Your Nearness Is To Us Our Good

I am happy with where I am spiritually, and I also am very discontent. I've learned and grown a lot, and with that growth I find myself wanting more. God has been challenging me to move forward and to move up. I have to remind myself that if I am not drawing closer to God, then I am moving away. Stagnant Christians eventually aren't Christians at all. That's something that God has been talking to me about, guarding myself against stagnancy and lethargy. I want this next year to be a year of growth, at the end of 2010 I don't want to find myself at the same place I am now. I know that is so cliche, but it's vividly true to me.
I've become more keenly aware of the Holy Spirit speaking to me and dealing with me. However, contrary to previous notions, His presence is not constricting and demanding, but rather sweet and beautiful. God "working" in a life always meant, to me, that they were becoming more conservative; as if drawing closer to Him always meant the giving up of something. Sometimes something does need to be given up, but He has taught me that when I come to Him and seek Him, my life becomes fuller and I become a more beautiful person.
I'm rediscovering the importance of prayer and praise, and that God doesn't just want my attendance at church but my participation as well. I'm realizing that if I want to see my church move forward, which I desperately do, it starts with me and my life. Closing out this year, I'm praying that God will help me to want Him more, that He will help me in my prayer life, my church life, and my life life.

Challenge Your Faith

I came across this website and ended up spending an exorbitant amount of time on it. I encourage you to check it out, and please don't exit in righteous indignation. Maybe I'm the only one who likes to challenge my faith, but I'm really into apologetics right now and reading these arguments from real people has been very enlightening. It's not enough for me to be able to ramble off a list of facts that I memorized from one of my books, I need to have real answers to real questions. There were some things on there that I have been taught the truth about but there were other things that I don't know how to argue with at this point, but I'm going to search until I find answers. So, if you go there and know all the answers to their objections, maybe you could teach me something.
I'm not endorsing any of this or anything, I just don't want to stay in my little bubble of church and Christianity where I am no help to anyone. I like knowing what atheists are saying, otherwise I'll never be able to assist anyone who has these doubts.

http://www.evilbible.com/


In my own pilgrimage, if I have to choose between a faith that has stared doubt in the eye and made it blink, or a naive faith that has never known the firing line of doubt, I will choose the former every time.
-Gary Parker

Abundant Life

There is, I believe, a god that many people have without realizing it. I did. I think this god is a huge threat especially to young people, even more specifically Christian young people. This god, like every other one, is something innocent and legitimate that we control, but when left unsupervised it slowly controls too much of us. We become addicted to it.

Fun.

The dictionary defines fun as something that provides amusement or enjoyment, laughing, life, entertainment. We want to live a little. Fun, to me, is anything that makes me feel alive. Something invigorating. Something that makes me feel fulfilled. Isn't that what we all want?

Sometimes Christianity doesn't fit in very well with our yearning to have fun. Following God omits a significant amount of "fun" stuff, telling God that He can have everything means giving up some enjoyment. It means passing up that beer when everyone else is drinking and laughing. It means not flirting with that woman. It means not watching that movie that is really funny but you know the humor is inappropriate. It means not going to that unscrupulous company party. It means not giving away your virginity before marriage. It means not joining in that gossip. It means not wearing that attention-getting outfit. It means not using that swear word even though it would make the joke so much funnier. So we feel like we have to choose. Focus on ourselves and have fun or serve God? I'm afraid that too often we choose the former. For many people the roadblock to the Cross is not unbelief in God or anger at God, but a longing for something that they believe He will take - fun.
Even as Christians, I think that sometimes we hold back...just a little. Maybe not in something specific, but in the back of our mind we don't want to let God have it all because He just might take our fun away. And the battle can be intense.

So, is it an either/or matter? Either we enjoy ourselves or we take the straight and narrow and settle for a life of tedium? Is it true that the closer you get to God, the less you enjoy yourself? As if a little of your personality dies as you draw closer to Him?

We are created in God's image. You have personality because God has personality. You love to laugh because God created you to laugh. You want to feel alive because God made you that way. Jesus was not a kill-joy, read about His life, He brought joy to a rigid, hopeless and joy-less generation.

Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. (Ps. 37:4) Delighting yourself in the Lord...it doesn't say simply serving God, or even obeying God's rules, it uses the word "delight". So I have to believe that God doesn't intend Christianity to just be some awful way of life that we submit to in order to avoid hell. John 10:10 "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." It's enjoying the fullness of life through a relationship with Christ. Now to say that God is "fun" would be cheapening Him, but in Him you can be delighted, fulfilled and feel the most alive. Jesus came to bring abundant life. Also, the desires that we have are God-given and are meant to be fulfilled through Him and in His way. "All sin is a warped attempt to meet a God-given need." (Richard Miles) God created in us a NEED to enjoy life, thus, He created a proper way to fulfill it. This verse doesn't mean, however, that if we are Christians that we will get whatever we want and everything will be pleasant. (I'm not Joel Osteen)

Another disclaimer, this doesn't mean that if you aren't a Christian that you will be miserable or that sin ISN'T "fun". Hebrews 11:25 talks about the "pleasures of sin for a season." Sin is pleasurable for a season. That season could be 2 weeks or 40 years, but in the end it will leave you empty and nothing can compare to a life lived the way it was meant to be lived.

Seek fun first and you will be sorely disappointed, but seek God first and you will have abundant life.

Misplaced Ardor

I like God.

He's neat. I love learning about Him. I love that He is fathomless and that I can never know everything about Him. Yet, He reveals Himself to us in little pieces that, to my mind at least, are SO profound. I love when someone or something makes me think of another aspect of God or even of an old truth in a new way. I love talking about Him, writing about Him, reading about Him, thinking about Him.

However due to all of this, I have, in my priorities, replaced my relationship WITH God for learning ABOUT Him. I got focused on the study of God so I slacked off in talking TO Him and listening for His voice. I so enjoyed the theology and loved the meditation but I wasn't IN love with Christ, which is what I want so badly. Now mind you, this wasn't premeditated or intentional. I suppose that I felt that because I had talked about God or written a blog about Him that I had been WITH Him. Thus, prayer and Bible reading times became few and far between. I might would tell you just HOW scarce they were, save for fear of excommunication.

I still love writing and talking about my Lord, after all He is my everything, but I am aspiring to give my relationship with Him first place.

Mere Christianity, a must read

In C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, he takes us on an intellectual journey, strewn with striking metaphors that even the most unlearned mind can comprehend. This odyssey tears down all our preconceptions about theology and God to bring us face to face with raw, unadulterated truth. Common sense and logic join with perspicaciousness to reveal to us a new and fresh picture of a very old, and many times misunderstood, religion. Starting out without the assumption of a God, Lewis’s practical yet intellectual analogies brings us to the conclusion that there is indeed a God, and that His way is real and works.
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists…If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world…Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” This is one of my favorite excerpts from the book. It makes perfect sense, yet on my own I most likely would have never thought of it like that.
I’ve grown up in church, surrounded by Christianity, but I’ve never been forced to think through what I believe and see why it was true. Mere Christianity made me think and discover new truths. It helped me form beliefs and opinions. It took me down the path of Christianity and philosophy. In the end, I came to an improved and deeper knowledge and understanding of the faith I hold dear.