Live Love

 

So this past weekend we took our youth group to Student Life Conference in Euless. It was incredible. The theme for the weekend was Live Love, and the speaker was Francis Chan.

I think this was a conference that was really able to hit all of our students right where they were. For our students who are growing in the faith, a topic brought up was having love for others, those who can’t love them back. But even more exciting than that, for our students, and I think all of them needed to hear it, but certain one’s in particular, the message was primarily focused on how much God the creator loves us and how we should reciprocate that love.

Something that Francis Chan pointed out the first night, and I think it is something that really hit our students and even me, is how we approach praying to God. He mentioned how we don’t necessarily approach prayer as being toward the almighty creator who has no responsibility to hear us when we talk to him. He read Revelation 4, describing John’s vision of God on his throne. He used the magnitude of what John described himself seeing to implore the audience to think about who they are praying to. To take 30 seconds before praying to God to think about who God is, how awesome and mighty he is, and then to pray to him realizing how much God loves them to even hear them.

Chan also made mention of how we are to be children who are crazily in love with God. We are to be excited about being his child, excited about getting to talk with him. God is so in love with us, all we should be able to do is be crazily in love with him, and in so doing, love the people around us in an unbelievable way.

Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell

So I just recently finished reading Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. Admittedly I had some reservations about reading this book because I have always heard really mixed reviews on Mr. Bell. I am happy to report however that I really enjoyed this book.

Now I have never really done any serious research on the theology of Rob Bell, and I am still a little shaky on what all he believes. But in this book, he just genuinely seems to be painting a picture of what he wants the Christian faith in the world to look like. In it’s simplest, Bell calls for the believer to fall more in love with Jesus, and to be more in awe of Him.

In Chapter 2, Bell describes the necessity of biblical interpretation. Interestingly, he argues against the idea that people can just live as the bible says, stating that everyone has there own biases and interpretations. Chapter 3 is possibly one of the most thought provoking chapters in the book, where Bell delivers his thoughts on missions and the reconciliation between truth and our experience. These are just things I found interesting in two of the eight chapters in this book.

There is a lot of great discussion points in this book, and I really wished I had read it with someone else so that we could have discussed it as we went. In my opinion Bell is not presenting anything that has not been presented by others who are questioning and “repainting” as it were what the Christian faith looks like.

A lot of people would fault Bell for being post-modern and emergent church folk, but I am not going to do that. The fact is, as I see it, and read it in this book, Rob Bell has a genuine love for Jesus, and he wants others to experience that kind of love also.

I just recently picked up one of his other books, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and I am excited to read it when I finish the last chapter of Crazy Love by Francis Chan.

A New Prayer

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up my love, fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

~A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

My Nerdy Self

So I am admittedly a nerd. I like books, computers, etc. So right in line with my nerdiness, i have discovered this:

http://www.logos.com/mac/biblestudy

This is some of the coolest bible study software I have found. Currently I am using Quickverse Black Box edition for mac, and I like it a lot, but Logos seems to be where its at.

The version seen in the above link is actually the base version, there are four versions above this one that just add more and more features. Hopefully one day I will be able to afford the base version, because it really would be a good resource for a minister/professor.

An Update

So I don’t really have anything in particular to write about, no deep thoughts or insights about life, love or God, but I thought I would give it a go tonight.

I have found myself in a period of transition. There is a little under 8 months until I graduate from college, which I find to be absolutely crazy. I have no clue where I will be this time next year. I have no prospective jobs lined up, am still undecided about where to go to seminary, and I don’t even know where I will live. Life is just kind of up in the air right now and I sort of like it. I see all these big life decisions and events on the horizon, but I have no idea about details, and most of them I can’t do anything about or even plan for. It’s kind of exciting.

I find myself less busy this year, only being involved with SGA on campus. The majority of my time is spent with homework, the church, or Janie, but all around I am not to busy. But I seem daily to realize that I had a whole day with lots of gaps in my schedule, but I didn’t spend time with the one person who matters most, God. I have really struggled since coming back to school with having a consistent time with God everyday, and really bothers me. I was really good about it this summer, but I have struggled come the school years. I really want to start getting up early and going to Texas Java and doing bible study there in the mornings, but thus far, haven’t done it.

This is where life is right now. More blogging to come.

