Politics

If a "Real Christian" will vote for a particular party, what does that say about the Christians who don't live in the U.S.?

Please read this. I'm not trying to change you. And the truth is, if I were, it wouldn't matter because if what you believe is truth, nothing will shake it. Right? : ) Which reminds me of a very different topic that I lilke to ponder- What do you actually want? Truth or comfort? That's an other can of worms for an other day.

We have meshed a culture of humans with a faith of God. We are viewing something supernatural and sacred through the eyes of something disgustingly polluted. Through the eyes of something that makes people kill each other. That's not okay.
I used to argue about political issues. I don't now. Not because I am "bigger than that," or because I have lost all hope in convincing people that I'm right. It's because I don't care anymore. The closer I get to God, the less I care about my government.

The condition of my government shouldn't effect the condition of my spirituality. If it does, my faith is at a humanly level. My faith is not at a humanly level, so what does that tell you about my concern for government?

Don't misunderstand me, I don't mean to say that this stuff doesn't matter; it does. Just not to me. You older folks may say something like, "Oh but you're young and don't have kids. So you don't know what it means to need protection and stability." Or "You haven't lived long enough to know what you really think." Maybe. It's possible. I'm open to these statements having merit. But currently, I don't think so. I am talking to a God that has no boundaries. He has no limits, literally, nothing can stop him. I don't think it's spiritually healthy to base my values on and find my comfort in conditional circumstances produced by human decision. I want my values to be based on the ideas of an infinitely everlasting authority.(That last part may have been redundant, but He is good enough to get two words meaning the same thing to describe him.) If this country is taken over by an other, and the conditions of living become harsh, I won't blame God, and I honestly don't think my love for him will be shaken. If anything, based on my observation of historical events depicted in the bible, I think my faith will be strengthened.

I believe that in bad times we come closer to him because it is only then that we can truly see that the "reality" we are in isn't good enough. It never is, but most of the time, (for us americans especially), we can convince ourselves that life is good with pleasures of the flesh. What will we do when we run out of the supplies we need for our pleasures? And we will. Bad times are simply times when the supplies aren't right, or here. I am calling us to realize one thing: God doesn't require supplies. So if you're claiming to live a life with God, then you're claiming to not need any of this. None. That's madness, but I want it.

Please don't think I am asking you to agree with me. I do recognize and appreciate the people who will rise up in the government and make things better. I believe God calls for that in some. This was written so that you will know where I am called. I don't think that where I am called is better. I am just beginning to see that where I am called to is nothing like the place I see other people living in. It's a place without boundaries and without condemnation. It's a place where my love for and dependency on God makes everything else completely irrelevant. If you know me, then you know that I am clearly not living this yet. But caterpillars will one day be butterflies. Assuming the other caterpillars don't kill them first. (Martin Luther King, Jr. Uhhhh let's see... who else?...JESUS!) To name a couple. (Lucky for them, they had connections. So do I.)

I have some scripture to back all this up. But I freakin(euphemism) hate it when Rush Limbaugh uses Godly stuff to back himself up, so I won't do it. And I know, I know, I kind of did up there, but not with scripture, the word of God. It's because I can't claim that I understand God. I can only claim that I'm desperately trying to.

If you have scripture that proves the things I have said wrong, please give it to me. I have lots to back up most of this, but I'm a blind man interpreting a movie, only being able to make out the dynamics of the audio. I'm looking for deaf people who want to share their insight with me so we can figure this thing out. It's a good thing that the Holy Spirit knows sign language and verbal language.

Awake

This morning I woke up in a new way. It usually takes me a while to "come to," often longer than it takes for my first class to start. I walk around like a zombie looking for life of some sort. Today was new, I woke up quickly with excitement. My mind was racing from the second my eyes opened. My thoughts have been moving like trains ever since.

As I slept last night, I had dreams. Some were stimulated by real outside sources, like my coffee maker. As it made coffee this morning, I began to have coffee show up in my dream. I even had a dream about a real event that happened yesterday. But the thing about dreams is this: They're not real. They can be about real things and even stimulated by real things, but they themselves are not real. Life is like this for too many of us.

