Thoughts on Leadership and being a Christ Follower

I really did not want to go to Intervarsity leadership retreat this weekend. In fact, this past Thursday night, I had a first in a while: I went to IV and saw hundreds of people swarming everywhere, and I got nervous, frightfully nervous. I did not want to be an IV leader. I did not want to try to reach people for Christ even though that's what we're called to do, maybe with a less corny term, by Christ. I just didn't want to be a Christian. I don't really mean, I didn't want to follow Jesus anymore, I just didn't want to be a subculture Christian, getting sucked into a bubble, of happy, smiling people swarming around me. That was where I didn't want to be. I've just realized over the summer, that as much as I love CNU and the community around me here, it's me and my fellow believers. I did not have any close relationships with people who weren't christians. What's the point of being a christian if you never leave your shell?

Then on Friday night, Bekah, Jamie and I were sitting on the swings outside at Camp Rudolph. And I stared at the trees, and the stars through the trees, and couldn't help but feel completely empty. I told them I need to re-fall in love with God. That I felt disconnected from him. Like, I know his values. But I don't know him anymore. And I felt like I was stuck. Stuck at CNU, stuck on leadership, stuck in a routine I couldn't get out of. The example I find of the cycle going around and around again, is that I have liked on and off the same guy I liked on and off last year at this time. And I still act completely strange with him. After all this time. It irks me, but now I just want to stay away from him. Just because I don't want this cycle repeating.

Then Beth Gambardella spoke that night. And I had trouble not falling asleep when she was talking about Moses and him acting as a mediator between his people and God. Not that it wasn't interesting, I was just very tired and wanted to go to bed. And some point in her talk, God gave me a light slap in the face. Because what she had to say had to deal directly with what I've been going through. She said, "If you're not hungry for God, you are starving. And often when you are starving, you don't realize the drastic need you are in", or something in that jist. And I was shook. Cause I wasn't hungry for God. I was starving so much for him, being much afraid to go into prescense, much afraid for being a christian, that I didn't know how to connect. As she was talking more and more, I started crying. I don't normally cry during talks, but I did this time. I realized the difference between me now and last year, is that I am much more sober. More serious, in a not so overly serious, uptight way, but sober that I am more aware, and even more wrecked and alert to what's going on around me. It was tough to swallow. Often times I doubt if my worship to God in corporate worship is genuine, and that night it felt especially so. My voice was raised, and it didn't sound pretty. As I was singing to my King, my voice was trembling and crying. People around me were no longer a distraction. I felt completely ruined before the glory of God.

Then today, in our quiet time, we read 1 Corinthians 2. I read this not too long ago, a week before I left Portland, and it spoke to me incredibly. I realized then, I had not spend my summer interning spending time with God through actually reading what God was saying in scripture. I was letting other people be the mediators, and me, just the spectator. I was trying to cram information into me, but it didn't bring me closer to God because "knowledge pumps up."

Anyways, I sat there, doing breathing exercises to clear my mind to anything I could to talk to God. Spent some time praying and not just for myself. And then, I felt compelled to write in my journal:

"The Cross has become empty to me and who I am in Christ has no meaning left. I lean too far on the side of Christian rhetoric, on books about God and not written by him. I let man's wisdom block me from my Creator. The gospel, in turn, has become total foolishness to me. I don't know at times if I really, truly believe it or if I'm just following steps cause it's as I've always done. Part of me doesn't want to be on IV leadership due to this. It feels like a sick cycle of repeats, like I'm trapped in a naturalist play I can't get out of. Of course I can't get myself out. That's the trap. Only God can. I don't want it to be a repeat of last year. All I wanna do right now is hold God tightly and never let him go. But I can't, I'm incapable. Allow God to hold me tightly and not let me out of his grasp.
The bible has become just another book on my reading list. I am a seeker of enlightenment, not og God. I know leadership will once again be a struggle for me. I can't let the devil use tht against me. I need the Lord's spirit over me. Nothing else matters. It makes me sick how much the rest of it all matters to me more. I want eyes to see, ears to hear, and a mind to concieve. But in the meantime, I am just grabbing for air."

This weekend we learned a little bit about ourselves in relation to christian leadership, and there is a good order that is not necessarily found directly in scripture but is highly applicable to how we live lives of christian leaders. CDSL
Child, Disciple, Servant, Leader.
Jesus says that children are first in the kingdom of God. Being a child of God means being taken under his loving care. We must swallow our pride and let him do that before leadership.

I know I will have many more struggles this semester with this, but I feel myself returning quickly back to parts of myself to that time that I had "faith like a child". For example, today during stretch out time in between things, I ran circles around the room. Like a little ADD kid, yelling and chanting. And you know what. It felt quite liberating and I don't know why I don't do it more often.

God knows my name. He calls me by Janelle.