Our Beautifully Connected World

Sickness

2011-07-23T15:41:00.003-04:00

I am incredibly, incredibly, incredibly sick. Not a on my death bed, coughing, wheezing, running a fever sick. Although my feeble body succombs to these maladies as well, there is a much deeper illness that plagues me. From my knowledge of others, I know I am not alone in my disease, this disease does not afflict a portion of the population, its affliction rate is 100%. This gruesome disease is a disease of the heart. We all have it. We all want to do good, but we have a pervasive inclination towards bad. I want to think of others ahead of myself at all times, but I can't. I do not want to lust anymore, but it doesn't happen. I want to serve others with the majority of my time, but I get cranky, tired, and simply selfish. This disease is bad news.

Throughout time, man, to some degree, has recognized this disease. We realize our meager existence as beings that are extremely complex yet o' so small. We realize there are things we ought to do yet can't do all the time no matter how hard we try. We realize we long for something beyond this world. We realize we long to worship something greater than ourselves.

In response, religions spring forth. Belief systems that seek to address the big questions. Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is good? What deserves my worship? Our mere knowledge that we need to ask and answer these questions is fascinating. The questions in themselves are evidence that there are answers. If I evolved from a few chemicals, why in the world would I develop a longing to answers questions about something that does not exist? I long for food and there is food. I long for sleep and there is sleep. I long for a God, I think there must be a God.

If we are going to reach truth, I believe this is where we must start. We have to wrestle with the realities that we like to hide under the bed. This universe had an origin, and the odds, through scientific discovery, are becoming increasingly greater that it wasn't a coincidence. There must, in my opinion, be a higher being. This is not something simple to say. If there is truly a being that created this world, pitiful me if I do not treat the seeking of the truth about this being with great importance.

I encourage all to engage in a thorough search of the answers to these big questions. But be certain to not put any rules in place. One cannot say, "I will not consider Islam because I cannot adhere to a religion through which murderers justify their actions," or, "I will not consider Christianity because I had a bad experience when I was young." The adherents cannot speak for the God. If there is truly a being that exists that is big enough to create this world, this being cannot be properly be represented by human beings like you and me. No stone can be left unturned. Only one set of beliefs can be right. There cannot be 1 god and 300 million gods. Engage in a proper search, nothing is more important.

I will throw in my two cents. I believe that the true God is the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He sent His only son to die on a cross for our sins. Yes, the God of Christianity.

There are many reasons. No religion properly deals with the sickness we all have like Christianity. Let's take a bird's eye view of our existence. Here's what I think we can know. We know that we live in a ridiculously complex world. This world is in an even more unbelievable, vast universe. More incredibly, in this vast universe, on the planet earth, are these extremely complex beings. Not just humans; birds, fish, trees, bushes, grass, vegetables, livestock, lions. It's really all incredible. I know for a fact, I didn't create this place, neither did anyone with all the same attributes as me. It had to be someone with incredible power, someone far beyond humans. If this being exists, it deserves ALL of our worship. Lebron James doesn't deserve it, neither does Brad Pitt, or President Obama.

Once we realize that there is a being that created this place and is inconceivably vast and powerful, we begin to look like scum real quick. This is where the work of Jesus Christ steps in. There is no way we should be able to interact with this being or please this being on our own accord. Judging by this creation, this being must be all that is good. Which means, it cannot accept anything that is bad. There is something like a debt that is owed to this being. If all of this is true, humankind has been stockpiling I owe yous to this being since the beginning of time. This is where we have to wrestle with the person of Jesus Christ.

There are both Jewish and Roman historic accounts of the person of Jesus. He certainly existed. Many try to write Him off as a great teacher or prophet. Get into a study of religion to test this out. It gets real dangerous, however, when we try to do this. Jesus gave us no room to hold Him as simply a great teacher of prophet:

Mark 14:60-62 (ESV)

⁶⁰And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, "Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?" ⁶¹But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" ⁶²And Jesus said, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."

Matthew 26:63-64 (ESV)

⁶³ But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, "I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." ⁶⁴Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven."

Luke 22:67-70 (ESV)

⁶⁷ "If you are the Christ, tell us." But he said to them, "If I tell you, you will not believe, ⁶⁸and if I ask you, you will not answer. ⁶⁹But from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God." ⁷⁰So they all said, "Are you the Son of God, then?" And he said to them, "You say that I am."

These are the three accounts of Jesus before His accusers prior to heading to the cross. If you asked me if I were the Son of God, and I told you I am and that you will see me sitting by Him in heaven, I would not be a man to be held as a great teacher or prophet. I would either then be a liar, a lunatic, or the actual Son of God; as C.S. Lewis so wisely points out in Mere Christianity. Jesus did not want to give us room to hold us as mere teacher, so we must make a decision. Either hate Him or love Him, there must not be any in between.

It is this that is so compelling about Christianity. First, it is only religion that properly points out that we have a massive debt to the Creator and the only religion that provides a remedy, and o' what a beautiful remedy it is. God orchestrates His story in a way that we may verify the facts. It is all historical, a person's quest to discover the truth about Jesus is the most the monumental journey. Do not read one source and think you have found out all you need to know. Learning of the person of Jesus is a lifelong task, there is a lot of trash out there about Him; one that doesn't regard Him as either Lord, a liar, or a lunatic, should not be read. I believe you will find author's that call Him a liar or a lunatic are appalling, which will leave you with only one choice. Do not fall for any of the soft talk about Jesus. Men that have piggybacked Him and like to take bits and pieces of Jesus in hopes of broadening their audience. Either take all of Him or none of Him, just taking a nibble is insulting.

Do It Now

2011-02-24T19:52:00.002-05:00

Whenever a task appears in your mind that must be completed eventually, do it then. The fulfillment of the task will bring contentment and the freedom felt later will be rich.

Media

2010-12-20T13:13:00.003-05:00

Legalism seems to be an increasingly vulgar word. Partially justified, as we are saved by faith, not fully by the law. However, much of the fear seems excessive. It seems to flow from the notion that God needs us to package, market, and sell Him. Nothing could be more preposterous. If one thinks that God needs him for anything, then a reevaluation of his fear of God is proper.

Some would probably call a hesitation to indulge in secular media legalistic. I would argue otherwise. Trouble arises due to the absence of true Christians in movies and television. As humans, we are constantly imitating and mimicking the actions of those around us. Others show us the proper way to act, of course, imitation is more evident among the youth and less evident among the elderly, yet the elderly's world view is still evolving.

The coexistence of our current media environment and our malleable hearts creates a problem. True Christians do not exist in movies and television, because movies and television display people acting like other people. Noone can act like a Christian, you are either a Christian or you are not. The existence of a Christian is so black and white because there is either an indwelling of the Holy Spirit or there is not. It is impossible to act Spirit-filled, because those who are Spirit-filled are a different breed. Of course Spirit-filled people can be on television, but fictional representations could only occur through a Spirit-filled actor playing a Spirit-filled character. Even then, it is an unnecessary stretch, and its occurrence is improbable in our current media market.

The only logical solution to our dilemma is abstinence, or at least temperance. Why, as a chosen people, would we willingly spend two hours of our gift from God watching lost people live a fictional life? Possibly to learn what drives our culture? Seems a bit unnecessary. God will grant us clarity on the needs of our culture simply by living an attentive life of prayer. Possibly to not turn off the world from a Christianity that seems too judgmental? Once again, unnecessary. It is not our strategy that bring people to God, the Bible is clear that God calls the lost. The only results of our cowardly acceptance of worldly media is the contamination of our hearts and the placement of a stumbling block in between the lost and a pure heart.

Our calling is to pattern our lives after Christ's. I am doubtful that Christ is admiring the artistic expression and the mind numbing entertainment of current mass media. He is more likely repulsed by the perversion of His creation and more disgusted at the widespread acceptance of this perversion by the people who call themselves His.

Pursue

2010-12-18T14:31:00.004-05:00

I want to pursue You.

The world spins and spins
and it is ever so hard to focus on the end.

The trees sway and the birds sing
all announce Your present and coming glory.
But in their midst is so much turmoil, so much pain.

My heart pants for Your refreshing brooks,
but my head spins in all the chaos.

What does it mean to only live for You?
Sometimes I feel like I know, but I always prove myself a sand castle.
Sturdy when the tide is out, drowning and crushed when the waters push forth.

Most concerning, I have hope.
What is happening in the hearts of the lost souls?
I am on a course for certain glory.
The lost have no sense of direction.

Yet I don't pursue them with a vengeance.
What am I to do with all of this Truth?
I didn't choose it, He chose me.
Everyone else needs it, but I don't know what my role is supposed to be.
Do I hope to live it until they get it?
Do I really care if they do?
If I don't care, do I really grasp the Truth?

I constantly prove myself broken,
Lord you must rescue me.
Show me more of You,
so, possibly, more people can be free.

The weight of the world is heavy,
but the world has never felt light.

Buy this,
eat that,
drink this,
wear that,
look at this,
watch that.

Lord when will the world realize it is fat?
Will it happen on this sphere?
Or are we just supposed to endure?
Will they know I am Christian by my love?
Or am I just another person that is here?

Content to be comfortable,
content to be rich,
content to be admired,
content without You?

Don't let it happen Lord!
My heart is a shapeless wave,
tossed to and fro.
Build up sturdy riverbanks Lord.
The tides of my heart must have purpose.
Petty things must not suffice.
I must lead folks to You.
It is the only thing that is right.

Without You nothing adds up.
But my heart is rarely good at addition.
Subtraction seems to be a talent.
Subtract foresight and pleasure is instant.
Add a few hours and hindsight will reveal multiplied problems.

If I can only add You to everything,
blessings will multiply,
subtract self,
and my heart won't be divided.
Salvation will abound.
My life will have purpose,
I will be pursuing You.

Quick As I Can, Without Rushing

2010-10-16T19:14:00.011-04:00

There is nothing I love more than God's revelation. Times in which God chooses to let my feeble mind grasp a sliver of His omniscience. In all honesty, every good thought I or anyone else has is revelation from God. He is the originator of all pure thoughts, of this I am sure.

Whether evil thoughts can be original I am not so sure. Proving man should never be arrogant about his enlightenment or the originality of his thoughts. If good, our thoughts had a divine origin, if proud of bad thoughts, we wouldn't know enlightenment if we tripped over it.

Where God grants me the most revelation is in the synthesis of physical, mental, and spiritual. I am increasingly convinced the following desire is innate: using our mental faculties to solve problems in a physical manner. Speaking of the New Creation, Isaiah 65:21-22 states: "They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands." Isaiah is prophesying of a time when Christ will physically reign on the Earth for 1000 years. When exactly this will happen is for scholars to debate, and only God to know.

No matter when it happens, I know it is going to be glorious, and "my (God's) chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands." The New Creation is going to be all that the original creation should have been. In the New Creation everyone is going to build their own houses and eat out of their own gardens (Isaiah 65:21-22). This is resounding evidence for my earlier statement: God intended man to receive fulfillment from physical action inspired by the mental and spiritual.

Before I proceed, I do not believe we are called to completely remove ourselves from society and live in the wilderness by self-sufficient means. Some may be called to this, but God instructs us to, "go and make disciples of all nations.." (Matthew 22:19). Doing so would be difficult on a self-sufficient, isolated plot of land.

I am no farmer, but I have been blessed to receive refreshing revelation with regards to my physical abilities. I enjoy playing sports, since beginning my pursuit of God a little over a year ago, He has blessed me with amazing revelation with regards to how the mind is to coordinate the movements of the body. He has revealed knowledge that transcends the traditional tips of sports and is applicable to all physical activity I have engaged in. It doesn't matter whether I am playing golf, basketball, tennis, or soccer, my performance improves in each sport with the application of "tips" God has given me when I am striving to focus on Him while playing.

These "tips" are so unique from any other athletic advice that I have ever heard, I am quite hesitant to attempt passing them along to others. An example would probably be illuminating. Enjoy what God has granted me that transcends conventional coaching, and may appear to be lunacy.

First find the point deep in your gut that would be the point that your entire body would rotate around if you were to lay horizontal and spin freely like a top. We can call this point your one point, as it is called in a martial art that God exposed to me at the beginning of my pursuit. Analyzing retrospectively, it was the short study of this martial art that God used to begin my journey in understanding the coordination of my body. While playing a sport I may focus on that one point being a cup of coffee and throughout the action focusing on that cup of coffee being just as likely to spill out the back of my body or out the front, and then out each side. That may have sounded like hog wash, but that is just one of the hundreds of revelations concerning coordination God has granted me in the past year. Each one leaving me feeling like I am breathing fresh air for the first time.

All of this is written to lead me into the revelation just granted. Possibly the most useful mantra in the use of my body is "quick as I can, without rushing". We are always balancing on footing the width of a needle's point. If we tip to the left we are trying too hard and therefore becoming tense. If we tip to the right we are trying too little, going too slow, and therefore allowing our brain to paralyze our motion. Hence, it is important to move as quick as we can, but also make sure we are not rushing.

Within athletics, I am able to pick out a body part and focus on it moving as quick as it can, without rushing, and the result is a motion that is a fully coordinated and concerted effort by the entire body. Going as "quick as I can, without rushing" has served me well in the playing of sports, but, obtusely, I have never applied it to my everyday life. Possibly because moving too quick is rarely an issue.

However, I have moved into the big boy world in the recent past, and have sadly found myself becoming more stressed than usual. Stress breeds tension, and tension causes us to forget to stop rushing. It took a sermon by the man whom God used so mightily to lead me towards Him, Francis Chan, to bring me back towards where I need to be.

God used Francis' October 4th, 2009 sermon "Slow Down and Show Grace" to reveal that I needed to be moving as "quick as I can, without rushing" through my life. In the message, Francis reflects on James 1:19: "My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry". During the message, it became clear that in my new job as a teacher I was rushing, and when I rush I am not quick to listen, and I am not slow to speak, and I am not slow to become angry. If I am going to be the greatest witness I can be I have to do these things.

My students have plenty of people in their lives that are slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry, I can't just be another one of them. In any endeavor, it is natural for us to try to control the situation too much and therefore put forth too much effort. When playing a sport, this will manifest itself in pulling our power from the wrong source. We may try to generate power and move our feet too much, or possibly our head. While trying to move each individual body part as "quick as I can, without rushing" I find that some parts are moving too fast and others are moving too slow. The result is a motion that may be just slightly out of balance and might work sometimes but is destined to fail. The parallel in life is evident. We often try to pull from the wrong power source. God must be our power source, and He only becomes the power source when we are going as "quick as we can, without rushing". There is no room for God when we rush. Rushing proclaims a lack of faith in His control. He has granted us the ability to do all He is calling us to do. For some of us, doing what He has called us to do means moving quicker, but I would argue for most of us it means not rushing.

