A serious look back at 2009

Leave it to me to require two different types of reflections on the same year. No, I'm not crazy (but that's debated by many), but I do both sarcastic and profound well enough... I just have to do them separately. I'll approach this reflection this way: this is what GOD did in my life in 2009:

• The Lord had had enough of my growing lukewarm spirituality. I didn't realize just how far I'd gotten away from that electric, living, active, and breathing Spirit relationship with my Savior. When I became a Christian, I was healed of a particular condition. In January, like an old nemesis that always beat me up coming back to his stomping grounds, it returned. After several days of punching the sky, it struck me that God had done it with a purpose. Several weeks later, at a dinner for my birthday with a good friend, my buddy prophetically called me out on a number of issues that the Lord had layed on my heart, and I had been burying. I spilled everything out right there, and a turning point happened.
• I found out again what it was like for the words in my Bible to rise up off the page and speak directly into my life. This is a phenomenon that is available to every believer. EVERY ONE OF THEM!! It may not happen every since time, but God speaks. I had to relearn to listen. The scriptures from a previous post are just a few that hit me hard this past year.
• I watched God cross my path with other people's paths... and almost instantly, I saw God's strategy it all. There are no coincidences or happy accidents in God's social realm. I used to talk Jesus with everyone, everywhere, all the time. For a couple years, that rarely happened. Suddenly, my boldness and my friends' readied hearts were connecting again.
• God showed me that He knew my hurts in the church. And I was about to embark on a period of restoration. Admittedly, I've still resisted this agenda at times, but God answered my prayer in this area in an interesting way...
• I've been called to ministry. Full time. Vocational. No shortcuts, no backing down. The church that has so hurt me, I will work with it and for it. And my training will not be quick, either... I feel led to a long, comprehensive educational training.
• Me... I had run from deep wounds for a long time. It brought about a spiritual desert. There was an agenda for me two or three years ago, and I flatly said, "No." It is one of my biggest regrets in my Christian walk. Now, I am working on all of the points on the agenda, several years later, and it feels like I'm paying interest on it. God spoke to my heart as I read Psalm 42:7 one day: "Deep hurts". He knows that those depths can be painful. But God wants to go there and speak love and mercy into the darkest corners of my soul.
• Society... I see the dichotomy in this world more clearly than ever. Darkness and light. Something is either pointing the world to God, or misleading the world. The depravity of our culture is so sad... in the media, music, television, movies, internet, magazines, schools, cities, homes. And we wonder why so many people self-medicate with drugs, medications, alcohol, sex... why marriages continue to break at a 50% rate... why the economy tanked (one word: greed)... why poverty cannot be solved... crime continues to destroy cities... this world is seduced by a deceiver that has most people eating out of the palm of his hand.
• Women... oh, this is a tough one for me. I had become such a sarcastic skeptic, and several messages struck me hard for a number of reasons. I've always treated the opposite gender kindly, but the Lord showed me that all women are God's daughters, in some respect or another. He is jealous for them. And I was starting to believe my own jokes. So I resolved to grow and treat women with the extreme respect, no matter the type of relationship they have with me, that God demands. And I've seen how this sexualized culture has damaged so many women. God hates it with a furious passion, and woe to me if I contribute to the damage.
• The Lord spoke great wisdom into my life with my buddy Phil Hoover's kidney donation. Check him out at philhoover-chicago.blogspot.com. I saw extreme reliance upon God, extreme sacrifice, extreme patience, and a resolve to see things through the lens of God's Kingdom instead of the world's.

And I look ahead to 2010. 2009 was definitely a turning point, preparing me for the wildest year of my life, where I will be stretched beyond imagination. I am being prepared for something radical to which God has called me. Pray for me as I embark on the journey of a lifetime!