Praise

Okay, random life occurrences to get me to my revelation today.

Last week I got my wisdom teeth removed. Apparently a nerve was damaged during my surgery, and now the right bottom half of my lip to my chin is numb. The nerve may take weeks, months, or never heal. I am hopeful that it will heal, but today I realized, it might not. Forever part of my face may be numb.

I met with my friend for coffee. One of the first things he tells me is, “You’re getting tan, praise God.” I laughed. Then we sat outside, and he moves so he can be in direct sunlight. He responds to his action saying, “I want to get tan, praise the Lord”. My dear friend keeps praising God for the opportunity to get tan.

I was online and stumbled upon this website, www.prayfordaisy.com. This is the blog of a 7-year-old girl who just got diagnosed with cancer for the 3^rd time. She lives in a Christian family; her father actually is the pastor of a huge church in California.

My friend got in a serious car accident with 4 youth group girls in her truck. Everyone was okay. She praised the Lord for their safety.

Okay, through all of these things, through terrible things, through irrelevant things, through miracles, we should always be giving praise to God. And not only we should be giving praise to God in any situation, I think we can even give praise to God FOR the situation.

James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Simply, every good thing in our life came from God. But our definition of “good” is different than God’s. So even things that we don’t see as good, can still come from God, because it may actually be good for reasons we don’t see. And we should praise God for everything he gives us.

James 1:2-4 says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.” It is a challenging word, to claim joy, not in, but for difficult times. In every situation, we should praise God for the opportunity to become more like him.

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” It doesn’t say he will work to bless us with continually happy things. He says no matter what, if you love me, I am going to pull good out of everything. And we should praise God for that promise.

So when my friend was still alive from a car accident, it was right to praise God. If they all would have been killed, it would have been appropriate to praise God for their lives, and how their legacy would now change the world.

It is right to praise God for allowing a precious girl to have cancer. It is a terrible thing in our eyes, but the fruit of maturation in faith in the family and the others around them may be priceless. God is doing good through her terrible situation, no doubt. We should praise him for that.

It is appropriate to praise God for silly things, such as getting tan. Why not praise God for creating the sun to be able to change our skin color, on top of the hundreds of other purposes it has.

I want to praise God for making my face numb, even if it may be that way till I get my new, glorified body. Today I am learning how I cared too much about my face. It is just my face. It was, and still is perfectly made. And my face, no matter what condition, should never decrease my amount of praise to God.

American Culture Convictions

I have been convicted of being hypocritical lately.

I believe this is my fourth attempt at writing a post. I tried writing one about how people accidently preach the prosperity gospel. And then I felt convicted about writing that while I drank my $3 iced coffee, which could have fed a couple of starving kids today. I think many of my friends are preaching too much about how God will bless us, when he simply might not by health or wealth on earth. I could get a brain tumor and die tomorrow, or end up homeless in a year. But truth is he has totally blessed me monetarily and in health in this season of my life. And, he is still a God worth giving up everything for if I end up sick, persecuted, or homeless. Actually, if that happened, I would have more in common with Christ, which is kind of what I am going for – he didn’t have a home, and then was killed. The gospel was so that I may have eternal life – not temporary blessings.

Praise God, my trip to Haiti has still been shaping my worldview. I was overwhelmed yesterday when I went shopping to buy new bed sheets. There are so many options. And then I remembered the hundreds of thousands of kids who sleep on cardboard, cement blocks or dirt. I guess I probably don’t need new bed sheets. But then again, I live in America, and this is what we do, we buy bed sheets. No one would tell me I am wrong in buying some new sheets after using the same ones for 12 years. And I ruined my sheets by my $10 dollar hairspray exploding all over them, so I MUST buy new sheets instead of doing everything I can to save those old bed sheets, right? Amazing how spending $30 dollars is such not a huge deal in my life. Over half of the world doesn’t make that much money in a month. Imagine that, really, if getting new bed sheets meant I had to spend 1/12 of my income for the whole year, would I get new bed sheets? No, no I wouldn’t. I would try to save my old ones.

Basically, I don’t want to be judging others so much, because I find myself guilty of the things I point my fingers at. I also don’t want to continually have my life shaped by American culture. I want to have clearer perspective, remembering that I am in the top 95% of richest people in the world. Not so I can be happy, call myself favored or blessed, but so that I can use my God given resources to help others who are not blessed by God monetarily. Those people exist, and are not one ounce less loved or favored by God. And truly, this “blessing” of wealth too often becomes or creates idols, so am I really more “blessed” by having something in my life that causes me to sin more? Nah, I would probably be better off without it.

