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Friday, 13 June 2008

So I have this awesome friend named Jesse who I now have the wonderful privilege of working with. Jesse is one of those people that everyone knows and loves, mostly because he's a big teddy bear that can sing with an amazingly beautiful man-voice and is one of the most lovingly outgoing people I know.

I bring up Jesse because he taught me something today, and I hope it's something that sticks with me and motivates me to make a change in myself.

You see, work's been going a little hard lately. There's a lot of irons in the fire, and people are getting anxious about some things that have been taking us much longer to do than we originally thought. There's plenty of blame to go around as to why it's taking so long, but that's not the point. The point is Jesse decided to grab me and a few other brothers that I'm blessed to be able to work with and pray about it.

The funny thing isn't that an awesome brother like Jesse would do such a thing, the interesting part is that while he was talking about the burden that God has put on his heart for our team and how he believes that God will give us favor with our customers and with the other people in our company if we give it over to Him to do so, but that I smiled. It wasn't one of those "I'm touched that someone would have a burden for me" or "Wow that's cool that you're that close with God and sensitive to His urgings". It was more like the smile you get when you see a child picking up some heavy object with the help of someone much larger, but naively thinking they're doing it all by themselves. I thought it was cute. The next thought I had was simply "Why?". Why would I have any doubt that God would do what he says? Why would I not believe that prayer is powerful and makes a difference? We have a direct line to the Creator of the universe who has promised to listen when we call, how can the importance of that be overstated, much less smiled at?

Long story short, I think I have some work to do. If I knew nothing else at this point I would know that I don't pray enough, otherwise how could I have that sort of short sighted knee jerk reaction to something so amazing? It's kind of sad to put yourself under the microscope, especially when you have such a shining example of what you want to find in Christ, and there's no way to measure up, but, in the end, it's only by finding where we fall short of Him that we find our need for Him, and where we can grow to be more like Him. My prayer is that I can know better the power of prayer, not to change my circumstances, but to change me. And that will only come with time, patience, and practice.

Wednesday, 13 December 2006

And we wonder why Christians tend to get little intellectual respect...

And that's me on my soap box

Monday, 24 July 2006

So.........

I'M GONNA BE A DAD!!!

Wednesday, 10 May 2006

Currently Reading
The Pursuit of Man
By A. W. Tozer
see related
My amazing wife had this fantastic idea, here's the jist:

1. I read part of a good book.
2. She reads the same part of the same book
3. We get to have really good talks about what we read
4. Repeat steps 1-4. (Yay for infinite recursion)

So as you can probably see, the first book we're reading together is A.W. Tozer's "The Pursuit of Man". That man knew lots of good stuff, and God bless 'im for writing so much of it down.

What we've been reading lately has been about something that I've thought about a lot. The Gospel can really be accepted in two different ways, in word alone, or in word and in power. A person can hear the Gospel and totally agree with it, but unless they hear it and accept it with the power that God has given it, nothing really happens. Even the demons believe that the resurrection happened. It says in scripture that when we accept Christ we are made a new creation (2 Corithians 5:17), but it is possible to hear the Gospel, believe it is true, and not truely accept it. In that case we're the same as we were before. We may change a little bit, but only as a dog may look different after it's had a bath. Once we are in Christ, we're a wholly different thing, the dog is now an elephant. "The old is gone, and the new has come."

As a person who loves learning things, this seems a dangerous thing to me. I enjoy learning new things, but in this case, just knowing the truths doesn't get you all the way there. Sometimes I worry that I intellectualize my faith to the point where it's not really faith, but just believing that the truth is just that, the truth. I look at my life and wonder if i'm really a new creation. I still have some of the same flaws as I did before, but did I just let them come along for the ride, or are they taking me for one?

My favorite part of the Chronicles of Narnia is in Voyage of the Dawn Trader, when Eustice has been turned into a dragon, and Aslan comes. Eustice has been trying and trying to scratch the scales off of his body, but each time he removes a layer, there's another layer underneath. But when Aslan takes some of them off, there's real skin underneath. It hurts, but it's a necessary hurt. And when Aslan is done, Eustice is a boy again, but he's new. When he returns to his companions, they all recognize that while he looks the same as he did before, he's not the same person.

We all have doubts from time to time. We're broken people, how can we not? But praise God that he uses even those doubts for his glory. Whenever I start wondering if my faith really isn't faith it always brings me back to Him; sends me running to His arms. When the passion for the knowledge of God takes outweighs the passion for knowing Him, don't blame Him when He seems distant. Afterall, who was the one who wandered off?

Saturday, 18 February 2006

Sometimes I get scared that I'm too complacent in my life. I worry that I'm getting too comfortable because that's usually when God turns my world upside down. Not that it's never happened before, but I've never been married at the time. Now if my world turns on it's head, there's an amazing woman that get's to come along for the ride. I look at my life, at all the blessings that God has given me, and it makes me think about how much of it I'm holding onto. A wise friend told me that every so often he thinks of the things in his life he's holding onto and what he would do if that blessing was taken away. It let's him put into perspective the things that he's not giving up to God, and helps him let go and put God back at the head of his life. It's a hard thing to do sometimes, realizing that the job I go to everyday, the condo that God's blessed me to be able to afford, and even my amazing wife, none of them are really mine. He can take any of them away and be perfectly justified, since they are His to begin with. What am I holding onto so tight that I won't let Him get close to me?