vision (prophetic or not)

a couple of us just came back from the oneThing conference in Kansas City, put on by the International House of Prayer. a four and a half hour drive, i must admit that when we walked into the building, you could feel something different. there was just something different everywhere, you could feel a desire for God and His Spirit in the air. it was refreshing, and part of me wondered how any of us could spend the entire day praying and going to seminars all day, literally speaker after speaker, song after song. i had never talked to God as much as i had than this past weekend, never pursued as heavily as what just happened.

i heard things that i've never heard before, things that i didn't know had anything to do with the Christianity i had subscribed to. i have been presented a side of God that i have never understood or stressed before, i have realized a tiny bit more how magnificent and impossible and changing His love really is. i have realized that the Bible has books like Hosea and Song of Solomon, things i had never known to be in the Bible. i have been lifted and sustained higher than i could have ever imagined, and some crazy things that i will never be able to explain nor forget.

i realized that when the Holy Spirit hits, when it's time, everything changes. absolutely everything changes. you start to become desperate, you start to see things you've never seen and feel things you've never felt and do things you could never do under any other circumstances. you know things you shouldn't know, you pray things and recklessly abandon your life in a way that you cannot do without your eyes being opened to God and His consuming fire.

we came back to a New Year's Party at church with the rest of our youth group and we ended up playing a short worship set to pass the time. it was good, no doubt, but one of us began to get mad. things had been so easy, so focused in Kansas City - so much that you could literally feel it in the air - and now we had come back, no offense, to some who had not just been through the things we had been through. i really mean no offense, but it was like we had just been presented with this amazing life we didn't even know could have been our God, and we didn't and don't want to just give it all away for what we had before. we had just made all of these commitments and felt the desire to really keep them, and instantly, it was all going to be challenged. i guess we were being faced with a choice.

and you know, i just don't want to settle anymore. i've seen this great life and this great God and we've talked a lot about how being able to invest in God wholly is what is really going to satisfy and i don't want to settle anymore. i don't want my life to be displeasing to God, especially knowing that i'm only hurting myself. i don't want to delve into my sin, i want to be separate from it. i don't want to make amends with darkness, i want to touch and taste the divine.

---i wrote this New Year's Day and haven't continued until now---

it's gotta be God. billy and i are probably going to push for Friday night to be...big. we're gonna try to push it. not to say we'll manipulate the people who show up and not to say we'll manipulate the Holy Spirit - God will show up in that kind of life changing way if He wants and due to other factors i don't know. if it's God's timing, which we're hoping that it is, things will be incredible. if it's not, we really shouldn't push it. at the same time, i think we can be disappointed, but it's still no reason to turn on God. God is God, He does no wrong. and He's writing the story. i seriously hope we break through though and that God's presence explodes into our church.

i hope i'm not heretic or crazy. following a weekend of knowing God in a way different from simply feeling God... man, i don't want to be wrong. i don't want to claim Godliness, i want it to claim me, you know? i don't want to tell people i'm a Christian, i want people to be able to see for themselves. i don't want to spiritually immature. i don't want to be prideful and boastful and yet deceive myself to think i am humble. i want a real relationship with God, and i don't want to just tell myself that. i want the passion to be there, not to settle, not to choose apathy and convenience over the narrow road that is where Jesus is leading.

i make mistakes. i know i make mistakes, more than i know what to do with. i'm less than perfect. far less than perfect. you don't even want to get me started on immaturity. but where is my heart? if my heart is wholly given over to God, i don't think anything else matters. i will continue to fall and stumble, but God... know my heart. be my judge, my only judge.

skepticism

i am gently reminded of my mortality. i mentioned in my last post the lyrics from the song Everything by Lifehouse, and how someone could truly sing the line "would you tell me how it could be any better than this?" and i said it was because God's love is wherever you go and whoever you are, regardless of the time or the circumstances. i was listening to the song while running and it was nighttime, so i was watching the stars and feeling fast because the weather was cold. and...i got these really sweet Asics, but the insole on the right shoe always slips or bunches up or something, so that my toes never get any padding and it's uncomfortable. it came to that part of the song, and i was watching the stars and feeling fast, and it asked how things could be any better than this, and i wanted to say, "they would be better if my shoes were working properly."

and maybe this question that implies that things couldn't get any better than they are now is loaded with an awareness of how...human we really are. how mortal, fragile, maybe how clueless. maybe how big of a mess we've gotten in. maybe part of things being so great has nothing to do with whether we have problems or not. maybe things are so great because...we realize that we have all these problems, and yet there's this power, this love for us that we can't shake that leads us to an unshakeable kingdom, a prize that doesn't rust. things aren't great because everything's perfect. maybe things are great because everything we need...we already have.

when you run...it's easy to go when you're feeling good. it's easy to sprint on a good day. but when you feel like crap, and your heart still manages to be in it, when you push your hardest, those are the days you will remember. i'm not trying to say life is something you will yourself through. i don't really know what life is. because the more and more i stumble and struggle through my day, the more it seems like God is the One doing all the work and the One who's really holding on to us, not the other way around.

---

i wrote that a day or two ago.

i find...i hate skeptics. i hate people who want to criticize me and find faults and flaws in my theology, and if not theology, then the way i live my life. almost like paparazzi who seem to spend their lives trying to destroy others' lives by exposing normal acts as incredulous news. this is made worse by my knowing that i am as skeptical as the next guy, and this is made worse by knowing that no matter how shallow my cries for peace might be, i can and probably will still be criticized for who i am.

i heard last spring break that something might be majorly wrong with CS Lewis' theology, so i finally checked it out. i ended up at a website that said CS Lewis was one of the devil's most destructive instruments ever, someone who was leading Christians astray. one of the site's arguments was that CS Lewis couldn't be a Christian, because his lifelong best friend was a homosexual.

and...Jesus loved homosexuals. Jesus died for the homosexual, whether they will ever get to hear it or not. and Jesus would have ditched all of his friends to hang out with the homosexual, even if the homosexual never responded. and that's what i'm supposed to say, and i think it's true. Jesus called the homosexual as a best friend, and i don't think Jesus is going to hell, so i don't think CS Lewis will go to hell based on those grounds either.

but...where i'm really going is that it talks about in Romans how you do what you approve of, essentially. like you can't tell people not to steal and then go to steal yourself. what you yourself do almost essentially indicates what you believe (this is a dangerous statement - some part of your beliefs could be seen by your actions, like the fruit you bear, but sometimes it can only be seen in your heart. it's a little like Job). it's like...if you are in favor of something, you're going to stand in favor of it and support it, and if you're against it, then you're going to be against it. you shouldn't be saying "i love God" in the church, only to walk out to tell the world with your life that you don't love God, much less respect Him. a famous saying is that the greatest cause of atheism is Christians who say they love God and walk out of the church and deny Him with their lifestyle.

this is still leading up to my point. well, i struggle with lust. actually, a lot, lately. i just get bored, so i end up online, denying God with my lifestyle. i haven't really done anything productive in the past couple days, though productivity might also be missing the point. well, anyway, if i commit this sin with my eyes and against my body with this lust, then i am somewhat, at the core, essentially encouraging it. i think that is what i am saying - that lust is okay. i am denying Christ with my lifestyle.

well, if this website was condemning CS Lewis to hell because his best friend was homosexual, how much greater is the condemnation on me if i choose (which i helplessly do to an extent) to say by action that i think lust is okay. throw a bunch of Bible verses at me, all the ones you want, and you could probably find a way to say that i'm in the wrong, and that i'm going to hell. it probably wouldn't even be that hard. i think the strongest Christians take the Bible literally, but i know that i do not very literally. my friend was told he was going to hell because he didn't believe that the planet earth was some amount of years old. people say if you can't take one verse in the Bible the right way, you can't take all of it. people say a lot of things.

it could be said about my running. it could be interpreted as as running away, as just not wanting to deal with anything. and that no matter how good i get at running, it's still a sign of weakness. some could interpret it as...self-discipline, as sport, as learning how to control and push oneself. [obviously i'm biased because i like running, that's not my point either] just on my running, some one can say i'm wrong and argue with depth that i'm wrong, and some one could say i'm right and argue that i'm right with just as much evidence that he's right as the other guy.

and it's difficult. you know, it downright sucks.

i don't want this. i don't know what i want, i'm not really sure, but i don't want this. i don't want condemnation.

anyways, that's what i've been thinking about. i've been trying to please people for a while, and i don't think i can. not everybody at least. there's too much controversy going on, too much division.

i don't really know what's going on.

catch up

back home, nothing really happening. woke up around noon to spend a couple hours before the sun went down. just went running and...played guitar and piano and hung out. still trying to figure if i should be doing anything in particular - here's one thing i think i'm gonna start: romans, on wci-chapteraday.blogspot.com, the site a couple of us started earlier this past semester. it's been dead for a while, but i was reading Romans in the Message: remix translation last night and it's really good. switching between NKJV gets me all excited about NKJV again, or just the Bible in general, and it really is a little about getting back to the basics.

Romans in the Message talks a lot about how faith is trusting in God. and it's all about believing that He will make you right with Him...He'll bring us to Him. "we'll be right with Him, by Him." Romans 5 - 8 talks about being a new creation, having a restored life apart from one marred by sin, which is pretty great.

"Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." Romans 12:1-2

things like that...actually pretty refreshing. i wasn't having that great of a day yesterday (Sunday), though we went to the Y and played basketball hard for two hours and it was a whole lot of fun. i kept on singing that song from Lifehouse called Everything, because we performed a skit to it earlier that morning for an early Christmas program since a lot of people were leaving for a winter conference. anyways, one of the lines in the song reads "how can I stand here with You and not be moved by You? would you tell me how could it be any better than this?" and...i read the last couple verses of Romans 8 last night. paul is talking about how he believes that absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God - not even us. not life or death or angels or principalities, and then he says not anything in the present, and nothing to come. and this is extremely comforting to me. it means that nothing, right now in this moment, is keeping me from the love of God. nothing, right now or any other time later, can keep God from loving me.*

"would you tell me how could it be any better than this?" it's because, no matter the circumstance, God is still loving. there's nothing in the way. things are gonna be okay, there's nothing wrong with you or anything. sometimes bad things just happen, that's not exactly reason to believe you screwed up or God was no longer God. sometimes things just happen, and we need to let them.

anyways, that's what i've been thinking about. Romans is a pretty good book. i'm not sure what i'm going to do tomorrow. probably just what i did today - keep running, keep playing. waiting for oneThing, which i am still anticipating going to.


*(i'd rather not have a theological debate right now, though the question would rise how God could love and still condemn people to hell. and in response...i'm not really sure. God is a lion and a lamb.)

a little...bewildered

http://billychia.com/

i was searching for a long lost song and found a chain of Christian blogs. the above link is one of a worship leader that links to a huge list of blogs by other worship leaders as well as blogs in general. it's pretty good, and i somewhat long to write like some of them do.

i'm kind of wondering...what is church for? i guess it is glorifying to God and it is certainly supposed to be edifying for each of us. i understand the analogy of Christians being called to be like a City on a Hill, but i also read in Donald Miller and agree that we can't really take that very seriously. we can't just stay in our churches in our self-proclaimed holiness and think we are being Godly. Jesus didn't coop himself up and disappear in the comfort of His own house (He probably didn't even have His own house). in fact, maybe the whole point is that Jesus came from that City on a Hill to us, underneath Him, and yet He didn't forget about His true identity. He still knew who He was and He maintained that position flawlessly, rubbing off on us more than we influenced Him. someone could tell He was from a metaphorical "City on a Hill" just by the way He lived, regardless of where He was physically.

then what is the church meant to do? the big Mars Hill church in Michigan pastored by Rob Bell has actually been working on a water filter that can take pond water and purify it so that it is safe to drink. there's a team of engineers and businessmen and prayers and worshippers probably working on this project so that it could be implemented into African communities where the water is not safe to drink. and i might respond to that by thinking, "maybe i should start going to Mars Hill," but the real point is that each church has its own purpose and churches are supposed to work together and there's really no reason our church should be any different from Mars Hill; there's also no real reason why our church should strive to be just like Mars Hill.

it's just...it's nice when there's a direction. when there's action, not entirely so that we can validate that we are Christians. but perhaps that's part of it. doing things is a lot easier than relationship with God. it even makes more sense, to go on a mission trip than spending the entire summer in quiet time with God. reading The Irresistible Revolution makes me want to go out and do missions and fight poverty, not exactly start praying more. but is not the church's connection to God primarily or necessarily through prayer?

i guess that's part of the church. finding what God's heart is. and we might be surprised at what we found. maybe it's just to be. maybe it's to change the world (wouldn't that be convenient, since we call ourselves World Changers International?) but i don't have the answer. not yet, i guess i'm trying to figure it out. maybe the goal is intimacy with Christ. to prepare people so that they can go out into the world and...continue to be intimate with Christ. and draw others to intimacy with Christ? maybe the whole point of everything is just to be intimate with Christ? who would have thought that?

anyways, if you read that last post, i guess i...might have been disillusioned again. ups and downs. i am getting better, i think, legitimately better. i'm not just saying i'm getting better. anyways, i feel better. i went running at the Huff and amyie was there, running with little sheets of paper with verses written on them to memorize as she ran. so... i took one of her papers. i realize why the Psalms are so resonant. because when you're feeling down, they really have a lot of promise in them. "Cast your care on the Lord, and He will sustain You. He will never let the righteous fall." the implications are huge. so i'm back into the Psalms again, and Hebrews 11 and 12.

i guess i'm running on an emotional high. by faith and grace, we'll see what happens in a week.

confessions

i post up all sorts of writings here and, maybe if you know me, you'd say i'm a nice guy. i certainly take pride in thinking that i am more moral than the next guy, i guess.

i was thinking today about all the prostitutes and Playboy cover girls. i was thinking how you have your firemen who make a living out of serving people. they fight fires and they help people in their time of need. i was thinking how you have everyday people like workers at convenience stores, who are a service because without them, we wouldn't be able to get things like food or household items. and i was thinking, no offense, that it's a little awkward that prostitutes or Playboy cover girls have to make their living out of selling their bodies, almost making themselves into objects of others' enjoyment. i guess it's a service, but why is the market so high in the first place? is there really enough demand that the supply is just increasing steadfastly, over the last decade, on television shows, the Internet, seemingly everything that has anything to do with culture?

we want satisfaction. we just do. sexual satisfaction. i hate that i'm typing this up here when i know that some people will see this and see me for who i am. and if not my identity, then something i struggle with. is that really so bad? i guess i'll leave it all on the floor. i want to be beautiful, yes. i want to be just like what anybody else wants. loved, special, unique. and all of these promises that come from stray places keep tearing me down, and i am senseless in my commitment to them. the commitments i had thought were broken.

anyways, i'm not this person who...thinks the sex and prostitution and pornography market is lame. in fact, i even indulge in it. i would acknowledge this as a problem and i would acknowledge that i don't like this part of myself and i would say that...dropping to standards like that is pretty classless. and i know that...saying this, i risk a lot. i know i can lose anybody's respect at this very moment. i know i am probably automatically the guy you wouldn't want to date, or see a respectable girl date, or see your daughter date, and i know full well that there's not much i can say to that. guilty as charged, i'm not worth it.

and here's the catch - there is none. i don't feel worth it either. i don't know.

i don't really feel like a Christian right now. i feel distanced from God. going through motions. foolishly wasting away. i don't seem to have the initiative to seek out God. i don't feel like i should just start talking to Him like nothing happened tonight, because there is a lot of sin that i filled my night with just now. i mean, things like this should be addressed. at the same time, the relationship shouldn't be cut off completely.

i feel like i am way too dependent on feelings. i know it's not bad to feel good...but it's bad to only pursue to feel good, because half the time, what feels good is possibly what is weighing you down. who am i to say what is good for me? i don't even know me very well.

i have fallen. i ran away today from sinning, but i think i might have run away to running instead of running to God. anyways, i ended up really sinning and screwing up pretty badly tonight. maybe God will read my blog.

dear God,

do you really believe in me?

because i'm not so sure who i am anymore.

david.

A Rumor about Christ

---this was my final essay for my Expository Writing class. i thought it was pretty good, so i'm putting it up. i don't usually proofread very much what i put up here, so this one should actually be grammatically correct and everything. i thought my penultimate paragraph was pretty good, but i felt a little egotistic in the last paragraph.---

I am a Christian. If I only had one chance to tell you something about myself, that would be it. One thing I wouldn’t tell you, however, is that you’re going to hell if I don’t approve of you. I wouldn’t say that I am any better than you or that you are wrong if we don’t agree. Christianity is so much more than trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong. The term “Christian” seems to have been condensed to simple morals, loyalty to a church, and the jeering and pointing of fingers at political parties, homosexuals, and anyone else who fails to meet the church’s approval. Being a Christian is anything but these things. The real idea of a Christian is someone who has found life in God and is so fulfilled by God that nothing else matters.

This is my story: I grew up in the Christian church – I’ve never known anything else to do on a Sunday morning. When I was young, I would pray the exact same prayers every night before falling asleep. I believed I was a Christian because of this and my church attendance, and at the age of twelve, I was even baptized to publicly declare my faith. Once, I even played Jesus in the Easter skit. And the strangest thing was I wasn’t a Christian. I believed that I was automatically a Christian because of the things I did. But Christianity has nothing to do with works – a Christian is simply someone who believes, knows, and loves God.

As I grew older, I learned I didn’t really believe in God. I found my lifestyle was anything but Christian. I cared about my social popularity and grades more than I could have ever cared about God, and I was okay with that. I had huge fights with my family, and I secretly looked at porn. If you had asked me, I would have told you that I was a Christian, because I still went to church, prayed, and read my Bible. But honestly? I don’t know why I did any of those things – I didn’t believe any of it. And my life was anything but Christian.

I guess I believed in God. I believed all the right things, all the things they told us we had to believe in order to be considered Christian. I believed them like a student memorizes facts for a test without learning anything. I solely wanted to be accepted, so I committed to God and enjoyed the approval from the adults and my peers. Entering into high school, I secretly and subconsciously departed from Christianity. I was still doing everything I thought a Christian should do, but it was just something I did without thinking about, much like homework. If Christianity was just these things, it was useless.

I started to struggle with depression. My grades sucked, I couldn’t be myself around my friends, and I continually fought with my mom and sister. I had no reason to live. I wasn’t on the verge of suicide, but I was getting more and more frustrated with the idea that I was only living to get A’s in school and to be popular. I needed something that gave me purpose, something that wouldn’t be worthless after a week like a grade or date. After a while, I started going to a new church. I needed answers, and church seemed to provide them.

