Pursuit of Him

Please Lead

2011-09-18T19:15:00.000-07:00

God I’m here,
Doing my best to follow Your lead.

It is only by Your grace that my steps are not my own.
I repeatedly fail.
To some I may not fall,
But Your standard is great,
To that I will never reach.

All I can do is follow.
It is certainly best I do not lead.

Make Your Spirit my closest friend.
A guide that I follow through thick and thin.

This is the only way I will not falter.
Your yoke is easy, make my path straight.

Allow me to overflow with passion for You.
This is all You ask,
Yet even this I cannot do on my own.

Lead me to the foot of the cross,
Taking my every step while gazing at Your gift to humanity.

You didn’t have to do it.
But of this I lose sight.
Steady my vision,
On the cross I must focus.

Solitude

2011-09-13T18:57:00.000-07:00

Solitude is the furnace for transformation.
- Henry Nouwen

Solitude is a beautiful thing. It is in solitude that one must reckon with who they are. This term solitude is used loosely, however. We are never really alone, God's there. It is our choice whether we recognize His existence or make our time of solitude a time to commune with Him. If we are intentional, if we long for His double-edged sword to cut into our soul, untangling the thorns and allowing the flowers to bloom, the transformation will be glorious. The furnace will have left us refined, and utterly transformed.

I Must Love

2011-08-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

Lord, I lay on my face before You.
Longing to commune with You.
Longing to find my strength only in You.
Longing to lead others to this place.

A place where I find much peace.
A place where I find my identity.

They can not pray emptily to air.
It must be to You Lord.

Strengthen my resolve to reach them everytime I come before You.
Make me effective.

Do not let me seek the lost to appease me.
Let me thirst to share You because I love.

This love must be pure,
Just as the love exuded at the cross.

It is to this structure that I must lead them.
If I don't, do I really care?

It mustn't be from guilt.
The hurt must be genuine.
Make it be so.
O' Lord make it be so.

Family: He Did It a Certain Way

2011-08-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

Family is a beautiful thing. We often lose sight of our blessings. God didn't have to create the world in a way that human beings are born to parents that desire to care for them. Many animals do not have as great of maternal instincts as humans, and certainly not as great of a paternal instinct. God could have created humans to hatch from lonely eggs laid 6 months before. It would not have taken much effort from Him; He could have made the decision right after He decided what chemical combinations would be necessary for star formation and right before He decided exactly how far the earth needed to be from the sun. But, He did it a certain way.

In fairness, not all would call their family a beautiful thing. Fathers leave, mothers die, children run away from home, and a great host of other problems. The most tragic scenarios arise when love goes awry. But none would argue that love is not a beautiful thing. Familial problems wouldn't be so tragic if something great wasn't being lost.

If family is so beautiful, it seems that much attention should be devoted to operating as a family correctly. Luckily, the Bible gives direction in the area of family. If family was divinely created, then the most logical place to look for familial direction is to the divine.

I could work to outline what the Bible says about family but I wouldn't do better than what is already outlined here. Go to the link and pray over the verses. Take as many trips to the site as necessary, and even look up the verses and get a better understanding of their context. True knowledge does not come through jamming as many words and experiences into our mind as possible, but through prayerfully considering the truth, praying that God will transform our hearts, minds, and relationships.

