On Faith and Service...

I sit here tonight with a mongo Organic Chemistry test tomorrow and the MCAT looming for Saturday, but I really feel like writing some of my thoughts down tonight.

I was reading in Luke 17 today. Christ offers some instructive words for his disciples about forgiveness and faith. I love how Jesus doesn't hold restraint when he talks. There is no sugar coating his message. How terrible life will be for those who tempt others to sin and fall away from God. He says that if a believer sins, make sure to rebuke him and if he repents, FORGIVE him. I struggle mightily with this. It can be so easy for me to hold onto grudges. It is something I pray frequently about. This passage really tells me the importance of forgiveness.

I love how the disciples ask Christ questions...I can picture in my mind the slight smile he would get across his face as they asked him questions such as "We need more faith; how do we get more of it?" These men were his best friends, what a great feeling it must have been for him to see their desire to learn more about what he was teaching. Here, Christ's answer says much about the power of faith. Faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains. Think about that...the power that lies in faith in Jesus. While I have never moved mountains, I have seen Christ work miracles in people around me as well as in my own life. Praise Him!

The last part of the first section of chapter 17 is my favorite. Christ talks about being a servant. How often do we do good things for people without thanks. Doesn't it bother you? Sometimes it really ticks me off that people don't acknowledge all of the work and sacrifice I've made to help them out. Christ uses the example of a servant preparing a meal for his master, he does it everyday without thanks. He is not thanked because he is doing what he is supposed to be doing. Christ then ends this section with this, "In the same way, when you obey me you should say, "We are not worthy of praise. We are servants who have simply done our duty." I think this is the attitude we need to adopt as Christians. Thanked or not, we must serve others (as Christ himself commands us to) and most of all praise and glorify Christ's cross. It is what we were made for, it is what we as believers and followers of Jesus are "supposed" to do.

The rest of the chapter accounts Christ healing some lepers and talking about the Kingdom of God...great stuff...check it out in Luke 17 :)

Today around our wonderful nation many people held Boston Tea Party-like demonstrations. While I totally respect their right to assemble, I find their cause somewhat silly. Don't get me wrong, I find it of the utmost importance to promote wise spending. However, I am not sure I understand the purpose of protesting taxes. First, who likes taxes?? Nobody, but we realize that for our government to run and provide assistance and services to us we need money. It has got to come from somewhere. Now, I'm sure some people could completely grill me on this, but I believe that is silly. Oh, and I read in the paper that our economy is starting to show some signs of life...housing markets are picking up in major cities (ex: Minneapolis), unemployment rates are going down...maybe the evil atrocities (*rolls eyes*) our President is committing by pledging our tax money to stimulus packages is actually working? Whoa! Anyways...if you did go to the Tea Party, I have no qualms with you, in fact, I support your desire to become involved in what is going on in our nation. All I ask is that you bring me your unwanted tea bag...I love tea :)

Anyways, enough politics...I hope the words of Christ resonate above any political rhetoric. It is He, that we can find life in. Praise Him!

Tragedy

I write this blog post with a heavy heart. I just got back from the visitation service of Brad Odens, a friend of mine from youth group and high school. While Brad was a couple years older than me, we bonded in youth group as for a couple years we were two of a small group of boys in a mostly girl youth group. He was a fun loving, quiet guy who loved to have fun. Lots of good memories were had with him both at church and at school in the HHS band. Like I told his parents tonight, I have nothing negative to say about Brad, he was a great man.

This whole situation has me thinking a lot about tragedy. It is almost cliche to ask "why does bad things happen to good people" However, this question burns into my mind as this happened to a family who has been good to our family and to the church as a whole. His parents are two of the nicest people in church. Brad, while obviously did not make wise decisions all the time (does anyone?), was also a great man. They are a family who knows and fears God...did a freak accident like this need to happen to them?

One of the great revelations I have had when it comes to situations like this is that God deeply cares about these happenings. He sheds tears right along with the family and friends who hurt with Brad's passing. While I think God rejoices to be with His children in heaven, I know that He does not delight in seeing a child of his have life end prematurely...He does not delight in seeing family and friends hurt that a child,brother, and friend has passed on. I believe God loves all people with all of his heart...there is no way the God I serve is indifferent to such a tragedy.

