I was reading The Naked Gospel today by Andrew Farley and I came across an analogy that I thought was really good. He was talking about how Christ's death and resurrection forgave us once and for all, he then writes...

"Let's say you are a married man. Imagine if every night before you went to sleep, you leaned over to your wife and asked her to marry you. It's just something that would make you feel better - asking her over and over again. It's your way of confirming you're married. So every night you say, 'Honey, will you marry me?' The words you choose are no big deal. It's just semantics. You know you're really married, you just like to ask her over and over.....

...If i were to try this with my wife, she would ask me to reconsider my thought processes: 'Don't you remember the ceremony? the vows? the witnesses? we were married years ago. I have the photo albums right here. It's now a past event. We live in a constant state of being married, there's no need to ask me over and over again if I'll marry you.

It's the same way with our forgiven state. And it's not just semantics. It matters. Have you thought about how many times the epistles urge us to ask God's forgiveness? The answer is zero times. You won't find a single epistle that suggests that we ask God for forgiveness. Why not? Because the writers penned their words after the death of Jesus. They were fully aware of their forgiveness as an accomplished fact."

So i know that was kinda long, but it just continues to strike me how we as humans continue to try and earn our salvation through works or words or ritual. Our forgiveness has been accomplished already. Christ said "It is finished," so why don't we believe him?

fear of man

So I'm currently sitting in my favorite coffee shop in Chesapeake, Bean There, watching it storm outside and reading. I'm also listening to Pandora, which I've recently rediscovered as being awesome.

Anyways, something I've been thinking about lately as it's come up in sermons at church and in small group discussion has been what my new pastor, Eric, referred to as 'fear of man.' The fear of man being when I let the fear of what others think of me dictate how I act.

This is something I've struggled with most of my life; worrying about how others view me. Never wanting people to dislike me, or think badly of me... I always have to be funny, or smart, or hardworking, or responsible, or any of a million other good things. While I don't think it's inherently bad to be any of these things, I've compromised my integrity on more than one occasion in order to maintain that image. I've laughed at things when I cringe inside, I've argued over a point just to prove myself right, I've used work as an excuse when really just didn't want to do something else.

Why do I put forth this false self? Why do I need people to like me? To think I'm better than I really am? And what's worse, my actions are telling lies about the gospel. In church we talked about Galatians 2 where Paul confronts Peter from withdrawing from the Gentile believers when the Jewish believers arrived. By worrying about what the Jewish believers would think of him, Peter's actions were saying that the Gentile believers were inferior, that they weren't as good as the Jewish believers.

What lies are told by the way I'm living my life?

I hope that being aware of it will help me to be less prone to worrying about what others think about me. I'm not sure that there's some magic steps that I can follow in order to break myself of it, but it's something I'll continue to deal with.

Too Much Tragedy

I am so tired of my school coming up in the news for the wrong reasons.

My heart goes out for the families of all those affected in the shootings on the military base of Fort Hood in Texas. Every time I hear about something like that my mind immediately goes back to the shootings at Virginia Tech over two years ago. And the fact that the shooter at Ft. Hood was a graduate of VT made feel even worse about it. There have been a seemingly absurd number of deaths that have had ties to Virginia Tech over the past couple of years. To name a few...

• This is how the 2006-2007 school year started, with an escaped convict killing two people and escaping into Blacksburg.

• Then of course the shootings on April 16th 2007 where a gunman killed 32 students and professors before turning the gun on himself.

• The following November, a freshman committed suicide by jumping out of a window in Pritchard hall (the dorm I lived in.)

• In February of 2008, a student was killed and another badly injured when they were hit by a car while crossing the street

• This past January, a graduate student was killed and decapitated by another graduate student in a cafe on campus.

• In August, two Virginia Tech students were found shot dead at a local campground

• In October, a Virginia Tech student went missing after a Metallica concert in Charlottesville and has still not been found.