Be Patient, Chew, Savor...... Fulfilled

2011-07-31T16:00:00.000-07:00

Human beings are curious creatures. There is an intense desire to understand the human condition, but we have a problem understanding ourselves. What is it that makes me want to go for a jog one minute and then take a nap the next? What is it that causes us to be so bad at diets? All of us, if we are attentive, frequently have thoughts that leave us questioning where that came from. It is for these reasons that I have a very limited appetite for studies that try to reduce the human condition to percentages and survey results. These have their place, but numbers can be manipulated to portray many things, especially in an inexact science as human behavior.
My dissatisfaction for scientific study of human thought and emotion is more pronounced because I know there is a better way. It becomes much harder to return to falsehood when you have tasted truth. Let's assume that there is a being that knows the every hair on my head currently, George Washington's in 1776, and Jesus' in 25 AD. It seems this being would be the only one with thorough knowledge of the human condition. Many know where I am heading here, because Jesus is quoted in Luke 12:7, "Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows". So there we have it, if you believe the Bible is inerrant, there is great comfort in knowing that there is a God that fully understands this web of statistical improbabilities. This is inconceivable, we can't even fully understand the motivations of ourselves, and we have lived with and as ourselves for many years. The thought of us understanding another and our connection with them is unfathomable without God.
If becomes even more encouraging when we analyze John 16:13. In this passage, Jesus is describing how the apostles will be better off without Him. He is sending them something even better, the Holy Spirit to live within them, who is fully divine. Verse 13 says, "But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come". This is rather intense. God has sent the Holy Spirit, fully divine, all-knowing, all-powerful, and ever present to live within us. As we learn in John 14:16-17: "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you". Pretty remarkable.
I do not want to claim that we should discard all survey results and all psychological and sociological research, but this should be significantly secondary to scripture and prayer. Prayer is powerful, Jesus retreated to do it often. Scripture is powerful, Jesus and the apostles knew it well, quoting it often to rebuke, and to present Jesus' fulfillment of the messianic prophecies. Yet the Pharisees knew the Scriptures well also, and Jesus' words for them were harsh. Scripture alone cannot do it, approach the Scriptures with a humble heart, an open mind, and a prayerful disposition. This process will not be instant; it isn't coffee, a google search, or an iphone. Be patient, get somewhere quiet, chew on the Scriptures, and savor them. The gratification may not be immediate; sometimes it will, but many aspects of Christianity cannot be embraced without deferring gratification until later. Be patient, and watch your time with God's word become the favorite part of your day.

Sickness

2011-07-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

I am incredibly, incredibly, incredibly sick. Not an on my death bed, coughing, wheezing, running a fever sick. Although my feeble body succombs to these maladies as well, there is a much deeper illness that plagues me. From my knowledge of others, I know I am not alone in my disease, this disease does not afflict a portion of the population, its affliction rate is 100%. This gruesome disease is a disease of the heart. We all have it. We all want to do good, but we have a pervasive inclination towards bad. I want to think of others ahead of myself at all times, but I can't. I do not want to lust anymore, but it doesn't happen. I want to serve others with the majority of my time, but I get cranky, tired, and simply selfish. This disease is bad news.

Throughout time, man, to some degree, has recognized this disease. We realize our meager existence as beings that are extremely complex yet o' so small. We realize there are things we ought to do yet can't do all the time no matter how hard we try. We realize we long for something beyond this world. We realize we long to worship something greater than ourselves.

In response, religions spring forth. Belief systems that seek to address the big questions. Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is good? What deserves my worship? Our mere knowledge that we need to ask and answer these questions is fascinating. The questions themselves are evidence that there are answers. If I evolved from a few chemicals, why in the world would I develop a longing to answers questions about something that does not exist? I long for food and there is food. I long for sleep and there is sleep. I long for a God, I think there must be a God.

If we are going to reach truth, I believe this is where we must start. We have to wrestle with the realities that we like to hide under the bed. This universe had an origin, and the odds, through scientific discovery, are becoming increasingly greater that it wasn't a coincidence. There must, in my opinion, be a higher being. This is not something simple to say. If there is truly a being that created this world, pitiful me if I do not treat the seeking of the truth about this being with great importance.

I encourage all to engage in a thorough search of the answers to these big questions. But be certain to not put any rules in place. One cannot say, "I will not consider Islam because I cannot adhere to a religion through which murderers justify their actions," or, "I will not consider Christianity because I had a bad experience when I was young." The adherents cannot speak completely for the god. If there is truly a being that exists that is big enough to create this world, this being cannot be properly represented by human beings like you and me. No stone can be left unturned. Only one set of beliefs can be right. There cannot be one God and 300 million gods. Engage in a proper search, nothing is more important.

I will throw in my two cents. I believe that the true God is the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He sent His only son to die on a cross for our sins. Yes, the God of Christianity.