Receiving vs. Reproducing

Friends.

I first want to preface, if you are not a book reader, I highly recommend becoming one. It is really important to learn things, and one of the best ways to learn is by reading. I know some of you may disagree, and say, “well I learn better by experience”. So do I, but the magnitude of what there is to learn cannot always be by experience, it must also be by study.

I recently read the book Radical by David Platt. This is a great book that I strongly believe every Christian in America should read. There are probably 100 things I would like to quote from this book, but I am only going to quote one random thing, to make my blog point :)

Excerpt from Radical, page 101-102:

“I often ask members of our church if they are receivers or reproducers of God’s Word. Let me illustrate the difference.

Imagine being in Sudan. You walk into a thatched hut with a small group of Sudanese church leaders, and you sit them down to teach God’s Word. As soon as you start, you lose eye contact with all of them. No one is looking at you, and you hardly see their eyes the rest of the time. The reason is because they’re writing down every word you say. They come up to you afterword and say, “Teacher, we are going to take everything we have learned from God’s Word, translate it into our languages, and teach it in our tribes.” They were not listening to receive, but listening to reproduce.

Now journey with me to a contemporary worship service in the United States. Some people have their Bibles open, while others don’t have a Bible with them. A few people are taking notes, but for the most part they are passively sitting in the audience. While some are probably disengaged, others are intently focused on what the preacher is saying, listening to God’s Word to hear how it applies to their lives. But the reality is, few are listening to reproduce.

We are, by nature, receivers. Even if we have a desire to learn God’s Word, we still listen from a default self-centered mind-set that is always asking, What can I get out of this? But as we have seen, this is unbiblical Christianity. What if we changed the question whenever we gathered to learn God’s Word? What if we began to think, How can I listen to his Word so that I am equipped to teach this Word to others? 

This changes everything. All of a sudden the pen and the paper come out. Note taking is not the measure of how committed we are to making disciples, but if we are hearing God’s Word taught in order to teach others, then we want to get it down as best we can. When we realize we have the responsibility to teach the Word, it changes everything about how we hear the Word.”

Conviction. I have rarely listened to a sermon with that intent. Normally I come at it with a “what can I learn about God and how can I apply it to my life” mindset. I personally need to change the way I read the Word and listen to sermons. I need to go into these things not only with the mindset to apply it to my life, but with gaining tools so I can confidently teach any and every part of the Bible to others.

It is vital to read, learn, and learn well enough to teach, so that others may come to know the Truth.

 

 

 

Ben Rector

March is such a great month. Such a great month.

I am going to see in concert Andrew Ripp, Ben Rector, Dave Barnes, Gungor, Needtobreathe, and some other sweet concert that my friend is bringing me to, (I forget the name at the moment).  But obviously it is a great concert month.

Ben Rector is opening for Needtobreathe.  I have known about Ben Rector for a long while. To me Ben has always been one of those artists in my mind that I have said, “yeah, I will listen to him eventually, after I get through the other 4 albums I just bought.”

Wrong logic. Go buy all of his music now and put it to the top of your listening list. I am not even kidding.

In my efforts to convince you to buy all of his music, I am going to lead you through the same process which made me an avid fan.

First, watch this music video.

Then watch this music video.

Then go here and get some free samples of his music. You will then realize that his music is even better than the covers above.

Noisetrade

Then go on itunes and buy all the other songs that he has recorded.

Then listen to everything on repeat.

Finally comment my blog thanking me for making your life better.

You’re welcome.

Prosteline.

This is the girl I think of about 20 times a day.  Her name is Prosteline.

Each day I spent a great amount of time playing with Prosteline.  For 4 days I spent a considerable amount of time holding her, playing ball with her and doing crafts with her. Never once did she smile. Seriously. I don’t think people understand this.  This girl, she was probably 6 years old, never smiled.  After holding her, trying to tickle her, there was no reaction.  The only way I got her to smile was picking her up and spinning her around really fast.  There were maybe 6 other kids in the Children’s Home (basically an orphanage) that were the same as Prosteline in this matter.

Can I even say that a child can be ruined? How else can I say what happened to her?