The youth pastor at my new church, Mike, had some very different ideas about God and what Christianity was like. They were different from anything I had ever heard. Mike literally believed in God. He talked about God like a real person, as though Christianity wasn’t just about doing things. He said God was still alive and He could actually help you out and talk to you and solve your problems if you approached Him and tried to listen to His voice, no matter who you were. My paradigm began to shift. No longer was the qualification of a Christian whether or not someone was a good person; it even says that in the Bible: “A man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ…by works of the law no flesh shall be justified” (Galatians 2:16, NKJV). God seemed to reveal Himself to me, though I’m not sure how to explain it. I just felt like He was there and He was talking to me everywhere I went. He seemed to show me how great it was to talk to Him and what it meant to really let Him control my life and what the result would be if I stayed obedient to Him.

I had a reason to live again and was discovering something much more lasting and exciting than anything I had ever experienced in school. Besides the way it made me feel, it made sense. I have to admit that I think there are certain things we can’t understand about God; He’s not always logically sound. But if I let go of only investing myself in things that I can understand and rationalize, I think God makes sense. And I could certainly see the change in my life. I stopped fighting with my family and myself, and I didn’t have to pretend to be somebody else when I was with the people at youth group. And if God was really God and all He wanted from me was a relationship, then it didn’t matter how good my grades were or if I was popular. All that mattered was relationship with Him, and if I had it, then I had everything.

This contradicted my entire conception of what made someone a Christian. I had thought Christianity was all about reading the Bible and being a good person, but I didn’t realize that God could actually be real. I began to think that a Christian was someone who spent time with God, who knew God and believed in Him, and had gone as far as to commit and base his life on a relationship with Him.

I began to believe that someone wouldn’t get to heaven by doing all of the right things well enough, but by loving God. But I don’t think everybody thinks like this. It seems like no one really loves God anymore; everyone is just doing. Many people claim that they are Christians and say that they love God and that they are going to heaven because of it, but their lives don’t show that they love God. Ridiculous things have been done in the name of God, by people who call themselves Christians, and I think if they truly loved God, they would realize that some of the things they do are destructive and can hardly be considered Christ-like.

Because of what “Christians” have done in the past, many have responded by turning away from God completely and wanting nothing to do with Christians. Christians have made a reputation for themselves for being arrogant jerks and clueless idiots who don’t know how to love people. Too many times have we encountered Christians who stand on street corners, telling everybody that they will go to hell if they don’t believe and repent. Jesus never said things like this, and I don’t think He would approve of things like this being said. I believe that Jesus didn’t come to condemn man (John 3:17), but He came to provide life to the fullest. He actually loved people. And I think most Christians nowadays don’t.

At the University of Oklahoma, it seems that everyone on campus is a Christian. But it also seems that no one really loves each other. They only care about “saving” people. And truly, when I am having a bad day, I don’t need someone to throw a religion at me and tell me I should believe or else I will go to hell. It is not that these things are necessarily untrue (if anything, they are gray areas and it is up to God to judge who goes to heaven or hell), but I think the approach misses the point of Christianity. Not only does this method of evangelism seem condemning and rude, but Christianity is not supposed to be about the afterlife; it is supposed to be about loving God no matter what. I don’t want to hear someone tell me God will crush me if I’m not good enough; I need someone who can tell me that God’s love is unconditional and things are going to be okay if I continue to trust that He will help me. The point of the church is not to make others like them or to judge them; the purpose of the church is to show others that Christ loves them.
I have not exactly found a church that I feel like I belong to since moving to Norman. I just don’t feel like I fit in with any of the churches in Norman or campus ministries at OU that I have attended. It is not that I don’t feel welcome; it is more like I have not found people with whom I am comfortable being myself. Sometimes it is a disagreement of doctrine, and at other times, I honestly just don’t like the people. It’s not hatred; we just seem to be from different backgrounds and have different interests and personalities.

I don’t mean to be critical, but some churches also seem to be filled with pretenders, people who appear very religious or spiritual and yet know nothing about God. They know all about the Bible, but they haven’t applied it to their lives. They know all about God, but they don’t have real relationship with Him. They don’t sit down and talk to Him because they enjoy it or because they know that God enjoys it. They do everything out of impulse, if they do it at all. I should add that I am not so different; at times, I am just like these Christians who have forgotten about God. I’m also wrong to judge, but this is what some churches feel like to me, and I think that the fake holiness that abides in the church is what non-Christians find so unappealing.

My roommate isn’t a Christian because he is fed up with all of the pretending that goes on in the church. He realizes that the church is filled with hypocrites who use God to reap the benefits, people who say one thing and do another. The last thing my roommate needs is someone to tell him he’s going to hell. I don’t try to save him; I try to love him. And I realize that I still fall short. I could never fully communicate the love that God has for him. I call myself a real Christian because I believe in God and interact with Him, but I am still only human. I struggle with the same thoughts, doubts, fears, and sins as anybody else. I try to be pleasing to God and to base my life on a relationship with Him, but it’s hard. I struggle with judging people and I show favoritism and still look at porn, and these are not things that belong in the life of someone who calls himself a Christian. I also know that my theology isn’t perfect, and I’m not trying to say that I’m right or that I know what’s going on. But I still believe in a God that is real and active, and I believe that I need someone like this God in my life.

I think that this is what really matters to God – a true desire for Him. God could really care less whether we went to church every Sunday of our lives, and He even says in the Bible, “Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me…When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you” (Isaiah 1:13, 15, TNIV). There is nothing wrong with good works, but if they are not done out of a love for God, they are missing the point. Reading the Bible isn’t bad, but it is wrong to read the Bible for the sole purpose of making yourself look better.

Jesus chose to eat with the criminals and prostitutes instead of the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders at the time, because the Pharisees had taken God out of Christianity. They did the works, the “meaningless offerings,” not to be seen by God, but by men. If they could convince others that they were strong Christians, they could manipulate power in their favor. So they would stand on street corners and pray aloud and they would fast and disfigure their faces so it looked like they had given so much to God, but really, they did all of this so they could be seen by men. They didn’t want God; they wanted their own glory and power.

It seems that many Christians have become like the Pharisees, people who do certain acts only to be seen by men. I would argue that these people have taken Christ out of Christianity and made it about works instead. And when Christianity is no longer centered on God and interaction with Him, it stops being so appealing. Most of the reason of why I am a Christian is because I have gained so much from learning about God and what He has said and done. The excitement doesn’t come from going to church or reading my Bible; the excitement comes from interaction with God Himself.

I was talking to one of my friends who said he used to believe in God; he said he would read his Bible and pray, but eventually, he got to the end of it. If Christianity is just reading stories and morals out of a “sacred” book and praying to an impersonal God, then it is pointless. It wouldn’t really do that much good. But if Christianity could be about God, then it would actually mean something. It would mean that people could start putting their trust in God out of a belief that He actually exists. We wouldn’t have to be consumed by school and getting high paying jobs, because they wouldn’t matter; we wouldn’t have to worry about who we are going to marry, because we would know that God has already planned the perfect spouse for us. It would mean social hierarchies would break and everyone could be accepted. It would weaken poverty, because people would actually care about others and give away the things they don’t need. The ramifications of what Christ-centered Christians could do are endless.

It is because of these ramifications that I am a Christian – because I desire something bigger than this world and something greater than money and fame. I think God provides this. I am a Christian because my life seems rather empty without God and only a relationship with Him has filled that void. I don’t love God because I want to go to heaven. I don’t love God because I want to be able to say I am a better person than everybody else. I love God because I think that is my purpose in life, and I love Him because He is worthy to be loved.

lacking (new)

i found this back from january 2007 and thought it was pretty good, so i proofread it and changed a couple things. nothing radical, but i think it's better than a year ago.

i think it's a beautiful thing to be vulnerable. it's beautiful when everything goes down in flames and there is no tomorrow and you're just trying to get past that moment of grief. When nothing else matters, and you do things you have never done before because you aren’t going to sit around and just let things happen. You take off running and you run your heart out because of desperation.

i watched a little bit of Beauty and the Geek, a reality TV show where hot, ditzy girls were matched with socially challenged geeks and sent through challenges to win money. One of the girls who had gotten into the finals or maybe not even that far was talking to the camera in a small room, kind of like a confessional booth. she was crying, saying how she felt shallow, how she saw that it didn't make any sense at all to put so much value on how she looked. She talked about how there was more to life than just make up and looks. and i think she saw that it didn't make her any better than anyone else and she had no right to treat these geeks like they were subhuman, just because people liked her and nobody liked them.

then i watched a little bit of the Real World-Road Rules challenge on MTV, which is pretty much the same concept as Beauty and the Geek, except everyone is hot and they are all battling for even more money. there was an elimination match between two guys, two of the top guys or something, and after an excruciatingly long time, one of them finally won. And at the end, he went back to his hotel room and called his fiancee and broke down crying. he couldn't really move because he was so tired. he was exhausted – he had totally spent himself trying to win the challenge, and now that he had finally won it, he wasn't sure if it was worth it. He had gone through this epic battle to try to preserve his chance to win the money, and… now he wasn’t sure if it was worth it. he wasn’t sure if he deserved it and he was more unsure that he enjoyed it. he said if he had to go through it all again, he didn't know what he would do, but he wouldn't want to go through it all because it was so physically grueling. he said he didn't know why he was doing it anymore - the whole game - and whether or not it was worth it. vulnerable.