God, I call for you to control my every step. Do not allow me to rush my pace. Rushing my pace is always a sign of walking towards the wrong destination. Do not let me become bogged down by the goals projected on me that I know to be meaningless. My only goal must be Your Throne Room. Once my eyes are fixed to the highest point, my steps will not waver. Don't let them!

i and He

2010-10-09T10:41:00.001-04:00

Who am I?

I am a speck of sand living in God's ocean.

Analogies don't do it justice.

His power is great.

My existence is feeble.

My mind focuses on time and hunger.

His mind comprehends all that is.

Calculating a ratio would be foolish.

God transcends mathematics.

Yet, there is an anomaly:

The all-powerful, all-knowing Ruler of All is most passionate about myself and my fellow specks of sand.

He knows all there is

But all He wants us to know is love.

God is love and love is God.

Men are selfish and selfishness is man.

We know little and believe satisfaction is found in knowing much.

He knows all and knows love is all.

We won't know Him until we know love.

We won't know love until we know Him.

Him is all.

We are, for now, victims of the fall.

Focus

2010-10-07T19:21:00.005-04:00

It's all going to crumble Lord
Yet my heart tells me differently.

My heart pants for the waters of instant pleasure
Please hide the streams.

This is the only way my broken nature will learn.

"Work harder.
Buy more.
Live better."
Screams the world.

I search for the mute switch.
My fallen self cannot stand under the weight of the world's message.

I can only pray that my Lord will steady my legs,
brace my back,
and remove the load whenever He sees fit.

Hurry Lord,
Don't let me be weak.

You have shown me the Truth
and it is not the weekend.

Adjust my eyes.
My heart must gaze eternally
while my eyes set their focus on glorifying You in the here and now.

There is no greater calling.

Boredom

2010-09-30T19:00:00.003-04:00

Human beings have a tendency to get bored. This statement is basic, but not easily explainable. It would be quite explainable if we didn't live in a world where babies are born, public speaking causes worse stomach aches than fruit roll-ups, and our skin protects itself from cold with bumps.

I have to think our boredom comes from the devil. It must. There is nothing good about desensitization to beauty. Only a fool could deem raindrops beautiless, yet raindrops frustrate us. Frustration towards raindrops reveals at least one of two human conditions: selfishness or forgetfulness.

Selfishness, because only a selfish man could be angry at a phenomenon that is necessary for all our survival. "I don't care if the entire world needs rain to eat, or that these rain drops are the product of a beautifully orchestrated process. I need to mow the lawn!"

Forgetfulness, because a man must either be forgetful or lack exposure to science in order to not marvel at a water molecule. This man must not know that only a Perfect Designer could create the building blocks of matter with the foresight that these infinitesimally small constructions will bond resiliently for generations. These bonds must be resilient, it is upon the shoulders of hydrogen and oxygen's bond that the Designer bases His creation's existence. It is, after all, this creation that is molded in His own image and He is longing to speak directly too.

He does this although He knows that the creation is going to become unamazed at His world's balance of fragility and stability. The people are going to cease caring that His system could have a bug. Hydrogen's electron orbitals could function slightly different and ice would sink rather than float, making marine life impossible, and therefore throwing the whole system out of whack.

Or He could have accidentally pushed the Earth a little further from the sun, leaving it impossible for any living being to maintain a healthy body temperature for one day, let alone reproduce. But God's creation is boring, it is more fun to push buttons on a screen.

This is what I find myself longing to do. What is it inside of me that causes me to long for the debut of computer software as much as I long to spend undivided time with Him? What is it that causes me to marvel at the grandeur of the buildings on a postcard rather than look beyond to the rolling hills and beautifully placed clouds in the background? There is nothing evil about buildings or operating systems, it is only our priorities that can be evil, and quite irrational.

It is my longing that God will strip away my fascination with the new and place my focus on what He has provided to all. The deepest joy is found in searching His scriptures and marveling at His nature. My heart discovers this often, but my heart repeatedly proves its brokenness. I pray that God will drive me deep into my pursuit of Him every time I slide towards restlessness, and patch up the holes of my heart that inevitably make way for the devil.

Forgetfulness

2010-08-06T19:09:00.000-04:00

I'm broken Lord.

All I can do is lay before you and plea.

Beautifully, this is exactly where you want me.

There isn't a more powerful position a man can fill.

Face down

Tear ducts swelled

Heart poured out at the feet of the Lord.

I dump all of my ache at your feet, Lord.

Take this toxic selfishness and dump it wherever it is you stow such things.

The Creator of this world does not dump his waste in the deserts of Nevada.

The Creator of this world do not devise clever regulations to cure my problems.

He oozes perfection.

I am able to swim joyfully in the turbulent depths of my heart only because my Lord knows every square inch.

I do not revert to self-help books to blow on my wounds.

I am strongest when I go directly to the Surgeon.

Why do I waver?

Why do I stray?

Why am I so forgetful?

The answer to heartache is always found when my face is down, my tear ducts are swelled, and my heart is poured out at the feet of the Lord.

I must not waver.

I must not stray.

I must not be forgetful.

The Surgeon does not ask for my insurance card.

He does not need my money.

All He needs is my time.

All He needs is my devotion.

All He needs is my heart.

Lord,

I must not waver.

I must not stray.

I must not be forgetful.

The measure of a man is how quickly he puts his face to the floor, lets his tear ducts swell, and pours out his heart before the Lord.

Why must we measure differently?

Why must we believe there is anything else that could satisfy?

Why must we believe we could offer God anything He would want other than everything?

Why do I waver?

Why do I stray?

Why am I so forgetful when indescribable peace is found every time I go to my knees?

Right and Wrong

2010-07-24T17:46:00.010-04:00

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27

What does God mean when He says we are created in His image? This is a question I often ponder. I believe it is an important question. If we can grasp what parts of us are like God then we can have a more complete view of who He is.

We know that we do not possess the power of God and nor do we exist on the same scale as Him. There are many things about our surroundings and ourselves that God knows and we are never going to understand, but we obviously have similarities to God or He wouldn't have said it is so. He isn't in the business of flattering us.

God isn't politically correct because He doesn't have to be. He isn't careful in what He says because everything He says or does is perfect, He literally is all that is good. This is where I believe one of the similarities lies.

We, as human beings, long for all that is good. We have a sense of what is good and bad, what is right and wrong, we simply have trouble following our heart that thirsts for goodness. This reality falls absolutely in line with the doctrine of Christianity.

Through the Bible we learn that there is an Almighty Being who embodies all that is good, and there is also an evil being who desires to wreck the relationship between the Almighty Being and His creation. There is a link between the creation and the Creator. He has created the creation (us) in His image so we long for all of the things that He longs for, the greatest and most encompassing of these longings being love. However, the Creator has allowed the evil being a considerable amount of influence over His creation, even calling him "the god of this age". Despite the efforts of the devil to wreak havoc in our lives, we still long for all that is God.

I believe this is manifested greatly in the older generations of human beings. There is no human (other than Jesus, of course) that is going to reach perfection, but I do believe human beings are collectively somewhat rational and mostly good (as the Bible tells us). Since we are mostly good, and we are always learning from mistakes and through experience, it would make sense that the older generations will have learned how to be good to the greatest degree. This occurs because God has placed hazards and pitfalls in the paths of all avenues of sin. One can temporarily make a rather enjoyable life for himself by obtaining 10 credit cards and buying everything his heart desires. Doing so could make sense to a 13 year old who only sees the fruits of material possession and not the hazards. Unfortunately this path makes sense to a lot of men and women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, but you do not see many 70 year olds fading the magnetic strip. Likewise, drinking, drugs, stealing, and sexual immorality can be enjoyable for quite some time. People do not indulge in these sins because they produce immediate turmoil, they do it because the initial enjoyment is rich, it is the final consequences that are harsh.

All sin is short-sighted. Whether it takes 8 hours to develop a hangover, 9 months to have an illegitimate child, or 60 years to be judged for all your actions, all sin has consequence. This is why God calls us to "set our hearts on things above". It is the people who are far-sighted who are able to overcome sin. A lot of things look enticing when viewed only in the context of 24 hours, 1 month, or 1 year, but consequences always loom, whether on earth or in heaven, there are always consequences.

It is the people furthest along in years that have witnessed sin run its course too many times. These people have often shifted their world-views and made lifestyle changes in response to the turmoil they have witnessed as a result of sin. Whether the turmoil was observed externally or internally, these people have had the most experience with God's laws, which makes them a resource when a youngster is deciding between right and wrong.

Of course the best place to turn when looking for behavior advice is to God Himself and His Word, or even to someone who earnestly strives to be Christ-like. But it can sometimes be hard for less experienced Christians especially, and even more experienced Christians to put God's Word into the context of their world, and it can be even harder to hear God's voice. We should always look to and exhaust these three options when looking for guidance in any of our decisions: God's Word, God Himself, and Christ-like influences, but when struggling for clarity an additional filter may be beneficial.

We have already concluded that the older generations are inherently going to be the most Christ-like in their perception of sin. Once again this does not mean that everyone within a certain age range is anywhere close to perfect, they have simply witnessed the most turmoil as a result of sin and have naturally had their perspectives' shifted by these experiences. Therefore, when considering carrying out an action, it may be beneficial to consider which generation would be most likely to approve of it. As a younger generation, we must realize that our parents, grandparents, and their generations did not always act as they do now. They act as they do now because they have enjoyed the most time on this earth, and, as a whole, have gathered a larger amount of perspective and wisdom than the younger generations.

Of course there are going to be outliers in each statistical sample. There are some 18 year olds who are among the most Christ-like people on the planet, and there are some 75 year olds who still find utility in picking up prostitutes and drinking until they fall over, but as a whole the 75 year old population is going to act in greater accordance to God's laws than are the 18 year old population. It could do us as the younger generation a lot of good to strive towards pleasing our grandparents' generation before we please our generation. If we do so, we will be much more likely to please God, and pleasing God is the first and only step towards pleasing the right people.

Till it Hurts

2010-05-25T23:51:00.004-04:00

Love till it hurts.

Pray till it hurts.

Serve till it hurts.

Study His word till it hurts.

I have recently been struggling though one of the times of discontentment I have written about before. It is not the emptiness that I felt before knowing God personally, but rather a sense of discontentment that I have learned is only a time in which God is molding me, yet it can be so hard to feel upbeat during these times. Despite the devil and my fallen nature's cries to the contrary, God always prevails with a defining moment on the back end of the discontentment.

The words italicized above are what God hit me over the head with tonight and left me feeling as if my heart has already reached His eternal kingdom. These are the moments that must sustain us, yet we have little control over when they come. We can only stay faithful, believing that God will fulfill us when it is His time.

This is somewhat of a second mission statement, with my first being "Seek Him, Bring Multitudes"; however, "Till it Hurts" is rather unique and clarifying. I have spent considerable time wrestling with the balance between walking by the Spirit and taking up my cross. The walk by the Spirit side of me feels that I must be slow and only respond to what the Spirit has "prepared" me to do. The problem with this is that I often feel I am not being bold enough in my walk. If I am only committing action when I totally feel ready then I don't feel like I am fully walking by faith. At the same time, if we engage in ridiculous self-denial and behavior so extreme that it is socially unacceptable in hopes of taking up our cross, then we are stifling our witness and not fulfilling the great commission to our highest degree. This is a difficult tightrope to walk, and I feel that the revelation enjoyed tonight and the subsequent action will help me walk the rope with greater precision.

The list of "commands" listed above are in an order of priority. Matthew 22:37-39 tells us that loving God is our greatest command and loving people is our second greatest command. This should not be taken lightly. In this passage, Jesus Himself is handing down the greatest commands. Therefore, as Christians, loving God must be our first priority in every action and loving others must be second.

Second in the list is praying till it hurts. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to pray constantly. Verses 16 and 18, bookending verse 17, tell us to rejoice always and give thanks in everything. In my opinion, these are some of the most absolute commands in the Bible. Not many places in the Bible is emphasis added in the form of constantly, always, and in everything. I believe praying, if healthy, encompasses these other two commands. Through prayer we should be rejoicing in and thanking God for what He has given to us.

Praying is an extremely crucial aspect to any religion and especially Christianity. The Gospels told of Jesus praying often. Prayer is our direct link to our Creator; it is also the most absolute way to display our faith. If we didn't have faith that our prayers would be heard and at least considered, then we wouldn't pray very often. All of the other "till it hurts" in this list can be done to some degree without a faith in God, but prayer requires at least some faith, and persistent prayer requires strong faith.

Third in the list is serving till it hurts. There is reason why Jesus spent so much time talking about serving. People expend a lot of effort trying to stop thinking about themselves. Much of the appeal behind drugs and alcohol is the transformation the substances often grant to the user; possibly from a self-conscious worrier into a care-free pleasure seeker. I am starting to believe that our ultimate calling is to completely stop thinking about self. True love cannot be enjoyed unless we completely eliminate ourselves from the equation. Neither can true worship. However, we cannot just will our self to love perfectly or worship perfectly. We are still fallen. Our only hope of denying self is to immerse ourselves in service. If we are joyfully pursuing service we have no time to think about our self and we are displaying God's love in its most perfect form.

Fourth is studying His word till it hurts. This falls to fourth because study is dead without the other three. There are plenty of people who have a deep knowledge of the Bible without a deep love for God. How they do this is still a mystery to me, but they do it! Studying the word till it hurts is crucial because it is easy to let Satan and his temptations talk me out of studying God's word. Spending large amounts of time in the Bible can be hard, yet the fruits of having His word engraved on my heart I know are invaluable. Deep knowledge requires time, lots of time.

Thinking about how flippantly I juggled the idea of taking up my cross is rather disheartening. Doing so is an insult to how painful of a sacrifice dying on the cross really was. If I am expecting to be strong enough to be martyred for Jesus, I better be willing to love, pray, serve, and study until it feels like torture. My flesh is so weak. My mind knows that no matter what I sacrifice on this earth it is worth my eternal reward, yet my heart strays. I pray that my heart knows that a life of earthly torture would be worth only my eternal reward. The beauty is that a heart committed to these four precepts is guaranteed to bring eternal rewards to many more than just its owner.

Control

2010-05-25T22:32:00.002-04:00

Lord, we all want to control. We can't fully trust that You have control over everything. How ironic is it that the only way we can gain control is by completely turning ourselves over to you?

Lord, all I see is what is before me. How I feel in this moment. How bright the light is at the end of my tunnel. Please strengthen my faith that the only way I can gain control is by trusting in Your control.

