pressing on

"Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth."
-Hosea 6:3

i've been thinking a lot about this verse, because it is becoming increasingly harder for me to come to God recently. i have pretty much no desire, and when i pray it is as if God is silent. and yet, i know that i have to continue to press on, to keep on going. there's no turning back. i know that i love God, but i definitely don't feel it right now. there's no passionate love relationship right now. its just bland-ness, silence, confusion, and frustration. i don't understand this life. one minute you can be awesome, and the next minute you have returned to the valley. there's nothing really all that constant in life. so, trying to have my love for him remain constant through changing circumstances and feelings is definitely a lifelong challenge.

i continue to pray that God would do whatever he needs to do with me in order that i may be closer to him. i trust him. he is the only one that can do it, and its not going to be my own strength that brings me closer to God. its tough right now, but i must press on to know the LORD. i must keep that goal in sight, so that although i might not desire it right now, i want to will to know God and to keep on going towards him. one thing that has stuck with me since last year's trial is this quote from c.s. lewis,

"[The enemy's] cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do [God's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

so, we press on...

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. "

philippians 3:7-14

keep it simple

God keeps reminding me of the simplicity of this relationship. if you think about it, its really so easy...but i tend to complicate things and overthink and overanalyze. see, i'm a thinker. if you know me at all you know that i think more than i speak. this has its good and bad side. fortunately, i don't end up doing many things that are too stupid, because i think before i do. but when it comes to my relationship with Christ, it would almost be better to quit thinking altogether...because in the world's eyes it will never make sense. since i've been born into the world, i still have a little of that lingering world view, which causes me to rationalize, plan, organize, replan, etc.

anyways, simplicity. yes, God has been showing me how simple it is to know him. it pretty much boils down into one thing, from which everything stems. and, since Jesus did, i'll throw in the second one too, because it is true (but i have found that without the first it is useless).


"Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 'Teacher, which is the greatest commandemt in the Law?'
"Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.'"


alright, so, predictable bible reference...yeah. but seriously, it is this simple. first (and, like i said earlier, it is first for a reason), love God! that's the whole purpose for God creating us right? i mean, God created us for a relationship with him, and he wants our love, so he lets us have the choice to love him or not love him. he sends his only Son Jesus Christ to come and rescue us so that we can have an even more intimate relationship with him than before. Christ suffers for us and pays the price for every little thing we have done wrong. we love God because he loved us first, and he has loved us with a perfect love. God just wants a little something back in return...and not out of obligation or duty, but LOVE. he's given it all for us, and now he's calling us to give it all for him. He's constantly trying to impress us, just begging for us to pay attention to him. he's written us a huge love letter, shows us his glory in creation, causes circumstances to work out for our good, and on and on and on...God is passionately in love with us, and he wants us to enter into that love with him and find the one and only true joy upon this earth. its what we were created for.

so, great...love. what does that actually look like!? i mean, come on...all this language of beatiful and things that we all want to aspire to, but what does that actually mean?

the way i have had to think about this has been through my relationships with other people. because God has created us in his own image, there's a lot of things to learn about God from the things around us. when i think of relationships, the first thing i think about of course is a dating"relationship." as a guy, i tend to shy away from this sort of stuff, but there really is a ton to learn from relationships in life. see, if you are attracted to someone, there is one thing above all other things that you want more than anything else. you just want to be with them. you want to spend time with them, to talk to them, to have a good time with them. you'll even do things that aren't necessarily fun, but since you are with this person, it makes it really good. it is the same with God. more than anything else, we should only desire to be with Him. what does loving God really look like? first of all, we must seek after his presence, striving to be with him and to know him. it is important to emphasize that doing things isn't first on this list. think about it, you don't spend all of your time going about running errands for a person that you love. you'll do it because you love them, but the thing you most desire is to be with that person. in our culture, we tend to put more emphasis on the outward appearance and what you "do." you're alright if you look ok from the outside. unfortunately that mindset has started to drift into the church atmosphere. more emphasis is placed on what you are doing for God rather than how close you really are to God. from the outside you could look like the best christian in the world, but on the inside you could be really really messed up with no true relationship with God. its like the pharisees. "Man looks at the outside appearance, but God looks at the heart." God is more concerned with your relationship with him than anything else, even the good works that you could possibly be doing.

this is where the second part of what Jesus had to say comes in. "love your neighbor as yourself." this, along with the other command sums up the entire bible. someone i heard once called it the cliff's notes of the bible. and, since i'm a lazy high schooler, i like it. anyways...this command is second because it is a natural response to obeying the first. if we are loving God with all we have got, our actions will follow. over and over again in scripture, God talks about how if we remain in him, he will bear the fruit within us. in philippians 2:13, paul says "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose." galatians 5:5 says "But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope." its all about God. it all hinges upon his grace. think about it. God created us for a relationship with him. that's the most important thing, that we would love him. just as in a friendship, when you spend time with someone and are around them pretty consistently, you start to develop some of their habits. some of them rubs off on you. the same goes with God. as we spend time with God, he starts to rub off on us, and we then are transformed into people who not only love God passionately, but out of that outpouring of love, our love for God and his love in us overflows onto the people we come in contact with on a daily basis.

let me leave with a verse which i have heard called the most succint representation of the gospel of Christ from john 17:3 -

"Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

God the adventurer

ok, so i've been thinking about the story of God and our (the human race's) role in this big huge story that he's got going on. and, ah, gosh, God's got this huge daredevil side to him that i think we tend to forget about. he's a little adventurous.

