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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Help! I'm in a nutshell!

How did I get into this very great big nutshell?

Thursday, January 28, 2010

2 for the price of 1

I am failing in the area of self-discipline. I know that I am failing because truths that once we so clear to me, while still "true", are pushed toward the back-burner. I believe God's Word is given as the truth we are meant to live in, and to see played out in everyday life. I have a diminished sense of these truths and realities. And I'm not talking about a couple days of missing devotion time. Rather I have some sense (and I could be wrong) that in an incredibly slow way that cannot simply be fought by means of one lone devotion time, however focused, sincere or sublime it may be. I am thinking more long-term. I am losing the core battle of life, the abs of godly living (when you lift heavy but have undeveloped abs, injuries start to happen). So that needs to change. I don't need one good prayer time. I need to discipline myself. It is not enough to roll out of bed only in time for work, day after day.

Personalities are sacred. Personality tests are very illuminating. They're limited, but still illuminating. Our personalities, in their infinite uniqueness and detail, reflect different aspects of the nature of God. That is why they are sacred. God is intelligent, creative, relational, gentle, unchanging, beautiful, joyful, self-aware, powerful, solid. And some people simply have certain of these qualities more than others do. And in these differences we (especially when restored by the transformation of the Holy Spirit) reflect God's image in different ways.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Yes, yes, yes

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The necessity of the cross

"All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and humanity. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed into the blinding glory of the holiness of God and have been so convicted by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely 'hell-deserving sinners,' then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before." John Stott, The Cross of Christ

Monday, January 18, 2010

Whatever the cost

May I be used to give others a greater sense of the greatness and holiness of God, whatever job or ministry it costs me, whatever friendships it costs me, whatever humiliation it costs me, whatever woman it costs me--He is har too great and too beautiful and too marvelous and too good, and I am far too small, and too temporary, for there to be any other worthy approach to life.

God have mercy on me in order to make this happen.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Pure things

Tonight I saw something beautiful. It was a brief, light, simple and unexpectedly profound exchange that occurred in the middle of a rather routine and mundane task. I don't really know what else to say about it. It was pure and innocent and kind and I think it changed my life. Not for any other reason but that it was an eye-opening, heart-opening little exchange.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Not much

Well, now that the Reality of Christ blog is up and running (and a cool thing in my opinion), I think I will use this old blog of mine, for tonight, to indulge in the strange phenomenon of writing one's deep personal reflections online for all the world to see; an archived practice of early man known as "blogging".

But there isn't much to tell. I just feel strange tonight.

God is incredibly, wondrously great and I look forward to never thinking in anguish again, in His presence. I think a lot. Too much sometimes. What a thought, that my thoughts will one day be in perfect harmony and in perfect joy, with Christ. They will not circle around obsessively, there will be no discontentment to spur my thoughts on needlessly. They will come in health and they will function in health.

If I have a flaw that I know of I will do what I can to correct it. I do this. But then again I am still immature. I realized that even when you grow as a person, you will be at a new level of maturity, and a new person so to speak--one who has a whole new set of things to learn and mistakes to make. But with each new level of maturity and responsibility reached, one can at least rejoice in it. After all, many will live their whole lives without being honest with themselves about whatever you just decided to be honest with yourself about. Aging for them is especially hard. I have all the thickheadedness to end up one of them, but I have the grace of God that teaches me not to.

Sometimes fellowship with friends in Christ feels so good, that I actually almost feel guilty. Talk about a need to retrain one's conscience, and philosophy, and lifestyle!

My heart for Long Island is starting to outweigh my heart for New York City. I heard firstborns are built with a sort of "homing device". Makes sense. We have ducks in our backyard at home. We have all sorts of birds, and we have rabbits. We have rabbits and squirrels that will actually come up to us and be fed by hand. All of this is my mother's doing. They know her; she feeds them.

I have more to learn, but this is my philosophy of dealing with people. Stay 100% committed to God's Word, and keep your heart 100% open to the person--engage them and feel what they feel. Change happens this way. Always remember the disarming power of Christian love. It completely changes the nature of the conversation.

Our generation (young and "cool" people) of Christians has GOT to stop absorbing and even promoting the irreverence of our culture. It is utterly impossible to square with Scripture. That is, if we read it.

For many years, when I thought about marriage and dating and courtship, I thought about compatibility. I thought about what would be the absolute ideal woman for me in every way; looks, personality, etc. And then there was a shift in my thinking. And with that shift came the thought, "Shut up and love one woman well." And I decided that either that's what God was telling me, or it was what he ought to be telling me. Obviously I'm joking by discussing what God "ought" to do.

I will share one thing, though--I decided and told a friend that unless I can say, "There walks a godly woman," I will not pursue that woman romantically.

Would a young woman say of me, "There walks a godly man"?

More importantly, what does God think?

The end.

Friday, January 1, 2010

This other blog...

I have an idea I am very excited about. It's a separate blog that I started 2 weeks ago:

http://realityofchrist.blogspot.com

This blog you are reading now, my main blog, has seen different kinds of postings; poems (one mine and one classic one), journal entries, theological essays, and thoughts on holiness.

My hope for the Reality of Christ blog is to make it different. My hope is for it to become a collaborative effort and for my own entries to be only a fraction of the total postings.

I want the blog (and its readers...and yes, I want it to have readers) to benefit from a spectrum of points of view, just as the body of Christ is comprised of a spectrum of personalities, spiritual gifts, backgrounds, and desires, with the result that we embrace God, His presence, His holiness and His Word with our hearts' affections and with our minds' awareness.