and i did something. i ran away from home one weekend and ran away from God because i was mad i was losing to lust and i ran away on the main streets, keeping a fast pace because i wanted it to hurt. and it was cold - like 35 degrees or so, and it was late at night and i only had a t-shirt and some basketball shorts on. about five miles later, i ended up at someone's house. i didn't really want anything more than just to be there...but i don't think i was welcome. i didn't feel like it, anyway. i ran away from there and maybe about half a mile or more later, my legs started cramping up, at first just a little. if i kept running, the pain would go away for a little. i felt like crap...because i didn't have anywhere to be. I was at least five miles away from home, it was incredibly impractical to think I could make it back. when i passed 71st and yale, headed south, my left leg shut down. it cramped and i couldn't really go on. i fell to the sidewalk, but it happened in such a position that my right leg started cramping too, and my hip, or something else. and so i ended up lying on the sidewalk, crying, because my left leg was dead and my right leg was dead and any movement would shoot pain through my body, and i didn't want to go home, and i didn't want to go to God's home, and the only home i wanted to go to wouldn't welcome me.

i screamed at God that He was right. that i was wrong. that i just needed to be saved. i felt worse because i wanted someone to stop and help me out, but no one did. it was dark and cold, and i was yelling in pain. vulnerable.

not really sure what to say

hey guys, it's been a while since i've posted up here. not much is really going on. today is Thanksgiving, which meant a lot of food and relaxing. spent about five hours of last night finishing up an essay that was due at midnight, so today i'm just hanging out. started doing programming problems again from the USA Computing Olympiad (i'm not legal since i'm out of high school, but i can still do them now that i know how) and just reading Thr3e by Ted Dekker. Black Friday is tomorrow, and rather than shop, i'm planning on running around on 71st. weather was pretty good today, though it was in the 30's yesterday. not really doing anything now, so i was just looking at the Chicago Marathon...7:15 pace will qualify me for Boston. just need to up the mileage.

anyways, i must admit i'm kind of scared to post anything up here. apparently a couple more people than just billy read this.

-----

i wrote that on Thanksgiving, never really finished the post, so i'm putting it up now. back to OU from home, things are different. it really is weird...back in the rhythm of things, in the privacy of being lost in a crowd (i don't know how to explain it...maybe just not being "home"), it becomes so much easier to pray and to believe in God. i know faith shouldn't be circumstantial, but this is the case, and i'm at least glad for the intimacy that is being rejuvenated.

we had a prayer meeting on Sunday night, the Restoration group (ask me about it sometime if interested) and we spent a while just praying about enjoying the Lord. not striving, not beating ourselves up to get to Him, not wanting to pray for the sake of praying or for whatever other sakes there are. not counting it burden or obligation, but just trying to enjoy God. in light of recent events, i learned maybe that i trivialize grace too much. i'm too freaked out at things, and if i am not reading my Bible every waking moment or not in a deep prayer conversation, i think things are wrong, or that i have failed God, or God is upset with me. apparently this is the kind of behavior, at an extremity, that yields... well, you know. distance.

the necessity to do things to earn God's approval or even to earn your own approval (as in "now I can approach God") cannot be satisfied. the actions become more important than the heart until finally, you're doing everything that you're supposed to be doing, but you've lost all momentum and all velocity. you might even be moving backward. instead of living, you've forgotten. instead of letting yourself come alive, you've fallen trying to come alive on your own and out of shame, only fall deeper.

anyways, yeah. i think i'm gonna try to take a break from Blogger. things are going fine, i just think i'm going to stop posting for a little while (not that you'll probably be able to tell. i hardly post anymore anyways). came back from Thanksgiving break in Tulsa, which was great, now i'm just working on three weeks of school before oneThing and the Call at IHOP in Kansas City. math test tomorrow, the design for a project due in computer science, and a writing assignment in EXPO writing due tomorrow, not to mention some scholarship apps. today was good.

Romans 12 is also pretty good.

maybe it's me, but things in the Bible seem to have a lot to do with food. Esau lost his inheritance to Jacob because he gave his birthright for some stew, and their father Isaac ended up blessing Jacob because he asked for fine food (just the way he liked it) and Jacob delivered.

even in Romans, Paul tells us not to judge each other in terms of food. he says that there are people who eat everything - these are the ones that are full of the Holy Spirit (pun intended). and then he says there are some who eat some things and refrain from eating other things - these are kind of like beginners, who have just started eating. he says those who eat everything shouldn't despise those who don't eat everything and vice versa. "Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls." i'm not very sure what that means.

a couple verses later, paul says that whoever eats, eats to the Lord, and whoever doesn't eat, doesn't eat to the Lord. i don't think that's a connection to the above paragraph. kinda makes me hungry though.

interesting dilemma + catching up

again, not much of a serious or aimed/loaded post. just writing to pass the time.

i should be working on a paper right now. but this is ridiculous.

times like these make me wish i had a girlfriend, and i don't even know why. it's ridiculous. maybe because it's a lot easier than God. i don't think anybody really reads this besides billy, i would be surprised to know if anybody else really read this.

this is ridiculous.

eyes on God. in the storm.

---

wrote that on the ninth when i was back in tulsa. seven page paper due today, stayed up until five working on it, three hours of sleep, finished it in my calculus class. yeah, i guess that's pretty bad. it really is grace. not very sleepy. you know what i want to say?

i listen to the song Here I am by Shaun Groves, and i want to say "let's go do something big. let's change the world. let's stop sitting around and make a difference." and the funniest thing is that the most we could ever do is be living sacrifices, to surrender. to give away impulse for comfort, popularity, and security in our own corruptible riches and live for love instead, a love that few will ever be able to see and even fewer ever able to understand. and that leads me to think "let's let go," even though it isn't something i exactly want to say.

[man. i was talking to jojo about relationships last night for like an hour. he said i should watch Friends. man, he knows a lot.]

i'll try to post something up here with more depth or interest later sometime.

just give me God

hey guys, i'm not really in the mood to write this post, but at the same time, if i don't write this, i'll find myself doing something before thinking it through. i can't pretend i'm a saint. i read somewhere that God sees us saints, not sinners, but the truth remains that i don't deserve to be seen that way. i'm jealous and i'm frustrated and i am so close to apathy. so close to just quit, to give everything away just in this single moment. i've heard people say "don't settle a temporary problem with a permanent solution," but they were talking about suicide and i'm not talking about suicide. i'm just talking about lust. and jealousy. and girls.

wouldn't it be great...to see someone give everything away? imagine with me. someone in a position where the circumstances are okay. maybe not even mediocre - maybe everything is going well. wouldn't it be great to see that person give that away, to risk it all - for what they really want? imagine someone who's got everything they could ever dream of...giving everything away - giving the comfort away and the security so that they can pursue what they really want, not knowing if they're going to get it. but risking it nonetheless.

i'm not going to say that this is like God, though i guess it is, because He wants us and stops at nothing to make it possible for us to be with Him. i'm just saying...wouldn't it be great to take the risk? to trade in the comfort of life in exchange for... something that might not be as great? to trade in the attention of men for the attention of God? to trade a high paying job to live on the streets? to trade popularity to be with outcasts, to trade pride and confidence for nothingness? to trade everything that you could ever want for...lowliness. not knowing if it'll be worth it, but taking the risk. realizing that people will tell you, "i told you so," and think lowly of you, but overlooking that because you want to find your life somewhere else. because you want a different substance than comfort provides.

comfort is great. but in tension... but in challenges, tribulations, crises, breakdowns. injuries. in all these things... are you not made all the better?

i hope i don't sound like a broken record to some people. but i realize that... i am writing for myself and for God. i should not be writing because i take pride in my writing and i should not be writing because i think i am good at it or think i am better at it than others. the reason i am writing should be because i enjoy it, just like playing the piano for any other reason besides an enjoyment of the melody and possibilities seems a little strange (okay, perhaps a bad example...i guess there are several justified reasons why one may play a piano, and obviously i'm not supposed to be the one who can judge).

anyways, this post wasn't meant to really go anywhere. just some thoughts. and to spend some time before i end up going to sleep. tests going like crazy, seven page research paper due Monday. gotta get a ride back home tomorrow, make it to the weekend without crashing, without ruining myself with pride, selfishness, and whatever the opposite of contentedness. i guess those three adjectives could all be the same thing. anyways... i still feel kind of lonely. i realize that God has been answering prayers, and it's interesting, because God seems to be forcing it so that the only thing i have is Him...but, it's hard to be content. want what the world has to offer. can't serve two masters though. one or the other. to be with God means to be divorced from the world, separated. a lifestyle actually foreign, so much that i am not easily recognized as myself anymore.

how about some goal setting? before the end of the semester:
1. be content with God. and only God.
2. grow more comfortable with myself.
3. grow more comfortable with relationships and girls and not be so convinced i can only do wrong. but not be puffed up. humility.
4. an A in expository writing (oh man...this is dangerous. if i keep up with these goals, i'll really have to start applying myself). OR to read the New Testament. one or the other.
5. more honest worship. with my guitar and with my heart.
6. to be in desperate need for daily Quiet Time and prayer (ie God).

