Long days

Turmoil and stress would be a heartfelt description of my weekdays. Classes, homework, tests, deadlines, bad grades, lecture, lecture, lecture, come home and prepare for another similar day. Monday through Friday, I repeat this process and my joy grows darker and darker.

Come Saturday, I had mostly forgotten why I’m still a Christian and who I’m living for. I gladly take the blessing of Saturdays, but I somehow don’t enjoy it as I should. I’m stressed and it is very obvious that I am. Yet when I’m asked how I’m doing, I find it hard to answer. I really don’t know. I haven’t had the spiritual stamina to examine that. I might think for a while about how I’m doing, and all I’d come up with is a list of things that I need to do. A good hint that I’m anxious.

It’s a good thing weekends have Sundays. Pure joy would be my heartfelt description of Sundays.

Sunday comes, and I’m very ready for some spiritual edification. Praise God I have a church home. A day ago, I was trying to remember what God is like. Now, I’m standing in the third row singing Come Thou Fount and I remember just who I’m living for and why I’m doing this for Him. I can’t say it’s a tangible thought. It may just be a feeling, but the feeling makes me want to keep going through another week and to fight for joy throughout the hardships.

After I’ve enjoyed worship and been enriched by a gospel-centered sermon, I enjoy a rare treat for me: I get to indulge in watching and playing with kids. I walk down to SPLASH where Mr. C. has the kids busily bopping beach balls all around the room. The sheer simplicity of their enjoyment is enough to bring me joy.

There’s some young boys plotting something in the corner. Their grins can’t hide from me. Maybe they plan to thoroughly spray me down with juice boxes again. Maybe they’re going to trick someone into saying something stupid. Maybe they just want to find some big guy to jump on and tackle. I keep my eye on them so I don’t miss a second of their scheme.

One of my favorite little girls says “hi” to me. I go over and talk with her and ask her about how she’s doing. For just a little while, I enjoy her small little world about her friends, horses, her favorite movies, her last birthday party, the bracelet she’s wearing and completely forget about my world. I pray a silent prayer for this girl, that God would draw her closer and closer to Him and that her little world would be wholly immersed in God.

Time to leave church and go over to some friends’ house and watch a game of football with a large group of people. I have some homework, but I can still enjoy being with the people, watch the game, and study for my astronomy test. Eventually, the passion of the crowd wins me away from my academic adventure and I heartily cheer my Redskins to a proud victory. It truly is sweet fellowship.

Finally, I return home tired and simultaneously renewed. Yes, I barely have the mental capacity to write this, yet I feel strong enough to wrestle another beastly week.

Monday, by God’s grace, I am ready for you and your host of classes, homework, tests, deadlines, bad grades, lectures, lectures, and lectures. I’ll fight through you cause I know that just on the other side of Friday is Saturday, and right after that comes that precious day when I enjoy fellowship with God’s people.

My future, likewise I’ll fight through you because I know that just on the other side there is a Sabbath that will not end by giving me up to another hard week.

“Jesus died for the world’s sins”

So there I was, sitting in the basement of some nameless building at Hood College. I was with my orientation group which was subdivided into smaller breakout groups for this particular session. The topic for today was Harmony at Hood, which was basically a time for people to share what stereotypes and prejudices they have against certain social groups.

Orientation group leaders had early on stated that a stereotype was a generally accepted idea of what people from a social group are supposed to be like.

My group had been given the relatively neutral task of sharing what stereotypes we ascribe to Asians. We did our job, and I must say that there was not much content in there that would be objectionable content at all. So naturally I was hoping for, yet not quite expecting, the same general outcome for the social groups that I would affiliate with.

Now imagine how I cringed and braced myself when I heard that a group was designated to list the stereotypes that they have of Christians. They listed things like, proud, ignorant, immoral, hypocritical and many other things of that sort. I recounted the list of what was read, and there was not a single stereotype granting any good trait, or even a neutral trait, in it.

If this was not discouraging enough, the following conversation bit even deeper into my heart. The proctoring professor (who was the professor of sexuality at Hood btw) went on to note in a very friendly and open-minded tone of voice that, “Even though Christians are always talking up a storm about family values, the statistics show that more pregnancies resulting from out of wedlock come from the evangelical Christian circle than from any other social group.”

What could I say? Did we not earn this name for ourselves by allowing these sins to go on and allowing those who do not submit to Christ’s rule to wear Christ’s name tag? I could not say, in the proper context, that Christians did not earn such a notoriously hypocritical stereotype in the world.

Lost in my unnerved state, I stopped paying attention to think about myself. Yes, I could easily fit into those categories laid out. I am very proud. I simply don’t know enough to reconcile my faith with certain worldviews. The immorality of my heart disgusts me the more I learn about it. And my hypocrisy mocks any witness I might have. What do I have to set me apart from these stereotypes?

