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.