Thoughts from the editing room

The thing about video editing is that it takes hours for each minute of film you're trying to produce.

Right now I'm in the office finishing up the teaching video for our Doral campus. Before that, I was in my car, driving away from Stephanie's house, marveling at all of the signs I have been able to see of God's grace in our relationship, in awe at the circumstances and decisions that have made possible a courtship where to this day, shame and regret are foreign concepts.

That being said, there's a definite understanding on my part that if/when we end up married, the close proximity to another imperfect human being will bring out those human imperfections real quick, but for now, I'm just enjoying being floored and amazed by the fruit that just the smallest bits of obedience on our part has produced (think: loaves and fishes).
And trust me, it's small, at least on my part. I was realizing tonight as I drove along, and moreso now as I mull things over, that I spend a lot of time living my life with Christ on my terms rather than his.
Here's how it works. It's so easy for me to define my Christian experience in terms of obedience to a set of boundary markers. I'm a straight shooter. It's how I'm wired. Give me rules, routine, boundaries, clean black and white divisions, and I'm a happy camper. The less complicated for me, the better. What I realize in times like these is that Jesus wants to change me into the right kind of person so I can know God, not just a person who does the right things because he has to.

Troy used a paintball gun and a target to demonstrate our inability to hit the mark 100% of the time; in other words, we blow it. Paul in Galatians tells us (and me) that trying to live life by following rules won't get me anywhere, and one of the reasons for this is because it doesn't do anything about my heart. The rules don't produce the righteousness I need. I could sing poetry all day, but if I don't mean it, my girlfriend will know that I'm just going through the motions.
I think the reason that the rules are sometimes so difficult to follow, or at least follow well, is because I haven't been fully changed into the right kind of of person; I'm a child of God, but sometimes would rather trade His Kingdom for mine, would rather choose the lack of security that comes from living my life my way rather than Christ's. It's control. It's lack of trust. And it's something that someday, by the grace of God, I'm going to have to learn to get past if I'm going to fully live the life I was intended to live.

Which brings me back to Stephanie. Tomorrow-or, today I should say, as I look at the time-we celebrate 8 months of courtship, which is probably a bigger deal to us than to anyone else. Times like these often make me wonder about the person I'm becoming.

(By the way, my sax professor told me after my lesson this week that he doesn't want to know me when I'm old, because I'm going to be insufferable; apparently he was trying to imply that I am somewhat anal retentive. Needless to say, I have no idea what hes's talking about.)

Random tangents aside (further proof that this DVD needs to hurry up and finish burning so that I can go home and go to sleep), I think that this is one of the most beautiful promises in Scripture. It's God's presence in us. It's the hope that, by relying on His Spirit, my our dead life is crucified so that he can birth something better in us, so that he can awaken us to the fact that this was the way life was meant to be lived all along, and by doing so, he can give us the real treasure of the Gospel: Himself.
I seriously think this is possible. As a Christian, I have to believe it's possible, because Jesus said it was.
I just have to learn to live in that reality.