Lost in the Sound of Seperation

Lost in the Sound of Separation . . .

that describes how I've felt since my last post. It seems that as I try to draw near to God, as I need Him, in so many ways, He promises with His mouth and then holds me at arms length.

Wednesday night, church night. So I had a bevy of places to choose from. And at most of the places, multiple classes. So I choose one and I head out the door. Third megachurch in 4 days. This is becoming quite the habit. I park as close as I can to the door I think I need to go in, still walk 5 minutes. As I'm ambling down the well manicured but static hallway I notice the huge numbers of adolescents surrounding me. Two thoughts occur: One is how much I miss kids like these. Teenagers dying to live, dying to meet Christ. Oh how I miss the frontlines, or any lines. I want to save lives! Two is wondering where the people my age are.

Another few minutes down a hallway and I notice people hanging out in the coffeehouse and finally see a central help desk larger than most malls. Turns out my arrival is due to an out of date website. And its too late to go anywhere else.

Fast forward to Saturday. Its been ups and downs all week, mostly downs. I've struggled with bitterness over my situation with Heather and her family, and with God. He continues to make promises, and seemingly continues to deny me, indeed to actively thwart my efforts. Since last Sunday, everything I've done to reach out has ended poorly, usually with me feeling the exact opposite of what it was supposed to.

I've cursed for the first time in my prayer journal, which is actually good. I think I'm being real with Him for the first time. And there are other good things coming from this. My relationship with my mom and my brother are improving. I'm learning a lot about myself and my relationship with Christ. But still I need more.

So after a few more outreach mishaps I make my way to a worship service tonight (Saturday). I'm not sure if it was me . . . but . . . it was just empty. It shouldn't have been, there was throbbing excellent worship music, it was fresh but accessible. The message was delivered by the very smart and very funny Dave Ramsey, on money matters. But at the end . . . I felt just as far away, if not further. Far from God, from people. I've been to three churches in the last week, and no one has introduced themselves to me.

And I don't think this is isolated. I think churches everywhere, successful, growing, living churches are doing this. I'm not ever sure where these people are coming from. It just . . . there's something wrong with us, and we need to fix it.

It's something I noticed about me the other day. I was crying, for the first time in a few days. I was crying because I had no one. Literally no one to reach out to. And the people I had reached out to had turned me away. And I was thinking of how I've never really been loved by anyone. No one has told me they loved me and lived up to it. No one. And I was so sunk by that awful feeling of no one caring, no one but God. And I realized its partially my fault. No one has loved because I have not loved well. So its me too.

The solution . . . I'm not entirely sure. Ostensibly I know what it is. We have to love God better. We have to worship Him and be with Him more, so that we can love well as an overflow of that. That's part of why I wasn't better to Heather at the end, I had lost that ability to love rightly. But there are so many churches where people are really doing this . . . so where's the extra step?

God keeps making these promises. Soon He'll have to deliver.