The first day at the Children’s Home I noticed parts of Prosteline’s scalp that had this yellow puss on it, and in the back of her head in the middle of the puss it was bleeding.  An intern next to me told me they noticed that and were sending a doctor to look at the children’s heads tonight.  All the other children had white dust in their hair, and apparently they all had a fungus.  Prosteline had an advanced level of this, and her scalp was bleeding from this fungus.  This fungus came from them not being able to properly bathe themselves.  This broke my heart.  First off, who gets a fungus from not being able to wash themselves properly? Secondly, if we wouldn’t have came, what would have happened to these kid’s heads? What would have happened to Prosteline? Would her scalp just continue to bleed and the fungus spread the rest of her body?  Who is looking out for the health of these children?

The final day, I met Prosteline’s mother.   I found out Prosteline has two other siblings in the Children’s Home and her mother is pregnant again.  I don’t know how often Prosteline’s mother came to see her, but she came that day to remove some of the yellow puss from Prosteline’s scalp. I knew before that a lot of these kids had parents, and they are in the orphanages because the parents cannot provide for their children, but I immediately was SO mad at her mother.  Here is this woman, not able to provide for her 3 children, and is STILL having babies.

Now to give her benefit of the doubt, I don’t think this mother enjoyed giving up her kids.  I think she honestly thought it was best for them to be there, because in the orphanage they got “fed” and received an “education”.  By quotations, these kids get fed once, maybe twice a day, and it is beans and rice everyday.  (Can you imagine eating one meal a day, and that being beans and rice, everyday? This is why the children are so small and malnourished.)  And you go to school, but your teacher most likely has the education of a 4^th grader, so really, how much can you learn from this person?  But this mother had to make a choice, for her children to be fed and not loved, or loved and not fed.  This picture is so hard for me to understand, and get over.  Children need love to be healthy.  But these kids lose love, and in exchange are barely taken care of.   Their emotions become as hard as stone, and they are not able to experience happiness, receive or even give love.

My heart weeps for Prosteline, and the thousands of other children who are put in her same situation.  Right now, as I think of her, all I can do is pray and have hope that things will either change for her, or she will somehow overcome the broken system she was born into.

The words to this song also run in my mind all day everyday since Haiti.

Poverty

I returned late last night from an 8 day mission trip in Haiti. Thank you to all of my friends who prayed for me and my team over this trip.  Our week was overwhelming – in a good way. I have so much to share, and I plan to write about it soon. Right now I am going through reverse-culture shock, so I want to wait to write about my trip until my emotions are more under control.

I am writing this now because I really want you to watch this video.  My eyes were opened up to the vast amount of poverty in the world, and this clip shows a lot of what I learned through the organization I worked with in Haiti.

Please please watch this.

Haiti

January 4th – 11th I will be in Haiti for a missions trip with 17 people from Renovation Church.

Here are some of the things that we will be doing:

Hanging out with these kids

Building a playground for them

Building a storage unit for them, so they don’t have to keep their food in a tent that gets flooded with water and infested with rats

Working with Haitians to fill in the road outside of their orphanage with dirt, so it no longer floods. This will reduce mosquitos and chance of them getting malaria

Telling these kids and others in their community about Jesus

Other things that we will find out when we get there

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Please be praying for me and my team as we go out to change the world

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Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…

James 1:27

Where did the time go?

Okay, so I basically failed blogging about Advent.  I truly thought it would be good way for me to blog more often, but alas, I put it aside everyday until Christmas.  Did I celebrate Advent? Honestly, the first week I really did.  And I was super excited to blog about my experience. But then I never sat down to write about my experience, and then basically every other day I thought. “I need to sit down and focus on Advent and blog!”, but never did.

I really hope I get to this point where I don’t have to apologize all the time in my blog for being a terrible blogger.  Okay enough pitter patter.  On to something more constructive.

So 2011 is basically over. I honestly feel like, seriously? Where did the time go?! What did I accomplish this year? Here are some thoughts of reflection..

For 9 months I worked 3 jobs, becoming terribly stressed out, but made a good dent on my loan payments.

I never went on vacation. I think the longest break I had off was 3 days.

The Youth Group I lead tripled.

I started learning how to play the piano this year.

I went to a U2 concert!

I basically failed at running this year, due to having neck pain for about 3 months while running, and then never fully getting back on the bandwagon after.