We're living in a false reality that is at times based on truth but is not wholly truth.(pun intended)

What I am saying is this: Let's stop thinking of God as a drug and start thinking of him as a life. He doesn't come into us and make us feel different, He consumes us and transforms us into new things! Drugs wear off, the new creation that I am with Jesus is eternal. I believe that, I always said I did, but seriously- I BELIEVE THAT. Do you?

This is real. Nothing is impossible with my God. Nothing is impossible with my God! Why do we keep putting him in a box? He doesn't fit in boxes! if you have successfully shoved him into one, than most of him is outside of it. You may get little bits and pieces of him here and there, and that's great, but I want all of him! I want everything he has to offer me. Isn't that what he gave us?! He gave himself.

We are cups that are mostly empty and all we're doing is putting what water we have into each others cups, and that's great, but come on!

You can't find your fulfillment in a cup that isn't filled!

Let's tap into the spring of life, let's be filled with the holy water and never, ever go thirsty again. I think Jesus meant it when he said it to the Samaritan woman. Let's be with God. We sit around and pray and wait for our "calling." I have prayed things like, " God, I won't move until you tell me to. I want to follow your will for me, tell me it and I'll act. Where should I go?" He's saying this, "It's not about where your going, trust me on that one!(faith) I am telling you that it's not okay to be where you are. Move closer to me. Advance." When he spoke to Abraham he said," Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." (Genesis 12)

He will show us!

He has promised us good things, is that not enough? We as a people need to look into his word and take it more seriously. God doesn't lie or exaggerate. I believe that if he says it, it's true. Let's use our lives to prove it. Let's start acting like saved people and stop acting like the world that is dying around us. Let's act like we have a hope. WE DO!
Live life. Live reality. There is one god who is God and who is holy. Wake up.

Bowls

Life is more than you think.
It doesn't stop when the debt is paid.
It doesn't stop when the death is gone.
We have been made rich and are being made richer by the second.
Grace is not like pouring out a bowl and then having him come fill it back up.
Grace is like throwing the empty bowl into an ocean.
What he did is doing more than you think.

Being "saved" isn't a check mark in the box on a piece of paper. It's the first page of a long, good, book with lots of pictures.

For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him, through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have received reconciliation.
Romans 5:10-11

The Cross

The cross is so good. I am glad. It sucked. A lot. But I'm Glad it happened.
We as a christian culture are to focussed on the cross. We are worshiping it instead of the guy on it.
The cross is not the pinnacle, life with the father is. The cross is the climax, or turning point. It was at the death on the cross that all of existence took a violent turn. Everything changed. All of it. The world would never, ever be the same. I think that what we are missing is what is most important: The result.

If you're angry, please bear with me and read the whole thing.

Why did Jesus die on the cross? You all know. He died for our sins and as the hymn says, "Jesus paid it all." Okay, cool. So now what? Has it not occurred to us that when you pay for something, you get it? We don't give the cashier the money and walk away without the product. So if He paid it all, I think it's safe to assume that He was paying for something? Something worth all of Him.

It's like this: Jesus wants to play catch with me, but we don't have a foot ball. As I reach into my pockets, I find that I am broke, in fact, I owe the football store money. Jesus, with his great love, smiles and says "I'll be right back." He comes back with a ball and a sheet of paper saying that my debt is paid. (Now remember the goal, to play catch with Jesus.) He hands me the ball and I stare at it with amazement. As he tries to get me to throw it to him, I resist and say things to him like- "Thank you so much for this!" and " You are so good! How could you give up all that you had to pay for this? To pay for me?" He smiles and says "because I love you. Now let's play." I look at the ball and then repeat the process. I thank him over and over again for paying for the ball. Jesus is annoyed.

He wants to play. So bad that he went and paid the price for it. But we're still not playing because we're standing in a building on sunday with our arms up in the air looking like silhouettes in front of the beautifully produced screens, thanking him for his death instead asking him for his life.

