A Paradoxical World

We live in a paradoxical world. A world where it is possible to love and hate the same person. Where we speak of peace but shelter enmity. Where every vice is hid by hypocrisy, every virtue is suspected to be hypocrisy . . . and the suspicion is looked upon as wisdom. Where truth gets lost in presuppositions. The same world is heaven and hell. Society, politics, commerce, literature, art and sciences, religion and ethics, all are full of paradoxes, contradictions, injustice, selfishness, and unreliablity. "To maintain an opinion because it is thine, and not because it is true, is to prefer thyself above the truth." (Venning)

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and love make you vulnerable.

Be honest and love anyway.

People need help but attack you if you do help them.

Help people anyway.

I've Found Today

I've shut the door on Yesterday,
It's sorrows and mistakes;
I've locked within it's gloomy walls
Past failures and heartaches.
And now I throw the key away
To seek another room,
And furnish it with hope and faith
and every sprintime bloom.

No thought shall enter this abode
That has a hint of pain,
And worry, malice and distrust
Shall never therein reign.
I've shut the door on Yesterday
And thrown the key away---
The Future holds no doubt for me,
Since I have found Today.

STINKING HILARIOUS

Jesus loves me...

Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong. They are weak and he is strong.

The authenticity of this song is ironic to me. Who knew that what we were singing when we were 3 years old was full of undeniable theology.

"I pray that you... will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ's love -- how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is.... Then you can be filled with the fullness of God." -Ephesians 3:18-19 (NIV)

In 2 Chronicles 33 it talks about a boy who had become king of Judah (Southern Kingdom of Israel) by the time he was only twelve years old. His name was Manasseh and he reigned in this Kingdom for 55 years!

The Bible tells us that Manasseh "did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord, following all the detestable practices of the Nations...." He "rebuilt idols and alters for people to worship other Gods and built new ones." He "bowed down to starry hosts and worshiped them. He built alters in the TEMPLE OF THE LORD (the dwelling place of God). He built alters in both courts of the temple and He sacrificed his own sons in the fire. He practiced sorcery, divination and witchcraft, and consulted mediums and spiritists. he did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking him to anger." The story continues on telling us that the Lord tried to speak to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. So finally, the Lord brought the army of Assyria to take them prisoner. These people bound him with bronze shackles, put a hook in his nose, and took him captive to Babylon.

While Manasseh was there he "cried out in distress as he sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the Lord." When he prayed to him "The Lord was moved by his entreaty and listend to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God." It was only when Manasseh reached his lowest low, only when he became little or humbled, that he ran to God. He realized he wasn't strong, he wasn't invincible, and he wasn't powerful.

The reason i'm telling you about Manasseh is because of my earlier blog that said, "are people bad or do we just do bad things?"

My answer is that we just do bad things. After I became a Christian, I released a lot of the "strongholds" or "chains" that Satan had bound on me during my life. I felt the true love, peace, and freedom that only Christ can give. But then, I stopped guarding my heart to Satan's lure's and trickery. I assumed that once strongholds were released that they would never return. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

After a while of Satan's oppression, I gave in to the fear of rejection and allowed that fear to make all of my decisions for me. I ran away from God, His Will, and the people and relationships he had placed in my life. Slowly Fading Away. Satan continued to instill fear, insecurity, doubt, intimidation, shame, and hopelessness in my Mind. He made my life feel purposeless. He replaced my solid faith with doubt and disbelief. He planted in me a hatred, bitterness, and unforgiveness towards others. I became jealous, and envious of those around me. My entire being was consumed with anger. I no longer had patience or peace but instead had impatience, and irritability. The Joy of Christ was replaced with sadness. I allowed evil to overcome me and pride was my only companion. I began to alienate myself from my family and friends and created disharmony in all of my Godly relationships. I quarreled and debated every opportunity I got. Before I know it seemed as if this seed that Satan planted in my mind and heart grew into a full grown tree that produced no fruit but evil. It all seemed to happen fast to me while others saw it slowly disintegrate my soul over time.

