Hymn 728b, with feeling

Funny thing about this blog. I started it some time ago and it was meant to be a sounding board for myself; a means to reflect on where I'm going, what I'm convicted of, what I'm confused about and what I have done about it.

The problem is that I've started plenty of posts and have never finished them. Because they were never long enough/insightful enough/in-depth enough/Christian enough.

That's the problem, isn't it. The whole facade thing. I've been battling this with myself, my belief in God, and my relationship with the church for my whole Christian lifetime. On the one hand, we're supposed to be family and we came to Christ on the very premise that we are flawed. And yet the other premise is that we have repented of our past, we understand how base we are and we are supposed to "put on and put off" - put off the past life and put on Christ. And because of this last bit, we think we're supposed to behave perfectly - even though we preach that we're still prone to sin. But if we can't wing being perfect or close to it, then let's at least appear to have it all together.

This will be my 15th year as a Christian. 15 years since I had the sudden epiphany that whatever lessons I've been hearing on Sundays actually pertain to me - I need to change, I need to be sorry (repentance is still a huge concept to me at 27; being very sorry is easier to understand) and I need to get dunked in the water.

Five years into my Christian walk, I realised that there was a very crucial part of my faith missing, and that was the heart. Ironically, having grown up emotional and rather impulsive at times, my borrowed faith had always been bred in me somewhat stone cold and factual. I could quote bible verses and exercise apologetics fluently and be passionate about giving an answer that is correct and biblical... but the overall faith always rang slightly hollow.

Five years into my Christian walk at age 17, I tried to articulate to many people the need to balance the head with the heart; the need for worship to be emotional as well as rational. I don't think I had the accurate vocabulary at 17, and it's taken me 10 years to start putting across to close family what it was exactly that I had meant. I'm still learning.

Here's my quandary at 27, 15 years as a Christian who has never missed a gathering with the church on Sundays. How many of those weeks did I actually spend worshipping God? Have I ever behaved in those 15 years as someone who believes that my God is Alive?

I read Phillip Yancey's "I was just wondering" last morning, and something shot out of the page and slapped me about because it was so poignant to me. A female friend of the author was trying to explain to a non-believer what her faith was about. And the non-believer's comeback had been, "But you don't ACT like you believe God is alive."

I want to know what it means to have a God that is alive. If I hear one more sermon about how knowledge of God's word is all-important - and that emotion is irrational and therefore to be avoided because of its unreliability - I think I might scream.

But that wouldn't be loving, would it.