godliness untouched

Recently I listened again to a sermon which was first preached when I was a freshman in college. The scripture verse was 1 Tim 4 if I remember correctly. The topic was discipline, namely train/discipilne yourselves for godliness. It was a formative sermon for me even though when I talk to my friend (who preached it) about it, he says it was really not one of his better sermons (just goes to show the power of the spirit of God I guess.) The sermon was this, very simply:

godliness is achieved through discipline.

That blew my mind. Godliness is achieved, it is worked for. It is not a fruit or product of time alone, we don’t get it through osmosis, or by some sort of law of maturity through age, it takes work!

Unfortunately this generation of young men and women don’t know what it means to be disciplined. In fact, we are the opposite. We are just plain lazy. Like dogs lying on the porch, who won’t fetch the ball when the master throws it, we lie around on the proverbial couch unwilling to do anything too difficult (or too glorious).

Just walk into your regular classroom lecture halfway through the quarter. I remember hearing someone say “no way, you’ve never missed class?” Isn’t that funny? I mean, when you think about it, just going to class, is the bare minimum. It’s like saying, “No way! you’ve done the bare minimum?!” We should feel ashamed. And the people who say this stuff fill up our fellowships. They are people like you and me. And we expect the Lord to be glorified in our school work?! We pray that we would study and do school to the glory of God. Are you kidding me! we have grown so lazy that even the bare minimum seems impossible! I think God is dishonored don’t you? Or maybe, you are saying, “wait, sometimes it’s not worth it to go to class.” Really? What if going to class was your way of representing the faithfulness of your Lord. Let me tell you, if I were an unbeliever, and you were a Christian who never attended your classes, never studied hard, always played and wasted time, I would think you were a hypocrite to identify yourself with the One who said “let your light shine before men.” I would say, that your light is pretty pathetic. You bear the testimony of One who is infinitely important. Most of us are dragging the name of God through the dirt by how we live because we can’t get it into our head that salvation means more than just heaven.

all this talk about disicpline and we haven’t even gotten to disciplining ourselves for godliness, that is simply and sadly too far away for us.

let’s take it a step at a time shall we?

first, why don’t we all just go to class.

Updating

Yes I know I haven’t posted in awhile. That is because this quarter I have to get up at 7:30 everyday so I can’t be up and about at the most ridiculous hours, hence, no talking crazy. Furthermore, I haven’t had anything really to say that would be helpful, useful, or poignant. Well, be patient, one of these nights, the craziness will come.

Good Friday

Remember the Cross upon which the prince of Glory Died in order that He might become the sin bearer for all those who might believe in Him.

The Greater Romance

There is an issue which I have often thought about simply because it is an issue that presses hard upon every young man when he must transition from living as a single man to living as a married man. It is of course, as you have certainly guessed , the issue of relationships, dating, marriage, and so forth. Maybe I should simply call it, Romance!

What I would like to say about this issue is simple. Listen closely. I don’t think this is too difficult to grasp. For all you young men, get this: life is bigger than you and her. (And for all you young women, life is bigger than you and him.) And most of you are missing the point of life.

It is a sad situation when people believe their purpose in life (i.e. their fulfillment) is in another human being. I remember having a conversation a few years ago with a good friend of mine back home. The context for the conversation was sharing the Gospel of our Lord. So at some point in time I asked her what she thought her purpose in life was, or why she thought God has put her into this world. Her response was concise and deeply tragic. She said this: “My purpose in life is to find my soul mate (i.e. my husband).” I can already hear some of you scoffing now. But don’t. It is something to grieve over, not laugh at. There are certainly millions if not billions of people who imagine that life is about the romance between men and women, that it is, about finding the “one,” the “soulmate”, the “life partener” and subsequently living happily ever after with them until their dying day. As sad and as pitiful as all this sounds, I would propose that the majority of those in our circles, that is believers in College fellowship (and certainly Highschool and Junior High fellowships), often think the same way. But mind you, of course, we would never confess such a thing! hah! pitiful! right?
But you think it, and if you don’t say it, you live it. You wake up in the morning and God has to compete over girls for your attention. You turn the page in your Bible in the middle of your morning devotion and before you start reading the next paragraph of Holy Scripture, you think of some possible relationship you might pursue or the future of the relationship you are already in. What a tragedy. The lesser romance has overshadowed the greater. Life no longer revolves around the Lord and our love for Him, but around humans and our love for them and the relationships we have with them.

