|
Jason4Christ
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Jason
Country: United States
State: Illinois
Metro: Chicago
Gender: Male
Interests: Jesus. Loving God. Redemption. Fulfilling God’s calling on my life. My life’s only purpose is to live for and serve God. In my past I’ve lived for everything else—I’ve gone down all those other roads and I can tell you that they only lead to death, pointless suffering and bondage. I am still finding my own purpose for which God has allowed me my next breath. Words that describe me: Thinker. Ideas. Theologian. Philosopher. Barista. Speaker. Film-maker. Loner. I enjoy music, computers, filming, hanging w/ friends, talking to people, helping others, reading and laughing at myself. Movies I like: Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Batman Begins, Gladiator, Brave Heart, King Arthur, Inside Man, and the Star Wars Trilogy (IV, V, VI).
2 Corinthians 5:14-15
Expertise: I'm an expert at... ummmm... thinking... dreaming... and at making random stupid witty comments that have no intrinsic value what-so-ever.
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
7/22/2003
|
|
|
Even when
we are faithless...
It occurs to me that though I’ve walked with the Lord for a
number of years there have been times I have sought after other things that I
have valued more then Jesus. There have
been times I have given into the darkness—allowing my corrupted flesh to twist
what Jesus has done in me and turn it into something ugly. There have been times when I have allowed
bitterness to eat my soul away. There
have been times when I have allowed loneliness to seek after things other then
Jesus. There have been times when I have
felt betrayed, abandoned and shamed by other people. But Jesus has been there all along.
"I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast
within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord’s great love we are
not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your
faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’"
(Lamentations 3:19-24)
Because
God is merciful, I am not consumed in His righteous justice. Because of God’s grace I am still alive. Because of God’s compassion I am offered
forgiveness. Because of God’s great love
I am a child of the King of Kings. In
fact, His compassions are new every morning.
His faithfulness is great. His
faithfulness is full. His faithfulness
never fails. His faithfulness is deep as
the sea. His faithfulness is wonderful.
"if we are faithless, he will remain
faithful, for he cannot disown himself." (2 Timothy 2:13)
God
is faithful. Therefore, I will continue
to remind myself that the Lord is my portion and therefore I will wait for
Him. I hate waiting. But since God’s faithfulness never fails,
since God is my portion I will wait.
What a wonderful thing. To wait
for the one who will not fail me. What a
generous portion—the Lord. He is
huge. He is bigger then our idea of
big. He is more fulfilling then our idea
of full. He satisfies when we think we
are already satisfied. He is more then
we could need. He is more then we could
want.
"if we are faithless, he will remain
faithful, for he cannot disown himself." (2 Timothy 2:13)
God
you are faithful. Your faithfulness is
the thing that continues to astound me.
I disappoint. You never disappoint. I become bitter. You forgive.
I am small. You are huge. I am nothing.
You are everything. I become
impatient. Your patience is
endures. I abandon those I love. You rescue me. I am faithless. You are faithful. I am merciless. Your mercy overflows. ...He will remain faithful, for He
cannot disown Himself.
| | |
| The Divorce of the Sacred and the Secular
The hard-metal Canadian band, Three Days Grace, might sound Christian in name, but Three Days Grace does not profess to be a “Christian” band, and their values and morals in their songs do not reflect Christian thinking. Like other bands such as Linkin Park, Three Days Grace often sings from the depth of their feelings and certainly hits the nail on the head with their listeners. In their song, “Animal I Have Become”, the lead singer laments his struggle to escape the “animal inside of me” and pleads “somebody help me tame this animal I have become”. Though he laments various (sin) problems he experiences in his life such as lying and rage, he also accepts his fate saying, “No one will ever change this animal I have become.”
Now, the numerous parallels and similarities between this song and the seventh chapter of the epistle of Romans written almost two-thousand years ago astound me. This seemingly secular (pagan) band and God’s word both agree about a common human experience--it is an experience I believe the evangelical Christian world refers to as “sin”. Should I throw this song in the recycle bin on my desktop because it never references God or Jesus, and doesn’t leave much room for hope in being redeemed from the nagging plague of sin? I don’t think so. It has a redeemable quality that I think is valuable. In this song I have a wonderful illustration of what the human condition is like apart from God’s redeeming work in a person’s soul.