It is because of the death we can live. But we aren't living! Don't you see?! We are called to live with him, literally. We can talk to him and he can talk to us. He will hold us and fill us with his Spirit as we take a breath. He is Life. He is holy. If we were actually living with him, we'd be changing. If we were actually praying, conversing with him, we would be changed every single time.The world would be changing. Because if he is holy, which he is, contact with him will change everything about who you were prior to the contact. When dirty meets clean one of two things will happen. Either they will both get dirty, or both get clean. God is perfect, therefore he will always be perfect, therefore our contact with him will not change him, and because something has to change, it becomes very clear who it is-US! We aren't living. Lets throw the ball! Yes, we will drop it a few times, but practice makes perfect! Let's live as he has called us to live! Through baptism, our own death and resurrection, we are united with him in the death and brought by him to the life. New Creations, made for life and not death! (Romans 6 poorly and ignorantly crammed into a nutshell)

Next time you pray, believe that He is there with you as you do it. I promise you he is. Believe. Have faith. He is alive and will smother your heart and it will overflow like a spring. This love is like nothing else. Ever. It is real.

"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect."
Matt 5:48

Plagiarism(I copied and pasted this word from dictionary.com)

I am not the source of truth. At times, I am a small tree producing good fruit. But how can the tree make the fruit without the sun water and soil?(trinity)(Put that in your pipe and smoke it.) Everything that is good that I say is from somewhere else. I won't claim that all of the things I say are traced back to the bible. I wish they were, but I really don't get this stuff well enough to actually act like it's how I live. I'm good at faking it and looking like a follower of the Lord. But you don't see the inside of my head or my hardened heart like I do. And I don't see it like He does. I'm glad He's so good.

Today a kid ran up to me and told me that what I said in class was awesome and wanted to know how I come up with these crazy things. I told him that I'm not coming up with anything new. All I do is look at stuff closer than most.

I am typing this to tell you readers that I am not anything special, at least not any more than any of you. The more I read the more I see that "my" ideas are actually not mine at all. They are from within me, yes, but my eyes are blue because my mom gave them to me. "He's got his mother's eyes." They are hers. The things I say are reflections and sometimes even exact replicas of things other people said. It's usually things C.S. Lewis said, which are things that George Macdonald said, which are things that the bible said. I think you get the point. Sometimes I even think of things as I watch trees and squirrels and stuff and get all kinds of excited at my original thought just to read about them in the writings of an Irish monk. I'm inheriting ideas and showing them to people who don't look for them. The true source of all that is good is God. The bible is a good spring. Fill your buckets.

I hope most of you didn't need to read this. I'm not arrogant. I only wrote this because of the kid who spoke to me today. What a misunderstanding. I hope he's the only one.

Please question everything you read. All of it.

We're chickens laying on our stomachs with a line of sight limited to what's in front of us.

Chickens

An elementary school kid has a limited view of the world and his role in it. If you ask them about matters of human existence they will probably speak of a playground and dinosaurs and fire-trucks. Their view of things is quite limited.

A circle does not understand the concept of a cube. If you were to present the idea of a third dimension to a circle, it wouldn't have the mental capacity to wrap its mind around the idea of a third dimension. It's view of reality is quite limited.

If you told the elementary school student why he needed good grades and why that is more important than recess, they wouldn't understand to the extent you do, for life as they have experienced it is veiled. Their view is quite limited.

If somehow you were able to explain to the the circle what a third dimension could even be, he wouldn't really get it, it's beyond his perceptual understanding of existence. His view is quite limited.

If you were to talk to a human about Godly matters, he'd think he got it because he's an arrogent prick, but he wouldn't. His view is quite limited.

My point is this: Realize where you stand in the stories. We are created beings. The creator MUST know more than us about the flow of things and what is actually important. If we are working with two dimensions, vertical and horizontal, He is seeing the third one. If we are elementary school kids focussed more on recess and less on development, he is the parent desperately trying to make life for their kid better than their own was. Instead of wasting time showing people how good we are at the monkey bars; a hopeless effort to get girls to chase you- but not actually tag you because that would be gross, why don't we listen to the adult? You may say, " It's not that simple!" But it is.