Growth

So I don’t know how this will come out, but here goes…

I suppose the last few weeks, even few months have been packed with events, some big, some small.  Some could be considered life changing, some have been hardly a ripple on the radar screen.  I say all that to ask myself a question, do i see myself growing, am i moving forward in life?

Part of me would like to say yes, I have grown a lot over this summer.  I would like to say that I am not the same person I was when school ended.  I would hope that I have grown in faith.  I would hope that I have learned to truly put faith in God and trust him, to believe and trust that he loves me and that I am truly his child.  I would like to think that I have grown in my knowledge of God, that I have learned a little bit, a very little bit, more about his infinite character.  I would like to think I have learned a lot about grace, mercy, and love.  I would like to think that I have made progress, which is what I long for.  I would like to say that I feel more prepared to be in ministry.  I desire to move forward so bad, but then I actually look at my life.

I still struggle with doubt, I still fight to believe that God wants me, that God loves me even when I mess up the same way for the thousandth time.  I still struggle sometimes to believe that I am even truly his child, because I look at my life, and I see so much crap, so much junk that my eyes are filled with it and I think surely I can’t count myself as his child, I am to much of a mess.  I realize how little I know, how little I am prepared to do what I think he is calling me to do.  I don’t think I know the first thing about being a youth minister, and the fact that in a year a church could be entrusting me with the spiritual health and growth of the students blows me away.  I am so inadequate, I am so not ready for this.

But then, I read in Joshua, particularly the first few chapters, and I read how God told Joshua, several times, to be strong and courageous, and that he was with him.  And then I think, that is being said to me.  God is with me, and I should be strong and courageous, and ready for him to guide me to whatever he is going to guide me to.

I think, maybe faith is not supposed to be this incredibly easy thing that I can have figured out and could write a paper on.  Maybe faith is this beautiful thing that I get to work through daily, maybe it is this thing that seems very transient to me, that is here one day so strong and then the next day I am crying out to God and asking for a visible sign, asking for another way, because faith without seeing his hard.  Maybe it was meant to be hard.  Maybe, faith was mean to be faith.  Maybe I am not meant to have proof, maybe I am meant to trust in a God who sent his only son to die a death that I deserve for giving anything more attention that I give to God.  Maybe faith is a lesson for me that I need to realize I don’t have it all figured out, and that the only sure thing is that I need to trust the only thing worth trusting.

And then I think, maybe its not about how much I know.  Maybe it is not about me being able to read and understand Hebrew and Greek and finally be able to unpack Calvinism.  Maybe I should be reading my bible to fall deeper in love with my savior who I don’t deserve.  Maybe, this book that I cling to and try and pull out facts about God, maybe it is there to show me how utterly desolate I am, and force me to cling to the only thing that is worth knowing, and that is that God loves me and sacrificed everything to be with me.  Maybe it is not about knowing, maybe it is about redirecting my attention to Christ.

And then I think, no, I know, that this thing is not about me.  I realize that this thing he has called me to do, teaching and preaching and loving on students who need to know that Jesus loves him, maybe it is less of a calling and more of a gift.  Maybe instead of being burdened with how inadequate I think and truly am, I will realize that my God is bringing me along for the ride.  He is letting me be a face to his message, a voice to bring the message to those he longs to be with, not that he needs me to be that, but he says “Come with me, I want you in on this.”  Again, maybe it is about showing me how I can’t do this, and how all I can do is cling to him and trust him to be the guide.

Maybe the growth and progress I have been longing to see, maybe it is in the fact the that the things I want to see myself confident in and growing in, all point me back to his endless power and grace.  I want to see myself faith filled, with a knowledge of the holy and a heart that is ready to take him to the world.  But maybe in reality my true growth is realizing that I am not capable of any of that.  Maybe in reality, I need to be much less concerned with growth I think I should see in myself, and much more concerned with focusing on him who brings about the growth, who makes me capable, who gives me the ability to have faith, and who is the only thing worth trusting.  Maybe growth is realizing that I am not seeking him enough, not focused on him enough, and getting after it.  Maybe growth is realizing that what I think is growth is really focusing on me and not on him.

