awkwardhello's Xanga

This American Life

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 06:13:54 GMT

Listen to it.

If you do, you will be awesome!

How to Love EVERYONE

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:35:42 GMT

Hello.

You may have heard that God wants to you love Him and not the world. But I sincerely believe that God is infusing people to passionately love the world. It seems daunting at first the sheer magnitude of what God is doing. How to we begin to love billions of people? The truth is we have already begun.

There is no greater joy for me than to love Gemie, care for her, and give her kind words. I feel elated when she smiles during her foot massages. She loves to see me satisfied after one of her awesome meals. God gives us our own experiences of love as glimpses into a life fully lived for the world. This life is a movement toward being like the perfect life that Jesus lived. As I begin to stretch myself to love my family, my friends, and my culture, God is expanding my capacity to love. I see what God has reserved in my heart. He unlocks more as I surrender to the expansion. What results is a large and vast capacity in me to experience love and a more meaningful existence here. Imagine how magnificent a life lived outside yourself can be.

How to start loving everyone:

Start with the people you know - Jesus explains in Matthew 6 that we should start with out families and friends. Take care of unresolved issues. Treat your parents to dinner. Give a helping hand tutoring your peers. Take your wife on a date. Do the things you do best for the people you know most.
Walk outside - Get to know your neighbors. Look for ways to lend a hand. Pick up trash. Mow someone's lawn. Start a football game and ask your neighbor to join.
Give things away - Take your favorite item of clothing, game, food, object, book, painting, song, electronic device, and give it away to a friend or someone who would use it or enjoy it.
Continue with people you hardly know - Treat the janitor to lunch. Volunteer at a school/church. Buy someone a weeks worth of groceries. Make someone dinner. Do the things you do best for the people you encounter everyday.
Plant a seed and feed it - Find one thing you can do on a consistent basis. Pick up trash at the beach. Pay for gas. Knit mittens for kids who are cold.

You are probably doing some of these things already. Notice that your goal is not to be the world's next great humanitarian. Treat someone nice and keep going. And remember to humbly give credit to Jesus, the God who makes this love possible.

The Inner City Woman:

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:31:57 GMT

An Example of Love

I heard a story last night about a woman who moved into a poor, high crime, urban neighborhood. She described how God had given her family a house previously owned by drug dealers. Their mission was to exist there in the shadows of the city (the part where God seems to have abandoned humanity). She makes an effort to walk down the street, every evening, with her husband and three young children in tow. Over time the neighborhood children start to play at the house and she welcomes them with open arms. A local church starts providing hand-knit mittens during the cold months for the children. She planted a seed of love in a place full of darkness and hate.

As I sat listening to this story I thought about my place here. I was challenged to reexamine my own calling. My effort to lead a small group of children in Little Saigon have been challenging lately. For the past few months all I could feel was friction and despair. The job here was getting increasingly difficult and I saw little impact in the kids, their families, or the culture at large. But I sense now that the real miracles are just beginning. Perhaps God is finally ready to torch something to get my attention.

You can listen to the story above yourself at Mars Hill, entitled The Most Normal Thing Imaginable

The Mystery of Hypocracy

Fri, 28 Apr 2006 00:56:19 GMT

via ThinkChristian as a comment to GospelDrivenLife. Read up kids. It's good for you.

Why is it so hard to avoid hypocrisy?

Hypocrisy is frustrating because the solution to it—confession and repentance—is so easy, yet we’re nevertheless willing to go to enormous lengths to avoid doing so. Think about it—if you’re a member of a healthy church community and are harboring a secret sin, you have a lot of good reasons to go straight to your pastor and confess that sin. You know that:

God will forgive you.
Your pastor, family, and church community will likely support you should you need help overcoming the sin.
Your life will be immensely more enjoyable without the stress of hiding a sin from everybody you know.
The longer you wait to confess it, the harder things are going to be when it is inevitably found out.

Yet despite these reasons to repent, we find it amazingly hard to do so. You might think that simple embarassment causes people to cover up their sins, but can that really explain our illogical aversion to repentance? In the case of especially serious issues like sexual addiction, we often pass up the chance to deal with the sin early on (when there’s much less embarassment or impact on the community), and instead let it fester for years until it finally grows big enough to wreck entire families. Christians know of the forgiving power of their God, and they also know about the consesquences of hidden sin, yet they choose to hide rather than confess it.

(article emphasis mine)

Let's Talk About Sex

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 20:13:45 GMT

Sorry it's all disjointed. I wrote it quick-style. (I'll try to edit, but here's the draft.)

This was the comment I left for Lilly on her xanga site for this post. It got too long, so I decided to post it here.

I think I understand what you're trying to say. It's good to be discerning. I guess what blows my mind is that you didn't really know that "some" guys do that. So I don't know, what standard can you use to discern what kind of man is good? A Christian man perhaps? More Christian marriages in the US now end in divorce than non-christian. Looks, financial status, education... there are bad men in every category.

Negatives:
Guess what else some guys do: look at porn, lust after strangers, masterbate, talk about girls as objects, describe their body parts and rate them, dominate the relationship using fear and manipulation, abuse, both physical and emotional, lie, cheat with other women, etc.. so on, so forth. pretty ugly stuff. but that's sin. all of it. I'm speaking in general, but I'm pretty sure EVERY SINGLE MALE on this planet has done one or more of the things on this list.

Why is it that women want to get married early? Why get married at all? Think of all the pain. There is the struggle to gain security, the battle to maintain companionship, amidst children and work schedules. There's the stress of two people becoming one. There are fights about money, sex, children, and the future. How does any amount of dating help prepare for a life-long marriage?

