Satisfied: 13 April 2002
I have changed significantly this year. I'm just realising that now. We had our last worship chapel yesterday, and it was very good. I remember the first worship chapel I went to last September. I wanted to get out of there so badly, ASAP, but I didn't have the guts to get up and leave, for fear that people would ask me about it and I would have to explain that I didn't give a shit about worship. ("And you're at Bible College because...??") I didn't know why I was here. I didn't want to be here. Now I don't want to leave. In chapel yesterday, I remember thinking, "I like this. I can participate in this. I do like God. I do want to sing to Him. I want to sing to Him with these people, with the sound filling this room, with the harmony and the striving. All of this seemed like a mob mentality to me a few months ago, but I'm not doing this as part of a mob - I truly want this."
I remember how I couldn't sing half the worship songs at the start of the year. "This is my desire: to worship you", "Give me one pure and holy passion, give me one magnificent obsession, give me a glorious ambition for my life, to know and follow hard after You...", "You're all I want... You're all I've ever needed..."
I couldn't mean those things at the start of the year, no matter how hard I tried. I didn't want to mean them. I didn't want to be the cheezy Christian who tells everyone that life is so wonderful! because Jesus loves you! so be happy! all! the! time! Sometimes (perhaps usually), life is hard. It sucks. It hurts. I wanted to be in touch with that and with my honest ambitions to write and research and think deeply, and I didn't want God destroying that by sending me to Africa or something.
I mean those things now. I want God to work in my life. I want to be able to say something like that olympian in Chariots of Fire (Eric something?), "When I run, I feel His pleasure." When I write, when I read, when I teach, I feel His pleasure. When I am willing to delay my own desires in my love life, either by letting the boy initiate the relationship and not meddling myself, or by having lines that I won't cross sexually, I feel His pleasure. I think that our obsession with instant gratification robs us of a true knowledge of joy and satisfaction. I am much more satisfied with a relationship that I currently want but don't have and am willing to wait for than a lot of my friends are with their "so I picked him up at the bar" relationships which are often based on sex and emotional dependence and other such selfish things.
Anyhow. I like Jesus. I don't like many Christians, but I like the guy that they're supposed to be (but aren't) following.
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