In order to practice solid Christian living, we must mimic God’s redemption in our integration of the “Christian” world and the “secular” world. It is sad that we must speak of integration of faith with other subjects. To imply that we must “integrate” something implies that whatever elements we are integrating are not combined into a harmonious whole already. To counter balance this, we must pursue the re-integration of faith into all aspects of life. Christian thought has bought into Plato’s philosophy that ideas were higher and better then the material world thus creating a false dichotomy. Throughout history, Christians have condemned certain activities as “un-spiritual” and other activities as being more “holy” or “spiritual”. However, C.S. Lewis writes in The Weight of Glory,
“All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest, and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not. Christianity does not simply replace our natural life and substitute a new one; it is rather a new organization which exploits, to its own supernatural ends, these natural materials.”
(Lewis, 54)
The idea of secular implies that something is worldly, material or of the world. This implies some sort of split between what is spiritual and what is of the world. Like I said, it was Plato who began this divorced thinking. It was his ideas that eventually lead to the division between the sacred and the secular. Plato reasoned in his analogy of the cave that the lesser—the material things were but a shadow of the better (higher) things the forms or ideas. So for instance, a carpenter’s idea (form) of a chair in his mind is better then the material chair that he makes—because the material chair is merely a representation of the carpenter’s idea. Christians, unfortunately, have applied this idea to their theology—making some sort of distinction between something being secular (bad) and being sacred (good). Christians often made the distinction between vocations arguing that one was better or pleased God more than another. Throughout history the ideas and the application of the divide between the sacred and the secular has changed. Holy artifacts were thought to be “extra holy” and common laypeople needed spiritual guidance from “holy priests”.
Whatever its’ form, the divide between the sacred and the secular has been misleading. David writes, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it…” (Ps. 24:1) Since God created matter, God saves garbage men and God uses normative—ordinary means to accomplish his will in the world—all the earth is indeed His since He created it and holds it together. Peter was confronted with this truth when God through a revelation commands Peter to eat non-kosher animals. The Jews had all kinds of separation regulations that went beyond something being sin or not—the point God was trying to make to Peter was that He had opened the way up to Gentiles as well as Jews—erasing the secular and sacred lines. The Apostle Paul wrote, “If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for? So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” (1 Cor. 10:30-31)
This does not mean that we erase God’s guidelines to distinguish between sin and righteousness. Some activities outside of their God given guidelines do not honor or please God. Sex is a gift from God. Sex outside of marriage is not only wrong—it ruins us and offends God. Food is a gift from God. Gluttony is a sin—that is not only unhealthy but dishonoring to God. However, to label some things as secular and other things as sacred is not what God intended. God intends us to “live in the world but not to be of the world”. He desires us to live with critical minds—and to be critical of how we live. Paul writes, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity…” (Eph. 5:15-16) If we continue to live just accepting and drinking everything we see and hear—uncritically then we will continue to become like those who do not know God. Learning to see things as the rest of the world sees—not seeing God in much of anything. Thinking like they think—becoming self centered. Living like the there is a false dichotomy—where some things are secular (having nothing to do with God) where as other things are spiritual being filled with God—rather then being critical minded and learning to live as God would have us live going about activities in a way that is pleasing to Him.
It is important to consistently think of God in every thought and in every single action because if we divorce God from how we go about every thought and activity that we engage in we will be divorcing God from our very lives. If we do not see God in everything that happens, in our every thought, in our every action we will become like the non-believers that the Apostle Paul writes about, “They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” (Eph 4:18) To understand how God sees your neighbor, to see how God sees starvation and aids in Africa, to understand how God thinks about your music, to see the world through His eyes and hear the world with His ears—this is what it means to consistently think of God in everything.
