it's not about me.

it's not about me.

by choosing Christ, i am to choose selflessness. i had coffee with a friend today. i thought she had sincerely been ignoring me. but she hadn't been. i love you, friend.

on my drive home, i could barely wait to type. i had "Galatians" on my mind. so i opened it up (on youversion.com) and in the MSG and started to read.

and it hit me deep and hard. Galatians 3.

1 You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it's obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the Cross was certainly set before you clearly enough.

2 Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God's Message to you?3 Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren't smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it?4 Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!

I don't even really know what to add to this, because it's just so clear. So, I'll continue.

5 Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you?6 Don't these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.

7 Is it not obvious to you that persons who put their trust in Christ (not persons who put their trust in the law!) are like Abraham: children of faith?8 It was all laid out beforehand in Scripture that God would set things right with non-Jews by faith. Scripture anticipated this in the promise to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed in you."

9 So those now who live by faith are blessed along with Abraham, who lived by faith-this is no new doctrine!10 And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure. Scripture backs this up: "Utterly cursed is every person who fails to carry out every detail written in the Book of the law."

Cursed? My sole goal has been to live by my own effort the last few weeks, maybe months... doomed to failure? oh crap. shall i go on?

11 The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: "The person who believes God, is set right by God-and that's the real life."

Whoa... what just happened??

i don't know what to title this

I just watched a movie. It's buzzing on Facebook. It's had 1,845,831 hits on YouTube. You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc #makekonyfamous

I won't go into what it's all about, because my words would not give it the justice it deserves.

This video gnaws at the core of who I am. To fight for justice for those who are too entangled and captured to free themselves. To love them.

I don't know much about the man who's behind all of this. Jason Russell is his name. He's making a difference. And in this video there was not ONE mention of God or Jesus or religion. Simply a seeking of justice.

In eight years, he has gotten far. He has empowered those around him to stand up and create an army of peace. And the US Government had no choice but to respond.

With God, I hear, "Wait." At least, with a lot of God's followers I hear, "Wait."

But what if we're not supposed to. Jason Russell didn't. He fought. And people are joining him.

Can we do more without God than with Him?

Theologically, and digging back to my roots, I hear a shouting, "no!"

But logically, with the evidence before me, my heart screams, "yes!"

I wish I could tell you what is happening in this mind and heart of mine. I can only write with words so much...

would it make you more comfortable?

if i talked about Jesus a lot on my blogs and how much i loved Him and how much good He was doing all around me, would it make you more comfortable?

if i talked lies about how much i trusted Him to take care of me and that i believed He wants good for me, would it make you more comfortable?

if talked about how the idea of humanitarian aid in other countries still sparked the beating muscle in my chest, but the thought of telling them about Jesus made me want to cry, would it make you uncomfortable?

if i talked scriptures from the Bible and made it apply to this here and now, would it make you more comfortable?

if i stopped the questions, and just took it for face value, would it make you more comfortable?

if i stopped asking you questions, and making you dig deep in your faith to find the answers, would it make you more comfortable?

just wondering.

my beating muscle

the truth has no power unless you believe in it.

this is something i've come to understand. i know there's God. i know the Bible is His inspired Word.

but when i hear people say, "i am nothing without Him." or "i'll follow Him regardless." or "i trust that He has me in His hands." to be honest... even if I wanted to believe it, I simply find that I cannot. it's lost it's power.

can i say this? too many times it seems like He's failed. He may not have failed you...yet. and maybe He won't. and maybe He hasn't failed me. but He only wants me to want what He wants. and what if I don't want that?

the idea that there is this big strong being way more than anything i've ever thought of up there controlling and directing the stars and asteroids and telling the ocean to stop where it is...it all seems a bit vague to me.

i used to just take it as they all said. it's truth. it must be. it's all i've ever been told. but logically, is that possible? and why would a God make a people that He loves, and then keep secrets from them? secrets of creation and of the future and of the present and of the past?

how does evil, in the eyes of the good-doers, come without repentance for so many? and how does good, in the eyes of good-doers, simply outweigh all the bad?

all this questioning, it makes my breathing quicken. i can feel my respirations increase per minute.

...but i'm still reading "Jesus Calling" by Sarah Young. and i'm still looking at scriptures. seeking for something...to satisfy this sucking black hole.

if He doesn't satisfy this beating muscle in my chest...will anything ever?

will He make it stop beating if I can't get this right?

"All I want is You to have Your way

You are the Potter and I am the clay

All I need is You to have Your way
You are Creator and I'm what You've made

Finally I Surrender

You are God. I am man. You are sovereign."

-Misty Edwards

"Choosing Your Faith" by Mark Mittelburg

an excerpt from "Choosing Your Faith" by Mark Mittelberg:

When I got to college, I came to the painful realization that I'd grown into my particular version of faith rather passively. I'd been raised believing in God, trusting in the Bible, and having faith that the church was the carrier of God's truth. And I had an unsubstantiated and naive confidence in the truth of all this.

Then I signed up for some philosophy classes. One of my professors, who was a religious man of a different stripe, seemed to delight in dismantling the simplistic beliefs of many of his Christian students-- and I felt like I was a favorite target. He skillfully pointed out problems with the Bible, with what he called "traditional views about God," and with most of the things I'd been taught to believe. His intellectual onslaught woke me up and made me face the fact that I'd bought into a belief system that I barely understood and had never critically analyzed.

I hardly knew how to respond, and I have to admit that my attempts to get better answers from some of the leaders at my church were generally disheartening. For example, I told one of my teachers that my faith was being assailed in school and that I needed a deeper understanding not only of what we believed, but also of why we thought it was correct.

"How do we know that the Bible is really true and that it is actually God's Word?" I asked. I'll never forget his reply: "Oh that's easy, it says right here in the New Testament that 'all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

"Yes, but how do we know that what that says is true?" I replied.

"Because it says it is," he answered, "and it's God's Word."

"But that's the very question we're trying to answer," I shot back. "If all you do is appeal to the Bible's claims to prove that the Bible is true, then you're guilty of circular reasoning, and you've proved nothing."

He looked at me like he was certain I was rapidly sinking into the quicksands of liberalism or skepticism-or had already become an actual infidel- and then, with a deep breath, took another run at it: "But you need to realize that there's no higher authority than God's revelation. If God says it's true, then you can bank your life on it."

"Okay," I replied wearily, "but how do you know that God's really the one talking here? Lots of religious books claim to be God talking- and you don't believe those other books."

"That's because," he said triumphantly, "those other books are not the Word of God!"

At this point, I was frustrated enough to wish I could imitate Indiana Jones in that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where he finally gets fed up with his sword-wielding opponent's antics and just pulls out his pistol and shoots the guy. Of course I'm only kidding (at least now I am). But it was becoming abundantly clear to me that logic was not going to get me any further in that conversation, so I finally just had to let it go-although I was left with the same questions churning in my mind.

Subsequently, I found some people and books that were a lot more helpful. I'll come back to my story later, but this exasperating interchange, and others like it along the way, helped me realize that lots of religious people hold firmly to all kinds of religious ideas-whether right or wrong-for all kinds of weak and apparently unfounded, or at least unexamined, reasons. I determined then and there that whether I ended up agreeing with the faith of my upbringing or choosing a completely different point of view, my conclusion would have to be based on more solid criteria than what some of my teachers and leaders were apparently clinging to.

Isaiah 59: 9-10

Therefore justice is far from us, and righteousness does not overtake us; we hope for light, and behold, darkness, and for brightness, but we walk in gloom. We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight, among those in full vigor we are like dead men.

(Isaiah 59: 9-10, ESV)