Faith

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Running On Empty...

It’s Thursday and I woke up early as usual, but instead of prayers and praying, a snippet of an old Jackson Browne song Running on Empty was playing in my head:

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels
I don't know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels
I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through
Looking into their eyes I see them running too.

Probably not the most uplifting tune, but it has been that kind of week.

I ran into an old friend the other day that I have known forever and, like me, he came to know the Lord later in life. I asked him how it was going and he told me he had the Christian Blues.

I asked him if we could pray together and he said no. He was taking a vacation from God. Surprised by his response I asked him what was going on.

My friend told me he was tired, worn out by the day in and day out battle against the pull of the world. Tired up getting up early and praying over an hour each day for all the needs in other people’s lives. He said he just wanted to know that God was in it, was working in His life. He wanted to know why success was always just out of reach. Success at work, success in his relationships and success as a Christian. I asked him if he was turning away from his faith and he laughed, said he had nowhere else to go.

As he walked away I thought about my friend. He is an ordinary guy, a little spontaneous at times. He doesn’t always think things through but is open and honest and always willing to help others. An ordinary guy who wants to be more than ordinary.

I think we need to be careful how we view our Christian walk and the kind of expectations we have of God. I think that many of us have this idea that when we turn our lives over to Him that somehow during the transformation that everything will be better, that we will be better and we are better, but I think we place expectations on God to do the impossible, too make us into someone we are not. I think we place expectations on God to keep us in this protective bubble where the unfairness of life cannot reach us or the members of our family. We need to understand that our relationship with Jesus is about who He wants us to be, not who we want to be.

I wish I had told my friend that he was a wonderfully ordinary child of God. I wish I had told him that he does not have to measure himself by the world standards. I wish that I had told him that in a world that values and champions the extraordinary; God values and champions the ordinary.

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