Blessings

So in this time of year when we are giving and receiving gifts from each other, it made me think about blessings and gifts that we receive from God. I want to address something I have noticed in myself and others around me that goes a little deeper than the usual message to Christians about "counting your blessings."

Sure, we can always use the reminder to remember that God gives us everything we have and that we have nothing by our own doing completely. Everything that we have, every gift, every possession, every cent in our bank accounts or secret drawers, EVERY thing, is from God. That is something we do all need to be reminded of often, especially this Christmas and Advent season. However, I want to tackle something else entirely.

I admit, I need the same reminder I just mentioned, but not that often. The reminder I need daily it seems goes a bit deeper and I think that it will ring true in your hearts as well. It is not that we don't believe God will bless us, but sometimes we don't see them always coming to fruition. We think, "why am I not finding a job? I am looking so hard and praying about it, why won't it work out?" Or, "I am praying for my relationship with so-and-so, yet things are still tense and not getting any easier." Or maybe something like "why is my vacation time still so stressful? I have been praying for it, yet I am still burdened."

Before I go any further, I want to point out that in every scenario, I included that the person was praying about the thing that was troubling them. This is essential. If we aren't asking God for something, he still will provide for us, but its a relationship, he WANTS us to ask and look for counsel in him. Anyways, back to the blessings...

We tend to think we know the areas in which God will bless our lives. We think, well, the biggest deal in my life right now is unemployment/relationships/stress and so God will obviously take care of that right away or at least make that his priority as well. This is not always the case though. I know, it seems crazy that we might not know exactly what we need and exactly when we need it, but we don't. God does though and we need to remember that as we keep our eyes open for the blessings he IS providing.

There is a book titled Walking With God, by John Eldredge and he talks about this very issue. He talks about his struggle with not receiving the blessings he expects from God, that he misses out on the ones God is still giving us. Eldredge is a man who lives in Colorado and is a HUGE outdoors fan. He has a really big passion for hawks and just really loves collecting their feathers and watching them in person out in nature. He has a cabin up in the mountains he frequently goes to. He tells a story about one time he was up at this cabin and how God showed him to see and appreciate the gifts God does give. He went out one afternoon to look for elk antlers from where the elk had shed them. He was very excited to find them and spent a whole afternoon scouring the mountain sides for some. He tells how he was continually in prayer for God to guide him and help him to find some. He said he kept feeling like he should go certain directions, but never came across the antlers feeling that they were JUST over the next hill. Never found them though. He was about to give up when suddenly he came across a beautiful red-tailed hawk. He got to watch it for 10-20 minutes, seeing it spread its wings a few times to keep its balance on the branch during the gusts of wind. Finally it spread its wings one last time and flew away. He said it was the biggest hawk he had ever seen and it was the closest he had ever been to one. He recognized this event as a huge blessing from God allowing him to see one of his favorite things in nature and to enjoy its beauty and Gods beauty, power, and majesty in it. He never found the antlers he set out to find, but he was given something much more valuable to him that he did not even expect to find when he woke up that morning.

I wonder how often we all have this happen to us, but we are too focused on the blessing we have not received that we don't notice the awesome gift God has set aside for us that day. I am going to make it my goal, and I encourage you to do the same, to be more active in allowing God to give you the gifts he wants, rather than have your list of blessings you demand of him. Yes, still ask him for things. Everyday. However, still be open to the fact that maybe God has better things for you than what is on your Christmas list.

I encourage you to pray and ask God what he has in store for you that day and to bless you in ways that HE sees fit, and to allow you to be open to seeing and appreciating those blessings. I also ask you to pray for me to be able to do the same as I will be praying for you all.

Thank you for reading, you all are truly a blessing to me for caring enough about what I say to read and encourage me to keep up writing and studying and sharing with you all my thoughts and feelings on the things I see and how I see them.

Political Confusion

OK, so I must write a preface for this post before getting into the observation that I have made. First of all, this topic has the potential to be quite controversial and it might hurt your feelings. Maybe because you think I am a fool, maybe because you realize I have a great point, but you don't want it to be true. Regardless, just wanted you to have a heads up. On the subject of being a fool, I have very little political knowledge or interest. I don't really concern myself much with political affiliation or worrying about the goings-on of the political world. I see it's value, but it is not something that I care enough about to have an extensive knowledge on the subject. That being said, I am still going to point out something that I seemed to notice about the correlation between political affiliation and our religious identity. Again, PLEASE understand my very shallow understanding of political views when you read this. I only hope to BEGIN to shed a light on something I think might be flawed about our connection of political and religious identities.

First off, I will explain my understanding of the two major political stances so that you can better understand what I am seeing and why I am seeing it. Conservatism to the best of my understanding is mostly about traditional values. From what I have seen, it does not agree with giving extra support to the poor, homeless, those without insurance, and whatever else you may lump into that category. Something I have often seen from the conservative side is "this country was founded on fending for yourself and individual liberties, if they can find a job themselves, too bad. I am not giving up my hard earned money to help someone who isn't helping themselves." That is a completely fair and valid point. I agree with that to an extent. However, the Christian in me feels weird about it. That is a very selfish stance if we really think about it, regardless of how logical it may be. Funny thing is, most traditional Christians relate to the conservative side of the political spectrum.

I am closely connected with two different denominations, both Methodist and Presbyterian. One is more traditional than the other and one is more liberal for sure. In the Methodist church, I do find a lot of liberal thinking people. However, I think if we look at the amount of conservative Christians to the amount of liberal Christians, the difference is clear.

The point I am making here is that Christianity does not teach what traditional conservatism seems to be teaching. In reality (this is going to upset some folks) Christianity is very much a system closely related to Socialism. I am not calling Jesus a "Commy" or anything here, take a deep breath. Look at his teachings though and the teachings throughout the Bible. We are taught to make sacrifices for others. To give to the poor. We are taught to not only make sacrifices, but to serve others. We are called to be a community, which the IDEA of communism is about. The problem with communism is that our human nature can't support it because we are corrupted and we cant make it work because instead of making it all about helping everyone, the people who have been rulers in charge of socialist societies have been incredibly corrupt and taken everything for themselves instead. THIS is why we have such a negative connotation for a system that was designed to help EVERYONE live a successful and fruitful life by working together and supporting each other. AGAIN, not saying the previous attempts of socialism were good. In fact they were warped and manipulated by the rulers. The fact is though, the teachings of our Christ are EXTREMELY similar to the idea of what the ideal socialist society and economy would look like.

Why is it that Christian conservatives are so against plans that tax us more in order to help the less fortunate? "DUH HUNTER! It's because they are not trying to get a job or help society!" Did Jesus care about what THEY did? Did Jesus care about what others did for him in return? Nope. I don't blame this mindset. I fall into it often, but the more I read scripture, pray, and try (and fail) to be like Christ, the more I understand that most of these staunch conservatives who also attend church very devoutly every Sunday are leading separate lives. They seem to believe one thing on Sunday and a different thing the other six days.

Liberals though often seem to be "of the world." Most of the non-religious friends I have tend to connect with a liberal view. Liberalism, as I see in what they say and feel, tends to be leaning towards helping the poor, in socialistic ways. It seems as though these ideas are more closely related to Christian ideals. If you don't understand, it is the opposite of everything I have previously said about the conservative outlook. Including acceptance of alternative lifestyles. This is going to cause a little stir...get ready....

