Recent Reflections

I have been working with God on recognizing His faithfulness in my life and how He continues to show up and prove who He is.

It. Has. Been. Amazing.

It has stretched me to asking the question, regularly, "What if I, daily, took God at His whole Word?"

Not just accepting that He has a plan for my life when things are tough, but accepting that He is God, and recognizing what that exactly and wholly means for my life; the misting vapor that it is. That is a huge reality and freeing thing to approach a day with let along a lifetime.

It is so cool when we allow God to be who He is, in our life. It seems very easy to recognize in others' lives, but for us to realize it in our own lives is paramount and changes the game. This song is really resonating with me.

Exciting Excellence

When it seems impossible...
When it looks like there is no way...
When we come to the "conclusion" that we shouldn't even try...
When it all comes crashing down...

...God is faithful.

When it's going well...

When things seem like they couldn't get any better...

When everything seems to be lining up...

When you "couldn't complain"...

...God is faithful.

As a believer of Jesus Christ, I sing songs, often, of God's faithfulness and His provision, and yet, take that reality for granted. The fact is that God is never changing. He is constant. Through good and bad, He always remains the same. And I was thinking about that lately. 

Why is God always the same?

I think part of why he never changes is so we can always remember who He is, what His touch feels like, and what His voice sounds like. He says, "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me" in John 10:27. 

I'm giving praise today that God never changes and always stays the same. I know His voice; and it never changes.

Awesome.

Do you rejoice because God glorifies Himself or do you find it difficult to be happy with His glorification?

Very interesting to me. I think that sometimes I still forget that His glory is the most important thing in this world. Not even Him using me or making me feel the fruit of His work through me, but simply His glory, period. We were made to praise God and to glorify Him.

If you want to continually see the Greatness of God, you have to get stuck on the Grace of God and not the greatness of our Sin.

On Wednesday, Derry talked about being in the awe of God and recognizing His greatness and awesomeness. All of this comes out of Isaiah 6 and the beginning of that chapter. I find it interesting where we can easily find ourselves and even where we can think we see Isaiah in this passage.

In Isaiah 6, Isaiah exclaims, "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;..." This statement is huge at this moment because it shows Isaiah's recognition of how Great God is. But, I fear that we can have a reaction to this comment that is not what the point of the scripture, at all.

See, when Isaiah cries out how "unclean" he is and the people he is with in comparison to God, we can get on the mentality, quite quickly, that Isaiah was having a moment of recognition of the sin in his life. I think we find it easier to identify with that mentality rather than identifying with the truth of the scripture, which is much more important than the recognition of our sin.

If you look back to the beginning of the chapter, Isaiah describes how Great God is through the things that he sees.

"High and lifted up..."
"The train of his robe filled the temple."

These two statements are huge in understanding what God wants to express through this passage. Do we not recognize that Isaiah is AMAZED, AWESTRUCK and COMPLETELY WRECKED because of what he saw. Isaiah does not give us a laundry list of the things that he was being convicted of in his own life. But he recognizes the Huge-ness of God, the Power of God and the recognition of all of this compacted into this one encounter. Sure, Isaiah says that he is man of unclean lips and that the people of the earth are a people of unclean lips. But, there is a huge thing that we miss in most cases when we read this passage.

Does Isaiah recognize that he is a sinner. Absolutely.
Is he probably running through the list of things that makes him unclean. Most likely.

But, if you look in verses 6 and 7 we have a huge lesson to learn. The seraph touches Isaiah's lips with the burning coal and says, "your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for." This is HUGE and my main point!

We have the tendency to recognize God's Greatness, move towards recognizing how unclean we are and how insignificant our lives actually are, but we take so long looking at ourselves that we forget to go back to the messages that God wants to send to us. We get so focused on ourselves and the things that we can think about and comprehend that we forget to go back to the Grace that we can't even come close to comprehending or understanding. We get stuck on ourselves and not stuck on the Greatness of God.

If you want to continually see the Greatness of God, you have to get stuck on the Grace of God and not the greatness of our Sin.

When Good things get made popular and secularized, they cease to be Good in the hearts of men.

With the advent of the Lenten season (the period of time leading up to Easter, which began yesterday, Ash Wednesday) and all of the blog posts that I have been reading today on the topic, I decided to throw my thoughts into the picture. See, for a long time, I have seen Lent treated in a terribly perverse way. Perverse in the sense that it remains a case to be proven, in some people's lives, as a true act of reverence towards the sacrifice Jesus paid on the Cross.

A number of my years, I would personally entertain the idea that I was going to give something up for the duration of the 40 days. Most times, I would either forget that I had given it up or decided that I wanted a bowl of ice cream, 2 liter of Mountain Dew and sleeve of Oreo cookies more than I wanted to abstain from the things that I had "committed" to giving up to demonstrate my understanding of His sacrifice. One might say that that was a pretty good demonstration of where Jesus actually was in my life. Others might want to make me feel better about my life and say that I was young, immature and really had no conception of what Lent is truly all about.

