Tension

"There is no growth without tension. Too much tension leads to anxiety and too little tension leads to apathy."

Hmm.

That kind of sums up something that's been in my mind a LOT lately. Sums it up really well, too, I'd say.

It's really interesting how beauty is found in the details

sublimity is in the nuances.

The small things shape the larger things

Funny how backwards the world is sometimes.

Transfiguration

Molecules erased

Unraveled, unmade

Fiercely burned away

Not by heat, but by light.

Effortless in strength, unchained, flowing clear

Striking the three with great awe and deep fear

His shoulders adorned with the flash of the storm

His face made the sun to look dim and forlorn

Dazzling the eyes, a blinding bright sight

Even still, so subdued and contrite

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Peter answered and said, “The Christ of God.”

Organic

Eyes to flesh

Breath to breath

Hand to hand

Chest to chest

Close and tangible,

Organically alive

A true connection reduced to bits and blips

A digital barrier to the biological reality

Reducing an already dim shadow to an even fainter breath – what is left?

People cannot be explained by pixels

A feeble representation at best.

Why constrain ourselves to pre-formed words on a machine-built display?

To make sure we have enough time to manipulate the response

To stroke our own ego, to make sure we look our best

We are an intricate unity of spirit and matter

The product of a fusion of the infusible

A wild vortex of both beauty and death

Each breath is a miracle, each step a great enterprise.

We are a soul, bearers of something great

Made to live together – to depend on one another –

To be uncomfortable together – to fight, to touch, to love and to learn.

Yet we hide behind our little screens,

Retreat to our comfortable prisons

So we can see how good our profile looks to our 10,000 “friends”

And quietly digest their own well-thought out parades of pride

We’ve grown content that the deepest meditations of the soul are cut off at 140 characters

Because we’re “safe” from any of the outside fears

But is it really safe to entrust our entire life to a hard drive?

You appreciate what you work for - and the amount of work required is quickly diminishing

What once took hours and miles, days and years, tears and honesty, vulnerability

Is now done in an instant, with a few taps and a click.

How far can this go?

We may never touch again

We may forget what it means to live

Reduced to our shiny electronic surrogates

Removed from true existence to the furthest degree

Recycled after death into the silicon veins of a circuitboard,

And letting the rules of our machines dictate the experiences of the infinite

In exalting ourselves, we quickly become nothing

And only by denying ourselves, can we become great.

We can look at pictures of the world and never move from our seats

But we become miles wide and just a few inches deep

Inspiration

Day of prayer today blew my mind.

There is such a need for the body of Christ to be united. Prayer should be engaging and active, worshipful and from the heart, not sitting silently and asking God for a hundred different blessings.

Our society is fragmented to no end. We have all the conveniences, all the privacy, all the comforts, but all these things just serve to further separate us from each other. We are quickly forgetting what it means to be one body - it means more than sitting in the same building with other people for 2 hours a week. There is no dependence on one another in our culture and it seems like the more we have, the less we give. Let us strive to get back the spirit of community and to come close together with the body of Christ - we can't do it alone. Each part needs each other part to be effective for the Kingdom. Seek each other out.

Here's some BTA lyrics that I find appropriate and extremely beautiful.

We exchange our faith for rational thought
We trade our conscience for advanced reasoning
But there's no love in thought
Nothing that lasts in deduction
There's no hope in justifying wrong
Just death in rationalism
I am not of this world
And science cannot explain me
I will transcend death
This body will not contain me

The cancer of mind-worship will leave your spirit to decay

Thank you God for the times when things feel right. And help me to persevere in the many times when they don't.

When the veil is pulled back,

when the world turns over,

When the stars begin to fall

And we know this world is over

When we are laid bare by the eyes of God

And our thoughts are said for all to know

What will have to say for ourselves?

What will we have to show?

Will there be shame or joy?

Regret or sweet blissful rest?

Can we say we did our best?

Did we strive with all our might?

Or did we fall in with all the rest

And hurry to hide our spirit's light?