• and now a Virginia Tech graduate, Nidal Malik Hasan is suspected to be responsible for the death of 13 soldiers and civilians at Ft. Hood in Texas.

Does this list seem ridiculous to anyone else for a span of 2 1/2 years? It's probably not even everything that happened, there's probably some incident that I've forgotten about. It sometimes seem like a cloud hangs over the school, that death and tragedy are not far from the students of the school.

And more than once, I have felt weighed down by all of this death and tragedy at the place that was home to me for 5 years, the lives lost were people I walked by every day, had class with, watched football games with. You would think we'd be good at dealing with tragedy by now, but that's something that I don't think we can ever get 'good' at.

I pray God would comfort those affected by this latest tragedy, and those that continue to be affected by all the other tragedies. I don't know what else to say beyond that.

Today I gave a guy a ride home from jail.

no, really.

I was volunteering and painting outside at a primary school across from my parent's church and this young guy comes walking up to me and asks if he can borrow my phone. He just got out of jail and needs someone to pick him up. So I let him use my phone as he tries unsuccessfully to call his dad and some other people. He said he needed a ride to portsmouth or he would have to walk. Now portsmouth is a 20 minute drive away, and this dude was gonna try and walk it?

So i did something that, looking back, I don't think i would have done 5 years ago, I offered him a ride. So we jumped in my car and started driving to portsmouth (p-town to the hip crowd) and we started talked about how he had just got out from a 60 day sentence in jail because he missed a court date, and that his girlfriend was supposed to be giving birth to his daughter today. All this for a guy who just turned 20.

Now i'm not the most conversational person in the world when I'm meeting someone for the first time, and so it was a little awkward at times, and there was a fair amount of small talk, we talked a little about church and God, but not much and before I knew it we were in p-town. I said God bless, and wished him well as I drove off from his house.

Driving back I was thinking about how even a few years ago I wouldn't have done something like that for a complete stranger. It was one of those things that helps me realize the work God is continually doing in our lives. I don't think I live my life incredibly different than I did a few years ago, but i think i respond to things differently now. I think in my good moments, I'm a lot less selfish than I used to be. (in my good moments) And that God has given me a heart for the marginalized people around me. (thanks Marshall)

I'm not usually one that does a lot of self reflection and self-analysis, so I think today was a good moment to just see that God's brought me a long way, and still has a long way yet to bring me.



Currently playing : Divine Romance - Phil Wickham

Signs

This is not a post about a Mel Gibson movie
or about a great game to play in small groups
or about things that direct the flow of traffic

This post is about signs from God.

I think that just about everyone at some point in their life has asked for a sign that what they're doing is right or a sign that points us in a direction to choose one thing over another.

Whether they're asking for a sign from God, or from something else, it seems like most of us want affirmation from something or someone else that what we're doing is right.

We want this sign to reassure our own insecurities and doubts.

Sometimes I want a sign that God is real, that I'm not imagining this whole thing and that what i've experienced is a genuine experience and not something contrived.

Sometimes I try to trick God into letting me have what I want. "If i'm not supposed to date this person, give me a sign not to." (I think I used this a lot when I was younger)

But are signs really going to be the thing that sways us towards God? The Bible doesn't really have a good track record of them working out. How many times did God perform miracles and wonders for the Israelis coming out of Egypt? And still they turned away from Him almost as soon as the wonders were over. How many times did Jesus perform miracles for the disciples and yet Thomas still didn't believe until he touched and saw the resurrected Christ.

Jesus even says "Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe." Which says to me that we shouldn't need or rely on signs.

Because faith is precisely that, not seeing and yet still believing.

So then what good are signs at all? Should we want to see signs from God?

Psalm 86 says

Give me a sign of your goodness,
that my enemies may see it and be put to shame,
for you, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me (v17)

The psalmist isn't asking for a sign for his sake, for his reassurance, but for others, that his enemies might see the error of their ways and come to know the true God. Is that why Jesus did signs and wonders? So that those who did not know him would understand that he had power and authority from God?