Lord (I don't know) by the Newsboys

one of my friends has a photo album on Facebook called The Places No One Sees. it's pretty nice. a great idea too. to see what everyone seems to miss. like the stars, for example. or the beauty of people. the seeming impossibility of mechanics as simple as riding a bike. the way rhythm fits into itself. seeing the people that no one sees. befriending who is weak, letting yourself be vulnerable. but that's not where i'm going with this post.

hopefully i'll touch someone's heart with this. and i don't know how to say it, or what to say, so i'm just gonna start writing.

you know God died for us? He died so that we wouldn't live stagnant lives. and so we get caught up with everything and we forget, and we count His salvation and His grace common (Hebrews 10:29), and we deny Him. and so when we look around and see all of the destruction or failure or disappointment and chaos and whatever around us, we just want to quit. we want to give up. we want to say "look at all the crap i've done. and i just don't want to deal with it. i don't have strength... look. i just don't want to deal with this."

and yet the world moves on, the day goes on, the train starts moving again and if you take a second, take a day off, you're behind. you're gone. more failure, more disappointment, more frustration, more work. less energy. you took a break and ironically you end up more tired than before. people say relax, but you don't know how. it might as well be a foreign word you can't comprehend.

and then you have Christians looking at you, expecting you to feel it, and you just can't tell them, "look, i'm just not feeling it. i don't want to deal with this." and you got non-Christians looking at you wondering if you're going to screw up, wondering why you're even a Christian in the first place, and you throw on another mask because you can't tell them, "look, i'm just not feeling it." and responsibilities at home and at school build up, and responsibilities to the church, and they're responsibilities. if you don't do them, that would make you irresponsible. and, all of a sudden, the church, which was supposed to help build you up, could be tearing you down. school, which is supposed to make you come alive and get you involved with things you like, ends up killing you. and home isn't a home or a refuge. it's a battleground. and then still, you have this tug on your heart that says, "come on, why aren't you spending time with God?"

wouldn't it be great to live a day not thinking saying "i'm glad just to be here," instead of "oh man, i have this homework that i really need to get done." wouldn't it be great to take a class thinking "i'm just blown away to have this opportunity," instead of saying, "well, if i get this A..."

and that tug is still on your heart, asking "why aren't you spending time with God?"

...

and don't you see? that voice isn't from God. it's not from God, not in that context at least. the Christians ask you, "why aren't you spending time with God?" the nonChristians ask you, "what's so great about your god?" pretty soon everyone is telling you, "i thought you were better than that." condemnation all around, all you can eat. and what is God saying?

you don't know. you might not even be able to guess.

this is why you need God to be true.

this is why you need God in the first place.

because He didn't come to condemn (John 3:17).

the world is going up in flames and you can't see your hand in front of your face, and your whole day is like a buffet of condemnation, and home's not home and church isn't church and school doesn't seem like anything more than dead weight. and what you really want to do is leave. quit. call it off. because the voice is still saying, "why aren't you spending time with God?"

you know what God asks?

He asks you to be in peace. He asks you to live in His peace. so that when the world goes up in flames like it's going now, you don't go through the agony of condemnation. in 1 Corinthians 7, paul is talking about relationships, and he's talking about the grief of someone leaving in a relationship,* a relationship not working out the way you want it to work, when all of a sudden he says, "But God has called us to peace."

you know what God asks?

"let me take Your burdens. let me fix what's really bugging you, let me fix what you don't want to deal with."

and you respond, "God i don't know how. i don't have the energy."

and God says, "you don't have to do anything. just be willing." you're unconvinced. it seems like the effort has to be on your part. and God says, "you don't have to do anything. i already did it all. just put your faith in me. instead of doing something, put your faith in me that i'll take care of what you need. just be willing."

you say, "i don't want to be willing. i don't want to change."

but if you don't change...all you will ever have is the world condemning you. if you change, which ultimately can only come from God...all you will ever have is peace.

...

i offer this prayer: Lord, i don't know what i'm doing. i don't know what's going on. i'm a bit sick of myself. the circumstances are only getting worse, and i am so easily influenced by what is going on around me that i easily abandon you and forget who i am meant to be. i forget any kind of higher purpose than instant gratification and to be seen by men. Lord, please let me come back. please let me do things Your way. please give me faith. please give me a heart that is focused and centered on You, and let me realize that i really need You. for everything. i need You to be God, i need You to be everything. that is the only thing i need. for You to come into my life and be who You are. God, i pray you would lead me to fall in love with You. i don't know what needs to happen on my part, and i don't know if i'm willing, but God, i pray that You would make me willing. God, i pray You would make me to fall in love with You, because that is where i will come alive.

...

*(okay, this isn't the best example, because the relationship paul is talking about is in the context of a nonbeliever and a believer. take this into consideration, but i wasn't trying to manipulate verses. i think the idea of grief is what was important)

to God be glory/i need to forgive/one long day

one Sunday, when Pastor Ron was still the pastor of the English ministry, he led the youth group during Sunday School, and billy closed in prayer. he prayed that each day we could get closer to God. well, today is the first real day where this has happened. or at least it will be the first day i remember specifically for getting closer to God. i had a great day, really blessed. and i say this to God's glory. it shouldn't be mine, and this is a rare moment because it is now that i would give everything away. it is now that i am sensitive to the Holy Spirit, that i am eternally minded more than i am focused on the things of this world. so this is to God's glory and it should not and cannot be my own. i also pray that it is edifying.

i remember i forgave my dad at my first Acquire the Fire. with Restoration, we started doing this devotional thing called The Prayer Driven Life, and it's written by this guy named Bishop Robert Oh who's actually pretty cool. (check out the website, the whole book is there in pdf format. it's under PDL OH on the right column.) it's 21 days long and it's all about prayer, and that is what we have been talking about in Restoration, how important it is to be in prayer with God, in communication with Him. anyways, in the Prayer Driven Life, he was talking about forgiving others, because just as God forgave us, we are supposed to forgive us, and it says something to the extent of if we are so selfish that we won't forgive others who have wronged us, why should God even listen to us? it reminded me of the parable of a guy who had a huge debt to a king. and the guy didn't have the money, but the king still forgave him. then, another guy owed the first guy a little debt, no where near what the first guy owed the king, but the first guy wouldn't forget about the debt that he was owed.

i need to forgive some people. because i'm no different, and i've hurt them and others just as i might have been hurt by them (but it shouldn't be about me...i could have hurt them more and am still so selfish as to not see). and all of this is in the past, and things change. it's wrong to hold a grudge, wrong to think they won't change when there's a living God who changes people, who moves mountains. wrong to say they don't deserve love. because they're just like you, just like me.

anyways, my dad. he's hurt me a lot, but i didn't help him. i made fun of him, and i didn't reach out a hand. i didn't try to help, either because it was inconvenience or simply ignorance. i will try to continue to love you, because you're more important than i give you credit for. and i want to see you excel. i want to see you live again. and love again.

and..aileen. i never really came out and said this in public, but we were dating and i loved it. she said it was her fault, but it's not. it's not your fault. don't be ashamed of what you did, and even if you hurt me, that's behind us. it's in the past and it couldn't matter at all. things change. anyways, well.. i'm doing what you asked of me. i'm becoming a man of God, a real son. it's great. i wasn't the best boyfriend either, and i don't deserve to be your ideal. you know as well as me that you gave me plenty of chances i didn't deserve and you chose to help me and spend time with me when you didn't have to. you did a lot for me. anyways, the mistakes are in the past. they won't dictate the future. you deserve something great. love never fails.

those were the two big ones. i know i've hurt a lot of people and been selfish in my relationships... i have hurt a lot of people. and that's not what they needed. they needed someone who could love and help them out and be genuine.

i don't usually run with this much adrenaline. not this much momentum. today is weird. i hope i don't burn out. God is good. i heard Him, i actually heard Him. i was sitting in my room playing guitar wondering about tonight, because i usually play guitar on Sunday night prayer meetings, but the idea popped into my head that, instead of playing guitar, we should just go on a prayer walk. i called up daniel and asked what we were going to do night and he said we would probably go on a prayer walk. just kinda unbelievable...

and i went to a korean church today, the whole thing was in korean. i couldn't understand the sermon, so i read the story of Samson in Judges. he killed a lot of people. one time, when he got mad, he went out and caught three thousand foxes. three thousand! and he tied their tails together, set them on fire, and burnt down like all of the grains of the Philistines, who were ruling over them. even though he was seduced and betrayed God, God still came through for him and let him kill about three thousand Philistines by pushing the temple over. collapsing it from the inside out. three thousand Philistines and three thousand foxes. that would be good television.

anyways, yeah. that was my day. God is great. it's all about Him.

character and cutting peoples' ears off

the weather in Norman is extraordinary. it's getting colder, but it'll still be really nice.

