Have you ever felt like a prophet? I don't mean in the since that you go around proclaiming God's word to the masses and that He speaks to/through you alone. I mean do you ever FEEL like a prophet? When one day you take a look at your life and you realize you have no friends, the world seems big but you are all alone. Yes, God is there, He will always be there, so you can say that you are not completely alone and you have all you need in Him. But, you have no friends. No one to be there when life hits the fan. When work is hard and other relationships are on the rocks, when your faith is being tested and you need that pillar to hold you up. Like a prophet out of the Old Testament you are standing alone, nobody around to care.
I feel like a prophet. People tell me "you have lots of friends" I laugh because who they say are my friends are not. Yes, I know them and we hang out...sometimes. It may sound strange to say that one has "standards" when it comes to friends. Mine are simply be a friend to me, show me that you want to be my friend. Don't keep our conversations at surface level try and get to know the real me. Show me that when I try and run and hide from the world you will come and knock down my door trying to find me. So many times have I had friends for just a season. I try to be the friend I want. When you go and hide, when life hits your fan I try to go find you. I try to be there and listen so that you know I am there, I will be your pillar and rock when you cannot stand alone. I just ask that you do the same. Has anyone? sure I have 4 friends, good friends. But lately those who I have been trying to be friends with have been leaving me in the dust. Life is hitting the fan in some ways but I have non of them to call on. It is as though you wanted me for your entertainment and now you do not need or want me anymore. As though I could just walk off the face of the earth and non of you would notice. Maybe I have been right all this time, maybe all you guys want are friends that meet your social standards. I am not like everyone else. I do not apologize for that. I will say what i feel is needed, I will have fun and be strange and it may seem "immature" I know I am young and have a lot to learn. I know I am not the shinny new person to the group.
Right now I feel like a prophet. Standing alone and non of you have an idea because you have never taken the time to try and be my friend.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Seeing God everywhere
Lets face it most of us to not think about God often. We have to consciously think about Him in our everyday lives. We are so consumed with other jank that God takes a back burner to our lives. I am just like everyone else there are times/days where I don't think much about God. But almost every night when I see a beautiful sunset or when it is clear and i can see the mountains far off I think to myself "Wow God you are good" who else could have made something so beautiful from nothing. And He shares it with us. Outside of nature I normally don't think "wow God is good" unless He has helped me or a family member in some way. Most of us don't, How many times have we finished talking to a friend and walked away thinking God is amazing and thanking Him for creating the other person so that we could be friends and so on? Not many, at least for me. But a few weeks ago while in Portland Or, on senior trip we went to Voodoo donuts and after buying our donuts we were waiting outside in the rain for our vans to come back around and pick us up. I noticed a homeless guy maybe 25-30 years old just chilling in the rain. I had already had some of my donut and didn't need the rest so i just gave it to him. At this moment most would just walk away but i knew i had sometime and that nothing would happen because i had some of my brothers in Christ watching my back. I started talking to him and found out his name is Jeremy and he had moved to Oregon from Texas he didn't go too deep into his story, which is fine and expected. But we just talked for a few minutes and in those few minutes i felt heart broken and was wishing that i could help him in anyway. maybe talking was the thing he needed at that time. someone to show him that they care and that he is not invisible. after a while of talking our vans came around and i had to leave and i asked what his name was and told him that i would be keeping him in my prayers. To be honest there have been days that i have not thought about him but on the days that he comes to mind i pray for him. will i ever see Jeremy again? probably not. Did i make a huge change in his life? probably not. But in those moments i was reminded of what we (as followers of Christ) are called to do. To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, to love all. To take time to try and help those that we can and to treat everyone as Christ would, as a human. Nobody is invisible to God, He loves all those that he has created.
My challenge for all 2 of you that read this (haha) is that the next time you see someone in need (in anyway) help in anyway you can. Maybe it is just talking/listening to them maybe you can give them food or a drink or something maybe all you can do is pray for them. When you see an ambulance on its way to an emergency send up a prayer for wherever they are going and for whomever they are going to help. If you see someone broken down on the side of the road and if you can help them (i also understand, that as a woman, it is not always safe in that situation one can call people to go help) Open your eyes pray and ask God to show you those that He needs/wants you to help that day.