Time

2010-05-22T23:04:00.002-04:00

Our greatest obstacle in any endeavor is time. Once we begin to love our activity or our Commander enough that time is not an issue, then we are freed to become great.

"Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth.... They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from." -C.S. Lewis

Time seems to be something no one has enough of, at least in the rich world culture we live in. Time is money, right? This type of mindset can be quite a hindrance when pursuing God. Spending quiet time with God is an integral part of a close relationship with our Creator, yet all of our experience tells us that we must make the most efficient use of our time. The world's definition of efficiency certainly does not include precious time spent outwardly doing nothing; however, we are truly doing everything.

If analyzed with an accurate frame of mind, spending undivided time speaking to and worshipping God is the most efficient thing we can do. This world isn't going to last forever, so why do we believe that pursuing paper, metal, and praise is the best thing we can be doing? The answer lies in our natural tendency to react to the evident and tangible before us. We shouldn't feel guilty for having this tendency, but rather for succumbing to it. This is largely why it is so important to be cognizant of what we are surrounding ourselves with. Although we like to believe otherwise, the strongest among us are even shaped by the settings they occupy. This is why it is so important to invest our time wisely.

Interestingly, if we invest our time in absolute pursuance of God I believe our calendars will begin to appear more open, and before we know it we will have had a much greater impact than we thought imaginable. There are several reasons why I believe our calendars will open up. First, God has the ability to prepare us for whatever it is He wants us to accomplish; therefore, when it is His time, He can certainly prepare our hearts and minds for anything that is in His will. Ultimately, what are we really accomplishing if our accomplishments do not lie within the Sovereign Creator's will?

Second, our time seems so crunched because a sinful life is fuelled by sin, and lifestyle sin is time consuming. I am a firm believer that all of us have a spiritual longing, and a spiritual longing is only filled by things of the Spirit or things of the flesh (sin). If we are not striving to be filled by the Spirit we are going to fall victim to sin. I see this manifested greatly in the lives of those who do not find spiritual fulfillment in their careers. If one holds a job for the sole purpose of a paycheck and possibly for entertainment, then it is, in my opinion, almost impossible to live a lifestyle that is not full of sin. The natural tendency in such a career is: go, go, go; sin, sin, sin; work, work, work; sin, sin, sin. The holder of such a job believes that he or she has "earned" his or her fruits of labor and now has free reign to spend it however he or she pleases. Contrarily, someone burning for God will not settle for a job that does not allow them to further His kingdom through their work. Therefore, what our society classifies as work will often not feel like work for them. Someone who loves God is fuelled by God and will therefore be able to go, go, go in any circumstance that they are certain is within His will. A calendar still may be desired in order to organize all of the things God has planned for us, but the calendar will not feel like shackles.

An example can be found in television. I don't want to become legalistic and call watching television a sin, but if we watch television more than a couple hours a day we should probably start searching ourselves and determine whether this is right. Some programming can be educational or equipping, but most of it is garbage. If everyone who called themselves a Christian would turn their television time into purely God time, most of the problems we whine about on the television would be fixed. The early church of the New Testament did not seem to whine about the brutal murders of their fellow brothers, but rather drew closer to God, placing supreme faith in the fact that He could control all things, and begging Him to give them the boldness to die for Him.

Self Control

2010-05-16T09:39:00.007-04:00

"A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry" -C.S. Lewis

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23. My grandmother believes that these are in a progressive order; in other words, one can't have joy without having love, and one can't have peace without having love and joy, and so on. She believes everything in the Bible is there and ordered for a specific reason. This is something I can easily believe; if God created the heavens and the earth, then what makes us believe that He couldn't order words in an exact sequence?

I believe this is the main rebutal to Bible scholars who refute the absolute accuracy of Biblical texts. These people must believe that there is something divine about the Bible or they wouldn't spend their entire careers analyzing one book. I would have to think Gone With The Wind was pretty special to spend my career critiquing and analyzing it. Although these scholars acknowledge the Bible's divine nature, many of them spend most of their time trying to poke holes in the Scriptures. I assume these men and women are simply falling victim to the nature of their job and therefore the nature of man. It's pretty hard for man to think about anything but himself, and looking out for number one within the arena of Bible scholarship most likely means postulating off the wall theories about the Bible.

This past spring, during the inaguaration of the new president at my college, the school hosted two "renowned scholars" who had been featured on the History Channel and a part of the Jesus Seminar. Wahoo! I ignorantly found this pretty cool upon first hearing it. Anybody who knows enough about the Bible to be featured on the History Channel and be a part of a well known event that is called the Jesus Seminar must have an unmatched connection to God Himself, right? It wasn't long before I learned that the Jesus Seminar is a biannual event that began in 1985, and whose chief aim is to seek an accurate historical perspective of the Bible. These guys truly believe that God needs them, their letters behind their names, and their diplomas on the wall to portray an accurate depiction of the Bible. They don't have a direct connection to God but rather to Satan himself.

The men with inflated brains and egos hosted a panel discussion as one of the events during the week. I wasn't able to attend any of the festivities because I was at a golf tournament, and I am not sure if my absence was a good thing or bad thing. If I had've been there I'm not sure I could have resisted the urge to jump up and pose the question: "Can you guys refute the fact that there is an incentive within your profession to formulate ridiculous theories because the History Channel isn't interested in interviewing those who simply legitimize the Bible?" I like to think this would have been a Christ-like thing to do because these guys are like the modern day Pharisees and Sadducees. They are using God and His Scriptures as a stepping stone to noteirity. But for some reason God didn't allow me to be at the events.

He did, however, allow my friends from the Crazy Love book study I was a part of this semester to make a stand. Four of them went and met with the president to try and persuade him to revoke the invitation extended to the Bible scholars. My friends gave our president enough credit to believe that he was simply inviting them through ignorance, and resultingly went to the meeting with a list of clear Biblical contradictions between the inerrant Scriptures and these men's teachings. From what I was told, they were only granted about ten minutes worth of speaking time in their hour long meeting. The rest of the time was filled with the president making excuses for the men and saying things such as: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and we must expose ourselves to many different teachings in order to find our own truth". How he spent 50 minutes speaking with such empty and cliche statements as these is a mystery to me. What my friends gained from the meeting was the depressing knowledge that our new president at our United Methodist affiliated college and a transplant from a seemingly conservative, and Christian college didn't know what he believed, which is sad. I was very proud of my friends though, they not only met with the president, but also held a worship service the night of the scholars' big, boring presentations. They may have been beaten down by the outcome of their meeting, but they still knew where to turn when everything seemed to be going wrong, our Father.

Recently, this is where I am seemingly struggling. I have spent my last two weeks attempting to align everything to graduate college, and playing in our national golf championship. During which, I feel like I have been stumbling. The two weeks have been filled with events, as well as a prevailing feeling that the most loving thing to do is to spend as much time as possible with people that I will not be seeing for a while or possibly ever again. Resultingly, my private time with God has moved to the backburner. The outcome has been catastrophic. I have begun to be annoyed by little things, less gracious with people, easily angered, and simply distant from God. I feel myself beginning to act as I did before I knew the love of God, yet this time I can't stand it; which I assume is a good thing. After all, one does not know he is in darkness until he sees the light. Before, I had never seen the light; now, I have enjoyed the light that is God and am heartbroken by how easily I can slip towards darkness.

This brings me to the topic of self-control. Before recently, I believed that I possessed a large amount of self-control. I didn't know if it came from the Spirit or not, but I had it. These past two weeks have shown me how powerless I really am without God. As I feel myself slipping I bear down. I grit my teeth and tell myself that I will not let myself fall away from God. However, no matter how tightly I grit my teeth and how earnestly I desire to change I still feel the same sin within me the next day. The only resolution is a transformation of one's heart orchestrated by God. I don't have the power to change my heart on my own. I am a part of a sinful and fallen species that, therefore, can not aspire to true self-control without the intervention of God. The only solution to my fallen nature is God and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. I truly believe that the fruits of the Spirit are only granted through constant pursuance of Him, and I have gained a greater appreciation for the role private, intimate time with God plays in His shaping of us. This must be our ultimate goal, to be shaped by God. We are constantly being shaped. If it is not being done by God, who is it being done by?

End Times Bible Prophecy; Are We There Yet?

2010-04-21T22:40:00.002-04:00

The following links to the thesis paper I recently completed:

End Times Bible Prophecy; Are We There Yet?

Obstacles

2010-04-17T12:20:00.002-04:00

Every person possesses a unique set of characteristics and desires. This is obvious, and it should therefore be obvious that each person is blocked from a devoted relationship with God by unique circumstances as well. This probably keeps ministers up at night. All of us, if we have tasted the sweetness of God's love, want to spread the good news. It is the only reasonable thing to do if we have truly enjoyed the presence of God. We possess enough faith to desire sharing the Truth, yet our faith falls short. We fail to fully grasp that there is no conceivable way to reach every person with a blanket outreach program. This is why any missional work that has not been ordained or blessed by God is fairly futile.

We are constrained by our human foresight. Humans cannot reach humans without the help of a divine source. Luckily we know the Divine Source. The only way we can hope to be missional is by drawing so near to God that we can't help but carry out His plan or hear His voice directing our paths. Our big nets may catch a few fish, but even those fish could be in the net against their will.

It is my desire to be the tool God created me to be in His kingdom. I know I will fall short because I am always going to be imperfect. However, the winner of any contest is not the one who obtains perfection, but rather the one who comes the closest. There is no precise formula for running to God, but I do know it includes earnest prayer and study of His word. I also know that trying to direct every step towards Him is our supreme purpose, and it is only through this purpose that we are going to bring people with us.

Too

2010-04-16T21:28:00.006-04:00

Be too generous to cheat

Be too brave to lie

The two rules listed above are attributed to George Washington Carver. Carver is esteemed by many as a brilliant inventor, teacher, and artist. What many are either unaware or skeptical of is Carver's claim that all of his revelations can be attributed directly to God, as Carver proclaimed:

- Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.

- Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth.

- I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

Carver pragmatically pointed out that "science is simply the truth about anything" and God is the Truth, so clearly science and God should be and are intertwined. Mr. Carver's insistence that his enlightenment came only from drawing near to God is tangible support for the Bible's many declarations that God is the possessor of unsearchable knowledge. In fact, many of history's most celebrated scientists have proclaimed faith in God, and He is willing to bestow His understanding on all who draw close to Him.

The fact that God is the keeper of all understanding should be intuitive to those with faith. Nevertheless, learning that many of the most game-changing scientists were men who sought God is encouraging. I am blessed to say that I have felt the hand of God shaping my understanding. He has not guided me to the creation of the telegram quite yet, but I can truthfully say that God has led me to academic, athletic, and spiritual enlightenment over the past 9 months. The words strung together in these blogs is a testament to the wealth of spiritual enlightenment God has granted me. A year ago I could testify close to nothing about the character of God, but in a relatively short time He has completely transformed my understanding through experience with Him. The transformation has been of such a dramatic nature that it could only occur through the work of the Spirit, and has left me so satisfied by my contact with God that I am unsure I could drift away from Him if I tried my hardest to do so.

As a college golfer, God has met me where I am and strengthened my faith through my two primary activities. I recently completed my senior thesis paper that will soon be linked at this blog site. During the writing process, I felt the unmistakable hand of God gathering motivation within me and then granting me supreme clarity in times that I handed the project completely to Him. If I did not listen for His guidance in the process I my as well been typing with my nose. It may sound seem odd to some, but the same has been true in my golf game. The only time I am granted enlightenment in the technical, mental, and emotional aspects of golf are when I am striving to focus on God. Not superficial, "I do this for you, you do this for me, slot machine devotion", but genuine "I can't do this without you God, don't let me care about this silly game more than You devotion". With time, and focus on Him, I can honestly say that God grants me golf enlightenment that hasn't come from a book, a magazine, or a television. Frankly, I'm not sure the stuff God reveals to me I could explain how to do to anyone else. It is simply a way that God has strengthened my faith, and revealed to me that He is truly the Keeper of all understanding and true understanding only comes through Him.

Learning of George Washington Carver and other scientists' proclamations of God's inspiration has been great encouragement. When pondering Carver's rules, God used the opportunity to reveal to me two rules that I hope to live by:

Be too unselfish to horde

Be too in love with God to be easily pried from devouring His word or serving

What is Your Foundation?

2010-03-07T16:50:00.005-05:00

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash. Matthew 7:24-27

Ask any structural engineer what the most important part of a structure is and the answer will most likely be the foundation. A human being must stand on something, just as a tree needs deep roots and a building needs a solid foundation. Persons can build their lives upon a career, a family, wealth, a hobby, a house, a drug, friends, or a combination of any of these. These are some of the most obvious foundations for one's life, therefore they are the most popular. However, if anyone with any sense were to honestly analyze the merits of any of these foundations, faults would quickly be found. A career can be lost for a variety of reasons: downsizing, outsourcing, or mechanization. Friends and family can and will disappoint and are frankly constrained by the fragility of human life. Wealth is fleeting, a house is decaying, a hobby will eventually lose its luster, and drugs need no explanation.

Many have probably heard Jesus referred to as the Rock and not given it much thought. I say many because I like to think I'm not the only one who has glazed over the meaning of this name. Only recently have I begun to appreciate Jesus as my Rock. I certainly have plenty of room for progress but I am thrilled to profess that I can feel the sturdiness of Jesus below many aspects of my life. Because I have felt the benefits of the foundation Jesus provides, I can truthfully proclaim: much of the despair experienced in this world is due to the vulnerable nature of our foundations. The more we dig into a fragile foundation, the more irrationally and selfishly we are inevitably going to act. Contrarily, the more we set ourselves into the foundation of Jesus' love and atoning death, the freer we are to see things accurately and therefore understand how unimportant our problems are.

It becomes hard to worry about the real estate market when we are constantly thinking about living in God's house. A lot of financial problems melt away when we care more about jewels on our heavenly crown than our fleeting earthly wealth. We become less tied to our career when we care less about our house and wealth, but even more so when we realize that our real job is professing the glory of God and helping the poor. Our relationships with our friends and family become much more fruitful when we view them as God's children and look forward to loving them even more deeply in eternity. A hobby is much more enjoyable when we view it as an avenue to glorify God, and drugs become unattractive when we are constantly in awe of God's creation, grace, and mercy.

Jesus' foundation provides the answer to all of our personal and societal problems. Although Satan will never let us reach a truly Godly society in this life, we should always try. As a result of our efforts we will be granted a more peaceful and fruitful earthly life, as well as a Godly society once we pass. Placing every aspect of our life upon the Rock is a lifelong process and provides no step by step recipe. We must commit ourselves to prayer, not just thank you for my food pre-meal prayers but desperate and constant cries to God, reading His word, and complete immersion into all things Him.