And the list could go on of hundreds of accomplishments and failures of this year.

But as I have blogged about this feeling before, I think there are really only two things that matter of what I did this year:

1. Have I grown closer to God?

2. Did I make an eternal impact in the world this year?

To answer the first question, I know I have grown closer to God, but it has been in a different way this year.  In college I feel like I grew emotionally much closer to God.  I spent more time than I ever had worshiping and praying, and had many tough life things happen that always kept me near Him.  This past year my relationship has taken more of an intellectual turn.  I have been connecting and growing closer to Him through reading theology books, and discussing with other Christians about such things.  One thing that has really sunken in this year is that I never have to shut off my brain with God.  I say that because I think many intellectual non-Christians believe that Christians have to make themselves dumber to have faith, and that is completely ridiculous, or more-so foolish to believe that you can outsmart the study of God.

I also grew a lot this year by realizing that I learn better by receiving lots of input, so I have been listening to sermon podcasts about 2-3 times a week. This has been a powerful way I have connected with God.  I learn so much about God by listening to Pastors such as Matt Chandler, Francis Chan, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, and of course David Sorn. :) I recommend everyone listen to these people! They are all brilliant!!

Also, I FINALLY have legit, wonderful accountability partners.  Ali and Molly, you have been an answer to prayer in my life in so many ways. Your accountability has caused me to read the Bible more consistently than I ever have this year, and your encouragement has strengthened me and my ministry in so many ways.  I love you both so much!!!!

To answer the second question, I believe so, yes.  I have seen some people I have been discipling come closer to God.  I have shared the gospel with multiple people.  I have worked harder at being a better representation of Christ to people in my life.  Sometimes I feel like I see little fruit, but I think many times we will never see the full effect of how God uses us in other people’s lives.  All we can do is daily serve and love God, tell others about Him, and love them the way He wants us to. If we always attempt great things for Him, we can expect great things from Him, whether we see them or not.

Ask yourself the same 2 questions and see what you come up with.

News Years resolutions coming soon, I have great plans :)

Advent Anyone?

I was blessed to grow up attending a very healthy Lutheran Church.  I seriously really love that Church.  It is the place where my faith began, and many people there made an incredible impact on my life.

Anyways, being part of a Lutheran Church and all, we definitely celebrated Lent and Advent.  I didn’t really understand why we did, but simply that we did.  I loved these times in the church because there were more candles to light in the front if you were an acolyte, and after Church was soup supper. Holla!

Anyways, the past few weeks I must confess I have been listening to Matt Chandler sermons about every other day (I know that is almost obsessive, but do yourself a favor and go listen to one here ).  He is a Pastor of an evangelical Church in Texas, and most contemporary churches do not celebrate Advent, but their Church is going to this year. So, I decided I am going to as well, and learn about the true meaning of Advent (aka learning more about Jesus). And I am inviting you to celebrate Advent with me.  And I am going to post blogs about this. So read them.

Check this out, here is what got me interested in doing this.  I will be using their guide, and you might as well too. It will be good for the both of us I am sure.

And yes, I will still be incorporating soup into my Advent season.  Duh.

Boldness is actually easy.

Hey there.

Last Friday I led worship for this conference called Anchored In The Word. It was a real legit thing. Anyways, one of the speakers was a Professor at Bethel Seminary, and he described a class assignment he did.

Now from the results I am going to share, he did not clarify how many years or times that he has done this assignment, so there could have been 40 people or 400 people that have done this, but I don’t really care.

The class assignment was for each student to ask someone to have a spiritual conversation with them. With whoever they spoke with, they could not of had a spiritual conversation with before. I am pretty sure those were the only rules. I think (I wasn’t super into the example until after he said it) he guided the students to just say something like, “Tell me what you think about God” or “Would you say you are a spiritual person? What do you think about spiritual things?” He encouraged the students to just ask people a simple question and listen. And you know what happens when you do that? People talk for a while, but then they feel they are rude, or they get curious to what you think, so they ask YOU the same question! And then you can answer it! And share the gospel. Easy.

He said that he was told of at least 20 people who came to a relationship with Jesus from this assignment. Like I said, I don’t know how many people have done this assignment, but really, at LEAST (cause we never see the full fruit of anything) 20 people got saved from just taking time to ask someone a question and hear them out.

Come on now, that’s easy to do.