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.)