There are many reasons. First among them: no religion properly deals with the sickness we all have like Christianity does. Let's take a bird's eye view of our existence. Here's what I think we can know. We know that we live in a ridiculously complex world. This world is in an even more unbelievable, vast universe. More incredibly, in this vast universe, on the planet earth, are these extremely complex beings. Not just humans; birds, fish, trees, bushes, grass, vegetables, livestock, lions. It's really all incredible. I know for a fact, I didn't create this place, neither did anyone with all the same attributes as me. It had to be someone with incredible power, someone far beyond humans. If this being exists, it deserves ALL of our worship. Lebron James doesn't deserve it, neither does Brad Pitt, or President Obama.

Once we realize that there is a being that created this place and is inconceivably vast and powerful, we begin to look like scum real quick. This is where the work of Jesus Christ becomes key. There is no way we should be able to interact with this being or please this being on our own accord. Judging by this creation, this being must be all that is good. Which means, it cannot accept anything that is bad. There is something like a debt that is owed to this being. If all of this is true, humankind has been stockpiling I-owe-yous to this being since the beginning of time. This is where we have to wrestle with the person of Jesus Christ.

There are both Jewish and Roman historic accounts of the person of Jesus. He certainly existed. Many try to write Him off as a great teacher or prophet. Get into a study of religion to test this out. It gets real dangerous, however, when we try to do this. Jesus gave us no room to hold Him as simply a great teacher or prophet:

Mark 14:60-62 (ESV)

⁶⁰And the high priest stood up in the midst and asked Jesus, "Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?" ⁶¹But he remained silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" ⁶²And Jesus said, "I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven."
Matthew 26:63-64 (ESV)
⁶³ But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, "I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God." ⁶⁴Jesus said to him, "You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven."
Luke 22:67-70 (ESV)
⁶⁷ "If you are the Christ, tell us." But he said to them, "If I tell you, you will not believe, ⁶⁸and if I ask you, you will not answer. ⁶⁹But from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God." ⁷⁰So they all said, "Are you the Son of God, then?" And he said to them, "You say that I am."

These are the three accounts of Jesus before His accusers prior to heading to the cross. If you asked me if I were the Son of God, and I told you I am and that you will see me sitting by God in heaven, I would not be a man to be held as a great teacher or prophet. I would either then be a liar, a lunatic, or the actual Son of God; as C.S. Lewis so wisely points out in Mere Christianity. Jesus did not want to give us room to hold him as a mere teacher, so we must make a decision. Either hate Him or love Him, there must not be any in between.

It is this that is so compelling about Christianity. First, it is the only religion that properly points out that we have a massive debt to the Creator and the only religion that provides a remedy, and o' what a beautiful remedy it is.

God orchestrates His story in a way that we may verify the facts. It is all historical, a person's quest to discover the truth about Jesus is the most monumental of all journeys. Do not read one source and think you have found out all you need to know.

Learning of the person of Jesus is a lifelong task, there is a lot of trash out there about Him; an author that doesn't regard Him as either Lord, a liar, or a lunatic, should not be read. I believe you will find author's calling Him a liar or a lunatic are appalling, which will leave you with only one choice. Do not fall for any of the soft talk about Jesus. Do not read the works of men that have piggybacked Him and like to take bits and pieces of Jesus in hopes of broadening their audience. Either take all of Him or none of Him, just taking a nibble is insulting.

Send Me

2011-05-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

Make me Yours, o LORD.
Purely Yours.

My heart must pant for Your brooks.
My skin must long for Your touch.

Leave me satisfied with nothing else.
You must do it.
My heart will betray me.
I am only a man.
You have equipped me to do much,
But how desperately I need Your touch.
Your gentle direction.
The divine roapmap.
I don't need the map.
I simply must know You are reading it to me.
Make me quick to thank;
Quick to repent;
Quick to acknowledge that You guide it all.

The world is thirsty for You LORD.
They are ignorant but thirsty.
Transform my heart, so that I may show them the refreshing brook.
I can't do it without You.
I wouldn't want to.

Easy to write but painfully difficult to live.
My heart does want the glory of doing it myself.
Heal this brokenness like only You can LORD.
Send me out,
With basins of Your refreshing love.

Simplicity

2011-04-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

It is the simple that I seek.
The simplicity that is unmistakeably You.

Not simple whatsoever,
But simple on the surface, to our eyes.