Paul saw that in order to convince his pagan audience, he had to convince them that God was already involved in every aspect of their lives—and that the god(s) were not compartmentalized as ruling various aspects of life—nor were the god(s) confined to the temples the Greeks had built. In fact, Paul argues effectively that there is only one God—who is heaven of the heavens and the earth and everything contained there in. It is so crucial that I integrate God into the areas He has been “divorced” from in the secular world and understand bad patterns of thinking where I’ve “created God in my own image”. It is important to see where my culture—my forefathers have affected my presuppositions—my assumptions and dispositions that shape the way I even read the Scriptures—in order to separate the truth from the lies.
Yet—so often, I live like a deist—not seeing God as being involved in every area of my life—seeing myself as the one responsible for everything. If I am to change this bad pattern of thinking, I have to learn to see God in everything and more importantly, I need to learn to see the world as God sees it, hear it as He is listening to it—and get involved in a way that pleases Him. Just like Paul mentioned, while He does not need us, yet He chooses to use us. I can become involved in helping to redeem the world and bring it back to shalom.
| | |
| Thoughts
about thinking.
“…prepare your minds…”
(1 Peter 1:13)
If you know me, you probably have figured out by now that I
like to think. In fact many people
accuse me of overanalyzing things. I
even have gotten accused of trying to find things that were not even
there. But as the old adage goes, if
there is dirt to be dug, there is treasure to be found. Ok, so maybe there is no adage that goes like that… but perhaps there should be. I’m sure there
are times I have over-heated and over-grinded my engines thinking too much, too
hard or too long about a particular thing.
I mean after all, I find it quite hilarious when a friend of mine will
make some statement or assertion that seems off track to me. So as my father did with me I start to fire
questions until the original statement is made to look illogical, untrue or
ridiculous, and all I ever did was ask questions. Do I do this because I’m cynical, critical
and like to destroy people’s self esteem?
That is not my intent, for I know that I love to help people. I disassemble people’s statements to show
faulty reasoning, inflated truth, fallacies in logic and flat out lies. Besides, it is fun to play with people's minds.
In the end, I would rather err on the side of thinking too much
since we live in a culture that has lost the value of deep thought. Maybe thought was too much work, or maybe it
was because thought meant consciences which would lead to the ruin their
fleshly fun and their lusts that they wanted to engage in.
Whatever the reasons, you will have to agree with me. Much of our culture has lost the value of
thinking. Then again, maybe you don’t
agree with me, and that’s fine. I
believe that God gave you a capable brain to discern between right and wrong. A mind that is able to distinguish between
good reasoning and poor logic. Whether
you choose to use that mind is up to you.
I will tell you what I observe and what I think.
You decide if you agree or you'll develop your own thoughts. I'm continuously developing mine. Ready?
There are three vices that I think have greatly crippled the
value of good thought in our culture. Oh
and when I say “culture” I’m not merely referring to the “secular” world. I mean the "Christian" culture as well. So understand that I am referring to all of
it within this country. First, I think much of our culture has adopted a Post-modern
mindset. Basically what’s true for you
is good for you and has no bearing on me.
This is the first brick knocked out of a good reasoning mind. Think about it, debate has no bearing if I
can’t reason off principles, values or some sort of standard by which we can
determine the reason as to why we debate.
Post-modernism has lead to the break down of logic. Post-modernism (as I understand it) would
have you believe that if you think 2 + 2 = 5 then that’s true for you. Where is the absolute truth, universal
standard or transcending principle in a post-modern world?? Nowhere as far as I can tell except in the
mass of the mob or the powerful leader because what’s true for most tends or
what’s true for the man on top tends to set the way things will be for everyone
else.