All of Me

2010-03-06T20:27:00.003-05:00

Take all of me Lord, because I know You will be satisfied with nothing less, and I will be satisfied with nothing less than You. Infiltrate every aspect of my life, all will be fruitless and incomplete without Your guiding light.

Spiritual Warfare

2010-02-28T22:50:00.002-05:00

From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse. Romans 1:20

It seems to be common Christian thought these days that spiritual warfare does not exist or needs to be downplayed. However, I believe that spiritual warfare is evident and right before us everyday.

Everywhere we look we see amazing "man-made" innovations: the modern car, airplane, computer, and the ridiculously small yet functional handheld devices that fill every one's pockets. We have a tendency to only see these innovations as trophies of man's inventiveness, leading us to believe that man is the meaning of this world; all of these thoughts originate from the devil. The devil prevents us from focusing on the Source of man's intellect, rather we look through a lens that convinces us man is the solver of all problems. The evidence for sin is right before us and evident through our tendency to not peel through the superficial layers and find the true Originator of All that is. If we were honest with ourselves we would see that all of our creations are simply products of the resources God has granted us, yet we view "our" innovations as products of man and become intoxicated by the idea that man is the meaning of all before us and fail to look beyond to a higher power.

Throughout history, many have held the belief that creating a utopia out of this world is possible, but all fail. They fail to realize that a utopia will only be enjoyed once we pass from this world and this world passes away. The more we try to make this world perfect through man's inventiveness, the further we will slide from God. I once heard Francis Chan, a pastor in Southern California and the author of Crazy Love and Forgotten God, state,"The devil is in the drywall". This statement is extremely accurate and speaks to how easy it is not to recognize God's glory if we are surrounded by man's products. If our life is lived constantly within drywall or metal walls and is saturated by high-tech inventions, it is easy to deny God's existence. To combat this, we must get out and experience God's nature, all the while worshiping him for it. I have found this to be so true through my own experience. When I am in a setting that does not permit me to enjoy nature I find it much harder to worship God; unfortunately, I quickly become intoxicated with the abilities of man without a conscious decision to do so, it is just a function of human nature. What we are surrounded by has a strong effect on us whether we like it or not.

God's canvas is this world, and it is so magnificent. It is so far beyond what any human being could create, and when we constantly place ourselves in it with the right intentions it becomes impossible not to at least search for a higher power, and once we begin searching it is my prayer that all will find the Truth, which is the God of the Bible.

Sustaining our relationship with God truly hinges on our ability to recognize the signs of His existence around us. Recognizing how beautiful His creation is and worshipping Him for it is crucial. I often wonder how beautiful areas of this world were before they were tampered with by man. The way that trees and grass and plants and animals interact is so intricate, marvelous, and self-sustaining, how could we not strive to look beyond the surface for the Creator of these things? The answer is clearly the resistance of the devil.

Support for God's existence is found in how passionately people from less sophisticated civilizations have pursued a spiritual knowledge throughout history. As we study primitive civilizations there is a common theme, they all had an awareness and a longing for a higher being. This spiritual longing that existed in these people, and still exists in us, is evidence of God in itself. If we are truly products of chance and coincidence, there would be no reason for an indwelt spiritual longing.

Our deafness to our inner longing is only a result of our modern age. Currently, it is easy to fill this spiritual longing with all the avenues of entertainment and vice that abound. Therefore completely denying that this void is even a spiritual longing, we view it as simply a longing for pleasure and entertainment. We are so entertained and consistently surrounded by noise and ideas that it is very easy to either temporarily fulfill or stifle our spiritual longing. It is once this spiritual longing has been quenched that we begin to argue that man should be tolerant of every one's opinions because there is no absolute truth, which could not be more false.

God is the truth, He is the source of our spiritual longing and the spiritual longing will not begin to be filled until we seek Him desperately. When studying primitive civilizations, a high degree of reverence for nature is almost always present. This is because their visions was not clouded by a constant bombardment of messages and entertainment; as a result, they were able to realize how beautiful nature is.

In this age, we have created such sophisticated supply chains and economies that it becomes very easy to not acknowledge how dependent we are on the ground beneath our feet and the sky above our heads. It isn't until natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the perceived melting of ice caps, or the recent earthquake in Haiti occur that we begin to acknowledge our dependence. However, we tend to stop at the acknowledgement and do not strive to look beyond to this intricate sphere's Master Creator. Whether we like it or not, we are at the mercy of this natural world, which is representative of how we are at the mercy of God's wrath and judgement.

Most unfortunate is our privilege to exponentially more knowledge than any other time in the world's history, including in depth knowledge of God's truth. Despite hundreds of Biblical translations, thousand of brilliant books by Spirit-filled men and women, and innumerable amounts of churches and Christian organizations, our collective acknowledgement of His existence in our daily lives is pathetic. I would venture to argue that people such as the natives that lived in this country were more spiritually enlightened and much closer to the Truth than much of our informed world of today. They recognized that man is not the meaning of everything, there is ridiculously obvious evidence pointing towards the existence of a higher being, yet we appease the devil by becoming consumed by our own abilities and lives rather than seeking and desiring God.

What are now tourist destinations to us (ex. the pyramids and Stonehenge), are evidence of how deeply the people before us sought a knowledge and relationship with higher beings. The creation of these landmarks in such a primitive age were gargantuan tasks, yet these people were not even privileged to a Bible, they were simply following the voice within them to seek something more. In our age, seeking something more often ceases at a healthy retirement account. We, Christ believers often not exempt, are far to satisfied by defining ourselves by our accomplishments and the perceptions of others. There is far too great of a tendency to only sprinkle enough God on our lives to make ourselves feel good. Our Stonehenge would consist of a couple pebbles stacked upon each other. Picking up our cross and following Jesus is taken far too lightly. We must seek to cast off all our desires and seek His, it isn't easy but it is our ultimate calling. We aren't going to be able to gain everything until we lose everything. We won't gain proximity to Him, which is so sweet, unless we are willing to lose everything except Him. If we want to fully enjoy His peace and joy, we must be willing to become detached from everything that is around us: our work, possessions, friends, and even family. He must be number one, and there shouldn't even be a close second.

This would be scary if it stopped here, but the beautiful thing is that pursuing Him produces immeasurably better human relationships. I cannot predict how each will be blessed because everyone is created differently by Him and will therefore be blessed and used differently; however, I do know that understanding God's love for us will enable us to love others to the greatest degree, but, in order to enjoy His fruits, we must make sure we are pursuing our relationship with Him whole heartily.

Scarily, God tells us through Scripture that He will have more mercy on those not privileged to His Word than He will on those who have knowledge of it. How He will treat the people not privileged to knowledge of Him during judgement is unclear, but we do know that He possesses the ultimate measure of justice and will therefore judge fairly. However, we must not consume ourselves with such stumbling blocks, we must consume ourselves with the knowledge we do possess of Him and answer His call. His Word tells us that those who know it yet do not turn away from their sins and come towards to Him are like a dog that returns to its vomit.
In Jesus' letter to the church at Laodicea, He tells them that He rather them be either hot or cold, but since they are lukewarm He wants to spit them out of His mouth! He rather them be either completely on fire for Him or either completely cold for Him. He is saying that if you know about My resurrection yet it does not completely change your life then you are not truly Mine, your lack of passion makes Me so repulsed that I want to vomit you from My mouth. How would it feel to have Jesus look you in the eye and say that? Vomiting may be the most repulsive bodily function, yet Jesus is telling many of us that vomiting is precisely what He wants to do with us. This should crush us. The Creator of this beautiful world, the only Begotten Son of God, wants to spit many of us out of His mouth, myself included. I spent far too many years being lukewarm, I am just now beginning to become aware of how gross I was to God, and it is a great practice to routinely refocus on how repulsive I was to Him. I am so thankful that I am no longer quenching His Spirit and am striving to move closer to Him through everything I do.

I strive to be so overflowing with His love that I do not leave one person on this earth that God created me capable of bringing to His eternal kingdom. This is how it occurs, people are not won to Christ by gimmicks and promotions, but through people so in love with Him that they naturally emit His brilliance and power. The last thing I want to hear God say when I reach heaven is, "I created you with the ability to bring more". The only way we will not hear this is if we strive to love Him with all of our being, constantly worshipping Him for His creation and casting away the desires of Satan. I want my heart to be a cup that has been so filled by His love that it cannot help but overflow.

Seek Him, Bring Multitudes

2010-02-18T10:15:00.002-05:00

Seek Him at all times and to the greatest degree. Bring multitudes to His eternal kingdom.

Most successful organizations (businesses, non-profits, government agencies, religious groups) possess a mission statement. By having a strong and relevant mission statement, all within that organization can pass each decision through the filter that lies within the statement. This is very important for an organization of many people that all seek to pursue one goal harmoniously, it can also be very beneficial for smaller organizations or even individuals. Selecting a mission statement can be delicate because it must be specific enough to clearly define the purpose but also broad enough to be relevant to every decision. Above is the mission statement for my life that was revealed to me by God yesterday. The statement does not redefine my beliefs in any way, but rather gives me a clear and concise filter to pass every decision and action through. Trying to align one's will with God's word and His will can be a gargantuan task, and it is my hope that through this statement I can more easily evaluate my every decision and likewise explain the reasons for my actions and decisions to others with greater ease. By no means do I believe that living by this statement is going to make following Christ easy, learning how to seek God and therefore resultingly leading many to Him should be the lifelong task of any Christian; however, it is comforting to possess a way to quickly test every action or thought.

Everything I have written here during the last two months in some form defines how to pursue the satisfaction of: Seek Him at all times and to the greatest degree. Bring multitudes to His eternal kingdom; therefore, seeking Him and bringing multitudes is clearly complicated. However, there is another way that I have learned to evaluate everything I do: moderate every thought, action, desire, or activity that is not specifically God.

Theory of Moderation

As I move through life and take on new endeavors the more I become convinced that moderation is imperative in all earthly activities. When one thinks of moderation being important he may think of moderating one's alcohol use or moderating one's eating, but I truly believe it is critical to any endeavor. Not exempt from the law of moderation is athletics. In athletics it is very easy to overemphasize a good piece of advice. Tips and advice are great until one begins to focus on them so much that other desired technique is sacrificed. Anyone who has played a sport seriously can probably cite numerous examples when they felt that they had figured the entire game out through emphasizing one aspect of the technique, a heavy dose of humility often follows such thoughts.

An example can be found in golf, the key to golf is repeating the same act over and over again. If one wants to be good, he must turn his body and mind into a machine that is able to consistently repeat the same action. It is beneficial to hit it long and high, but if one can simply hit the same shot consistently he or she will be relatively good at golf. In order to become consistent, it helps to have solid technique. Technique is achieved through drills and tips, but it is very easy to focus on these drills and tips too long and they then become counterproductive. For example, if a teacher instructs one to take the club more inside, this tip may work wonders for him in the short term and one may falsely believe that he has found the secret to golf. Typically, just at the moment one believes that he has found the secret to the game is when he begins to overemphasize this tip and is taking the club too far inside. In order to combat this, one must have other swing thoughts, feelings, or indicators that will reveal when one is beginning to focus too much on one aspect of technique. The key is learning how to use beneficial practices in moderation, because if one were to focus too long on a particular tip he will soon have a host of other problems. This is why golf and many other technique driven sports can be so frustrating, much like life.

As most have probably learned, no one piece of advice is key to making one successful by itself. Analysis of one's self is critical but only beneficial if the goal of such analysis is moderation in every activity and action. It doesn't matter if one is doing a good thing, such as practicing a presently beneficial golf tip, if he does a good thing too much the result will be overemphasis and the encroachment of this thing into other areas of his life. In life, there are certain tightropes one must walk in order to live successfully. On each side of these tightropes lies areas in which one would either be focusing or trying too hard and on the other side an area where one would not be trying hard enough. As I have written before, one can easily fall off the tightrope of love. Without God's template for loving others, it is easy to either tie too much of one's emotions to the love of others, or evoke too little love for others in fear of either getting hurt or simply as a result of indifference and selfishness. Through heightened awareness of God's love for us, we begin to more easily love others as God wishes; this will not happen over night but through the aid of God we are given a steadying hand and a lamp to guide our feet along the tightrope. We are no longer learning to love others in darkness through trial and error or through mimicking the example media provides, but we are following the path of the Understander of All.

This Understander of All is also the outlier in my theory of moderation. I am sure others have theorized extensively on the benefits of moderation, but my awareness of the imperative nature of moderation has come through observing my own desires and actions. As I move through these endeavors, it is amazing to use life as a laboratory for testing this theory. No matter what the area of my earthly life, I always find that it is beneficial to act in moderation, this never fails. There is only one point of focus that is worth focusing upon with all of our being, this point of focus is God. One can never have too much God in their life; I know this sounds very cliche, but if one is to examine their own life, I believe they would agree that nothing earthly is ever beneficial in large quantities. Expensive and exquisite vacations are fun in the short term, but when the fun is over it is very easy to feel more empty afterwards than before. Water, the most plentiful and necessary resource on earth, can even be harmful in excess. However, God is the creator of all that is good, one can never have too much God, one can have too much studying, too much work, too much leisure time (all good things in moderation), but one cannot have too much God. I can not fully explain it, my only explanation is that God desired to wire us this way. He indwelt us with this sense of longing that is only fulfilled by Him and made it so that nothing other than pursuing Him would bring eternal satisfaction.

I know many are sceptical of the statements such as the following, but as I move through life I become more adamantly convinced of it: it is impossible to focus too much on God. If we focus all our attention consistently on Him, He is going to bring unspeakable freedom and peace, and is going to speak through us and to us. I am not saying that we will be consistently happy while in pursuit of Him, because happiness is temporary and God desires to do purifying work in us that will not result in happiness in the present but happiness in the future and eternity.

As a culture we must constantly look upon our lives and be sure too much of our energy is not devoted to one particular earthly activity or desire. If we dedicate the majority of our energy to one activity, it becomes very easy to wrap too much of our pride and self-worth up in this activity. For instance, referencing back to golf since I spend so much time playing it and the law of moderation works well within it, if I were to practice golf for 8-10 hours a day I would certainly become better technically but I could still be doing harm in regards to my preparation for a competitive round. Mental stability is critical to success in golf and if I were to devote the majority of my waking hours to practicing golf, not leading a balanced life, it would become very easy to try too hard while playing competitively and therefore become easily angered and not play to my potential.

