Mission

Over the last several hours, I feel as though a new weight has come upon me. Its funny that a single day isn’t a very long period of time. Yet, going from eight days till the wedding to a week till the wedding felt like a huge shift. The line of where responsibility ends and feelings of anxiety begins is a bit blurry over the last day or so.


Its not hesitancy, its not cold feet, its not worry. Its just a weight. A weight of responsibility. It is a bit of realizing not only the magnitude of what Melissa and I going to walk into for our personal lives, but also the magnitude of the effect that this will have on the Kingdom. To be sure, the most important person in our marriage is neither of us. And while that’s easy enough to say for any Christian relationship, saying that God is the center, the focus and the most important Person in our relationship takes on another meaning when the couple have chosen to do something that is beyond themselves.


I’ve said it before, but I really have no interest in living a life that is meaningless or understandable. I think that God does things that are supernatural and impossible to comprehend, He then calls us into that same life. I want that. I am grieved by the moments of my life that don’t reflect Who He is. I know that it is the same for Melissa. I’ll be the first to say that I don’t know what I’m doing. I really don’t. I have friends that are missionaries or pastors and sometimes I feel like they have such a handle on things. They know what they’re doing and have effective Kingdom advancing techniques. At other times, I see into their lives at more real moments and realize that they don’t know what they’re doing either. And I really think that that is the way that God designed it, because if all of life and ministry came down to checking off a list and having things figured out, it would be nothing more than empty religion and passion would become non-existent. Praise God that such a life like that doesn’t even work.


Instead of dead religion, He calls us to go on a mission with Him. He will tell us things, but only when He wants to and only when its necessary. He could give us a perfect plan at one time and we do it and it works great for His purposes. We could then figure that that will do the trick every time, try it again, and fall flat on our face. It seems unpredictable to us, but its perfect sense to Him, whose ways our higher than our own.

Best Friend

When you get married, you should marry your best friend.

I'm going to do that on Saturday.

Evil

A few weeks ago, America came to a pinnacle moment in the modern era. So much of what has happened in our country the last ten years has centered around the terrorist attacks of September 11th. From that day on, the man at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list has been Osama Bin Laden. Of course this man was the mastermind behind the heinous attacks of September 11th. He quite clearly was a man bent towards evil and his actions followed suit.


I was at Cody and Alaina’s when President Obama made that special announcement about how the Navy Seals infiltrated the compound and killed Bin Laden. It was undoubtedly a high moment for the US Military and the President himself. The president’s approval rating goes up and a wave of patriotism sweeps over the nation.

Image from www.washingtonpost.com 

Its an interesting occurrence though, when you really think about it. Americans became happy, because the Seals did to him, what he (and his terrorist group) did to us - killing. Now, I will say that I believe it is a good thing that he is gone, for the sole reason that it could, and probably will, lead to a lot of other people not being killed in any of his terrorist attacks. However, I struggle to “celebrate” his death, or any other person’s for that matter. The Lord wanted something other for that man, but he instead chose to do evil and hardened his heart against the Lord. He subsequently died unrepentant and is now eternally separated from the love and grace of His Creator. He was a wicked man, entirely sadistic and its better for him to be dead then for him to kill other people, but its still sad. His life wasn’t merely wasted, it was hell-bent against the Kingdom of God and that’s sad. I can’t imagine what a terrible pain it would have been to lose a loved one on September 11th. And while, I hope that this can help bring closure to those precious people, I can’t imagine that it does entirely. Because whether or not some evil man that aided in their loved one’s demise is killed in Pakistan, it doesn’t bring their loved one back. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is far too much to ask in this situation because one man’s death isn’t equivalent to 3,000+.


I was having a conversation with Andy yesterday and we began to talk about man’s leaning towards evil. G.K. Chesterton says that that sin nature is the only part of our Christian doctrine that we can prove. I think that’s because we can take one look at the world, and realize just how much people have messed it up. This isn’t blaming it on “that person” or “that group of people,” its all of us, as humankind realizing that each of us have made decisions that were detrimental to ourselves and the world in which we live. In the case of a terrorist mastermind like Bin Laden, that’s an easy conclusion. But if in humility, we could really look at ourselves, we’d soon realize the pain that we’ve caused on ourselves and those around us. It may not be a mass murder, but its certainly not good. A person can kill others in far more ruthless ways than murdering them and none of us are above that.


