Blogging

 I blog because I need to write. Sometimes I tell myself I don't have to write and my life seems to suffer. Writing is therapeutic and relaxing for me but, ultimately, it helps me sort out what I'm thinking about. It helps me to flesh out ideas in my head and figure out what I actually believe about things. Blogging gives me a way to do that. I write on a blog so others can read what I'm thinking about, and in turn, hold me accountable to keep writing. If I write on paper with a pen I might not ever look at what I wrote again but having a digital copy means I can share it with others or use it for other things.

Can't Stop Talking!

I was recently reading a book and it was one of those books you can read and not really draw anything from it because you've read other books on the topic before. Anyway, I read a book that mentioned if a person really cares about something and is passionate about it, he or she will tend to talk about it a lot. "Duh, that is common sense," I thought to myself when I first read it.

I finished the book and moved on with my life, unchanged. Since then, I've been thinking a lot about what the book said. Am I that passionate about Christ that I talk about Him with others? I looked up the paragraph in the book and it was referencing Peter and John when they were brought before the Sanhedrin.

They were facing possible persecution for preaching Christ but they said, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

Bam! Peter and John preached boldly, but not only that, they stood their ground in front their prosecutors. When the Sanhedrin saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, the Sanhedrin were astonished.  The Sanhedrin took note that Peter and John had been with Jesus and they were willing to die if that was to be the consequence for their continued preaching about Christ.

Check it out: Acts 4: 1-22
Are you talking to others about Jesus Christ? Maybe you need to reignite your passion for Him in order to be more motivated?

Identity in American Culture

We are so obsessed with work in American culture that the first thing we ask to start a conversation with a stranger is, "What do you do?"

If you are on the answering side of this question, you imply that you have figured out a major part of our identity by answering.

American society wants us to work- to contribute and move society forward- and American culture wants us to work a lot- 40 plus hours a week. When we work a lot, we naturally begin to adopt what we are doing into our identity. It only makes sense that we derive our identity largely from what we spend our time doing. (i.e. I spend my time writing, therefore, I am a writer. I spend my time building things, therefore, I am a builder.)

As a result, we stop spending any time thinking about who we are because we already answered that question with a job. We simply assume our identity from our job and never spend any more time looking any deeper. 

We should look deeper at who we are as people aside from our job. Try defining your identity without mentioning where you work. (I often avoid answering the question "What do you do?" when I meet people).

A few weeks ago I volunteered at a homeless shelter and, before the doors opened, we were told to get to know the guests but not to use the conversational questions we would typically use. That got me thinking, "Jesus hung out and talked to the poor a lot. He befriended them and related to them. Jesus would not have been able to get to know those people by asking them what they do for a living when it was obvious they did not have a job."

Jesus was a carpenter but when you think of Jesus, carpenter is probably not the first identity you give him.  You probably think of him as Savior, or as the son of God.

Since we naturally begin to adopt what we spend our doing into our identity, we should spend our time serving others.

We are called, as Christians, to live like Christ and that entails so much more than making a living for ourselves. We are to pursue him in all we do- at work and everywhere else. Our identity needs to be more than what we do for a living, it needs to be what we do in our free time. Are you someone who pursues Christ first? If a person wants to make "Christian" their primary identity, pursuing him should be first and foremost. Christ will know us by the fruit we bear.


John 5:5-8

Sick Cycle

It is harder to worship God now more than ever. 

It is harder than ever before to live for Christ.

It is harder to pursue Him now than it was when Christians suffered persecution. Now that people are not threatened to die for their faith many have chosen to keep their faith but pursue it so pathetically and lazily that it is of no purpose beside personal salvation. Others pursue faith through organized religion emphatically but are always left empty. 

The difficulty of pursuing Christ now has nothing to do with freedom of religion but has to do with our surroundings. We are surrounded by black holes. These black holes suck up our time, our income, and eventually our faith. The black holes in our lives are things. There are so many things for us to want to have and want to do that all of our time is vacuumed away. We work in order to buy things or we work in order to pay for ourselves to do things. It is a sick cycle. We tell ourselves we will stop the cycle as soon as we get/do that last thing. We even go far enough to promise ourselves that it will all end after the next thing. But it doesn’t.

We need to outsmart ourselves and simply stop before we get the next thing. We need to outsmart ourselves by just stopping right now and straightening our lives out. 

Instead of getting the next thing, ask yourself if you can be content with what you have now?

When I got home this fall I started piling my things together so that I could get rid of them. A stronger man might have organized his things enough to sell them but I just wanted the things gone. So I started making trips to Goodwill, local thrift stores, and the recycling center. I did this instead of looking for a job because I knew it was more important.    

I realize that some people might feel like deliberately deciding to not get a job would be jumping off track but I knew I needed otherwise. Society is a big bad beast. It wants us to believe we are worthless unless we are contributing to it. In reality, we are just feeding the beast that is killing us. We work long so we can afford to drown ourselves in distractions. 

In the end, we have no time. When was the last time you had free time?

If there is anyone who is reading this, please STOP right now and take the time to reexamine your life. Where are you headed? Don’t tell yourself you’ll examine your life later because you won’t ever make it to the time when everything stops and you have free time.

Take your mind off things of this earth and set them on things that are above. 

-Colossians 3:2

Inspiration Tank

 Anne Lamont says that writer’s block is a misleading name. It is not a matter of being impeded by a block, but rather, it is like being empty and drained of inspiration. 

The thing about nature is that it is a place of renewal. Whether you are into writing, drawing, painting, singing, or even reading the forest is a great place to start. In its silence a person will once again be filled with inspiration. 

Typically quiet river beds come to life after a rain and suddenly the entire forest sings the tune of rushing water. It echoes through green trees as the leaves drop fresh droplets of rain. Witnessing this begins to fill my empty tank of inspiration.

 A tricking brook interrupts my path as I walk. I stop to enjoy the fresh scent of rain. Looking up to my left, a cloud of fog lingers in the trees but everywhere else is as clear as can be. The air is always still in the fog, as if to hide ghosts in its presence. A gentle wind eventually blows the fog away and rain droplets that were once content perched upon green leaves now plummet to the forest floor.

The green surrounding me becomes green with new life, shining a vigorous green that can only be seen when freshly watered. I begin walking downhill and the river has overflowed onto the trail. Pulsating waves move down the slanted slabs of rock. I hear the soft cooing of a mourning dove and it brings peace to the forest as well as to my ears, signaling all is well here. I hear no stream except the one beneath my feet. The rocks are more slippery now, yes, and my socks occasionally get wet, but in solitude I suddenly become aware of just how quiet everything is.

Hiking further and further down until the scent of trees disappears, overtaken by the aroma of the approaching sea. Its salty scent is like no other. The warm air pockets in the trees of the forest spill out into the ocean and are replaced by a cool sea breeze. Soon the trickling of the river fades out into the sound of the surf pounding rocks and waves crashing into rocks. In these places, my senses are awakened. Unlike the civilization I typically experience, my brain is stimulated by silence and the small number of noises. It is hear I come to rid my fill my inspiration tank.