Last night was probably the third time in my life in college (and quite possibly in my whole life) that I felt the joy that God promises, which is above any other kind of joy that I could possibly imagine. Earlier this week I wrote a rant note on facebook more or less combining my political and religious views and asking what the heck Christianity was supposed to be (it was only supposed to be a brief explanation of who I felt I was). Truth be told, there was quite a bit of anger and frustration in it, and I tagged a few friends that I trusted the most with this kind of deep thought. Yesterday over lunch I met with my two religio-spiritual friends Glen and Nick and we engaged a little bit over it, with me trying to make the most of my first opportunity to defend what I wrote and further press what I was arguing. It was kind of a stressful week, not just because of the note but because of several mini-projects I had due, and even though things weren't just killing me I could still tell that I was being weighed down by them.
So last night I went to Bible Study, and for most of it I was just struggling to hear and discern the messages of the night. Dave-O, the leader of the session, gave his speech on the Gospels. But it also involved a couple group discussions and tossing ideas onto a whiteboard--what is the Gospel? what do they say Jesus is? what do we say He is?--and together discerning the truth about who Jesus was. I had read the Gospels relatively recently (like in January), so this was kind of up my alley. However, I was still having a hard time just getting my heart into it, because I found myself preoccupied with all this technical analysis of how different people with different politcal sides treat Christianity and all that jazz (which was part of what my Facebook note was about).
However, things started to turn when Dave-O mentioned a passage from Acts, saying that we shouldn't be overoccupied or worried about relationships with other people (family, friends, what-have-you) if we treat our relationship with God as any less important. I wrote another blog entry covering this realization, and last night was a simple revisiting of it. After Dave-O finished his blurb and Nick started his, something strange happened. Nick started explaining midway through his speech about why we have God's laws in our lives. We have to be perfect to successfully follow God, but since in our own nature we can't be perfect, the only way it can happen is if we give up and let God enter and carry us on His own strength. At that moment I looked at the sources of my frustrations and somehow realized that if I stopped struggling they will all go away, and they did. Suddenly I felt euphoric, as if somehow I just stopped trying to do anything on cue and let God enter (which is probably what happened), and suddenly all my worries went away. I had tried to explain to Nick earlier about why I wrote what I did, but when I talked to him after his blurb, I told him technically he didn't answer my question, but in actuality he did because through his speech everything that I ever needed to know about God and Christianity was made clear. I thanked him for giving me that.
All political, religious, and social aspects of which I was tense just floated away and felt a happiness higher than I could have imagined than if any singular thing I wanted was fulfilled. So since last night I've been high on life for the most part. But probably more importantly, I got my questions about myself and Christianity answered. [Thanks God.]
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