Here are a few things we are getting pretty excited about, as the year comes to a close.
Come on everybody! GET STOKED!
-Your Humble Servant
God why? Why do I have to do this again? have i know had enough pain? Did I do something wrong? I thought we were doing good. We have been growing so close lately. Then this hit. I don’t think I can handle this.
Be still and know that I am God
Psalm 46:10
Did you know what this would do to me? Dis you see the fear? Anger? Heartbreak? Did you see the tears?
My presence will go with you, and i will give you rest.
Exodus 33:14
It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not hail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.
Deut 31:8
Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and i will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
Where is my res? I have been weary and burdened my whole life. When will I find rest? I have lived in hear and suffering. How can i do that again?
The lord is a refuge for the oppressed a stronghold in times of troubles.
Psalm 9:9
Lord i love you. I don’t want to loose you. I don’t want this to tear us apart. I don’t want to loose sight of you like i have so many times before.
Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction of anguish or persecution famine or nakedness or anger or sword? As it is written: Because of You we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all of these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
Romans 8:35-37
You love me. This won’t separate us. We will be closer because i need You. I can’t do this alone, but with you a I am more than a conqueror.
What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who si against us?
Romans 8:31
Amen
-Virginia
There isn’t much I feel lead to say about this, its James 1:2-8. I’ll let James do the talking.
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.
I hope everyone is doing well. Keep your eyes toward Christ in everything. Let Him be sovereign in your life. Pray without end. Love without restriction.
-Carrying His Name
I thought I might take a break from our usual solemn tone.
As I sat listening to Johnny Cash I had a sudden epiphany about a certain dear friend of mine. This particular friend of mine is, on a regular basis, shoeless. At first I thought it was just because he thinks it is more comfortable, or maybe even because he is some sort of new hipster if you will. But after listening to a certain Johnny Cash song, I came to the realization that it must be more serious than that.
As a result of this epiphany i was inspired to change this Johnny Cash song around a little to match my realization. So, in an attempt to bring you to the same conclusion, here it is; with my sincerest apologies to Mr. Johnny Cash.
Man Without Shoes
Well, you wonder why I never wear shoes,
This must give you a sense of bemuse,
And why does my appearance seem to have a poor tone.
Well, there’s a reason for the things that I don’t have on.
I don’t wear shoes for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I don’t wear them for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.
I’m shoeless for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me.
Well, I’m doin’ mighty fine, a shoeless man,
In my old man truck and sandal tan,
But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are around abuse,
Up front there ought ‘a be a Man without shoes.
I don’t wear shoes for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I’m shoeless in mournin’ for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.
And, I don’t wear them for the thousands who have died,
Believen’ that the Lord was on their side,
I don’t wear them for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen’ that we all were on their side.
Well, there’s things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin’ everywhere you go,
But ‘til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
I will continue my shoeless plight.
Ah, I’d love to wear a shoe every day,
And tell the world that everything’s OK,
But I’ll try to carry off on my feet a little of the blue’s,
‘Till things are brighter, I’m the Man without shoes.
-Your Humble Servant
Ellie was a simple girl, with simple things and a simple life. She had her troubles every now and again, but they were nothing she couldn’t get through with little difficulty. Her mother was gone, died of cancer, and her father worked two jobs, never home much. Her brother and sister, both older, tended to ignore their youngest sibling, too self-absorbed to care much. Her friends were mediocre at best, there for her when she needed them, but caught up in the whirlwind of their own lives as well. Ellie was floating through life.
And then she found Him.
The corner of Carter Ave and Woodburn was always a fast paced, high traffic area, both of the automobile and pedestrian kind. It was the center of the city and full of color and life. Part of that life was a homeless man named Roger, who stood several feet back from the intersection with a small cardboard sign, ‘Need money for food’. People would sporadically toss change into the old coffee can at Roger’s feet and move on by, most too caught up in their own lives to do more than glance at the untidy middle aged man. At the end of the day, Roger would pack up his sign and tin can, and wander off down one of the many alleyways in the city, disappearing until the next morning.
There were several homeless shelters in the city that offered meals and a warm place to sleep, but Roger was always at the corner of Carter and Woodburn, rain or shine. Ellie had never spoken to Roger, but had seen him on his corner many times as she sat at the Starbucks with her friends or by herself. It was at this Starbucks that Ellie decided to spend her day watching Roger.
She observed the people who stopped and chatted with him, some in passing, and others would pause for several minutes. There was no rhyme or reason to the array of people who stopped, and they were all quite friendly towards the scruffy man. A man in a business suit waved a quick hello and tossed Roger the paper, mentioning a headline in the sports section he should take a look at. A woman with four children in tow stopped and emptied her change purse into the tin can while her brood of offspring rattled off about their day. Roger nodded with excitement as the eldest one pointed to a wide gap in his mouth, a missing tooth for sure. Even a police officer on a bicycle paused and gave a foil wrapped sandwich to the unkempt man.
Ellie couldn’t grasp what this homeless man’s appeal was to everyone. He drew people to him like a moth to flame. Whether they gave him money or a kind word, he responded the same, with unending gratitude and humility. She was perplexed. How was it this unassuming man was a friend to all and yet still a beggar? Certainly someone would have offered the man a place to stay or even a job of some sorts, he was liked well enough.
As the shadows started to lengthen, the day winding to a close, Roger packed up his things as he did every day. As he started to make his way down the street, Ellie let her impulses get the better of her and jogged after him. “Wait,” she called. Roger slowed to a stop and turned around just as the girl caught up to him. “I’m Ellie”.
“You’ve been watching me all day,” he stated, looking at her with an even gaze that seemed to see right through her. The girl blushed slightly, almost ashamed, as if she had been invading this man’s privacy.
“Does it bother you? Being poor and a beggar?”
