Here I raise my Ebenezer

I don't write often because I see no quality in my writing, and many times I think, why I should say something when it's been said before in a better form? However, writing helps organize my otherwise disheveled mind, so here it goes.
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I'm at a "spiritual low," as a Christian would politely say. The truth is that I haven't prayed on my own for more months then I can admit, and many times doubt if I'm really a Christian. After all, I've learned enough about Christianity to know the basics--there's no such thing as a lukewarm Christian.

But I am a Christian, but many times the full Gospel message hasn't hit me yet, it hasn't resonated in me. I correlate my prayer life and actions with how well I'm doing in my "relationship with Jesus," as if Jesus is impressed with how consistent my prayers are. Like I'm a better person than Mr. John Doe because I read a passage that day. Or that He is dissatisfied because I wasted the day on the internet. That I can't pray because my hands are stained with the blood of guilt. He died so that I might live, and live to the fullest, that I might be freed from this dog-eat-dog world, where the only name that matters is my own. I'm called to live a radical life because it's freeing from this one. This one that makes me feel inadequate as a man, a friend, a son, a brother...a person. That I can say these things and be unashamed because I no longer trust in my inadequate self but a perfect God.

For the longest time, I couldn't understand that "personal relationship" with God. It simply didn't make sense to me, how could you call Jesus your best friend? Or, as Donald Miller put it (and weeks of my undying prayer request) "living as if she just got off the phone with God?" I'm still confused and boggled by it, but I had a little taste of this past school year. When I lost God, my confidence, my dignity...when I resorted to a TV episode so I could forget about my situation for thirty minutes...it seemed like everyone else had a place to be. But actually I was right where I needed to be, and with a broken and contrite heart, "Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God. He, to rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood."

So here I raise my Ebenezer, as a show that You have been faithful. I'm not where I expected I'd be this summer, but Your ways are above my ways, and Your thoughts are above my thoughts. Thank you.
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Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.