Open my eyes Lord, I want to see Jesus

The title of this blog entry is a line from one of my favorite worship songs. It’s very simple. Only one verse/chorus, and it goes like this…

“OPEN MY EYES LORD

I WANT TO SEE JESUS

TO REACH OUT AND TOUCH HIM

AND SAY THAT I LOVE HIM

OPEN MY EARS LORD AND HELP ME TO LISTEN

OPEN MY EYES LORD I WANT TO SEE JESUS.”

These words perfectly express how I feel right now.

You know, I always worry about this blogging stuff. I don’t like the idea. Why should everyone know what’s going on? What do I say? What’s appropriate? Who really cares anyway?...

All I know is that there’s a bunch of things going on in my life now. School is ending soon… I need to start applying for jobs… I’m making amazing friends… I’m connecting with the old ones more… I really couldn’t ask for anything more. Everything is great, everything is better than I couldn’t have ever imagined. But I just can’t seem to focus, or evern bring myself to care.

All I want is Jesus.

I see him working in my life… bringing in new friends, using me to speak peace into people’s lives; I see him changing me and orchestrating all these events around me… his fingerprints are everywhere in my life… but I just can’t seem to find him.

I feel like the Shulamite when she says, “O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you - if you find my lover, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love.” (Song of Solomon 5:8) She says this after she was lazy in getting up to greet him at the door. I can’t help but think that I’ve done the same thing. Only I wasn’t lazy… I just didn’t want to answer the door… I didn’t want to let him in… I just wanted to stew & sit in my own bitterness and anger. I wanted to push him away as far as I could.

And now I so desperately want him. I’m so nervous to write this because I know that God truly does take us at our words… but I don’t care if these new people and things are taken from my life… Take them! I don’t want them!... If I could make a trade, O God, I would!...

Please God, I want to see you. I want to see Jesus. I want to reach out and touch him, and say that I love him. I want to talk with him again… and listen again! I want to feel you right next to me in the morning, and to walk with you during the day. I want to smile with you, and laugh with you. I want to hold your hand again; look into your eyes and just be in love again!

Jesus, I know you love me... I know you see me... I know you’re there. Please draw near to me again as I so desperately long, and seek after you.

The First Step

This is not what I originally wanted to post. I had an elegant little blog ready for today. It was supported by a few bible verses & it was both challenging and inspiring. I was very proud of it :)

Unfortunately, it’s going to have to wait for another day.

You know, my first post (March 6^th) was really from the heart. It’s not the most eloquent thing I’ve ever written, but I meant it. Now part of me wishes that I had just kept my big mouth shut.

My whole life I’ve loved inspiring stories. My favorites are about people who despite all odds do what God tells them. In fact, it was the life of Martin Luther that inspired me to get to the bottom of this whole God/Jesus/Salvation thing.

But no matter how inspiring, challenging or uplifting… all the testimonies, all the songs, all the emotional moments you have when you say in your heart “I will follow”… all these fade very quickly when you’re actually called to take your first step.

While I can’t divulge all the details, I was called to take my first step last night somewhere between 2 & 2:04 am. All of the mumbo-jumbo I’ve been speaking about discipleship and following Jesus was staring me in the face. It wasn't just words anymore. I was being called to action.

In my last blog, I was so enthusiastic about writing… “The choice. The choice to follow is the only duty of the disciple. The decision to give Jesus all… and He’ll take care of the rest”… but I didn’t fully realize that in choosing to follow, you’ve got to leave everything else behind.

While you’re zealous & inspired this may not seem like much of a choice. After all, ‘Jesus is everything! He’ll take care of all your needs! He is the way, the truth and the life!’… but when it’s fully laid out for you, and when you begin to realize just how much Jesus is going to challenge you and stretch you... the reality of the decision begins to set in.

I didn’t fully understand why I chose to start my last blog with Luke 14:28-33. Now I know.

The Choice

Jesus said, "For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it - lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:28-33).

Before I came to Jesus, my uncle (he was the one who lead me through the prayer) said just one thing…

“You can’t follow Jesus half way… Its all or nothing”

At the time it didn’t sound so extreme, and it didn’t even sound like a choice. 'Who wouldn’t want to follow Jesus?' I thought to myself. That was six years ago… actually, that was six years, five days, 23 hours and 11 minutes ago… And if I’ve learned anything in that time it’s that following Jesus is extreme. It’s all or nothing, and it’s a choice.

For the past year or so I’ve been “out-of-commission” so to speak. I don’t know what went wrong exactly. A relationship went south… I was hurt… school was getting tough… friends were getting annoying and church wasn’t helping. I guess it was a combo of things.

And I don’t know when it happened, but at one point I stopping looking at Jesus.

It was hard to keep his word in my heart when everything around me was yelling the opposite. And it was hard to stick to what I knew to be true when people around me were having so much fun living the lie. I so desperately wanted to have fun living the lie.

So I did it for a while. I went back to some bad habits of mine (namely drinking too much, partying, flirting like a mad-woman & swearing like a sailor). The funny thing is though that none of that really bothered me about the whole thing.

What bothered me is that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t drown Him out. I couldn’t swear enough, or drink enough, or dance enough to get Jesus away. But instead of giving in I just partied harder and drank more. Like a little kid I put my fingers in my ears and started to scream at the top of my lungs… “I’m not Listening…I’M NOT LISTENING!”

Well, inevitably, the world didn’t deliver on its promises (hmm… big surprise) and I was left numb… completely numb. When I finally took my fingers out of my ears I heard nothing. And I so desperately wanted to ear from Him… I strained and strained but I couldn’t even make out a whisper.

I wish I could say that Jesus came in, zapped me with life, parted to clouds & rescued me… but that would be a lie. Nothing like that happened.

What did happen was that I came across an old book of mine, ‘The Cost of Discipleship,’ by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I was in the middle of reading this book before my ‘fall’ and I left it unfinished.

(For those of you who don’t know who Bonhoeffer is, he was a German pastor and resistance member against Hitler. In the summer of 1939, just before the WW2 began, he was in New York. He knew that going back to Germany would mean his life but went back anyway. He wrote the book in 1936, and finally he would have to live it. The Nazis executed him in 1945. It’s honestly the toughest read I’ve ever encountered, and I’m still not done, but it’s so worth it)

When I picked it up again I felt so inadequate. Luke 9:62 was looping in my head (“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”) and I just wanted to give up before I even started. I wasn’t fit to be a disciple! Let’s face it, I thought… I’m no Peter, or Paul… I don’t have the endurance or compassion of John, who am I kidding? A disciple? Puh-lease!

And then a thought came… “Isn’t it the master’s job choose his disciples?... And if that’s true, what is the only duty of the disciple?”

…

The choice. The choice to follow is the first duty of the disciple. The decision to give Jesus all… and He’ll take care of the rest.

I wish I could say that everything has been sunshine & lollipops since then… it hasn’t. But there’s a new verse that loops in my head now. Its Psalm 139:1-5.

“O LORD, you have searched me, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.”