Amid my dreary introspection, my ears perked to a certain phrase. It wasn’t said dramatically; it was just being listed as something about Christians. It wasn’t said with conviction; I doubt the person who said it was a Christian. Yet the truth of this phrase caught me, and I listened to it.

“Jesus died for the world’s sins.”

It was a breath of fresh air in the stagnant air of the world. Finally someone spoke a truth, and the truth spoke to me.

What makes me different from any other sinner or makes my witness any more valid that any other person who claims to be a Christian? My sin is the same, so why should I pretend to be different? Because of the fact that I have been forgiven by God and am no longer under the condemnation of sin and have been given, by God’s grace, His own Holy Spirit and the power to fight sin and pursue holiness to God’s glory.

I had almost forgotten that my message was not that all Christians are good people. My message is Christ and Him crucified.

***Currently listening to the Main Thing (part 1) and The Main Thing (part 2). Yes they are for free, and yes, you must listen to them.

Hollywood’s Orphans

How do you make kids and youth to go great things and turn into great people? Apparently according to almost every single movie geared toward younger kids, the first step to greatness is to have your parents die early on, having the youth run away from home in order to pursue his or her destiny, making the parents babbling and annoying buffoons, or to some way or another isolate them from interfering with the youth’s quest to greatness.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, all you need to do is go see enough movies or read enough books that are geared toward engaging a youthful imagination and upon further thought, I believe you will notice a distinct lack of parental involvement in the lives of the youthful protagonist. I have yet to find a movie, or book, or other form of media which portrays an adolescent as the protagonist who actively seeks and involves their parents in their exploits. (I am prepared to share a sampling of the kinds of books I am talking of.) How many stories have you seen, read, or heard in which the young protagonist are orphans, have parents but they are completely uninvolved in the plot, have parents that are portrayed as idiots, or something else that disengages from the picture of their growth to greatness? Way too many for reality, and I honestly have some trouble thinking of movie which portrays a young protagonist who does deliberately involve their parents in their growth. In my eyes, the trend of media is clearly to leave the parents out of the picture of their child’s life.

So who takes the place of the parents in the media? To a large degree, the child-protagonist does. The parents (if even present in the story) do not instruct their child; the child learns about life on their own. The parents do not give wisdom; the child looks to him or herself for answers. The parents do not guide their child; the children make decisions for themselves. Whatever advice the protagonist gets, usually comes from a peer. Either way, the role of the parent is undermined. To whatever degree, media  asserts that children ought to learn and make decisions independently of their parents.

I must admit that many of these movies and books that I have experienced have brought me much enjoyment and I would recommend them highly. However, I think it is important to realize that what is portrayed in this movies is not how reality generally is. Children do not become adults by asserting their independence from their parents. God designed parenthood to be a primary role to play into the growth of their children. Their role does not end in infancy, grade-school, nor adolescence, and honestly the older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that I probably never will outgrow my need for my parents. Yet if an alien came and watched our movies and read our books, I wonder if they would think that parents are at all important to the raising of the next generation.

So what does this annoying trend of the media do? I can tell you for certain it certainly will not teach kids how to grow up. I’m not sure exactly what this does to our mentality or how it works into our psyche, but I know for certain that it’s up to no good. The youth of today are already isolated from their parents enough without the encouragement of the media. I predict that this is both contributing to and indicative of a generation which does not recognize the role of parents the way God designed it to be.

The sad truth is, we live in an age of deliberate orphans. Our youth, in their desire to be fiercely independent forsake the God-given responsibility to hold themselves accountable to their parents, and parents neglect their duty to teach, guide, and discipline their children in accordance with God’s design. Hollywood, you have got to stop encouraging this.

The Giver we worship

Christians have a greater ability to appreciate beauty and the glory manifest in God’s creation than atheists do. We as Christians perceive a world which God made for his people to enjoy. We see a world made beautiful because our creator loves us. We see a clear purpose behind creation, for us to enjoy and to cause us to worship God. 

But atheists have refused to worship God as He truly is. Yet they do worship a god. But it is an ugly excuse for a god. They have elevated the laws of science and the perceptions of fallible humans to a status that takes the place of God. Essentially, they have made a god who is more of a non-living force—no will, no purpose, no intention in its actions. God is reduced to pure randomness.

 Because they have taken this position on God, they have limited their ability to enjoy God’s creation. It is a natural human instinct upon enjoying something to worship that person who had given that source of enjoyment. Atheists have deprived themselves of the luxury of having someone to worship for the enjoyment they get save a pathetic non-living natural force. To them, all the things that are of beauty in the world are just there and there was no one and nothing that gave it to them and no will or purpose that decided to love them enough to bless them.