Christianity is clear about gay marriage not being what God intended. Conservatives are fighting it seems very hard to keep marriage between one man and one woman and I think that is good. However, I think that the derogatory to which it has come to, is not good. In this case, it seems that liberalism ALSO takes a valid Christian stance in not condemning people who live alternative or even sinful lives. We are all sinners, judgement is not ours to pass. Regardless of political stance, to my understanding as Christians the view we are to take with something such as homosexuality is to understand that it is a sin, just like lying, murder, or not having faith in the Lord. We are to not agree with the sin, but since we all sin, we are not to say that the homosexual individual is somehow worse than anyone else. It seems that homosexuality has somehow become a more potent sin, which is ludicrous, but that is a whole different topic...

Anyways, I feel like we are circling now. I hope that the point that our political views tend to not agree with our religious beliefs was made or at least planted in your mind. I pray that you reflect on this. Maybe you will realize I am a blabbering fool. Or maybe you will see that I have a valid point. Better yet, I hope that some of you have already noticed this and we can talk about it sometime. Again, I am no political expert and I never will be. But in hearing different discussions from supposed Christians, it caught my attention and worried me a little bit. Just food for thought.

God bless you all and you are all in my prayers. Until next time...

Tough Love Is Still Love

I am sure most of us are familiar with the phrase "tough love", but for those of us who have not been familiarized with this concept, "tough love" is essentially where we give constructive criticism to someone who means a lot to us. It can be by any number of mean, direct conversation, the silent treatment, forcing/encouraging us to do things we don't want to do, but we need to do to better ourselves, etc. Some people take tough love as being a way just to be abrasive or tell the person how wrong they are. In other words, instead of being constructive in their criticism and calling out, they forget the "love" part, and they are just "tough." Tough love though is an essential part of the Christian life, and I will explain what I mean if you are confused how it could possibly be good.

I think this tough love concept is something that we need to hone and perfect in all of our relationships as Christians. We need to be able to show tough love with other believers in our Christian community and also realize, and this is going to startle a few of you I think, that God is going to show us tough love. The thing to keep in mind with that, is that tough LOVE is still LOVE. If you tell me that "oh, Hunter, there is no way you know what you are talking about now. God is only the lovey dovey kind of love with unicorns and butterflies." I would challenge you to show me where it says that in scripture. I am not claiming to know exactly how God works, but to me it should make sense that as we are created in God's image, we can look at how we tend to love, and that is just merely a SMALL glimpse of how his love works.

If we understand that in truly loving someone, we have to call them out when they are hurting themselves or others, I should think that the creator of the universe would notice that too and the difference with his love is that he will actually always step in and help us. God is truly involved in our lives and loves us. In his love, if we are not doing things right or are down a wrong path, he will help us, but he doesn't just pick us up and put us on the right path. God will guide us and lead us back to where he wants us and where we should be. How he does this can be any number of ways, but don't you think that showing a "tough love" to us would be an efficient way to get us where we need to be and also break us of the bad thing we were doing or to help us learn a lesson to stay on the right path? I just want to make sure that we all understand this, me included, that just because God isn't making us feel all warm and fuzzy inside 24/7 does not mean that he isn't showing us the love he has and getting us to become the creatures he intended us to be.

I think I have gotten the point of God's tough love across, but now I think it is also important to make a quick note about our use of tough love with each other. I encourage tough love, but make sure like I mentioned before that you don't forget the "love" part of it. Using it effectively can be very beneficial for those around you, but if you are just plain mean to them, it can make things infinitely worse. An example would be when someone is struggling with some issue, and instead of just coddling them and telling them it's going to be okay and blah blah blah, you are real and honest and just tell them that it's not okay what they are dealing with and they need to do something about it. Explain to them that this thing they are struggling with is hurting their relationship with God and with others and that they need to rely on God to help them get back on the right track. Don't forget to mention to them that although you see their need to fix things, you and the rest of their friends are there to help and to pray for them. A support system isn't worth much if we are only their for each other to tell each other how great we are and not to let each other know when we are slipping down the into places we shouldn't be. In short, it is all in the approach.

I hope and pray that this has somehow helped you guys to better understand how and what tough love works. This is just what I understand of it and how I see it after much prayer and reflection about it. I have wanted to write a post about this for a while and after much prayer and thought, this is what I felt called to write. I hope God has spoken through me so that you feel more comfortable with the concept.

Hearing Problems?

Before I start this post, I want to remind everyone, that in no way are my posts necessarily the official stance of any branch of the church or any denomination or anything like that. They are merely my understanding of God based on experience, scripture, and other theologians.

So this is kind of a continuation of the post about prayer. This is more directed towards the hearing from God aspect of prayer. I am not going to take the usual approach of looking at ways in which we DO hear from God, but instead look at ways in which we hinder ourselves from hearing God speaking to us. Some of these are things that we don't realize are hindering us, but some are things we do because we want to be secure in ourselves and not have to be completely dependent on our Father in Heaven.

First of all, is when we don't take time to stop and listen. This is so obvious, yet we often don't think about this. How are we going to be able to hear from God if we are not stopping to listen for his response and guidance for us? That's like asking a question to an academic adviser, then getting up and walking out of the room before they tell you what classes they feel you should take next semester. Don't ask God to guide you to your perfect spouse, to help you make a financial decision, or to help you pick a college, then not listen for his response. We tend to fill our lives and our schedules to the brim that we have no time for our relationship with God. Make some time in your daily schedule to both pray to God, but to also listen back.

People often find the issue that when things are going well for them, and even sometimes when things are just alright, we have the tendency to think we are not in need of anything anymore. "We have everything we need." This is not true at all and will not be until we are in Heaven. We always need God and we always need him to continue providing us with his grace and his blessings. We need to fight against this mindset and always remember our need for him.

Along with the taking time in our schedule to listen to God, we need to take time to rest. I know more than enough people who are burnt out and just physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. We live in a time and society where we feel like we always need to be on-the-go and doing something. What about taking care of ourselves though? Sure, exercise is good and you should do that, but maybe some days of the week, use your exercise time to take a nap. Or go to bed early instead of staying up to watch the ball game. Trust me, that's a hard one for me. Rest is important and vital. Even God rested. Maybe he didn't need to, but in doing so, he showed us that WE need to. If we aren't rested, we can't be the creature God created us to be and can't worship him as he intended.

I am sure that we all can relate to the feeling of wanting God to fit how we need him or want him to be. We want God to fit OUR lives rather than fit our lives to what God has for us. Doing this is essentially telling God that we know better than he does what is best for us. Does that even sound remotely like a good idea to be living your life in that way? Didn't think so. I know we feel like we know ourselves well enough to know what's best for us, but I promise you, God knows you infinitely more intimately better than you will ever understand yourself. Trust him with your life, rather than making him fit your expectations and desires. In this mindset, even if we do somehow let God speak to us, it could upset us and what we ourselves are trying to gain in this world.

