Rapture

I should have posted this about a month ago or so.  Anyways, when the rapture was supposedly happening it really got me thinking.  We don’t really know when Jesus will come back, and people were freaking out about the rapture, almost anxious.  I wasn’t worried, but it did make me think about what I would do if the rapture was tomorrow.  This feeling of impatience and excitement started brewing inside me.  It made me realize we shouldn’t live that anxiousness when someone predicts the rapture; we should live that anxiousness every day.  Like Jesus is coming back tomorrow.  We should be living like Him and spreading His word.  The first things I thought about were my family and friends that didn’t know Him, and how if the rapture was coming tomorrow, I would tell them about Jesus.  We should live that anxiousness and excited anticipation every single day not just when falsely predicted.  A fellow Pepperdine student ends many of his prayers wishing that Jesus would come back tomorrow or today or even before the prayer is over, that’s how we should really live.

-Carly

No School = No Skimming

In some ways we, as Believers, are much weaker than our counterpart non-believers that walk through life with little to no care in the world. There is a lot of Christian rhetoric that will tell you otherwise, but I know it because I’ve felt it. Secular individuals believe that they neither need nor have a religious crutch which they will cling to. Whether they consider their “end of days” and the implications of not believing in something or not, they decide that Jesus Christ is a waste of time and a serious hindrance to living a fun and ceaselessly entertaining lifestyle. They may experience little earthly consequence because of affluence of the Western culture and the obvious superfluity of a God in a culture where we have everything we need. In many ways, I see how this view proliferates. We can relate to the doubt, the intrigue and the attraction of living in the moment. Oft considered, we can imagine how fun and easy it would be to drop the weighty responsibilities of following a religious creed on earth and seek the most sensual desires of our heart. At this very moment, at the moment of forming this wild and unbridled thought, something holds me back.

What is this weakness that I feel and the overwhelming sense of inability to pursue my most worldly thoughts? If I can imagine this so vividly and feel the self-confidence surging through my veins, what can possibly stop me?

Dependence is the thing that stops me. What a dirty sounding word to me. As I begin to formulate an independent and primal urge, I’m struck by an immovable experience of unyielding obligation. This obligation doesn’t feel like an obligation to change my oil or spend time with my overly precocious cousins at seasonal holidays. This obligation has no frame of reference in my life because I’ve only felt it in the context of my faith. In this moment I am weak. I am the anti-hero. I have no power to save the day. I fear death. I fear my own fragility. I doubt myself. My true nature is exposed and I am ashamed. Even my favorite tools like the power of positive thinking and my parent’s nurturing empowerment are impotent forces.

This is the moment that I see how weak I am compared to those around me who can dismiss this obligation of reliance. You think you know what’s coming, “He’s going to say that he feels God’s peace wash over and a warm buzz of good feelings dissipate the shame.” Actually, I feel none of that. As I see the world laughing at my weakness and fragility, I don’t feel better about myself at all. It is not a matter of my emotion, but of my soul. A spark inside my soul is ignited, a flicker of faith…that I have been redeemed by some power that I desperately need. In spite of the way I feel, my soul, my very essence, KNOWS that my pathetic weakness is my eternal strength. 

-Luke (I love you guys, hope everyone has a great summer and keep posting on here!)

He Loves Me

I learned something fundamental this year. I learned that God loves me. I learned to show emotion frankly. I learned to trust despite uncertainty. I learned to try to understand success. 

Finally, and above all, I learned that He loves me so much.

Can something be ‘very’ true?

That was a question a friend asked me years ago.  Well, not really a friend, or at least, as it turned out.  But, the question stuck with me.  Like gum on the bottom of your shoe.  Like that annoying friend who you later find out is really a better friend to you than you were to him/her

The reason the question stuck with me, I’m pretty sure, was because ‘truth’ and what it actually consists of has haunted me most of my life, and especially, in my study of the Scripture. 

John 8:32 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

People quote this verse all the time.  Pastors quote it, athletes quote it, ‘unChristian’ entertainers and actors/actresses quote it, Sunday school teachers quote it, and politicians even quote it.  Why?  I’m pretty sure because we all have a lot of natural yearning for freedom.  Freedom to what?  Usually this means to do whatever we want.  ….if we only knew what that actually was.  If we look at the context of the verse, we see that Jesus has just brought the verbal pain to the Pharisees, telling them they don’t know God, the Father, His Father.  And His statement about ‘being free’ is a conditional one.  It starts with “if”.  “IF” you continue in Jesus’s word, He says, you shall become His disciples.  THEN you get the truth.  Then you get set free.  Kinda how Peter was set free to get crucified upside down.  How Paul was free to get stoned and snakebitten and ship-wrecked.  How Jesus was free to give up His life and die the most gruesome death imaginable.