So I reflect upon the cliche question...bad things happen because sin is on our Earth. Because God loved us enough to give our own free will, situations like this happen. Sometimes things happen that we don't think are fair, and to be honest they are not fair a lot of the times...however, God's gracious gift of free will opens the door for us to make poor decisions. Sometimes people can live a life full of poor decisions and enjoy a long, relatively happy life. Other times, one poor decision can lead to a consequence that will forever change the lives of those involved.

My heart goes out to the Odens family, may God give them peace, comfort, and allow them to grieve for the loss of a dear son and brother. My heart also goes out to the shooter, who was operating in self defense. While I do not agree with his decision to shoot Brad, he obviously was scared for his life so I don't think he needs to be charged. However, I do think he needs much prayer...how awful to have to live with this for the rest of his life. Justified or not...he took the life of a human being, not something easy to deal with. I pray that he also finds comfort and peace that can only come from God.

This touches a button for me as far as my feelings on gun control, but I find this post not to be an appropriate place to write about such issues. May such tragedies remind us to have an open mind to this sensitive political issue.

Please take a moment to thank God for the life you have, it truly is a gift and something that should not be taken for granted.

Good Friday to you

Hey friends!

It's been a while since I've posted. Last week I was busy running for Student Body Vice President with one of my best friends Bill Ballard. The two of us came up 22 votes short! (445 total votes) Oh well...what can ya do? We both had a great time running and brought forth ideas that we can follow up on as senators next year. Looking forward to an exciting year.

Taking the MCAT in just over 1 week. Yikes! Super nervous about it, but I put it into God's hands. I pray that if medicine is where He wants me to be, it will all work out.

Today, I reflect upon the cross. Good Friday...it is so easy to "skip" over this day. We know the end of the story, we understand that Jesus died for our sins. May I not forget the price that was paid for my sins. The suffering my best friend and Lord endured on my behalf is almost too much for me to take at times. Imagining the aloneness he felt as his disciples left him, the agony he felt as he was whipped and beaten, the humiliation he felt as he was made a mockery of...how much he must love me! It puts into perspective so much for me, Christ endured it all so that I could be with him. Reflecting upon what happened on this day makes me realize the wondrous love He has for me. So undeserved it is, but how grateful I am for it. Praise Christ, the suffering servant of God.

Life has been hard for many people lately. I look at a family in my resident director's church. They just lost 4 babies (quadruplets that didn't survive more than a week)...imagine the devestation that would bring a young family. I think of an old friend of mine who was killed this week in a shooting in Brookings. He made a bad decision and it cost him his life...23 years old. I know the family quite well, and it is something that will cause much hurt for them. It makes me sad to sit and reflect about the suffering that some people are enduring right now. This is what makes Good Friday so important. Our Savior, while he could have simply spoke our forgiveness into being...instead took the most excruciating, humiliating way to overcome evil. We can go to him in times of suffering because we know he's been there. God had to make the ultimate sacrifice, the Son he loved so dearly. I look to God in times such as these, there are no answers that can bring comfort to people who lose their children, but God can bring them comfort because He lost his Son. I pray that those people will find the peace that rests in knowing God is in charge and that he is hurting right alongside them.

I pray that you have a blessed Good Friday. Take time to reflect upon the cross. The suffering that was endured there, the triumph it represents for all of us, and the man who hung there and his great love for you!

Did He REALLY mean what he said??

First off, thanks for all of those you have been praying for Favre, the guy on my floor with the mom with cancer. She went to Mayo last week to begin surgeries/chemo...etc. When the doctors did another test to locate the exact location (of the cancer that had been found in Sioux Falls), they were surprised to find out that there was NO cancer in her liver...or anywhere for that matter, just a fatty growth. Praise God! For miracles such as this, I am forever praising the creator of the universe for his power, his love, and willingness to answer his people's cries for help! Man, this fires me up...no matter the crap that comes our way in life...God NEVER leaves our sides...he is always listening and caring for us....wow! Great stuff!

Today, Shane Claiborne, author of Irrestible Revolution and Jesus for President, came to speak at our chapel service. I was floored...what a great talk and a great example of Christ in our generation. Because of men like this I believe there is hope for the future of our world. Claiborne is a man who has taken to living in the inner city of Philadelphia...living with the poor and living simply.