There is certainly nothing simple about a human body.
Nor anything else that inhabitants this planet.
But it is Your talent to make the complex simple.
So simple that we can forget.
Forget that You are the foundation of it all.
Forget that we are only tenants.
Only extras in the movie titled, "I AM".

Empower me to seek this simplicity.
The simplicity of resting in Your complexity.
Not the complexity of my own simplicity.
Life is not complicated until we try to take the reins.
People are hard to please,
Houses are hard to heat,
Cars are difficult to pay for,
And mouths are difficult to feed,
Only when the reins are in our hands.

It is all in the skill of the one at the helm.

Through You

2011-04-23T09:07:00.000-07:00

You can make it happen Lord.
Whatever is Your will.
Do not let the feebleness of me get in the way.
I am weak but You are strong.
Whatever You have me do is great.
Whatever I do on my own is worthless.

Whether it is sport, study, or service,
Shine through.
Do not let me try painting on my own.
I think I can hold the brush and be elegant,
Do not let me forget that You want to create a masterpiece.

The world does not need any more human effort.
Our history books are littered with such.

In the same vein,
Do not allow me to aspire to the etching of my name in those pages.
The Book of Life is where I want the ink spent.
Let it be so.

Lead me down Your path.
Let me find no pleasure in the path carved by human effort.

The touch of the Divine is so sweet.
Have me pant for Your caress.
It is only through You that I desire any rest.

Wherever

2011-04-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

O Lord I pant.
I pant for Your Touch
Your undeniable presence in my life.

O how robbed are those who have not felt it.
Lead me along Your Path,
So that I may lead others to the origin of their's in You.

Take me wherever You must.
Geographically, intellectually, or financially.
Do not let the "me" get in the way of You.

Lead me wherever.
Wherever the harvest is plentiful and my sickle is effective.

You have instructed us to go.
May I go where You have prepared.

As I do, may I be strengthened in You.
Becoming the vessel You have created me to be.

The path must lead directly to Your throne room.
It must pull many from the muck,
Dragging them against the will of Satan into the glory of Your presence.

Take me wherever it must be.

Guidance

2010-01-07T10:31:00.000-08:00

I long to be deaf to my thoughts and desires Lord, so deaf that I can tune my heart only to the broadcast of Your guidance.

The Flesh Crowding out the Spirit

2009-12-25T16:53:00.000-08:00

Every time I go to my knees I want to more fully know what it means to submit to God.

I often find myself questioning the battle that is being waged within my heart. Galatians 5:16-23 has been a large help in understanding these feelings of discontent. This passage explains that the Spirit and the flesh are at absolute odds with each other, the Spirit is against the flesh and the flesh is against the Spirit. Subconsciously I feel that I was always aware of this truth but had never felt it within my own spiritual walk, probably because my walk has been historically shallow.

There is certainly a spiritual warfare occurring within all of our hearts. What else would explain thoughts so evidently bad, followed by thoughts so evidently good?

It is my belief that there is only so much room within our heart. This room is either filled with the desires of the flesh or the Spirit, an area of the heart cannot be filled with both.

As Christians we must make Christ the gatekeeper of our hearts. Through Him we must open the door to our heart and allow our sinful desires to be dug out of their firmly established homes.

Things of the flesh are not easily torn from their homes, after all it is through the fulfillment of these desires that we have derived pleasure for years. Sin does temporarily fulfill us. If every sin felt immediately disgusting, there would be no temptation to indulge ourselves. But, we must quickly realize sin will never fully gratify. True fulfillment is found in accepting the offering of the Almighty. An offering to wash away our sins, fill us with the Holy Spirit. A promise so beautiful, but far too dull to the minds of many in a western world that is far too comfortable with the doctrines of Christianity. There is nothing boring about eternal life.

I love John 14-16 because in these chapters Jesus constantly refers back to this Counselor he is going to send us. He tells the disciples that having the Holy Spirit in their hearts is going to be more beneficial than Jesus Himself physically walking and talking with them. Imagine the disciples' reactions when they were told they would be better off without Jesus. The beauty of this revelation is that through it we learn that God is offering the same gift to every human being that graces this planet in the After Death (AD) era.