The next thing is to be "religious." What I mean by this is like the Pharisees. Religion in this sense is being overly committed to the law and having the mindset and tunnel vision to think that you can find all the answers. We have to realize that we are saved by God through Christ, not the laws and scriptures. We are told about this salvation and father through the scriptures and guidelines, but they themselves are not the source of salvation or grace. When we find ourselves putting our faith in the Bible itself or the laws, or theologies, or philosophies of Christianity rather than Christ, we are missing the point and will never correctly hear or interpret God's guidance or voice.

Spiritual warfare is real and we have to acknowledge it. If we ignore it, it could be fatal. We are told in Ephesians chapter 6, verses 12-13, that we are not fighting wars against flesh or other people, but rather a more vital war against spiritual evil and darkness. We are to suit up with the armor of God and go to battle with that, rather than wage war on Earth with each other. By focusing on our Earthly battles, we are not keeping ourselves open to God's command as our spiritual general.

Lastly, and this may sound silly to you, but we can not tolerate sin in our lives that we have yet to confess or are unwilling to confess. As Christians, I feel we often think that since we believe in Christ and the grace we are given through him is enough and the rest will take care of itself. However, being a Christian is a whole new lifestyle and it is something we must work at and build upon for our whole existence here on Earth. Psalms 66:18 tells us that if we keep sin in our hearts without confession, God will not hear us. Hebrews 10:22 tells us we are to draw near to the Lord with clean and pure hearts free from an evil conscience. How to get rid of that evil in our conscience is to confess.

These were in no particular order, but just different ways that we are hindered from being close to God and hearing him speak to us. I hope and pray that God has made his way into your heart in reading this.

Keep your chin up

So everyone in this world experiences highs and lows in life. Its inevitable and if you think otherwise, you need to stop kidding yourself, or come out from under that rock you have been living under. Life in this world is a roller coaster emotionally, physically, and most importantly spiritually. We go through periods where things are going great in our personal lives like we have a great boyfriend or girlfriend, our job is really great (or we find a job), our grades are good, and our relationships with our families are great. However, there are also periods where we go through crap. Pure crap.We are lonely and feel as though no one will ever love us, we are financially in trouble and unemployed, we have familial struggles, and so on and so on. Those times can feel hopeless. I am here to tell you though that in any situation, bad and good, we can have hope.

If there is one thing that I think most Christians can agree on, its that God is here for us no matter what. That right there SHOULD be all I need to say about this. I should be able to just leave it at that, wish you all a good evening, and let you all look forward to the next time I post something. However, its easy for us to accept that as a good enough reason to cheer up for about 5.38 seconds, then we feel insecure again. We humans are so focused on the tangible things. God is with us always? Oh well that's GREAT! ....Where is he? I don't see him....

However, if you read the Bible, and you might have to go skim through what it says again, it teaches nothing BUT hope for us. There are tons of stories about people who literally went through Hell on Earth. They experienced pain and agony and fear and abandonment. However, they were never left on their own and in the end, God would rescue them. Job I think is a great example of this. He was utterly destroyed. Everything taken away from him. His family, is property, everything he owned was taken from him. HOWEVER, Job remained faithful knowing that God does not back down from his promises and will always bless his people and deliver them. Pretty great example of how we should face the hard times in our life too.

I want to point out though as well that we are to have hope still in the good times as well. "Hunter, its so easy to do that." Sure, you might think that. Hope in God is very closely related to your faith. Our hope is in Christ and by having faith in him, we are to remember him in all things, good and bad. However, I have seen in both my life and others, that when things are going well in our lives, we tend to forget where these blessings come from and even sometimes that they are blessings, not anything we earned by our own doing. When things are going well, we need to understand that God is giving us the blessings and giving us a time of prosperity, and we therefore need to keep hope in God that his promise of giving us infinitely more in Heaven is still true. It may seem like you could be perfectly happy living like that in those times, but comparatively to Heaven, you have no idea what joy even means! So continue to have faith that God's promises of eternal joy are more than just the happiness we can find on Earth.

We are to keep finding our hope in God through Jesus Christ both in the hard times by knowing that God redeems his people and calls them out of the darkness, but also we are to keep seeing the hope in him in the good by knowing that his promise means so much more than temporary earthly joy. As Christians, it is so important not to get complacent in the good times or to feel as though God is not a part of our good times. Everything we have is from him. We have done nothing to earn our blessings or good fortune. Keep the hope that he will stick to his promise of eternal joy in his presence.

My prayer for you is that your hope in God is renewed today and that you recognize your worth. God will never forsake you, and he will never let you settle for the earthly happiness when he has so much more prepared for you in Heaven. I pray that you seem him more and more each day and feel him guiding you more and more along his will.

Having a Rough Time?

Check out these lyrics from Casting Crowns' song Praise You In This Storm...

I was sure by now,God, that You would have reached down
and wiped our tears away,
stepped in and saved the day.
But once again, I say amen
and it's still raining
as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain,
"I'm with you"
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away.

Chorus:
And I'll praise you in this storm
and I will lift my hands
for You are who You are
no matter where I am
and every tear I've cried
You hold in your hand
You never left my side
and though my heart is torn
I will praise You in this storm

I remember when I stumbled in the wind
You heard my cry to You
and raised me up again
my strength is almost gone how can I carry on
if I can't find You
and as the thunder rolls
I barely hear You whisper through the rain
"I'm with you"
and as Your mercy falls
I raise my hands and praise
the God who gives and takes away

Chorus

I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
I lift my eyes onto the hills
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth 

Prayer

So something I have seen that a lot, if not all Christians struggle with, is prayer. How do I pray? When do I pray? What does praying even mean? Is there a wrong way to pray? All very good questions because prayer is a very personal thing for you and for God. Its not the same for any two people, so thus, we have a lot of differences in what prayer looks like and therefore now set of instructions that tell us EXACTLY how to pray. There is no list of things you have to cover or anything like that.

First off, I feel like the biggest question I hear is "How do I pray?" Or it could be phrased in the statement "I don't know how to pray." Well this is silly. Why is it silly? Well let's first look at what exactly is prayer? Prayer is simply our way of communicating with God. So many times, people look at prayer as our way to just talk AT God rather than to talk WITH God. What I mean is that simply, we talk, but rarely listen. I am sure that we all can relate to this. We pray to God and we tell him our joys and our struggles, we thank him for blessings and ask him for guidance and strength. However, once we say "Amen", that is often the end of it. Prayer is not just when we are talking. Prayer is a conversation, a dialogue, not a monologue. God is not the audience to his creation. He is the director. He is actually like a director AT a dress rehearsal of a play. He watches, but intervenes when necessary and talks to his actors and gives them new direction or tells them about how he likes what they already were doing. Not the best analogy, but I think it works for our understanding of who he is. The point is we can't just talk to him and ask him for things, yet not be listening to his response. Listening for God's response is just as much part of prayer as us talking to him. Prayer then can be just taking time to sit in quiet and just listen for his guidance and his assurance to direct you. Prayer can not be limited anymore to "speaking to God" because prayer ISN'T just when we speak. I can't stress this enough. This I feel is our biggest mistake in prayer as Christians. We complain that we don't feel God's guidance or that he is speaking or calling us, but are we actually even listening??

