Activities

At this point in time, I have been getting agitated about my job. I keep pouring myself into activities, and I'm really enjoying them, but I want to be done waiting tables. It is the least fulfilling thing about my life. Everything else is exciting right now. We started playing Ultimate Frisbee every Saturday at noon, and that's been really fun. We've been doing dancing lessons on Saturday afternoon. I started playing bass for the worship team at church this weekend. A friend of mine and I are planning an Improv night, where we will be doing improv games and activities. I recently finished a shorter book called "Trumpet," and I'm planning on sending it to a publisher. It's an inspirational book that I think is really creative and I really like.

So I'm doing a lot, and I'm enjoying life with my wife and our friends here in Utah. And then I go to work, and all that excitement goes away. All that fulfillment disappears. I feel I need God's favor more than ever, but I'm in this balance between being responsible and thinking maybe I'm just supposed to trust him. I mean, I know I'm supposed to have faith - it's just figuring out what faith is telling me to do. Maybe it means I keep going to work and trust that God will keep me going until such time as other opportunities present themselves. I don't know.

Part of me hesitates to ask God for "favor," because it sounds like a televangelist or something like that, but I think the bible paints a pretty good picture of seeking God's favor. I just don't want it to sound like it lacks depth or reveals some kind of unwillingness to endure or to give my all for God.

Anyway, the point is, I try to think positive - and maybe I don't spend enough time in prayer and meditation, but I want my life to be led by the voice of God, by his Spirit's whisper in my mind, and sometimes it just feels like I'm just fumbling my way through.

People talk about living life by God's power or living on your own power. But no one has ever been able to explain what that really means to me. I mean I understand the idea, and maybe there's some truth to it. But what is the difference, specifically. Suppose God asks me to plant a tree. Don't I simply go out, dig a hole, fill in the hole with a little sapling, water it and watch it grow? I mean, is there a way to do that "On my own power" that actually looks different than doing it "by God's power?" Or say I want to tell a friend about Jesus, but I get in this attitude of not needing some extra boost from God's spirit, and I go try to speak to people "on my own power." What does that mean? It seems like what people mean when they say that is that there is some indistinct inner attitude or feeling which, felt a certain way, is centered on God, and felt a different way is relying on the self. But I don't know what that means exactly and I certainly don't know how to measure it or gauge how well I'm accomplishing it.

I get this suspicion that what we're really supposed to do is pray, ask for God's guidance and assistance, enjoy his presence, and then act. And this is what I've been trying to do, perhaps not enough of it, and I've ended up where I am now. And of course, I have a lot of things going for me. I just find that I let a lack of money control too much of my life, and I limit my thinking about what I can do and what I can experience, when God says "I can do all things"

"Through Christ."

So I'm back again at the question: what does that mean, "Through Christ?"