Broken and Weak

The past few months God has been teaching me about finding satisfaction in Christ. Not some satisfaction in Him but Him solely. First, He showed me my selfishness and my self-interest motivation in my actions and behavior. Why do I watch movies? Is it for God or to entertain myself because I am not satisfied enough in who Christ is? Do I need to eat the amount of food I do or have I crossed to self indulgence which is caused by a self-centered attitude to attain what is pleasurable to me? The list goes on as He tore apart every aspect of my life causing me to reflect on the true motivation behind the things I do and think. Are the things that I do a direct result of my satisfaction in Christ or are they reactions to my inability at being fulfilled by God alone? The sad truth is that most of the things I do result from the latter.

 Do not be dismayed, though, because God has opened up my blinded eyes and revealed to me my weakened state and now I can have newness of life once again in Christ!

Wait...that is not what happened though. If there is something worse than the Spirit convicting one of his current state it is when that one has had the truth revealed to him yet can do nothing to fix it. My life is one of pursuit of Christ yet is clouded by so many selfish vain pursuits of which I am powerless to change. My mind screams for my heart and body to seek Christ. It reasons that God is the only thing worth living for, therefore I must seek His face and live for Him. Yet reason is not strong enough compulsion to die to one's self and to live as Christ. God alone is what can compel us to live wholeheartedly in total rejection of this world, because when we are satisfied in Him the world has nothing in which to entice us. I share this mainly for the reason that it is only when God graces people with this satisfaction then they speak out and call the rest of us to follow after Christ with as much enthusiasm and dedication. No one likes that guy. "What's that you say? Now you're interested in following after Christ?" Either the enthusiasm is momentary and we ignore it or we get angry with their dedication because of our own lukewarm state. Either way or reaction is hardly holy. Yet I say this in a state when I recognize that I should not give in and indulge in my selfish pursuits not because it is bad but because I should be finding sole satisfaction in my Jesus. Well, I don't find very much satisfaction in Him right now, but that is my desire. I try to spend time in His presence and word yet nothing fills me up or encourages me. Emptiness is fellow companion. Yet just because we as Christians are not fulfilled solely by Him does not give us right to seek it in other venues. For when we claim Christ as our everything we give up all other things. So this has been said show that believers are broken and weak people and only by God's grace do we survive. We do not have it together, and because we don't that should drive us to Christ to whom power and glory and honor and dominion belong.

  Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds... Hebrews 10:23-24

God is Holy

Holy is a word that I never really understood growing up. Sure people would say, "literally it means set apart", but then they would go on and expound on the word. I got the understanding that holy had some sort of moral component to it...or perhaps it was a word of praise like hallelujah. People would throw in the word holy when other words fell short or just did not quite hit the mark. It seemed like everybody would just agree because they did not fully grasp the lofty meaning of the "divine" word. I have come to realize that, sometimes, humans, and in this context, Christians, tend to give more meanings to words than was originally intended. So I look at the word holy and what does it mean? It means set apart. It has no hidden meaning giving it a higher calling of a word. It means set apart. God is not like creation. He is set apart. There is no power as great as God's. He is set apart. There is no love like God. He is set apart. Who is wise like our God? He is set apart. God alone deserves glory. He is set apart. Nothing compares to God. There is no one like Him. There is no one beside Him. He is holy. Let us not give an unknown meaning to a word and miss out on what many of the writers from the Bible were trying to convey. God is a set apart entity that no person, animal, natural force, idea, or any other thing can come close to comparing to his divine nature. This divine nature that beckons for all of creation to bring glory to. Let us give glory accordingly.

Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Revelation 4:8

Made in His Image

I am taking a class this semester that all DBU students are required to take, called Developing the Christian Mind (DCM). This class is focused on preparing Christians to intellectually develop their faith so it is based upon truth that they have thought out and worked out instead of just believing generalities and not digging deeper. At least, I think that is what the class is about. Regardless, today we were talking about creation and how in the first three chapters of the Bible, we are able to answer the four questions that every person longs to know. Who am I? Where am I? What's wrong (with the world)? What's the remedy? We were on the topic of "who am I" in regard to Adam and Eve. We were talking about how they were made in the image of God. Then, the professor asked the question of why God was so against the Israelites making graven images or idols. One student said that the idols could take the place of God in our lives and become the receptor of our praise instead of God. That is true. Another student said God cannot be confined to human efforts of craftsmanship and it is a disgrace to attempt to. That is true as well. But then it clicked. God made humans in the image of God. We are to be the representation of God on this planet because we have his characteristics and attributes to a certain extent. We shirk our duty of being the physical representation of God in this world and put it upon other things, but God designed us to be His graven image. Not so we can receive praise, but that people may see who God is through their fellow human which will lead them to a relational powerful God. Humans are the only creation made in God's image, so we have a innate duty to display who our creator for his glory.

What's That You Say?