"Ok, Hunter, I get it! I need to listen. I will work on that, but when I speak to him, how do I do that?" Good question reader. How do you speak to someone you love, lets say your father or a close friend? I will give you a few moments to think about that question first......


OK, speak to God like that. God is your father and he is your close friend. He has your back and he wants to have an ACTUAL relationship with you where you are comfortable with him and you trust him. He doesn't want to be this unapproachable creator and ruler that we feel afraid to talk to. Be respectful, but be friendly and just TALK to him. It doesn't have to be laden with "thee", "thou", "thine/thy", and all of this wordy business that we are conditioned to think. Matthew 6:7 says "And when you pray, do not heap on empty words as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words." Don't be wordy, say what you mean and what you need to say and end it. God doesn't like when we talk in circles any more than other people do.

Well the next issue is when to pray. Always be in a state of prayer. As a Christian, it is important to always be in this "conversation" with our Father. When we are not directly talking to him, we should have an ear open to what he is saying to us and how and where he is guiding us. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says this: "Rejoice always, PRAY WITHOUT CEASING, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for all of you." Notice the capitalized letters. Pray without ceasing. Always be speaking or listening to God.

Why do we need to pray though? This is the easiest question of them all. We need to pray to build that relationship that I mentioned earlier. God wants a real relationship with us. Unlike the relationships or lack of, between people and the deities of other religions. God loves us and wants to be connected with us and have an actual working relationship with us. How many relationships with other people have you had that worked well without ever talking to each other at all. Romantic, friendship, or familial, none of them work without proper communication, both speaking and listening. Prayer is ESSENTIAL to building and maintaining our relationship with the creator of the universe.

Why would you NOT want to have a relationship with him? Talk to the guy for crying out loud!!! And listen to what he has to say in return, it is probably going to change your life.

The Little Golden Calf

So maybe we don't necessarily have visible or completely tangible things like a golden statue of a baby cow anymore, but idolatry is not any less true in today's times. The old testament is littered with examples of God's people worshiping things or objects other than God. The main example here, as the title refers to, is the golden calf. The new testament though also warns of putting other things apart from God as the main object of our attention. The first of the ten commandments is to not worship any God other than our God. This in some texts includes a detail saying on Heaven or on earth. This implies something very important, and something I intend to stress in this post.

So the very important thing to note here about idolatry is that the things we can make into idols are more complex than what the stereotypical view of idols are. First off, which I think we all already understand is that idols are not simply statues or objects we can hold in our hands or set on our mantles. They are much more than that. They can be things that are important to us such as getting good grades, getting a promotion, being a good parent, winning the tournament, etc. So you might have noticed, those are all good things. They are not necessarily things we should avoid. There is absolutely nothing wrong with striving for ALL of those things. However, its the amount of importance that we put on these things that matters and what contributes to their "idol" status. So now I realize, we need to define what exactly an idol is.

Idol can be defined a few ways, and I want to show them all to you because they all vary a little and yet all have accuracy to the. Dictionary.com provides us with a few of them. Here is the first: "an image or other material object representing a deity to which religious worship is addressed." So what does this saying? It is saying that an idol, simply put, is something that we worship in place of God. God is supposed to be our number one focus in life and who we put at the top of our priorities. Our relationship with him is supposed to be number 1 on our list. Anything that is above him on that totem pole is by definition an idol.

The next definition we look at says: "a material object, esp a carved image, that is worshiped as a god." This definition implies that the idol or deity is not super-natural or divine, but rather formed or created by man or some other thing. Why is that important? If something is created by something else, it can not be treated as a deity. Something worthy of our worship cannot be created by us. If created by us, it is automatically below us and we shouldn't worship something we make. Do you worship the bench you made for your back yard? What about the anklet that you made for your friend? How about that tie-die shirt you wore yesterday? No? You don't worship those things? Just because it is less valuable monetarily than a shiny cow, doesn't make the cow statue any more worthy of worship. It is still man made, and not divine.

The next definition says this: "a mere image or semblance of something, visible but without substance, as a phantom." We can now take the last two definitions and decide to ourselves that this one definitely makes sense. Something that is often inanimate and man-made can't possibly have substance to it in a worshipful way. Sure, it looks cool, and we can admire the objects beauty or cool appearance, but it has no worship value. In a spiritual sense, it truly is a phantom because these things can not hold up.

Back to how I was saying that idols are not always physical objects though. You might ask, how? Well lets look at some examples. I think money is one that many people struggle with nowadays, whether they realize it or not. We have to look at the first definition here. What is more important to you at any given moment in the day, your relationship with God, or how much is in your bank account, how much your bills are, how much you are making on your paycheck, and how much gas prices have risen? I think if we all answer that question honestly, we care more about our financial situation that our relationship with God. We are far more stressed about finances and we are far more overjoyed when something good happens financially. I struggle with this too, don't get the impression I am calling people out.

Another one that I see a lot in college and saw a lot in high school is getting good grades. "Hunter, there is nothing wrong with striving for good grades and being the best you can." I agree completely. However, are your studies getting in the way of God. What I am about to say might hit home with some of you, just know I am pointing out something that ALL of us struggle with. How often do we not go to church/youth group/campus ministry because we "need to study." Sure, the workload for school is big, I get that, but we need to learn to budget our time better so that God, our supposed number 1 priority, gets the time he deserves and that when it is time to give him his time, we do it. Skipping out on church for homework is saying "I value my school more than I value my time worshiping God and studying his word." That may sound a bit harsh, but maybe its because we realize its true. Just food for thought.

Lastly, I want to look at something that is a little deeper, but something that I know I struggle with, and I am sure many of you do as well. It is the idolizing of relationships. I can be a romantic relationship, relationships with friends, or just the interaction with any people. "What does Hunter mean?" Something that often gets in the way of my relationship with God is my desire to find companionship here on Earth. I get very lonely here and although I have friends, many friends, I long for more. I idolize the idea of having a companion to be with. I am of course speaking of a girlfriend or future wife. I just love the idea of having someone in my life to share my life with and love on and give my affection to. Those are all good things. They are all Christian things as well that are promoted in our religion. However, it can get a hold of us and take over our thinking. Do some people only go to church in order to find "the right kind of woman/man"? Of course they do! Do some people think that the kind of love they are missing is the love between humans? Yes, but they are probably actually searching for the love of the Father that they haven't yet fully accepted. The same is true on the friendship level or on the level of general acceptance of others around them. All of this is idolatry. For me, relationships are an idol, as it is with most people.

To wrap things up I want to look at Timothy Keller and what he has to say about the matter. Keller is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC and writer of the book The Reason for God. He makes the point that when we have idols, they become our identity because as our deity, they are our reason for being. The point he then makes is this:


"Identity apart from God is inherently unstable. Without God, our sense of worth may seem solid on the surface, but it never is--it can desert you in a moment...If anything threatens your identity you will not just be anxious but paralyzed with fear. If you lose your identity through the failings of someone else you will not just be resentful, but locked into bitterness. If you lose it through your own failings, you will hate or despise yourself as a failure as long as you live. Only if your identity is built on God and his love can you have a self that can venture anything, face anything."