How easy it is for us to forget how great of a gift the Holy Spirit is. He is such a gift that we must make every effort to clear our hearts for Him; He will not occupy areas of our hearts where we are still clutching sin. This is why it is imperative for Christians to declare a war on the desires of our flesh. What an insult it is to not accept the gift of the Holy Spirit with gratitude. Luckily, through prayer and repentance God opens the doors of our heart and the Spirit begins to dwell in us. Once the Spirit is inside of us He begins to help us uproot our sins; however, I often find that He does not always immediately fill the void that was left by sin. I believe this is where a Christian's endurance must kick in (James 1:2-4). We must muster up all our strength to hold the walls of our heart open. It is during this process that God is purifying us, trying us by fire so that He can make us shine. Our hearts are crying out to God, "I can't do this anymore Lord the weights of this void are so heavy". Meanwhile we continue to resist this sin that has held us captive. In the moment when we feel like we cannot hold up the weight of world a second longer, God fills the void left by the eradicated sin and the satisfaction is rich. We gain an instant appreciation for how comforting the Spirit is, we begin to see the fruits of our hardship throughout our lives, and it is from these moments that we build our love for God and an unquenchable thirst for the presence of His Spirit.

If we don't embark on a full-scale war with our sinful nature then we are robbing ourselves of all the gifts God has to offer. By putting ourselves at the mercy of the Spirit and ridding ourselves of our unhealthy pleasures, our faith and love in Christ will grow exponentially. Once we hold up under our first practices of purification, the next stages become easier, not because the work the Spirit is doing is less important or less painstaking, but because we have learned to love and trust the Trinity. Problems and pain begin to become smaller and smaller when our trust in Him has become larger and larger.

Knowledge, Roots, and the Christian Faith

2009-12-25T10:07:00.000-08:00

We've spent our whole lives learning to live our lives the way we want, our parents want, or our culture wants. In order to be a child of God we should be prepared to spend as much time learning to live how God wants.

The true necessity for deep spiritual knowledge has been perplexing me lately. Although following Christ is certainly based upon one's faith that lies in Him and the pursuance of a loving relationship with the Trinity, the role of deep knowledge of scriptures and biblical truths has been weighing on my heart lately. I believe that a desire to know God's scriptures and truths to a further extent is often proof of a growing love for Him and His ways, but not always.

Turning one's pursuit of knowledge into a Christian competition is certainly counterproductive, as competition is largely rooted in pride and a tightly held pride can not be part of a loving relationship with God, which is the point of Christianity and our ultimate calling in life:

And he (Jesus) said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 22:37-39

When the Son of God, fully divine, and therefore of the same divinity as the Creator of this beautifully complex world says something like: "This is the first and greatest commandment", we must sit up and listen. However, learning what it means to love the Lord with everything we have, as this passage clearly states, is a lifelong process. Recently I've been struggling with how someone like myself, one wanting to understand everything around him, can truly love the Lord his God with his mind without sacrificing the love of his heart.

Can I keep my humility while also pursuing deep theological knowledge of God? Is it even necessary?

First, the words of Paul come to mind. In 1 Corinthian 3:1-4, Paul scolds the Corinthians for remaining infants in their faith. A Christian remaining an infant in their knowledge of the Christian teachings for an extended period of time is just as ludicrous as a 15 year-old insisting on remaining in preschool where they are comfortable playing with blocks.

Likewise, having a deep understanding, as deep as fallible human understanding can go, of the Trinity and its ways is necessary for many to stand firm in the faith among the vast number of temptations the world is able to throw at us. In this analogy, the Christian is a tree and her level of understanding is her roots. Without any roots the tree is going to be non-existent and therefore not a Christian at all. All Christians must have roots of some sort. The width of the root system is symbolic of all the different types of biblical truths: the love of God, Jesus' atoning death, the role the Spirit plays in our lives, etc. The deeper our knowledge of any of these truths, the deeper our roots.

Ideally, a Christian would have a constantly growing, broad, balanced root system. One can not stand on one single extremely deep root, and one will not stand in the face of adversity if the roots are broad but shallow. Both a shallow root system and a root system boasting only a single deep root will be uprooted by the first wind.

God did not create us to be satisfied with either of these root systems, and if we are then it is a sign that we are not truly in love with the magnificent Creator and therefore not a Child of God at all.