My challenge for all 2 of you that read this (haha) is that the next time you see someone in need (in anyway) help in anyway you can. Maybe it is just talking/listening to them maybe you can give them food or a drink or something maybe all you can do is pray for them. When you see an ambulance on its way to an emergency send up a prayer for wherever they are going and for whomever they are going to help. If you see someone broken down on the side of the road and if you can help them (i also understand, that as a woman, it is not always safe in that situation one can call people to go help) Open your eyes pray and ask God to show you those that He needs/wants you to help that day.
Lukewarm leftovers
So a couple weeks ago we had a revival at church and then we had senior trip. This was where the young adults group takes the seniors in high school on a trip to wherever and gets to know them and show them that there is something for them after youth group in the church. Anyway I was in charge of this years senior trip and while looking through songs to sing and thinking/praying about what the theme should be and what I should talk about the simple word Worship stuck out to me. So our theme was Worship, living for a loving God.
While praying and searching for some sort of bible verse or something to follow one of my friends suggested I read the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan. The title of 5 of his chapters became kind of an outline. Some of you right now are probably thinking "how does the book crazy love work with your 'worship' theme?" easy. I believe that the only way one can truly worship is through love, so it works. We do not worship something we hate, we cant.
When we truly Love God we can truly worship Him. All weekend I also used the analogy i read about in Lui Giglios book "the Air I Breathe" he states that everyone worships and we can find out what we worship by following our path that leads to the throne. Wherever we spend most of our time, money, effort/strength is what we worship.
Anyway this all lead up to one night when I talked about being a "lukewarm" Christian and giving God "leftovers" God addresses how much he hates lukewarmness in Revelation when he says he will "Spit them out of his mouth" now when it comes to spit most of us think of the typical lugy. This is not what is being said here. This is the only time in the Bible that this Greek word is used, it translates to spit/gagging/wanting to blow chunks. We can think about this in our terms, a little, who likes their food to be lukewarm? or lukewarm coffee? or even a lukewarm bath/shower?
Francis Chan relates a lukewarm Christian back to the parable of the seed. He states "I think most American churchgoers are the soil that chokes seed because of all the thorns. Thorns are anything that distracts us from God. When we want God and a bunch of other stuff, that means we have thorns in our soil. A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled on top of it." (67)
I agree with the author, going back to Gigglio's analogy of the path I think that for some of us that path does lead to God but we have thorns that can pop up on our path and we need God (The Great Gardener) to come into our lives and take them out and that may take time and some digging to get to the root of the thorn bush.
For the average christian, one who does love God and they do worship Him but they can have things that come up and try and choke that relationship. Nobody is alone in that aspect.
Leftovers;
When one is a lukewarm christian all they can give God is "leftovers" this pisses God off so much. As if being lukewarm wasn't bad enough we give Him the worst we can. By worst I mean we are not giving Him our best. That's all He wants and He deserves it! I mean come on He is the Creator of the World! He made EVERYTHING He is All that IS and once WAS! He should be getting nothing less than our best in every way! The Bible talks about this in Malachi 1:8 when God is saying that what the priests are doing is Evil. They are not sacrificing their best and most pure animals, they are trying to give God animals that have blemishes and in someway are not following the law that He established in Leviticus. He tells them that they are being evil and He wants them to close the temple gates. So in a way God rather us not give Him any form of sacrifice if it is not our best.
To wrap this up; If we are lukewarm (i.e. not living fully for God everyday and striving to learn more about Him and not loving as He loves us) in the end he will vomit us out of His mouth in disgust. And He rather us (be cold) not sacrifice to Him than to give Him something that is less than our best.
And I believe that if we truly love God and accept His love we will not be a lukewarm christian that serves leftovers. We would not be able to because our love is such that we can give nothing but our whole selves and our best. Again this does not mean that I believe that one who truly loves God will have and easy life (see Job) but it will be a better life worth living. He created us so that we may Worship Him.