Secondly, our culture has also bought into the close and
clever brother of post-modernism, experientialism. This basically states (as I understand it) that your experience is
the ultimate authority. Wow, so if I eat
a beef burrito at Taco Bell and ace my history exam, then beef burritos will
firmly in my worldview be tied to doing well on exams. It’s true for me for one. Secondly, it seems what’s true for me is
based on my experience. Now I don’t want
to undermine the value of experience. If
you touch a hot stove and burn yourself you learn a good universal
standard. Hot stoves tend to burn
flesh. But when you first state that
what’s true for you isn’t true for me and then go on to make your own
experience the truth… guess what? This
is where you end up... exactly where your experience has put you. So maybe friends were never meant to be last
because none of mine ever have. Maybe
running doesn’t do anyone any good because it kills me. Caffeine is useless because it doesn’t phase me. Geesh, comedy
movies are dumb cause I never laugh at them.
So what place do I have to say that the Associate Press is a reliable
source of information (which can be proven with evidence)? Further, how can I state that the AP states such and such
on such and such recent date, therefore giving my argument more validity?? Pish-posh with my validity… experience rules the
day (aside from the mass opinion polls of ignorant people). I guess BBC, NBC and the AP can go eat dirt I guess unless they want to tell me how Brittany Spear's love life is going (like I really care).
Thirdly, our culture has brought in one last and just as
dangerous mind-set. It is one of
hedonism. The ultimate end in life is to
make myself happy. To bring myself
pleasure. It seems that the hard work of
our grandparents lead to the wealth and materialism of our parents which has
lead to the pleasure seeking, pleasure worshiping generation of today. From food to material things, gadgets, art, lusts,
being popular, having power, attention down to sexual pleasure. It's all about enjoyment, happiness and entertainment. Those are some of the things that really drive
our culture. It is all summed up in
enjoyment. Even in the way I think. I don’t think about it. But it’s everywhere. It's as if pleasure was an end in itself. So Susan, how did you enjoy the movie? Dad, how did you like Pastor Mark’s
sermon? So, Luke, what you’re telling me
is that you’re not happy at Grace
College anymore?? Maybe that means that it’s time to move
on. Obviously, if you’re not fulfilled or enjoying the church / movie / college,
that must God speaking to you man.
Because I mean after all… you’ve got to be happy. Pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction and other
such two dollar words are a dime a dozen deep within the constructs and
infrastructure of our thought patterns.
This is the value of America. Enjoyment.
Pleasure. Man I love that
pleasure. It’s such a pleasing word.
Wait… that reminds me of something that I read in the Bible…
“They are... ...lovers
of pleasure rather than lovers of God…” (2 Timothy 3:4)
Yeah. That describes our culture. I think that describes us. Then the real truth hits: more often than I
would like… that describes me.
There is an old adage.
I don’t know where it comes from, but I like it. It states that we’re supposed to “think God’s
thoughts after Him”. Man, that’s what I
long for. But I think before we can get
there we have do a couple things. First,
I think we need to learn to think for ourselves. Secondly, we need to be able to accurately
think about how we think and why and all those question I love. To put it simply, we need to be able to
identify the frame work of thinking that each of us has. Thirdly, we must allow God to bring
redemption to our thought life… all the way down to the core. If we’re honest with ourselves, many of us
need a new framework for thinking.