“O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you;my flesh faints for you,as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”  Psalm 63:1

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”  Matthew 7:7

Grace, Love, and Truth

I guess you could say that in my three years at UMHB, I have grown a whole lot, in several ways.  I am sure I look older, I am hopefully a little smarter, and maybe I am a bit more mature.  But I think the most important growing I have done in the last few years is the growth I have done spiritually.   The growth I have seen in my relationship with God, in my understanding of Him, and my understanding of Christianity.  I have grown through incredible times of grief over death, my own personal struggle with assurance of my Salvation, and my attempts to reconcile the academic side of Christianity I get at school with the faith that is and should be my foundation.

Recently, I have found myself reevaluating the way I look at Christianity, the way I look at the church, the way I want and am called to do ministry.  I find myself leaving the Christianity I grew up knowing, in hopes that what I have found is truer to what is found in scripture.  Now this is not to say that the church I grew up in is a bunch of heretics or anything of that sort, but I do see somethings in them that need to be changed. And that thing is mostly love.  I am personally getting tired of the “holy huddle,” and I am getting tired of trying to be the source of morality in this world.  There is a desire in me to just love people, to care for people, particularly students, but everyone is my call.  I think we are called to love, to show the love that God showed us when he gave his son to ransom us from slavery.  I think we are called to love the people of this world, not the things of this world, like Christ loved the church.

I find myself listening to and reading guys who are much smarter in these things than I am, and I seem to be hearing the same thing from them.  And when I go back and look at it in scripture, it seems to be correct.  So here is what I have come to conclude for this point in my life.  This is what I am going to be about, my ministry, my life, what I want people to see when they see me is this.

Grace

I am going to be a man who shows the grace that I have been shown.  I am going to be a man who tries his best to not condemn, to not judge, but to forgive, even when it is undeserved.  My Savior showed incredible grace to me on the cross, a cross that I deserved to die on.  God has not called me to be a judge, he has not given me the right to be the morality police, I am not to judge, because I am the chief of sinners.  I am just as corrupt, I have just as many problems as the next person.  But by the grace of Jesus Christ, I have been redeemed by his blood, and I am going to show grace to others because it was first shown to me.

“And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”  John 1:16-17

Love

I am going to be a man who shows love.  My Savior showed the ultimate love by dying a death he did not deserve to save me, a sinner he just as easily could have written off.  To me, love goes right along with grace.  I am going to show others the love that I was shown on the cross by Jesus.  I am going to care about people.  I am called to be salt and light in this world, and I am called to love others.  I am going to strive to be a man defined by love for everyone.  I am not going to condemn, I am not going to judge, but I am going to love as Christ loved me.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  John 13:34-35

Truth

I am going to be a man who speaks the truth.  I am not going to sugarcoat the gospel, I am not going to sugarcoat what I believe to be right.  With grace and love, I am going to be a preacher of the truth, and that truth is that we are a fallen people, and there is nothing we can do to save ourselves from a death we so justly deserve.  But by the grace of God, he sent his son to be a ransom for many, and through his death on the cross, he purchased us out of the bondage of sin.  That is what I am going to speak.  And whether or not it makes me possible, the truth is all I will preach.  I am not going to preach a feel good message, I am not going to change what the bible says.  I will speak the truth, even if it means being scorned by others, I will speak the truth.

“These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace;”  Zechariah 8:16

So that is what I have been thinking of these last few days.  I don’t know if these are the right things, I don’t know if my aim is way off.  And I do know that if I am going to be a man characterized by these things, that I will be radically different, and I will not be popular.  But I think I am okay with that.

I don’t know how many people read this thing, but if you are someone who is around me often, please hold me accountable to this, please talk to me about this if I am off.  Please just do this thing called life with me.  I don’t think I am alone in wanting to change myself and to see something change in this world, but I don’t know.  I just don’t know.

Faith my Eyes

So lately I have been struggling a lot with the concept of faith, particularly my faith. Lately I have been wondering, as is a constant struggle in my life, if my salvation is real or not, if the decision I made a long time ago was the real deal as it were. My prayers every night were for God to give me assurance that all of this, that my faith was real. The other night I prayed that and went to bed. The next morning I woke up and began reading through the Gospel of John, a personal favorite of mine. So I come to the story of the first disciples deciding to follow Jesus.

“The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.” John 1:35-37

As I was reading this, I was really shocked by the faith of these two disciples. They simply heard John the Baptist say that the Lamb of God was approaching, and they followed Jesus. That’s some pretty impressive faith right there. And then it hit me, faith was the answer.