One thing that Andy and I talked about is who we are when no one else is around. Its that age-old youth group proposition. Who are you when no one else is looking at you? We can all be great in the eyes of the people that see us in public settings, but we can do truly awful things behind closed doors. Whether it be a pornography addiction, slamming someone else online, suicide or any other evil that happens in private, we should realize that there is no end to the darkness we can go into.


And that common saying of “its not affecting anyone else” is just not true. The way that this world is designed is for people to inhabit it together. If you do something bad, that will negatively affect those around you. The reverse of that is equally true. If you are purchasing pornography and using it in private, that is feeding into an evil system that keeps other people, some willing and many not willing, enslaved to producing it. Furthermore, it will have a negative effect on your relationships, especially with your significant other, because you are becoming dissatisfied with them and perverting the way that you see them and the opposite sex in general. Evil spreads very easily.


And yet in this post-modern culture, people don’t want to call it like it is. I was watching the Colbert Report a few weeks ago and a man came on and was talking about a book that he wrote called “The Humanist Bible.” Clearly this man isn’t a Christian, and I’m not particularly offended by the title of his book or the contents of it. Not only because the word “bible” simply means “book,” but also because there’s no point in getting offended by non-believers, they simply don’t hold the same views as me and I can’t judge them according to things they don’t believe in (my job is to merely try and show them the Light and the freedom that I‘ve found in Jesus, before they are judged by Someone else). Anyways, he talks in the opening section about “good and its opposite.” Its interesting, he doesn’t even want to say the word “evil.” We’d like to plug our ears, close our eyes, and pretend that its not there, but how else can you explain that the twentieth century was the bloodiest century in the history of mankind? Evil exists and we must do something about it other than turning a blind eye to it.


For followers of Christ, its not enough to just get by with our salvation and punch our ticket it to heaven. Those are great things, but faith in Jesus is so much more than that. Our relationship with Him is a relationship with a General. When the Old Testament talks about God being the “Lord of Hosts” its talking about Him being the Lord over an angelic military that fights in the heavenly realm which manifests in the physical realm. We are at war with evil and we need to be more gung-ho in that pursuit. The soldier that’s revered is the one that moves in boldness and gives his entire being to the cause, whether that is in life or in death. The enemy is out there and he’s so wicked and he’s tormenting people. And our own sin nature and the evil from within is only making matters worse. We must take this seriously.


Praise be to God that He has overcome and He is overcoming. Praise Him for conquering sin and evil on the cross. He has called us into this fight for good and equipped us with His Spirit that we too may be more than conquerors, for this we give praise.

Verse of the Week: Philippians 1:20-21

So I'm struggling with this notion that for the most part, people don't really care about my blog and my mother has always told me that I'm too sensitive, so I take that probably harder than I ought to. That coupled with the craziness of planning the wedding and the inconsistent schedule that that entails has led me to not be as adamant in updating the blog and becoming more apathetic to do so. I have a couple ideas for a couple posts, but time is waning and I'm not sure it'd be worth the post. Welcome again to my love-hate relationship with blogging. Anyways, even posting the verse of the week was looked over last week, so I'm trying to make up a little by actually posting one on time this week.

I seem to be posting several verses that people "know" but they don't really know. Everybody has heard the last tag in this week's verse, but rarely know where in the Bible its found. Furthermore, memorization helps with meditation on scripture and this is certainly a verse worthwhile for both of those ventures. David Platt wrote in his recent book, Radical, about what a revolutionary concept it is to live for Christ when if you were to die that's actually a good thing. We walk around and are so afraid of death, but biblically that should be something that we look forward to. Beyond that, if we lived like the verse proposes, our lives would be inherently more risky and thus more effective and powerful. This is a challenge to me for sure and I hope that it is for you as well.

"According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." -Phillipians 1:20-21