Caught up to join the King

in the pathways of the clouds

As the heavens burst to sing

And the praise of the Lamb resounds

The blast of sweet wind and the rush of revealing power

At the end of this age, in the long awaited final hour

What will have to say for ourselves?

This world is so small, so limited and pale

Why worship it, can't we see it has failed?

How quickly we forget that it is meaningless.

Did we live for something greater?

Did we give ourselves to Him in trust?

Or did we squander the gifts of our Maker

And bury them in the dust?

Eternity awaits as our final home

What will we say, and what can we show?

Worship

A few thoughts to share before I try to get some homework done.

Does God get insulted by sentimentality in worship?

I was talking to a friend yesterday about worship - he knows someone who thinks that it's wrong to get too emotional when worshipping God because it's giving God something that should be reserved for people. This isn't exactly what he said, but it's the same general idea. He was saying that worship songs that repeat the same lines over and over and are overly sentimental are wrong, because it evokes a feeling "like what we would feel toward our girlfriend." To this person, worship seemed to be little more than reciting lines of theology, with a melody to the words.

I don't see how this type of worship could be more honoring to God than the type that is more overtly emotional. What should we be doing when we are singing to, about, or for Him? Does God delight more in our knowledge of Him or in our love for Him? Well.. there is a familiar passage about this. I find it quite appropriate.

It is this: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."

It sure seems to me that we could recite the most clear and precise theology of anyone, and it could be that we are nothing more than a bothersome noise to the ears of God. Pretty crazy right? But note that I said could be, not always is that the case. But then, what exactly is love? If it doesn't matter (in one sense) what we know, say, or understand, then how do we love God?

While love is probably infinitely complicated, I think it can be divided into two elements, emotion and commitment.

I was thinking about this today and it struck me that our relationship to God is more like a human relationship that I had perhaps previously thought.

So take these two elements - emotion, and devotion. One is purely an experience, a feeling, a fleeting interaction of our soul with our body that creates, well, feelings. When worshipping, this can become overwhelmingly strong and can cause some very intense reactions and feelings - hence why people cry, dance, kneel, etc. during worship. I have heard the word "ecstasy" used when describing an emotional interaction with God. It really can be powerful. But should we suppress it? Is there a moment when this gets out of hand or becomes sinful? Yes. People can seek this emotional high to the neglect of God Himself. Emotions do some crazy stuff in our bodies - they can literally make us feel high as if we were taking drugs. So it's not too much of a stretch to say that people can "worship" for the sole purpose of selfishly taking what makes them feel good. We seek the emotion without any sort of commitment. How insulting. It's a perversion of worship, really. It's like having sex before marriage - all we want is the physical and emotional satisfaction, but the committed relationship that is the only proper context for that satisfaction isn't there. It is a very incomplete picture indeed.

The other element of worship is chiefly intellectual. It is asserting our relationship with God, reminding ourselves of who He is, and yes, understanding theologically accurate lines of a song. This kind of devotion by itself is a cold, unappreciative commitment to follow someone or something. It is like walking up to your earthly father, and saying monotone, "I know you are a good dad, and you have sacrificed a lot for me when you were raising me. You have always fed me and been there for me. so thank you," and then leaving. This alone does have some worth, but it is really lacking, is it not? If this happened between me and my child I would probably be really confused and weirded out. How much more appropriate and complete would it be to say this to our dad with emotion, and to follow through by giving your dad a big smile and a hug? Right?

BUT.