I don't know, maybe that's all signs were supposed to be, just letting outsiders know that this person has authority and you should pay attention to what he says. What do you think?

the problem of pain

I may or may not have stolen the title for this post from a c.s. lewis book.

I have not read this book, and this post is not about that book.

but I like the title anyways.

Pain sucks. for the past 2 months I've been dealing with chronic joint pain. It started out in my knees, but has progressed to just about every joint in my body, from my neck to my toes. Last week I was diagnosed with rheumatory arthritis. which is essentially the immune system going haywire to the point that it attacks the body's joints, causing inflammation and pain in the joints.

This is not fun.

But this post isn't about that.

This post is about responding to that.

When the realization that I will be taking pills for the rest of my life to deal with this, and that even then, nothing is guaranteed, I was angry. Angry at God for allowing this to happen to me. Haven't I been faithful? Haven't I done work for your kingdom? How am I supposed to get up early and have a quiet time if i can barely get out of bed and ready on time because of the pain. How can I stay in shape and take care of my body? Why God? Why do you hit me with this on top of everything else I have going on in my life?

And to be honest, I still go back to this massive self-pity party sometimes, I still have moments where I let myself get angry at God because of this. But I was quickly reminded of what my friend Derek would say.

"This is not how God intended it to be."

And he's right. When God created the world, everything he created was good. There was no pain, no suffering and no death... until the fall. But now we live in a world that is corrupted by the fall. Our relationship with God, with others, with our environments and with ourselves have been corrupted by the fall. This includes pain. God never intended for us to feel pain, but we were selfish, we chose to be selfish, and the resulting world is broken because of it.

And Christ has redeemed our spirits, but not yet our bodies. So while we've been given spiritual freedom in Christ, our bodies our still bound to this world. Following Christ doesn't mean you are less likely to get cancer, or AIDS, or arthritis. We have to deal with these things like the rest of the world. Though we should deal with it better than the rest, because we have eternity to look towards. We should have hope for freedom from this broken world.

We often don't.

We feel like we're entitled to more.

That we've earned the right to a good life.

That's nowhere in scripture. Somewhere along the line we got this idea that we should expect to live a life free of pain. That if things go like they should, we'll live a happy, pain-free life. In my opinion, that is the problem of pain. That we are surprised when we encounter it. That we are unprepared to deal with it because we've grown up in good neighborhoods and with bad theology. I hope I learn to deal with it better, and learn to trust God despite it.

the far side of the sea

"If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there Your hand will guide me,

Your right hand will hold me fast."

-psalm 139:9-10

I really like the poetry in the Old Testament: Psalms, parts of Isaiah, etc. This is one of my favorite psalms. I can't give you a good reason why, it just struck me the first time i read it.

There's a lot of different things in there, from God knowing when you rise and when you lay down, to Him making us as creations ' fearfully and wonderfully made,' to the psalmist petitioning God that He would search his heart for any offensive way. It has a lot of good and comforting things in it.

The thing that i love about verses 9 and 10 is that the author is saying even if i go beyond the sea, away from everything I know, away from the temple in Jerusalem where God dwelt, still God will pursue us there. There is no where that is too foreign or too far that God will abandon us. It's not a revelation by any means, but I think the poetics of how it is put here really struck a chord with me. (growing up by the ocean, I find particular peace with scriptures that speak of water and of the sea.)

I think it resonates with me a lot right now. I've moved far away from where I experienced and grew in God the most in my life; Blacksburg, College, IV, Pritchard. And so part of me equates that place and those people with God. Like in the Old Testament where God did something for the patriarchs or the Israelites and they would erect monuments or altars, I feel like there are places back at Virginia Tech I could do that for. The tree to the right of War Memorial Chapel, litton reeves 1670, bollos, Allen and Dave's apartment/rooms over the years, pritchard crossover lounges and burchard plaza are all places where God did something in my life. I don't have a lot of those places here. I don't have that same history with God in Chesapeake.