While praying and searching for some sort of bible verse or something to follow one of my friends suggested I read the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan. The title of 5 of his chapters became kind of an outline. Some of you right now are probably thinking "how does the book crazy love work with your 'worship' theme?" easy. I believe that the only way one can truly worship is through love, so it works. We do not worship something we hate, we cant.
When we truly Love God we can truly worship Him. All weekend I also used the analogy i read about in Lui Giglios book "the Air I Breathe" he states that everyone worships and we can find out what we worship by following our path that leads to the throne. Wherever we spend most of our time, money, effort/strength is what we worship.
Anyway this all lead up to one night when I talked about being a "lukewarm" Christian and giving God "leftovers" God addresses how much he hates lukewarmness in Revelation when he says he will "Spit them out of his mouth" now when it comes to spit most of us think of the typical lugy. This is not what is being said here. This is the only time in the Bible that this Greek word is used, it translates to spit/gagging/wanting to blow chunks. We can think about this in our terms, a little, who likes their food to be lukewarm? or lukewarm coffee? or even a lukewarm bath/shower?
Francis Chan relates a lukewarm Christian back to the parable of the seed. He states "I think most American churchgoers are the soil that chokes seed because of all the thorns. Thorns are anything that distracts us from God. When we want God and a bunch of other stuff, that means we have thorns in our soil. A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled on top of it." (67)
I agree with the author, going back to Gigglio's analogy of the path I think that for some of us that path does lead to God but we have thorns that can pop up on our path and we need God (The Great Gardener) to come into our lives and take them out and that may take time and some digging to get to the root of the thorn bush.
For the average christian, one who does love God and they do worship Him but they can have things that come up and try and choke that relationship. Nobody is alone in that aspect.
Leftovers;
When one is a lukewarm christian all they can give God is "leftovers" this pisses God off so much. As if being lukewarm wasn't bad enough we give Him the worst we can. By worst I mean we are not giving Him our best. That's all He wants and He deserves it! I mean come on He is the Creator of the World! He made EVERYTHING He is All that IS and once WAS! He should be getting nothing less than our best in every way! The Bible talks about this in Malachi 1:8 when God is saying that what the priests are doing is Evil. They are not sacrificing their best and most pure animals, they are trying to give God animals that have blemishes and in someway are not following the law that He established in Leviticus. He tells them that they are being evil and He wants them to close the temple gates. So in a way God rather us not give Him any form of sacrifice if it is not our best.
To wrap this up; If we are lukewarm (i.e. not living fully for God everyday and striving to learn more about Him and not loving as He loves us) in the end he will vomit us out of His mouth in disgust. And He rather us (be cold) not sacrifice to Him than to give Him something that is less than our best.
And I believe that if we truly love God and accept His love we will not be a lukewarm christian that serves leftovers. We would not be able to because our love is such that we can give nothing but our whole selves and our best. Again this does not mean that I believe that one who truly loves God will have and easy life (see Job) but it will be a better life worth living. He created us so that we may Worship Him.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Friday, November 26, 2010
Starbucks Spirituality
So this afternoon I met up with a friend for some coffee at Starbucks. We were just talking about life and whats been going on. After about an hour of this she excused herself to go use the restroom, while I was sitting there the song "Youth Ministarz" popped into my head. There is a line "rollin' to the Starbucks to work on my message..." as I though about this another thing popped into my head. Starbucks Spirituality, or faith. I have been reading the book Ministry Mutiny by Greg Stier. The whole book is about, well Ministry Mutiny. There is a young youth pastor who was about to quit his job because he felt like a failure, his youth group was not growing spiritually and he felt as though it was all his fault and he could do nothing. He ends up meeting another youth pastor named Tony. Tony came up with the ministry mutiny and has been meeting with Ty (the young YP) once a week and has been mentoring him.