Which, tangent, but – every time we see a cross around someone’s neck we should really imagine a gas chamber or the electric chair instead – because if Jesus had lived and died and rose again today that’d be the symbol to remember Him by, not one with no cultural relevance to the current time and place.  But I digress…

The point of this passage, I think anyway, is that Jesus sets up a construct for following Him, His word, becoming His disciple, getting in sync with the Father, knowing the Father – THAT sets free.  Like a chemical process.  This is scientific…if-then…something happens.  And it’s not about us, it’s about becoming 1) a disciple of Jesus and 2) connected to the Father & knowing Him.

Which, according to most of the Bible, anyway, usually involves hardship, pain, death, torture.  That stuff.  Not exactly the American dream.  But I digress…

I think, by the way, now, after years of contemplation, that something can be ‘very’ true and other things just ‘true.’  What I mean is, a filet mignon steak is ‘very’ good and that cheap standardized flank steak you are getting thrown on your plate as you’re bused through a line like sheep or cattle yourself in a sketchy cafeteria is just ‘good.’  There are degrees to things that can be good or valuable or pleasurable, just like degrees to truth.  Jesus however is speaking of truth as an either/or.  Either you follow Him or you do not.

Main takeaway:  In summary, I would submit that he’s speaking about God/Him/Holy Spirit as the praxis of truth itself.  As in, truth being worked out in the hearts and souls of human beings.

Two supplementary quotes—one from the Indian author of ‘House for Mr. Biswas,’ and the second from my journal while building a log cabin in Colorado w/a buddy who embodies the Truth of Christ in His life in a way that has challenged me to the core:

"Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision." —V.S. Naipaul.   How does this relate to your intellectual and other pursuits?

Like the fabric and threads of that old blanket which conjures instantaneous sentimentality in your mind, God has been stitching together time, experiences, relationships, events, thoughts, feelings, and a plethora of components out of which he has, and is weaving, a life.  Your life.  Which, the Psalmist says is like a “fleeting vapor” that moves over blades of grass.  So guess what, it doesn’t matter anyway, at least, not as much as you might think.  We are all vapors, God-breathed, and may we settle well on His grass, and be enjoyed in His nostrils, freely, lively, abundantly…

-Matthew

You Can Skim This One

How will you measure my life?

Clayton Christensen is a Harvard Business School professor who recently wrote an article posing this question to graduating MBA students. The author is a Christian and offers a model that is meant to be used to by individuals to define the important things in their life and what metrics are pertinent to track implementation. A short read, I highly recommend it.  

Where is my value found?


Placing my value entirely in God is impossible. It goes without saying that I would tell you I want my value to be completely interwoven into the fabric of our relationship, but my actions betray my altruistic rhetoric. In fact, using pretentious language like "altruistic rhetoric" just tied up some value in what I perceive as a facetious mind.

I spend a lot of my time trying to make sure that I seem valuable through: popularity, professional success, relationships, personal appearance, a wise demeanor and fractiously battle any enemy -- especially God. These exogenous variables valiantly defy the Almighty, but why?

Unusual circumstances often serve as points of clarification. Recently, God revealed how satisfying and "right" it was to yield all (or as much as my sinful mind could) of my value proposition into His grace and loving arms.


Eternity panic attacks

In Ernest Becker's book, The Denial of Death, he discusses the dualism of having an animalistic nature with all the functions of a sentient being-but also having a symbolic self, such as a name and self-awareness. This thought led me to an "eternity panic attack" which I occasionally have. You know, the thought of forever and what that will be like. I can grasp the idea that I have a symbolic self and how that places me on higher tier of creation, but if you want to feel insignificant and completely dependent, look up at the sky and imagine uninterrupted existence.

The dualism of having a symbolic self, like a name and cogent thought processes combined with the eternal purpose that God created us makes me feel like a dumb mule. Thankfully, God grants a clue to this dumb mule, and has offered the gift of eternal life.

It was interesting that when I stopped fretting about eternity, I looked less at myself and began to look at ways I could spread this exhilarating thought.

-Luke (sorry if this post was overly fragmented...hopefully you just skimmed it anyway :)

Power -> God’s Glory

I’m a man of little faith, most of the time.  I’ve increasingly grown less confident of my own ability to do anything, and yet instead of realizing this displacement is God’s strategy to shift my focus inevitably toward His all-sufficing provision, capability, and resurrection power, usually I see things as falling into an awkward state of limbo from which there seems no proximate remedy.  Over the years God has been developing in me, through adverse circumstances and loving discipline, an awareness to His sufficiency and my minute mortality. 

One of the stories of Jesus’ steps on our planet that has most intrigued me goes like this [end of Matthew 8]:  two dudes have so many demons they’re uncountable, thus called ‘legion,’ demons recognize Jesus as having power over them and they ask to be sent into farm animals, Jesus sends them into some pigs [thus honoring their request…odd], economic loss of pigs ensues when pigs run off the cliffs, townspeople have entirely inverted priorities of the universe and prize economic value over supernatural visitation of the Lord God Almighty in their town and kick him out of town….