He is making the point that idolatry leads to building our worth on Earthly things, and therefore broken things since our world is broken and sinful. In putting our worth and identity in such things, we will inevitably be let down and it will destroy us spiritually and emotionally. However, when we worship the one true thing worthy of our worship, our identity and worth can not be shaken. We can not be moved. The reason then is obvious why God does not allow us to worship anything else. Not because he is some kind of dictator, but because he knows what will happen to us if we don't solely worship him. He knows what kind of destruction that causes in us and in our hearts. He loves us enough to warn us against this so that we know that he is the only thing worthy of our worship and the only thing that can keep us from the destruction our hearts will face.

I hope that you have found this inspired by God and not in a way where it sounds as though I am judging people. I too struggle with idolatry and that is actually why I wrote this post. I felt it on my heart to write about it and share my thoughts with you and what God had put on my heart. I hope that at least one of you got something out of this. I continue to pray for you as you care enough about this blog to read it and search for God speaking to you through it. 

Camp

So this summer, as some of you may know, I spent 8 weeks being a counselor at a Methodist camp where kids would come for a week to hang out, play, have fun, doing crazy crap, and learn about Jesus all at the same time. I came for 8 summers as a camper myself and this was my second summer on team, so it is like a home away from home for me. I just wanted to take my first posting after the summer to just reflect on the experience and share with you guys how good God was and what kind of growth I experienced.

First off, coming into the summer as returning team has a whole new feeling to it than when I came in as a new team member. I had more experience, I knew more what to expect, and I definitely already had a lot more friends than I did just one year ago. This time it was my turn to be the one to help the new people settle in and I was definitely excited to do so. During O-Week (Orientation Week) I feel like I really was able to embrace kind of a big brother role with my buddy and also with a few of the other new guy counselors and kind of help them find their feet here. It was really awesome and created some great friendships over the summer.

I spent the first 4 weeks straight on the high school age level. That is the age I love working with the most, but it is also the most draining in my opinion. Not only are you getting the least amount of sleep each night, but also it is the most active during the day and also the most emotionally and spiritually challenging and draining because at this point in their lives, they are dealing with the toughest issues USUALLY. Some cases you have the occasional middle school or maybe even elementary camper that has rough crap going on too, but the biggest struggles usually show themselves with the high school campers. This summer, we did something on Thursday night that focused on the brokenness of the individual and the societal pressures put on them and this REALLY brought out the sharing of brokenness. Dealing with all of that was tough, but also very cool because I got to see God use me to reach out to the kids and show them love despite their problems which they probably don't get much of back home.

I had multiple campers tell me how great of a counselor I was in those first four weeks, including campers I had last summer who came back and where really excited to see me. That is another thing that was a big change from last summer. I had campers that knew me each and every week and that was cool, but a challenge too. I struggle with pride sometimes and this summer was a real test of that. I like to hear good things about me and praises in my name, but at the same time, I hate that I like to hear it and I wish I wouldn't hear it because I know how quickly it can get to my head. When the campers are saying it, that's one thing, but its another when other counselors started giving me praise too. I was thankful that I was doing a good enough job to get noticed by other team members, but at the same time, I felt bad because I was just trying to do my job and I was getting praise while others were not. It felt weird to me especially during meetings when we would do something called "shout outs" where we just give praise to other team members in front of the whole team of a certain age group. To me, I feel like its good to give praise to people, but maybe do it privately, rather than in front of everyone. Maybe I am just weird about it because it is a struggle of mine, but I think that I grew in my ability to receive praise this summer and not let it get to my head AS MUCH. Just one of many areas I grew.

Week 5 I had a buddy. A buddy is a camper that is special needs that needs someone to be with them at all times to just make sure they are ok. They could have special needs for mental or physical disabilities. For privacy purposes, I won't share his name. If you were on team with me this summer, you know his name anyways. I just want to start off by saying that I had always wanted a little brother and getting the opportunity to look after this camper 24/7 for a whole week and just hang out him and I was really cool because I felt like I got to have the little brother I have always wanted to have. He grew so much spiritually and emotionally his week here and I am so proud of the man he is becoming and that he is allowing God to work in him. Being at camp was his first time away from his parents and it was a worry that he might not make it all the way through the week, that he might have to go home early. He made it the entire week though and only cried once at the end of the week because he was going to miss me and being at camp! I was so ecstatic that he had such a good week and he told me he could not wait to get back next year and have me as his counselor again. There are so many special moments I could share with you about this boy, but I will limit it to just one. On Friday night in worship, we do communion with the campers. He had never taken communion before and asked me about it. So I got to explain to him what communion is and why we do it and then I got to serve him his first communion and take it with him. I felt God so much in that moment and felt like the most blessed counselor to ever work at WWW. Then, he asked me to pray with him at the alter which was a huge deal because up to this point, he did not like to pray out loud with other people around at all. It was a huge step for him to have the courage to do that and it just blew me away how much God worked in him that week. I will never forget him or the week we had together and I continually pray that I am able to come back next summer and that I can have him as my buddy again.

One last story I wanted to share was about another camper I had last summer who came back this summer. Last summer, he was kind of less into his faith, for lack of a better phrase. He called himself a Christian, but I don't know that he really understood what that meant or lived it out at all. He was in my small group the week he came last summer and I could kind of see a change in him the week he was here, but it was very small. Then he came back this summer and I could see a huge change in him the minute I saw him at worship on Monday night. He was so into the music and the lyrics and just was full on worshiping God! It was awesome! So I sought him out the next day and just asked him what he had been up to since camp last summer. He told me that he had really changed, that he had gotten more involved at church and had accepted Christ into his life and that he was really convicted by God. He had just spent an entire month out of the country ministering to people of another country. It wasn't a typical mission trip, but they just went and spent time with the people and prayed with them and loved them. I could just hear the passion and the love in his voice when he talked about it. He then told me that myself and the other counselor who taught the small group with him, my good friend Morgan, where a HUGE part in his transformation. He said without us, he would not be where he was today. That blew me away. I cried, hard. I was so touched by the fact that God used me and my good friend to reach out to this young man and bring him into the kingdom and do great things not only in his community, but in another country. I found out later from another counselor from this campers church that the camper had been talking about Morgan and I and how much we impacted him at his church for a long time before he even got back to camp. It really showed me how big of an impact we have as counselors and if we truly love the kids and show them genuine love of God, we can literally change the world through the kids. It is still something that just blows me away and shows me how good our God is. To wrap up the story, on Friday night at worship, he was praying with Morgan at the alter. I played bass guitar in the band so I saw this happening right in front of me, so I put my bass down to go pray with them. After Morgan got done praying for him, I got up and went back to playing alter call music. Then he prayed over her and it really touched me. Much to my surprise, he then looked up at me and told me to come back down and he prayed over me as well and I will never forget the things he said to our Lord about me and the genuine thanks he had for me in his life and what I was doing for the camp and for all the kids. I am so blessed to have been a part of this young man's life and I am beyond excited to see how God uses him to bring God's kingdom to earth.

Outside of the campers, the team experience was fantastic this summer. I got to build more on friendships that I already had started last summer as well as start new ones with new people. I am sure that there are at LEAST a few that will be friendships that last a lifetime. I have never felt such a tight community of believers as I have the past two summers here on team. I know that we will all look out for each other and have each others backs for a long time. I would do a couple shout outs, but I would end up just naming all of team. I made a few friends that were closer than others, but there is no need to name you, you know who you are. If you served on team this summer, know that I love you and pray for you every day.