In chapter 6, Grow Deep, the two meet at a Starbucks. Ty orders some complicated drink and Tony orders just plain coffee. This gets them into the conversation about how everyone orders different drinks. How everyone tries to "order" their own faith. People try and pick and choose what parts of Christianity they like and ones that they don't and go with it. everyone wants to be an individual.
One of the arguments I love is: Can you be a Christian and not go to church? many would say yes, and explain why. Yet others would say no, I am one of them. I believe that there are certain things that Christians do and don't do, believe and don't believe. Such as, if someone believes that the trinity are 3 separate persons/bodies they are a Polytheist and therefore not christian because Christian's are monotheists. There are other theological things that the church believes that people either don't know, or disagree with. I believe that there are many issues like this that some throw out the window because they "don't like it" and by doing so they are not a Christian because they are not doing/believing what the Church (universal) believes one must do/believe in order to be a true Christian.
Another conversation that some friends and I started a few days ago was on pacifism. And how someone we knew believes that you cannot be a christian if you are not a pacifist. Jesus was one so we must be, or not be called Christian. I myself have a hard time with this. we all presented our perspectives and what we know and believe now. But it is things like this that get me to think about where I stand on such subjects. Because I was never taught what the Church (universal) believes and stands upon.
In the end we all agreed that the church sucks at teaching its people what is and is not christian. Maybe it is because we all want our own special flavor of Christianity. I agree that some topics are gray areas, but others are not.
I don't know about you, but I don't want a Starbucks faith. I think that is something that keeps people naive and not willing to listen or learn other perspectives. Instead of learning they will cop out with "well this is what I believe, you believe what you want" in other words "I like frapichino's and you like moca's, you drink what you want I will drink what I want" not caring that one is (or could be) theologically wrong and against what the Church says. We do not want to offend people and people are easily offended or defencive when it comes to religion. In the end I think a lot of people are sending the message that they are more afraid of people not liking them rather than people calling themselves one thing but living another way. This is how the name Christian became tainted in the first place. People calling them selves Christ followers yet they were not acting, and living the way one who follows Christ does.
Think about it, talking with your pastor's, parents, friends, and whomever else about it. Do you have Starbucks faith?
In chapter 6, Grow Deep, the two meet at a Starbucks. Ty orders some complicated drink and Tony orders just plain coffee. This gets them into the conversation about how everyone orders different drinks. How everyone tries to "order" their own faith. People try and pick and choose what parts of Christianity they like and ones that they don't and go with it. everyone wants to be an individual.
One of the arguments I love is: Can you be a Christian and not go to church? many would say yes, and explain why. Yet others would say no, I am one of them. I believe that there are certain things that Christians do and don't do, believe and don't believe. Such as, if someone believes that the trinity are 3 separate persons/bodies they are a Polytheist and therefore not christian because Christian's are monotheists. There are other theological things that the church believes that people either don't know, or disagree with. I believe that there are many issues like this that some throw out the window because they "don't like it" and by doing so they are not a Christian because they are not doing/believing what the Church (universal) believes one must do/believe in order to be a true Christian.
Another conversation that some friends and I started a few days ago was on pacifism. And how someone we knew believes that you cannot be a christian if you are not a pacifist. Jesus was one so we must be, or not be called Christian. I myself have a hard time with this. we all presented our perspectives and what we know and believe now. But it is things like this that get me to think about where I stand on such subjects. Because I was never taught what the Church (universal) believes and stands upon.
In the end we all agreed that the church sucks at teaching its people what is and is not christian. Maybe it is because we all want our own special flavor of Christianity. I agree that some topics are gray areas, but others are not.
I don't know about you, but I don't want a Starbucks faith. I think that is something that keeps people naive and not willing to listen or learn other perspectives. Instead of learning they will cop out with "well this is what I believe, you believe what you want" in other words "I like frapichino's and you like moca's, you drink what you want I will drink what I want" not caring that one is (or could be) theologically wrong and against what the Church says. We do not want to offend people and people are easily offended or defencive when it comes to religion. In the end I think a lot of people are sending the message that they are more afraid of people not liking them rather than people calling themselves one thing but living another way. This is how the name Christian became tainted in the first place. People calling them selves Christ followers yet they were not acting, and living the way one who follows Christ does.