It wouldn't make sense for us to go running to our father sobbing, overcome with love for him, to throw our arms around him and weep on his shoulder and say how much we love him, and then turn around and immediately disobey him right in front of his face, would it? This emotional interaction is completely empty if we don't prove it with our lifestyle. He will soon begin to realize that we don't really love him if all we do is cause him tons of grief, never listening to the guidelines that he lovingly gives us for our protection. Emotional love alone is not love. It acts and looks like love for a time, but in the end it is just a huge facade and an insult. How painful would it be for a father to see his child do this? Extremely. It doesn't make any sense at all, and it is like toying with your father's heart, raising it up and giving it great joy and hope, and then right at the peak of the ecstatic experience, throwing it in the garbage. We are saying "All I wanted from you is to give me the experience of loving me. I got my emotional fix from you and I'm going to ignore you now." How destructive. If we said this to our spouse, they would be devastated. This is absolutely not how love works. And we should certainly be very wary of this when we worship!! There are people who do this all the time. I am so strongly convicted that our emotional experiences with God should drive us to be more committed to Him, to act differently and to prove that we do actually love Him like the emotions themselves say we do. This is the only way to worship that makes any sense.

This is not to say, however, that hymns or the more formal and staunch forms of worship are always like this. The difference between singing Hillsong or How Great Thou Art is not even close to enough to say that either one is always wrong - it's just that if taken to the extreme, these two styles of worship can lead to these two different ways of sucking the life out of how we worship God. We don't have to always be super emotional when we worship - in fact, we can't. At least I can't. If my heart just isn't in tune with what is going on, the emotional part of worship will be very much diminished, but this of course does not make worship futile or worthless. But if we never have some measure of an emotional response when worshipping God, I would argue that something is wrong. Can you be married to someone and never want to hug them, never experience any good emotions about them at all? Probably not unless there is something wrong.

So, commitment by itself is lacking.

And emotion by itself is worthless and chaotic.

So, there needs to be a balance of both.

Commitment is the necessary context of emotion.

We validate our emotions by our commitment.

Commitment is the voice box that gives us the ability to sing, the floor that gives our feet something to dance on.

How could it be wrong to give heartfelt thanks and to just feel strongly toward your Father? I don't think there is any level of sentimentality that is wrong to give to God. Why would there be? There is no type of love that we should withhold from Him, even the most sappy and sentimental and ecstatic. But we absolutely musn't leave it at that. If we actually do love Him, we will be committed to Him, even in the times when all we feel toward Him is hate. There are certainly times when we are all angry with our earthly fathers, but this does not excuse our rebellion against them.

These things can't exist apart from each other, or our worship would be either utterly heartless and cold or completely chaotic and without foundation. But how very sweet it is when our emotions line up with our commitment - when the fleeting is right in tune with the concrete - when what we feel like doing is the same as what we should do. When what God wants from us is exactly what we want to give to Him. Seriously even thinking about that just made my heart jump a bit. It is such a beautiful picture. Seriously, what a crazy thing that is. What amazing moments those are. I think that everything I just said applies to any relationship, to differing extents.

One last thing - the amount of words in a song has nothing to do with how worshipful or appropriate the song is. There is something good about repeating the words "Your grace is enough," or "lover of my soul, I want to live for You," or "I will exalt You, You are my God." I am convinced that we

will never (before heaven) have a perfect understanding of any attribute of God, or of any part of Scripture for that matter. As David said, "How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand."

And as Job said, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.

And as God Himself said, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

So what is wrong about focusing on one idea, dwelling on it for a long time and repeating it? Nothing. I usually prefer this way actually. Breadth isn't worth much without some level of depth. The truth that God's grace is enough to cover all of our sins is not something that can be grasped by a fleeting thought. It deserves time in our minds.

"These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me."

Please, let this not be any of us. Seek closeness with God both in action and in your heart - because apart from one another, they are meaningless - of no real substance.

How very narrow my view of all things is.

Ignition

The calm before the storm

Brace yourself – like a man

Prepare your mind for action

Set your gaze on the task ahead

The hammer drops,

A sharp and jarring stab

A sudden grip twisting fast

Momentum builds, gears catch

Torsion and grit

Slammed hard back, down, against

Heart quickening, happily grimaced

Tensing, tightening, frictioning.

Frantically pumping, rushing and compensating.

Explosively shoving.

Blood and steel work much the same, way deep down.

Always seeking a balance that’s never quite found.

Too high up, or maybe still too far down?

Who is to say, what’s lost or what’s found?

Cheers and weeping are equally medicinal.