The summer is over now and I am still at camp working for people who come on retreats and other things of the like. We have a band camp going on right now as well as a football team staying here and I am just lifeguarding, working in the kitchen, or facilitating the ropes course for them as they need it. It is nice to still be here, but weird too as the rest of team is gone and summer camp is not going on anymore. Its almost like a whole new place here now.

Predestination and Free Will

So the matter of Predestination and free will is something that I have been thinking about a lot as of late and I figured I would share some of my thoughts with whatever readers I may have. The issue of not that either one of them is necessarily true, I think most Christians will agree on the fact that we have free will, but the issue of how does that coincide, if at all, with the doctrine of Predestination.

Predestination is the theological idea of God having chosen his people ahead of time. In other words, there are certain people who have been predestined to go to Heaven. Some people have defined it as God controlling every little detail that ever happens. In a sense, this is true because God is in control, however, the way that it has often been interpreted is not exactly correct. For instance, we look at natural disasters. It is not that God CAUSED it to happen, God did not send a natural disaster to happen, but he is still in control. Its a difficult to really grasp, but there is a difference. He is in control so he is able to fix situations, but he does not cause bad things to happen. Sidenote: scripture does tell us he works out all for good though and we should keep that in mind. We may not always see the good in the situation or even see the good come later, but we know that God is keeping that promise.

ANYWAY, I have been struggling lately with how if God has predestined certain people to go to Heaven and others to go somewhere else, how does free will play into that? And you may say, well why do they have to fit in with each other? Well, I will answer that by saying that I definitely believe that predestination and free will both exist and are true at least to an extent. My reasoning for this is simple: scripture says so. Multiple places for both actually. If you want to know anything about predestination, check out any book in the new testament, especially something written by Paul. Genesis will tell you all about the free will stuff. I will give you a couple verses at the end too.

The problem that I have encountered is mostly with our eternal life, or our life after our flesh passes away. If some of our predestined to go to Heaven, then our choosing to follow Jesus is not really our choice at all. Or is it? I don't really understand that, and I am not afraid to admit that I have no idea how that works, but maybe talking this out will help at least me understand more even if you think I am an idiot. Also, I have been presented with a theological view of something called prevenient grace. This kind of grace, to the best of my understanding is the idea that God's grace is so big that no matter what we choose in life, no matter how we live our lives or what religion we follow, that grace and love is strong enough to let everyone into Heaven still. That is something I struggle with. That is hard for me because Jesus preached that to get to the Father, he is the way, the truth and the life, no one gets to the Father except through him. So how then if people don't go through Jesus, would they still spend eternity in Heaven. I do believe that God is that loving, but in being so loving, I also believe that he is just and keeps ALL of his promises, even the promises of us being rewarded for doing what he has asked. He promises eternal life to those who follow him, not to EVERYONE. He does want everyone to end up in Heaven, but in that, he wants everyone to get to Heaven the way that he intended, by following Jesus and giving our lives to him.

Another thing with this seemingly conflicting set of theologies is this: if we are predestined to go to one or the other, then choosing Jesus isn't really our choice at all, we were destined to choose Christ. The same goes for the opposite. If we have free will, we should be able to choose to NOT have Christ in our lives and therefore choose to not spend eternity in Heaven. Why anyone would choose that, I have no idea, but by definition, free will allows that. Free will by pure definition gives us the choice to choose the alternative apart from God. If prevenient grace is true, then we again don't really have free will. God is forcing us into Heaven. That would not be a bad thing, but again to stress that if prevenient grace is true, then to my understanding, either it or free will are not true. The more likely case is that like most theological things, we can not ever fully understand these things about God. He never will fully make sense. That's ok though, he is still good and we know that he loves us and that if we follow Christ and accept Christ into our hearts, we will be redeemed and given eternal life in Heaven with him.

This is creating quite a conflict within my mind/heart and I am sure that you probably are either frustrated, annoyed, or confused with me now. When it comes down to it though, I think that a preacher I heard this week described it very well. He said that the only sure way to Heaven given to us in scripture is through Christ, but that doesn't mean that God CAN'T allow others in. Maybe there are Buddists or Muslims or Jews in Heaven, but the Bible does not give us any assurance on that. The only thing we know FOR SURE is that people who are in Christ and have Christ in their hearts are definitely going to spend eternity in paradise. As for the rest, that is up to God. We will find out how that works when we get there.

I hope that at least one sentence out of all this made sense to you and that God spoke to you through me in at least one word. Keep in mind that this is only my opinion and my process that I am going through of working out theological issues that don't make sense to me and most other people. Me writing about it is me trying to explain it to myself and also to present to you something that may be a way for God to help you understand it as well. That doesn't necessarily mean I am right, or even that I am dead set in believing that I am right. I could very well be wrong, but this subject is something I struggle with and both sides make sense to me and don't at the same time all the while I believe that both doctrines are true and supplement each other and work together to make God the awesome God that he is as well as making his creation (us) the most beautiful thing in history. I pray that you all find this inspired by God and that he speaks to you in it rather than seeing my brokenness and idiocy in it. Stay safe and keep praying. I love you all.

Community

No, this is not about the hit sit-com. This is about hanging out with other Jesus loving folks.

As you may have noticed, it has been a while since my last post, I have a summer job as a camp counselor at a Christian camp which a 24/5 job (aka Monday afternoon to Saturday morning) so posts will be far less frequent for the next couple months. Sorry about that....

Anyways, just from being here and being with the rest of team and after seeing again the community that the campers also form with each other, I figured I would address the importance of being in community with other people who also love our Lord. You may think, well as long as I believe in Jesus, it doesn't really matter if I have a community or not. Salvation isn't dependent on whether we are in community or not, but it makes the journey and the process of salvation a LOT easier.

What is the point of this community? What does community mean? Well the Christian definition of community I think can be most closely defined as the church. And if that is still foreign to you, or your only view of the church is just a big building you go to on Sunday mornings, another way to put it is, the group of people that you surround yourself with in worship and accountability and to just be a Christian influence with each other.

The biggest example of this, which is something everyone deals with, not just Christians, is the need to have someone there for you when going through hard times in life. We need to have people we can talk to and to encourage us and help us get back on our feet. It goes the other way too. We are built to love. God made us out of love and we were created to love him and love others. How can we love others if the "others" are not around. Our soul needs to have other people around so that we can give that love, encouragement, and support out to others or else we are left longing for something to help and love. I have experienced this firsthand this past week. I dealt with a lot of issues in some campers that I have seen before in other campers, but only like one or two a week. This week, I had at least one different camper a night on my bed crying with me. That is only counting the ones in my cabin at night, not the ones in small group or just around during other camp activities. It really took a toll on me and my spirit is pretty drained after this week. However, the community of Christian friends I have around me here at camp on team with me really picked me up and although I experienced so much brokenness in such great kids, through team and a few of the other campers, I still was able to see the AWESOME things God is still doing in each and everyone of his children. Only through being in a community was I able to see that despite the brokenness, there is still hope. Without this fellowship around me, I would be feeling rather hopeless today because of all the brokenness I experienced. God is good though and continues to show me that.

