1/30/04

I talked in my blog about a month ago - has it been that long? - about how I was kind of taking time out of ministry to get my life back in order. I was going to write, "on the spiritual side" but realized that I shouldn't consider that as some separate part of life. There is my life, the physical, spiritual, emotional, mental, all of it. No dichotomy (or 4-chotomy - what would the right term be - quad? Wouldn't that be if the word was bi-chotomoy? I'm sure someone out there knows). Anyway, things have been going good in that regard. I think I have 3 main problems in my life right now, two of them related one. I'll mention the two sub-problems, and work my way up to the alpha problem. So the two sub-problems I would say are my direction in career - specifically with what I should do in the next, say, 6-12 months - and being a better husband/having a healthier marriage. These are two very big issues, and they press down on me, if not daily, then at least weekly. I'm totally in a rut in regards to career - I'd like to leave my current job and go into a ministry position before the end of the year (preferably related to worship/music), but I have no idea and am limited in the scope of how I can pursue something like this. Anyway, it's complicated. To be completely frank, I've thought about how God wants me to pursue music for the last 5 1/2 years, and I've come to the place where I feel like I have the most direction and passion in the course of the last 6 months. I really want to be a songwriter. Ask me how I'm going to do this, and all I can say is I'm going to try and start writing songs, and being disciplined about learning the craft. But other than that, I have no idea how it is, or is supposed to look. If you asked me how I'd envision my career, I'd love to have a home studio where I could record stuff, write songs and be with my family. I don't need to be a star or anything, I'd just like to write meaningful songs that God would use.

In terms of family, I am a total jerk. I have very little patience with Miriam, and I get on her case all the time. It is part of the viscious middle-child syndrome in me coming out, a part that Miriam only has a little of. Basically, it is my middle-childness mixed together with me being most like my mom, and you have a wonderfully impatient, judgmental, perfectionist mix. So of course, as our marriage has continued on past the 1 year mark, the newlywed part starts to diminish, and the jerk side comes out. Hey Minho - the jerk store called and their missing a lot of you! (Seinfeld reference) Anyway, there's been rising conflict - well, I wouldn't say rising - it's just about different stuff now, and what I'm really frustrated with is how I handle it. I'm SO impatient! I also find myself clinging to the idea of what's fair for me. It's my right to do this and this. Hey, I'm not advocating being a doormat. I just don't think Jesus was all that concerned with His "rights" when it came to loving us. Anyway, I know it's a bad sign when I'm thinking - "Hey, that's not fair to me."

So where does this all lead to? Well, I think to the alpha problem. The present reality of God in my life. I don't think I lead a very Spirit-led life. Rules, yes. Christian conduct, check. Vibrant relationship with God? Hmmm, let me get back to you on that.

So that's what this time for me has been all about. Rebuilding. Tearing everything back down to the foundation. What C.S. Lewis called my faith as a house of cards that gets totally knocked over. So I read through Purpose Driven Life as I also revitalized my prayer life and trying to read the Word everyday. I finished the PDL, which was pretty good. There's a lot of good stuff in there. I started reading Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. And I've been reading Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper. On Friday, I read some stuff that was so impactful. Celebration was about meditation. I realized that I have no idea how to meditate. My mind is so full of crap, that I can't think deeply, I can't commune with God in that way. My mind is just about entertainment - internet, TV, movies, you name it. AM I NOT ENTERTAINED?!? AM I NOT ENTERTAINED?!? I want microwave Scripture, soundbite prayer, everything in a minute or less, or I'll lose interest. I get home, and I want to turn on the tube. I've earned it. I'm tired from work, I need to just vege out for awhile. And I wonder why all my song ideas are stupid, why I can't seem to get beyond Christianese statements. I've heard God tell me in the past month - Minho, you have to go deeper with Me. So, we've decided to cut off our cable. We didn't have full cable, just basic that gives you all the local channels. But, we don't need it. Time to trim the fat. I want my weeknights to be mostly about meditating, practicing, reading. Things that will make me go deeper into life.

On the way home on Friday, I picked up the Piper book. Jason lent it to me a long time ago, and I've just gotten to it in the past month. Anyway, the chapter title read "Living to Prove He is More Precious Than Life." What a title! Think of this book as kind of a Purpose Driven Life on steroids. It's actually a little hard to compare the two books, but I guess I mean that Piper will get right in your face about stuff. 'Roid rage in a good way. So this chapter mainly dealt with the title in two ways: money (materialism), and time. I was reading this chapter, and it was drawing out a most violent response. I ended up wanting to use profanity towards how I was previously thinking and acting. Miriam had mentioned the week before, "It's nice to have money." At the time, I thought, "Very true." It's true. There's a lot of stress that comes from not having security, not having money. We're looking for an apartment right now, and it's not the most easy thing because of budget constraints. So I definitely understand it. But as I was reading, I thought to myself - F*** that! It's understandable, but that's not how I want to think anymore. I've been living and putting my hope in that long enough. Let me quote directly from the book:

"The issue [money] is pervasive because it is crucial for the witness of the church. If we want to make people glad in God, our lives must look as if God, not possessions, is our joy. Our lives must looks as if we use our possessions to make people glad in God - especially the most needy."

Anyway, he talks about free time too. He talks about TV too - and about how mere avoidance of "bad TV" and spending "quality time" with one's family is not enough. Here's a quote he takes from David Wells that I found particularly profound:

"'It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure pollsters of their belief in God's existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers' sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. It is a condition we have assigned to him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized life... Weightlessness tells us nothing about God but everything about ourselves, about our condition, about our psychological disposition to exclude God from our reality.'"

That is ME! Did I mention before how I lack an understanding of the present reality of God in my life? Man, this chapter hit me like a load of bricks. This is no life half-heartedly lived for God. Piper doesn't really talk about specifics, it's more just general attitudes and focus. Anyway, there's part of me that secretly whispers "Minho, don't get too extreme. You don't really need to cut off TV. Security's not a bad thing." And there might be merit to those thoughts. But, I'd rather go too far the other way. Not in terms of judging people and holding them to some legalistic standard, but just in terms of the decisions I make and how I live. I think in our culture, I'm way more prone to seek the "blessings" of comfort, than to be too crazy for God.

Anyway, that's an update on me. I'm just going to try and go deeper with God over the next month. To turn my hope from the things that I can see before me to the the things that He has promised. To live like He is more important than my life itself. There is, of course, a danger in posting this. That is to say, that nothing happens, that everything I've written is just talk, and no action. Well, that may be true, but sometimes you gotta just let it out, and can't keep what God's been saying inside. He said it to me, and I feel the need to share it. I have no idea who or how many people read my blog (and you don't have to tell me either), but I hope you can feel me on this.