Crazy, but true. Like so many things.

The physics of fire - There’s no such thing

Not even in the smallest flick of a flame

A dim, stray spark causes an opposite same

Rhyme and reason haven’t the slightest sway.

Quickly and violently, everything burnt away

No quench for the thirst, no block to bar the way

The hotter the fire, the colder the ash.

The greater the expense, the deeper the lack.

One word, glance, thought, sound, smell, taste,

The whole world is transformed.

Crazy, but true. Like so many things.

Kansas

The sweet, warm earth of home

Always asking to come and to roam

Far away from these walls of dust and of rocks

Back there, across the many miles I’ve crossed

My heart can understand that place

Far removed from this land of waste

It invites, welcomes, accepts, embraces,

With wide and such forgiving spaces

There is room there to breathe, and plenty of space to wander

Accommodating to even the most restless of drifters

The only place I can now call my home -

yet it's so far away from where is truly my home.

It doesn’t try to be something it’s not

But melts into an afterthought

It bows its head, and falls asleep

No goals to meet or agenda to keep

Opened arms and gaping skies

Empty of any sort of trick or disguise

Peace does abound where the simple is found

With no barriers or secrets, no burden to weigh down

Just a simple, and silent place, which God laid out for me

With so much space to think, and just enough room to be.

The Path of the Beam

The crooked path is becoming straight

As we move toward perfection

That old black rider ever chasing

No longer sets the direction

We ride on a beam of light

On a wave of pure precision

Our souls arise in endless flight

And we are one in perfect fusion

Now we ride

There is truth in the illusion
But do not be deceived

There is a greater purpose

Than what is easily perceived

The presence of the light increases

While all else is growing dim

Fleeting reality withers away

Revealing beauty concealed within

The evidence of perfection grows

While kingdoms rise and fall

The souls of men are drawn

To the source that binds us all

And makes us who we are...

WE ARE THE SLEEPLESS ONES

We are the sleepless ones

The ones who will be changed

The living, breathing, body of light

And we’ve got freedom coursing through our veins

- Credit to Jason Wisdom and Becoming the Archetype

I love the passion behind these words. Absolutely love it.

Because You're with me,

I will not fear.

I think it would be difficult to find words that are more beautiful than these. The picture of having that kind of relationship with God Himself - it's hard to grasp just how great that really is. He is with us. He helps us, protects us. And we have nothing to fear in the whole Earth. That kind of relationship has to be one of complete trust. In a way, trust is the opposite of fear. Trust means we are safe. Think of this:

One of the greatest examples of this complete trust, at least in my mind, is in a father driving his daughter. It might sound weird, but picture a young girl, maybe 3 years old, in the back seat of a car (for some reason I picture a big van), sound asleep. It's night, and the only sound is the soft hiss of the tires on the pavement. The only person awake in the car is the driver, the father. He has complete control over what the car does and where it goes. Even though this is something that would happen in a normal day in a normal family, I think there are a lot of extremely beautiful things going on. There has to be a huge amount of trust in this situation.

If you don't trust someone, it's very hard to fall asleep while you're even in their presence, much less a passenger in their car, when the slightest twitch of their hand could mean death. Sleeping means you are making yourself completely vulnerable, acknowledging that you know the person will not harm you or take advantage of you in any way. She trusts her dad's hands to be steady and sure. It's dark outside, and the girl has no idea where she is, but there is not even a hint of worry because she knows that her dad is taking her home, taking her directly to her warm bed and to comfort and safety.

Where there is high trust, there is high freedom. She is free to let her little mind wander, free to rest, to sleep without any fear at all. She knows that her dad is focused on bringing her home quickly and safely. How strong of a bond would this be between a loving father and his dear little daughter? Worry or fear is the farthest thing from that little girl's mind, and the father wants nothing more than to keep it that way. He would protect her no matter what, he takes joy in knowing that she feels safe with him, that she trusts him, and he loves her. He handles the car with great care, not wanting to take any turn too sharp or too fast because it might startle his daughter or make her uncomfortable. He stops slowly and smoothly, taking his time and enjoying the quiet drive. And when they get home, he carefully and gently picks her up out of the seat and carries her inside, where she knew he was taking her all along.