Accountability is another big one in community. We need to hold each other accountable and make sure that our brothers and sisters are leading a Christ-like life. We are not being very Christ-like if we are not holding them accountable and making sure that they are being faithful and allowing them to be lead astray. This life we live in Christ is not one of looking out for "number 1", but rather one where we strive to all be one with the Creator. The ultimate goal is not to just be you and God chilling in Heaven for eternity, but for ALL of creation to be united with him forever. We need to therefore make sure we are holding each others hands through the process to do our best to make sure that we fulfill that goal of uniting the whole creation in his kingdom. Accountability is tough because it sucks to have to "call out" your friends, but it is something that we must do as brothers and sisters in Christ. We have to continually point each other to the cross and remind each other of who we are striving to be with and who we want to be like. I know that for me at least, I need daily reminders of who I want to be like. Jesus is our role model, and its good to be reminded of that.

This post was kind of random and disorganized and scatter brained, but I am so tired, that is just how I am right now. I hope that some of this made sense and that God spoke through me rather than me just being dumb. Hopefully, God spoke to you in some way here. If not, ignore it and wait and see if the next one has more of an impact. I pray for you all that my words don't distract you from the King, but rather he is using me to reach out to you.

"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." -Galatians 6:2

No Works Necessary. Faith Only

So recently someone very close to me expressed concern over their destination after they die, or when the rapture happens. Whichever comes first. I asked why they thought they might go to Hell and their response was that they felt as though they were not good enough, not nice enough to other people even. They said that they have mean thoughts about others and just don't feel like they are a very caring individual. Their feeling is that since they struggle with this, that they find it difficult to be caring to others or even keep the negative thoughts out, that they don't see how Jesus can love them and let them into Heaven. This broke my heart so badly. I tried to tell them that how they are viewing Christianity, Heaven, salvation, God,...the whole thing, just isn't right. If you ever feel the same way as this person, please read on. I have good news for you about who Jesus is and what he has ACTUALLY done for us.

Although we as Christians are called to love each other, everyone, even the non-believers, it is not a requirement for Heaven. The checklist to get in is actually very short. A very important thing is on their, but really, there is only one condition. It isn't that we do so many good deeds, or give X amount of money to charity, or attend church Y amount of times per month, or even that we read our Bible Z amount of times. The only thing that we have to do to spend eternity with our Father in Heaven is to accept what he has already done for us. "What is Hunter talking about?" What I am talking about is when God came down to Earth in the flesh and did miraculous things for us simply because he loves us. "Well what did he do?" He came down as a baby, a king, but still, just a little baby boy. He grew up teaching the truth about who God is and how he wants us to live, in the process casting out beliefs and practices that are not what he envisioned for his people (for instance, one of these is that salvation is a works based process aka that we have to earn our way into heaven by doing good deeds or attending church or performing rituals.) In the end, the real purpose for Jesus being here was to be persecuted by everyone, hated even, to be killed on a cross, and then here's the real awesome part, RISE AGAIN! "Why would he do that?" Well he did that because it is what we sinners deserve to happen to us. Because all of us are like the friend I described to start this post, we all suck at being nice, we all fail to love others, we all are jerks to not just our enemies, but our friends at times as well. We are all sinners. Because of our sin, we all deserved to die the death Christ died. Knowing this, out of his love for us Jesus essentially said "I love you too much to let this happen to you and keep you from spending eternity in paradise with me and our Father. So here, let me take it for ALL of you." That is exactly what happened, in his death, he paid for EVERY SINGLE one of our sins. Not just mine, not just yours, not just the really bad ones or just the little ones. EVERY sin has been paid for and forgiven.

However, you have to believe it and accept that he did that for you. Unfortunately for the non-believers, they have a problem with where they are at now since they don't accept the gift we have been given. Their sins are still forgiven, Jesus didn't die in vain, but they just don't receive the reward of eternal life in paradise. But for those of us who do believe it, even when it is hard to do so, we get the prize. And trust me, even for the most rock firm Christians, its hard to understand how this is possible. It doesn't make sense from the mortal sense that we don't have to earn eternal life in paradise. That is not comprehensible from the standpoint of our human minds. Our nature says that anything you get, is something you earned. Prime example is Christmas. We grow up saying, if you are naughty, Santa won't bring you gifts. Gifts by definition though are things we receive without doing anything to earn them. Salvation is a gift from God. We don't earn it. We get it from God because he loves us just as we get gifts on Christmas morning because our parents love us. Even though we are bad, they still love us and want to give us things just because of love.

Now, I am not saying we should forget about doing nice things for other people and serving them and loving them in every way we possibly can. We are called to live as Christ lived too. The point is that, even in trying to be the best we can be, we are going to fail. We are human. We are not Jesus. That's why Jesus rocks. He was like "Hey, its ok you're not perfect, I am and I will cover for you. Come hang out with me in Heaven and I will introduce you to the guy who created the ENTIRE universe and loves you more than you will ever understand."

The love of God is unfair. Fortunately for us, its unfair in a way that benefits us. We gain literally everything out of this unfair thing called "grace." Just remember, even though you should try your best to do good things and be nice to others and love and serve them, if you fail at that, that is not what will keep you from your Father. The mere fact that you recognize your short comings and feel remorse about it is a step in repentance and THAT is what leads you to Heaven. For the person that I talked about at first, if you are reading this, I have told you already, but the fact that you realize that you need to change this about yourself and you want to, that is a step towards Heaven. God loves you, so do I and so many other people. Keep praying and working towards loving others better and I will see you in paradise when our Earthly missions are over. You may think you don't love people well, but you do a much better job at it than you give yourself credit for. I pray for this person, and for all of you, that you find peace with your failures and shortcomings that they are covered, paid for, forgiven and forgotten about by the only one who matters and as long as we accept that gift, we will get to personally thank Him one day.

"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is NOT your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

Be Joyous

So this is kind of a continuation of the last post. I have really seen what I wrote about before become more and more true in my life. The more I fight back against the crap that Satan and the world are throwing at me, the more I feel the pain and the more of a struggle it is. Not giving up though and here is why. There is a verse that comes to mind immediately off the top of my head in James, actually right at the beginning of the book directly after his greeting to his audience, which is the twelve tribes...

"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 perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." James 1:2-4

Wow. What is God saying to us here through James? Well, he is saying that first of all, we are going to face trials. It is unavoidable and just part of life. It is going to happen and we should not fool ourselves otherwise. Get ready. Secondly, this is saying that we aren't supposed to just be like "well, this sucks, but I guess it is for the best. Blah." Pause. I have been doing this as of late. I know God has a plan, I do and I trust in it. However, I am honestly tired of facing trials and temptations and depressing circumstances. OK play. What this is actually telling us is that we are actually supposed to be JOYOUS about facing trials and hardships and things that are not fun. Wait what? Really? That can't be right.....but it is. Again though, don't stop reading there. WHY are we supposed to be joyous? We are not called to just be happy that things are hard. That doesn't make sense, but when you read it all, it does. We are called to find it all joy, because through those trials and hard times, we are going to be made complete and whole and perfect (oh hey sanctification, I didn't realize that was you again.) This is God's grace through sanctification AGAIN. Good news for us all.

