Today Revisited

Today, I am counting down the days until graduation: 25.

Today, I am counting down days of algebra: 4

Today I am looking forward to getting more hours at the library where I work.

On the sbject of that, I am not looking forward to having the only other young employee leave. She was a college grad, but we were basically equals, and she having been working there since she was 14 was able to give me all kinds of tips and pointers for after she left. She gave me the rundown on library politics; ugh! She also convinced me to start using Twitter. So that shall be coming up, and I shall let you all (is anyone reading this?) about that.

Other than that, today I am just enjoying the sunbeams.

Calendar of events:

May 20th: Computer Fair

May 24th: Graduation

June 22nd: leave for speech competition in Kansas City, MO

July sometime: City on the Hill Youth Leadership Conference

August 31st: Report to Grace College for orientation!


And some of you know, I was going to send out a monthly friends update so that people could keep in touch even after splitting up during the summer. Yeah, I tried that last May and did one email. That failed, but I hope I can do that with this blog.

Right now, I'm also really thinking about a dear old friend who I haven't had contact with in a long time. K.D. were here initials, some of you should know her. Good 'ole PHAA times.

I'm also getting ready to really start seriously into my novel. I got some books and have been reading up getting ready for June. I'm going to try to do my own little novel month. I already have a start, but with my schedule I am still only hoping for 50,000 words. Like Anilee, I will probably send out some chapters to people.

Also, I'm considering starting up an online youth ministry that I've been praying over for a while.

Today

Ok, so maybe I've lost the concept of what a blog really is. A blog is to tell friends about your life, not scare them with intellectual topics, or preach doom and gloom (I haven't have I?)

Well, right now I'm printing out invitations to my graduation party and so forth. If you're reading this you're probably invited and will be receiving one whether by email or by snail mail.

Today we're doing serious spring cleaning. We just replaced all the glass with screens and are letting in the breeze. I'm Wearing shorts!!!

We're planning on making a new computer desk for me too, in the basement. It's kinda dark and damp down there but it will work out for what I need to do.

I'm mentally preparing myself for college. It really is scary. I will be driving 11.5 hours to get to a place where I will be assigned a roomate who I do not know. Calling home is long distance. There is no respite if I am sick, no mom to bring my soup or tea. There is no call out to get the time of my next appointment with whoever. It will be just me. My family was spoiled by my sister. She is going only 45 minutes away. She can come home on weekends and on some evenings. I will have nothing and it is scary. The one comfort is that email will work just as fast over 11.5 miles of road, and blogs still function from other computers. Meanwhile, I'm bequeathing those personal belongings that I cannot take with me.

Justified (original post Easter Sudnay 2008)

I wrote this this afternoon, It is obviously fiction, and yet to be refined, but I anted to post this on Easter.

I cannot begin to describe the journey after my eyes closed that last time. I remember only that it seemed an eternity, something I little understood then. I guess it must have been so short that I had no time to glimpse the tunnel with the light at the end. I know only that I was there.

Until you see it for yourself you cannot comprehend the wonder and awe of seeing the immortal, all glorious God face to face. I wanted to worship and kneel before him, but I could stand there only, simply, with my hands at my sides and an expressionless face.

The air around us, if air it could be called, was tense, and I could tell that something terrible was about to happen. The Almighty God sat on His throne, King of all His creation, and He was sad. His eyes looked at me and they pierced to my soul. They were full of love and compassion I had always heard of and had come to know, but mixed with those sweet emotions was the anger and wrath of an Infinite Being who had been betrayed and hurt by a servant whom he loved dearly.

He brought out the great book of my life, a record of all the charges that were to be brought before me in this great, eternal courtroom. I guessed that perhaps that this was to be merely a reading, a tribute to all that He could forgive. I looked up to the face of God, and could not meet his gaze. How could I look Him in the eye and declare that this was irrelevant because I was forgiven by His Son. The book was heavy and the list of my misdeeds long. Every thought, every deed, every feeling was there.

The book was opened and it was read. I soon realized that this was no mere account of my life, this was a trial, my trial, my final accounting before God. As charge after charge was laid on me, my lusts, my greed, my pride, I wondered: “Where was the Son who had died that there might be forgiveness for all this.” But the accusations were read, on and on. The burden grew on my heart and I realized just how many of them there were, and even the smallest of these was like a burning coal thrown into my soul until it burned from what filled it and overflowed, and piled around it. “Where, oh where is the Savior for all this.” I cried. “Where is the one who makes intercession for me as promised.”