There is always more to say, but I think you get the idea. I look forward to the possibility of being the father in that car some day.

Be encouraged knowing that God is with us. We have hope, no matter what. He does love us, and He will bring us home. Be humbled and give thanks for the unbelievable amount of blessings we have.. it's seriously so much.

The purer the gold becomes, the more glaring the remaining impurities become.

The old medicine, (though a plague in itself) when gone,

reveals a new host of pains.

That dock has been burned, quite thoroughly too

But how scared I would be, I couldn't have knew

Though old, weakened, rotten, and not worth a dime

It still offered a measure of security.

This ocean is much too big for a little boat like me

Far too much for a weak heart to see.

I want to savor this beauty, and to do so takes time

But before that time comes, a new beauty arrives

A new thought on my mind, the first still on my lips

Drinking from the fire hose

When all I can take is a sip.

Patience, perseverance, endurance, and hope.

I need a very heavy anchor, with a very long rope.

Broken, but ...

I'm tired, tired of resting, so used to stillness that I can do nothing else

The thought is much too far for me to grasp, too great for me to see with these dull, cloudy eyes

Eyes that have wandered so far and sank so deep.

Can these eyes behold Truth and be made pure?

Can my hands, the same hands that have sat idle and worked for nothing, grasping for wind

Can hands so wretched carry the image of the Sacred?

It seems nothing short of impossible

Can a mind so twisted carry the wisdom of the Divine?

It is highly doubtable.

Can a heart so frail, so impressionable and so burdened by nothing

Can this heart become a heart worthy to bear, to lead, to teach, to love and serve?

Completely illogical.

The very hands of a murderer - can they heal?

The very eyes of an adulterer - cleave to purity?

The very tongue of a deceiver - speak only truth?

The very heart of wickedness - flow forth love?

The very mind of an utter fool - be wiser than any sage?

Every answer is no, every road a dead end. - without You.

Thus.. I walk heavy on this delicate ground. Recklessly throwing myself when ignorance abounds.

But ... Your power is perfected in weakness.

Thus..

Hope remains.

There is something more at work here - Something greater than I can understand. Something that is different than everything else.

Unbound and unmastered by anything else.

Unchained and uncaptured by anyone else.

The slightest glimpse of whom is a complete eclipse.

The tiniest understanding a total revelation.

The faintest glimmer a blinding flash.

The softest touch a wrenching conflagration.

The quietest sound a deafening blast.

The smallest taste of whom will erase the desire for anything else.

Nothing compares.

We need a taste,

a glimpse,

an embrace,

we need to see and are dying to know -

that the path is narrow,

but the burden light. The burden is light.

Our (my) only hope: To die, and be created again.

From joint to marrow, in spirit and soul.

To be made nothing, to be made whole.

Unmade. Undone.

Remade. Reformed.

To taste of the thing so sweet, so pure

that nothing else has any allure.

I have come a long way in the past two months, but there is still so far to go. The more road I cover, the more I realize how much is still ahead of me. This makes it feel like i'm going backwards and not forward. There are so many things that I don't understand, so many mistakes I make every day and so many ways in which I am nothing more than selfish, sinful, naive and ignorant child. If nothing else, I pray that I can become and always stay completely humble, low-minded, and teachable. Lord I ask that foolishness would be far from me.

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man is he who listens to counsel.

There is so much wisdom in this book. To extract and apply it will be life-long and difficult. If we believe the Bible, it has to affect everything that we do. There is no area that is not reached.

Seven Years

Is how long you clung

your grip seldom bent and never broken

heavy on my heart you hung

always felt but seldom spoken

You took so much away from me

my life, my time and energy

you always looked so beautiful

but created only agony

It's over now. your power is gone

And my heart lies wreckage from your reign

but my true King has come again

and is rebuilding everything

Without you joy is so much nearer

and the dark, heavy guilt begins to lift

now my eyes are so much clearer

I know I can no longer simply drift

My heart now leaps at the sound of Your name

where before it only cowered

My God, You saved me from my shame.