And maybe I never will, maybe this is my wilderness and God will lead me out of it into somewhere else. I don't know.

Is anyone else like this? Do you have places where you would build altars of remembrance for what God has done or just places you've experienced God more often? Where are they? What kind of places are they?

Autographs and Apologetics

So I was talking with my friend dave today, he mentioned some of the professors he had up in northern VA were some of the top minds and authorities on apologetics. They were authors and well known people in their field. Kind of a big deal. He said how they were just regular guys but despite that he had to avoid falling into hero worship when he interacted with them.
I think this is a common trend in our Christian society that seems harmful to me. We view well known christian authors, artists and speakers with this sort of worship that belongs with Christ, not with man.

I think it's a carry over from American culture at large. Whether it's actors, musicians, athletes or some other person that is either talented enough or lucky enough to make it into the spotlight that is today's media, we elevate people to the level of worship, or near worship, We want to model our lives after Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, John Mayer, Jay-Z, Lebron James, or Tom Brady. Even people who make it onto reality shows, American Idols, Top Chefs, Next Top Models, etc. Why? Why do we seek out fame? Is it because of our own dis-satisfaction with our identity?

Even within Christian circles; people want to be hip like Rob Bell, or counter-cultural like Shane Claiborne or adventurous like John Eldridge. Why do we stand in long lines to get our books autographed by these guys? Or push people out of the way to get a drumstick that the drummer from Mercy Me threw out into the crowd? I'm not saying anything is bad about any of these people. but I am saying at some level, all these people, from Brad Pitt to Shane Claiborne are not worthy of our devotion.

That belongs to God alone.

And I'm also not saying that doing certain things like these people are bad. Shane Claiborne has an incredible passion for the poor. And I love that about him and his ministry. But that stems from what God is doing through him. Not what Shane is doing himself. And as great as his books may be, they aren't scripture, and we shouldn't treat them like they are. Not everything in it is correct and true of what God desires for us. (Not to seem like I'm railing on Shane Claiborne, of the people I listed, he's probably the person that I struggle the most with hero worship of, so this is as much a reminder to me.)

We should look at one another with the same eyes that God does. That we would love one another and seek out how to sharpen one another into the men and women that God created us to be. But Christ should always be the model for our lives, and we should seek His face.

abiding vs. dropping by for a visit

So one of my favorite passages is John 15 talking about the vine and the branches, and it's something that comes to mind a lot when i think about spiritual matters. Tonight I was thinking about verse 4 where it says

"remain in Me and I will remain in you" (NIV)

or another phrasing i like

"abide in Me and I in you" (KJV)

That got me thinking, what does it mean to abide in Christ?

When i think about abiding, i think about living in, dwelling, making my home there. but I feel like most times my relationship with God looks more like a corner store than a house. I when I come in, I get what I need, maybe make some small talk, and leave. Some days it's raining, or I'm on the other side of town, so I don't come in at all.

Seems like a funny metaphor, but I think it's pretty accurate. My days might consist of a quick prayer, a brief quiet time, and then the rest of the day God gets put on the back burner. Even Sundays when I go to church, it's just a bigger block of time before I go my own way and leave God behind. I've got to deal with work and traffic and bills and chores and in all of these things, there's little or no thought or need for God.

This doesn't seem like what Christ is asking of us in John 15. or the rest of the Bible for that matter.

So I don't know if it's just the patterns in my life, or the way I choose to live in those patterns that keeps me from abiding in Christ. I don't want stop by, i want to be there for the long haul.

Any thoughts on how this should work? or examples of how you can abide in Christ throughout the day?

church inc.

I'm finding myself frustrated by the church lately.

not the capital c Church, the collective whole of those who believe in and follow Christ, but the little c church. The organizational, business-minded church.

disclaimer, this is not a blanket criticism of all churches, this is a specific incident and specific church, though I'm sure it's not exclusive.