Contrarily, drawing close to God always brings us closer to our potential. If any of us wants to be successful in any endeavor then we must draw close to God. He is the Creator of all, therefore He is the Understander of All. He sees all the angles and can thus lead us down the most direct and unobstructed path to our full potential. If we are going to have our most positive impact in anything we do then we must be led by the hand and Spirit of God. Once again, I can't fully explain it; I can only advise everyone to observe how this theory of moderation works in their own lives and whole heartily pursue God in every endeavor and witness how much more fulfillment He brings to every activity. By turning our every action and thought over to Him, we will be walking down the path He destined for us before we were conceived, we will be exuding the fruits of the Spirit, and will be moving closer to our potential every moment.

Civilization's Direction

2010-02-10T21:09:00.002-05:00

Anyone who is vaguely in tune with current events and news knows that America and the global economy are showing signs of emerging from an initially very threatening economic downturn. Many politicians, chiefly those in America and China, are being hailed for their quick response to the economic problems and are gaining credit for fending off an economic catastrophe. My feeling, however, is that we have simply given pain killers for and bandaged a wound that is calling for surgery. Sure we may have stopped the bleeding and numbed the pain, but we have only masked a problem that is sure to grow if not fully treated. Just as a wound tends to get infected or cause other complications if not properly remedied, future and greater economic meltdowns seem inevitable if we do not seek to treat the root cause of the problem.

This most recent recession has often been compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both originated in financial markets, the crisis of the 1930s in the stock market and the most recent crisis in the housing and therefore derivatives markets. The similarities do not end there, both downturns were ultimately rooted in spiritual shortcomings, more specifically greed and pride. Greed and pride are often the explanation for corruption and evil in this world, but in the runup to both crises, the 1920s and 2000s, greed and pride were rampant and systematic. In the 1920s, the resulting depression was rooted in unsustainable increases in stock prices. America was enjoying the fruits of rapidly increasing industrialization, and the public conception was that rising profits and increasing stock prices could last forever. The masses were beginning to borrow money from various lenders and place it in the stock market, the appetite for risk was enormous. Accounts from the times indicate that everyone was getting into the stock market, including housewives. Of course, the stock market bubble inevitably burst on October 29, 1929, and the following decade would be dubbed the Great Depression. During the Great Depression there was a return to more conservative money management and a more conservative lifestyle, and many accounts report a surge in Christianity. Hopefully the recovery from this most recent economic downturn will yield similar results, although I am not optimistic.

Those in the 1920s have an excuse for the stock market crash of 1929, ignorance. Markets had only recently become sophisticated enough for such a widespread runup in prices to occur, therefore the market participants were not informed enough to realize how unsustainable their practices were. For the instigators of the economic downturn of the 2000s there is no excuse. With the wealth of knowledge this age possesses, there was plenty of precedence for the participants in the housing bubble to be forewarned. The cause was not a lack of information but a lack of spirituality. The lenders, investment bankers, regulators, and home buyers had become so intoxicated by the pursuance of a superficial lifestyle, that all of them acted against their best judgement. Home buyers should be granted the most leeway because of their privilege to less financial information and their lesser necessity for financial sophistication, but home buyers are certainly not innocent. Their excessive desire to live a cozy lifestyle and impress those around them was the fuel for the subprime mortgage machine. As for all of the other market participants, they should be ashamed of themselves; lenders, investment bankers, and regulators are financial professionals who definitely knew better but couldn't help but get their piece of the pie. Lenders lent at ridiculously low standards in order to pad their pockets, but only because investment bankers were demanding the loans because they wanted to make sure their bonuses had enough zeroes, and regulators were allowing it to happen possibly because of a lack of complete information but more likely because of a desire to stimulate the economy because stimulating the economy has become the measuring stick by which all modern economies lay themselves up against. It is clear that systematic spiritual shortcomings were revealed through the recent economic crisis, and one can hope that the spiritual response will be similar to the Great Depression; however, I have a feeling this will not be the case.

Rather than entering a time of sustained widespread poverty, as occured during the Great Depression, it seems that this crisis is only going to be a blip on the graphs of economic prosperity. The ordeal is far from over, but many indicators are suggesting that the massive government responses to the downturn have had significant effects. This is very positive for the financial well being of many workers, communities, and companies around the globe, but I am afraid that the main result will be a further increase in the collective global pride. The false idea that man can fix all of this world's problems has only been furthered during this recent crisis. Concepts such as fiscal stimuli, lowering of interest rates, and quantitative easing have only bolstered humankind's confidence. Mankind is so blinded by our pride that we fail to link the fact that our actions making the world less environmentally sustainable points towards the existence of a divine creator, and this Creator is undoubtedly the God of the Bible. As the scientific research is unintentionally pointing out, God made this world perfectly sustainable and it is only through man's meddling that the world veers towards its demise. This in itself is enough to disprove the theory of secular humanism. How can man be the source of all meaning when man makes this place fall apart? If we are truly going to aspire to a greater sense of living and a better civilization, then we must fix our eyes on God.

C.S. Lewis, in his book "Mere Christianity", provides an excellent analogy explaining the necessity of moral and therefore Christian living. I am going to paraphrase and modernize the analogy, in hopes of making it more clear and relevant to our times, but I highly recommend reading his entire work for many brilliant explanations such as this one:
Civilization can be viewed as a fleet of airplanes, we will use fighter jets since they often fly in groups, in order for the planes to travel to their destination safely, three things must be established. Firstly, the planes must not collide with each other and get in each other's way. This is symbolic of the rules of law that we have in place in order to ensure fair play. The trouble with faster planes is that the margin for error is smaller and the catastrophe that would ensue upon crashing would be greater. There is a parallel to society, the faster us and information move, the greater potential fallout after a violation of the rules. As aspects of society become more intertwined, the risk of widespread problems rises, as this recent crisis has made evident. Secondly, the planes must be in proper flying shape, the attempts to avoid collision become futile if the planes are not flightworthy. Similarly, it doesn't matter how hard we try to make our societal rules equitable, clear, and just, and how much we spend to enforce them, if those in society aren't making their greatest attempt to pursue morality. Legislation, courts, and law enforcement become more expensive and complicated if those in the society are not looking after the condition of their soul. Lastly, every mission is absolutely pointless if there is not a clear and important destination. If the pilots don't know where they are flying or if the destination they are flying to is not worthwhile then they are simply burning up fuel and wasting the time of everyone. This is the largest point Lewis makes and I would like to emphasize; it doesn't matter if we invest trillions of dollars and theorize in millions of papers and books about how we are going to make this world a better place if we are not aiming at God.

This crisis and ones like it provide a precious chance for civilization to step back and recognize that we are extremely fallible, we have always been fallible, and we will always be fallible. We will not make any lasting progress until we shift our focus away from the capabilities of man through our own power and towards the power of God and the capabilities of man through Him. Sure this world has become a more comfortable place through recent innovations, but we must look past the surface; on the surface we see man using our remarkable intellectual capabilities, but where did that intellect come from? Where did all of the material resources to create these innovations come from? These are questions we have to seriously ask ourselves if we are going to live more fruitful lives on this earth. We must stop focusing on what rules and incentives can be put in place to ensure that we do not bump into each other and must focus on how we are improving the condition of ourselves so we no longer need excessive rules, and, most importantly, we must know where we are going. The only fulfilling and worthwhile destination is closer to Him.

Privileged

2010-02-10T00:06:00.003-05:00

Lord what a privilege it is to be able to kneel before you in darkness and silence, free from any feelings of discomfort or worries for safety. Don't let me quench my privileged circumstances Lord, have me embrace them and leverage them into a lifestyle that maximizes my capabilities for the glory and honor of Your Kingdom.

Parable of the Talents: Matthew 25:14-30

"Voices" Answered

2010-02-06T23:56:00.006-05:00

Therefore, submit to God. But resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people! Be miserable and mourn and weep. Your laughter must change to mourning and your joy to sorrow. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.

James 4:7-10

I will suffer weeks of God's purifying work for ten minutes of His incomparably fulfilling joy.

A few hours more than a week ago I prayed the prayer from the blog post "Voices". Since then I have been feeling the nagging sense of discontent that I have learned only originates from a constant pursuance of God. In order for God to purify us, He must do His work; as I wrote before, us and God working as a team to rip sin from our hearts and fill it with the Spirit is hard work. This week I felt the work God was doing in my Spirit for a longer period of time than ever before; rationally, I knew that such a period of discontent must be followed by a breakthrough, through which God was going to grant me a revelation and immeasurable joy. I say rationally because it is very hard to constantly be faithful that God is doing work in you when you are feeling so much pain and emptiness, but I assure you I was in for a treat.

The entire week I have been struggling to discern the Spirit's voice from my desires and the voices of the evil one. In retrospect, I can be pleased with the fact that God considered me ready to endure such a long period of struggle, but during the struggle I felt so out of step with God's path and desires, feeling an extreme sense of inner longing. The beautiful thing is, during this time God has allowed me to keep my outward joy and love for others, those around me have probably been completely unaware that I was inwardly struggling so mightily. This encourages me that I am truly allowing God to work in me, I have been able to continue to shine His light while He is truly ripping me apart on the inside. At this point you are probably ready to hear what my revelation has been; it came in the form of a scriptural passage that I was led to through a book I am reading: "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But every spirit who does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist; you have heard that he is coming, and he is already in the world now" 1 John 4:1-3. Immediately upon reading this verse I began asking the voices that were speaking to me whether they believed that Jesus was the Son of God, or questions along these lines, and immediately began to hear clear answers of yes and no, allowing me to follow the Spirit with a clear and undivided conscious.

After doing further research, I learned that this passage has faced a fair amount of scrutiny of what is being communicated, but I can only respond to how God is communicating to me through the scripture. Judging by the authority with which He spoke to me through the passage, the immediate results I enjoyed once putting it into practice, and the burden that was taken away from me, I cannot be more convicted that it is a good practice to question the voices within us in this way. There is no way I can assure you that all who attempt to do this will have such a dramatic result, especially if you are not used to hearing the voice of the Spirit. However, I feel that God definitely speaks, and has the desire to speak to each and every one of us, we must simply surround ourselves with His word and teaching, strive to follow these teachings, pray to Him fervently, and quiet ourselves enough to hear His voice. As for me, I am thrilled with the thought of what God might say to me and lead me to do in the future.

In a small group Bible study recently, the leader asked us the following question (or something along these lines):
How would you classify the current state of your relationship with God?
A) The dead of winter
B) The growth of spring
C) The warmth of summer
D) The change of fall
I personally believe that we must hope to be in a blend of spring and fall, striving for God to grow us and change us. If we are in the warmth of summer too long, then it may be a sign that God is not doing as much work in us that He wants to do, and we certainly don't want to be in the dead of winter. If we are in the dead of winter, we have lost all faith and hope. We must stay strong in our faith and assure ourselves that the growth and change we are feeling is God shaping our hearts for the better. The Bible tells us repeatedly that following Christ with all of our being is not going to be easy, but if we pursue Him whole heartedly, the earthly pay off will be rich and the eternal pay off will be even richer.

Too Much Evil, Too Little Hope, and Too Much Comfort

2010-02-04T22:34:00.011-05:00

Moments ago I finished watching The Hurt Locker, not a family friendly flick but one I would recommend for mature audiences. There is a large amount of language and violence but only with the intention of most accurately depicting the Iraq War. I rarely watch movies anymore; however, when I do, the new viewpoint I am able to watch them through after enjoying so much spiritual maturity growth is remarkable. I no longer simply watch through my human eyes, but it is as if God is granting me increasing access to His vantage point. My emotions are more rarely lustful and envious, and more often sympathetic and sometimes empathetic; I am more able to turn my attention to the vastness of God's creation and how He must look upon it.

While watching The Hurt Locker I was convicted of three things: there is too much evil in the world, far too many people experience far too little hope, and the ones protected from the harshest forms of evil take too much comfort in and feel too little gratitude for their cozy lifestyles. Such an accurate depiction of a current war zone was a very powerful image. There are hundreds of thousands men and women currently involved in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan solely because of humankind's sinful nature. So much of the world is in a constant power struggle, each person or groups of people trying to exert their influence and get their fill of pride at the expense of others. Many in the warless world sit back and take pride in the fact that we are not like all those other lawless parts of the world. When, in fact, the only thing holding us back from lawlessness is our fortunate dwelling in civilized society. If any one of us were born into a country such as Somalia or Afghanistan, we would be just as likely to be corrupt or "uncivilized" as the next guy. When we get an accurate picture of a conflict such as The Hurt Locker provides, it is quite sobering and reveals how badly this world really needs a savior.

This brings me to my second point, we take far too much comfort in our lives. I believe it is fair to say that if half of the world population were too travel to the poorest parts of America they would feel like it was paradise. They would be travelling to the same areas that we consider the epitomy of evil when we see images of it on the local news, while sitting comfortably on our couch saying things to ourselves such as: "What is wrong with these people?" and "You don't see 'my' people doing stuff like that". We conveniently fail to realize that half the world lives on $2 a day or less, and it would be sickening for them to see the lifestyles most Americans live, yet they still manage to live similarly moral lives as Americans. Even more sickening would be the revelation that Americans probably save a lower percentage or their incomes than these poverty stricken people do. Estimates fluctuate but all place the U.S. household savings rate below 5%, and it is no secret that the recent economic crisis was caused by rich country households buying far larger houses than they could afford. Not only do we live lifestyles that are thousands of times more blessed that the rest of the world, but we feel the need to borrow money to further our comfort and extravagance. I believe it is also a fair assessment that our low savings rates probably indicate a very low giving rate as well; it is highly unlikely that Americans are saving at a higher rate than we are giving. Being that we consider ourselves largely a "Christian nation", it should be rather embarassing and convicting that we are not following our command from Jesus in Matthew 25.

Receiving such an accurate view of such dangerous circumstances should also give a Christian some perspective on taking up our cross and following Jesus, as we are commanded in Luke 9:22-26. The Bible does not command us to necessarily put ourselves in harms way, but we better be making every effort to prepare ourselves for hardships if we want God to work through us to the fullest extent. These men and women at war are sacrificing their comfort, safety, and possibly their lives for a country, we better be willing to do the same for something so much bigger, our faith. The even more sobering realization is that the men and women at war now's suffering and discomfort does not hold a candle to the amounts of suffering endured in conflicts such as World War I. The amount of armed conflict that has occured throughout the history of the world is astounding, most of those fighting in such conflicts were doing so because of much lesser reasons than a relationship with the Almighty Creator. Think about that for a second, we are called to a relationship with the Creator of everything around us, the being that cannot be looked upon by human eyes, we better being willing to sacrifice everything for such a relationship. I used to falsely believe I was ready to do the big things for Jesus Christ, but then I find myself having trouble listening to God when He tells me to get up off the couch. If we can't listen to God in the small things, it is going to probably be much harder to listen to Him in the large ones. Listening to God and sacrificing for God is like everything else, it takes practice if we want to become good at it. It is not an easy thing to do, the easiest way to live is simply by our own emotions and desires, but the most fulfilling and lasting way to live is in step with God.