i went back to tulsa for the weekend, since billy was leading worship for the big English service as well as youth group. interestingly enough, i kind of got caught up in the moment during youth group worship (i was playing keys). there was this song called Rain Down, and in it, it seemed like we were getting kind of mad at God. well, i was anyways, and if i had only ever lived in that moment, i would have been a rather mean person. i was mad at God because He put up with us and put up with our stagnancy and He let us live these lives that weren't necessarily glorifying to Him. i guess, essentially, i was calling God's character into play. i later realized...i need God to be God. i need Him not to change for my sake, as if things were about me. but God is God and He is perfect and He knows all things and shouldn't change and, even better, won't change. He doesn't change, He is always loving, though there are about an infinity of different dimensions to His character, i think, and we only see a couple of them. and then i remembered...that i pretty much do it to myself. stagnancy. i asked to be separated from Him, i told Him to get lost, i asked this upon myself. so... what i said during worship yesterday completely undermined grace. it kind of said that i had a right to be glorifying to God, and it sorta also blamed God, in a way, that i wasn't being glorifying to Him. i was in the wrong. i was mad at God for the wrong reasons. i was reading in Acts, and someone is talking to a church somewhere and talking about the people who killed Jesus... he said that they couldn't find anything wrong with Jesus, but they still killed Him, without reason, just because they wanted to.

actual, looking throughout the book of John, not many people seem to understand Jesus. most try to kill Him, and most are certain that He is speaking lies and He is either demon possessed or a drunkard. Jesus came to be the King and Savior of the Jews and yet, even the Jews didn't want to claim Him as their king. (John 1 - Jesus came to His own and His own did not receive Him.) i read somewhere (i think in Donald Miller) that Jesus must have been insane or the real deal - He's actually who He says He is. even His followers didn't exactly follow Him. they diverted from His ways and there were times when they acted out of their own impulse instead of considering what Jesus would have done. which doesn't make them any different from us. just as they fell asleep when Jesus went to Gethsemane, i seem to fall asleep on Jesus on a frequent basis, perhaps when big things are about to happen.

when Jesus is in Gethsemane and some soldiers come to arrest Him, Peter ends up slicing one of the soldiers' ears off, maybe just caught up in the moment of it all. now, keep in mind this is very gross. and you'd probably be pretty mad if someone just came at you and cut your ear off. you would be hurt and you would think they were crazy. and it must have hurt a lot. even though this is a guy arresting Jesus, Jesus corrects Peter and puts the guy's ear back on, whose name is Malchus (the high priest; interestingly enough, his name showed up in one translation i was reading, but it's not in NKJV...), and you have to wonder whatever happened to him. things like that don't happen everyday.

but this was Peter (his name is not actually mentioned in NKJV either...it simply reads "one of those who were with Jesus") - this was someone that Jesus chose to follow Him. i'm not saying i'm better than peter, i'm certainly not saying that. and this is the story of any one who follows Jesus and even any one who doesn't follow Jesus - you end up hurting someone, even if you didn't mean to. Peter, who said he was a follower of Jesus and actually was a follower of Jesus (literally), diverted from the ways of Jesus, and hurt a guy by cutting his ear off. the guy was probably mad and confused and in a lot of pain and, if the guy who cut his ear off was one with jesus, he probably wouldn't like Jesus. but Jesus deals with what peter has done and He fixes the situation - He heals who has been hurt, saying.

a lot of people have been hurt by the church and people who say they follow Christ, and there have been a lot of lame things that have been done in Christ's name and i know that i myself screw up and am a perfect example of beautiful chaos. someone who tries really hard to follow Jesus, but i'm really not unlike anybody else. i make mistakes just the same and i give nonbelievers and believers alike the ability to say that Christians are no better than anybody else, and on occasion, severely worse. people don't like God because people don't like the church, and i can't really blame them, and they turn away from God because the church has turned away from what it is supposed to do. because the followers of Christ have set bad examples and diverted from the ways of Jesus, going around cutting peoples' ears off, people respond naturally. they are turned away. they are mad and they are in pain and they are confused.

and...Jesus grabs that ear, grabs what has been hurt, and puts it back. that's about it. He doesn't say, "now you should believe" or "you owe me this one." He does it and then He lets them arrest Him. interestingly enough, the followers are about as wrong as the people about to kill Him. we're both alike, we're both human. you ask what's the difference then, and what's the significance of following Jesus if it creates no difference in a person's life from someone not following Jesus. and i have an idea what the answer is, but if you asked me to live it out, i'm not sure. i could point to DL Moody or Billy Graham or Mother Teresa, i could point to other peoples' lives and say - hey, look at that. that was what it meant to really follow Jesus, but probably the best way i could show you is with my own life.

you see, a lot of Christians (or at least people like me) are stuck between truly committing everything to God and being in compromise with the world. things like pride get in the way, things like not being willing to live a life totally centered around God, focused on God and getting God glory and forgetting about ourselves and not thinking highly of ourselves at all and not even wanting things like popularity and grades and money like everyone else. but when you really follow Jesus... things change. your life changes, your source of energy changes. it should. because all of a sudden, you won't be living for yourself. you'll be living for God, and God approves of that. you'll go through hard times, and hopefully you won't crack and turn from God, but as long as you're focused on God... i don't know. things might be like hell, but i really believe that you'll see God smiling down on you. i really believe that you'll know in your heart and soul that you're doing the right thing, even if it hurts.

and here lies the challenge that i extend to myself as i type this. glorify God. give Him your time. talk to Him. pursue actual relationship, be open to change, be open to be changed and have expectations be changed and be open to having your dreams and your own plans fall out of the picture. ask Him how to spend time with Him, ask Him where to find Him. because it's not always just reading a Bible and praying and meditating and playing a guitar. life is worship. you can worship, you can find God, just by living. by going throughout your day just like any other day and having it look like just another day, but knowing in your heart that there is a tension that you need to see God today and bring glory to Him because if you don't try today, then who's to say that you will tomorrow? there should be no waiting. now's the time to worship, to get serious.

i read this yesterday night:
"We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises - human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God - but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people."

OUTEDIT (tangent):
the first church starts in Acts after Jesus had died and risen and the apostles are baptized in the Holy Spirit. they get "tongues of fire" and 3000 people are saved that day and they all hang out together, "continuing daily with one accord in the temple...praising God and having favor with all the people. and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." and then Peter and John went on a walk a little while later and a blind man gets healed in the process and they speak with boldness, how God has healed the blind man and how "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." and the multitude grew and they shared everything "and with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked" (Acts 4: 33-34). everyone sold everything they had, so much so that they didn't own anything of their own, and they gave to the disciples, who then distributed to those in need, so that everyone was taken care of. people actually gave away everything they had - that's why it was such a big deal that Ananias and his wife Sapphira claimed that they had given everything away when they had secretly kept things for themselves - they had kept things away from the church, which was actually weighing it down...and so they were killed on the spot. but this is so radically different from our lives now. we don't do things like this. many of us don't even believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and "tongues of fire." i think that the apostles and the first church honored and glorified God in everything that they did. they worshiped God. and now, we worship religion.

girls

everything has been chaos lately. okay, not necessarily chaos, just really busy. really quick. over a span of three days, i have averaged about five hours of sleep, going to sleep at 2 at the earliest and 3:30 at the latest. i have logged about two four hour straight programming sessions, and about ten total, and i have skipped two chemistry lectures doing so. so...you know the funny thing is i feel like crying. i feel like being mad, because it's like i end up spending so much effort and all of this time on something, and it hardly works, and even if it did work, it wouldn't have been worth it. i mean, the A would have been great, and honestly, i would probably be seriously irked if i didn't get an A and i might secretly care a great deal, but... it's not worth it. when you spend almost as much of your day on homework as you do sleeping. it's whack.

i've heard that there are people who go through their entire lives without working a single day, even though they go to work every day and have inevitable responsibility. but that they enjoy all of it so much that they don't think it's work. it's what they want to be doing, it's what they take joy in, where they come alive.

our lives are delicate. we're fragile. words cut like fire, cruel actions give way to crueler backlash. we won't let ourselves be hurt or wronged. we won't let ourselves look weak or vulnerable, we won't cry out. we won't admit anything's wrong, we won't share our lives, we won't believe things will be all right so we freak out at a bad grade, at a bad day, at a bad moment. we won't let ourselves be lesser than someone. we won't let someone else control us. we have to be in control. we have to be better than everyone else.

our lives are delicate. one wrong step and we're done. in a relationship, one bad move could mean the end. one mistake, one sentence, one thing could ruin everything. and yet, when grace and mercy are our redeemers, we only dig ourselves deeper, farther into the abyss, into the cracks in the ground. we take more and more wrong steps, our stumbling and failure only more frequent, more violent, more heart breaking, more significant. this is why we need something bigger than us.

revolution

revolution, at any level, requires you to be aware of something greater than yourself. it means stepping out of yourself. getting away from yourself, separating yourself from yourself, if that made sense. because revolution is change, and change for the better requires God.

when i am feeling good, i might take a shower, put on some baggy jeans and maybe wear my glasses, clean everything up, make my bed, and sit on it at my laptop or to read and maybe even sometimes ponder how great it feels. but really, that's a pretty small deal. in fact, the only thing it accomplishes is making me feel better. i mean, that's great for me, and it's convenient, but i'm not sure it exactly gets anything done.

