What I got for Christmas...

It is 8:30 in the morning, no one else in my family is up and we have not even began to think about opening presents. I have a pretty good idea what presents to expect under my tree. Every year since I have been 15 I have selected goodies from my favourite shopping catalogue, Musicians Friend. This year I asked for some Fender Single Coil Pickups and a amp stand but there is one thing I know I am getting.

Redeeming grace and love from my Savior! On the first Christmas we all got Immanuel, God with us! Christ came so he could be with us, so we could be with him for eternity! Selah, weigh my sins for my Christ has come to pay my debt! I got a best friend who knows me inside-out because he was there when I knit me together in my mother's womb.

Please do not forget your gift of the spotless lamb today, tomarrow or anyday.

Facing fears,,,

"The LORD is my light and my salvation— whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life— of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1)

Freaking hospitable! I hate them. They are disgusting and germy. When I have to go to one (usually to visit someone because I rather die then be in one) I refuse to touch things. I make people nervous because I will not sit down in a chair because that is just disgusting. When I walk down the halls I strategically walk in the center to avoid touching anything. Although if I am going to honest about it, the reason why I hate hospitable is because I spent to much time in them.

If you do not know my Mom died when I was 14 of lung cancer. She was sick for a good two years and during that time she was in and out of the hospitable. I used to visit her in them all the time and it was so hard. That was not my Mom in the hospitable bed, connected to the wall by an IV. My Mom was an active women. She was the PTA President, boyscout committee member, my baseball teams team mom, and these are just my activities she was active in.

My Mom died in a hospitable and since then I have only gone back three times. The first was for my friend Heather. She was having some internal problems but I really cannot remember what to be honest. That was super hard because she was in the same wing that my Mom died in. The second time was for Sammy after her surgery. That was hard because I was making her mom nervous because I was standing, she tried to get me sit. Needless to say I did not sit down. Today was the third time. I went to a nursing home to pass out presents and Christmas Carroll.

It was not to bad, besides almost passing out while singing Come All Ye Faithful. I was there for Jesus and that helped a lot. Visiting people in hospitable is going to be a big part of my career so I better get used to it. Besides what do I got fear if Jesus is my Lord?

Monetary Love...

I have a friend who just knows how to love people. Sometimes she is pretty guarded and other times she can be a mean person, but if you are on her good side, she knows how to love. Personally I have never seen someone care for her family and friends so much, even though they do not show her the same love. By knowing her I have seen a clear picture of what Jesus must have been like while he roamed the earth. What is amazing is she does not believe in Jesus.

Sometimes we followers base are love on what we can get out of it. We love someone but not as much as the next because he or she did this. Our love can be based on gain and that is just wrong. Just think of the metaphors we use to talk about relationships.

We value people...

Value is a monetary term and we value what they can do.

Love is a nutrient...

Nutrients are a necessity to life and so is love but do we only love people to fill our own needs?

We invest in people...

Invest is another monetary term. Why do you invest in something unless you expect a return?

My friends family treats her like dirt but she still loves them. Her mother is alcoholic and is addicted to amphetamines. She told me that her mothers love is based on this "monetary love." If she is willing to get her mother alcohol or speed, she is loved. When she does not do these things for her mother, she is rejected and out casted.

We need to start loving like my friend and ultimately like Jesus. No more love, just agape...

On days like today...

...I like to remind myself of a verse I found about a month ago...

"The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." (Zephaniah 3:17)

It is so hard to separate the noise of the world from the voice of God sometimes. Sometimes I want the voice of the world to be the voice of God, while other times I want the voice of God to be the voice of the world. Then sometimes one is just so loud I cannot hear the other, today was one of those days.

You will never succeed...

You will always be alone...

You have nothing to offer...

God does not love you...

I just have to remind myself this world has nothing for me. The advise, the criticism and the love are void and empty. I know it is cliche and impossible to say I am not going to listen to the world anymore but I am going to try. I am sick of depression, pain and loneliness. God loves me and that is all I need tonight...

What I should of taught tonight at ABS...

So I feel if I need to apologize to some of you, those of you who where at ABS tonight. I chickened out of a lesson that I felt led to teach. In a poor attempt to make up for my fallacy I am going to present what should have been presented today at ABS.

