The Faith of Cain

I can’t help but wake a few minutes early because the sunlight bursts through my southeastern window. It’s quite revealing. It dashes into every dark corner in my room and reflects off of a full length mirror on the back of my door and then charges back into the room again. It didn’t blast into the room in one moment like the flash on a camera but it came slowly and gently and you don’t realize the magnitude of light until the time is just right and the sun is perfectly positioned to beam into the room.

The Holy Spirit is much like this too. The Holy Spirit’s purpose is to convict and reveal our need for repentance just as the light shows even the fine particles that are floating in the air that most times we don’t see. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit He dashes, like a child who dashes out to play, into your life. Any part of our lives that we’ve polished so that it doesn’t reveal the ritual, tradition, or discipline involved reveals only truth and when the Holy Spirit meets His own reflection in our lives He darts away even faster and farther, just like a child who has just discovered a mirror and thinks, “Yeaa, someone else to play with just like me!” The Holy Spirit can come in a gentle fashion, just like sunlight in a room. What good is a flash of the Holy Spirit? We don’t typically realize the workings of the Holy Spirit until after He has spread light and truth in our lives and we can see the magnitude in which He came. We can position ourselves to receive this light everyday. Most do not and only happen to have a day when they realize the goodness of it and will thank God.

Let the Holy Spirit invade your life and show you the dark places and the particles of sin you think to small to notice. Give way to the peace that you can experience when the Holy Spirit is with you. He will show you your broken spots as his light will pour out of our cracks and holes that we try so desperately to patch. Approach the Father with your deep burden for the sin in your life and he will make your life all the much brighter with the Holy Spirit and will forgive you of all your particles, poor patch-jobs, holes, and cracks.

It's you I like,
It's not the things you wear,
It's not the way you do your hair--
But it's you I like
The way you are right now,
The way down deep inside you--
Not the things that hide you,
Not your toys--
They're just beside you.

But it's you I like--
Every part of you,
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings
Whether old or new.
I hope that you'll remember
Even when you're feeling blue
That it's you I like,
It's you yourself,
It's you, it's you I like.

God has been really good to me and I don’t deserve any of it but I am so glad that he is gracious and knows what is best for me because at this time in my life when things seem so uncertain and busy I’m apt to not do anything and just mourn my own grief of sin. Our Father is better than that. If we pray then our God is faithful to heal us. To cast our sin as far as the east is from the west. He wants us to seek him and live happy and fulfilled lives. And to truly experience Him is to truly experience ourselves as a creation that he has made in a wonderful way. When we give of ourselves then we will experience the true life our Father intends for us. “When they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” – C.S. Lewis

... one understands and can practice true love. When one is able to protect, fully trust, have hope in, and preserve love with another. When one has learned to be patient and kind, self-less and humble. To be an adult is to be able to forgive another without any good reason and with that be full of grace.

I want my relationships to grow deeper and I have struggled with practical ways to do this. I don’t believe that we were meant to live life alone (not necessarily in a romantic relationship). I am really seeking to be a better friend and to be more intimate with my friends. I really want them to see me as I am. I want to help them and defend them and stand as a witness to their beautiful lives. I want to follow the advice of the apostle Paul to Timothy: “Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” (2 Timothy 2.22) I seek a pure heart that calls out to God for those I love and cherish even for those I am yet to love and cherish.

Lately, I find myself immersed for hours at a time (usually at night) in Narnia. I’m currently reading The Silver Chair, a story in the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I can really get into my reading and I have been so close to this reading that I can almost feel the hot breath from the nostrils of Aslan, the great lion, billowing from the pages in my face. Oooh.