What is the church supposed to be? a lot of times when I think of the church, I think of Acts 2: 42-47

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

Are there churches that exist like that? Forget on a church-wide level, are there even small groups like that? I don't know anyone that does that.

Recently, a couple I am friends with got burned by the church I grew up in. I won't go into the details, but basically there were some mistakes made along the lines of policy and protocol in asking their friends (who were also in the congregation) for financial help to adopt a child from the Congo. They were told they have to give back all the money they had gotten, and first go through official channels before they could ask their friends for money.

While I agree that things could have been done differently in asking for the money, nothing they did justified the response from the church, unless one of the people making these decisions legitimately thought they were trying to con their friends out of money.

Now, obviously I'm going to be biased in this; these are friends of mine whom I love and care about, but since when did the church become run like a business and not the organization which is supposed to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth? When did it become an organization which became concerned more with it's legal liability than understanding and grace?

Maybe this is just me ranting about this particular incident, but does the church in America seem this way to anyone else? Something that functions as a business first and a dispenser of teaching, grace and community second.

Which leads me to the larger question of what should the church look like as an organization?

Whatever it is, if it is without Love, it is nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

dealing with death

I don't think man deals with death well.

I guess that's because we were never intended to, God never intended for us to die, but sin entered the world and it's all downhill from there.

I attended a funeral today for a high school friend that died last week.

He was 23.

To be fair, we weren't real close anymore, we'd gone to high school together and lived in the same neighborhood, but I went off to college and he went off to college and our paths very rarely crossed since. But it's still the first person who I've known and have been friends with who has died.

All day my thoughts have been returning to the shootings at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. But even then, I didn't know any of the victims personally, I mourned the collective loss of life, but i didn't know any of them. The only way I got any connection with some of the victims was that 4 of them had been involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, and I got the chance to go and listen to some of their stories from the people who knew them. So I only slightly began to understand the weight of the lives that were cut short. But I'd never talked in person to any of them, never shared a ride with them, never hung out after school with them...

And that what makes today harder for me. I grew up with this guy, played backyard football with him, shared jokes with him. And while I hadn't done any of these things in years, I knew the kind of person he was, the genuine kindness he had towards people. He was a good guy who loved God. On top of that, his father was killed in a plane crash over Afghanistan 4 years ago. For his mother, younger sister and brother to have to deal with all of this in a 4 year span seems ridiculously unfair.

And there's no other way I can explain that. I sat here for a few minutes re-reading that last line and trying to come up with something else to say about it, but it simply seems unfair. I'm sure God can redeem it, but i can't see it. I guess that's why I'm not God...

How is man supposed to deal with death?

It's easier when it's someone older who's fought illness for years, or when we have no personal connection to it. Which is why we can sit here and hear about 70 people being killed by a suicide bomber in some far off country and hardly bat an eye at it.

I think it's also easier when we can blame someone for it. When it's some horrible crime committed, we can blame the person committing the crime. If it's cancer or some other disease, we can blame the disease. I guess in this case, where my friend collapsed for no reason that's been figured out yet, you could blame God. But blaming God doesn't seem very helpful to me. I think that's why we blame people, we want our anger at their death to feel justified. But what is our anger to God? What is our sense of justification to Him?

I think this post has been fairly long and rambling so far, so I'll tie it up and maybe return to some of the stuff later. Is there a 'right' way to deal with death? Are there ways that our society deals with death that are 'wrong?' I don't know. the only thing I do know, and the thing I've been returning to is the same thing I returned to during the April 16th shootings, and it comes from psalm 34:18

"the LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

and I pray that would be true for my friend's family now.