“See to it that
no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends
on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on
Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)
“…we take captive every thought to make it obedient to
Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)
So
that’s what’s been on my mind lately… or in my mind it’s hard to tell after
having worked for over eleven hours during a graveyard shift. Well… as I like to say… that’s what I think… what do you
think?? | | |
| In need of redemption. Near the very end of this past semester I was walking alone (as I often do) to the student dinning hall. I began to feel those feelings that one can have when one is stressed, sad and things are not working out as one would like. I call it feeling “blue” or feeling “down”. However, this time I stopped myself. Right there in the tunnels, I stopped. I said to myself, “Wait, I don’t want to feel down. I want to feel happy.” So I changed how I felt on the spot. I’ve long held the position that people were capable of controlling their feelings but I realize that most people (myself included) don’t take active control and aren’t disciplined enough to do it. But that’s just the beginning of a new season. The more I thought about things, the more it began to make sense to me. I began to reflect upon the last year of my life as my Pastor encouraged us in Church at the end of the year to reflect upon the previous year. Everything began to come to a head. So many thoughts began to swirl around in my head. Now this is the point in our story that things get personal and we must take a look at some history in order to better understand the present situation. I warn you that before you continue this is not for the faint of heart. This story gets somewhat ugly. For as long as I can remember, I’ve struggled with relationships. I used to be timid and always kept to myself. Eventually having friends was the only thing that mattered to me. I longed for bonds with my fellow man, to develop deep ties of brotherhood that would last a lifetime. I wanted deeper friendships over the shallow ones. This of course, led me to attempt to develop close relationships with people. However, it seemed the harder I tried the more friendships failed. Not having that close relationship in my life left a huge hole in my life for years. My view of relationships is probably still a bit skewed. All my life I saw a pattern of failing friendships in my life. I kept seeing friends’ moving away, abandoning me and rejecting me. So I fought long and hard to keep relationships going. The harder I tried to make and keep lasting friendships the more friends deserted me. I literally have had friends just walk out of my life to never hear from them again. Other times relationships just went from being close to superfluous, shallow and meaningless. This loss drove me to despair. My walk waned and faded in and out. The young man of who was so passionate about the God he loved and wanted to serve with his once pure heart was now being suffocated by agony and pain this young man was now in. I understood time and time again that God had His hand in this and that He was trying to bring me closer to Himself. I knew that God wanted me to rely on Him as my source for friendship, companionship and my hope. My dad has said that I have a gift to understand Biblical truths and draw out application. Unfortunately, I also can be thick headed when it comes to my own life. I learn, but up until now I’ve often learned slowly and I learn best by doing and experience. It is hard for me to put everything in perspective for you. There’s so many aspects in which I’ve grown in the past few years even when I’ve been blowing it. It’s been a stage in life where I think God can use so many different paths to mold and mature a person. So many things were going on in my life it is hard to really put them in their proper place. So suffice it to say at the end of this past semester I looked back on my life. I saw a lot of failed relationships. I saw a young man who had been a failure. I also a young man who had persevered, but to what end I did not know. I saw a reflection in the shattered mirror of a young man who long ago had once wanted to give his life in service to the King of Kings. I saw a reflection in the shattered mirror of a young man who once long ago enjoyed preaching and was a talented speaker. But now, both those things had been crushed and shattered. I saw myself here at the Moody Bible Institute… the place I had always dreamed of going before my dreams got shattered. Here I was at Bible school going into ministry with this relationship with God that has still been puttering along all these years in between the mountain tops and valleys. I saw people here at school my that caused me realize what I could have become if I had more devoted to Jesus. I hate to say it, but seeing these godly students these past two years it made me furious to think about how much I had screwed up my life. I had become judgmental and tried to find my place to fit in at this institution. I had been depressed every time the cycle of failure had repeated itself. When rejection and abandonment reared its ugly head again I sulked in the corner defending the only thing I knew I had left—me. Somehow Jesus had gotten lost in my fight to survive. What if being so bent on rescuing what I lost I continued to lose myself? So that was the point all along. I would never be pulled back up the cliff. The broken mirror would never be put back together. Yet for so long I held onto that rope, as the birds pecked at my flesh. For so long I held the shards of the mirror tightly for fear that I would lose who I am. Would MY failures, mistakes and short comings of my past haunt me forever? This is the point where when I lose my life I begin to find it again. It’s a glimpse of redemption through the dark clouds. I