Gilling, and pretty much nails how I'm feeling at the moment. Ive being in that space where God has made me very aware and uncomfortable about some of the crud in my life... and it is one of those very cool but painful processes of growing and in some small way dying to self and becoming more alive and more whole in the process. But part of me likes my baggage, and wants to hold onto it... And I dont like this vulnerable weird feeling of being in the middle of some rather deep shifts in my life, and I certainly dont like being aware of my pride, my arrogance, the "self" that is all of a sudden so clear for me to see.

In the midst of all of this, I have being reflecting on the fruit of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Now when I look at that list I almost want to laugh, because I feel like I really dont have much fruit, to be honest Im a bit of a scrawny tree that maybe has a one of two mangy, half eaten, worm filled apples. Yum.
But it feels like God has begun a wee bit of pruning so that maybe in time I can be a bit more fruitful in character...


My understanding about some of these words, especially peace, gentelness and kindness are really feminite, boring, introvert, a bit "ned flanders". And so I have being reflecting on what they really mean, and asking some questions around these particular fruits.

What does it look like for a kiwi bloke to have that sort of fruit in their life, when I am a natural extravert, have a deep frustration and agitation by a lot of Christian culture, and desire to reclaim something of the "edge" that I believe is part and parcel of being a follower of Jesus? What did it look like in the way that Jesus reflected this stuff? Darryl asked a further question of me today; How much of our understanding of these words is reflected through our cultural understanding, our worldview, and is not what Paul was really trying to communicate in that particular context, or what God is calling us to be? How much of it is? And what do they look like for a wild, edgy, fire in their eyes, follower of Jesus to be displaying this fruit?

At the end of the day this isnt actually keeping me awake at night, because I figure if I keep on charging around with Jesus, and allowing him to continue to lead me into uncomfortable places then I'm hopefully going to wind up a bit more like the guy; fruity and all...

Labels: jesus followers, personal

This entry was posted by Sam, on Wednesday, October 25, 2006. You can leave your response.