Since them I have cried out to God for forgiveness and pleaded to him for help. It has been hard to forgive myself and I am still in the process of removing these chains in which Satan has me bound. But I need not feel any more shame or discouragement. I shouldn't feel like i'm a bad person. I shouldn't believe that I am worthless or that I have just messed it up tooooooo horribly this time. I must realize I made a mistake like many other people who love God.

I also must realize that God's love is based on mercy and not on merit. In 1 John it tells us that "God is Love." It is so hard for me to comprehend and believe in God's perfect love or atleast in his love for me. But lately I am learning just how true this love is. God's very "is-ness" is love. It is his inner-most being. For example... we all know that I am a woman. All the way down to my core, my inner-most being, I am a girl. Now, lets pretend I get in a terrible accident and somehow my physical being has been distorted. I am no longer physically looking like a woman. BUTTTTTTT, my womanhood still has not changed. I am still a woman. And it is like that with God. GOD IS LOVE. No matter what we do, we can't change the fact that he is love. Just as much as you are male or female, God is love. God loved me just as much when I was living a life defined by sin as he does now when I am going to a christian college, living a life bathed in prayer and bible study, and seeking his will in all I do. His love for me has not grown nor changed. It is the same amount and the same kind. He may be more glorified and pleased with my actions, but he doesn't love me more because of them.

Satan, knows our weaknesses... He has been studying humans for longer than we know. Satan is always going to use our past, present, and future to tempt us, to lure us into thinking that he can offer protection and security. But I am warning you to GUARD YOUR HEART AND MIND! Do not let Satan deceive you. Watch out! He is always going to be whispering in your ear. Whispering thoughts of failure, rejection, fear, intimidation, depression, insecurity, and ultimately pride. GUARD YOUR HEART AND MIND AGAINST SATAN AND BE VULNERABLE TO CHRIST. Don't allow yourself to be crushed by Satan's tricks. Don't give him permission into your life by believeing him when he says that you are unworthy and unloved. Pray for God to reveal to you when Satan is trying to plant seeds in your mind and heart. Satan is never going to stop trying, but you can resist. And that's all God asks. He doesn't ask for the temptation to not be there, he asks for you to choose him instead! And if you mess up, don't count yourself out as a failure. Manasseh repented and felt the fullness of Christ, and so can you! Jesus Loves You!!!! Don't just know it... BELIEVE IT. Allow it to influence your actions. Allow it to define who you are! When Satan creeps into your mind and tells you lies, throw him back to where he belongs by bringing out the truth that God does Love you, no matter who you are or what you do or have done and that you are worth it!!!!!!

Help Me...

This summer has been a major healing time for me and will continue to be into the fall (at least!!!). It's time to for healing and time to move on. It's time to fix what has been broken for too long. Something inside of me has been wrong for a very long time, and it's time to make it right. Its time to find a way back to where I belong. There is the huge wave crashing over me and the only thing I can do is surrender. It feels like chaos but somehow I know its right. It's so hard to surrender to what I can't see, but I know that i'm giving in to something heavenly.

This is going to be a huge milestone. A time to begin again. Reevaluate who I really am. It's time to face up and clean out this old house. Time to take a breath and let everything out. Everything that i've wanted to say for so many years. It's time to release all my held back tears.

It's not very fun, but it has to be done. I'm sitting here wondering why. Sometimes the truth ain't easy to find. I want to know all the answers But I'm learning that these things take time. Is it easier to doubt or harder to believe?

Sometimes I just wish we could say all the things that are easy to hear. But I'd rather speak honestly and wear a tattered heart on my sleeve 'Cause in the middle of my broken dreams, I know your redemption is here. I don't have every answer in life But I'm trusting You one day at a time, this is the only way my weary heart can even stay alive.

I think its time to find a better way to live my life than living in my security blanket of fear. I NEED stop loving the things that have left me so bruised, all the things that have made me so confused. I think it's time to write a better chapter of my life and leave those things that have kept me wrapped up so tight.

I just need a place to lay my head and Forget the chain that hangs around my neck. These guns are not as heavy as the heart that they defend, but I can't wait to get back home where I can find some rest. I want to lay down my guns and lift up my hands, surrender to love and just LIVE again. I want this desert to reach it's end where my new life begins again.