So the verse is saying, "Hey, things are going to be hard, often. However, its ok, its actually good, because I, God, the King of all things, am going to make you perfect and holy and lacking nothing in the process. Cheer up and check out how cool I am."

Here is some more scripture to ponder...and we will stay in James. He seems to have a good idea about this temptation/struggle/trial stuff.

"Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted 'I am being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it has fully grown brings forth death." James 1:12-15

Ok, so pretty much we already established this stuff, but it is good to see it in scripture and verified so we know its not just something that we concocted in our minds. So when we face trials, we are blessed when we remain steadfast and still keep our eyes to the heavens rather than shifting our focus to worldly things aka IDOLS. Also, NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE has ever been tempted by God. That is Satan's claim to fame. He uses worldly things, or evil things, or even seemingly good things, to tempt us away from the blessings of God. These things become desires of ours or are even previously good desires that we had, that have been corrupted by sin. Now I will bring it back....RELATIONSHIPS. Boom, I said it. This is obviously what is going on with me and I know for a fact that it is something that at least 74.79% of you all struggle with as well.

Relationships are a good thing. They are. God made us to be in relationship both with him AND with each other (Gen. 2). However, Satan uses that desire for companionship and to be with someone to corrupt our minds and take our focus away from the relationship with God. Now its not good. Because now we are worshiping relationships with people instead of God and that is not good at all. Thats what we do though. Not intentionally, but we do it. And thats what sucks about that jerk Satan, he is sneaky and doesn't let us realize what he has done until we are already idolizing something else.

Don't confuse what I am saying here. Remember, relationships = good. Relationship being too important = bad. Keep that in mind. And thats true with EVERYTHING. Not just relationships. Food, tv, video games, friends, fixing up a car, working, following sports, playing sports, blogging, facebooking, tweeting, etc etc etc. You get the point.

It kind of feels like I have strayed away from the original point, but I promise I am still here. The point to be made here is that we have to make sure that our priorities have not been shifted away from our Father. It is when we put something else above him, that we get burned and face trials and etc. I put a girl too high on my priorities. Maybe not ahead of God, but maybe I did. I dont really know for sure. I still feel like I kept God at the top, but I know I put a lot of importance on her and I in my emotions and too much of my heart into it for the stage that we were at. Lesson learned though, but maybe that is just how I am. I am an emotional guy who puts my heart into things. It is something that we have to be careful about in life. Be wary about what you are investing your heart into and how much of your heart you are investing into things. ALWAYS BE SURE GOD IS GETTING THE TOP SPOT. It is when we lose sight of that is when Satan gets a foothold and is able to come in and mess with us. (See, told you I was still on track)

God bless you all and thank you for reading. I am open to suggestions from you all too at any point about things you would like to read about or just get my thoughts on. With those, it might take me a little longer to get a post together because I will want to research and pray about it first, but I would be happy to have suggestions from you guys. Again, thanks for reading, I love you all, and will be praying for my readers that they hear God through me, not just me talking about God.

Life is Hard

The past couple weeks have been not an easy time for me. Sometimes the world just is not an easy place to live. The world is full of sin and corruption and things that don't want you to be close to God. The world wants us to worship it, rather than who deserves our worship and praise and trust. The key is to notice when we are being tempted away from our God and fight against it. Be ready though. If you are going to pick a fight with the world, and really want to fight for your faith, get ready for a fight that will be rough. Living here is hard, but fighting against the evil and sin here in order to be with God and trust God and live as Christ did, is the hardest thing to do because it goes against everything in society and Satan is going to join the battle too.

I recently saw the movie, Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader. C.S. Lewis really was a disciple of Christ and true servant of our Father. The message of the movie was pretty much, the more you try to be like Christ and follow God, the more the world is going to hate you and try to destroy you and fight you every step of the way. Everything you will come across is going to try to deter you away from accomplishing your goal and try to make your goal anything else apart from following God and becoming like Christ. Obviously, it wasn't so blatantly spelled out in the movie, it is written in Narnian, fantasy terms, but the message is definitely there.

How much I needed to hear this and see this! Recently I experienced some pretty rough heartbreak. Things were going really well in a relationship I had with someone who meant a lot to me, and still does. She is one of the most amazing people I have ever met and she really likes/liked me as well. For some reason, it didn't work out to the confusion of both of us. Both of us had been diligently praying about it and pleading for God to be a part of what was going on and our journey in getting to know each other. This might be the point where you think I am going to say something depressing. Sorry to disappoint. God WAS with us and working in us and our journey in getting to know each other. It may have come down to timing, or just fears about other aspects of our lives outside of our direct relationship with each other, but regardless, for now at least, it is over and we hope to one day resume a friendship.

At first I questioned why God would allow such heartbreak to happen so unexpectedly. Things had been going PERFECTLY between her and I. Then out of nowhere, things ended. It was devastating and to a certain degree, still is. I didnt understand why when I felt like I was pursuing God so hard and wanting Him so much to be a part of what was going on between me and this girl, and trusting him so much with it, why would he not bless it and allow it to work out. I was looking at it wrong though. COMPLETELY wrong.

It is when we are striving to be like Jesus with all our might that the world, and Satan, fight back. It is when all we want from life is God, that we face trials and temptations. It is in those times when evil says "No, I will not let God win easily." Friends, don't give in. Keep fighting. God is the winner. Jesus Christ has already won. Thus, we have won. You may not know it yet, but you have. We are the winners. Grace, peace, love, forgiveness, hope....all are victorious over greed, lust, rejection, despair, depression, and hate. We just can't give in to those temptations.

Don't get me wrong. I am still feeling the pain of the loss and it hurts like Hell. That is how I know though that I am on the right track. That I am going in the right direction towards our God. I am being assaulted by evil because I am not giving in. The more we fight back, the more it is going to hurt, but in the end, we will reach a day when pain, tears, sadness, and loneliness are all forgotten. Not only will they not exist, but we will forget what those things even were. How glorious a promise that is!

Friends, don't lose hope if you are facing crap in life. No where are we promised a life of ease and luxury in Christ. Quite the opposite. If our goal is to be Christ-like, why should we not have a life similar to his of rejection, scorn, and condemnation to death? Dont forget the last part though, he rose from the dead. As will we. I have been told many times by a great mentor of mine, "How can we be resurrected if we don't die?"

Going through all the crap and trials of life is something that is not immune for Christians. But we go through a process called sanctification. This is where God uses the crap we go through to refine us and make us new and improve us. To burn away the bad crap we have. Like refining metal. Metal has to be heated to extremely high levels in order to refine it and make it stronger and purer. Or even look at the classic example of pruning a plant. Snipping off the dead leaves and branches to keep the rest of the plant healthy. Sure, it hurts if your leg is dead to get it amputated, but it is going to make the rest of your body healthier. Same with plants and metals and our soul. Santification: painful, yet beautiful and graceful. C.S. Lewis says "We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."



"It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God." Acts 14:22

“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” 2 Cor. 12:9 – 10


^18(A) "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. ^19(B) If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because^(C) you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. ²⁰Remember the word that I said to you:^(D) 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me,^(E) they will also persecute you.^(F) If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. (John 15:18-20)