Mathew 1:18-25

"This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.


But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: "The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"-which means, "God with us."

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus."

Since the Christmas season is upon us, I think we really should look at who Jesus is and why he is here. Above is an account of the birth of Christ according to Mathew. Now what is interesting or most misunderstood about this verse is the use of Immanuel in it. The Angel told Joseph to the name his Child Jesus, so most people assume that Jesus and Immanuel are interchangeable but that is not the case.

Jesus is the Greek name for Joseph, which literally translates into Yawhay saves. The name of our saviour is Yawhay saves, pretty cool but wait. Immanuel is a title, sort of like Messiah, that means God with us. What I find fascinating with this is what happens if you put the two phases together.

Yahwhay saves when he is with us.

Think about it, when are we saved? When we confess of our sins, accept Christ and then we receive the Holy Spirit, God with us.

Gandhious?

The other day at "the park" a server asked me if I hated her. I do not know why she asked that. At times I know I can show discontentment with my fellow co-workers but we are usually pretty cool. She is one of the few good servers at "the park," she never messes up her orders and she is a generally a nice person. None the less she asked me if I hated her.

I replied by saying, "No, I do not believe in hate. Only love can change people so why bother hating people?"

She replied with, "Awe, you are little Gandhi."

Gandhi?

Gandhi!

What about Jesus?

I did not know how to take her compliment. Gandhi was a great man but all his work was done in vain. His message was good but it was not 100% correct. It lacked the creator of love, Jesus! I mean Jesus is love. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

I have new goal for while I am at work, to show people the love of Christ. Not the love of Gandhi...

It's Friday...

It’s Friday and I am scared and doubting.

Things are becoming very real for me in my life. I have one more semester at WCCC before I go off to real college and start to prepare for my life in ministry. I thought that this time of filling out applications and writing essays would be exciting but it has not been. To get into college and you have to sell yourself to the school, why should they pick you over the next guy. Personally I have trouble seeing why any school would want me. My GPA would make a mediocre batting average, my SAT scores would be an excellent credit report and the only thing I have going for me is extracurricular activities but that just shows I should spend more time studying.

It’s Friday and I am scared and doubting.

My recent doubts are not with God, they are with me. From the very start of my decision to follow this call to ministry has been rough. My father has not supported it, I have not strived to live it and now I doubt my actual call.

It’s Friday and I am scared and doubting.

I know God can work miracles through the small and weak. Gideon, David and Saul are all evidence of His ability to do so but I am same as them?

It’s Friday and I am scared and doubting.

I do not know if I am same as those guys but I do know God has not changed. If he wants me to be a pastor he will open the doors for me to do so. The more I have been praying about this I realize that my doubts are driven by fear of failure. By doubting myself I doubt God because he will provide the provisions necessary for me to succeed. Without God who am I? Just dirt (read Genesis if you did not get that one).

It’s Friday but Sunday’s coming!

One of my new favourite bands...

Check out this song by one of my new favourite bands, The Glorious Unseen. Their music is just raw praise and worship. It is beautifully honest praise.

Slot machine god...

Have you ever felt like God is a slot machine or maybe that just your prayer life is like playing a slot machine? You know you need something in your life so you pray and cross your fingers for "7-7-7." Maybe sometimes you are not getting what you pray for so it is just better to walk away. On the other hand your life may be going pretty good so you keep on praying for the "Jackpot."

I know I have. At points in my life my relationship with God was as such. I would be so hurting and I would pray a quick prayer for forgiveness and pull that lever. When I did not get what I wanted I thought it was because of my sin and I would try not too. It was kinda of like putting more quarters in the machine, the payoff would be bigger if I was doing good things, right? That logic failed me and I thought it be just better to cut my loses and walk away.

Although I knew there was more to it. I knew God had to be real because of how he had effected my life. When I first excepted him in my life I felt healing and relief but what was different?

After time thinking about it I realized it was my prayer life. I was playing the slot machine god. There was no relationship involved, just me pulling the lever. The Christian prayer life is so important because it is how we connect with God, along with worship.

My life is built on a relationship not on a game...