God's revolution goes deeper then a clean room, then a clean appearance. it touches a heart, changes a soul, alters a personality. something like...pride. lust. malicious thoughts. what about brokenness? self-doubt? what about pretending? performance mentality? deception? God's revolution cleans the soul. but it requires...God. God's got to be in the driver seat of our lives, instead of us. we can't lead ourselves, we can't guide or direct our lives. we're lost. we're fragile. we're misled. we've misled others. we need to be found, to be corrected.

and so revolution takes stepping away from ourselves, perhaps outside of ourselves. it requires us to have our eyes focused on greater things than feeling good. and it's possible to use God to feel good. it's sin too. you can sin in the church just as easily as you can outside of it, and you can keep your eyes on yourself through the whole service and whenever you pray. i forgot and that's what i did.

i have a misconception about God. when one girl says that she cares about me, i think "oh, now i have a reason to try to succeed. i better get my act together because someone is watching," but i didn't think that in relation to God. i didn't value that God was watching everything, hoping that i would make the choices, but also violently disappointed at my compromises and agreements with sin. and all the more violently disappointed because i didn't consider Him as my audience, my singular audience. and i didn't consider Him as a worthy audience. i didn't consider Him as my only real audience.

that's why i used to run. the little things that no one saw, i knew God saw, so i did them. i worked hard when no one saw because i knew God saw. in the little things that no one sees or pays attention to, in those secret places, God speaks. it's like how there were thunderstorms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters when Elijah was running away, but God didn't speak in any of those things. He spoke in the silence, He whispered in one of those moments most would have missed. i would miss. anyone would miss if they were not looking for it, desperate and set for it.

i don't run like i used to run. when i see people running, i spite them. i think arrogant thoughts and shoot them down, jumping to competition. i want to get away from that. i want something better. but it's still a bigger fight than i can even begin to battle or think of battling. i'm cornered on all sides, the time isn't to fight. the time is to praise. the time is to worship, and to lose myself in worship.

i was reading the first couple chapters of Acts, it was talking about how the first real revolution came when the apostles, 12 of them, were all in one accord, and they were blessed and taken over by the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and that day, 3000 got saved because they saw something they had never seen before and they all lived together and shared together and people were being daily added to their fellowship, daily saved.

revolution, at any level, requires God. we don't know how to do it. need to step away from pride, need to stop taking stock in what i think i know, in what i have. and try to give to God. because He's worthy.

transitions

i guess i'm in that weird spot that probably all college students have to go through. i don't really have a home. i don't really have a family, or a church, or a best friend. i don't really have a mentor, and i don't have a girlfriend.

the only thing i still have is God, and i must admit that it's not exactly satisfying. i don't think i'm giving Him my whole heart, but...i've still given Him something (the easy things, probably, until it gets hard), so i expect to go somewhere, and if i don't, then it's not exactly satisfying. i think i want it to resemble work too. i want to go out and save people and end poverty and hunger and change things and...maybe get a rock star kind of personality, the kind of Christian heavyweights like Rob Bell or Chris Tomlin. but...it's not about that at all, and if i want it to be like that, it'll be the same as giving up on God with the alias of a Christian.

each day at a time. no regrets. do what you can, nothing more. don't get down on yourself. failure happens. but success happens. don't be so numbed that you don't enjoy it. God will enjoy it too. weigh your relationships. count your blessings and your priorities. consider changing. consider work ethic - all things that are worth doing are hard and may take discipline. change what needs to be changed. evaluate yourself. be reflective. seize the day. no regrets.

we're all blessed. what's funny is that usually only the destitute and blind see it. only the truly destitute and blind understsand what it means to love and the simple joy of an answered prayer. we don't know love and one answered prayer only seems to prompt more and more requests for answers and signs than praise for a God who hears, tolerates, and grants us our deepest wishes and, sometimes, our most on-the-surface wishes.

oh yeah, and add to that second to last paragraph. it's gotta be God. don't be so consumed by work or stress or schedules or laziness that you miss it. every moment is precious, every heart beautiful. everything cries out to His glory, to this Savior, even if they don't know who they're crying to or can see who it is they need. there's a reason why we love movies like Finding Nemo or Pride and Prejudice or Spiderman 3. because we believe. we want life to be like that, filled with love and the drama and such belief in a hero who will push himself to all sorts of limits to overcome the evil that is separation or a villain or misunderstanding.

and that is truth is this: our lives are just like this. they're precious, they're beautiful. but our only audience will be God. don't let other people be your audience, because they're actors right alongside you, living their own movies. the only one outside of the story - heck, even telling the story - is God. and your life is like the movies. when you fall in love, God sits back, overcome by joy, and wants it to last just like you do. when you fall into depression and deception, a tear comes to God's eye and He wants it to end just like you do. and when everything has become so numbing, so stressful and seemingly meaningless, God pursues. God heals. God moves.

your life is a movie, it's something wonderful. but you've got to overcome first. you might have all this crap and junk in your life, i know i do. maybe you have to get out of school first, maybe it'll take a couple of years. maybe it's something that needs to change now, maybe something that should be handled later. but you don't have to overcome it; in fact, i wouldn't be surprised if the fight was so much bigger than us that we couldn't stand up against our Goliaths. God's there. God's the hero in the movie, the one who gives everything away so you can finally stop and realize, at the very end, how much He had really given away. so you can stop and finally see everything He had really done was, in fact, for you. and He did all of this so that, at the end, the bombs will be going off and people will be screaming all around you, and time will slow down, and the only words that anyone will ever hear are "I love you. I love you, God." and the only words you'll ever hear again are "I love you too."

joy of the Lord

i have to put this somewhere.

God is good. very good. so far beyond our perceptions and imaginations good.

we were having a prayer meeting, like we always do on Sunday nights, and...things just got out of control with the Holy Spirit. joy of the Lord, all over the place for me. it was pretty amazing.

yesterday was awful. it felt like it did before i was saved. my day lacked direction, and i was a slave to my stupid lustful desires. anyways, i fell to sin so much yesterday, i felt pathetic, and i didn't really even have a desire for God. my faith was pretty weak.

i got a nice amount of sleep, and took a break from playing worship tonight. i usually played worship Sunday and Wednesday nights, but i didn't tonight. i still thought it would just be a normal day, even though daniel had asked if i wanted to get drunk and i had told them that i did. i didn't actually think it would happen. and even when we stood up for him to pray for me, i didn't really think anything of it. and when i fell over backwards, i wasn't so sure whether it was God who had pushed me over not. i didn't think it was.

but something happened in falling over backwards, uncertain whether or not God would actually do something. there was some kind of liberation that eventually prevailed, and i lost dignity. i began to laugh, because though my circumstances weren't perfect at all, and though my faith had been so weak just a day earlier, God was still in control. and even though we were possibly going through some rough times, God was still in control, and God still knew what He was doing. i had been praying for faith. and joy of the Lord. i wanted to be restored to joy. God gave me just that.

because it wasn't soon before i was speaking in tongues and squirming around with manifestations. when i say that i lost dignity, i really mean i lost dignity. i was acting a way i don't think anybody's ever seen me act. it was like God was tickling me. i was just lieing on the ground of Daniel's room, kicking around, laughing, squirming. amazed, because this had nothing to do with me. it was just God, and He felt really really good. and it was like no one could take away with this joy. and i thought how i could live in it forever, for some reason just really really happy, living in God's glory, even with my grades dropping in the background and all of these other issues that could be worried about. and i was thinking how i could go to my calculus class acting just like this, how i could live completely unconcerned with the world, completely indifferent to this life of grades and society and competition.

and i thought how funny it was, because yesterday was so bad, that the events of tonight could have definitely not been prompted, in anyway, by any kind of my own self righteousness. i, in no way, deserved what happened tonight. is it not obvious to see that my direct disobedience of God and His commandments should not have resulted in such a pleasant experience with God that happened tonight? it was completely grace. and it was completely God. i had very little to do with it, and i was just laughing because I was in His presence, and this was something i have never felt before. and i will tell you this - it's something that will be remembered. it really is something great. God restored me to joy. and it was all in His timing, all in His plan.

which faces me with this dilemma - how shall i go on living? because, i think it's pretty clear. it has to be of God. it has be totally God, if i want it to resound like tonight did. like my own problems and my own ego - everything that has to do with me - should take a backseat to God. let God drive, i shouldn't really have anything to do with it, except that i should laugh and squirm around when God tickles me. oh - and another thing - my legs felt amazing. i could not keep my legs still. i couldn't keep both of them stretched out on the ground in front of me. one always had to be bent. and...i kind of felt that God let me run. granted, i also felt that He said not to let it get in the way, but it was restoration in a way i've never felt.

and...when i talk to people, it's gotta be all God. it can't be me. at the same time, i have no idea what this looks like. it might always be talking about God, it might have very little to do with even mentioning God's name. it might be casting out demons, it might be deliverance, healings. God knows no boundaries or impossibilities. He just loves on people, and His love conquers all things. God, i just pray that You would overflow onto this campus and all over on all of us, the people that You love. i pray that we would really give You control of our hearts, that we would simply submit and, somehow, just fall to our knees and worship You and wait on You for provision and everything. find ourselves, our identities in You, and see how far we can delve into Your grace, away from our pride. steal away our hearts, ruin us from daily life. secure us in Your presence, and steal us away from this world and what we know. bring us to You.

i want something great.

i used to say that there were a million tiny things some people did each day that no one ever saw, and that these things would make people cry.

i heard about a michael w. smith song, about how it feels to be a father watching his daughter grow up, would push any father to tears, if he should see the music video.

i have felt it. i have felt uncontrollable crying, i have felt completely blown away. i have felt significant and completely secure in my significance, not because i deserved or earned it, but because i was staring God in the face and seeing Him and seeing His love.

now, i want to cry.

