[ Umm...grateful? ]

This week being thanksgiving, I had a couple of random thoughts going through my head.

My pastor gave a sermon a few weeks ago, talking about thankfulness. As Christians, we have the great blessing of knowing who gives us our strength and help. Jesus provides for us even on the smallest levels. I am certainly aware of the fact that I didn't wake myself up this morning. I know that no matter how much I didn't want it to rain this morning, my wishes had no effect on whether or not a drop will fall from the sky (and I really wished hard for no rain!). All of the good things that happen to me are results of God's provision for me. I don't have to be reminded of that.

This week at church, we were taught about "The Leash". This was the idea that God is in control of EVERYTHING. God is even in control of Satan. *gasp!* (did he really just go there?.... Yup! I did, deal!) God is so powerful that even Satan has to check in with Him about the things that he does in and around the earth. (if you don't believe me, read the beginning of Job, playa...) The joy in this is that, even when bad things happen to us, we should be aware of the fact that no matter how bad things get, without Jesus' restrictions, things could be SO much worse! Who knows the depths of depair that we'd be facing if He didn't filter our troubles to only things we are ready/able to handle?

That being said, it makes me wonder why it's so hard to remember the good things in life. So often, when people ask me how my day has been; (and I actually feel like answering with something more substantial than just: "ok" or "good" ) I can easily rattle off a long list of all the things that annoyed me that day. I could tell smeone how many times I was screwed and exactly how that managed to happen. It's all too easy for me to recount my annoyances and the other problems that seemingly appeared out of nowhere, just to torment me.

Why isn't it something that resembles more thankfulness. Why am I not remembering all the ways that I was blessed in my situations? I think God would much rather us be able to give glory to Him by expressing joy about
His blessings throughout the craziness that happens to us. Why not have a story like: "I lost my wallet... But God helped guide me to it, or influenced someone to give it back to me.
Out of my mouth should be praises, not complaints. However, I find myself having to write down every positive experience or highlights.

My challenge, as we think about this season, and what we're really grateful for, is to change every negative thought about the day with a prayer of thanksgiving. Let's see if perhaps a change in our attitude can cause a change in the ways that we're ungrateful to God for the wsys that He is with us. Even thinking about it that way may enrich your relationship with Him, cause you're ready to accept His blessings even in the midst of trouble.

Besides, thinking negative things only brings us negativity...

I'm out...

| yes/no? |

I've been hearing a lot about this prop 8 business. I doubt there's been a day in the past at least 8 days that I haven't either spoken about it. I've also found myself being asked by other people to even explain why a Christian would want to vote for it, instead of against it. Here's how I look at things... 

Here is the entirety of the content of Prop 8, according to the california voter information guide website:

"Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."

So this is what has people up in arms?! The Christian folk are all ready to straight up jump in people's faces and say, this is a huge abomination! I've seen more Christian people become mobilized around this particular proposition, than I've seen Christian people be willing to step out of their comfort zones and have a conversation with a non-Christian about their faith. It's so easy to get behind this thing, and get other people to vote yes on something, because this shows people who are living differently than what we believe is right, that we can take a stand for something. Apparently salvation of people's souls takes a back seat to the ways that we can show them our convictions for attempting to mess with marriage. (we'll show them, won't we?)

This is a great opportunity for the non-Christians and the homosexual community to show the world just how horrible we Christians and conservatives really can be. We're so bent on making them suffer, that we would fight as hard as we could, in order to strip them of basic human rights, guaranteed by the constitution. We don't want them to be anything like us, so we're denying them their human rights as citizens of California! How dare us....

I, for one, will be voting yes on proposition 8. If God wanted there to be marriage between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, I think there would've been mention about it in the Bible. As it is, the only mention about those situations is that sex amongst someone of the same gender is something that is an abomination. Based on that, I would have to be against any law that was encouraging the following of a lifestyle that I knew was not traditional, nor could be seen as delighting in the eyes of Jesus. It's not that I'm hating on those people who are homosexual and want to have families. I'm am scared of the potential personal problem that I would have with the fact that I voted to ok gay marriage in California. 

