Well, it's a good thing my New Year's resolution didn't have to do with blogging more often, because I would have already failed miserably. Come to think of it, I don't think I had a New Year's resolution this year at all, actually.
Anyway. I've been reading this awesome book called Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (thanks Ben :]). In chapter two there's this great quote from D.L. Moody. He states the following:
"A man can no more take in a supply of grace for the future than he can eat enough for the next six months, or take sufficient air into his lungs at one time to sustain life for a week. We must draw upon God's boundless store of grace from day to day as we need it."
Personally I find this statement quite convicting. It's not my habit to start each day by seeking grace, humbly admitting that I can't make it through on my own strength. Instead, I rely on my lacking abilities to get by, only stopping to ask for grace when I've failed - miserably - yet again.
I wonder what kind of difference it would make if I began to pray for the understanding that I have no power in and of myself to succeed in life, or even to make it through a single 24-hour period without sinning? What if I began to view grace not as something that I withdraw only when I have a debt to pay, but as something that is as readily available, but also as crucially essential to life, as air?
It's a little bit late for a New Year's resolution, but if we waited around for the new year to make changes in our lives all the time, we'd never get anything done. So this is my resolution, starting today, March 7: to begin each day with a petition for grace, understanding my need for it at all times, not just when I fail.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
When People are Big and God is Small...
...then you should watch these videos! Louie Giglio does a fantastic job of pointing out how creation declares the glory of God, and then bringing it down to a personal level. It really helps put things back into the right perspective. If you haven't seen this message before, I highly recommend it.
These first two are about creation, and it's pretty amazing. If you only have time for these two, it's enough to make you think. But then he switches gear...
Here are the links to the other three parts.
How great is our God.
These first two are about creation, and it's pretty amazing. If you only have time for these two, it's enough to make you think. But then he switches gear...
Here are the links to the other three parts.
How great is our God.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Perspectives, or Faith and Hope and Where They Belong
Today I went to a Christmas brunch at my grandma's church. A woman named Nicole Johnson spoke, and I really wish I'd taken notes or something because what she said was really powerful and anything I say won't do it justice.
First she talked about how so often she feels like she's invisible - her kids and her husband ignore her and don't appreciate all the work she's doing for her family. Then her friend gave her a book on cathedrals, and as she read it she discovered that most of the great cathedrals of England have no builder's name attached to them. Men invested their entire lives in these beautiful structures that took more than 100 years to complete, knowing that they wouldn't be remembered for their work, because they did it unto the Lord, and not unto men. Nicole went on to talk about how spending your life building a monument for yourself is a waste of time. People will never appreciate us as much as we wish they would, unless we tell them and then they express their 'gratitude' out of obligation. What's worth it is building a monument to a God who deserves to be worshipped with our lives. We may not see the monument completed in our lifetimes, but we will have invested our time and effort in something that is so much greater than ourselves.
Then she talked about the story of Jesus healing a man's shriveled hand on the Sabbath. It was mostly speculation, but there was a lot of truth in what she said. She talked about how the Pharisees may have baited Jesus with the man, egging him on and hoping they could trap Him, and how He saw their hearts and asked them a pointed question: is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or ignore the man and essentially do evil by refusing him help when Jesus could heal him?
Then Jesus told the man to stretch out his hand - not the good one, because he knew how to use that one and what to do with it - but the withered one, the one the man was probably trying to hide and maybe had been ridiculed for. The cause of the defect was unknown - a wound? An injury? Had it been that way from birth? It didn't matter, Jesus could heal it. But first the man had to stretch out his hand - to offer up his imperfection, to display his shame to everyone - and demonstrate his faith in Jesus' power to heal him. "This stretching," Nicole said, "separates fear from faith...hurt from hope...shame from trust."
The man stretched out his hand and was healed, and the wounded went away whole and unashamed. The Pharisees, on the other hand, full of their whitewashed selves and convinced of their righteousness, were left with their shriveled hearts and their wounded pride. Why were their hearts withered and cold? Had they been wounded? Injured? Jesus could have healed them, but their pride stood in the way.
Nicole went on to apply this story to our lives. She told us about her tendency to try and control her life and everything and everyone in it. She talked about how in order to grow, we need to stretch and offer up not what's whole in our lives, but what's shriveled and useless. Often we want to hold so tightly to those areas, afraid that if we let go, everyhing will fall apart. "And you're probably right," Nicole said. "But it may be the best thing that's ever happened to you."
It reminded me of that week in youth group when Mark Driscoll talked about the different views of Jesus, particularly the one that says that Jesus isn't king enough to rule over every area of our lives. Until we learn to let go of everything and trust that His hands are more than big enough to hold it all for us, we'll be fighting Him for control every step of our journey.
