So I went to bed at about 2AM on Sunday, excited to go to church for the first time in almost a month. I had been preaching at other places, so I hadn't had the chance to go to my church in Lakeland for quite a while. I went to sleep thinking I'd wear something nice in the daytime. A lavender shirt, a Florentine tie, my new Express pinstripe pants, and my polished black shoes. I was too tired to iron my shirt and tie my tie that night, so I figured I'd just do it in the morning. Wake up at 8:30AM, catch that Chartwells breakfast, get to ironing, get to tying, and get to driving.
To be fair, I woke up at 8:30AM, except that I figured I could just make oatmeal in my house. With that decided, I went back to sleep. The only problem was, I woke up at 10:17AM thanks to my brother's random text and I was still in my pajamas. Church started in under 45 minutes and took about 20 minutes to get to. I told myself, I'm a college student. Plenty of college students (let alone church-going college students) miss out on church. I'd be fine.
The only problem was, I couldn't go back to sleep in that mindset. So, I got up about five minutes later, brushed my teeth, and took a much needed shower. For whatever reason, I didn't feel rushed. This is rather strange considering just the night before, I was excited to get to church. Not only that, if this had been a class I was late to or a presentation I needed to get to, I know I would have been moving much faster.
Well, it's 11AM and I still need to iron my shirt. No biggie. I'm already late anyway, might as well take my time. So I have a banana. (This is going well, can you tell?) Now that the shirt is done, it's time to get this tie going. Except for the life of me, I couldn't get it done right. 15 minutes go by with the tie either being too short, or too long, or just looking funny. Finally I head out the door and make it into church by 11:40AM.
The drive over wasn't much fun. I took Polk Parkway and sacrificed $1.00 to do it. The whole time I'm thinking, "If I was as excited as I said I was, why wasn't my shirt ironed and my tie tied yesterday?" Other questions buzzed in my head, "If I was preaching this morning, would I really have taken this much time? If I was leading a Sunday school class? What if it was for a college class?" Every answer was no.
I finally make it to church and I've missed worship and all of the announcements. Great. Hope the sermon goes well. Turns out it does. Very simple and to the point. Something about not wasting our lives. Now, I have to be fair here, but I also wanna be transparent: I loved the message, but sometimes when my head isn't in it I can get lost in grammatical errors and allusions to scripture. All in all though, I felt like he had a lot of great things to say.
Well, the preacher says that he's done but now it's time to allow the Holy Ghost to work. I knew what this meant. I grew up in a Pentecostal, Assemblies of God home. This meant people were free to leave as they pleased and that there would be no formal dismissal. No problem, you won't get any complaint out of me.
But for one of the few times in my life I realized something--there's no one holding me here. I have no meeting to get to, no kids to pick up, no wife that needs to do something, no parents to take care of things with. It's just me here. If I want to leave, I can. If I want to stay I can.
So I decide to stay. It's about 12:45pm at this point. I figure, if I head out at like 1:20pm, I can still make it to the campus restaurant and not have to buy myself lunch. Okay Lord, let's see what I'm here for. I figure if I felt bothered enough to still go to church knowing I was going to be late, something had to be in store for me.
Yet, I sat there and felt nothing. I looked around and saw people praying, crying, holding each other--but I felt nothing. This was strange to me. Cognitively, I knew that the Holy Spirit is still living and active. In fact, I felt that I could discern that was occurring in front of me was legitimately spiritual. Except, I felt no emotional tug. This concerned me heavily. So I closed my eyes and sang along with whatever the worship team was singing. "How Great is Our God" I think. In that moment, I knew something was off.
I could sing the words without hesitation. I earnestly believe my God is great. I believe that His holy scriptures are true. I believe that the Holy Spirit can still do miracles. In fact, some were happening right in front of me. And yet, I felt no emotional tug. What was wrong with me? I wanted to have the joy of the Spirit like I saw some around me. I wanted to cry in the beauty of what was around me. And yet, nothing!
I sat there and thought, what is my motivation for being here in this moment? I realized it was obedience. I felt that God wanted me there because he had my attention. I still had no idea what I was supposed to get out of all of this, but still I figured, it couldn't hurt to stay for a little while longer...except that it's now 1:45pm. Well, looks like I'm missing out on lunch with the snow birds in my cafeteria. Taco Bell anyone? Maybe I'd treat myself to a chalupa. Sub-beans of course. :)
Anyway, I sat there thinking, "there's gotta be something more here." In a quiet voice, I asked God for hope. Hope that my life would turn out okay. That despite the challenges in store, God would see me through. And then I realized something--this is a pretty consistent prayer of mine. Has God been reduced to a wish-granter in my life? When I was just about to seal the bag that made me feel like crap, I felt God say to me, "Passion comes when you hope to see the things I can do."
And then it hit me: Why are the people around me so emotionally aroused in the Spirit? It's because there's hope that the God they believe in, the Spirit they put their trust in, has the capacity to change lives in the ways he promises he can change them. And in some point, I had lost it. Not that I had fallen away, and not that I didn't believe. I preached a message of hope to hundreds these past few months, yet did it because I cognitively knew this is what the Scripture teach. I believed it to be so without hesitation. Yet in my heart of hearts, I had lost the hope for God's plan in my life.
That's a difficult thing to say, and quite honestly, it's embarrassing to see on the screen. Yet, I mention this because some of you reading this have felt exactly what I have felt. Seeing faith and hope as something that's good for everyone else, but just not applicable to the circumstances of your life. Maybe it's something you should have, or maybe it's something you can get a better grasp of when things start turning up.
God's Spirit isn't done with you yet. Even if you are. I found out that my motivations for serving God were getting lost in the serving--writing sermons, teaching classes, etc. With that, my passions were in the wrong place. My passion is to be found in be belief that lives can be changed with the truth that God has shared with all of us. It's not shared in a moment, but by ongoing interactions with a Spirit who can't keep his hands off of us.
So where does this all begin?
The passion for change is found in the hope that change is possible.