Persuasion and Propaganda

Persuasion and Propaganda is a class that I elected to take next semester, well I guess that is a bit of stretch. My current speech professor is the professor for it and he insisted that I take it. Last week I met with a councilor to schedule and he sent me to another councilor to schedule. Lo and behold Mr. Culbya, my speech professor, standing in the room I was sent to.

"I am glad you are here because we need to get you into my Persuasion and Propaganda class."

Prior to this I did not plan on taking the class, I just was going to take another literature class. He asked me about and I pretty much just blew it off. He tracked me down. I do not know how but he made sure he was there to schedule me.

"Look, I need you in my class."

I gave speech on poverty that I thought was pretty good. The majority of class thought so as well and one girl told me it was the best persuasive speech she had ever heard. Apparently Mr. Culbya did as well because of that speech he wants me in this class.

"I can see it now, WCCC getting active against poverty."

The class takes a project and tries to persuade our school to get involved in it. Last year it was the organization "Nothing but Nets." This year he wants me to spearhead a project that will help people in poverty. I do not know what we will be doing but I do know I want to make a differnce. I want to make a difference in to those who need help and those who are doing the helping. It is an all to common belief that poverty is Asian, African, South American and Mexican problem but its not. Poverty is our problem.

That hurt...

So I got bored and typed in "trendy Christianity" into my browser. Trendy Christianity has been on my mind and I was looking for a quote by Donald Miller about trendy Christianity. In all honesty this blog I am writing was going to be about trendy Christianity and how I do not like it but that changed when I saw something.

One of the hits linked my to "uncyclopedia.com." If you are unfamiliar with this website check it out because most of the times I find it hilarious. It is run by the same people who do wikipedia and is much like it. People write articles on a topic and they are published online but with uncyclopedia you are supposed to get it wrong (opposed to wikipedia, which is usually wrong). It is supposed to be funny but this one kinda hurt.

I will admit, it had me laughing at first. The article was on Christianity in general and the first line read, "Christianity is a form of fire insurance." That is just funny and do not worry, just think about it and you will laugh. I continued on reading and there was a section on quotes and all but one were made up, ridiculous quotes. The quote that was not made up was "Preach the gospel everywhere you go, use words if necessary."

I find the quote powerful and at the heart of what Jesus wants us to do but the author of the article disagrees. After the quote he wrote, "What the hell? That's an actually quote!" Obviously he was thinking that you cannot preach without speaking but the is not what old Francis meant. St. Francis meant that our actions should do our preaching, that we do not need words to reach people.

It did not hurt that this person made fun of Christianity, like I said I found the majority of the article amusing. What hurt is somewhere along the line someone missed a chance to preach the Gospel to this person without speaking, I just hope it was not me.

Small Things

The Irresistible Revolution is quite possibly the third greatest writing that influences my own personal theology. The second and very close to the Irresistible Revolution is Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and of course, far ahead of both these great works is the Bible. What I love about Shane Claiborne’s vision community is how it is not new all. There are a lot of people who claim that Shane has revolutionary ideas about Christianity but if he would hear you say that he would simply say that he has been inspired by the church demonstrated in Acts.

In the video above, Shane is reading from his book. He starts out with quote from Mother Theresa that has just infected my soul of late. “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” It really makes me think about why we do things.

A lot of us like the feeling of giving. How giving to the poor makes us feel better about ourselves but we never really understand the problem, nor do we want to. I have noticed a trend in popular Christian churches. We like to do big mission trips in the summer. We might travel half the way across the world to China or Africa or Calcutta and when we return something amazing happens. World poverty ceases to exist or at least in our minds.

I am not minimizing the good things that happen on these big mission trips but when we just do the big things, who did we do it for? You see it is so easy to detach ourselves from the needy by going far away to help people. What are chances of you seeing those people ever again? It makes it very easy for the needy not to expect things from you. Then you will not have to worry about letting them down.

I want to suggest a new way or should I say an old way to serve. I live in a county that has 380,000 residents in it and our poverty rate is at 8.8%. We need to reach these people, you and I have to reach these people because who else will. The popular church of America likes to go to attractive places to serve people. Westmoreland County is probably not on any churches agenda to be served, so let us put on ours.

When we focus on these big mission trips as our way to serve we miss the heart of the Gospel. The good news is for all. We need to focus on small mission trips. Mission trips that occur on our way to work, in the halls of our schools and in our own community because “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”