A rebuttal to Ms. Staloch's schedule which is *so* busy and *so* tiring.

Typical day in Mike's life:

6:30am: Wake Up
7:00am: Actually wake up
7:00am-7:20am: Shower/prep for the day
7:20am-7:35am: Answer emails, browse news and deals on the web, monitor auctions, etc.
7:40am-10:20am: Start class or work
10:30am-11:00am: Chapel
11:15am-2:00pm: More classes
2:00pm-7:00pm: Work
7:00pm-8:00pm: Answer emails, take care of business, dinner
8:00pm-9:00pm: Catch up with Nikki
9:00pm-10:30pm: School work/extracurricular learning
10:30pm-10:45pm: Goodnight call from Nikki
10:45pm-11:30pm: Personal stuff: bible, contemplation, blogging, balance checkbook, tidy up room, brush my teeth, quick workout, yadda yadda
11:30pm-1:30am: More school work
1:30am-6:30am: sleep

This is only a typical day.  Usually I work 6-8 hours a day on top of 18 credits, not just 5, and some days I do more web browsing than homework, and vice versa.  I sleep a lot on Saturdays, too.

I am sick of my sin.  I do not want to be in this place anymore.  I feel like I can't get out, and the more I try to get out of my sin and seek after God, the more I fall into sin.  The more I try to do what pleases God, the more I run in the opposite direction, blatantly sinning in the face of a powerful God.  I want to give up.  I want to quit trying.  Satan is tempting me to suppress my desire for righteousness and give into sin, and half the time I listen to him.  I am sick of my sin, and the more it makes me me sick, the more I fall right into it.

Of course, I have to have the ficade of being a Christian at Northwestern College and Bethlehem Baptist Church and around my roommates and around my co-workers.  And whereever I go, I have to smile, and say 'God is in control,' and 'God bless you, too.'  I do not know what it means to live the Christian life when things are tough, because I've never experienced it.  The first two years of my Christian existence were easy; now what do I do now that I am tempted?  Outwardly I am a Christian, but inwardly I am vile.

^{Romans 7:14}For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. ¹⁵I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. ¹⁷So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

   ²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²²For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

From a comment I made earlier today on Xanga, reposted here for my own enjoyment:

There are two dangers for pride, at least speaking from my own experience.  I've been through both, and it seems like you may have as well.  I'll offer them to you, but not out of judgment.  How can I judge a man whose heart echoes mine?  The first type of pride exalts me and makes me feel high and mighty; that is, until I fall.  The problem with being prideful about how good you are (at anything) is that eventually you won't be the best at it, and then you feel like the suckiest creature on earth.  The second kind of pride involves making yourself low so that nobody else can take you to a low place.  Picture American Gladiator, if you've ever seen it, in which two opponents joust each other in attempt to knock the other from the platform.  The danger there is falling; therefore, many take the second kind of pride.  If they're already low, no person, no thing, and no God can make them low.  It's essentially the "safe" place.  You can't fall off the high wire if you never get up there.  This lowly hubris is no better than self-exaltation; it is false humility, and it's worthless. 

Rather, I hope you can grasp (and I wrestle with it daily) a balanced, godly view of who you are in Christ.  Yes, you're fallen, but you are also a glorious re-creation.  You are not in bondage to any sin, including anger and criticism.  They are choices which God can help you conquer.  As I've been working on these, I find that you cannot dwell on failures--you'll only get frustrated.  Instead, dwell on Christ.  I've said too much already.

I was mindlessly singing a hymn once (I'm not perfect), until the the chorus grabbed my attention.  "If you tarry [delay] until you're better, you will never come at all."  What sick man needs a doctor?  What new car needs a mechanic?  When you are broken, seek Christ.  Anyhow, the hymn:

"Southern Harmony"

1. Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched,
   Weak and wounded, sick and sore;
   Jesus ready stands to save you,
   Full of pity, love, and power:
   He is able,
   He is willing: doubt no more.

2. Ho! ye thirsty, come and welcome;
   God's free bounty glorify;
   True belief and true repentance,
   Every grace that brings us nigh,
   Without money,
   Come to Jesus Christ and buy.

3. Let not conscience make you linger,
   Nor of fitness fondly dream;
   All the fitness he requireth
   Is to feel your need of him:
   This he gives you;
   'Tis the Spirit's rising beam.

4. Come, ye weary heavy laden,
   Lost and ruined by the fall;
   If you tarry till you're better,
   You will never come at all;
   Not the righteous,
   Sinners Jesus came to call.

5. View him prostrate in the garden,
   On the ground your Savior lies;
   On the bloody tree behold him!
   Hear him cry before he dies,
   "It is finished!"
   Sinners, will not this suffice?

6. Lo! the incarnate God ascending,
   Pleads the merit of his blood;
   Venture on him, venture wholly,
   Let no other trust intrude:
   None but Jesus
   Can do helpless sinners good.

7. Saints and angels, joined in concert,
   Sing the praises of the Lamb;
   While the blissful seats of heaven
   Sweetly echo with his name.
   Hallelujah!
   Sinners here may sing the same.

I got in a fight with Nikki last night.  I hate fighting.  I hate my anger.  Sometimes I can be such a failure.

Relient K, the most teenie-bopper Christian band I can imagine, speaks a lot of truth from my experiences.  It’s not the most poetic source to quote--I could quote a Classical poet or a Psalm of David, but why bother? 

Nonetheless, Matt Thiessen (or the songwriter) relates his frustration with trying to be what God tells him he needs to be.  He knows it's right, he’s trying hard, but it’s sort of like a twisted game of Candy Land.  Two steps forward, ten steps back.  Cursed ladder.  You’ve almost won the game when you get the card that sends you back to that goofy guy with the gumdrops.  I forget his name, but I’d call his space ‘Square One.’  I hate Candy Land.

"I’ve been banging my head against the wall

For so long it seems I knocked it down, yeah it got knocked down

And the heating bill went through the roof

And the wall I knocked down was the proof

That the landlord needed to kick me out

 

I got evicted now I’m living on the street

My spirits lifted.. oh wait, that wasn’t me

Too many turns, I’ve turned out to be wrong

This time I learned that I knew it all along

 

When car crashes occur, then I’ll be what you were

When I see what I should, when I see that it’s good

To experience the bittersweet to taste defeat then brush my teeth

Experience the bittersweet to taste defeat then brush my teeth

 

I struggle with forward motion, I struggle with forward motion

We all struggle with forward motion

 

Cause forward motion is harder than it sounds

Cause every time I get some ground

I gotta turn myself around again

It’s harder than it sounds,

every time I get some ground

I gotta turn myself around again"

If you have ever found the menu item that meets your hunger, or a fitting desk chair, or the right color to paint a wall, then you know what it was like for me to come across what Thomas Carlyle says about anger: “In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”

So what does one do when there is an increasingly large desire to move toward an attitude of peace, love, and humility, all the while sliding down the slippery slope of sin and anger?  I live for the next Bad Moment, for the next Screw Up, for the next Outburst, for the next Mistake.  I wish I could turn my anger off.  I’m climbing an ice-covered mountain cliff, and I’m still at Base Camp.  Where do I go from here?