The question that stuck out most to me was "What if Jesus actually meant what he said in the Bible". What if the last shall be first, what if we should give to the poor above all else...what if we should love others as ourselves." Such thinking contradicts our culture. Claiborne and his friends have taken this literally, they have traveled the world, even working with Mother Teresa in India...but more importantly they live it out everyday of their lives. Such a lifestyle can be dangerous, but remember Jesus was a dangerous man. He never was about keeping the status quo. I loved how Claiborne pointed out the fact that the Bible has led to more people getting in trouble than any other book. How true... what the Bible demands of us goes against the grain... it begs us to make Christ and his cross the priority of our lives.

Now, I don't plan on dropping out of school tomorrow and moving into a cardboard box, but Claiborne's talk challenged me deeply. God has put a passion for those in dire straights, those living in poverty. My challenge now is to pray earnestly, seeking God's will for my life. Does it involve medicine like I think?...does it involve working with the poor? Regardless, I put my trust in Him that he will lead me to where I need to go. I also put faith in him that he means what he says!

Live Dangerously!

Uh....help?

What a crazy couple of weeks of life...I'm looking forward to a day where I can relax, sip on a glass of Diet Pepsi and reminisce about the days of running around and trying to keep everything straight! School has been kicking my butt lately! I've been doing alright in my classes, but overall I have been taxed more academically then ever before. It seems as though my hardest work and best effort still doesn't net me that elusive A grade. I believe the good Lord is humbling me through all of it.

I'm a Resident Assistant in a freshman dorm. I've seen some stuff...you will not imagine what has been left in the Burgess bathrooms (due to graphic nature it will be omitted :) ). However, the last week has probably been the hardest week of residence life. I've had to deal with seeing suffering amongst my guys. This is so hard to deal with for me at times. How badly I wish that guys could live lives full of happiness, especially those who know Jesus. This week, one of the great guys of my floor (who we'll call Favre for confidentiality) just found out his mom has cancer. Knowing the strain I would feel if I found out such news about my own mother made me genuinely feel hurt for him. Lots of questions come up when such things happen to people who love Jesus. I had the opportunity to listen to many of these questions from Favre, but unfortunately was not able to give any answers. Funny thing about God is that sometimes he saves answers for us for a time when we are better able to understand them. So, that has been a tough thing to deal with.

Another resident had some issues with demonic sorts of things. This is really a long story and not appropriate to talk about in a blog, but let me tell you Jesus Christ reigns over all evil!!

Finally, I had the opportunity to work with the Furniture Mission in Sioux Falls. Basically we donated furniture to needy families. This is a tough thing to see, driving around the poorest neighborhoods of Sioux Falls is like a different country. I wonder how many of our city's residents are even aware that such a poverty stricken area exists. My eyes were opened and I received a gut check. How tragic is it to see people struggling so much that they have kids sleeping on the floor and have NO furniture in their dwellings (some were too rough to call houses). How can any Christian not be hurt by the fact that there are people in such a state of suffering? My heart was broken for them, may I never reach a place where my own possessions become so important that I forget to help those in need the most.

So I'm at a place in life where I am putting up my hands and asking God for help. This is real life, it is easy to be a servant for God when things are going great. When the rubber hits the road and things start to get hard, people start to suffer, this is when we need to rely on God and the power of the cross to carry us through.

One final note, for the politically minded. I try not to make too many bold political statements on the blog, many readers of this particular blog probably don't care too much about political rhetoric. However, I feel compelled to say that I support our President and feel that he is the man for the job and will get things turned around. There is such an aura of negativity around people of my party (I'm a registered Republican). To be frankly honest, sometimes I am somewhat ashamed to call myself a Republican. People like Rush Limbaugh make me sick to my stomach (granted, I believe he is primarily an entertainer, not a politician...or at least I hope). This is pretty much an aside, but I felt I wanted to say it just because I've run across a substantial amount of friends who have been trashing our President.

Remember, God is with you and is willing to help. Live with reckless abandon for Him!

On the Dusty Road

In the Bible study I am a part of based on John Piper's book Don't Waste Your Life, we talked about something last night that has crossed my mind many times the past year. Tonight, in the floor Bible study I lead we are tackling 1 Corinthians 1...also relating to what's been on my mind lately.

The issues of suffering and pain for Jesus has been coming up lately in my mind. We are called by Jesus himself to pick up our crosses and follow him. What does it mean to suffer for Christ, to die for him?? In order to live a life that is completely sold out for Christ do we need to say goodbye to comforts, safety, and pleasure? Is it possible to not waste your life if you don't do something radical for Jesus? I do not think that this is necessarily the case. There are people in our world who do lose their lives in the name of Jesus. That's a fact. However, I do not believe that every Christian who is a sold-out believer in the power of Jesus is destined to die a martyr's death. I know plenty of people who lived unwasted lives who did not die a martyr's death.