Now, people would say to me. How is that fair? How are you showing Christian love by not being able/willing to give them the rights that tradionally married couples have. How are we making things equal with oppurtunities for all? This country was based on the idea of equality for everyone here right? How is it that God is present in the world, and doesn't allow for the openness to welcome others' lifestyle? How is it that He made homosexuals the way they are, but does not accept them as He made them?

My pastor had a great sermon this past week. It was about fairness vs. justice. 

fairness: opportunities available to everyone, provided that they all are starting from the same level, with the same circumstances, handicaps, and abilities. fairness is everyone getting the same thing.

justice: the administering of deserved punishments and rewards. Justice is everyone getting what is deserved.

The world does not care about fairness or justice. The world cares about convenience. Somtimes it is more convenient to be fair in a certain situation, sometimes it becomes convenient for us to pursue justice. 

So, I have to say. No it isn't fair that I don't want to allow people of the same sex to be able to marry each other. It isn't fair of me to want to help deny people some of the same rights. My response to that is, it's not fair that there are systems in place that are keeping the poor poorer. It's not fair that I know people who are working harder than lots of the ceo's in this country, but are poorer than some of the people in the nations that we so fairly neglect to help. It's not fair that although everyone in this country has the same opportunities to make something of themselves, the richest of us are not amongst minorities. Right now, it's not fair to not want homosexuals to marry, tomorrow it'll be something else that's unfair. 

I wanna tell you the truth about unfairness. It's unfair that an innocent man had to be spat upon, beat, and crucified for the fact that we were loved. It's unfair that there are definite truths that come out, in the form of the Bible, that people consider to only be trivial or entertaining stories. It's not fair that I get a label just because I tell someone that I'm a Christian. It's not fair that my children won't be able to hear anything about God in a publilc school, because that's not what the majority of people want to have their children hear about. Is it fair when all this Savior asks us to do is talk to people about who He is, that people get angry with us and call us to shut up about it? 

The Bible says that we are supposed to love Jesus more than everything else in our lives. So, speaking as a man who has a homosexual parent, and homosexual best friends, I must say that even though I love these people, I cannot go against what the Lord says is right. I'm not judging them, because ultimately it is up to them and God to decide what their salvation status is going to look like. It's not fair that I can't pray hard enough to get some of my friends and family into heaven. They have to do things for themselves, so that they can get there. I'm not sorry that I'm choosing God's ways instead of the ways of this world. I'm supposed to be in it and not of it.

It's not fair that because of these thoughts, I'll be considered to be close minded. It's not fair that even the most "enlightened" people, shall write me off for having done what they strive to do everyday, just express myself and expect to be left be to do that as much as I'd like. 

The bottom line for those people who are wanting to fight for this proposition not to pass is, things are not meant to be fair. It's not fair that you're fighting only for yourselves and not for the rights of all homosexuals everywhere to marry. Make a federal case, don't just fight on the level that'll allow you to marry who you want. What about the other people in this country who want the same thing? If we're going to do things for the sake of fairness, why don't we let fathers marry their daughters, or let brothers marry their cousins? If two people are really in love, who are we to say that two consenting adults can't be together under the law?  As long as they're in love, and are willing to commit to each other why would we try to stop them? I don't see people striving for incestual rights. 

prolly becuase once again, it's more convenient for the homosexual community right now to make a big stink. Remember, it was the majority vote in this state that people didn't want to let homosexuals marry, and 4 supreme court judges overturned the voice of a whole state of people. How is that fair in a democratic country?

Don't make the complaint about fairness. Jesus isn't a God of fairness and equality. He is a God of Justice. If He rewarded any of us based on what we deserve, I don't think that any of us would have very much. He works with each of us as we are and as we need. If He was really all about fairness, He'd treat us all the same, and would actually have just written us all off, as our forefathers had written Him off before. 

He still has mercy on all of us. Saved or unsaved. Think about fairness vs. justice. 

I'm voting yes on prop 8. God wouldn't stand for the desecration of marriage as an institution.

Here's to all of us getting Justice instead of fairness.