This brings me to my third point. It blows my mind how people in such life or death situations can keep their sanity without the certainty of a better life after death. Some of the soldiers certainly have strong relationships with God, but I am fairly certain that most do not. I know that I am going to begin adding those in armed conflicts to my prayers: American soldiers, NATO soldiers, Taliban fighters, Somali militiamen, Colombian paramilitary members, Al-Qaeda members, Mexican drug gangs, and their leaders. Not only will these conflicts be minimized if the leaders seek God's direction, but the soldiers will receive so much more freedom from death and so much more comfort from a relationship with the Lord. War can also be a time that God can penetrate the vulnerable hearts of the scared and add men and women from every nation to His kingdom.

As privileged members of the world's population, we should not only pray for those in less fortunate circumstances, but we should also educate ourselves with less local news and a more accurate worldview. It becomes much harder to become frustrated about being cut off in traffic on our beautifully paved roads in our extravagant cars, or wasting our energy becoming aggravated with a local zoning decision or what Congress might possibly pass next if we are focused on how much more privileged we are than the rest of the world. Intelligently running our country is important in order to provide support to these other suffering areas, but our tendency is not to be concerned with our actions or legislation because we are concerned about the rest of the world but rather because we are concerned about us. We must do ourselves a favor and focus on God's creation in its entirety. If we do, we will be so much slower to anger and become impatient, and so much quicker to care about the well-being of others and thank God for our abundant blessings. Once we become aware of how fortunate we are, it becomes much easier to let go of those possessions and praise God for how much He has given us.

WWJS?

2010-01-31T11:18:00.005-05:00

Most are probably familiar with the What Would Jesus Do bracelet craze, which was an extremely powerful movement, and constantly reminding oneself of what would Jesus would do in his or her situation is a great practice. An equally beneficial practice would be constantly asking ourselves What Will Jesus Say? This is not just a practice but a fact, the Bible tells us that we are all going to come before the judgement seat of Christ. We are all going to have everything laid bare before The Only Divine Being. In actuality, all of our thoughts and desires are already lay bare before Him, but it is a very powerful and either scary or joyous (depending on our proximity to Him) image to know that we will all stand before the throne of this God who cannot even be looked upon by human eyes. This is not only a powerful image to provoke change in our own approach to life, but for me, it also helps me consider the well-being of others and therefore love them as myself. The thought of my friends, family, and those around me standing before the judgement seat of Christ is so frightening. Everything from their lives are going to be laid bare, just them and Christ looking into each other's eyes, I am not going to be able to speak on their behalf, I had my chance to change their outcome while in contact with them on this earth.

When we think of all human beings standing together on equal standing before Jesus Christ, it becomes impossible to exalt other human beings as we so often do, and it becomes much easier to want the best for others. Next time you find yourself watching something from pop culture, whether movies or television, envision the actors, actresses, singers, athletes, and media figures before the throne of God. Upon doing this, it becomes much easier to dispel all thoughts of envy and adoration, that can be so harmful, and rather evoke the emotions of concern and pity. This place of dwelling is only temporary, power on this earth is fleeting and unsatisfying. We are all going to have to stand before Him on equal standing one day, and if we are honest with ourselves, we are doing so today.

Sincerely Passionate

2010-01-31T09:02:00.008-05:00

Before we know who were are, we must know whose we are.

I believe that human beings are much better determinants of sincerity than we think. People naturally gravitate to people who are 'real', whether we realize it or not. There is something attractive about a person who knows who they are. Someone who is comfortable in who they are is simply interesting, they are individuals, because that is who God created us to be. He created us to have unique passions, desires, and personalities; one who becomes comfortable in who God created him or her to be is going to naturally draw people into him or herself, and he or she is going to be able to love others appropriately because he or she has began to love him or herself appropriately.

These people are extremely rare, largely, I think, because we are constantly tugged so many directions. It is hard to resist the urge to feel like 'I am supposed to look, talk, walk, dress, live like this' or 'my lifestyle is supposed to look like this'. I believe there is a remedy.

It is my feeling that everyone would be very likable if he or she fully appreciated God's love for him or her. In order to be the most powerful witnesses we can be, we must be sincerely passionate about Him. Once again 'sincerely' is key here. I have heard many times through many different sources, that hypocritical Christians are the number one reason there are non-Christians. I don't know if this is backed by some scholarly research, but I don't need it to be because it is quite sensible. As I said, people are attracted to sincerity more than we often think, so what makes us think that they are going to be attracted to our belief if we are not sincere about it. If they see absolutely no difference in our lives, then what do we expect? Do we expect them to say, "Man, have you seen Mike lately? He is living so much like the rest of the world that I just wanna know what he is about. He always talks about how he is a Christian. You know what, I think I'm going to give up my time to read the Bible and go to church and try to live by the ten commandments so that I can live just like the rest of the world". No! This is not going to happen. In fact, I am increasingly hesitant to tell people I am Christian. If I feel I am slipping in my passion for God at that time, I am not going to tell people I have a relationship with the Creator. It doesn't make sense. If I truly have a relationship with the Creator of this place, then I have all that should be treasured. I don't want to spill forth some empty phrases that leave room for people to sense I'm not genuine.

But, on the other hand, if we are sincere about God changing our lives, we must not squash our passion for Him that should be growing as we enjoy the work that He is doing in us. It is so hard to consistently display this passion, but just as our love and faith should spill over into good works, our love and faith must spill over into evident passion for Him. If this is not happening, then maybe we should step back and objectively analyze whether our love and faith for Christ are sincere. We should use John and Peter's response to the Sanhedrin in Acts 4 as an example, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than God, you decide; for we are unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard" (Act 4:19-20). This is our calling, to beg God to do so much work in our lives that we cannot help but speak about His glory.

I know that the state of ministry is never short of critics, but one of the biggest shortcomings I see throughout ministry is the lack of uncontrollable sincere passion for God. I know that it is hard for preachers to bring passion and a powerful message every Sunday, but I think too often the sequencing of these two objectives is confused. Too often, preachers fall into the trap of working tirelessly to prepare a powerful message and then work tirelessly to muster up the passion to deliver it on Sunday. The result is a message that may be sound doctrinely sound and may be filled with interesting illustrations, yelling, and many voice inflections; it may tickle a few ears or reach a few hearts, but to most it will simply go in own ear, stay in the mind for a little while, before going out the other ear and never reaching the heart.

In contrast, a preacher or teacher must prioritize his or her passion for God, and then the message will be both divinely spoken and filled with sincere passion. If a preacher is preaching to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul, but is not attempting to do so in his life, then it is going to be impossible to deliver it with sincere passion. It is my feeling that if a preacher does not practice what he preaches, then he will not be preaching for very long. The same is true in the lives of lay people. If we are not practicing what we preach with our mouths to those around us, then eventually we are not going to have a platform to preach from, and we will have probably done more damage than we know. We first must pursue God with all of our being, then we must not squash the passion that should build in us for Him. Sincere passion is contagious, without it we are going to be inadequate witnesses for God.

Voices

2010-01-30T16:59:00.002-05:00

Lord, I long for the ability to readily discern between my inner voice, the voice of the evil one, and the voice of Your Spirit. You see every angle Lord, train my heart to receive direction only from Your Spirit, so every step I take may be precisely in line with Your will. Accordance with Your will is the only eternally satisfying path, my mind knows this but my heart strays. Clear the obstructions that lie on the road from my mind to my heart so that my inner most beings unceasingly cry out for you.

Get With Him

2010-01-29T12:25:00.004-05:00

The only path to knowledge is focused practice

Yet knowledge is useless if without spiritual enlightenment.

If knowledge is cloaked in arrogance, what is the point?

Is there not a higher calling than knowledge and personal achievement?

There certainly is.

This calling is a relationship with the Creator

His name is God and he is longing for a relationship with each of us

A relationship which yields unspeakable peace, freedom, and joy.

Get with the Creator.

God's Rules Are Not Just Commands but Advice

2010-01-27T14:58:00.005-05:00

It becomes so easy to do harmful things if we don't understand the ramifications. Ignorance can definitely be bliss but ignorance can also be dangerous. As a child I did not realize how fortunate I am to have a mother who stresses health. It wasn't until I began to do research on nutrition and exercise for myself that I began to gain an appreciation. While living at home, I simply ate what she put before me and exercised when she suggested for me to exercise because I had a small understanding of the importance, but more so, because of a lack for better options; I didn't necessarily have the funds to go purchase all my own food. It wasn't until I was in college and began to research health and nutrition on my own that I fully appreciated the importance of a healthy lifestyle. In fact, the health guidelines that I follow now are probably more stringent than the ones my mother promoted, and the great thing is I couldn't go back to an unhealthy lifestyle if I wanted. Unhealthy foods have progressively lost their attractiveness of flavor and being sedentary increasingly makes me feel awful. This has happened because I have made it personal, I am no longer responding to my circumstances or a set of rules but I am acting upon what I know to be backed by accurate information.

I believe that Christianity and its 'rules' follow this same concept. I am convinced that the amount of sin that corrupts this world is completely dependent upon our opinion of the Creator. It becomes so easy to violate rules when we have either no opinion or an insufficient opinion of the One who created the rules and why He did so. God did not make rules to make our lives miserable, but rather to help us live harmoniously in this imperfect world. How accurate God's rules are becomes evident when we recognize how closely civilizations throughout history have aligned their rules to the Ten Commandments, whether they meant to or not. What God has asked us to do through the Bible is only going to make our lives here on earth better, and the real kicker is that if we learn to love Him and His commandments our eternal lives are going to be immeasurably better. The problem is that until we learn to love Him there is no way we are going to love His commandments and if we don't love His commandments there is no way we are going to consistently follow them.

Not only was I fortunate to grow up in a health conscious home, but I was even more lucky to grow up in a very Christian home. A home where I can not recall a time when my parents raised their voices, and have never seen either of them drink and have never heard either of them curse. Despite this great model, I accumulated far too many drunken nights with my friends. I knew it wasn't right, and despite my parents great influence and my love for them I could not seem to follow the rules. I loved the ones who were exhibiting and telling me the rules but I did not understand and have a love for the One who was ultimately making the rules. It wasn't until about six months ago that my love for God proliferated. For the first time I was freed from this lifestyle of sin that I was caught in. It wasn't that I heard about God or His commandments for the first time but I truly began to love Him and His creation. And the great thing is, much like health, I could not return to this sin-ridden lifestyle if I wanted to, it is simply too disgusting to me and I have tasted the joy and peace that close proximity to God boasts. Upon exponentially growing my love for Him, I began to realize that through altering my state of mind I was trying to escape God's beautiful creation. I was insulting the Creator of this beautiful world by telling Him through my lifestyle that I am not satisfied with the natural state of mind or surroundings He carefully chose and created for me. What an insult! I was routinely spitting in the face of the One who gives me every single breath I draw and so beautifully coordinates everything that has ever and will ever happen to me. I was telling this Beautiful Being that I was not happy with all that He had given me, I needed more, how selfish could I be?

God commands us to be joyful always. Always. There is no reading between the lines here, it does not say be joyful only when you feel like it and when you don't feel like it drink alcohol. Anyone can be joyful when drunk, God cannot do all the work within us he wants to do if we do not try to be naturally joyful in all situations. We can always get our supplementation of joyfulness through a substance, but if we want to be sanctified through the Lord we must find joy through our relationship with Jesus Christ in the tough times along with the not so tough times. In order to enjoy either the good times or the bad times we must find joy in His commandments and we are not going to find joy in His commandments without first loving Him with all that we have. I firmly believe that just like there would be no obesity and few fast food restaurants if we were all to attend a 2 week informative health seminar, there would be dramatically lower amounts of sin and hardship if we could all learn to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds. Only then are we going to be freed from our cycles of sin.

Intention and Progress

2010-01-25T14:28:00.006-05:00

A Christ follower never gave Christianity a bad name. Christ followers strive to make their hearts progressively pure.

The more deeply I become rooted in the Bible and Christian thought, the more convinced I become that being a Christ follower is largely about intention and progress. I will begin with intention.

If I had to claim a body part which intention comes from I would most definitely say the heart. It is commonly held that the heart is where one's deepest desires and motives are held; Christianity is all about these motives. Without the right intentions every single action deemed 'religious' can be essentially fruitless and actually toe the lines of blasphemy. The Bible teaches us that even the devil knows the Scripture; in fact, he knows them better than any of us ever will, a very humbling thought. Through this we learn that just knowing the Bible does nothing for us, in fact God judges those who know His glory but do not embrace it harsher than He does those who have never heard.

We must be sure that everything we do is with the intention of glorifying God. This does not mean that we are to sit in our room every minute of the day in fear that we may offend God in any action we may commit. It would be very hard to carry our the great commission in this manner. We must not paralyze ourselves by fear that we are going to offend God, but we must also be very critical of our actions and even more of our intentions. This is an extremely difficult tightrope to walk, and I honestly believe is one that Christians must spend their entire earthly lives learning to balance upon. Walking this tightrope is the same concept as our command to pray continually. Praying continually does not entail walking around with our heads down attempting to talk to God and no one else; I am confident that God would actually be pretty reluctant to speak to us in this case because we would be ignoring so many of His other commands. Rather, praying continually consists of seeking God's guidance in every decision we make, striving harder and harder every day to be more in tune with His will and His word. This brings me to the concept of progress.

Striving for progress in our Christian walk can be rather liberating, and I believe is an aspect of the freedom in Christ that we are promised. For a true Christ follower, progress should only be defined by our proximity to Him. Everything we do must be with the intention of moving closer to Him, this sounds rather selfish but upon further analysis I don't think it is. So much of what we are called to do involves loving others. After all, the second greatest commandment is to the love others as we love ourselves. If we are going to draw closer to our model, Jesus Christ, then we must care about others and genuinely act upon this care.

