GBF & BGF

I am hereby coining the terms GBF and BGF.

GBF meaning a Girl who acts like a boyfriend and BGF meaning a boy who acts like a girlfriend. These can be applied to a variety of relational circumstances.

“GBF” :

For girls, sometimes you have these girl friends that you treat like your boyfriend, its really disturbing but this is very common. For guys, sometimes you have friends that are girls that you are so tight with that they are almost like one of the fellas. Both of those are GBF.

“BGF”:

It goes the other way around too. Sometimes a guy is to a girl, just like one of the sistas. This is the most shameful of all but it is also very common. These may be considered the “safe” guys. They are in relational limbo. Also, sometimes guys take brotherhood to the n’th degree such that it is uncomfortably ambiguous. Both of these cases may be considered BGF.

okay. Have a nice remainder of the break. This is what graduated people think about.

The end of the beginning.

I’m officially finished with my undergraduate career.  I give my praise to the King of Kings, the Sovereign Lord of the Universe.  Jesus.

p.s. Thanks to everyone who ran with me along the way.

It’s all been worthwhile.

I’ve never gone so long without sleep.

3:00 pm Saturday – 6:30 am Sunday @ Print lab

7:00-12:00 – Church

1:00-2:00 lunch in dorms

3:00 pm – 2:40 am – work on final project

3:15 – Sleep.

Smallgroup Bleaching

we started with Will.

but it wasn’t right. Turned out it wasn’t real hair bleach, just some extra-lightner thing. So we tried again the next day. This time it was real bleach. Here’s me being a leader.

here’s Richard being a disciple.

The bleaching went on for awhile, almost everyone had a go. We even gave Will another try. (didn’t turn out so hot though. my bad.)

that’s chris I think. See Nate holding the foil, he wanted highlights, we told him it was fruity. He relented.

After a while we got everyone.

oh yeah, and happy birthday Mike. You are loved by very masculine men.

I love my smallgroup.

5:40 am

that’s the time.  My roomate steve is going to wake up soon.  As he does I will only just be falling asleep.

I’m graduating in a week.

I can’t believe that I will so quickly and so simply be moving on to the next stage in life.

It’s about time I know.  Sorry for those of you who have stopped waiting.  And sorry for those of you who feel like I’m leaving them behind.  Sometimes, no matter how you flip it you just can’t win.

A Remedy for Overly Romanticized living.

Sometimes life can become fairly romantic. When I say romantic here I don’t mean flowers and poems or candle-lit dinners. Think, epic and larger than life, heightened emotions, the awareness of a publicly silent but personally audible soundtrack. Okay, I’ll admit it first upfront as a disclaimer, this sort of thinking is not always bad really, and I would say it could even be good if it gives us a better view of a greater reality (namely, that of the coming Kingdom and its many glories). But usually the romanticized version of our lives gets us either delusional or depressed. It’s not real of course. If you just stand still for a moment you will realize that there is no music, that the story unraveling through time is not about you, that you are not in the center of a thousand dollar cinematic shot, and that there are very few people who care at that point about who you are and what you’re doing. That’s not my remedy, but I think it’s funny.

Here’s how I deal with the romanticized view of life. At the end of my day, when the movie which is my life draws to its glorious conclusion, I open a big fat tome on Theology Proper, set it on the table and start reading about God. Let me tell you, that will snap a drifting mind to attention pretty quickly. You see, when you’re taking a good hard look at the Almighty Sovereign, all the shallow cinematic dreaming gets stripped away and things suddenly get very, very real. I love that. Again and again I keep becoming more convinced that God is no figment of the imagination. Because in fact, the sheer potency of His reality, when apprehended correctly, is able to snatch the sentimental wool from our eyes. He is so real, that we cannot be fake when we are with Him. The presence of God is is a place of penetrating honesty. When we are in it, we see ourselves as we are.

““Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!””
(Is 6:5 ESV)

The Majesty of the Godhead

Recently picked up The Doctrine of God by John Frame, the second book in his series “A Theology of Lordship.”  It is a classic in the systematic study of Theology proper and I am excited to read it.  Also recently ordered Feinberg’s No One Like Him, the alleged jewel of the book series, “Foundations of Evangelical Theology.” All I hear are rave reviews.
So, why the interest in Theology Proper?

Well, it should be no surprise that God is the greatest and most exhilarating thought that can ever pass through the mind of man.  But more than that I believe one of the most effective ways for a Christian to renew his mind and set it on the things above is by taking good long look at his Maker.  As an illustration which supports his proposition that mankind’s ultimate pleasure is fulfilled and satiated by God, our beloved John Piper loves to say, “nobody goes to the grand canyon to increase his self-esteem.”  If that is truly the case then, the study of God Himself, that is, the long gaze through Scripture’s looking glass, is the means by which we will move towards ultimate Joy.  Studying Theology Proper is the like a spiritual version of standing at the edge of the Grand canyon and feeling the sheer magnitude of Majesty.

A Tribute.

Iron in the Heart

Dr. Craigen preached a sermon on the book of James a few years ago on James 5:7-8.

“ Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near.” (James 5:7-8 NAS95S)

He said something quite wonderful when illustrating the call to strengthen our hearts.

“Put iron your heart is the way William’s colloquially translates it. What is this to put steel in your heart? A British soccer coach might say to his team were they to be facing a superior team that has won all the time, “stout hearts chaps, stout hearts! Stand strong and firm.” Heart referring to the whole being, the inner being, the seat of intelligence of the intellect… of the emotions… of all the reasoning coalescing all together producing what you are in your in your thinking internally and what you’re doing so far as you’re allowed to come at it externally. A Biblical world view calls for you to have stability in this life as you look out upon its distressing circumstances and believe, you, me. Both personally and globally we can be disturbed by what’s happening in our world, what’s happening, what’s next, why now, why me? Then the Lord steps in, ‘Stand firm and hold firm to the traditions you’ve been told’ Paul says. Because God is coming on the scene. Put it like this, Put iron in your soul for the coming of the Lord is at hand [and] here it is. Jesus said “Be on the alert, you don’t know the hour of the end. Evening or morning or midnight or afternoon” it’s ‘draw near,’ it is, it’s right here, ready to break in.

I”ll summarize it like this: You put iron in your heart by putting facts of eternity in your head.”

Need I say more?

Mortality and Purpose

“ For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be (further)clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge” (2Cor 5:1-5 NAS95S)

What’s so great about having our mortal bodies swallowed up by life? If your reply is “because it’s cool to be immortal” That’s the wrong answer.

“We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. (2Cor 5:6 ESV)

The reason you and I should long for Immortality is because when our bodies are swallowed up by life, we will no longer be away from the Lord. As we live, mortality is the last standing barrier between us and the one for whom we were created and exist.

I think about it often, meeting my Maker. How precious, to know that there is only one experience for which I can say, “I was made for this.”