“I may be poor by this world’s standards, but I am a rich man in Christ,” Roger said, a slight smile and joy shining in his eyes. How could he be happy as a beggar? The only way to be rich was with money, right?
“What does that mean?” Ellie asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.
“’Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’.”
“Is that from a book?” If it was, it wasn’t from anything that Ellie had ever read. Roger smiled a wide smile then and pulled out a tattered book from his coat pocket.
“A great man named Luke wrote it. He was writing about Jesus’ teachings. This book can tell you all about him.” He held the small book out to Ellie. She looked from the book to Roger’s face, still not understanding what the man was talking about. She took the book from him and flipped through it carefully. She found the chapter titled Luke near the end and found it covered in red text. As she looked up to ask Roger what it meant, she realized he was gone. Ellie frowned and looked down at the book still in her hands. She hadn’t meant to take his book, just understand what he was talking about.
The light had quickly faded and the shop owners were flicking on their neon signs for their nighttime customers. Ellie clutched the book to her firmly and headed towards the bus stop to get home. She didn’t open the book again until she was safely at home and closed in her room. Whatever Roger was trying to tell her, she wanted to understand it completely and give it her full attention. She turned her bedside light on and opened the book to the first page.
“’In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty…’”
-Humbled by Grace
God commands us to think. He does not ask us to follow blindly.
Too often when I was a child, due to my inquisitive nature, I would ask my parents a complex question, such as “why is the sky blue?” They would respond, just as fast as I had asked the question, “because thats how God made it.” The result of this answer would usually be the end of the conversation. At the time I did not realize that that answer meant that “I don’t know and I hope you never ask me that again.” Don’t get me wrong my parents are some of the smartest people I know; I mean they were able to raise me without going completely insane. They just didn’t know that the blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air. However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue. So answering that question in that manner was perfectly acceptable.
I wonder how many times though we answer our own questions that way. Questions such as
“Do we really have free will?”
“Why do we do communion?”
“Why do I believe that…….?”
God does not ask us to follow blindly. He wants us to better understand Him. He wants us to study His word in an attempt to answer our questions in a better way than “thats the way things are.” We must know why we follow Him and choose to believe what we do. Like socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
For example
I believe that Jehovah God is the only God, and only He is responsible for the creation of the heavens and the earth. I believe he sent His son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross as an atonement for our sins. I believe in the preexisting divinity of Jesus Christ. I believe that the Bible is the word of God. I believe in a literal Hell. And I believe that if we do not accept Jesus christ into our hearts and ask for forgiveness then that is were we will end up.
I believe this because it is the only thing that makes since theologically and philosophically.
Another good thing would be to understand why you don’t believe in other things as well.
For example.
I do not believe that Allah is the one true God, and I do no believe that Muhammad was a prophet of God. I do not believe in the holiness of the city of Mecca and Medina, or the holiness of the Black Stone. I do not believe that the Qur’an is a pure revelation from God with no human input.
I believe this because the religion of islam contains too many contradictions. The beginning of the Qur’an, when Muhammad was still Mecca and his followers were still the persecuted minority, depicts a god with a different temperament and goals from the god depicted in the second half of the Qur’an, when the Umma was being built. They also believe that Jesus Christ was only a prophet of Allah, but how could this be if He said He was the way the truth and the light and that no one gets to the father except through him? If he was telling the truth then how is Jesus just simply a prophet, if he was lying then how could he be a prophet at all?
If you are a Christian, but don’t know why you believe what you do, or even what you believe for that matter, I would seriously question your faith and weather or not you truly love Him. This statement, which is very radical I know, can be better explained through a quote by Thomas Goodwin.
“Indeed, thoughts and affections are sibi mutuo causae —the mutual causes of each other: “Whilst I mused, the fire burned” (Psalm 39:3); so that thoughts are the bellows that kindle and inflame affections; and then if they are inflamed, they cause thoughts to boil.”
Thomas Goodwin
-Your Humble Servant
Today as I was getting ready for classes at about 8:30 am, I turned on my iPod on shuffle and did some emailing and such. I have always been one for silence in the morning, but recently I have been drawn to music- the rhythm, the style, the lyrics. The majority of my music is Christian, but I do have some secular songs that I enjoy because of the overall sound or feel.
Last semester before I left for home in Virginia Beach God told me to do something about my love for singing. No, it was not just a feeling, but it was a prophetic word spoken over me by a man who honestly knew nothing of my past of singing, in school and elsewhere. I sang in the chorus throughout school, and in the choir at my home church since I was 13. When I came to The College I stopped singing, and didn’t think twice about it. I also left my love of roller skating behind as I grew older, but that’s beside the point. There was a multitude of change in my life, and recently I realized (as a second semester sophomore!) that I was missing the point of truly listening to what God has for me. I decided that now is the time for change. Needless to say, I will hopefully be singing at Christian Life Center in Williamsburg on Sunday mornings in the Fall semester.
Now that you know a bit about me, on to the point of this little blurb. One of the songs that came on my iPod this morning was “No Such Thing” by John Mayer. (I know, a lot of people have mixed feelings about Mayer, so on and so forth. But personally I just like the sound) I had just finished my devotions and was thinking on God, how He’s in every little thing I say, do, hear, see. So Mayer’s song came on, and I didn’t notice it until his bridge-like part. The lyrics were “I am invincible, as long as I’m alive.” Seems like a groundless argument, seeing as if you’re alive, then you are not defeated in life. Otherwise you would be dead. But then I started thinking about it.
1 Corinthians 15:20-22
“ But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
If I am alive in Christ, I will not die. No, death is nothing.
Romans 8:37-39
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Turns out God is indeed in everything. Thank you Jesus for being the only mediator we need between us and God Himself.
-Always Seeking