feel new life welling up inside my veins. My heart feels lighter again. I sense the hope that I’ve not seen in a long time. I see glimpses again of the good qualities God instilled in me, that I thought were long gone. Nothing that doesn’t truly die can ever live again. It’s as if I had been looking truth in the face but didn’t have the wisdom to recognize it. I could have gotten upset over everything I’ve lost along the way. But what’s the point? I can’t save it. I can’t redeem it. Only God can bring redemption. God redeems what He wants to. I’m living proof of that. Whatever is lost cannot be gotten back. I cannot redeem poor choices. I cannot rescue those who make poor choices. I cannot undo evil or right wrongs. I cannot erase mistakes I made. There are things in my past I’m not proud of, no doubt. But I’ve learned a lot along the way. There are consequences for the choices I’ve made. But I’ve developed some good things as well over these last few years. The real wrong would be to not move on. The only thing left is to put an end to letting myself dwell in the past. Since I cannot correct it, I might as well move on. I remember back when I was first saved in high school when this wretched, sinful soul was so overjoyed to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of his own based on things which he had done. It is in Christ alone in whom my hope was truly found. I think I'm finding that missing heart of mine again. the proof of the need for redemption, Jason | | |
| death smiles at us all… The clouds begin to break. A warrior pulls his beat and bloodied body up from the pit his enemies had thrown him into. He knows that the battle is not over and that the time for resting has not come. He knows that it would be wrong to seek his own protection, because there’s something bigger at stake. He struggles to his feet as his eyes flash with a new sense of direction and purpose. He limps over to where his sword is stuck in the earth. He falls to his knees and then grabs a hold of the hilt and with great effort he releases the earth’s hold on his weapon. This warrior winces as old wounds, never really healed rub against his armor. He inspects what was once a fresh wound, scabbed over now. His eyes glance to the horizon where a dark cloud is rising. He hears a muffled cough and with an almost a renewed sense of energy he runs up a hill where he kicks a dead body off a man who is miraculously still alive and stretches out his hand. The warrior looks the wounded man in the eye and mutters, “They’ll be back and in greater numbers.” The wounded solider coughs up some blood and between gasps of breath wheezes, “It’s over, they’ve won.” The warrior looks again to the horizon, and with strength in his voice booms, “No... not so long as there is but one man who still stands to oppose them… are you with me?” It has been years. I never knew that one mistake could lead to so much loss. I never knew that my life would slip so far as to succumb to the bleak form of mere survival. I lost more then I could have ever possibly imagined. It seemed so right—even innocent. To in complete truthfulness care for another person so much that you would give your life for them. The betrayal was more then I could bear. It seemed that God Himself had destined all relationships to fail. I was sent reeling and tumbling into the darkness. The more I tried the more I seemed to fail. The harder I tried to retrieve what was slipping out of my grasp, the more I lost. The harder I fought, the bloodier I got, the more the enemy seemed to be winning. The more my companions abandoned me on the battle field. The harder it became to move on. The victories seemed bitter to me as I forgot what I was fighting for. The battle seemed lost. Retreat seemed like the only option left. On occasion, I saw the light and charged like a madman desperate to retake lost ground. So desperate to reclaim the man I had once hoped to become. But the battle grew worse and worse until I began to wonder if my hopes were unrealistic. It seemed enough to just survive as I fled through the mountains trying to avoid open conflict with the enemy. But in those dark nights I cried, cried for what I had lost and cried for what I knew I continued to lose. I began to realize that it was not the comrades that I had lost that were so abhorrent to me. I slowly began to see that it was not the loss of who I had hoped to be that caused me such despair. It was Him. I lost Him. He had been the life, the source, the breath of everything that ever meant anything to me. Somehow, in the confusion of that fight so long ago I lost track of Him. In between fights I was so desperate to rescue fellow comrades and search for ones that had fled that I had all but forgotten about Him. He seemed so far—it almost felt impossible to find Him. He was gone. But no more, my friend. The days of darkness might not be over. But the days of regret are. No more will I mourn what I have lost. It is a new day. Though so many things could cloud my countenance, I do see the light that gives the dark clouds their silver lining. The journey to find Him will be painful and perhaps more difficult then anything I have yet faced, and even if it kills me it will be worth it. To find HIM whom my heart longs for, my soul thirsts for Him. Without Him, there is no peace in my soul. Without Him there is doubt and confusion in my mind. Without Him there is no life in me. To be without Him is to be without the one whom I fight for. To be without Him is to be without reason and without meaning. But I will not be without Him much longer. I knew a man who once said that death smiles at us all… all a man can do is smile back. When I do die, whether it be today or some day in the future… I will be with Him and know Him better then I ever could in this pain ridden, heartless, hopeless bleak existence. …all a man can do is smile back. | | |
|