part of me wants to be part of something big, and so...i want to be part of God's plan. i want to find myself in His will, i want to be so in love with Him just so that i can be onto something big, so i can be on the brink of something big. so i can feel like my life will make people cry.

and this is what i really want. i want someone to cry over me, not necessarily because of things that go wrong, but because of beauty. i want to run like crazy, run like ecstacy in the cold night and lose myself in it. i want to lose myself in this thing that is big. i want to pour out my heart into words, because i have read some people's notes and they're just so real. they just make you feel like crying, feel like this person is finally vulnerable, that this person... is beautiful. and i guess that's like me, but i can't put words to it. i'm not sure i can put my heart to it either.

i guess i haven't had one of these lately - a testimony. i think if we forget our testimonies, then we forget how much Christ has done for us and what it meant for Him to be our Savior. on the other side, if we only live in our testimonies, then we're no longer really moving forward. anyways, here is what i can manage [with later editing, since i wrote this at like 2 in the morning last night]:

i have been blessed beyond reason. beyond imagination.

in one night, this night, i saw before me flash what was really going on. i saw that i wasn't a very good guitar player or singer compared to some people out there. and i saw that i had sinned, that i wasn't really feeling God. i had fallen away. and yet God used me anyways. He forgave me of my sins, even if i hadn't yet asked for forgiveness - He overlooked my sins and then He overlooked my flaws and He still used me.

but it was how He used me. He used me to get glory for Himself. you see, i was the one playing the guitar and leading the songs and everything, but people didn't see me, and that's the way it should be. all they saw was God. i was worshipping, but it didn't have to be me. it could have been anyone with a guitar and a desire for God, and i think God would have happened just like He did. but it was all the more amazing because it was me. i had a front row seat to watching God move. God working right through me.

and the power of prayer became apparent. because we would pray for people and after a while, God would show up and answer our prayers. and there were multiple times when i just wanted to stop praying and multiple times when i thought it just wasn't going to work and that God wouldn't answer our prayers like that, but the others persevered in their prayer and waited on the Lord and He came. answered our prayers. there was liberation in the air.

it reoccurs that God is my life. i mean, i sing how God is the only one who's worthy of everything we can give and how He's the only one i want to give my life to, but i hadn't realized this for a while. God is my life. no back up plans. nothing. God is my life, and i have nothing else that i would want to live for than for God. more than that, when my life isn't about God, things kinda get screwed up. if i fall away from God, i'm falling away from my life. i'm dying when i purposely choose against God. in fact, when i'm not even listening to God tell me who i am, when i don't let God give me value, i get so screwed up. i get down on myself thinking that i'm not good enough and then i think that not only am i good enough, but i'm better than everyone else, which gets me more down on myself because that's pride. and what God does is give us a new peace of mind. He takes our eyes off of ourselves and puts them on Him. not only that, but He pulls us out of our struggles. He redefines us, makes us new.

today was the first day that i've been in a room with about four or five other people and really been aware of their beauty. and at times, i wouldn't even want to look at them or touch them because i didn't want to dishonor them, and seeing how much God loved them made me feel like i should love them like that too. i think what i have been missing out on is a love for other people, a genuine desire to see people grow and progress and get better - a real care for people - as well as joy in my life. billy was talking to me how he feels like he and the rest of the youth group are kind of missing out on the spirit of joy, and i would agree with him as i can see it lacking in myself too. i just don't get excited like i used to.

one weekend, we went to the gym in Broken Arrow and jerry's stuff got stolen, and we spent pretty much all of saturday night working to change out the locks on his house so that jerry could go to church the next morning. we hardly got any sleep at all. one time in Michigan, it was 1 or 2 at night, and i was upset, so billy and i ran about a mile out to the beach and just sat there, watching the tide come in and out and the silhouette of buildings against the dark night sky, and when we came back, we were laughing at how much God would do. and at the Labor Day Retreat, i remember billy stepping up to the mic and just pouring out his thoughts in front of about 100 people and i got to do the same. i remember my very last Sunday before we went to college, leading worship.

and i remember one of the beginning Friday nights, mike had this crazy idea or something that he could put oil on us and we would all pray for one another and...it turned out that aileen was speaking in tongues from the very beginning and i was crying like i never had before and even crying with my sister, letting myself be vulnerable for one of the first times, saying that i was sorry for all the crap i put her through. i remember a lock-in when nothing seemed to be going right, but later that night when mike and lisa played worship, i ended up running around celebrating because i realized how great and wonderful it would be when, after trying so hard to get to God, we would actually get to Him and He would bless us so much with His gifts, it would be like we were flying.

i remember the long hike up the Pecos Wilderness and i remember watching the sunset that very last night in Michigan. i remember running away from home and God one cold night my senior year, both my legs locking up at 81st and Yale and crying to God on the side of the road. i remember the one weekend when there was grace to play worship. i remember what it looked like to see Jojo and Jerry and Richard and Jeff worship for the first time. i remember the impossibility of it all that night in Michigan when we were standing in a circle and things just started happening. i remember late nights with my small group, not knowing what i was going to talk about and still being blown away by things my group members would say. i remember talking to Jojo about Muslims and i remember billy stepping up as a leader in michigan and i remember Sleeping Bag Sumo and wrestling with demons at the campsite and trying to change seats every five minutes in our cramped van.

i remember times when all i wanted to do was quit. i remember times when i fell so hard, when i chose to compromise, when i let sin get the best of me. i remember some of my failures. failures with relationships and failures to be real. i remember what it feels like to be tired and to be stagnant with God. i remember what it feels like to have God show you something you haven't seen before, to run like you've never run before. i remember running my last real race ever and having John Spencer tell me that i was a man of God. i remember running my last cross country race and coming back for Friday night, feeling the indescribable pain in my legs, and thanking God because He had given me what i had asked for.

today was the first day i was in a room with four or five different people and i saw how much they wanted God in their hearts. how sold out they were, how desperate they were to catch a glimpse of God. they wanted Him more than they wanted themselves. truly, as simple as it sounds. and i saw God satisfy.

it seems as if God is calling me to love people. to see the people that no one sees, to let myself be associated with people who haven't really had people in their lives tell them that they're okay. that they're worth time. they're worth energy. that someone would give everything away for them. and by spending time with these people, i will get to love on them. i will get to witness... that they're really no different from me. i'm just like them.

God is good. He has...fixed my problems. my dilemmas, and He has seriously turned them into something amazing. something beyond beautiful, beyond explanation and scientific reason. He has given me something to live for, something worth remembering, something worth holding close to my heart. if i didn't have God, sure. i guess i could do absolutely whatever i wanted. but that wouldn't be liberating at all. i would be living lies. and all i would have would be myself and my reputation and things like money and all those things would pass away.

but i think with God...things aren't like that at all. i think with God, it doesn't matter if i'm going through heaven or hell. it doesn't matter if everything is fine or if i hate myself and need someone to comfort me or i shot and murdered a guy and am wondering if i should do the same to myself. His love never changes. He never changes. there's a lot of things i can't understand, and a lot of things i have trouble believing. but i'm starting to let go. because i think with God... you get what you need. regardless of whatever impossibilities we attach to it, i think it's actually satisfying. it actually doesn't get old or stupid and it's not a blind faith, and you can question God and things are perhaps better that way. and i'm trying to base my life on this principle. God is life.

hey guys, how's it going? well, that blog got started: it's called wci-chapteraday.blogspot.com, and it's actually been working well. we've been reading through 1 Corinthians and it turns out that we've got about five people reading and posting and none of them seem to get what i get from reading the text. so it's great, and there are a lot of different perspectives that add a lot.

anyways, college has been okay. man, the weeks are the longest. but things are sorta settling into a balance. whenever i go to Burger King, i will get 2 crispy tacos, 2 rodeo cheeseburgers (though interchangeable with the Spicy Chick'n'Crisp), and a Coke Icee. on top of that, my job at Cafe Plaid is cool. Happy Hour (that is, beer) brings in a huge crowd, and i even met some runners yesterday. crazy fast runners. there was a guy from Jenks with a 4:24 mile. so...yeah. pretty intense. i have also been running lately, though not very consistently, and i think i might actually be gaining weight from everything that i've been eating at Burger King and elsewhere.

so...this post was to point to that chapter a day website that we've been posting on, and to say that God is great. this past week was a terribly hard week that would not end, but today was simply amazing. it really was. i cracked friday night, but i was talking to billy and he reminded me that God was still God, through everything. i didn't matter. and so my flaws don't matter. no matter how much i fail, it's still not going to matter. God is still God and He is still going to get what He wants. He's still gonna be lifted high and glorified at the end. and that's what really matters. that's what i want to see happen.

so God has sustained and provided. man, you don't even want to know what He did for me. there was a math test. at 8:30 in the morning. i didn't study for it at all. half the test might have been just waking up in time. well, that morning i actually woke up on time. more than that, i had energy. i got to the test that i hadn't studied for, and...i was the first one out. i don't think i missed anything....God is nice. i just read this in 1 Corinthians 4. it asks "what do you have that you didn't receive? then why do you boast about it like you had not received it?" the thing is...i received that grade. and today he kept my mind and my eyes pure. that hasn't really happened in a while...i received that too.

anyways, yeah. eyes fixed on God. hope you guys are having a good time. if you have prayer requests, you can hit me up at david.w.chang-1@ou.edu