Other years, I would deem that only the Catholics are to observe Lent and that there is no way that I was going to become Catholic and therefore, do nothing of the sort to recklessly assert any allegiance to that way of belief or any of their traditions. They were responsible for the Crusades for Pete's sake! And so, the appropriate response is to do nothing to honor the ultimate sacrifice and go on living my life on my terms, in all forms of hedonism and self-comfort.

So, this year, I'm going to take a reverse approach to this Lent thing. I refuse to allow a season that is to be geared toward coming to a better understanding of what it means to give something up, just to give something up. We call that fasting. And yes, I do intend to work on that. In processing through Lent and why I want to be a participant in this year's version of the season has nothing to do with bettering myself or making something seem like a fun idea. I want nothing to do with making myself be glorified in this whole thing. Anything that I do to truly sacrifice for 40 days, I want to do it simply for the glory of God.

This seems to eliminate a few things pretty quickly.
-Losing weight.
-Not texting.
-Writing witty blogposts about sacrificing things.
-Being nicer.
-Telling people what I'm going to do so they can see it and tell me what a good job I'm doing in this season of Lent.

All that to say, I'm not sure if I'm doing Lent this year. Guess that means that I'm not. Perhaps, my whole rant here is to say one big point:

The point of Lent is not to begin things we should already be doing or to stop doing things we shouldn't be doing. 

If you shouldn't be drinking soda, because it's bad for your health, then stop. If you should be watching less TV because you should be reading your Bible or any book, then do it. But don't give something up that you should have given up anyway.

If Lent is something that you need to do, fine. But as we enter this season, may the point of the season be evident in our lives each day: Christ gave the ultimate sacrifice, our response is, and can only be, complete surrender every day. Allow this season be a renewed time of awe-inspired dedication to following Jesus.

Friday Thoughts: Everything is Meaningless...

So, I have been studying Ecclesiastes for the past week or so, and I am convinced that Solomon would not have been a very good counselor. I mean, here's a guy that was known as the wisest man to ever live and spits out this book, authors many proverbs, a number of the psalms not to mention every newlywed's favorite book, Song of Songs. I mean come on, the heir of David. DAVID. Not his thrid son or something, who killed for the right of heir. This is David's son. The King of Israel. And all this guy can do is reflect on the meaninglessness of everything!

As much as Solomon offers a number of reasons and examples as to why everything under the sun is meaningless, Solomon allows us to see some huge insights into the meaning of life. Even through his, seemingly, negative or cynical rants about the things of this world, there is one obvious theme: We should forget about all the things that seem to dominate our lives in this world and focus on things that further the kingdom of God. What are we doing today that will bring us and those around us closer to Heaven? Closer to Christ?

One way that we do that is by simply loving. Not loving people to the point that they want to see Jesus. Just loving. And sometimes love comes in many different forms: attention, money, sending a note, etc. However, the biggest way that we can bring people closer to Christ is simply by "BE-ing" who He has created us to be.

One of the ways that you can express God's love is by participating in the KIN Silent Auction that will begin next week at NMC and online at www.helpingkidsinneed.com and share LOVE with an area of the world that needs to feel LOVE. Our Senior High Pastor, Derry has posted a great informational post on how you can get involved.

Quick Clarification on LOVE: I want to clarify that I don't mean LOVE with strings attached. Christ never said, I want you to feed the homeless and then tell them that they need to accept your version of Jesus. He never said even told the woman at the well that she needed to "accept [him]" and then sin no more. He loved her and told her to sin no more. By "BE-ing" sometimes we just need to offer that sandwich, offer that TV for that auction, spend time with that widow, and just BE there for what God has given you the opportunity for.

May we "BE" who God has created us to be and follow those passions, promptings, and desires today. May we understand and accept the situations that he has made us to BE in.

Anxiously Waiting

Last night, I was working a football Doubleheader at Bremen that was scheduled to start at 4:30 in the afternoon. I know what you're thinking, anything that starts with Junior High football can't be that exciting. Good thing this isn't about the game!



I digress.



To start the first game, one of the officials couldn't make the start or just thought the game was at 5:00. This left is to start the game with three officials and that's what started this Holy Spirit conviction. Before the fourth official got there, I was so distracted, looking for his car, hoping we wouldn't have to work both games in a three man system. It was the most distracted I have ever been in a game. I'm pretty positive that I had to have missed something. (Brad Thorton could tell you if I did, he was working the chains)



This situation made me think of my Christian walk. Have there been times that I have been searching for God is every place around me but the specific mission field that He has given me? Have I been looking around searching for that next person to bring into my life or that next job, forgetting or neglecting, and not on purpose, the people, mission, or plan that He has for me right in front of me?



I pray that I can continue to look around for Him, but only when I can no longer for find Him where I am at, or with those that He has put in my life.



Amen.

I want to be God's Masterpiece

After watching this video, I am convinced that this video fits well with where many students may be right now. More than that, it rings true for a lot of people who maybe don't understand where they are. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. Does God expect me to be perfect? Absolutely, because He has made that possible. Check this out and insert your name; your stuff; yourself.