You know it’s true. Inside we twist and turn and bellyache and whine and throw fits and groan when things with our respective significant others just aren’t going our way. We sometimes go days if not weeks just pondering over marriage and turning endless pages of possible outcomes for our future marital status. We get mad, jealous, and down right sassy when things get sticky over who likes who or who doesn’t like who or who will end up with who. When we walk to class or when we study we take the time to listen to some heart-fluttering tunes which makes us even more enamored with the lesser romance. When we start dating it is as though something within us awakens to life but when we break up it is as though our breath has been cut off and we are left gasping for comfort. Believe it, many of you have begun to think that this is what life is about, that it is about stepping foot into the wide ocean of relationships and finding a ship that won’t sink. This is not what life is about. We are dreaming about somethign that is not worth dreaming over. Life is a mosaic the size of the sky, and romantic relationships are just a hazy patch of clouds over to the right somewhere.

It is as though you were assigned to read a 300 pg book and you just got stuck reading the first few chapters over and over again. Or it can be compared to climbing a latter halfway and then just sitting there on that middle step when the point is to get to the top and up onto the roof. As lame as those illlustrations are, they don’t come close to describing the destitution of our condition.

That said, I have been tellign myself over and over again especially these days when my emotions are heightened and my dreams more vivid, to Get a life! I need to get a life.

Think about it, we bellyache over heartbreak or unrequited like and get mental ulcers just being unsure of if we’ll ever get married. You know it’s true, and most likely you do it too.

But let me tell you, there are things worth bellyaching over. There is a God greater than the mind of man can imagine. Before the mountains were brought forth or the earth and the world itself was even made, from everlasting to everlasting, God has been God. Life is about the Divine Majesty. The infinitely abundant soul satisfier. There is a global glory. There are nations that do not know the Lord. They are the sheep that are not of this fold and He must bring them also. There will come a day when the glory of the Lord will fill the earth even as the oceans cover the earth. And the Greater Romance will make itself fully known as Greatest.

so here is my concluding sigh. Life is bigger than you. Life is bigger than you AND her. (girls make the proper adjustments) Why don’t you get your mind off of you for once and set it above where Christ is seated, where your life is hidden to be revealed at the great coming of our Lord.

What do you believe? Is life bigger than you and her/him? or not?

Thoughts on Deep Feelings and Rationale

As of late I have been reading and listening to lectures on the function of the Imagination as a part of Reason. The two as proposed by C.S. lewis were Divinely wed together in the beginning and only through recent developments (okay not so recent, it goes back to Plato) in modern society have the two been severed. He says some interesting things regarding those people who divorce imagination from Reason calling them "men without chests." They can figure it all out in their minds and on their black boards and graph paper but in the end they have no knowledge of the "deep" things such as glory, honor, valour, beauty, love and the like. They are without chests, men who for all their training in the intellect have not trained their hearts to "feel" appropriately.

I remember having a conversation a long time ago with a friend of mine about living life and making decisions. I proposed that mankind was made to think with more than his brain and he replied witih a certain degree of dissapproval that feelings are irrelevant to rationale. We think with our brains, we feel with our hearts. But we should always do what we think and not what we feel. O, I don't know friend. I remember thinking to myself, how can you live if all you do is let your reason take the wheel while you stuff desire, emotion, imagination, and feelings in the trunk? (This never actualy happens though it is often claimed to be the way to go) There is a reason men have done great and noble things in the past, there is a reason that men found it a worthy cause to end slavery even at the cost of War, that heroes are forged from battles and brotherhood brings tears, that memorials and love songs exist. A life without the deep things is not a life at all, but a poor and empty shell of something that was meant to be beautiful. There is a reason, but this reason was not so reasonable to my friend.