As temporary residents of a physical world, it's tempting to place our hope in things or people - which are all 'appearances' that will fade away. Reality - the truth of the Gospel and the promise of heaven - are where we should place our hope. Nicole summed it up better than I could: "I tell God, 'please take my hope and put it way up high, so I can't reach it, because I know if I hold onto it I'll put it in the wrong places.'"
First she talked about how so often she feels like she's invisible - her kids and her husband ignore her and don't appreciate all the work she's doing for her family. Then her friend gave her a book on cathedrals, and as she read it she discovered that most of the great cathedrals of England have no builder's name attached to them. Men invested their entire lives in these beautiful structures that took more than 100 years to complete, knowing that they wouldn't be remembered for their work, because they did it unto the Lord, and not unto men. Nicole went on to talk about how spending your life building a monument for yourself is a waste of time. People will never appreciate us as much as we wish they would, unless we tell them and then they express their 'gratitude' out of obligation. What's worth it is building a monument to a God who deserves to be worshipped with our lives. We may not see the monument completed in our lifetimes, but we will have invested our time and effort in something that is so much greater than ourselves.
Then she talked about the story of Jesus healing a man's shriveled hand on the Sabbath. It was mostly speculation, but there was a lot of truth in what she said. She talked about how the Pharisees may have baited Jesus with the man, egging him on and hoping they could trap Him, and how He saw their hearts and asked them a pointed question: is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath, or ignore the man and essentially do evil by refusing him help when Jesus could heal him?
Then Jesus told the man to stretch out his hand - not the good one, because he knew how to use that one and what to do with it - but the withered one, the one the man was probably trying to hide and maybe had been ridiculed for. The cause of the defect was unknown - a wound? An injury? Had it been that way from birth? It didn't matter, Jesus could heal it. But first the man had to stretch out his hand - to offer up his imperfection, to display his shame to everyone - and demonstrate his faith in Jesus' power to heal him. "This stretching," Nicole said, "separates fear from faith...hurt from hope...shame from trust."
The man stretched out his hand and was healed, and the wounded went away whole and unashamed. The Pharisees, on the other hand, full of their whitewashed selves and convinced of their righteousness, were left with their shriveled hearts and their wounded pride. Why were their hearts withered and cold? Had they been wounded? Injured? Jesus could have healed them, but their pride stood in the way.
Nicole went on to apply this story to our lives. She told us about her tendency to try and control her life and everything and everyone in it. She talked about how in order to grow, we need to stretch and offer up not what's whole in our lives, but what's shriveled and useless. Often we want to hold so tightly to those areas, afraid that if we let go, everyhing will fall apart. "And you're probably right," Nicole said. "But it may be the best thing that's ever happened to you."
It reminded me of that week in youth group when Mark Driscoll talked about the different views of Jesus, particularly the one that says that Jesus isn't king enough to rule over every area of our lives. Until we learn to let go of everything and trust that His hands are more than big enough to hold it all for us, we'll be fighting Him for control every step of our journey.
As temporary residents of a physical world, it's tempting to place our hope in things or people - which are all 'appearances' that will fade away. Reality - the truth of the Gospel and the promise of heaven - are where we should place our hope. Nicole summed it up better than I could: "I tell God, 'please take my hope and put it way up high, so I can't reach it, because I know if I hold onto it I'll put it in the wrong places.'"
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Trains
The other day, I was thinking about color - how many different colors and shades of colors there are, how different colors evoke different moods and memories, and how nice it is that we don't live in a black and white world. How boring would that be??
But even though the range of colors that humans have recreated is astounding, how many more colors is God capable of creating? I bet the number is somewhere pretty close to infinity. If you hold up any number of leaves from different plants next to each other, I bet you couldn't find any two that were exactly the same shade of green. The sky's blue isn't the same every day. The number of different colors on flowers and animals is probably near uncountable. Why would God bother to paint our world in such wondrous hues? He could have left it black and white. Seems pretty clear to me that it's an expression of His love for us - and also evidence of His glory and praiseworthiness.
Thinking about color led me to think about eyes, how we perceive color, and how I would venture to guess that no two sets of irises are exactly alike. Eye color is amazing - it's no wonder eyes are fascinating when everyone's are different. Then there's the function of the eyeball. Our pupils widen and contract involuntarily depending on the amount of light they take in. We've all heard this a million times, but if you stop and think about it - it's incredible! Most of us don't understand much about a camera, except that it has a lens and it takes pictures. But even cameras, with all their high-tech settings and program capabilities, can't match the superior design of the eye. While the camera lens position has to be manually adjusted to zoom in or out and focus, the eye lens not only does this automatically, it does it by adjusting the SIZE of the lens.
I don't know about you, but I think that's really cool. And that's not even considering the fact that we see things UPSIDE DOWN, and then our brain takes the images that we're streaming to it for about 16 hours straight every day, and flips them around so fast that we never see anything upside down.