The reading continued and I fell to my knees and wept. I cried for my iniquities, which I knew nothing but the blood of The Son could cover over. The reading ended and there was silence in that great hall but for my agony.

All the faces of the heavenly bodies turned and I lifted my face from the floor and beheld the Son. He had been there, unnoticed since the beginning of the reading and now, he came forward. He declared to all that these charges were unfounded and that it was not I who had committed them.

My heart overflowed with gratitude. I had given my life over to Him in the trust that He would do this, and He had. I wanted to sing my praise and love of Christ so that all could hear, but I was stopped.

Jesus was looking at me with a sad smile. He could see into my soul and saw the joy there, but His eyes were full of tears.

“It was I.” He declared to the Father. “I was the one who was proud. I lusted. I was the selfish one, and the one who was violent. There is no fault in him who is before you.” He bowed His head like a criminal who is pleading guilty to a charge against him, and a shining droplet fell from His face and splashed onto His feet. I could think nothing, form no words in my mouth. A dread gew on me; what was he doing? Why was he saying this? Hs blood had covered over all sin and removed it, “as far as the East is from the West”, the scrptures said.

An angel came forward bearing the great book of the Law of God. It was open and the flaming letters therin burned my eyes, as the demands of holiiness shone out from the pages. In a voice free of emotion and expression the voice of the great angel intoned, “The Law finds that He is guilty of sin.”

The dread and fear in my heart grew and became anguish and suffering as a great cloud of witnesses appeared and one by one pointed at The Christ and said “I am witness that He is guilty.”

One after another they came, each saying the same thing. I saw that perfect One, who loved me over His Own life, taking on Himself the weight of these charges. I called out in anguish “Stop!, It was I, you cannot say that!” But the witness continued to come and make their proclamations for all to hear. My soul was weighted more than ever before as now those burning coals of my sin were transferred to the immaculate Son of God. I knew that from this new trial, there could be no happy ending.

“Why?” I sobbed. “Your blood was supposed to accomplish the forgiveness of my sins! Where is that forgiveness now?”

“The eyes of the Son turned on me again and He said simply, “Forgiveness was never promised only Justification.”

The last witness filed past and I could not lift my head again to look at the Halls of Heaven, which I now could enjoy while Jesus carried my blemishes.

God then declared “Enough, this man is Justified, he is found guilty of no fault. Another must now be condemned for His sins against me, and the wrongs He has done.”

I knew he meant my Wonderful Jesus and my hearted ached and my soul cried out for mercy, but it received its answer: there is no mercy for sin.

The declaration of Righteous Justness came from the mouth of God then. “The only punishment that will pay justly for such crimes is death. Since this Man is found guilty, the sentence must be carried out.”

Jesus again stepped forward towards the Father, and for the first time I saw the wounds. I had long dreamed of Heaven and seeing these for myself, and seeing truly how much He had suffered for me, but not like this. How could I bear to see them like this, but I looked and as I saw them, they looked fresh, as if only a few minutes old. For the first time, I noticed the trail of blood that Jesus’ feet left as he walked, and the blood that seeped through the side of His robe. He held out His hands to His Father and showed him the marks of the nails, still dripping those crimsondrops, each more precious to me now than all the treasures of Earth had been.

“The punishment has already been carried out.” God declared. “No further pain or death needs be suffered.”

And then my heart was truly free from all burden,as I saw that now there was no sin left that could not be paid for by the death of my Christ.

Later as I sat on the lap of my Savior, I asked Him what had happened. “Why was there no forgiveness why did you still have to take my sins onto Your shoulders?” I will carry his answer for all the eternity that I now understand.

“Forgiveness was never promised, only Justification. You were not declared forgiven, you were declared ‘not guilty’. You were blameless before God, because I took all your faults on myself, because I was the only one who could ever die and erase that condemnation. Someone must die for every sin committed. You gave that burden to Me, and I took it willingly. That is how much I loved you. God cannot forgive sin, - it is against His nature - but you were Justified.”

On the subject of instructional and doctrinal books...

Alright, I finally made time to sit down and type this out.