If there is actually more to it then riddle me this: How is money any different from monkey bars? We do all we can to impress by using our strength and gifts to make it across. If that's not good enough, we'll even hang upside down and do flips. I've seen a kid belly flop into the gravel. On purpose. Once we have won the attention, or gotten the cash, we delight in people's jealous attempts to catch up to us and get what we have. It's all fun until one actually catches you or until you fall and scrape you knee. Plus, you may be the king of the playground. But it's an F-ing playground! Whoop-T-Freakin-do. Let's leave the playground and go to nap time so we can actually learn something.

Don't limit yourself to the standards of the world. They're all two dimensional and they are all recreational. The God has a view of things that we don't. Faith for me is to realize that and trust him on it and to do as he says, even if it means I'm the weird kid eating rocks in the corner of the blacktop. You will never understand the three dimensional view of things until the mediator from the third dimension is in your heart to explain it to you and to lead you through it. Jesus is sacrificing all that he is to hold the dimensional door open and he is inviting into the building.

Don't let your view limit your greatness. If He told us to be holy, don't you think he meant it. It's not as impossible as you would think. He has done the work for us and the evil girl chasing him will never catch him.

Eyes

I'm tired of believing the things I see.
I'm ready to see the things I believe!

Too much of life, as people know it, is like a drug addiction. The first few times it gets you high, then you're only doing it to satisfy your chemical dependency. Look at society, it's everywhere. Marriages start with booms of sexual love, fun and even joy. But then 18 years later you find yourself just trying to keep things going. The church or "christian experience" is a prime example. One encounters the Spirit and is blown away by it, so they dive into this "Faith" and spend all of their energy trying to make it happen. Then they "fall" and encounter the Spirit again to get back up. Before they know it, this roller-coaster flattens and it's just a level plain, comfortably dependable. The week is a downslope leading to next sunday. This isn't how it is supposed to be!

We are called to be resurrected with the living Christ into a life that is true life. This wouldn't need to happen if what we were "living" was life already! The new is here because the old wasn't it! So why do we try to put the new things into an old box?!

Life doesn't fit in boxes.

The eye is merely a lens. You don't see with your eye, you see with your mind. Now, with that, see this: The world as you knew it, the life as you knew it, time as you knew it, is merely the truth through two eyes.

The real life is how you see, not what you see.

So open your hearts, and by the renewing of your mind let the Spirit show you what is actually there. The truth isn't what your eyes tell you.

The life we are called to through Jesus Christ is not one we were already living. The things you see will not look the same as before, for your way of seeing must be different. If you don't change your sight, Jesus is going to sound crazy.
Give to receive?

"Dude! You totally read my mind!"

A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
Now some teachers of the law were sitting there, thinking to themselves, "Why does this fellow talk like that? He's blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?"

Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this was what they were thinking in their hearts, and he said to them, "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins . . . ." He said to the paralytic, "I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home." He got up, took his mat and walked out in full view of them all. This amazed everyone and they praised God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"

Sucks to be a teacher of the law. Not only is Jesus making them look bad by being amazing and preaching with authority, and forgiving people of their sins, but He's reading their minds. I would be pretty mad if I spent my life trying to get to a certain point, only to have some man from who knows where come and be better. It's like going to Juliard and mastering in musical composition and getting shown up by the blues playing hobo down the street.(Okay, not exactly, but you see the point.) The focus of this story is usually the faith of the men who brought the paralytic, and rightfully so, this is a vital message about faith and our responsibility to each other. But man, think about what it must have been like to think to yourself some pouty things and then have the guy you were thinking about come up to you and call you out on it. Can you say intimidating? or annoying?

What would He say if he was reading my thoughts and my heart? Scratch that.
WHEN He is reading them.
Probably somegthing allong the lines of-
"Father forgive him, for he doesn't know what he does... Yeah I know he's an idiot, you already said that, but trust me on this one- give him an other chance."