Why don't men want to get married? Maybe the same reason why most people don't want to trust Jesus. It's hard to face the person you love and admit your deepest, darkest sins, forgive you, ask them to help you change. With all our evil tendancies, it's easier to just play the game.

If you understand WHY God blesses marriage, then you'll have a totally different perspective on dating. Understand that marriage is not what you think it is. The union between two people, based on trust, drench in grace and forgiveness, full of love, models the gospel. A married person has a permanent accountability partner. They cannot sucessfully hide from their sin, they must implicitly trust that their mate will not crush them with guilt and shame.

That's why I believe relationships should be based on principles. Intimacy before marriage prevents us from talking about deep issues. If you're making out with someone, it's hard to really hammer out your theological positions on relationships and family.

More Betrayer Goodness

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 21:47:49 GMT

Here's some more interesting reading on the Gospel of Judas. Larry Hurtado over at Slate Magazine did a really good job summarizing the origins of the text and the millions spent getting it.

but along with the merchandising of the codex have come exaggerated claims. For instance, National Geographic spokesperson Terry Garcia reported anonymous claims that the discovery of the text ranks with that of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi collection. Garcia also suggested that by presenting Judas as Jesus' special confidante, the Gospel of Judas may be seen as threatening two millenniums of Christian doctrine. This is all ballyhoo designed to get us to buy the books and CDs and watch the TV specials, all of which National Geographic is producing to make back the $1 million it reportedly invested in the project.

ah... marketing to Christians. Look for the "ballyhoo" at your local Barns and Noble soon.

Surprising

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:57:53 GMT

I was very surprised by the results of the "Passion of the Christ" survey done by George Barna.

Two years ago, Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, was marketed heavily to church leaders as “perhaps the best outreach opportunity in 2,000 years.” Gibson stunned Hollywood naysayers by pocketing over $600 million as The Passion became the eighth highest grossing film of all time. By targeting churches The Passion may have uncovered the greatest marketing opportunity in 2000 years. But what about the film’s spiritual impact—did The Passion deliver?
According to George Barna, it did not. Barna conducted an extensive survey of those who saw the film and concluded:
“Among the most startling outcomes…is the apparent absence of a direct evangelistic impact by the movie…. Less than one-tenth of one percent of those who saw the film stated that they made a profession of faith or accepted Jesus Christ as their savior in reaction to the film’s content.”
Either The Passion wasn’t the greatest outreach opportunity in 2000 years, or churches simply squandered the opportunity it presented.

(read on at Out of Ur)

Judas (MySpace Edition)

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 04:29:28 GMT

Here's a bulletin I posted on MySpace. (You need to login, first)

[Since Easter/Good Friday are just around the corner, I thought this would be relevant.]

Friend: So I was watching the Discovery Channel and saw a documentary on Judas, the guy who betrayed Jesus. Turns out Jesus asked him to plan the event! I hear it's making some Christians mad, what do you think?

Me: Well...

There's been some murmurs in the news about the gnostic 'Gospel of Judas.' It's even going to be on the Discovery Channel. This archaelogical finding is pruported to change the New Testament account of Jesus. [source NYT]

While I support Middle East archaeology and such, I don't see how a document written 300 years after the life and death of Jesus could significantly change the historical account of his life.

Please, there's no reason Christians should get up in arms about this kind of stuff. (Don't protest the Discovery Channel, I like Mythbusters)

This is nothing new. Christianity has stood for almost 2,000 years against alternative gospels, like the Gospel of Judas and fiction like the Da Vinci Code; entertaining reading, but not true.

Here are some philosophical exercises we can take to further understand the significance of this finding on Christianity. (via imonk, mixed and modified)

- Should we trust a document written 300 years after the life of a person that reveals a "new truth"? If that's trustworthy, then the new story of my life can be written by someone in 2280-2380 A.D. in the future and be more accurate than my obituary.
- The Gnostics were a fringe Christian group (agreed by many to be heretical) Paul and Peter, writers of most the New Testament, even addressed early gnosticism in their letters.
- Some would argue this could be true because early Christians "suppressed anything salacious about Jesus." But these salacious stories were more like tabloid stories (think Big Foot) or conspiracy stories.
- We trust the four Gospels (first four books of the New Testament) about Jesus because there is a very reliable process by which those books can be deemed acurate by trustworthy people. This process has been rock solid since the first century church.

//end conversation

Friends, I think our best response should be to listen, understand and then accurately represent the historical and biblical account of Jesus. Lovingly explain your position on why you believe this is not representative of ~~what you believe and stake your life on.~~ why you believe Jesus and stake your life on Him.

** You have a mind and a voice, WRITE! **
** Don't mass email, or bulletin this, thanks. **

Procrastination

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:35:02 GMT

Procrastination is the thief of time.

Edward Young (1683-1765)

Resurgence

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 04:44:51 GMT

I've been listening to Mark Driscoll for the last couple of months and have become a fan of his writing and teaching. It's refreshing to hear from teachers whose sole focus is on Jesus. Anyways, here's a quote from Chuck Colson in an interview Driscoll had on his blog Resurgence.

Question from Mark Driscoll: Does the greatest threat to Christianity come from forces outside the church, or from inside the church, through leaders who are more like Judas than Jesus?
Answer from Chuck Colson: The answer to your third question about whether the greatest threats are from inside or outside the church is “both.” I get nauseous about some of the things that go on in the church. In fact, I’m comforted by Niebuhr who once said that the church of Jesus Christ is like Noah’s ark; the stench inside would be unbearable if it weren’t for the storm outside. I’m in favor of cleaning up the stench, and also navigating through the storm.