Back to my comment about Christian progress being liberating. The worldly definition of progress is not liberating whatsoever, there is nothing liberating about expectations to jump through societal hoops of accomplishment or acceptance. In society, everyone is our judge but in Christianity only us and Jesus Christ are our judges. We do not gain salvation by doing 'Christian acts' but rather by having so much faith in and love for Christ that we want to be as much like Him as possible, we want to take up our cross and follow Him, we want to deny ourselves daily. The only ones that can truly judge if we are making progress towards these goals are ourselves and God. No one else can tell you how good or bad of a Christian you are, sometimes we may need someone to wake us up, but he or she is not ultimately our judge. And as Christians it is crucial that we are not judgemental of how Christ-like someone is. Christianity is not a beauty contest, we are not judged by our external acts of beauty but on the progress that is happening within our hearts. If there is truly progress being made in our hearts then there will be progress on the surface, but our progress cannot be judged only from the outside. Everyone begins his or her Christian walk from different points, a simple act for one can be an extraordinary act for another. God does not judge us on a particular action but on our hearts that should be becoming increasingly filled with Him, so much so that we can not help but let His goodness pour out into our every action.

Looking Forward to a New Creation

2010-01-20T23:16:00.006-05:00

When recently reading Randal Rauser's "Finding God in the Shack", which I think should be sold in tandem with William Young's "The Shack", I was further introduced to God's plan for a new creation. Isaiah 65:17-25 describes this new creation well. This new creation Isaiah speaks of is the creation God tells us He is going to create for His followers after Jesus Christ's return. In this passage we learn that in this new creation there will no longer be any suffering, everyone will enjoy the fruits of their labor, before we are able to call to God he will answer us, and every being will be at peace with each other (wolf and lambs will feed together and lions will eat straw). How beautiful of a picture this is. Every being living in harmony with each other with no suffering or complaining. This is how we attempt to view heaven but oftentimes the idea of harps and clouds just does not seem appealing (the reason heaven has been described this way is because our language cannot fully describe how terrific eternal life with God is going to be). However, in this passage in Isaiah we are given a more easily comprehendable view of eternity. Interestingly, this new creation is going to be just the world environmentalists are trying to create here. Even more interestingly, in my experience I have not found that many environmentalists are Christians. How someone could hold nature to such a high regard and not seek answers to how this beauty truly came about is beyond me.

I genuinely think if concepts such as God's promised new creation were more readily 'promoted', then there would be droves of people (like environmentalists) flocking to God and His salvation. I know that the state of ministry is never short of critics, but I do feel that it is a problem that I, a 22 year old who was raised in the Christian faith, am just wrapping my head around what is in store for those who follow Christ. The glory of God and the beauty of eternal life with Him are starving to be preached. This summer I heard a speaker at a Christian children's camp use an illustration in which he rolled a roll of string straight out the building. As we were all beginning to run out of ideas for what he could possibly be doing, he began to explain that our life on earth is only equivalent to the portion of the string he could pinch in between his thumb and finger, the rest was our eternal life. What a powerful illustration for a group full of 4th and 5th graders (obviously powerful for the counselor's as well). It is so easy to become wrapped up in the details of this life that we begin to forget how minute everything is compared to eternity. I know it is hard to grasp what eternity is, as the string illustration does not even give it justice, but it is a very good practice to try.

An accurate picture of eternity is so powerful. What really matters when compared to eternity? I think Christian thought so easily gets bogged down with what God can do for me today or what do I have to do for God today. If we get stuck in this thinking then we may as well read self-help books, the bookstores are full of them. If we don't focus on the glory of God and His eternal plans for us then we are bound to fail. Who can follow rules consistently with no rationale for them? In fact, God doesn't call us to follow rules for the rules sake. He calls us to love him and worship Him with all that we have, if we do that then we will have the virtues and fruits thrown in. We (lay people and those in the ministry) must focus on how great the glory of God is. If we are mesmerized by His majesty and amazing plans for us it suddenly becomes very hard to sin, doubt him, or worry about the seemingly unconquerable problems of our life.

Order My Steps

2010-01-20T20:21:00.004-05:00

Everywhere You lead me opportunities abound Lord. Make me more appreciative of Your guidance through every breath that I take.

Seeing the Good

2010-01-19T23:19:00.006-05:00

At first it is natural for a baby to take its mother's milk without knowing its mother. It is equally natural for us to see the man who helps us without seeing Christ behind him.

C.S. Lewis

This quote by C.S. Lewis is very telling of the perspectives of both the non-Christian and Christian. For non-Christians it is very easy to recognize all that is good in the world as simply existing. For Christians, we should constantly acknowledge God's hand in all that is good. 1 Timothy 4:4 tells us that everything God created is good, just as we are told in the creation story. A Christian's development should include a progressive acknowledgment of the goodness of God's creation. Constantly marvelling at the beauty of God's creation provides an ever flowing fountain of joy. Recognizing the goodness in others is also a necessary practice. We have a terrible tendency of only noticing the bad in ourselves and others. Noticing the good God has created in us and in those around us will lead us to treat ourselves and others with more respect.

The goodness of God's creation is remarkable. As scientific research pours forth it is always entertaining to observe how healthiness, sustainability, and general goodness fall in line with His natural creation. The healthiest foods are the ones God commanded to spring from the ground for our consumption. Upon further research, scientifically engineered foods such as high fructose corn syrup are consistently proving to be poison.

The safest way to protect our environment and therefore our safety is to touch it as little as possible. Imagine that, not tampering with a planet that the human race could never have created is the best strategy.

Although we are living longer, we are not living happier or healthier. Our modern healthcare system specializes in placing expensive band aids on wounds that would be non-existent if we had've been eating God's foods, listening to our natural instincts to rest and be joyful, or listening to our God-given desire for moderate exercise.

Recent research is even showing that modern running shoes could cause most running injuries. I say 'could cause' simply because all of the experts are not sold on this hypothesis. Critics of running shoes are pointing towards the complexity of our feet, the absence of sophisticated shoes throughout history, and the rising occurrences of foot, knee, hip, and back injuries linked to running. This theory may have doubters, but to me it is not a theory. God equipped us from the beginning with everything we need to be active and healthy. If sophisticated running shoes were beneficial then we would have been born with them on our feet.

All of this scientific research on how we can enhance the quality of human life through man-made inventions is rather arrogant. Much of the developed world roots their lives in the notion that if they work hard enough they will make life easier. They are forgetting that we are the creation, not the Creator. A higher being has already given us all we need for this life, all He wants is for us to desire to give it back to Him. The Lord has to be shaking His head at the sums of money and amount of time devoted to endeavors such as advancing running shoe technology and engineering cheaper and 'healthier' foods. He has already given us everything, we just need to love His creation and worship Him for it.

Righteousness and the Eyes and Ears of the Lord

2010-01-15T08:53:00.005-05:00

The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, observing the wicked and the good. Proverbs 15:3

The Lord is far from the wicked, but He hears the prayer of the righteous. Proverbs 15:29

Within Proverbs 15 we learn that the Lord sees all but only hears the prayers of the righteous. Throughout the chapter we also learn that the Lord detests the way of the wicked. Just in this chapter we debunk several fallacies about Christianity:

1) We can hide from the Lord

2) The Lord isn't offended by our sin

3) The Lord treats all prayers equally

Based on this proverb we can be certain that the Lord sees the wicked, detests the actions of the wicked, and doesn't hear the wicked. If we were to grasp this who would allow themselves to be wicked? Unfortunately many of us wallow in our wickedness because we are blinded by the ways of the devil. All we can see is darkness but we are unaware that we are even in the dark, we think it is light! We must come and bow before our Lord Jesus Christ, praising and worshipping him, vowing to love him. Only then will we have the muck slowly cleared from our eyes, so that we can see the world through the lens of goodness, and we can be on the path to righteousness.

Constant Pursuance

2010-01-14T17:01:00.008-05:00

The natural is only that which we have become accustomed to.

I would like to begin by clarifying that God is completely supernatural and is capable of acting as supernaturally as He would like; however, through my experience I have found that the Lord most often works supernaturally through very 'natural' means. The explanation for His ways of dealing are certainly beyond me, but to give it my best shot: I believe He acts in subtle ways in respect to the maintenance of our free will. If He were to act in completely obvious and supernatural ways regularly then our free will would be severely limited. There would almost be no choice between believing in the God of the bible and not.

I began with this introduction because I would like to voice my opinion on the reason new Christian's enthusiasm often declines as time passes, but I also had to clarify that God is definitely able to work any way he wants at any time. I also wanted to make this point because I know it can be a stumbling block for many, as I know it has been for me. Everyone is always looking for these big grand examples of God's power. It is easy to find ourselves asking where God is because all we see are the 'natural' occurrences around us. This word 'natural' is very dangerous. What is natural is only what God chooses to put into existence, when in reality everything is very supernatural when our perspectives are properly tweaked. Everything is supernatural if viewed through the eyes of a child.

When we are children everything is completely new and magnificent to us. The way we saw things as a child is comparable to how we would see things if we were to go to a completely foreign country, or even more properly a foreign planet. Imagine being dropped in a foreign country that you have no prior knowledge of. You have never seen pictures or heard descriptions of this foreign land. Now imagine how much awe you would feel at everything you came in contact with. The people, food, landscape, culture, language, cities, and buildings would all be new. You could spend the first few months or years just admiring and being mesmerized by your surroundings. But right when you were getting comfortable with this seemingly eternal sense of happiness I would guess that it would be pulled out from under you. Suddenly you would be used to everything around you, that sense of amazement would vanish and you would be left feeling empty. Sounds pretty similar to the too common story of a new Christian doesn't it? All too often our Christian walks become like the life of the inhabitant of the foreign land. Everything is so intriguing and we are so filled with the joy of God for the first few months or so, but when we are no longer intrigued we feel like God has left us. God hasn't left us, it is our selfish and pleasure-seeking nature that is becoming used to God.

Now I would like to propose an alternative. How can the foreign inhabitant become enthralled with his new found home? Maybe he can learn the history of the land, giving himself a deeper appreciation of where he is living, maybe he can learn how the governmental system works, or about the ecosystem that the land boasts. If he were to learn more about these areas, wouldn't his appreciation for his surroundings be heightened again?

This scenario helps bring things into perspective for me in two areas:

1) We must constantly learn more about God and all that he is (through the bible, books, sermons, music, etc.). This is clearly the most important area, but I think the next is largely overlooked and am therefore going to devote more time to it.

2) We can't let the 'natural' world around us become natural, it must remain supernatural. If we were to truly contemplate the nature of what is around us we would be constantly mesmerized. We must look upon God's creation with the eyes of a child. Imagine yourself as a child seeing a tree for the first time. A towering beautiful tree of your choice. This would be magnificent, trees are so intricate: their height, their girth, the way the limbs bend and spring forth leaves and fruit. We have become blind to these intricacies. One reason children are so joyful is because they are seeing everything for the first time, everything is absolutely supernatural to them. Children see a tree and are mesmerized, we see trees and are bored. We must not fill our minds with the shortcomings of man (which is pretty much anything we can watch on TV), but rather with the beauty of God's nature. It becomes so easy to worship him joyfully in everything we do it we are constantly marvelling at his creation. We must do ourselves a favor and look upon God's creation with the eyes of a child, soaking up information about his beautiful planet because we are so thirsty to worship Him. If we are to do this we will be filled with supernatural views of God. We might cast the word natural out of our vocabulary.

Why Christ Followers and God Pursuers are so Likeable

2010-01-11T11:10:00.010-05:00

When a man's ways please the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him. Proverbs 16:7

What one admires is what he is either unwilling to work towards or unaware how.

This morning I was watching a CNBC special on the empire and craze that is eBay. The documentary featured a wealthy businessman that claimed to have spent upwards of $5 million dollars on eBay, largely on comic collectibles. Although I do not envy this man whatsoever and honestly pity him, I do find him somewhat interesting and possibly likeable. The reason for this is the man's individuality. Our society interestingly seems to encourage and value both conformity and individuality. Many are afraid to reveal the true contents of their hearts and minds so they cloak themselves in conformity; however, most people also seem to be attracted to individuality, supposing this individuality is expressed in an acceptable, non-harming way.

The power of striving to follow Christ and pursuing His Father's love is that we are naturally blessed with a freedom to uncover our individuality. God's love is the only love that allows one to feel both humbled and accepted, humbled through worship because we are able to recognize the vastness of both God and His kingdom, accepted because this magnificent God wants to love meager little us. Through this recognition we realize how small of a vessel we really are. This would prove troublesome if the story stopped there, if our God was impersonal. If He were an impersonal God, we would probably feel led to either act however we pleased, because we would believe that it does not really matter in the scheme of things (a feeling I have honestly struggled with) or we would become depressed and remove ourselves from the world completely. Neither of these are healthy ways to live. Luckily our God is not impersonal, He desires to love us and is able to love us with the only pure form of love that exists. What greater acceptance is there than the acceptance of the One who constructed us and this world (both are remarkable if you haven't checked lately)?

I can confidently state that there is no greater acceptance than this. Because we are granted this acceptance and humility we are able to slowly pull back the layers of artificiality that we have accumulated from society over the years and reveal the true individual that we were created by God to be. However, we are not called to express our individuality as a compromise of our morals. We are created in the image of God, therefore we are created with a nature of goodness. What else explains the somewhat consistent standard of morality which all civilizations have at least held in high esteem? The fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control have always been at least admired. I want you to seriously ponder each one of those attributes and attempt to find a case, in modern society or history, in which they were truthfully not admired. I know I can not come up with one; whenever I find myself presenting an example which I think violates these values, I will quickly recognize that it is not a pure example and even in my example the fruits of the Spirit were still admired. Humanity has always aspired to this level of goodness because we have a force working within us that strives for all that is pure; this level of purity is presented through the word of God and was manifested in Jesus.

The only human being to ever fully possess the fruits of the Spirit was Jesus Christ. He was the only one to ever fully devote himself to his relationship with God, and through it he was able to exude this incomprehendable freedom which we are called to. Anyone that is familiar with the life of Christ knows that Jesus was the epitome of an individual. I could try to explain Jesus' individuality but the rapper Lecrae does it much better than I could in this intro to his album Rebel. As you listen to this song, as I hope you just did, I hope that you find truth in the lyrics and recognize that Jesus was the ultimate individual. Jesus was so likeable. He exuded the fruits of Spirit in their most pure form and along the way was a fresh breath of individuality. The awesome part is that we are called to be a follower of Christ, be filled by the Holy Spirit, and pursue the freedom of God. If one is to truthfully do all three of these things he or she will enjoy unspeakable indivuality and exude contagious morality. One that truly strives to become Christ-like will be the most likeable person that one can encounter. Like I stated before, everyone atleast admires the fruits of Spirit, the problem is people fail to recognize the link between admirable behavior and the teachings of God.

