Finding God in the Dark by Ted Kluck & Ronnie Martin

Author:Ted Kluck & Ronnie Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012070, REL012120, Faith, Disappointment—Religious aspects—Christianity, Loss (Psychology)—Religious aspects—Christianity
ISBN: 9781441261151
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Enjoy the Silence

Sometimes we can’t remember where it all went wrong. In the beginning I just wanted to be a songwriter. I loved songs, and there was something about the process of creating something out of nothing that intrigued me. I spent hours listening to simple, beautifully crafted pop songs and hoped that someday I would learn how to do it. In an era before Myspace, iTunes, and Bandcamp, it felt like an impossible dream that I might be afforded the opportunity for anyone to actually listen to, much less buy something I wrote. Eventually I was given an inch, but what I desperately wanted was a mile. It wasn’t enough to simply enjoy something God had given me an interest and desire for. Instead, it birthed a hunger in me that could never be filled. My appetite had become insatiable. There was nothing that occupied my thoughts more than music. When I wasn’t writing, performing, or recording, I was planning tours, designing merchandise, buying gear, corresponding with managers, meeting with my booking agent, and dialoguing with my label . . . all day, every day. And you know what? People admired me for it. They respected how hard I worked and how devoted I was to my art. What they didn’t know was how self-centered, self-indulgent, self-consumed, and self-focused I was, at the expense of personal relationships and spiritual growth. I had traded my hope in Christ for a religious experience called “me.”

We’re all given raw materials. We’re each given a portion. In reality, it’s only by God’s amazing grace we’re given anything at all. Sadly, our base tendency is to hoard, feed on, and become gluttons with the things God has privileged us to be stewards over. Instead of praising Him for the portion He’s given us, we indulge in it because we don’t think God has been generous enough. We love our goods more than our God. How tragic would it be if one of our kids opened a gift we bought them but promptly ran away, never spoke to us again, and spent every waking moment caring for and obsessing over the gift instead? Imagine the confusion and horror of trying to understand why they would choose a gift over the one who gave them the gift! Our first reaction would be to find them and get rid of the gift as soon as possible, because it had ceased to be the thing we gave them. Instead of an object given out of our affection, it had become the object of their affection.

Anytime we love our gifts more than the Giver of gifts, we enter into a state of disharmony, dissatisfaction, and disarray, and plunge headlong into the dark side effects of those heart conditions. Because we were created by a God who is above all else, we were never meant to put anything else above Him.

It’s a convicting, heartbreaking truth.

The reason we struggle with our desire for the things of God is because we’ve cultivated a stronger love for the things He gave us.

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