I find no problem with doctrinal books and the sermons of men in their nature. I, in fact, find them to be rather helpful and insightful in many ways. I come in conflict with my conscience when men take and study these human works to the extent that it takes away from God's word. I even have seen some study exclusively the writings of others concerning God's Scriptures.
How can we in good faith do this and ignore the command to study for ourselves. The Bereans whom Paul ministered to were not just content to hear one of the greatest evangelists of all time, one of the apostles of Christ; they took his teachings and then studied God's Words to really see what God's will for them was. All men will make errors and mistakes in their own interpretations. If we then take this flawed writing or sermon as our guide, we will, like all humans, make errors and misinterpret that teaching, so that now the flaw is multiplied to twice its original magnitude.

Think of a carpenter building a house. If he cut's trusses or supports for a roof. If he uses his pattern to cut piece1, then uses piece1 as the pattern for piece2, the flaws and misshapeness of the first piece will be multiplied in the second. But if he goes on to cut piece3 using piece2 as a pattern then that flaw will be even greater. After all the pieces for the roof are cut in this manner, the carpenter may be short of supplies, and the pieces will not fit together properly, and so with the body of Christ.

The Church cannot function when all the members are believing and basing their beliefs on another person's flawed thinking. God's word has only one meaning, and the closer we are to that meaning, the better we will be able to live together without disagreements and the discord that comes from a disunified Church.

"All scripture is God breathed...." God spoke these words in our Bible, indirectly though they often are. This scripture is our only insight into the mind of the All Powerful, All Knowing God. We need to make sure that we are not deceived in any of it. We must study on our own, and take lessons from the great theologians, who have studied more than we, but we must always compare these teachings to the original scripture for accuracy.

Refutation: NOOMA 8

Sorry it has been 2 weeks since my last post, but I thought of this last Sunday and it has been a week in the processing.

Has anyone heard of NOOMA? It is a series of online videos done by Rob Bell ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Bell ), the pastor of a 25,000+ member shurch in Michigan. My youth pastor recently shoewed video number 8 in my sunday school class.

In the video number 8, Rob teaches on the appearance of Jesus, walking on water, on the Sea of Galilee. The focus of the message is on the sinking of Peter and why. Rob explains the process by which a young jewish boy grows up and becomes the disciple of the Rabbi. A young jewish boy must memorize, in his first years of training, the Torah, the first five books of our modern Bible. At the end of this first several years a normal boy would move on to a trade, but the best of the best would go on and study longer and memorize the rest of the scriptres and prophecies of the Jews. At the end of this next period of study, most of the young men would go out into trades and other areas, but the best of the best of the best would go after even more study to the Rabbi and request to become his disciple. The Rabbi would then decide if the man was worthy and learned enough to become his disciple and follow in his footsteps. If the Rabbi said no, the man would go out and study and train harder or find a trade, but the very best of all would be accepted as disciples of the Rabbi. This is an amazing process in itself, and I believe that it has its application in the realm of Christ selected unlearned fishermen as His Disciples. Rob takes this a step further however. He states in this video that Peter sank in the water on the sea, not because he neglected to trust in Christ's power, but that he failed to trust in himself. That is where I find the enormous mistake in his theology. Rob ends the video with a very clear statement. "God believes in you, so you chould too" (very roughly paraphrased but I put quotes in case I got it right)

My response: This is all nonsense and Christain "self help". Understand, please, that this is not a rant, I have thought about this for one week and organized my thoughts as clearly as I can and any lack of clarity is my inability to express thoughts and emotion that are very clear in my own mind.

To say that we need to trust in ourselves, and that God believes in us is not only false but it is extremely demeaning of God's character and power. God's greatest power is displayed thorugh His ablility to use worthless and unskilled people in His service and for His glory. If God used only the skilled, the rich, and the successful then we are saying only that God "knows how to pick 'em good". We are nothing without God's power in our lives.

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

This verse clearly states that no skill or ability that any human has comes from anywhere except God. We cannot claim to be sufficient. Any belief that we are insufficient to attain or own salvation or maintain our state of existence is totally correct. If Peter doubted himself and his own worthiness and ability to accomplish the impossible and follow in Jesus' steps on the water, how can he have been at fault? He doubted Christ's ability to work through his human, physical body and accomplish a miracle. Peter saw hi own unworthieness and lack of education, yes; but he failed to see that God can accomplish salvation and miracles anyway, despite our own failings. Peter did not have the education necessary to become the follower and disciple of a Rabbi, but Jese was able to work around that and was further Glorified because of the ineptitude of His servant.

