back again

Not long ago I realized that my work is actually an obstacle to my writing. You see, I work in the electronics industry, and my job involves the design of computers. Not desktop computers, laptops, or netbooks, such as what you might be using to read this, but specialty systems, such as retail kiosks, price checkers, and so on. However, the development work I do is hosted on the same type of computer I use to write this blog, and I realized that after spending all day every day "on the computer," I often don't want to do computer stuff in my off time. That, I have realized, is why I have gone "missing" from writing several times.

Life is full of obstacles. Some are real, some imagined. But whether actual or rationalized, the effect is the same. Last year, I wrote a post about church attendance and membership which was prompted by people leaving and/or switching churches. There are real reasons to switch churches, but there are many more selfish, imagined "reasons" to do so. I don't like the preacher, someone hurt my feelings, I'm not appreciated. At least at their beginning, an honest, human emotion can be found in each of these, but acting on the emotion rather than God-grown character is an error. I've seen some who left for wrong reasons come back, once they realize they miss their [church] family or that what they sought doesn't exist.

God-grown character. It's all a matter of maturity that only God can accomplish in us, if we let Him. This is the reason for this rant: I was reading Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest this morning and saw in today's session the following question:

Are you willing to spend and be spent; not seeking to be ministered unto, but to minister?

Is my focus to minister? Or is my priority to seek to be ministered to? For myself I'll just say that I regularly must acknowledge that God isn't finished with me yet.