Re-reading books

So i've been reading during my lunch break at work, which has given me some time to get through a lot of books so far this summer. But i think the book i've enjoyed reading the most has been "to kill a mockingbird." I read it years ago in high school but reading it now i better appreciate the issues of it. I think you still can see issues today between the races have improved, but there's still a lot going on under the surface. The book convicts me on a few prejudices i still haven't let go and reminds me that while there are people with prejudices that are wrong, they aren't necessarily bad people. It's a great book, read it if you have the chance.

craving community

So, being back home in chesapeake has been hard. I've struggled with the fact that almost all the people I know here, I know from my church. and yet, I don't feel like I'm engaging with anyone there. Everyone that goes there is either older, or younger and married with kids and so I feel like there are very few people that I could call peers.
So lately I've entertained the thought of going and looking at a new church. I want to find a church like the ones I read about in all these books where everyone is living in community and accountability and all that stuff. I have a hard time believing those churches really exist. I've never been to one. So how do I go about finding something like that? Is there any hope for finding one in Tidewater, Va? I don't know, I hope so.

welcome to the real world

so these past weeks i've gotten a taste of what living in the real world will be like... waking up at 7, driving through traffic, 8+ hour work days, driving back through traffic. i start to understand why people out of college seem so burned out, it's exhausting.
and i'm finding it harder and harder to take time with God each day.
in college it was so easy because you made your own hours, i could set aside time for God so easily. now someone else makes the hours... and God wasn't in consideration when they were made.
maybe it's just personal discipline that i need to get up earlier, or devote time in the evenings.
it's just been a difficult adjustment.
and something else i'm struggling to find here in tidewater has been community. the community i had in blacksburg is something that i treasure a lot, and i know i'm not going to be able to replace it, but i've struggled to find any community here of people my own age.
i pray that i can start learning how to put God first in my schedule and that He would provide me with community here in chesapeake

Exile?

Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

-Jeremiah 29:7

so the 29th chapter of Jeremiah is a letter to the exiles in Babylon, and somehow i resonate greatly with this part of it.
it sounds silly, but i feel like as i'm going out from blacksburg and virginia tech, a place of comfort and blessing for the past 5 years, and going back to chesapeake, the place i swore i would never go back to after growing up there, i feel like it's almost an exile.
i don't know why i have a particular dislike of chesapeake, maybe all the things i've learned about architecture and urban planning have showed me all the things wrong with chesapeake, maybe it's the fact that most of my friends have moved on from there, or maybe it's just simply because it's not an exciting place to live.
however, Jeremiah 29:7 really convicted me about how i was feeling. yea, it may not be the place i wanted to go, but it is the place that God seems to be leading me to at this time. what good is it for me to sit and grumble and be miserable the whole time i'm there?
God is putting me into a position where i can actively participate in fixing the things that i don't like about that place, to "seek the peace and prosperity" of chesapeake. there are places that i can minister there, places that i can seek to restore the Lord's justice.
just because i've spent my life in the upper-middle class of chesapeake, doesn't mean that there aren't places of injustice. Deep Creek and Indian River are both places that are very different sides of chesapeake than the ones that i grew up in. just because i'm coming back to an old place, doesn't mean that i have to live in the same way that i did before. i'm a much different person than i was the last time i lived full time in chesapeake. let me be content in all situations and seek God's peace and prosperity for any place that i might be in.

encouragement

"I write to you, dear children,
because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
I write to you, fathers,
because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you have overcome the evil one.
I write to you, dear children,
because you have known the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
because you have known him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one."
- 1 John 2:12-14

i read this today and was really encouraged. i think for the first time in my life i feel like that last part is true about me.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

i think at various points of my life that has been partially true of me, but right now i feel like the whole thing is true of me. praise be to God!

calling [again]

so calling seems to be a recurring theme in my blogs lately. big surprise, i'm graduating this semester and don't know what i'm doing with my life... but last night was particularly helpful so i thought i'd share.
last night in small group we talked about the call of abrahm. and i brought up the question of calling. are we called to one specific thing in life? or are we called simply to follow God and within that there are multiple things that we can do. and in discussing that [thanks to guest appearances by bryan carey and isaac barber] we got onto the calls of various biblical characters. so here are some examples of call:

abrahm [genesis 12:1-9] "leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to land I will show you." v.1

so here abrahm was called to just go and God would tell him when to stop. it wasn't a call to go to canaan and then be done, that was all God had for him to do. no, he goes to canaan, there's a famine, he goes to egypt, almost gets killed, goes back to canaan, saves his nephew, has a son, almost sacrifices his son, etc. so it's not just one thing. if you look at the big picture, yes, he just ends up back in canaan in the end. but is that the important fact when you look at his life as an individual? is it the final destination or is it the journey that is important when you look at the scale of the individual?