Think about it, talking with your pastor's, parents, friends, and whomever else about it. Do you have Starbucks faith?
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Relationship
It seems as though i always find myself in this spot.
Longing to love someone in that special way but never getting the chance.
Normally I am able to excuse these feelings when I see myself falling for someone.
Typically I can say something like "we could never be because he is not a christian, and doesn't like me" or "He is intellectually out of my league, I could never catch up, and he doesn't like me"
But this one, this one is different.
Somehow I cannot just let him go.
I talk to my close friends and family about it.
many have said "Just drop it. forget about him"
others say "just pray about it"
or even better "just wait and see what God has planned"
Non of these seem to work for me.
The father I run from him he follows,
in conversation and thoughts.
I pray about it and it seems as though God is telling me "just wait"
for what? HE DOES NOT LIKE ME! what am i waiting for?!?!
I just want these feelings gone, or returned.
Today I was thinking back to try and find out where the "turning point" was. As in when did i start to think of him different, or wonder about him in any other way other than friends. What I found did not help me. Why? because it was the first day that we met. We hung out and after having one conversation with him I knew that there was something different. That he is just not the same as any of the other guys.
Now, being a college student and feeling the pressure of being in a relationship, I try to not think about guys as more than friends when we are first meeting and to just keep them there. This normally works out well seeing as out of the 20+ guys that I have met and gotten to know on some level, only 7 of them do i consider close friends and only 2 have i ended up having some feelings for. One of them I knew would never happened and that ended quickly. But this one...everything about it is different and weird. I want to let it go, let him go but I don't feel like I can for some reason. I am at a lose as to what I should do. I am trying to forget about him and move on. But a large piece of me is saying to hang on.
onto what? On top of not liking me he has fallen for someone else. Knowing that makes my heart ache and my stomach turn. He makes me feel sick yet good, not wanted yet loved, not good enough yet just what he needs and is looking for, invisible yet the only girl in the room.
I have written all this to say BLAH BOYS STINK I"MA BE A NUN!
Longing to love someone in that special way but never getting the chance.
Normally I am able to excuse these feelings when I see myself falling for someone.
Typically I can say something like "we could never be because he is not a christian, and doesn't like me" or "He is intellectually out of my league, I could never catch up, and he doesn't like me"
But this one, this one is different.
Somehow I cannot just let him go.
I talk to my close friends and family about it.
many have said "Just drop it. forget about him"
others say "just pray about it"
or even better "just wait and see what God has planned"
Non of these seem to work for me.
The father I run from him he follows,
in conversation and thoughts.
I pray about it and it seems as though God is telling me "just wait"
for what? HE DOES NOT LIKE ME! what am i waiting for?!?!
I just want these feelings gone, or returned.
Today I was thinking back to try and find out where the "turning point" was. As in when did i start to think of him different, or wonder about him in any other way other than friends. What I found did not help me. Why? because it was the first day that we met. We hung out and after having one conversation with him I knew that there was something different. That he is just not the same as any of the other guys.
Now, being a college student and feeling the pressure of being in a relationship, I try to not think about guys as more than friends when we are first meeting and to just keep them there. This normally works out well seeing as out of the 20+ guys that I have met and gotten to know on some level, only 7 of them do i consider close friends and only 2 have i ended up having some feelings for. One of them I knew would never happened and that ended quickly. But this one...everything about it is different and weird. I want to let it go, let him go but I don't feel like I can for some reason. I am at a lose as to what I should do. I am trying to forget about him and move on. But a large piece of me is saying to hang on.
onto what? On top of not liking me he has fallen for someone else. Knowing that makes my heart ache and my stomach turn. He makes me feel sick yet good, not wanted yet loved, not good enough yet just what he needs and is looking for, invisible yet the only girl in the room.
I have written all this to say BLAH BOYS STINK I"MA BE A NUN!
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