You Can't Force Belief

Recently I've been asked to perform a piece I wrote on sexual purity and it posed the greatest challenge I've been up against. At the rehearsal, after I knew I had flopped, I walked up to the director and asked for her comments on the piece. Nothing she said was new but somehow it still cut like a fresh wound. She called the piece "shapeless"; it had no movement and it was just like I was reading it. I sat and cried inside and listened closely as she continued to pour out tips on how to give life to the poem. It felt like producing crap, knowing it's crap and still hoping that it's accepted...but it wasn't. I walked away with my tail between my legs but not because I was reprimanded for a poorly done job but because someone else noticed. As I turned to leave I asked her what I could do to give it life, and she smiled at me and said, "believe in it."

Why was it so hard to believe in this piece? I knew the importance of sexual purity and I could produce statistics on HIV/AIDS, STI's, heart breaks, and sex related human trafficking but I also knew the extreme position I took. It's one thing to go into a church and cry down christians saying "God owns you" but to stand in the midst of people, some not caring about God, and say "God owns you" takes a conviction I do not own. I knew the hard line I was taking and how fickle the arts is. In a world where "everyone is having sex" people are hostile to messages about purity and antagonistic against message of the gospel, yet they love art and though they wouldn't agree, they may listen simply because it is art.

So my rehearsals became fatal attempts to fly because in the back of my mind I knew what I was saying but in the front I was sifting my heart to keep out the offensive part and it just kept flopping. Then I prayed and asked God to give me the conviction to speak with authority but I still had my reservations about the issue so I just kept flopping. It was like attaching an anchor to a rocket and expecting to reach the moon. I started out hot and on fire but then it got to a point where my mind blocked my heart and my tongue froze up but since I was half way there I had to let the words out so they just came out motionless. Even saying it to myself caused issues because I was fully aware of what I was doing and for all these years I've either not taken a stand or took one oblivious to the consequences.

But after some prayer and quiet time God spoke to me and said, "you cannot force belief". In my mind, and in my soul I felt so strongly about this message but in my heart I wanted just one more peep, one glance, one change at wrong before I started to write again. Sin is a dangerous thing. I can heap up all the self-confidence I have but my swag's too tight to let loose this fire in my soul; my heart was too dirty to come clean with myself and say "I've done wrong in God's eyes many times and I don't know where this message came from but it's here and it's not to keep." I was too proud to admit my own impurities and short falls, and not humble enough to ask for help. I thought it was all about me and I lost focus on the one who kept me pure, who cleaned me when I was impure who forgave me over and over again, and who put these words in my mouth because all of my poems are cheesy, and self-centred and commercial and lack depth and substance; and it's only by grace that I am saved from it.

Belief is a strange thing. When Jesus was on earth a woman touched his robe and was healed because she believed and yet the Pharisees saw him raise a man who was dead for four days and tried to kill him. No amount of logic can cause belief. I was at my youth group and we were discussing the bible and the journey it went through from the time the scrolls were written to what we have now and its history is plagued with controversies and reasons not to accept it as God's word written as it was originally. And at the end of it I said that belief in God's word is nothing that we can do in our own strength. It takes divine faith to believe it because if we honestly examine history we would probably come to the conclusion that what we have was altered and therefore not to be believed in. But that's what faith is about. When our faith is gone, our life is gone as christians.

We can't muster up the assent that what is told in churches about Jesus (especially) is right. Neither can I muster up any passion or conviction to back up my poem - especially when my legs aren't strong enough to help me walk away from sin. I have turned my mind towards acceptance of my poem but only God can change my heart to comply. And it's the faith that God has given me which can make me fly. I can't force belief because it comes out forced.  When I performed Toy Soldiers there was nothing that could convince me that I was wrong or out of place and it came out like that. But now, I have to rely on God like this is the last thing I say because if I don't, it very well might be.