All this time I had been trying to solve this internal struggle I was having by asking God to do something, when faith was the answer. My faith was obviously; I couldn’t even realize that God was big enough to save me from myself, though I suppose I knew he was, I was not believing that he would do it when I called on him. In all the late nights I stayed awake and struggled with whether it was real or not, I knew that I believed that Jesus came and died for my sins and rose again, but I wasn’t allowing myself to believe that it could be as simple as faith I suppose.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I am just now coming to faith in Jesus Christ, because I have always had that faith, but I think that as we grow, we need to grow in faith to that God is going to take care of us and protect us from the struggles of life, and I think that that is where my faith was lacking. So now my prayer is: “God, increase my faith, so that I will be totally dependent on you and trust fully in who you are, the power you have, and what you are going to do.”

Any thoughts on faith? Or even thoughts on my struggles? I am welcome to any kind of discussion

Discombobulated (yes its a real word)

This semester is going to be an interesting adventure I think.  I’m actually very nervous about a lot of things, which is not like me at all.  I have a lot on my plate at school and the rest of my life is seeming to not want to slow down to comfort me.

One thing I have discovered that is pretty cool is that I have found that I have a love for theology, which is something I did not think would happen.  But there is just something about thinking more critically about things about my faith, not to undermine my faith by any means, but to make sure my beliefs are correct and to enhance the faith that I have.

So here is the thing in the last few days that I have been trying to process and work my way through.  I grew up with a belief that God has a will for your life, and that it is very specific, and the actions you take either move you toward that or push you away.  In addition, I had always believed that God would speak to you (not audibly) and give you guidance as to how to be in that will.  It was recently presented to me that this is not a biblical thought.  Now the man who presented this to me is a scholar and I do trust that he is not leading me astray, but he says that there is not scriptural proof that God has a specific will for your life.

Now in tandem with this, he presented two thoughts.  First, that God’s will and God’s guidance for your life comes from right living and the wisdom he put into the bible.  Secondly, he said that God’s will for your life was a little bit more generalized than I was allowing for, and that there are many choices you could make that would place you into God’s will.

Now I do not in anyway claim to be a great theologian, I don’t even know how much merit there is in these arguments, but I do enjoy the fact that I am being able to look at my faith critically and try to understand what it is I believe better.  I don’t know how many people actually read this, but let me know what you think.

Done.

And another semester comes to an end.  This has probably been one of the easier semesters for me academically, and yet i feel it has probably been the semester where I have learned the most and where I have really found what I like to study and gotten some direction into some sort of career for myself later in life.

So I have come to the decision that I like studying the bible.  I have experienced just every kind of class the Christian Studies department can throw at me, and I have to say that the one’s based on the bible, where the bible is the only textbook, are definitely my favorites.  I have found that I really do genuinely enjoy getting up at 8 in the morning and listening to these two men who I respect so much teach me what they have discovered about scripture and let them encourage me to dive in and find the same.  Even in learning Hebrew, I just really enjoy scripture and all it has to offer.  I like theology and everything else like that, but I like studying what all other disciplines in the field of Christian Studies fall back to, scripture.  I am actually really sad that I don’t get to take anymore classes of New Testament in my undergrad, and that I only have one more Old Testament and no more Hebrew.  Those things really have expanded my knowledge so much more than I have experienced in any other subject I have ever studied.

In light of this recent discovery, I have decided and am in the process of deciding several other things.  The first thing is that, because of my new found desire to really study the bible, I am all the more excited about Seminary.  I have decided that in seminary, I am going to focus on the disciplines of biblical studies, hopefully in the original Hebrew and Greek, and I am almost guaranteed to be able to take a lot of those classes if that is what I really want.  Because of this desire, I have narrowed down my choices to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary or Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  At NOBTS I can get an MDiv with a concentration in biblical languages, and at SWBTS I can get an MDIV where all my NT and OT classes are in Greek and Hebrew.

The other thing I have decided is that I think in addition to doing youth ministry, I want to go for my Ph.D and become a professor, and teach somewhere.  It makes sense for the level of education I want to obtain, and it is a good second ministry to have that when I can no longer do youth ministry, I can solely focus on that.

Let me know what you think.