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Living in the Light of Eternity by K.P. Yohannan
Chapter 6: What Motivates You?

The man stopped hoeing and straightened up, wiping sweat and grime from his forehead. He thought he had heard unusual sounds coming from the house. Strains of music drifted across the field and, he thought, shouts and laughter as well. What was going on?
Well, it was ‘way past quitting time anyway. He swung the hoe over his shoulder and trudged over the freshly turned-up field toward the house.
As he drew nearer, the music grew louder. He could tell the wine must be flowing freely; the dancing and merriment were in full swing.
Father must have real reason for celebration, he thought.
Just then a servant came scurrying out.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“You brother has come home!” the servant replied. “Your father has killed the fatted calf, and we are all rejoicing because you brother is safe and sound. Please, your father wants you to join the celebration- come!”
The man’s face darkened. So this was what they were celebrating –his brother’s return? His irresponsible, wild, loose-living, inheritance-wasting brother? How dare he return after all the years of grief and uncertainty he had caused! A storehouse of angry memories flooded him.
“I will have no part of this celebration!” he spat at the servant. “you can tell my father I will not go in!”
And he turned on his heel.
We are all familiar with the story in Luke 15 of the man and his two sons. We know the younger brother as the Prodigal Son, but the story is really about the love of his father.
Jesus had been criticized by the Pharisees and scribes because He chose to eat with publicans and sinners. “Look at this man,” they whispered to each other. “He says He’s God, but look who He eats with!”
Jesus’ dinner companions were indeed reputed to be the worst members of society. But the Pharisees misunderstood God’s holiness to mean He would have nothing to do with sinners. So Jesus told them the story of the man and his sons to show them the heart of the Father. He was saying to them, “God has everything to do with sinners, because He loves them.” Read more »

Tomorrow I start a temp job, just something to hold me over until I hear back from some of the places I’m interested in. Unfortunately for me, a few hours ago I had some strong tea and I didn’t even consider that I’d have to wake up at a human time tomorrow, er today; in five hours.

I’ve been reading a lot of encouraging stuff lately and I’m thinking I might share a couple chapters of it with you if you’re lucky. I’m currently tackling KP Yohannan’s book ‘Living in the Light of Eternity,’ and CS Lewis’ ‘The Screwtape Letters’. I was about half way through eight different books and I hit a wall, both spiritually and mentally… I’m finally getting back into the swing of things with a little help from my Friend (capital f). When you’ve been in the dark for as long as I have lately, a little light goes a long way. But it also shows just how big the mess is as well.

As I’ve spoken of in a roundabout way I’ve been lacking the proper motivation in my life lately, and I’ve been trying to get my needs met horizontally and coming up dry, I really need to get back to The Vine, that vertical relationship with Jesus! I just finished “We Would See Jesus” by Roy Hession, if there’s one thing I want to take away from that book, it’s the importance of being attached to The Vine.

So tomorrow I’m going to get paid 11$/hour to do data entry… from this Thursday until next Friday. They didn’t say how many hours a day, but the place is close by and shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to get there. My one hope is that I can listen to my iPod, and then at least I’ll be able to catch up on some Leonard Ravenhill while entering data.

Now I will attempt another summit of the mattress.

I suppose I should keep some record of the comings and goings of my life… it’s been quite a while since I updated. A lot has changed since my last update, but in retrospect it seems to be more of the same.
I quit my ‘new’ job after just two days. I made a lot of excuses, I probably could have persevered, but with everything I’ve been going through lately I realize I’m really weak. I’m a quitter.
I’ve met with my new small group leader on two occasions; I’m really torn over how to feel about him and everything at church. The fact that he’s met with me and many of the things he’s said lead me to believe he genuinely cares about me… but part of me is still suspect. The topic of the second meeting was marriage; it is immediately apparent to my leaders that I’m a flunky on that subject. They’ve suggested that I start to attend another church on the side in order to meet people. Two things are pretty obvious out of the conversation; my leaders are convinced that I’m the least eligible bachelor out of my peers, and that in their minds none of the sisters would ‘stoop’ so low. My self-esteem was already at an all time low prior to this conversation… I’m sinking even farther.
Part of me wants to trust God and stick it out… I’ve never liked the idea of going to another church to ‘hook-up.’ But is trusting God just sitting around and waiting for Him without doing anything on my part? Nothing is clear right now. What is trusting God?
On the job front, I attended a job fair this last Tuesday and have had a phone interview with an organization that I’m really excited about. I love the organization, but the job they want me to do is fundraising, and there’s some degree of cold calling. I really have done my best to avoid sales type positions for this reason… I’m really hesitant. Part of me wants to do it and see if after a year I can’t move around inside the organization.
I’ve also signed up to take the GRE on December 16th. I started studying for real today. I’ve got a little under two months; I hope I can devote at least two hours a day to studying and preparing. I’m really intimidated by the math section. I haven’t taken any math since my junior year of high school. That was eight years ago!
I’ve been really lazy this last week, Tuesday night I went home to Olympia and I’ve been sprawled out on my parent’s couch for the last four days. I finally got back to Seattle this evening, its really refreshing, I feel like there’s a lot less distractions here, of course everything is more expensive. I guess that’s the trade off. I really want to do some reading this coming week… hopefully I’ll have a job by the start of next month. Until then I really want to be better about prayer and reading, I’ve got a great opportunity to use this time, so far I’ve been pretty wasteful.

Today marks the last day of sorts for a stage of my life. Tomorrow I start a new job; I’ve got a new small group at church. I’ve got a new family dynamic with the passing of my grandmother two weeks ago. I’ve got a new hobby in cooking and baking. I’ve got a new big brother of sorts. There is so much potential for this to be a real new start for me, somewhere though there’s a small voice that says I’m going to fall on my face and it’ll be a failure like everything else so far.
With everything that’s been going on lately I feel especially far away from God. I know the block is in myself. I am so bitter, frustrated, depressed. Last night I read Psalms:39-40. Even King David can be depressed. I don’t want to be like this.
Part of me wants to run away.