I have a question. How does anyone in their right minds possibly believe in evolution? How can matter that came from who knows where create life that has the capability to evolve into the complex, rational being that man is today? Man is more intelligent than matter, and still no one has been able to prove or figure out how this is possible. I respect people who are evolutionists, especially those who have well-reasoned arguments, but I don't understand.
This is not what I planned to blog on today, but it's probably better than whatever it was I thought I was going to say. I love trains of thought like this - they lead me to a deeper appreciation for God's creation and a deeper sense of humility as I realize, by His grace, that there is no way that I deserve to be loved by a God this great.
All glory, honor, power, and adoration be unto Him forever and ever!!
"For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well." - Psalm 139:13&14
But even though the range of colors that humans have recreated is astounding, how many more colors is God capable of creating? I bet the number is somewhere pretty close to infinity. If you hold up any number of leaves from different plants next to each other, I bet you couldn't find any two that were exactly the same shade of green. The sky's blue isn't the same every day. The number of different colors on flowers and animals is probably near uncountable. Why would God bother to paint our world in such wondrous hues? He could have left it black and white. Seems pretty clear to me that it's an expression of His love for us - and also evidence of His glory and praiseworthiness.
Thinking about color led me to think about eyes, how we perceive color, and how I would venture to guess that no two sets of irises are exactly alike. Eye color is amazing - it's no wonder eyes are fascinating when everyone's are different. Then there's the function of the eyeball. Our pupils widen and contract involuntarily depending on the amount of light they take in. We've all heard this a million times, but if you stop and think about it - it's incredible! Most of us don't understand much about a camera, except that it has a lens and it takes pictures. But even cameras, with all their high-tech settings and program capabilities, can't match the superior design of the eye. While the camera lens position has to be manually adjusted to zoom in or out and focus, the eye lens not only does this automatically, it does it by adjusting the SIZE of the lens.
I don't know about you, but I think that's really cool. And that's not even considering the fact that we see things UPSIDE DOWN, and then our brain takes the images that we're streaming to it for about 16 hours straight every day, and flips them around so fast that we never see anything upside down.
I have a question. How does anyone in their right minds possibly believe in evolution? How can matter that came from who knows where create life that has the capability to evolve into the complex, rational being that man is today? Man is more intelligent than matter, and still no one has been able to prove or figure out how this is possible. I respect people who are evolutionists, especially those who have well-reasoned arguments, but I don't understand.
This is not what I planned to blog on today, but it's probably better than whatever it was I thought I was going to say. I love trains of thought like this - they lead me to a deeper appreciation for God's creation and a deeper sense of humility as I realize, by His grace, that there is no way that I deserve to be loved by a God this great.
All glory, honor, power, and adoration be unto Him forever and ever!!
"For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well." - Psalm 139:13&14
Monday, November 15, 2010
Comic Relief Take 2, Part 2
Parts 2 and 3 of my failure of a storyboard...I imagine they will take some explaining, but I'll let you try and figure it out first. Haha.
Repetition
(or, another scatterbrained attempt to convey how amazed by the Gospel I am - by God's grace, of course.)
In our culture today, it's all about the newest, best thing. Music artists are constantly putting out new catchier music. Movie producers are always releasing new edgier, scarier movies. Cell phone companies are competing to create the new fastest, slimmest, most poweful phone.
Why the constant change? I think it's because consumers get bored. We live in an age of ADD. If things aren't easy to understand or exciting enough to hold our attention, forget it. And when you see the same movie more than twice, read the same book more than once, use the same phone for more than six months, or listen to the same song more than three times, it starts becoming unbearably repetitive. Like a joke you already know the punch line of - predictable and totally anticlimactic. Consumers need something new to amaze them, shock them, repulse them, terrify them, enthrall them, or immerse them so that they keep buying into new things. There always has to be something better so that it can break through the ever-toughening shell of desensitization and boredom in order to interest us in itself.
But does the short attention span of our society apply in the Christian realm too? In my personal experience it does. If you hear a story told the exact same way enough times, it gets boring. It ceases to impact you or elicit any sort of response. "Preach the gospel to yourself daily" sounds like a good idea in theory, but after a while, when it becomes a simple, emotionless "Jesus died to save me," there isn't a whole lot of power in it. Which isn't the gospel's fault, but
mine. (Yeah, I'm talking about me now.)
Thankfully, unlike the culture, which seems to be running out of ideas, God is never at a loss for ways to bring us back to the cross and reconvict our hearts of the magnitude of the sacrifice it represents. I think that's one of the reasons there are so many books of the Bible that contain the Gospel, or at least references to it or prophesies about it - so we don't hear the exact same thing over and over again. Then there's music that contains the gospel message, different pastors who each present it in a different way, and people in our lives who have different (and often better) views on various areas of life than we do.
