insights.

There's this blog I frequent titled "Stuff Christians Like," written by the very funny Jon Acuff. The site is a blatant rip-off of the successful "Stuff White People Like" site, but has a wonderful satirical tone that both pokes fun at the Christian subculture, while also celebrating and questioning why this subculture functions the way it does. It's written by someone on the "inside," who both smirks at Christians while proudly claiming the title. It is one of the funniest thing I've ever read, which is why I visit the blog daily.

Every so often, Jon writes a personal blog that isn't humor-focused, but instead relates what he has been learning in his own spiritual life. I've found that these insights often speak to me profoundly and have some relation to where I am in my own spiritual jaunt.

Most of the blog titles are numbered and detail the stuff Christians like. A post from last week was titled "Thinking God Needs You." Jon, as a writer finishing his first book (based around his blog concept), has been blogging about the whole process. Here's part of what he wrote:

"I started to get fearful about posting on the site and writing the book because I didn’t want to mess up whatever it was God needed me to do.

In the midst of that time, God reminded me of a powerful truth, “He doesn’t need me. He loves me.” There’s a big difference between those two things.

Need is a partnership.

Love is a relationship.

He doesn’t call me on this adventure called life so that I can, with my deep pools of awesomeness, release some sort of handcuffs He’s wearing. He calls me on this adventure because He knows I love adventures and He enjoys seeing me do things I love.

The more time I wrestled with that thought, the juxtaposition of need vs. love, the more I began to think that I had this whole thing backwards. Maybe if I listened to God and was honest with Him He’d whisper to me:

“Let me be clear. I am God. I am complete. I do not need your additions. I want your work to be an overflow of love. I want to pour so much love and strength and truth into you that you cannot help but do things. Add to the world. Add to the people around you. Overflow on them what I give to you. Not because I need you to do something but because you can’t help but go out and share the love I am overflowing in you."

Does God call us into big adventures that take us across the planet and across the break room at work? Without a doubt. Does He have a purpose for us that He loves seeing us fulfill in obedience? Certainly. Does He call us into those adventures because without us He can’t complete the work He intends? I don’t think so, because that would make Him an “almost god.” As in, He was almost able to tell people about His deep, ridiculous love for them online but He needed me to write the Stuff Christians Like blog first. Ha, that’s just silly."

This was something I definitely needed to hear (read?) at this moment. I've felt anxious and nearly stuck in my fear because of my uncertainty about what I'll produce after this trip. But I truly believe the only reason I'm going on this trip is because Jesus wants me to go. How else would I be able to go overseas to Papua New Guinea, get paid to go, and be forced to do the thing I love? And because of that, I don't need to be afraid. To quote Mr. Acuff again, "He calls me on this adventure because He knows I love adventures and He enjoys seeing me do things I love."

God doesn't need my words; he created them. He loves them because he loves me; he delights in them because he delights in me. He made me this way, a person who thinks and feels in metaphors and irony, in parallel sentences and creative essay structures. And to deny that part of myself would be to deny what God has created in me.

I love insights from unexpected places. Thanks, Jon.

[Read the entire post here: http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/2009/04/527-thinking-god-needs-you.html]