I look at my grandmother first of all. She passed away from complications from diabetes almost nine years ago already. A disease killed her, not a sword or other forms of persecution, but did she live a wasted life?? I find it hard to believe that she lived a wasted moment, let alone a wasted life. From growing up in hard times, to raising 5 God-fearing children, including my mom, to constantly showing Christ's love to us grandkids, this woman lived for Jesus and did not waste her life.

So we've established that one does not need to die a martyr's death to live an unwasted life. What was it that made my grandma and people like her not to live a wasted life. The answer I believe lies in the idea of daily dying to self. Perhaps this is somewhat of what Christ is saying when he says to pick up our crosses. This doesn't involve a literal picking up of a cross, it involves saying no to our selfish desires and putting God's first. It involves putting the cross of Christ at the center of our life...daily taking a trip down the dusty road of Calvary where we put our sins, our desires of the flesh at the foot of the cross. It is when we do this, we consciously put to death our own selfish desires that we really live. When Christ becomes the center of our life we are able to live lives that will bring him Glory!

May we never forget the power of Jesus Christ and what he accomplished on that dusty road to Calvary and then on the cross itself. Moreso, let us not forget what he accomplished by his resurrection and conquering of death. May all of our lives be living examples of what this means to us and bring glory to Him!

POWER!....without steroids

Been a super busy couple of weeks. Classes are hard, I'm not getting enough studying in for the MCAT, RA activities are great but time-consuming, I took a post as a DJ for the campus radio station....the list goes on!

With all of these activities and some other volunteering thrown on top my life seems to get out of control in a hurry. I personally am one of those people who likes to be busy, sitting around wasting time is not for me (*note, i do enjoy sitting around doing nothing and relaxing at times, not a waste of time at all)...but sometimes in the midst of all the business I get overwhelmed.

This past week I have been really reflecting on the power of Christ. It seems such a trivial thing for a Christian to talk about...no duh we think Christ is legit, we are CHRISTians after all right?

Something interesting happened this week. On Tuesday nights I volunteer with a group called Halo (it's a bible study we have at the VoA in town for troubled and substance abuse teenagers). It's really random because the head of it is my best friend's brother, my nearly life long neighbor, and role model growing up...but anyways, back to the story. We played a game with the kids and then watched some videos about a guy interviewing people about what happens after death. We broke up into small groups and Aaron and I led a group of young guys. What was so interesting for me was that while we talked everyone was willing to participate in "God talk"...as long as we were talking about "God/god" everything was fine, but when we mentioned Jesus Christ, three of the guys instantly started fidgeting, looking out the window, trying to get everyone else's attention off of us leaders who were basically sharing the Gospel. It was almost as if we were in the midst of the battle described by Paul in Ephesians 6.

All of this has really prompted me to investigate the power of Christ in my life. First of all I shouldn't have been surprised by the response of the boys. 1 corinthians 1 says something of the order that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who do not believe. It is almost as if the name of Christ is offensive to those who don't believe. Nearly all people seem willing to at least entertain the idea of a god but when Christ comes up something changes. Suddenly the rules have changed. Why is this?? I think it has much to do with the fact that in order to accept Christ as our Lord, we need to accept that we are failures. We fail to live up to the standards that God has set forth for us because of sin and evil. The problem is that so many people have the feeling that living "good lives" is all that's necessary to earn a spot in heaven. What a tradgedy if all there is to getting to heaven is living a good life. Think of how much we would miss as Christians.

You see as Christians it is not all about living the "good life" with God. So many Christians I have read about and know have not had good lifes in our worldly standards. Maybe it was a ravaging disease, a sudden death of a loved one, tough circumstances, whatever...following Christ doesn't guarantee one "riches". However, ask any Christian..."Is it worth it?" every single one will say yes. Why? There is absolutely nothing that compares with having a personal relationship with the creator of the universe. If all we had to do was live good lives, help others,etc...to get into heaven we would be missing out on the best part of life here on Earth.

To sum all of this together we must acknowledge in the mighty power of Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate source of hapiness and encouragement. He has the power to save anyone and if we as Christians are willing to accept this free gift from Him and share it with others we can bring further glory to him. Beware though, this will not be easy...sharing about someone who offends what those of the world hold dear will be sure to ruffle some feathers.

Live offensively.