I'm out...

| Instant Gratification |

I get so annoyed when I have issues with my internet! It took me a few tries with my web browser to get to this place so that I could blog tonight! It was freakin' destroying me that it wasn't coming up for me. You'd think I'd be able to just get right in, especially since I have dsl right? I mean, this isn't 1996, I'm not rollin with the dial up that my parents had. Things are supposed to move so much faster now right? Gosh.

That's just my problem though. I always want what I want, when I want it. I'm kind of a spokesperson of my generation though, I think. We definitely want things the way we want them, when we want them. Think about it! When we pray, we want the answer quickly and we want it to be clear. I don't know if it's the wisest thing to just give God time guidelines with my prayers, but I do it. Have you ever done that? Ever tried to give God a time ultimatum in prayers? "I need this to happen in the next couple of days God, or things are going to be messed up!"

Even the way that we evagelize is a bit like that sometimes. We think that we'll have that magical and fateful conversation with someone, where they will hear what the goodness of the gospel has to offer, and they'll fall in love with God just like we did! Is it wrong of me to want to be instantly amazingly effective in someone's life? Why don't I ever see impact like that with people I talk to? Is it because I'm horrible at evangelizing? *Shrug*

I think that the problem with instant gratification is that it really neglects the idea that patience is necessary! We have to be patient on God in all facets of our lives. His timing is not our timing, and remembering that can save a lot of us some grief. There's a reason that patience is a fruit of the spirit. It is an important trait to have some practice with. If you think about it, all of our faith is based on patience. We have to be patient for the day that we get to be reconciled with our Lord. We're patient in the fact that one day we will get to see heaven and want to be part of that. We're patient because of the belief that the way that we live today will produce some kind of reward for us once we get to heaven. We are supposed to be living with the idea that we're waiting for Jesus to come back to this world and restore His power and justice to a lost world.

For a religion that is based in so much patience, why do we have such a hard time waiting for things? Shouldn't we be in the practice of waiting on God for everything?

I'd say that we have to make a change in ourselves RIGHT NOW! That I want to see it IMMEDIATELY!

but I need to practice some patience...

I'm out...

| who's really in charge? |

Jesus is supposed to be the Lord of our lives...

Why is it that I feel that this is not the case? I feel like so often, I am the bottom line for decisions that need to be made. I'm the one who chooses what I do everyday. I choose my moods and I decide if I'm going to have a good day, a great day, or a crappy day. I decide what I want to do with my money, I decide if I even want to make money on a particular day. I get to make the rules for myself, and I choose whether or not I want to follow them or not. I have rights, I have privileges, and I can assign or retract both from my life as I deem necessary. I wake myself up in the morning and I put myself to sleep every night. I survive my days and my nights. I don't have to listen to anything that people say, because I am my own person. I stand on my own two feet. I look out for myself, no one else wants to do such things for me. I can't trust people, because they let me down.

When I was pledging for my fraternity, there was a rule that all the pledges had to adhere to. We were not allowed to refer to ourselves in the first person at all. This was crazy, most people thought. All the pledges had to refer to themselves in the third person only. That meant that we couldn't use the words: I, me, my, mine, or myself. This really drove my friends crazy, as well as my pledge brothers. It was really hard to see what the point of speaking in third person was. What I realized as we went on in this process, was the fact that there are a lot of times where we refer to ourselves in our everyday thoughts, prayers, or conversations. Having to change my pattern every time I was about to mention something about myself made me pay special attention to just how often I used such words. After a while, I realized that I was pretty self absorbed. Almost everything that came out of my mouth referred to me. I saw how easy it was to put myself into everything, and not to put God into anything.

One of the secrets that we like to hide from God and from each other sometimes is the fact that we like control. We like to be able to have control of all kinds of things. We like to control situations, feelings, and outcomes. Lots of times when we get frustrated about things, it is because we cannot control circumstances that surround us. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten angry because something did not go the way that I planned it, or something that I couldn't control hampered my plans. I think we like to have the last say in lots of things. We are raised in a society that is very individualistic, and we grow into these ideas that we are our number one priorities. We have to focus on how we feel, what we get out of things, how things affect us, etc. At work, I generally seem to get mad when people don't listen to me, because I have particular insights about things. We are so quick to be able to give 95% of things up to God (actually that might be pretty high), but there is that 5% that God is just not allowed to touch.