 But we as Christians see the world entirely differently than they do. We see beauty, and we enjoy things and we know that these things are reflections on the character of our God who loves to bless us. We get to worship Him as one who intentionally made the world for human beings to inhabit and enjoy and worship Him as the author of it all.

 I think of the difference this way. Imagine one day you just happen to reach into your pocket and find a twenty dollar bill. I guess that’s pretty cool. That’s the way an atheist perceives the world. Now imagine that a dear friend of yours hands you a twenty dollar bill because they love you and want to bless you. That’s different. Technically speaking, it’s the same blessing that both examples enjoy. But the latter is more than the recipient of a lucky coincidence. The latter enjoys a gift and the dear love of a Giver who desired to bless them.

 Now this example is unjustly scaled down to a size that I find manageable for my understanding of this concept. But we know that God’s love extends much further than giving us a twenty. We worship a God who wanted to bless us so much that He created a whole world full of beauty and His glory for us to enjoy—everything from the miniscule blades of grass that color the ground, to the greatness of the stars that show us how large the universe is. But still this isn’t quite yet the God we worship.

 “For God so loved the world, the He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

 This is a truly mysterious God that we worship. Why would He send His perfect Son to save us? God loves His son. And yet He still gave His Son as a sacrifice for us? One might even wonder that God loves us more than he loves His Son.

All these questions are mysteries to us. We can’t understand why God would want to bless His enemies as He has. All we know is that He has blessed us even while we were enemies, and for that we worship Him.

 And yet while we enjoy such blessings and such gifts, yet there remain those who despise the giver and thus the gift is diminished. All these blessings they do not get to enjoy because they refuse to see God as a god with a clear will and desire to bless them.

 Our hearts ought to ache for them to see God’s love for them. Because they don’t they miss out on the blessings of worshipping God in this world and in the next. We must ache for them to see God’s love and the blessings God has given us so that they can worship the Living God and give God the glory due his name.

Summer is coming

If you haven’t been counting the days till it arrives, it’s about time. As youth, we should be looking forward to this time, not as a time when we get to go about and do whatever springs on our minds. Summer ought not to be a time that we take advantage of to follow our whims. We ought to go into summer with the intention of getting something out of it. We ought to be deliberate about how we use our summer.

Last summer, I looked with a bit of dread at the boredom I knew was going to come from another meaningless summer. I’d let too many summers go by and I had nothing to show for the extra time I had except for a bit more money than usual. So last summer I began something that I hope will be a tradition for me throughout the rest of my years in school. I looked for a specific area of spiritual relevance and dedicated several quiet times and extra times of study to learning about it. Last summer I decided to do prayer. I read several books on the issue and prayed in my quiet times that God would give me a heart that communicates with Him 24/7. Admittedly, I am not near as close as I would like to be in this area. But the growth I made last summer in that area really inspired me to continue this practice of focusing on one spiritual area. (You can find some of my memoirs on that summer here.)

This practice is one that I would heartily recommend to anyone. It was so helpful for me to use the liberty of summer’s schedule to look at just one area of my life and seek to grow in it. Because I was not so occupied by the stresses of school and had a clear direction in which I would like to grow, I was blessed to be able to learn a lot and grow significantly.

Now this year, I have a mind to focus on growing in humility, specifically learning to think of myself humbly. I have set out a plan for myself that I hope will last throughout the summer.

• Read Humility by C.J. Mahaney and go through it with a pencil in hand*.
• Read through and meditate on Romans during quiet times.
• After finishing Romans, read through Philippians and memorize key passages.
• Read The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul and go through it with a pencil.
• Talk with my dad regularly about the temptations and struggles in my growth.
• Ask my close friends regularly if they see any area in need of growth.

I’m not telling you this plan so you could learn from my example, though I hope you guys will see the value of planning through your summer. A large reason why I’m sharing this with you guys is so you can give me recommendations of other books or steps that you would see relevant for me to incorporate into my plan. So please feel free to recommend something that you would say is helpful. I’m open to all suggestions.

So that’s something I’m planning for the summer. I heartily encourage you guys to do something similar. I exhort you to take a hold of this summer and seek to find a way that you can get the most out of it. It’s not too soon to be planning for it.

Now don’t get me wrong, planning your summer will not make it fruitful. God makes our lives fruitful. Don’t fall into the trap of legalism and thinking that you are somehow going to make yourself better by planning how you will grow. But understand that there is wisdom in looking and planning how you would like to meet God. So go and plan your summer with the understanding that it is God who ultimately gets the glory for our growth. Remain humble throughout the process so that we can pursue our sanctification to the greater glory of God.

*I personally find that I get so much more out of what I read when I go through it with a pencil in hand. It causes me to interact with the text more and causes me to be intentional to look for key phrases and important passages. This is another practice I would recommend.