I am heading out with 17 Jr. Highers today to 1000 Pines camp at noon today and will be gone until next Saturday. Hopefully i will have fun pictures to show after that. Last night i just started typing ideas down like crazy for a book. Unfortunately they are raw and i haven't had time to look over them, revise them, etc. so you are basically seeing like a C paper in an English class. Hopefully it may still be intellectually stimulating:
Book Idea: My journey through Christ
Apologetics were not the answer: Good and people often don’t know enough but the point is to defend who Jesus is not the Bible(The bible is not JESUS!)
The Bible does not give us the personality of Christ just his character. That is because he wants us to live in tune with his heart and to praise and exemplify him in our different personalities that he created all to be like him. There is not a Cookie Cutter Christian Personality!
Growing is a process. You go from crawling, to walking, to taking a few steps, to walking, to running. You never complain as a kid about only being able to crawl or trying to cut his legs off, but just understands that is how it is. Why is it as adults then that we forget this and go right back to getting frustrated with how we learn. In divine conspiracy we see this idea about the beatitudes. We also see it in James. God is always giving wisdom, it is more a matter of whether, you are ready to hear it or not. If you are not ready to hear it whether it is doubt or immaturity or stubbornness, you won’t hear it. The Pharisees didn’t, infants don’t, and even those with doubts want hear it. When discussing on how to lead a church, Rick Warren paralleled it to a family. Do you run a family like a democracy? No, the ones with more experience, wisdom, and maturity aka. the parents, hold more weight in the decisions. It is not a dis on those who are less spiritual, it is just how things are. In the same way that you don’t tell a kid what sex is when he is five. He just will not be able to grasp it right. And yet as Christians, we are five year old kids tugging on God’s pants and throwing temper tantrums because he want tell us how a car works!
The Word of God is what Sustains all that exists: God has created this world with the intent of helping us to learn what he truly desires and wants for us. The word of God in essence as Rob Bell would say in Velvet Elvis & Tozer in Pursuit of God is the underlying ground of how this world works. It is even what Donald Miller in Blue Like Jazz is alluding to it when he says wouldn’t it be beautiful if…
The main answer to this world is not love, it is love. I have learned that the main answer to this world is love. But it is not that sweet. Many teens in the church tend to rebel around their college years, I believe, because they do not grasp this yet. They were presented with the Bible statements of truth and then found out that they were not all true and decided that the Bible was not right. I was told my whole life that the Bible was completely true and trustworthy. After taking a Biblical literature class, I learned that the bible is almost completely based upon debate after debate. From a completely logical, non-biased secular view, You could discuss whether a certain book should be in the Bible. Then.You could start off by conjecuting what you think the author was talking about and who he was talking to in each book(this could change the whole meaning of the book ie.Jews or Gentiles). Then you could question whether a section of verses should be in that book or whether they were added during the transcription process(cults have been started off of verses out of context like this). Then you could take each verse apart and discuss the meaning of it. Then you can discuss that translation of an individual word that may change the entire meaning of a sentence and what it is trying to say(faith in Christ vs faith of Christ). In 1382-1415 The Wycliffe Bible was the 1st Bible translated into English
but not without the persecution, burning, and the banning of the Bible by the CHURCH. They believed the new translation would be inaccurate and do injustice to the meaning of the Bible in the translation process. Wycliffe was so hated for this that after he was dead his bones were dug up and burned.