When I was living in Houston I went through a time when I wanted to hear God's voice more than any other voice in my life. Many voices are always speaking to us trying to get heard above the others. These voices include family, friends, world, Satan, even our own. They try to tell us what we should do and how we should live our lives. As children of God we should desire to hear God's voice rather than man's so we may please Him and bring glory to His name. So at that point in my life I was fed up with hearing any voice besides my God's. So I did what any normal person would do when they want to focus, I went to the streets to get away from people and fasted to be able to hear God's voice. After being on the streets for about 2 weeks I eventually went back to the house that I had been staying at without any clear direction from the Lord or an ability to hear him better. I was discouraged and disappointed in not being any closer to God than in the beginning. I think it is obvious to say that the ability to hear God's voice grows over our whole lifetimes. Yet I wanted a huge jump so I would know exactly what He wanted. I wanted to skip the lifetime of learning and just have it. Sounds like a lot of things in life. We do not like to wait or grow into something but we just want to have it. Anyways, I was speaking with a friend of mine and he was sharing this same desire causing me to recall that time in Houston. As I recounting my experience, God spoke. When I went to the streets I was wanting God to speak louder than any voice in my life. I wanted him to be loud and drown out the other voices, to make it easy for me. That is not how He works. He allows those voices to be heard, yet He grows us to be able to discern His voice above any other voice. He does not out yell the other voices. He does not compete with other voices. He speaks at His normal volume and gives us the grace to discern His voice. It takes no skill to be able to hear a person shouting at you in a room of normal conversation level. Let me put it this way. Sunday morning, the praise team was singing which includes six or seven different people. Yet even amongst all the voices I was able to distinguish to voice of Haley Till. It is not because she was singing louder than the others but because I was familiar with her. We have been friends for many years and that intimacy allowed me to discern her voice out of the others. God wants us to grow in intimacy with Him so we are able to distinguish His voice out of the sea of voices. He wants us to be familiar with His ways and nature. He wants a personal relationship that is growing deeper and deeper. ...and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. John 10:4

The Perfect Church

Sorry it has been awhile since I have posted. A couple of times I have sat down to type something and actually wrote some, but I did not feel the Holy Spirit guiding me in it so I deleted it. So hopefully this is from God and for His glory. Little update on me, I recently was asked to pray about going to Morocco this summer with IGO. After praying about this I did not feel any leading from the Lord nor any peace from Him to pursue this option. So once again, I find myself waiting on Him or maybe more appropriately, He waiting on me till I'm ready for Him to send me.

"Let the fellowship of Christ examine itself and see whether it has given any token of the love of Christ to the victims of the world's contumely and contempt, any token of that love of Christ which seeks to preserve, support and protect life. Otherwise however liturgically correct our services are, and however devout our prayer, however brave our testimony, they will profit us nothing, nay rather, they must needs testify against us that we have as a Church ceased to follow our Lord." The Cost of Discipleship

For years I grew up believing the church is rated on how big it was, how many programs it had, what type of events they held, and so on. Bonhoeffer is expositionally teaching from the sermon on the mount. He comes to how we should treat our brother and he makes this claim (stated above). The church should be rated on how we treated our brother, showing love to the people that are despised by this world, and treating kindly those that persecute us. It does not matter if we have the largest sanctuary in the city with the most high tech gadgets. It is about relationships with your brothers and with the lost. If these large crowds and gadgets get in the way of our relationships then we should get rid of them or more likely we as individuals should leave them. The body of God is about living in a community that reaches out to all types especially the oppressed and broken-hearted. When you see a church doing that then you have seen a healthy church.

Addictions

addiction- the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something

Being on the streets it is easy to identify people with addictions. Addictions to drugs, addictions to alcohol, even some addicted to sex. It is easy to condemn these actions and these people. We wonder, how can they live theirs lives in such a worthless manner? Don't they see they are ruining their lives and their friends' and family's lives? They do not deserve our love or our money. Well, one time as I was pondering these thoughts God showed me that we all have addictions, they are just not as noticeable. Some of us are addicted to self-righteousness, legalism, lust, materialism and these are just a few. We do not view these as serious because the physical consequences are not as visible. We can easily gauge the effects of being addicted to drugs and alcohol. It breaks up families and relationships, expends money and resources, and causes thievery and violence. Therefore we judge this addiction to be of a greater evil and condemn the people of it. Yet God views all these addictions as equal evil and despises them all the same. An addiction to materialism will actually improve one's physical outlook so we are not as quick to judge that. Materialism's consequences are in the mental and spiritual aspect of man and causes deep roots of darkness that may go unnoticed. And even a more obscure addiction would be one of legalism which is rampant in the church. How can we know that the people we attend church with are truly acting in love and not in a legalistic mindset. The results seem the same. Yet the causes are worlds apart. We do not condemn these people the same as the addicts and drunkards. All this really comes down to that we are all pathetic sinners and the only good in us comes from God. We all have a sinful flesh and if we do not fall to evil it is because God gave us that desire or that discipline to withstain from it.

God, I ask that you will free us from our addictions of every type. That you would put to death the self that continues to live inside of us. And we will live without judging others but have compassion upon them. God break us and allow Jesus to live through us. In Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

God is Love

For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Romans 9:3

So basically, Paul is saying that he would go to hell for the sake of his people. If he could forfeit his soul to the devil so his people would be saved, he would do it. I am well known with the passage in 1 John that speaks about no greater love than a person laying down his life for a friend yet I have missed this passage in Romans and the extent to Paul's claim. It is one thing to forfeit one's life because BAM I am in heaven, so I am the real winner but to forfeit one's soul and die eternally in the lake of fire is unimaginable.

So let me ask you a question. Who are you ready to die for? Children? Spouse? No one? Lost people? Maybe you are ready to die for the sake of the Gospel so that people you love can have a chance of hearing. Or perhaps you are not ready to die for anyone, even a loved one. Well, let me ask you another question. Who are you ready to go to hell for? ....yeah, I did not think so. Now I do not beat you down to leave you lying on the floor. I think it is obvious that this love that Paul has for his people is something greater than himself. This is not the type of love that happens from knowing them, talking with them, even spending a whole life with them. This love comes from God and only from God. God has this love for all people and that is why He sent His son who has this same love. In fact, Jesus went to hell for all people yet He overcame hell and tooks the keys. So this is the love that God desires us to have for our brothers and sisters and for the lost. A love that does not depend on who they are or what they have done, but a pure love that Satan cannot defeat. This is the love of God. This is God.