Despite our failings and short comings God's ability and power will always shine through and will be made greater because of the crude tools he had to work with. God doesn't just know how to pick good servants, he can make good ones out of poor ones.

Because I told you so...

This post is a rant and therefore: Incoherent, not well thought out, spur of the moment, etc...

Please read the article before you read the rest of my post, it will make much better sense.

There are 4 pages.

http://www.rd.com/family/parenting/words-to-inspire/article.html

Personally, I was raised on these sayings and did not misconstrue any of them. Now I know that many who would read this do not know me in person, but I assure you I am completely normal.
I think this is the very thing that is causing our youth "issues" today. Parents do not establish their own authority, which even extra-Biblically is still there. Our parents have at the least 18 years more experience in life than we do, and without authority they cannot hope to keep us safe in any area, whether keeping them from abuse, fraud, or any of the other concerns adults have. Treating them like equals that are bound by no authority is not only wrong, it is downright dangerous.
Look at today's youth, they are rebellious and disrespectful and defiant; but when did this trend start? Of course, youth have always had these issues at heart, but when they were openly encouraged we can see by looking at when the very idealology presented in this article began to be encouraged.
In the 1800s the children were raised with very strict guidelines in regards to respect, ethics and parental authority. As the "parents and children are equals" teachings began to rise, and parenting became a career for journalists the system that was never broken was, and it was by too much "fixing". I think that nearly any youth issue that rises today is because of parenting idealology like this. If any misunderdstandings arise because of statements like those listed in that article, they are because the child is rebellious, or mentally deficient, and it is not the parent's fault. I think it rather healthy for our parents to say to us every once and a while: "BECAUSE IT TOLD YOU SO!"

Music in God's Church

A Beginning... I don't know how long this will last, but I intend to try. This blog is meant for me to rant, to theorize and to in general give vent to feelings.

Today's rant and vent just happens to be on the most sensetive subject in churches: music. This is a huge issue. Some (mostly older people) do not appreciate the newer up-beat songs, while the younger generation seems to despise the older hymns and songs. This thought has made me rather angry at times and mostly I blamed the younger group (which I technically am included in) for being rebellious and uncompromisingly spoiled in their music tastes. Yesterday however, in the worship service at my chruch, we sang God of Wonders I love that song. It is lively and I just love that song; it is not a "rocky" song, or "modern" in any way accept when it was written. I was shocked though when in a congregation of over 500 I felt like I was singing a solo. Some friends of mine were singing, and my siblings, all the youth, but the adults were hardly singing. Now I could attribute this to the fact that they didn't know the song if we hadn't done it in church services before (this was the first time I actually noticed the quiet). I looked around, and there were hardly any of the older genrations actually putting their hearts into praising God. I got rather frustrated with them and mentally I was shouting "Why can't you just go along with a song like this? Why is it so hard to learn a song that you didn't grow up with? Is it that offensive to you?"
This really started me thinking on music and styles today. And I think it can be boiled down to two questions to ask yourself when choosing music: "Am I a believer in Jesus Christ?" and "Do I sing and listen to my music with the one goal of worshipping and drawing closer to God?" I am determined never to ask the question "Why not?" when considering what music I will listen to. God commands us in Phillipains 4:8

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

Please notice that God does not say "Whatever things are not true, whatever things are not honest etc... Do not think on such things." We are not supposed to look at a style of music or a song and say "Oh it has no offensive language and I like it, so it must be ok." But God doesn't command that our choices not reflect evil, He commands our choices to reflect the new life that is in us.
But back to the intergenerational thing. Rebellion will always be a part of youth culture, even with the most compliant of us. Youth will always want to be different in their styles both of clothing and music as well as just about every other area. Christian youth, I think, see the subjectivity of music as a freedom and strike out for it. In a world where they feel trapped by God's standards to be like their parents they see music as an outlet of their expression and even if the styles they like are similar to their parents' they will migrate towards the wilder new genres.
So what can we do to fix this problem?

For starters, we, the younger generations, can stop pushing for what according to our conscience is not profitable; and the older generation needs to stop shuinning the music that according to their consciences is really alright even if it is not what they are used to. And then nobody will need to feel like they are singing solo in a worship service of 500+...