Then there was evening and morning. The first day.

Oh the spiritual implications of sleep. I once had someone describe different sorts of people and the different levels and types of tiredness that people needed to hear from God. Now I’m not saying that God cannot communicate whenever he wishes too. I'm just saying that most people, including myself, have a mode in which we operate best. Some people need physical tiredness to communicate with God. These can be your outdoorsy type people who “find God in nature” in the most orthodox interpretation of that phrase. Others need a weariness of the mind to hear well from God. These are your early morning risers who get up at 4 in the morning because that’s when they are less distracted by the on goings of the day. Then there are those who operate on a moderate level of constant fatigue. These people normally are your servant types in the church who can hear from God while serving, whether that’s vacuuming or doing dishes. Then there are the people who need to be totally at the top of their game to really hear from God. Well rested, have already been awake for a while, and have the time to sit and think.

All that to say, that I need sleep to hear from God.

So today I started a new (old?) journey to find out what God has for me (and my pretty girl); where he is leading us and what he is calling us to do. I started what amounts to a sabbatical- time taken to seek God for direction in ministry. I stepped down from any sort of official role in my church, I’ll probably have to give back my keys, clean out my bookshelf and my picture probably wont hang on the wall any more (though I wonder if I can get that picture, its kinda nice). I don’t even know if I’m still invited to the Christmas party next week.

It probably looks sudden to those around me. Its okay. I'm not super ready to have to explain myself to people but I guess I will have to say something. Perhaps that I want to be where God wants me, and I don’t know where that is right now. True, yes. Vague; that too.

The reality is that when I started at the church it was with a certain set of conditions. I knew I would have to work out side of the church to make ends meet. I mean seriously what church can afford (or has the vision) to hire three guys to run one ministry outside of what happens on a Sunday morning. No, I knew going in that I would probably never get paid here. I was to be in charge of the worship gathering of our main group. Leading, teaching and a developing a group of people with a heart to bring people to the presence of God in a real way that would cause them to ascribe worth to Him. I was also to be in charge of writing. What does that mean? Well we didn’t know either except for the fact that I was good at writing, and it seemed that God was using things that I had already written in different people’ lives, so we said yes I should be in charge of writing. Anything else? Well yeah I should share in the teaching responsibilities. Fine and dandy I guess, but really I'm not that great of a public speaker, at least not to large crowds, and not to people who look at you with blank stares and you just sit and wonder, is any of this sinking in? I like interaction. I like to answer questions and have discussions, I like to scratch where people itch, in the sense that I want to talk about what people really are thinking about and give them God’s perspective (does that assume too much on my part, maybe, but its my journal and if you don’t like it, write you own)

So how did I do at those things? Well as I sat to do a “three-sixty” evaluation of myself, my ministry partners, and our ministry, I couldn’t really help but look at what I was doing and evaluate anything other than “fails to meet expectations.” Was it because I was in some blatant sin? No I don’t think so. It was different, other than that. It was that life had changed for me. When we started, I was a single guy, in college, living in a place without running water or heat or a stove that I only paid $100 a month to rent a room. I had a job with flexible hours and I had this strange desire to succeed and help out those around me as much as a could. Some people saw this as passion and faithfulness. Others saw it as foolhardy and youthful exuberance. Nobody really saw it as a continuation of co-dependence on a system that felt very safe to me. “Succeed” I told my self “and somebody will take notice” A servant’s heart is what I was told I had. And my varied experience, my competence at many different things and fierce confidence in my ability to figure things out only allowed me to excel at filling in the gaps for people. All of this meant my cell phone rang a lot. And my desire to be liked and accepted by people meant I rarely said no. And now I'm supposed to be in charge of all this stuff? I did what any highly competent man pleaser would do. I work hard. I stayed up late, I sacrificed friendships, and I sacrificed my school worked. So the “ministry” looked good but the reality was that I was not a healthy guy.

And so in the last six months I have been growing in my realization that my place in the kingdom depends less and less on the things I do, and more and more on who I am. God has created each of us to function with him in different ways. And he’s created us to be healthy.

I am a Son of God. There are boundaries that God has, I think, built in to each one of us. Principled the same but manifested in different ways. They are the boundaries that allow us to live in freedom, but once we over-step those bounds, suddenly there is bondage and not freedom. I, in my commitments, had overstepped these bounds.