Let me say this. If you live according to your reason alone and keep imagination forever stashed away in the closet you will never truly live, at least not as you should. You will never do anything that sacrifices your greatest interest, puts you in harms way, sets your face against the storm or makes you swim against the tide. Because after all, there is no "Reason" to do something because it is honoroable, noble, or worthy. Right?

Well yeah, unless "Reason" is more than just your reason.

Many are the plans in the heart of a man…

I have a lot of plans in life. Most of them change. So I have decided to stop stating absolutes in terms of what I will do or where I will go because I realize not only is it rare that I can follow up on them, I am also not the Sovereign and I do not have an irresistable will (according to which all things must necessarily occur). I have no say in absolutes. What a surprise.

…But the Purpose of the Lord will stand.

The Law of conservation of “Caring”

It really seems like it doesn’t it? We only have so much “caring” to go around and so some get more others get less and those unfortunate nobodies get none at all. That’s lame.

The influence of self-love, self-preservation, self-exaltation, whatever you’d like to call it is prevalent in Christian circles. Even the known “servants” of a fellowship group fall prey to its influences. But hey, can’t a guy get a break? A guy can only care for so many people right? True. Nobody is perfect. Caring for the world is not the responsibility of any one man. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point is not that we need to be caring to 100% of the population, but that we need to be 100% caring to whoever comes knocking on our doors and knocking mind you does not mean they actuallly knock on our physical doors and say “care for me.” Knocking can be a look, a fallen countenance, a drag in the step, a dip in their tone. It can even be shutting out the public. That’s knocking. It’s as active as a depressed soul can be.

So when people knock, for goodness sakes answer. If you look and listen hard enough you will find that there are hundreds of knocks a day.

Let’s defy this lame Law. We have the Spirit of Christ.

Insensitivity is not a Male-exclusive attribute

Most people ascribe insensitivity to men as opposed to women, but I think that is an illegitimate observation. Women can be and are often just as blunt and unfeeling in their words as men are. Truly both men and women need to work on gentleness.

I find that girls often forget that guys are breakable. They say things expecting them to be men which, in their mental dictionaries entails “strong and resilient and able to handle difficulties cooly”, but in the end what really happens is when they speak their words they crush them and never give a second thought to it because guys don’t show their pain. You know why? Men also understand that they must be, as stated before “strong, resilient, and able to handle difficulties cooly”. So they’re in the doghouse, they’ve got nowhere to go.

I would like to take this time to make this very clear. Men are breakable! just as much as women are, they just don’t always show it so clearly. I must confess that the majority of the most discouraging and spirit-crushing conversations I have had in my life have been with women. I hope in my deepest heart that that statistic will change in the future.

Another thing, harsh words are not legitimated by being prefaced with a warning to their harshness. Unless the words are biblically profitable and God-honoring in their message and function, prefacing it with “I know this is going to sound bad” or “this may seem really shady to say” or the like, is most often just verbal scrambling for an excuse to say something which is not best for the hearer to hear nor most glorifying the Lord to verbalize. Take that with a grain of salt, of course I understand that difficult things must be said, but as I qualified before, difficult things should only be said if they are what is best, God-honoring, and Biblically profitable for the hearer to hear.

In the end, there are many things that need to be addressed when it comes to gentleness and graciousness in speech but I only wanted to pick the mind a bit in order to get thoughts flowing. I guess I have said a few things that can be disagreed with but the point is this, girls and guys share the attribute of insenstivity and both girls and guys just need to get down to business and work on it. There is just too much spirit-crushing going on these days. People need a break.