"It's better if I can handle that one God"

How much sense does that make? He created us, He provides for us, and we can't give Him everything? All He asks is that we trust Him, and allow Him to shoulder our burdens. What's better than being free of troubles, because we can give them up? We go through a lot of self inflicted suffering throughout our lives. This is mostly due to the fact that we have the mentality: "I've gotten myself into this, and I can get myself out of this." or "lemme try to fix things before I go to God about it". How often have I gone to people, complaining about the things that were going on with me, and how I couldn't do anything to change the situation, only to be met with the question: "have you prayed about it?" and me answering "not yet, I think I can figure this out". Why do we think we can figure out our own things? Why do we think that we can outwit God?! He gave us the intellect that we ABUSE most of the time.

What's the deal? What's holding us back from giving complete control of things over to God? What are we afraid of? It can't be that He will find out about the kind of people that we are, or the things we've done. If it is, I have a secret for you: HE ALREADY KNOWS! A lot of the time, we're so much harder on ourselves than God is on us. We are the ones that don't allow for forgiveness. He's all about forgiving people. We are the ones that hold on to sin and think that it somehow permanently damages us. He's quite the opposite! Once we ask for forgiveness, God completely writes things off as if they've never happened.We are made white as the freshly fallen snow in His eyes; Shouldn't that be enough for us!? How is it possible that we hold ourselves up to a higher standard than God does?

the answer is, for most of us, we are our own little gods...

time for a change yes? He is for us...For a reason!

Give up Lordship to the true Ruler and King of all creation.

I'm out...

| comfortability |

It is very clichéd, but it is true... We humans are very much creatures of habit.

Everyday I have the same morning routine. I get up. I pray. I read some scripture. I try to dwell on it. I pray again. I get out of my bed, grab my toothbrush and head to the bathroom. I wet my brush, apply toothpaste while walking back to my room, start brushing, and turn on some morning music. I brush my teeth for about 5-7 minutes (any less and I feel like I haven't done a thorough job). While brushing my teeth, I use only my right hand (my left hand is used only to hold my toothbrush while I'm rinsing my mouth out). I go back to my room and retrieve my mouthwash, gargle for about 50 seconds, then I'm off to the shower. I get dressed, and then turn my music off and head out to face the day at work.

So I admit that when it's broken down into such anal details, I do sound like I'm pretty obsessive compulsive. This has to be done the same way every time that I do it. I might sound particularly crazy, but I promise that this is not a plan of attack I come up with every night before I wake up (that plan would be the same as every other night... trying to take over the world.) I don't set things in action before each new day, just so that I can repeat it day after day. It's just the way that I've become comfortable doing things. I don't even think about it. I'm so comfortable with the process, that I really just blindly fall into doing them the way that they get done. It's only when I stop and take time to break down my actions, that I realize how specific, rigid, and crazy this all sounds to me.

That's just how it is though, right? We get stuck doing things so often, in the same exact way, that it becomes habitual to us. Living life is just that, and part of living is having things go just the way that we are used to them going. We have ideas of how things should be, and those ideas constantly stay with us, no matter what. Living with secrets is just like that. There may not be a lot of constant thought about the secrets that we have, or the specifics that keep them something to be secretive, but we are constantly carrying them with us. We hold them close to us, and a lot of times we feel lost without them. These things that we hold onto in life are things that are sometimes only understood by us. The idea is that maybe if we were to let people in on them, they would be freaked out by the secrets. Of course, we don't want to have that happen to us. With that, we decide that it'd be the best thing if we learn to live comfortably while keeping these secrets with us.