Not I, but through Your power.

I have nothing of which to boast

no feats, no acts of bravery

but God has shown His love to me

and taken me from slavery

Truly I can say that I am not the same

because of what You've done

You reshaped my heart, renewed my name,

and You've only just begun.

Teach me, Lord, tell me of joy.

Tell me the story of love, show me the beauty of purity, make me a servant of all, give me a passion for truth.

Enable my feet to take Your Word, anchor my heart to who You are. Forgive my doubt, build my faith, and Lord I beg that You renew my twisted, ignorant mind.

The melter of mountains, the breather of life, the architect of creation.

The author of wisdom, the poet of love, the orchestrator of history.

The First. And the Last.

Let my hope be in You, and only there.

Because seven years have made it clear

that there truly is no hope in me.

I'm planning on a big, important, exciting post soon. There's so many things that are changing in me lately.

One thing that is seriously mind-boggling is how powerful our ability to lie to ourselves (and to believe these lies) is. When you really think about it it is hard to even believe.

I am definitely using myself as an example here, but I think that most people have at least one memory of something like this - something you did where you look back afterwards and ask "what in the world was I thinking, that was so obviously a terrible thing to do / say."

BUT. When you were there, in that moment, you were rationalizing, telling yourself that you were doing the right thing, and felt pretty much confident that you actually were doing the right thing.

If anything I think this proves our need for wisdom to come from somewhere outside of ourselves. There is a person who never had this happen, every time He would look back on what He had done He was happy with His actions, He knew that they were right. Most of you know who this is.

We have to be led by this man. Not by our own wicked and deceitful hearts (Jeremiah 17:9). I have deceived myself many times and hurt many people because of it. Inconsistency and wickedness is so rampant in my heart at all times, I have no other choice but to anchor myself to Christ if I am to have any hope of being stable and capable of doing anything worthwhile.

I'm currently undergoing on of those times where you look back and ask "was I really doing this for so long and telling myself it was okay?" I have been living with a lot of guilt and a lot of shame and not really realizing how extensive and crippling it was. I have been experiencing some freedom from this recently which has been very humbling and eye-opening. I am completely undeserving of this freedom, though and i honestly don't remember changing anything about my lifestyle that would facilitate such a big change of heart. It's actually driving me a little bit crazy because i'm like "God, this is really wonderful, but how did it even happen? I did nothing different yet my life has starting going in this very different direction." I'm also fairly paranoid of going into a relapse like I have in the past, paranoid of this new direction being a temporary and fake emotional change that will soon pendulum-swing back into where I have been going for so long.

I honestly feel like i'm just now beginning to have even the tiniest understanding of who God is and what it is to follow Christ. Kind of like i've been on the ocean my whole life but have never left the cabin of the boat, and i'm just now coming outside and realizing how huge the ocean is and how much there is to discover underneath the surface.

There are so many huge, important, complicated questions in life that I often get overwhelmed. It is a testament to how huge God must be to have orchestrated all of life's events perfectly. He knows the answer to all of these questions.

Most of you who know me know that I love heavy music, and I could talk about it forever but I have wondered so many times what it is that makes it so very dear to my heart - and the only word I can really come up with is a word I believe is one of the most overused and underappreciated words in the english language, but it is the best one for describing what I love about heavy music: Passion. I am really sick of hearing that word, but it is a powerful and important word. This music just gives such a sense of raw, pure, unbound energy and (again) passion that no other kind of music can even hold a candle to. This is not to say that other kinds of music are passionless or not worthwhile, but at least for me, heavy metal is incomparably more powerful.

This power is so misunderstood and abused and neglected, both by musicians and by the listeners, but some bands and a few listeners have really tapped into it in an awesome way. The band in the picture above has a song where at the end, there is a breakdown and the only words are "love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength." The same song says this:

If we loved God to a teaspoon
of his overflowing cup
What would this world then see?
Our land of sorrow and turmoil
would swirl to a community of joy.

