I thought you may be interested in reading a lament psalm (or poem) I recently composed in reflection of a time of burnout. I dedicate it to you church planters who know the experience described in the poem.
The God of Just Enough
Like manna from heaven has come daily provision,
Just enough for today, just enough.
The rent is soon due and one offering on Sunday,
Will it be enough? Just Enough?
The kids are thirsty. They want more of You.
Will some step up soon?
Will they be enough? Just enough?
Where is the God of glorious riches?
Where are the cattle of a thousand hills?
Where is the God who rewards sacrifice and faith?
Are You the God of Just Enough?
You who keep us barely alive,
You who sustain us as we look for the
breakthrough that will never come.
And yet this I remember –
It is Your work. I am Your servant.
My responsibility is faithfulness,
Your responsibility is success.
So I will trust Your heart for me,
And for me right now – Just enough is enough.
In the recovery process, I've come to a conclusion. Well, I've come to a question I would like for you bloggers to read and answer: Does faith require emotional energy?
Let me explain. For those of you who do not know me, I am completing a phase of ministry in planting a new church. It took all we (my wife & I) had to plant it. After five years, we were give out. So I resigned. The past few months have been refreshing, but one thing we have discovered is that our faith has really been under fire. We are having to trust God at a deeper level than ever before. Church planting pushed us to trust God, but this time of unemployment has really pushed us even further in our faith. One of our challenges is trusting God when our heart is weary and has no energy to go another step.
So, what do you think? Does faith require emotional energy? Of perhaps a better question is:
What is the relationship between our emotions and our faith?
There you go, bloggers. Food for thought. Eat it up.
One soul saved is success - a huge
ReplyDeletesuccess! Maybe for generations. But you are right - it was God's success. On more than one occasion, God called me to a task that I did not wish to have any part of. But just when I released myself fully to his call = I was released from the task. A dirty trick? No. Just a pop quiz for a more important test down the road. So I don't try to figure him out. God is God and I am only me. And that is enough -just enough.
Cindy Dye
NC
Hey Bruce,
ReplyDeleteKeep writing! I think we are a corporeal whole. We cannot divorce one part form the other. Emotions are real, deceptive but an integral part of our existence. If emotions played no part in faith, how is it that Jesus wept and bitterly. How is his last cry from the cross, emotionless? I say feel your faith and faith your feel. I say be careful because untrained emotions are dangerous.
What do we make of Paul's flaming doxologies, and Jesus being full of joy at the return of the seventy? I want to feel and know I'm alive. Ted Haggard quit feeling and got to the top of the evangelical heap. He was able to compartmentalize his life with a seared conscience. Lord have mercy on us. To believe is to experience more emotion because the life of faith is lived on a level like Jesus when he was viscerally moved in seeing the multitudes (gk=splankna). I say believe and feel, believe and see, believe and work, believe and die!
For two long we hear that faith is divorced from emotion. But this comes from the builder generation which, was emotionally castrated while growing up in the Depression and WWII. Science was the answer to everything, even faith. The SBC, operates by, you guessed it, Builders. Boomers came along and went emotionally berserk at the emptiness of their Builder parents and mentors. Kurt Kobaine came along and flipped all of us off with his grunge rock to busters in further response to an emotionless faith, yea, life. So, beware of the believers that fear emotions. One of the religious offshoots is the charismatic, Pentecostal movement which babbles in tongues to the consternation all of us builder led Baptists, "I'm gonna feel my religion and I'm gonna get ecstatic doing it, and I don't care what you think-shandala catumke benlickee sonshi...put that in you pipe and smoke baby."
Well, we Baptists reacted and freaked out and went the other way. I'm not validating anyone’s behavior but Lord have mercy-feel you faith and faith your feel.
“If you deny or distort your emotions as an integral part of your existence, they will force an aberrant behavior in some unsuspected sector of your life; usually a moral place.” You can quote me on that.
PS-Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggert, and Jim Baker were Pentecostals.