Sadly enough, the things that are the secrets in our lives usually affect how we define ourselves. For example: I would always feel alone. That was my secret... Even in a room full of people (friends or not), I could feel like no one got me or understood me. That thought constantly made me feel like I was alone. That secret led me to start alienating myself from people. I would begin to deliberately sabatoge social situations and blame things on the fact that I was made to feel like I was alone. No one understood me or cared about me, so it was ok to be solitary. I got very comfortable with living life like that. I was so comfortable in fact, that I would deny myself chances for heavy social interaction altogether. When other people would call me out for being hermit-like, I would cower in fear. I thought they would try to discredit my secret or challenge the ways that I was comfortable!

A lot of times, I think that we Christians view our faith like that too. We get comfortable in seeing our faith in the same way all the time. A lot of times, our beliefs are so static. We read the Bible with the same lens, we pray in the same way all the time. We have the same way of connecting with God, or even having ways of experiencing Him. We get set in our ways, and we have a cow when a different way is presented to us. "How can someone tell me how to relate to God?!? I've been doing it for years, and I've not had any problems." We have the tendency to really latch on to the ways that we are introduced to God, generally with little deviation.

How do we get past doing or feeling things when they are so comfortable to us? How do we open ourselves up to new ways of doing, feeling, or even experiencing things in life? We have to challenge our comfortability! This would include even our better habits. When dealing with our faith, we definitely have to think outside of the box (such a corporate idea, that I feel connected to every ceo in the universe right now). It's true though, Jesus was so revolutionary, because He was never overly comfortable with anything. He was able to be in a state of constant change.Being a certain way was not good enough for Him. Having a standard relationship with His heavenly father was not good enough for Him. When we die to our comfortability in things, we can let ourselves be open to experiencing new, different, and awesome things. Jesus was not comfortable in carrying secrets with Him. He really included His community when thinking about things and doing things. Holding onto these secrets and being comfortable with them make it hard to get rid of them. Keeping things in the open is truly freeing. In God's vision, the world was void of secrets, there was true intimacy with Him and with other people. He calls us to be part of a revolution! A revolution in which we develop real community with each other, in order to really love and uplift one another. In order to do that, we have to be able to become uncomfy with being secretive. Let's try to set ourselves free.

What are you too comfortable with?

I'm out...

| dr jekyll, mr hyde |

Being a Christian is hard...

There are really times where I want to just have things the easy way. I want to be able to do the things that everyone else does, not really thinking about the way things are, or the consequences of some of my actions. I kinda long for the blissful ignorance of not knowing how this affects my soul or my ways to heaven.

At the same time, I really don't think I would be able to live like that. Knowing God has really shown me so much, I've been able to grow in so many different ways, and understand the world around me so much better. I feel like, even though I have a lot to consider during my days, that I'm really much more ALIVE with the knowledge of Him and how He controls the things around and including me.

I had a conversation a couple of weeks back, where a friend of mine told me that I'm not really like other Christians that she has met. Which made me think about what the criteria is for being a Christian person. Am I supposed to be a rosary carrying, Bible thumping, openly judging person? Is that what people are expecting when they hear the word Christian?! Are they expecting me to jump up at them and throw the gospel down their throats? Is there the idea that I'm constantly on a "change your mind" mission?

I think we should be willing to evangelize, but I'm not going to change your mind about anything. I'm not trying to be out to just tell you that the way I think is the ONLY way in the world to go about things. The beautiful thing about Jesus is that He loves us corporately and INDIVIDUALLY. That means that I can't tell you who Jesus is to/for you. That's something that you have the pleasure of figuring out for yourself. I can help you to discern how God has been trying to get your attention, and recognize those things. In that process, it's definitely a lot of questions to be asked and lots of different options to be explored.

Back to topic though, sometimes it really seems like non-believers have life so easy. They don't have to do any worrying, and don't really seem to be held back by so many rules. However, when I think about it, I see the flip side of things. There is so much hurt in this world. So much loss and so much pain that is just rampant through our world. So many people feel alone and disconnected and have little hope. Knowing that God loves me, affords me the luxury of not having to go through things alone. I don't even have to deal with stuff completely on my own. I have a backup who is really infallible. There is a being that is much stronger than I am, who is willing to lend His strength and goodness to me. A father that is constantly on watch over me.