You wouldn’t share this with a child because he would give up and say it is worthless, since it is not 100% true. In fact people do this all the time But on contrare. One Author used the analogy of the ocean. He said that if you are standing on the shore you are looking at the ocean. That is a true Statement. But you are not looking at the whole ocean. You are seeing just the surface of it. For someone to say the Bible is true, you are only hearing the surface of the ocean. So as soon as someone brings up a qualm with the Bible you should not allow it to say that everything is not true. It is most likely that the person is saying that the question is not on the surface of the ocean but down in the depths. For someone to say love is the answer to life is comical and yet deep. You see so many searching for love and never feeling fulfilled. Probably ¾ of the songs on the radio talk about finding the right partner, it really has almost become a god. For people that don’t believe in God, even in most movies today (put example here) If God is not the answer, Love is! You know why, because there is something deeper there. Many people here love is the answer and then laugh because they see all of the divorces and dissatisfied singles and married couples. They could give up on love, and I think a lot would, except that they are too lazy to and have nowhere else to turn. The truth of the matter is, they are trying to fit this surface idea of love(if it can even be called that) and saying it is the whole ocean. That doesn’t work either. 1 Corinthians 13 gives us the opposite. Without Love very little is worthwhile! Love is huge! Love is what causes one to give up what he is entitled to for the Good of another- that is at the heart of the incarnation of Jesus. At the center of Love is an acceptance through grace that very few find. The kind of acceptance that says you can do nothing wrong. I was a receiver and yet every time there I missed a catch my dad would say it was the quarterbacks fault. I sure I did things wrong and my dad knew that, but it sure seemed that my dad never believed it and often gave me the benefit of the doubt. In Dallas Willards Hearing God, he gives an example of his kids playing in the backyard and being completely in his will at that moment because he didn’t have to ask them to do this. I wonder if a lot of us miss the acceptance that God wants us to have. I feel like Donald Miller hits on this base truth in Searching for God knows what. Two other people that knew what they were talking about were Max Lucado in You Are Special and Brother Lawrence in Practicing the Presence of God. Lucado’s book is an inspired work. It portrays a truth about God’s love in the Bible continually in my life like few other things have. Brother Lawrence is just popular and quoted in almost every book know to man because of his example and focus. He wanted to Live in a love of God that went deeper than the surface. So how did I come to accept the Bible if I felt it was built upon debate upon debate. I trusted the words in it and how it coincided with this world. The same with love. I trusted in the Person it talks about behind these words and that if this is what he wanted us to hear that he would continue to work through it despite the human inefficiencies. That is a truth to discuss later on.
The Bible Tells us of a story of our inefficiency. Please don’t ever forget that! You can pursue holiness, you don’t have to believe we are always going to be trapped in sin and never have victory on this earth, but please don’t ever overlook that we are inadequate. And yet it is not the Point. The Point is Victory and Redemption through our Lord. There is just often a gap between those who profess victory and those who see the reality of being born under the law. The world is run so that we are never satisfied by it. You can try marriage and see if all your problems go away, it won’t work. You would be surprised how many times I have heard within Christian circles I have heard comments like, “Shoot, why is that guy complaining for being on the bench in the NBA?!? I would do that any day for the money he is making.” Umm…. Being secure in money doesn’t take away your problems! In Fact it often increases them. You talk to the pastor of a church of 20 and 20,0000 and see who deals with more problems. Talk to Christians and nonChristians alike and you will find money doesn’t satisfy. Good looks don’t satisfy. Why is it that the most beautiful girls often don’t know it and are getting surgery and no diets to become more beautiful. Pleasure doesn’t satisfy. You go to the guys that is addicted to Porn, alchohol, gambling, drugs, and have him tell you whether it satisfies. Talk to the Star of the past and see if Fame satisfies. MC Hammer For instance. Let’s face it we are set in a world that says, “You are not good enough.” I would go as far as to say it has set you up for failure. If we don’t emphasize this people will thing we are being unrealistic. This where true acceptance and redemption comes in. Max Lucado’s book once again shows a great example of the opposite.
Calvinism vs. Arminianism- I struggled for a long time between these two and trying to figure it out. I believe there are strengths and weaknesses to both. I am personally Arminianism but I believe that is beside the point. I believe there are a lot of points in the Bible where God often takes things that are appearingly contradictory when in reality they are dialectical or both true. I went thr
Different Convictions- My roommate gave me a hard time about being a stickler on cd burning and then relaxed on all of the other laws. I thought he was a walking contradiction because he wouldn’t speed at all, but then he would let words and pictures slide by his face and ears that I would never let go by. This is where the whole church split over carpet color comes in. People are going to have discrepancies and (this may go against the Bible) but as of right now believe that you can find contradictions in any person if you want to. They may be false, but you can in anyone you want to. Bring it down to earth. You may think someone is racist by a comment they make but they may not be. (Parallel to bible story somehow)
Honesty & Clear Communication are Key- As long as you feel you have to hide things, you are often just avoiding the truth with God and other
The most urgent things are often not the most important
here is trace catching a wave
this is trace's cousin ben
I took this photo with a self-timer after surfing last night... Isn't this like poster material!
