Vision

So, every once in a while, I get this recurring vision. It's not some great vision of God's majesty and splendour; it's more of an idea which keeps coming to me. I often think of all the things I could do with my life which would bring God glory and make plans of how I could do them, but for some reason this one keeps coming back, and often more detailed each time. I want to someday have a home characterized by generosity and peace, where anyone can come and go as they please. They would get fed and shown love, and would even have a place to stay for some time if necessary. It could be a place of recovery and of job-searching. I don't know if this includes me having a family or not, but this idea keeps coming back to me.

Along with this, I think God wants to cultivate generosity and peace in me for it to happen. Ironic, as those are two of the fruits I often struggle with the most, even if it's not obvious. I can give away things which don't matter to me, but when it comes to more "important" things, like my CDs, my iPod, my stereo, and even my time. I'm very selfish. I'm also often easily upset and angered by certain things. Basically, I'm the opposite of generosity and peace most of the time, haha! I'm always thinking about Luke 14 and 18, where Jesus speaks about the cost of following Him, and selling one's possessions. I am rich by the world's standards in general, so why do I feel like I need more stuff so often? God has been slowly convicting me more and more of these things (the chapel speaker today even brought up the story of the rich young ruler), and I'm getting tired of hearing Him tell me things and not obeying Him. I was going to talk a lot more about Jesus' words here, but that's a rant for another day, haha.

These are my thoughts today. I'd appreciate your prayers for generosity and peace.

Some thoughts on Sabbath

So, I've been really looking into the Sabbath, or Shabbat, a lot lately. In my Spiritual Formations class, we talked about some verses in Isaiah 58 about fasting, but I found some verses about Sabbath which I really liked.


"If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, or seeking your own pleasure, or talking idly, then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth..."


You may see some issues with this. For example, it's obviously originally addressed to the Israelites, not Christians (since they weren't even around then). Next, you might say it doesn't apply to us, since it's in the Old Testament and Jesus has freed us from all those laws. I don't want to talk too much about those issues, but I will say a few things. I believe God's Word is living and active, and also that God is outside of time, so from there it's not much of a stretch to say God's Word addresses all of God's people throughout time, including Christians. Also, without getting into a really big argument, I'd also like to say this passage is not technically part of the Law, nor is it a law at all.


This is God talking to His people, telling them the purpose of the Sabbath. Going to Jesus' own words, man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man. This doesn't contradict the passage in Isaiah, even though God says we should keep from pleasuring ourselves "or talking idly." The Sabbath is made for man so that he can have a time to focus completely on God alone. Of course it wouldn't make sense if man was made for the Sabbath. God makes it plain in the Isaiah passage that we are supposed to use the time for focusing on Him, not ourselves. It's not a day for catching up on homework, for fasting, or even for doing nothing at all; it's a day meant for a time of closer communion with God and for seeking Him. It's also one of the most taken-for-granted aspects of our faith. I'm running out of thoughts, so I guess that's it for now. Just thought I'd share that.


Peace.

Mindless chatter

So, my roommate and I were talking about communication and prayer tonight. A big point we discussed was "filler words." I think it's interesting how much we hate silence in prayers. With how we pray, someone might think it must be a sin to speak slowly or to even stop for a second before saying something else. It might even seem like we're trying to fast-talk God into coming through on our prayers. We fall into this thing where we think the more words we can sputter out in succession, the more real our prayers are. We spout out words without even thinking about what we're saying to God. I wonder how many "uhhhs," "likes," and "justs" are stuck in our prayers perpetually. A good speaker avoids these words at all costs. Why, when we learn to not say these words in speech classes, do we let our vocabulary slacken in our prayers? If we avoid these words in talking to people, shouldn't we avoid them in talking to our Creator?

My roommate brought up a fantastic analogy to go with this. The story of Cain and Abel in the Bible illustrates how Abel brought a fantastic sacrifice, best of what he had, while Cain basically brought the leftovers of what he had. Abel's sacrifice was obviously better. Bringing this back to the conversation, it's not that God won't understand out prayers if we use too many fillers; it's more about how we're bringing the best we can to Him, even in our communication with Him.

Besides all this, when we're praying in public, our bad communication habits can be extremely distracting for others and bring their thoughts away from God. When you use "uhh" every five words or so, and it's almost louder than the actual words in your prayer...I'm sorry, but I can't handle that. It's ok to stop and think instead of jamming noise into your prayers. Again, why is silence such a bad thing to us?

I may have mentioned this in a previous blog, but one peeve I have in particular is the word "just." Think of it this way: "God, would You just do this" really means "God, would You do only this one thing,"...but we use "just" at least five times per prayer. To me, that's like lying right to God's face. "God, I'm only asking for this one thing. I'm also only asking for this other one thing. Oh yeah, and only this other thing as well."

Even through all this communication policing, we still can't be overly distracted by what we're saying, or else we fall into selfishness in our prayers. "Oh man, I have to sound good, or else...." If we're worried about how others think of us when we pray, who are we even praying to? Certainly not God, because He wants our full attention on Himself. This goes back again to giving our best for God. He doesn't want meaningless chatter, but he also doesn't want us focusing on ourselves and our words. He wants meaningful, relational conversation and love from us.

Just some thoughts. Comment or talk to me in person.

Peace.

Spiritual Disciplines

So, this is a topic we've all talked and listened to sermons and read books and taken classes about...so I'm not going to preach. Rather, I want to make a little statement about how I've been thinking about it lately and some things I would like help with. God has been teaching me lately how much I need some serious discipline in my life, much more so than usual. I've been recognizing the significance of it more in certain ways. I even just finished a fantastic little textbook called "Mudhouse Sabbath" all about certain disciplines. I've decided I'm going to try harder at not just little daily disciplines, but also more substantial ones like Sabbath and fasting. Everyone takes these and other for granted, and everyone KNOWS that everyone takes them for granted. I would like to start being more diligent in everything I do so I can accomplish a recognition of Sabbath at the end of this coming week. I'm going to try to do better at various other things, but this is the one which I feel I should talk to others about specifically. If everything works out like I want it to this week, I'll probably be unavailable to contact for the most part except in person Friday night through Sunday morning. I would love to talk more about Sabbath and accountability with other disciplines with whoever wants to, as well...preferably in person, and less in the comments section of this blog.


Peace.

Psalm 59

"Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me..."

"Each evening they come back, howling like dogs and prowling about the city. There they are, bellowing with their mouths with swords in their lips - for "Who," they think, "will hear us?"

"O my Strength, I will watch for you, for you, O God, are my fortress. My God in his steadfast love will meet me; God will let me look in triumph on my enemies."

"Each evening they come back, howling like dogs, and prowling about the city. They wander about for food and growl if the do not get their fill."

"But I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress. O my Strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love."


O God, my temptations return every night and day, but You hear all my thoughts. You hear them spouting lies at me, and You hear me try to justify my wrong actions. O God, my Strength, I will watch for You. You are my Fortress and Refuge in my times of trouble. You will let me look in triumph over my old ways, and remind me of Your mighty hand through it all. I will sing aloud of Your steadfast love in the morning because of the love You have shown me. I will watch for You in the night; I will watch for You in the day.

Peace.