isaiah [isaiah 6:1-13] "whom shall I send? and who will go for Us?" v.8

with isaiah there is a recognizable need. God needs someone to go for Him to proclaim the word to israel. isaiah, in his vision sees this need and rather than waiting for one of the angels to speak up or worrying that he wouldn't have the words to say, he steps up and says "here i am, send me!" he doesn't know what he's supposed to say, doesn't know the logistics, God fills in those details later. isaiah recognizes a need and steps in to fill that need as best as he can. and God provides him guidance as he goes.

jeremiah [jeremiah 1:4-12] "before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." v.5

jeremiah seems very unsure of himself. God comes down and says i set you up for this before you were even born! you were made for this, don't doubt yourself. but jeremiah replies that he is only a child and doesn't know how to speak. God tells him not to say that, if I made you to be a prophet don't you think i'll take care of you being able? so God is validating jeremiah's call and his identity here when he worries that he isn't good enough for the calling he's recieved.

so in all of these calls God says to just start going, He'll fill in the details as you go. there's no plan laid out before the start of the journey, it's like walking with a candle in the dark, you can only see far enough ahead for a few steps. so when God gives me a direction i need to just start going and let him fill in the details. now if only i could get that direction...

help yourself

so on saturday, i went with my church to bring sack lunches to Union Mission, the homeless shelter in norfolk. I got to sit down and talk with a guy briefly with a guy who i overheard talking about how he has just gotten an apartment and was going to be getting out of the homeless shelter this weekend.

the first thing he said to me was "you know something, God helps those who help themselves." and we went on to talk about how he's worked to get himself off the streets and get back on his feet.

i think that was exactly the thing i needed to hear.

i've been sitting around, feeling sorry for myself for not knowing what i want to do when i graduate, when i should be working to give myself options. not just waiting for the perfect opportunity to drop into my lap.

this guy had been into drugs, in jail, and on the street, but he's working to get out from that.
i need to work toward my future, not expect it to be provided for me.

i need to help myself

calling?

So it's been a while since i've posted one of these, so i dont know if anybody even looks at this anymore, but here we go anyways....

Calling is a word that's thrown around pretty commonly in the 'christian vocabulary.'
"God calls us to do ______"
"I feel called to ______ ministry"
But what does calling mean? What does calling look like?
Does God call us into specific things, like into a particular job or a particular ministry? Or is God's calling simply that we should follow him in whatever we do and let us fill in the details?

In the first instance, I've known a lot of people who have 'felt called into ministry' or 'called into the workforce.' I'm not trying to dispute what those people have felt, but i've never felt God telling me in some sort of prophetic manner what i'm supposed to do with my life. It would be a lot easier for me if He would just tell me what to do once i graduate, cause i'm lost. I dont feel 'called' to anything or anywhere in particular when i graduate, and that's how i've been feeling for the better part of a year now.

So that brings me to the second idea of calling, the idea that we are simply called to follow God in whatever profession we chose for ourselves, be it in the workforce, in the ministry, whatever. This idea resonates with me a little better, just because we are to be children of God first and foremost in whatever we do. However, that still doesn't help me figure out what i want to do when i graduate, but there is a difference in where each idea of calling puts me. Am i trying to figure out what i am supposed to do when i graduate, or do i have to figure out what i want to do when i graduate.

But i'm still not sure if there's something that i'm supposed to be doing, that i'm called to do. So as i continue to wrestle with this, any input would of course be helpful. Grace and peace.