I would like to make a distinction before I close, being a Christian is not about being popular. Everyone will not like you if you are truly Christ-like, as Jesus warned his disciples in Luke 6:26, it should be noted that in this scripture He was referring to the rejection a Christian will face when his or her biblical teachings offend and contrast the opinions of those stuck in their own false teachings. He is not calling us to go out and pick fights for the sake of fighting, but to exude the fruits of the Spirit, only contradicting those that are spreading false teachings and always contradicting out of love. They will know we are Christians by our love. Having the love of Christ does not mean going out of one's way to be likeable, that will be a byproduct, but rather about genuinely caring about the well-being of those around you. Sometimes this will manifest itself through controversy, as Jesus' did with the Jewish religious leaders, but the goal is to worship God until we are both humbled and comforted by his presence, only then will we enjoy a sense of contentment and our true individuality will shine.

God's Voice

2010-01-07T13:31:00.002-05:00

I long to be deaf to my thoughts and desires Lord, so deaf that I can tune my heart only to the broadcast of Your Voice.

Aiming at Heaven

2010-01-06T11:40:00.014-05:00

-It is my desire to be more fully satisfied every time I place my head on my pillow, not by my accomplishments of the day, but by the notion that I am closer to God than I was when my head was in the same place a night before.

-Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.

- C.S. Lewis "Mere Christianity"

This quote by C.S. Lewis is so true. In his chapter on hope in his book "Mere Christianity", Lewis points out that the people who accomplished the most on this earth were the ones who thought the most about the next world. By constantly thinking about our Ultimate Destination we set ourselves on a path to virtuous life. By constantly thinking these things we are incrementally drawing ourselves closer to God and therefore righting our focus. When we think about Heaven our pride and therefore our competitive and sinful natures will dissolve and our faith, hope, and love will proliferate. It is only natural that our unhealthy pride will evaporate as we begin to put into perspective the scope of this world and the grandiosity and hope of the next. All who are wise constantly seek humility. Pride can be such a detriment to our lives, as Proverbs 16:5 tells us: "Everyone with a proud heart is detestable to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished". Pride is sickening to God, and those who are proud will be punished!

If we begin to take too much pride in our earthly accomplishments and appearances we will naturally devote too much attention to these areas. Because they are the ultimate sources of our pride, right? We must take pride in the fact that God created us the way we are for a reason and that he loves everything he has created. There is no way you or I could have been created better or worse, but we can become better or worse by either drawing nearer or further from God.

Although this world is marred with sin and corruption, the pure forms of God's creation are so beautiful. It is so easy to become wrapped up in the defiencies of the things around us or even in ourselves. Our bodies are so beautiful! We have become so accustomed to only recognizing certain types of beauty (appearance, athletic ability), that we fail to recognize how beautiful any human body is. The way the organs, tissues, ligaments, muscles, and tendons work together is so intricate and miraculous. Maybe it is hard for you to focus on the beauty of your own body just yet, so let's focus on the beauty which lies within the life of an infant. The functioning of an human infant is enough to testify to the existence of God. Here is a breathing being that essentially came out of nothing, anatomy experts could explain the particulars, but the fact that a human being with so much potential came from a fluid and egg is so remarkable. One attribute that the human race has failed to lose yet is the ability to marvel and cherish a young life. This is possibly because we view these lives as untainted representations of the hope and potential that lies in human life, yet we lose this notion as one grows older. A human suddenly becomes a 'tainted' being because we become riddled with sinful desires and exposed to the destructive expectations of a sinful world. This does not have to be so. God sent Jesus to wash away these sins and return us to the pure, innocent infant state. We are called to an ultimate purity and holiness, we will never get there but it does not mean that we should not try, in fact we are commanded to try, and the beauty is that we are not called to do it alone but with the Holy Spirit.

In any activity we are never going to catch perfection, but the winner is always the one who comes the closest. Our lives are ultimately an activity in which we are all trying to catch perfection, yet our idea of perfection is flawed. There is no perfect state of wealth or appearance, but only a perfect state of goodness and holiness and this perfection was and is manifested through Jesus Christ. Until we shift our idea of perfection to our proximity with the Creator, we will miss the mark constantly. The beauty of the human race is that God created us all differently, yet when we all reach towards a societal goal we lose this individuality. When we draw near to God He speaks into our hearts His desires for our lives. He will do completely different things in each one, our outward actions will be different but our inward desires of faith, hope, and love of and in the Creator will bind us.

Do not view your life as unrecoverable. View it through God's lense, as the beautifully intricate being that you are. This does not happen by striving to be more outwardly beautiful or intricate but rather by embracing how God has created you. What makes children so amazing is their complete lack of pride. Because they lack pride, toddlers can fully embrace the faith, hope, and love that is derived from their relationship with their parents. We are called to the ultimate relationship, with the Ultimate Parent; cast away your pride and fully embrace the faith, hope, and love that He provides. Who does not want more faith, hope, and love? We all want it, but we are all clutching pride to tightly to embrace it.

The World's Direction and the Speed at which it is Travelling

2010-01-05T21:44:00.003-05:00

I love Casting Crown's first and last line of their "Does Anybody Hear Her?". In both instances the band sings that she (or he) is running 100 miles per hour in the wrong direction. This is so true of our whole society. Everyone is so wrapped up in their own successes and the competition that exists in this world that we begin pursuing a worldly objective at blistering paces. Everything the world tells us about success is wrapped up in what we earn, own, or accomplish. How refreshing it is to be given the freedom in Christ to only measure ourselves by His measuring stick. A measuring stick which is presented through God's holy word. Although it may be difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we must trust in God and draw nearer and nearer to Him so that he may shape us to His will. It may be a long an arduous process, but we can be satisfied in the times of hardship because we know that they are the times in which the Lord is shaping us the most. I am thrilled to testify that my moods are no longer based on external events or circumstances but rather the Spirit within me that is preparing my outlook for the truth He is about to speak into my heart or the circumstances He is about to place me in. In my times of desperation, which are not outward times of desperation whatsoever but rather times of discontentment tied completely to the workings of the Holy Spirit, I am able to drop to my knees and speak to my fully divine Best Friend. In these times my heart is particularly open to the words of Him and I can rest in the knowledge that He is shaping me like a master craftsman because He is the ultimate Master Craftsman, molding me for a mission I am presently unaware of but must know is going to be so miraculous. It is not always easy believing I am being shaped for a mission, but the times of doubt are often followed by times of growth.

It is my desire to be running 100 miles per hour in the right direction. Sometimes running 100 miles per hour may feel like a crawl, but we can be sure that our paths will be right if our focus is Him. How beautiful would it be if our society were filled with people running 100 mph in the right direction? Love would abound, our law system would be useless, and the Creator would be leading each of our paths, intertwining them into a society that would accomplish lightyears more than any accomplishment-thirsty society could ever fathom.

The Work of the Spirit

2010-01-03T12:48:00.003-05:00

Being INDWELLED with the Spirit is a PROMISE from God.

Being FILLED with the Spirit is a COMMAND from God.

This was a quote the minister used at the service I attended today. It had a large impact on me as I have never heard our role of pursuing God described this way. It is easy for Christ-believers to lull themselves into believing that being indwelled by the Spirit is enough for our salvation, as I know I have, but to be fully FILLED by the Holy Spirit we must be Christ-FOLLOWERS. Once we begin actively pursuing God, the work the Holy Spirit can do is immeasurable.

Our Capacity to Love Others

2010-01-02T10:17:00.006-05:00

Of all the Biblical commands, loving others as myself must be the most difficult for me to grasp and constantly pursue. I believe there have always been two primary reasons for my incapable feelings: 1) I consider myself a fairly unemotional person and 2) I often enjoy pursuing knowledge and personal enlightenment so much that I get more attached to books, lectures, and ideas than I do people. Neither of these are necessarily bad traits in moderation, few traits are, but I have realized that they have stood as roadblocks in my path to the highest form of love, agape (unconditional love). Part of the problem is definitely my selfishness, but the larger problem has been my skewed view of what agape love is.

I have not been able to rid myself of the idea that loving others as myself means becoming an emotional train wreck. Recently I have become convicted that this is a complete fallacy. Loving others as ourselves may sometimes result in strong emotions, but only because we desire what is best for them, not because we are infatuated with them. If we were called to be infatuated with everyone then it would become almost impossible to function in society; after every societal encounter we would feel emotionally exhausted. The only being we should be infatuated with is God, and then all of His blessings will flow from this love.

By calling us to love others as ourselves, God is asking us to love others as we should love ourselves. Should is key because a healthy love for one's self does not involve becoming enveloped in how great oneself is. A healthy love for one's self can only stem from God. We receive an enormous dose of both humility and acceptance from a relationship with Him. The first step to a healthy love for one's self is stripping away all hindering pride that we may be holding closely. Once we have removed all unnecessary pride, our love for ourselves can focus on only our well being, and as we become even more spiritually mature we begin to realize that the true wellness of our being is only dependent on our proximity to the Lord. Our self worth must be only dependent on this truth: the Creator crafted us in a specific and exact way and has the only existent pure love for His creation's well-being. It is only when we have begun to love ourselves as God intended that we will be able to love others as He intended. Once we begin to fear, love, and place our trust in God, we will begin to value ourselves as He values us, and only then will we be able to value others as He values them.

The Flesh Crowding out the Spirit

2009-12-25T19:53:00.008-05:00

Every time I go to my knees I want to more fully know what it means to submit to God.

I often find myself questioning the battle that is being waged within my heart. Galatians 5:16-23 has been a large help in understanding these feelings of discontent. This passage explains that the Spirit and the flesh are at absolute odds with each other, the Spirit is against the flesh and the flesh is against the Spirit. Subconsciously I feel that I was always aware of this truth but had never felt it within my own spiritual walk, probably because my walk has been so historically shallow. I find it beneficial to visualize the spiritual warfare of our heart with the following analogy:

It is my belief that there is only so much room within our heart. This room is either filled with the desires of the flesh or the Spirit, an area of the heart cannot be filled with both.

As Christians we must make Christ the gatekeeper of our hearts. Through Him we must open the door to our heart and allow our sinful desires to be dug out of their firmly established homes.

It is not easy to rip out our fleshly desires, after all it is through the fulfillment of these desires that we have derived pleasure for years. Sin does temporarily fulfill us, but we must recognize that it will never fully gratify us and we need to accept the offering of the Almighty to take away our sins and fill us with a being that is fulling Him.

I love John 14-16 because in this passage Jesus constantly refers back to this Counselor he is going to send us. He tells the disciples that having the Holy Spirit in their hearts is going to be more beneficial than Him physically walking and talking with them. Imagine the disciples' reactions when they were told they would be better off without Jesus. The beauty of this revelation is that through it we learn that God is offering the same gift to every human being to take in air in the After Death (AD) era.

How easy it is for us to forget how great of a gift the Holy Spirit is. He is such a gift that we must make every effort to clear our hearts for Him; He will not occupy areas of our hearts where we are still clutching sin. This is why it is imperative for Christians to declare a war on the desires of our flesh. What an insult it is to not accept the gift of the Holy Spirit with gratitude. Luckily, through prayer and repentance God opens the doors of our heart and the Spirit begins to dwell in us. Once the Spirit is inside of us He begins to help us uproot our sins; however, I often find that He does not always immediately fill the void that was left by sin. I believe this is where a Christian's endurance must kick in. We must muster up all our strength to hold the walls of our heart open. It is during this process that God is purifying us, trying us by fire so that He can make us shine. Our hearts are crying out to God, "I can't do this anymore Lord the weights of this void are so heavy". Meanwhile we continue to resist this sin that has held us captive. In the moment when we feel like we cannot hold up the weight of world a second longer, God fills the void left by the eradicated sin and the satisfaction is rich. We gain an instant appreciation for how comforting the Spirit is, we begin to see the fruits of our hardship throughout our lives, and it is from these moments that we build our love for God and an unquenchable thirst for the presence of His Spirit.

If we don't embark on a full-scale war with our sinful nature then we are robbing ourselves of all the gifts God has to offer. By putting ourselves at the mercy of the Spirit and ridding ourselves of our unhealthy pleasures, our faith and love in Christ will grow exponentially. Once we hold up under our first practices of purification, the next stages become easier, not because the work the Spirit is doing is less important or less painstaking, but because we have learned to love and trust the Trinity. Problems and pain begin to become smaller and smaller when our trust in Him has become larger and larger.

Knowledge, Roots, and the Christian Faith

2009-12-25T13:07:00.008-05:00

We've spent our whole lives learning to live our lives the way we want, our parents want, or our culture wants, in order to be a child of God we should be prepared to spend as much time learning to live how God wants.

The true necessity for deep spiritual knowledge has been perplexing me lately. Although following Christ is certainly based upon one's faith that lies in Him and the pursuance of a loving relationship with the Trinity, the role of deep knowledge of scriptures and biblical truths has been weighing on my heart lately. I believe that a desire to know God's scriptures and truths to a further extent is often proof of a growing love for Him and His ways, but not always. Turning one's pursuance of knowledge into a Christian competition is certainly counterproductive, as competition is largely rooted in pride and a tightly held pride can certainly not be part of a loving relationship with God, which is the point of Christianity and our ultimate calling in life:

And he (Jesus) said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 22:37-39

When the Son of God (who is fully divine, and therefore of the same divinity as the Creator of this beautifully complex world) says something like: "This is the first and greatest commandment", I'm going to sit up and listen. However, learning what it means to love the Lord with everything we have (as this passage clearly states) is a lifelong process. Recently I've been struggling with how a 22 year old who wants to understand everything around him can truly love the Lord his God with his mind without sacrificing the love of my heart.

Can I keep my humility while also pursuing deep theological knowledge of God? Is it even necessary?

While reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, the Holy Spirit gifted me with an analogy. I often need analogies that make perfect sense to break through my stubborn desire to understand everything:

Having a deep understanding (as deep as fallible human understanding can get) of the Trinity and its ways is necessary for many to stand firm in the faith among the vast number of temptations the world (Satan) is able to throw at us. In this analogy the Christian is a tree and our level of understanding is our roots. Without any roots the tree is going to be non-existent and therefore not a Christian at all. All Christians must have roots of some sort. The width of the root system is symbolic of all the different types of biblical truths (the existence of the Trinity, Jesus' atoning death, the role the Spirit plays in our lives, etc.). The depth is evident, the deeper one's knowledge of each the deeper the roots.

Ideally a Christian would have a constantly growing, broad, balanced root system. One can not stand on one single extremely deep root, and one will not stand in the face of adversity if the roots are broad but shallow. Both a shallow root system and a root system with depth but limited width will be uprooted by the first wind.

God did not create us to be satisfied with either of these root systems, and if we are then it is a sign that we are not truly in love with the magnificent Creator and therefore not a Child of God at all.