There's no way that I would be able to live life without Him. However, sometimes it seems that the grass really is greener on the other side. When I look into my neighbor's yard, I see all the weeds though, and I realize we're all really trying to strive to find a way to make it through the same struggles. Some of us have a little extra help... I wanna help everyone have access to the same resource.

I'm out...

| secrets |

Everyone is hiding something....

During the Intern Trek, we helped to participate in a proxy station on the campus of UNLV. This proxy station is all the new rage amongst people trying to do evangelism on college campuses. A proxy station is basically a big display which is meant to ask a probing question of people who witness it. The question that we asked on the trek was: "what are your secrets?" The premise of this question was to get some discussion about the ways in which today's society operates behind secrets. Everyone has them , and we keep them held so tight that we begin to let them dictate our existence.

There is so much drama in our world today. So much pain, so much hurt, so much mistrust. Most of this can be attributed to the fact that we are keeping secrets (many of them horrible and shameful). We keep secrets about all kinds of things, little things: (like my fear of butterflies), because we're afraid that being exposed in this very individualistic society can be certainly embarassing beyond all repair. We keep secrets about big things: (like my suicide attempt in high school), because we don't want to re-live certain problems or issues that are happening around or to us.

Whatever it really is, these secrets are supposed to stay deep down inside of us, because if they were to ever be revealed, we would be made unnecessarily exposed in front of family, friends, or strangers. This would include us keeping things from others to save face. Christians are especially fond of that one. We like to give off the idea that we are all doing quite well. A good Christian doesn't have problems, because we have God on our side! He provides for us and we don't have any reason to be hurting or struggling. There's also the popular idea that we have no reason to be complaining, because we're so much better off than millions of other people in this world. There might be some pressure for us to present ourselves as doing well, because we want to have something tangible for non-Christians to see. We have better lives, because we know God, and because of that, you should want to know Him too. This of course keeps us from letting people see the power of God. Part of the problem with us keeping secrets is that we don't let people see us suffer. If someone knows that we're having a hard time with something, we just assume that it's easiest to pray about things and leave that as it is. When non-Christians find out that we have problems, it makes us seem like we are hypocrites.

Secrets even affect our romantic relationships. As a result of our secrets, we're constantly in a back and forth game with the opposite sex. No one wants to seem more attached to someone than they are, so they have to put on some fake bravado. Instead of admitting that I have been hurt by women before, I'll just put on a "hard to get" facade, so that I don't have to deal with being real with girls. Instead of admitting that some guy has broken your heart, you'll play the "I'm going to string men along" role, because you'd rather re-gain the power that you feel men can have over you. These secrets, although maybe not always conventional secrets, can really affect our lives in deeper ways than we can imagine.

Secrets definitely murk up our relationship with God. We want to be able to hide things from Him, even though He knows what we're going through, even better than we do. Sometimes, instead of keeping a secret, we'll lock a door to a part of our life that we aren't ready for Him to be involved in. We'll give everything else up to Him, but we won't be willing to let Him behind door number 2. "You can have every other part of me God, but I have to have this thing to myself. It's all for me! No one else can have access to that." Unfortunately, when we do this, we're allowing ourselves to be opened to deception from satan. Anything that is not of God, that we attempt to hide from Him, is giving satan the opportunity to work in. When we aren't in true community, we are vulnerable to attack from satan. We are essentially, out of the position that God has set up for us. We gather strength from being with brothers and sisters in Christ. Being separated from them makes you vulnerable in a different way.

Secrets, they're tearing our world apart, one withheld story by the next. Jesus came to us so that we could regain our openness with God and with each other. We don't have to have secrets from each other. That doesn't mean that we go about spilling absolutely everything about ourselves with anyone, but we are to live in real community. Community calls us to be real with ourselves and real with others. Christianity is about having community, so if you're harboring secrets, you're really allowing yourself to be separated from community, thus instantly making your religious walk much harder than it has to be. It is not wrong to be real with each other! We need to do that, because we need each other to be looking out for each other. There is no shame in being vulnerable with family.

That's a lesson that I'm working through right now. Just thought I'd share.

I'm out...