first of all...he creates us humans, knowing that its a huge risk, and knowing that it will cause him so much pain to see us reject him for lesser things. but, he took that risk, and i think he took it becuase the love of a handful was worth it to him. so, he took that huge risk.
then, he loves us so much that he's up in heaven trying to figure out how to redeem us, and get us able to be in his presence. see, i've always thought, "why did Jesus have to come to save us...i mean, God is God and so can't he do anything he wants, so why did he have to do it that way. couldn't he have come up with a better plan?" well, here's how i think it works. see, God is holy. he's perfect and righteous. he can't be united with anything that is not perfect because that would make him not perfect. so, since we've messed up so much and we have this sin nature, God can't be united with us - unless someone/thing else takes away our stains. since what we deserve is death, something has to die for our sins. so God started out with the Law. unfortunately, the whole sacrificing a lamb all the time...we weren't good enough at that thing. so God comes up with this plan. over and over again its referred to as a "mystery" (see ephesians and colossians especially). and, i guess mystery isn't like "oooh all hard to understand and gotta figure it out." no, the mystery isn't that. its just like a secret plan. God kept it secret because he's cool like that, and also i think just to make Satan mad. so, anyways...God dreams up this secret plan to get us back into fellowship with him and save us from our bondage to sin. and, this secret plan of course is Christ coming to redeem us. and, yeah, it was pretty much the perfect plan. first of all, totally covert operation here. Jesus comes undercover as a baby. sweet. secret plan going well. then, Jesus lives a perfect life. ok, cool. then, since Satan didn't quite know what was going on and he's not as smart as God he gets Christ crucified. alright, secret plan going perfectly. Jesus dies on the cross. he pays the penalty once and for all for our sin so that we can be in fellowship with him. and not only does he do that, but since he lived that perfect life and now we're holy in God's eyes because of Christ he can dwell in us like never before. the Holy Spirit comes. serious power. and, ah now God's given everything for us. i still can't figure out his plan exactly, but just scraping the surface is like, wow...God had all the bases covered. secret plan that he'd been waiting to put into action for centuries...covert operation...tricking Satan into putting the final touches on the plan...perfect communion with God after Christ's sacrifice...pretty cool.

part 2

this morning matt and i met again. we read all of 2 corinthians for this meeting, and another passage stuck out to me about light.

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is Spirit."

ah, how often do we say this - ITS ALL ABOUT GOD!!! its not like we were good enough to shine on our own, or had the power to light our own little flame. no, God is light. that's it. and who are we? we're just reflectors of His glory. how does that feel? when i think of reflector, i think of that little thing on the back of a bicycle. its nothing on its own, just a piece of plastic. there's no glory in it at all. its kinda nerdy and stupid, you know? but it serves a purpose, and without the light, there's no point in that little reflector at all. when light hits it, though, it does its job...it reflects that light back towards other people. and people see it. and it saves your life. that's what we are. once the Light hits us, we just reflect it out into the world, and they see it. they can't choose to not see it. its just there.

so, yeah...kind of a stupid metaphor, but true, right? when i hear the word reflect, i think of one other thing. i think of the moon. yeah, i'm into space. i wanted to be an astronaut when i was in middle school. i did all my reports on the space shuttle or stars or, when it was a history project, one of the apollo missions. so, because i'm sort of a space nerd (yeah, i watch the NASA channel on tv sometimes), i think of the moon. the light we see from the moon isn't the moon's light. its all from the sun's light. the moon doesn't produce any light at all on its own. all of the light we see comes from the sun.

i don't know why i'm so into this at this point, but i keep thinking about how awesome God is, and how frail we are. our purpose as Christians is to stay close to the source, so that his light may reflect off of us. and you're right, this is a good "religious" thought, but it is so much more than that. God is light. he's rescued us from darkness and brought us into his marvelous light. isn't that flat out amazing? like, to think we were once in darkness and God called us into light. ah, that just blows my mind. what's it going to be like when we die, and we're standing at the gates of heaven with absolutely nothing to our name. we look up to see Christ, and then we look over our shoulder and see darkness....absolute darkness. we know we deserve to be in that darkness, and we know that the light and brilliance of Christ is more than we could ever ask for. we look to Christ again, and he's got his arms open ready to embrace us. ah, it's insane. why would someone give everything He had for someone who couldn't even really give anything back at all. why would someone suffer and die for someone who was going to, time and time again, reject their Savior and follow after the things which had them in bondage in the first place. that's what Christ did for us, and don't you think that's enough? like, its crazy how much love that is, to save us from what we deserve, and it wasn't because of anything we did, only his love. ah, that's so awe-some. it demands awe and worship and we could sing the song of salvation forever and ever. and yet, he's given us so much more than just salvation. he's given us blessing upon blessing upon blessing in this life, and there's so much more in the life to come. not only has he given us blessing, but he's given us responsibility. now, why would you give someone who has no skill whatsoever a task as great as what God has given to us...

not only has God called us out of darkness into light, but he has also made us the light of the world. he has given us the privilege of reflecting his radiance upon the world. he's given us the task of shining into the darkness and calling others to Himself. ah, gosh...that blows my mind too! why would God use us to reflect his glory? wouldn't it be easier for him to just shine upon us, you know...or to create some other being to do that, or even to have the angels do it or something...some being more equipped than us and more responsible should be given that task. but no, God's a crafty one. he's pretty smart. he's got a different plan than the one that makes sense.