I have seen the devil in this place, this is where I lost myself and dug my own grave. When you're this far from Heaven, It's hard to keep the faith... I'm barely holding on. And I'm laying down these burdens, Taking off the weights. And I can't count the miles that I've walked to find my way To lay down these guns. Oh how I need to lay down these guns.

How I want to lay down my guns and lift up my hands surrender to your love and just live again. I wanna reach the place where this new life begins. I'll abandon my defenses and all that I fear. I'm trusting you and giving in... it's time to live to love again.

Hmm...

What makes someone a bad person? Is someone considered a bad person or do they just do bad things? Where is the line drawn between the two?

Imagine

Often times our prayers can be summed up into this sentence, “deliver us from evil.” We pray for inner-peace instead of inner torment, we pray for safe travels instead of trips ending in tragedy. We pray for God to guide us instead of us wandering around running into walls. We pray for political and ethical peace in the world instead of people wanting to be terrorists. We pray for children not to die from starvation everyday but for food, love, and protection to be provided for them and their families. We pray for comfort, we pray for love, we pray for joy, we pray for patience, we pray for kindness, goodness, and faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. All which seem to be the opposite of evil. In doing this we tend to suppress evil, placing it into a compartment in the back of our minds, hoping it will never make its reappearance in our lives. In doing this we neglect to realize that evil is real and powerful and by not recognizing this, we have gotten ourselves into a position where we react to the sudden appearance of massive evil, whether this be personally or nationally, in an immature and unwise fashion.

This is not to say that these are prayers that should be left un-prayed or not even selfish ones for that matter. God’s ultimate purpose after all is to ride the world of evil altogether and to establish his new creation of justice, beauty, and peace. And it’s clear from the very beginning that this was not intended as a distant goal in which all we can do is wait in passive expectation for this future fulfillment. God’s future has already broken into the present in Jesus, and the church’s task consists of implementing the achievement of the cross and anticipating God’s promised future world.

Anticipating God’s promised future world does not mean to imagine a world without terrorists and dictators, without communism and corruption. That would represent a kind of shallow, dualistic thinking. Though there are millions of people in the world who if invited to imagine the world without evil would include these things on their list of wishes, there is great danger in this dualistic way of thinking. It begins to create an us-and-them disjunction which says, “ ‘our’ way of life is ‘good’ while ‘theirs’ is ‘bad.’” Dualism also tends to breed this kind of paranoia. Where we begin to think that the whole system is rotten including congress, the media, the military, Hollywood, so on and so forth.

In the same way, anticipating God’s promised future does not mean to have a progressive way of thinking where ‘might is ALWAYS right.’ World War I was justified on the principal of the “survival of the fittest.” This kind of thinking has all too easily led to wars and rumors of wars. Today this doctrine is widely accepted and believed and even preached from pulpits in many parts of the United States. The whole way of thinking is absurd.

As Christians, we are called to contend with the problem of evil in a different way. If we desire to confront the problem of evil we must adopt an approach which is neither that of the dualist or progressivist. We must address the problem of evil on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus. We must learn to imagine a world without evil and then to think through the steps by which we might approach this goal, RECOGNIZING that we shall never attain it fully during the present age but that we must not, for that reason, live passively in the present day in the present world.

We need to awaken our creative imaginations which seem to have gone into hibernation after this long winter of secularism and point it in the right direction. We need to enliven our imaginations to be energized, and lively, not walking around in circles over the same ideas of the past. And the Christian imagination must be disciplined so that it is not easily swayed or thrown about between the ONLY two extremes offered by the political pendulum of today. Nor must we assume that all creative ideas and writings are serving the cause of the Kingdom of God. How can we as Christians reeducate our minds so that we can become conscious of living between the victory (won by Jesus) and the ultimate renewal of everything? Surely there is a HUGE opportunity here reserved for those Christians with an integrated worldview and with the longing to love God with heart, mind and soul to find this new way, perhaps to even lead the way forward. Perhaps this is a wonderful opportunity saved for those Christians who can capture this glimpse of truth without faltering into pantheism on one hand or negative “realism” on the other. Perhaps this is a blessed opportunity for those Christians who are creative enough to not only draw attention to the way things are but also to the way things are meant to be.