Stand and Feel Your Worth

I've felt horrible lately, like i have no worth, that my life is pointless, often meaningless. I was at encounter this thursday and matt dean said when we do things that are against GOD, when we do things that are wrong, we feel that we are something wrong, something horrible. I've dealt with that all week. I was in the shower the other night, thinking about all this, and i realized that i'm not worthless, we as humans are not worthless. You ask how, i shall explain. In the old testament, before Christ came, the people made sacrifices to God to atone for their sins, they did this because God commanded that a sin had to be met with a blood sacrifice. On the day Solomon completed the temple in jerusalem, they slaughtered around 22,000 oxen and around 120,000 sheep. Thats a lot. But, it wasn't enough. Imagine the numbers of animals slaughtered, and it wasn't enough. Now think of Christ, who left heaven to become a man. He led a perfect life, yet was led to the slaughter. He died a sinners death. The bible says i was ransomed, my debt was paid. Now i ask, if I was bought and paid for, If I was bought at such a high price, how could I possibly be worthless? Every human is equal regardless of money, race, whatever. Every man is cared for and loved.

In Such A Case As This

When you miss someone the days seem to take forever and you find yourself dying to fill them with time consuming task just to divert the fact that you can't handle being patient. I've really been trying to fill my life with hobbies, school, and work lately. I've come to realize that dreaming of someone isn't quite as good as the comfort of having them there everyday. You tell yourself in the beginning that it will make the time you do spend together more exciting, or more romantic. You think that you can handle the pressure of having many miles between the two. It's not that I can't handle the pressure, just as I know that Atlas can handle the pressure of holding up the world, but I'm sure even Atlas would like a little relief every now and then. Patience is no strong point of mine. Perhaps this is a test for me. I don't really know. But all this struggle won't be for nothing and I know that we walk out of the otherside stronger once we complete the task at hand. In such a case as this, the end will justify the means it took to get us there.

Blood:Water Mission

The band Jars of Clay formed an organization called Blood: Water Mission, or 1000 Wells. They take donations and raise awareness for the tragedies surrounding the crisis for water in Africa. The organization uses donations to start new wells, which cost thousands of dollars to drill, in villages (villages usually contain around 700-1000 people). Some of the money goes to the upkeep of old wells and other sources of purifying water. So, statistically, one dollar of your money, gives one African water to drink for one year. That is a true stat. The numbers seem a little outrageous. I might spend $1 on one bottle of water during any point of my day. Any donations can be sent to http://www.blood:watermission.com/. I've emailed the coordinators, and They should be sending me more info; along with tracs. So, I hope to set up a booth on campus soon to take donations and raise awareness.

Love is More......

" I love you" seems to have outstayed its welcome and has been reduced to the latest and greatest trend. It's been reduced to t-shirt logos and our favorite method of ending phone conversations. Empty words filled with empty meanings. Love might as well be a reality show on MTV. The bulk of society doesn't realize that love is more than a virtue needed to be an intelligient, eclectic pop star who wants to adopt children from Uganda or wage for peace in Darfur. Love is more than a trend. Love is a resurrection. Love is no strings attached. Love is a movement; constantly rooted in commitment. If there is one thing Christ's death on the cross has shown me is this, Christ came to wage a war against sin, against our own flesh. His resurrection has shown me that the perfect love of the Father raises us up from our graves conquering death. And in the end, Mercy Triumphs

Sustainer

It rained today. There was something comforting in watching it out of the window. I find it beautiful, all the ways the Father sustains life. His actions go deeper than first thought, and reveals his complexity. What we view as a storm, breaths life. Much like an image of the cross, what could be viewed as a storm, a ship wreck, actually turned out to be the rescue. It creates a paradox in my mind. The pain and suffering of the cross reveal the love our hearts search for. When we think of the cross, if you could be in that moment of time, what would you response be. You'd most likely feel compassion at the sight of a man being tortured, and you'd feel a need to do something. I would almost contend that we would want to help him, to help him down and seek medical attention. That should be the opposite of our intentions. We don't find comfort or beauty in the fact that a man is ship wrecked, bleeding before all humanity. We take comfort in the fact that only love was found on that hill. Our comfort is that Christ didn't voluntarily come down from his suffering, but rather he sustained life.

Rebels and Saints

"We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved, We are REBELS who must lay down our arms." C.S. Lewis

The more and more I read the Bible I find I must abandon the thought of my goodness. Christ made it painfully clear that our righteousness is nothing more than filth. And Christ goes to great lengths in explaining to us that we must abandon every thing that we are. The reason behing this is that Christ is perfect; therefore he expects us to edge closer and closer to that perfection until it is finally made complete in him, and by " in him" I mean " by him." Very plainly, we are to become like Christ, they call this Saintification. It is also very clear that nothing of this world will ever enter into the kingdom of God, and therefore should be abandoned for the eternal. C.S. Lewis compares this to the great divorce. We should seperate the to elements of our life, the flesh divorced from the Spirit. To break the bond which can't really exist.

By doing this, we give the rest of a lost and dying world a chance at life. The more I lose myself and find Christ, I find that I've been the one holding the rest of the world under water, and now my new self offers the opportunity to come up and breath to those gasping for air. If we're going to be salt and light, we have to escape the darkness.

The new "coffee shop culture" says we should end social injustice, stop global warming, and so on. These are all noble thoughts and things that I would really like to see happen. But, we seem to spend more time talking about these things than we do fixing them. So starving children become nothing more than a conversation piece in our minds. These conversations have yet to yield action over the majority of our society; including the majority of churchs, which most have grown apathetic. So, we have yet to really let love penetrate our being. If love is only found in our speech and never in our actions, then we don't really love at all. Preach as we may, until we take these matters to heart, nothing will change, and we only continue to subscribe to a doctrine that we don't truly believe. There is still hope to be offered, but it won't be found in hippies theory or Starbucks. Prayer and fasting, a fear and reverence of a divine God might just be an answer. But pray as you may for rescue, remember, You are that rescue. But there won't be a rescue for all the invisible children in Uganda, no water for a dry Africa, no earthing of the gospel in third world countries until we can fix the monster in the mirror.

Good day

32 Billion, or maybe it was 34 billion, either way, it was in the billions

i was informed, while at encounter, that americans spent 32 billion on their pets last year. Awesome, there's nothing more beautiful than a weiner dog wearing a 30 dollar sweater. And I don't own a dog, so i spent my cut on c.d.'s and shoes, and other crap. one more stat, there are 8 Billion people living in the world, 1 billion of which live on less than 2 dollars a day, try and wrap your minds around that. Greed and materialism has blinded us into thinking we're living good, honest lives. All the while men, women, children, villages, families, and you name it, go hungry and need. When was the last time we needed? I'm certainly glad that dogs and cats need more than kids in Uganda. thanks petco. (sarcasm)