For me, hearing these words screamed and the music blasted at me does so much more than just singing them softly and slowly. Please don't get me wrong, I also love soft and slow music and there is certainly a time and place for it.

*sigh* all right, there's the end of my metal rant. I hope that wasn't too boring to read or repetitive.

All for now. Thoughts welcome

I just read this quote, which very much ties in with my last post. I thought it was pretty powerful

"Christianity has fallen to its present low state from lack of spiritual desire. Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in one thousand reveal any passionate thirst for God. We fear extremes and shy away from too much zeal as if it were possible to have too much love, or too much faith, or too much holiness. If you don't refuse to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment, you will be doomed to a dead spiritual state of mediocrity."

A.W. Tozer

Man, God is good. I've been awake for 32 hours straight now, and probably 80% of that time has been spent either in a classroom or doing homework. And I'm barely even caught up to where I need to be. It's crazy but I'm learning so much. It really is remarkable how practical the Bible is when it comes to dealing with people's problems. It just makes a whole lot of sense. A heck of a lot more sense than taking drugs that mess with the chemicals in your brain, or electroshock therapy, or exploring secret subconscious desires that control us our whole lives, or reliving past experiences, or reconditioning our reward and punishment instincts in an attempt to fix the things we don't like in our lives. Those do nothing for your heart. The Bible is entirely concerned about the heart in regards to counseling, because the heart is the source of everything we do, say, and feel. It is our mind, will, and affections. That is a convicting and seriously, seriously powerful truth to think about.

I need more of that conviction and power, and I need to dig into the Word more.

One thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is just the implications that come with the Bible being true. If we are 100% convicted of the unwavering truth of the Bible, how are we not spending every second of our lives witnessing to people and being broken and rejoicing in the power and love from that Book. I remember hearing a quote, I believe from Ghandi, who said something along the lines of "If people really believed in this book, it would change the world" I need SO MUCH more of that conviction. Honestly this terrifies me to think about. The Bible being true means abandoning everything I have ever wanted or enjoyed that is a product of sin. But how much better are the things of God? Terrifying, but exhilarating. It is beyond words how little I know about the God of the Bible, how far I am from true faith, and how much different my life must be if it is to reflect the truth of this Word. In short, how much of a helpless infant I am spiritually, in knowledge and in faith. God, please show me Your Truth. Please help me to act according to it. Keep me from sin and draw me to You. If you're reading this I would greatly appreciate prayers in this area.

How infinitely greater is the life controlled by the true Gospel of Jesus, compared to the life of so many "Christians" that are content to live a "moral life" and go to Church. How much power is in that truth??? This is, like I said, terrifying to me, and I can barely understand the implications of this, but all I can hope is that I will earnestly seek the Truth, and trust that God will both allow and help me to find it. Why are Christians so mediocre if we believe what we claim to believe? It's like saying that we know for a fact that we will die in 24 hours, but doing nothing special with our "last day", just kind of being lazy and milling around by ourselves. Ridiculous picture, isn't it? Is this not what so much of the Church is like? Are we not content with living comfortably? The Bible does not leave an inch for us to live a life defined by comfort. But so many of us who bear the name of Christ are completely infatuated with comfort. This simply does not make any sense at all. This is powerful, terrifying, and convicting. Is it not?

Be good to each other. Thoughts on this are welcome.

Semester #6

Tomorrow is the first day of classes for the semester. I'm excited because I know i'll be learning so much and that all of it will be true, helpful and important. My main concern is that i'll have the discipline and desire to really devote myself to it. I miss people back home. I miss flat ground and things being green. I also have been wanting to go on a hike really bad lately. And i'm craving a burger from in-n-out.

I bought a new guitar today which I very much enjoy.


I know i'll enjoy it for many years to come as well.

I feel like I need to say more but that's really all I have for now, thanks for reading

Kyle