…which leads to Jesus showing up and mind-reading the religious dudes who are looking down on him for healing a previously lame person, which sets up Matthew 9:8-9:

“But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.  And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him”

           That’s quite a turn of events.  Let’s be honest: what would you do if you turned on the evening news to see pigs running off a cliff due to being recently possessed by demons – demons who had just had a conversation with some dude who claimed to be the Son of God, who everyone has been talking about, and then after you turn off the news your buddy who’s been lame his entire life walks up to your house claiming this Son of God dude just healed him?   Oh, and your neighbor’s cousin’s wife’s friend Matthew just up and left his cushy job and started following this guy right afterwards?!  But wait, do you even think that some of the causes of events in our world and/or actions of people are directly attributable to demon possession or God’s direct healing hand on someone’s life? [but I digress, as that is another conversation…]

            

           We have a perspective today which, I believe, does not truly account for the power of God.  Or at least, I don’t.  Sure, we acknowledge the saving power of God over our sins, etc., but do we contemplate that it is power over EVERYTHING.  Over life, over death, over demons, over disease or deformity?!  We might claim we believe the Bible is true, but when’s the last time you overheard someone in church say:  ‘so, I was having an argument with this demon the other day…’ or ‘my daughter was recently raised from the dead’?  I’m overstating to make my point, but overall I believe we down-size God to match the parameters of our current problems.issues.wants.wishlist.mood.  If we contemplate God’s power, we see God as being all-powerful over our job search, our upcoming final, our relational drama, our income taxes, etc.  We see something like the tragedy in Japan and…is our first thought of God’s omnipotent power or Him or the destruction and how devastating it must be?  I know what my first inclination is. 

And yet, the Scripture says that God had ‘given such power unto men.’  A friend who is much smarter than I believes this passage shows that God’s design is to give us power, and cites how the apostles healed others, cast out demons, etc. when Jesus sent them out.  And I do get his point, and I haven’t studied the Scriptures to the degree he has, but I would agree with him thus far that a general construct goes like this:  God is all-powerful.  That means He has power over EVERYTHING.  Our God is not diffracted and does not report to someone else.  He gave this power to men.  Jesus and the apostles, to name a few.  We are made in His image and are built to become ‘little Christs’ and thus replicate Jesus with our very lives.  Thus, His design is for us to wield His power as well…why?  The Scripture says the result of Jesus using God’s power is that when the multitudes of people saw Jesus do it “they marveled” and “GLORIFIED GOD.” 

When I ask God why I’m weak the answer is usually that I’m not glorifying Him.  Every time, now that I think about it, that I’ve ever been powerful, channeling God’s power through me, it’s been synonymous with my life glorifying His.

And, Lest we think this is a one-time thing, or something Matthew blew out of proportion to justify him leaving his job to follow a random stranger, consider the very last instruction of Jesus to his disciples before ascending into heaven [talk about a sight to behold!]

Matthew 28:18-20  “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Then in Acts 1:8 Jesus instructs them that “you will receive power” and be His witnesses…to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Main takeaway:  There is one Being with all the power in all Heaven and earth given to Him.  And He says we will receive power.  Why?  To be His witness, and to glorify God, that’s what His power’s for.

--Matthew

Comfortably Uncomfortable

As humans, I think we strive for comfort.  Some of us take comfort when we have enough money, others take comfort in having a good education, others in a family, and others in a career.  We like our routines, we find comfort in small things, because we know what to expect. 

Living a comfortable Christian life is easy too.  Go to church, go to fellowship, read the bible, have a few conversations, pray—all of these things are safe and comfortable.  And I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I do think there is a way for us to be challenged and thus have a stronger faith.

When we are comfortable, it’s hard to depend on God because we have other things to depend on; we are not much different from the rest of the world.  When we are uncomfortable, the only thing we have is God, and we have to put all of our faith in Him.

God clearly called me to Pepperdine, and for me this was an uncomfortable choice.  I had a safe and comfortable choice at home; I could stay in my hometown, I could work at my same job--easy choice.  I had to step out in faith and depend on him 100% and the peace I felt by making that uncomfortable choice was surreal.

What if God called you to…Africa…or to live homeless…would you make that leap?  I can think of many reasons why not to make that choice including fear, loneliness, safety, etc.

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”—Isaiah 6:8

So many times we cry out to God “Here am I. Send me!”  Then we complain that we never hear Him calling us, but I think sometimes we have selective hearing.  “Here Am I, Send me…but only if it’s safe and I will feel comfortable.”  I have made this same cry myself…there are many things that I feel God has called me to do…and I have ignored a lot of them because I’m not sure how I am supposed to do them or where I am even supposed to start.

We can’t expect to change the world if we live by the same rules.  Jesus I’m sure was quite comfortable in heaven, but instead He came down into the world in a very uncomfortable position…knowing He was going to be crucified.

If Jesus can put himself in a position like that for us, certainly we can step out in faith in uncomfortable situations and depend completely on God.  We can take comfort in the fact that God is not going to let us fall, and even if we do stumble, He’s going to be there. 

I think living uncomfortably, but depending completely on God will allow us to see Him work in a refreshing and rewarding way.

--Carly