When I was stuck in a rut in terms of my appreciation for the gospel, God brought me back to a place of awe through worship, messages, and meaningful conversations with people.
But perhaps the main reason that the gospel never stays uninteresting long enough for the Christian belief system to die off is that by God's grace we are continuously changing! When you watch a movie, no matter how many times you watch the end, it will always be the same. But the ending of the lives of those who are saved already changed - we who were once condemned to death have now been brought back to life! While Christ's death is a finished work, the work that begins in our lives when we believe in Him never finishes this side of heaven. We can't stop being impacted by the gospel because the Holy Spirit will continue to change us as long as we allow Him to - not into people who are more calloused and immune to the message of redemption,
but into people who are more open and receptive to it.
All this ridiculously long confusing rambly post is to say, the gospel is and always will be way better than anything this culture has to offer. Even when it seems like we've grown bored of it, God is not so limited in His resources that He can't make it come alive to us again, even more vividly than before. I have experienced His grace in this way personally, and I am grateful beyond words that He cares enough to humble me and lead me back to a place of surrender time and again.
The end.
In our culture today, it's all about the newest, best thing. Music artists are constantly putting out new catchier music. Movie producers are always releasing new edgier, scarier movies. Cell phone companies are competing to create the new fastest, slimmest, most poweful phone.
Why the constant change? I think it's because consumers get bored. We live in an age of ADD. If things aren't easy to understand or exciting enough to hold our attention, forget it. And when you see the same movie more than twice, read the same book more than once, use the same phone for more than six months, or listen to the same song more than three times, it starts becoming unbearably repetitive. Like a joke you already know the punch line of - predictable and totally anticlimactic. Consumers need something new to amaze them, shock them, repulse them, terrify them, enthrall them, or immerse them so that they keep buying into new things. There always has to be something better so that it can break through the ever-toughening shell of desensitization and boredom in order to interest us in itself.
But does the short attention span of our society apply in the Christian realm too? In my personal experience it does. If you hear a story told the exact same way enough times, it gets boring. It ceases to impact you or elicit any sort of response. "Preach the gospel to yourself daily" sounds like a good idea in theory, but after a while, when it becomes a simple, emotionless "Jesus died to save me," there isn't a whole lot of power in it. Which isn't the gospel's fault, but
mine. (Yeah, I'm talking about me now.)
Thankfully, unlike the culture, which seems to be running out of ideas, God is never at a loss for ways to bring us back to the cross and reconvict our hearts of the magnitude of the sacrifice it represents. I think that's one of the reasons there are so many books of the Bible that contain the Gospel, or at least references to it or prophesies about it - so we don't hear the exact same thing over and over again. Then there's music that contains the gospel message, different pastors who each present it in a different way, and people in our lives who have different (and often better) views on various areas of life than we do.
When I was stuck in a rut in terms of my appreciation for the gospel, God brought me back to a place of awe through worship, messages, and meaningful conversations with people.
But perhaps the main reason that the gospel never stays uninteresting long enough for the Christian belief system to die off is that by God's grace we are continuously changing! When you watch a movie, no matter how many times you watch the end, it will always be the same. But the ending of the lives of those who are saved already changed - we who were once condemned to death have now been brought back to life! While Christ's death is a finished work, the work that begins in our lives when we believe in Him never finishes this side of heaven. We can't stop being impacted by the gospel because the Holy Spirit will continue to change us as long as we allow Him to - not into people who are more calloused and immune to the message of redemption,
but into people who are more open and receptive to it.
All this ridiculously long confusing rambly post is to say, the gospel is and always will be way better than anything this culture has to offer. Even when it seems like we've grown bored of it, God is not so limited in His resources that He can't make it come alive to us again, even more vividly than before. I have experienced His grace in this way personally, and I am grateful beyond words that He cares enough to humble me and lead me back to a place of surrender time and again.
The end.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Comic Relief Take 2
Well, after the intense profundity of my last post, I needed to take a break from strenuous thinking.
That was a joke.
But I'm going to post something ridiculous anyway.
The pictures aren't the funny part, because the story is rather absurd. The comical part is the drawings themselves, and their clear representation of my total lack of artistic ability. I had to draw (or attempt, rather) a storyboard of 8 frames or more (I drew 12; these are only the first 4) for the story we just finished reading as an assignment for British Literature.
So, here.
Guess I've drawn severed heads now too...sort of.
That was a joke.
But I'm going to post something ridiculous anyway.
The pictures aren't the funny part, because the story is rather absurd. The comical part is the drawings themselves, and their clear representation of my total lack of artistic ability. I had to draw (or attempt, rather) a storyboard of 8 frames or more (I drew 12; these are only the first 4) for the story we just finished reading as an assignment for British Literature.
So, here.
Guess I've drawn severed heads now too...sort of.
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