And in trying to bring myself back into right accord, I became unable to fulfill those tasks that I had once under taken. But I was trying. We are all called to be administers of the good news of the coming of the messiah. But being a pastor of a group of people is a totally different undertaking. Work, healthy boundaries, and full-time ministry quickly overflowed my schedule. I pulled out of as many “non-essential” peripheral ministries as I could.

I don’t know where I'm going with this right now. Maybe I’ll change this later and call all this history the back-story, so that I can actually write what I'm thinking with out so much explanation.

So things I did today.
Got up early and took Sarah to work- Realized that once we are married, there will be some thing to rising and going to bed on the same schedule whenever possible.

Prayed while I tried to go back to sleep-
Prayers consisted of asking God what he wanted me to do.
Response: It’s about time.
Realize that because of my lack of strength and energy, I was unwilling to seek God in what he wanted from me in the fear that he might want to “add” to my plate

Went and met with some people I work at the church with
Sorta weird. I think I feel way more okay with it than other people did. Felt like they were justifying why they thought it was time for me to step down for a while. Weird conversations about whether I had been supported in all of my change. They felt they had, but really I felt abandoned by them. Anybody who calls my future wife a Jezebel because she would like to see me healthy in my life and fulfilled in my ministry doesn’t rank real high with me on the support list. Mostly I felt condemnation. Mostly I felt confused, like out of one corner of their mouth they said, “Yes be healthy” and out of the other “How come you aren’t doing more.”

Left church but was called and asked what I wanted to celebrate about leaving. Had no answer, because I didn’t think what I was celebrating would go over well.
Hmm
Celebrating freedom from bondage that I had created for myself.
Celebrating the son who realized he wasn’t a slave.
Celebrating the chance to explore relationships with people who I feel actually have my health in mind and not what I can bring to their program
Things like that get left unsaid. I'm sure it will be some mumbo jumbo about me seeking God and what he has for me, True and untrue. I already know what he has to offer me. Health, Abundant life. Sonship. These are all things that I have instinctive, experiential, and scriptural understandings of, both their presence and their absence.

Took a nap. Remember the spiritual significance of sleep. Here it is. I'm tired a lot. Even inside of the boundaries that I have set after discovering them in myself I still push right up to the edge whenever I can. And sleep for me is a powerful tool to seek God. I have dreams, I have visions. Do I talk about them much? No. But if you want to know how Sarah and kinda figured out that we should really look at dating one another, it started with a praying and fasting woman, and a praying and fasting man. And God giving us each dreams as an answer to each other’s prayer. Did we know this? Not at the time. Sarah was in Russia, I was in the States. I prayed that my wife would be revealing herself to me. Sarah has a dream. She then prays and fasts food for me for three days while I’m sleeping that I might have dreams. I dream the same dream 3 nights in a row. Which I finally tell her about on the third day. Sorta felt like Dan’s angle in the bible. The answer had already been sent, but she continued to pray and fast cause she didn’t know it yet. God has given me specific visions. Pictures from people’s lives. Words on their faces. A vision of the story of my life. Some times with phrases that I don’t understand but keep. The first was in the response to a gal I knew. Her life was in shambles but she was totally able to pass off that she was doing great and I believed her. Then a vision came. Took my breath away. No frame of reference for me just bam. And it was all that had happened to her over the past 4 years. And a word “Adultery”. Vision # 1

Vision # 2 a couple of months later I was praying, God I'm just having a hard time trusting, of following when I don’t know where you are leading. And I woke up, this time with a vision of my life, a bunch of snapshot, flipped through at high speed, photos of my life, past present and future with the phrase “Occupy the land”

Vision # 3 today; waking up from my nap. A crowd of people with large letters above them “Father to the fatherless” A description of God? A description of a new emphasis in my life? A description of need in my life? I don’t know. Still working on what it means

Then I went and had some sushi and went Christmas shopping.

So some things to consider and pray for.
Guidance
What my next step is to be
Strength to follow what he says
That I would embrace it when it hurts that I might know what it means to be a son and not a slave

And man does it hurt sometimes. I have the experience today of a huge range of emotions. Uncontrollably sobbing to elation. Sadness that comes at the death of a thing, and yet also the feeling of a lifted burden.

Oh God show me what it means to be your son.