Sept 12, 2007 - The Funk

*****No Cliffnotes, Just Micah writting about being blue.. and gettin past it********

There are those days, those weekends, in which we often find ourselves where something isn’t quite right. Though we con’t put our finger on it, we know that something is missing, something has changed. It is in these days, during these times that something seems to hinder thoughts and feelings that have come to be normal. And this feeling, this hinderance, this thing that is not quite right, I have come to call “the funk.” “The funk” is different than other things that often have similar results. For example when you begin to get sick, or are sick, or when you have unusual amounts of stress in your life. Though the symptoms are the same, the primary characteristic of “the funk” is that it’s cause, it’s root is indefinable. Such was my case last night.
When I went to church, I had known something was amiss. I just guessed and attributed it to the fact that I had been working to resolve computer problems for most of the day, and had little success. But then the worship service started. The songs were the same, but for some reason, I could not seem to get into them. My mind wondered, I started to notice the singers that were off tune. I started to get annoyed when the PowerPoint slides were behind, and either consciously or unconsciously, I began to make a list of how things could be better. My thoughts were justifiable right? After all, how would the service appear to newcomers? But then I couldn’t get into the sermon either. Andy my prayers almost seemed to bounce back at me. I guess it was the prayer thing that had bugged me the most. The other shortcomings I could attribute to a fault in someone else. But the prayer thing? I couldn’t shake it something was off. I’ve known this funk before, and usually when I’ve been able to trace it down to it’s roots it’s had to do something unresolved in my own life. Soooo what could it be.
Prayer. Jesus a man of prayer, didn’t do all that much teaching on the subject, not even to his own disciples. After a year and a half of following him, and witnessing him, they finally asked him to teach them how to pray. There must be some secret right? Something that he hadn’t taught the masses so long ago on the Sermon on the mount. Something he could share just with his disciples, just with his closest friends. Not only did Jesus share with them the exact thing he had shared with the masses, he shortend it by a few words.
So there it was…. The format for prayer…given by Jesus himself. If we dissect it you have:
Recognition of who God is
Worship.
Submission
Supplication
Asking for forgiveness
Asking for protection
In the whole prayer only one thing was required of the pray-er… forgiving others.
Why is the forgiving of others so important? Oh, I know some of the psychological implications of harbored bitterness, but the day-to-day stuff. The little stuff. The little things that you tuck away in your mind for some future conversation that you’ll have. You’ll have these conversation with basically pure motives, to see the other person improve. To see the other person get better. But the problem is, in this world of crazy schedules, often times these conversations never happen. So there you sit, there I sit, with all of these minor things, minor irritations building in our minds. It’s hard to call these things areas of forgiveness, because after all, the things that happened were so small, they doen’t merit the title of “sins.” But they build just the same. And as they build in our minds, our fuse gets shorter. And our communion with God gets fractured. Jesus held forgiving others with such importance, he told the masses that if anyone has something against you…leave you sacrifice on the alter, and first be reconciled to your brother. Also the Bible reads that if we don’t forgive our brothers when they sin against us, God will not forgive us. And without this forgiveness our sin, our guilt remains, and communion with God is broken.
So there I was this morning far before Samara woke up debating with God, if these things I had harbored needed to be forgiven. Deserved to be forgiven. They were such little things. They needed to be righted. For the good of the church right? My input was valuable right? So I wondered in these early morning hours what then is the line between needing to forgive someone and needing simply to right a situation? Then God brought me face-to-face with my own motives. Did my motives in confronting the other person want to change an action, or want to change their feelings. Sure I had wanted the action to change for the good of the church, for the good of the system. But so too, did I want the other person feel a little bit guilty, a little bit bad. I wanted them to feel a little bit of the gravity of the situation that they had helped cause. And in that sense, I was wrong.
Forgiveness was needed, and I knew it. But like always, grace cannot be justified. When God extends His grace on me, I like it. But how could I justify extending grace to another? But like other things in life, forgiveness doesn’t rely on my emotions, or my thoughts, but on my will. Like getting out of bed in the morning, especially after a long night; I don’t feel like getting out of bed, and I can justify why I deserve to stay asleep, but sooner or later I have to decided to kick one foot after another off the edge of the mattress and start my day. And usually after I do, I feel better. And also just like getting out of bed, I have to decide to forgive everyday. Sometimes those same thoughts and feelings remain for a while, so everyday I have to recommit to the decisions that I made, until sooner or later those thoughts and feelings are gone. And we are restored.
The Bible says the “Prayers of a righteous man availeth much.” And our society today is in desperate need of true prayer warriors. If we are to do much in this world, if we are to do much in our minististries we have to be righteous. Our righteousness is dependant on us being forgiven, and or forgiveness is dependant on us being forgiving. Even in the little things, the small annoyances, the minor irritations.