-excerpts from Donald Miller's To Own a Dragon
"we have to live it out. and that, in turn, increases our faith. it's like any relationship, you have to dive in, you have to let the relationship change you. we do that by obeying God. we submit to Him like a kid does with a father. Scripture says if we love God we will obey God. our occasional failures or our repeated messes don't negate the truth of that. It's cause and effect...we try to make obedience the cause and love the effect, but it doesn't work. we will eventually bag the whole thing. love comes first"
"people who have the authority of awful experiences, experiences that educate them toward empathy, and yet still have within themselves hearts willing to forgive. this, he went on to clarify, could be accomplished only through a deeply buttressed spiritual life. these people will be wounded healers. it makes you wonder, doesn't it, whether or not AGod calls specific people who have specific pain into the authority of empathy? we are the ones who will wrestle with security, who will overcome our fear of intimacy, who will learn the hard task of staying with a woman and our children, who will mentor others through the difficult journey of life, perhaps rescuing them from what we have been rescued... it is that we would not be arrogant victims, but wounded healers. i can only perceive this as a dignified calling."
today is not particularly a day i will forget, at least until the missions trip. today was a day of work and becoming closer to God, ending in an hour or so long praise session outside on my driveway with Phong. God is so amazing, to be in the presence of Him is life-changing. it is not something i want to forget. how everything about God is everything we could have asked for. we are blessed in that He provides us with everything that we need and He knows the best for us and He loves us - in that, He doesn't change. He always has His arms wide open for us, even after we turn our backs and stumble and don't meet His standard. it is amazing that we have the chance, and that He would give His life to let us experience real life.
how God has this calling for us, and it is only completely necessary that we give everything we have to it - that we give Him our lives. that in doing so, we will be with Him, we will have secured the opportunity to really know Him. how, even with trials and tribulations and temptations to come, if our faith in God and such a willingness to be obedient would be so strong, we would really know what it feels like to be closer to God, to know how great God is and how great it is to be able to be with Him. how our lives have been designed so that God is the only one who will ever work for us and how it is only completely essential that, our lives in His hands, we do what He tells us to do with as little hesitation as possible to spread His name and His light.
how this missions trip really will be life-changing for everyone and how we will be changing the world, and how we really don't have limits and we go out into the world right now and be ready to set examples of maturity. how there is the falling american public and the other end of the spectrum contains kids like us who are trying to understand what it means to love, and we call ourselves Christians, because Christ is at the center of our lives. how great it is to be able to say something like that - "yes, i am a Christian" or "yes, i have given my life to God." how great it would be to do such a thing. God's more than willing and ready to take our lives and transform them into something so much more rewarding and fulfilling - it is still our stumbling to understand and listen to Him. and even in such misunderstandings and shortcomings, God has patience and does not condemn us. He doesn't tell us we're not good enough and that we don't deserve to follow Him. He never turns His back.
if we could just never leave a moment like that, then we would know what we have to look forward to. what it means to really be with God forever. what it means to know that this is what life is meant to be - and how silly it would be to decide to spend life on instant gratification instead of this master scheme, from a God who, let's face it, is more relevant than ever and could not be any more important than He already is. to make a point: there would be nothing better than to give everything to Christ and to stay in such an awareness that any doubts or temptations would be instantly crushed by God's presence. this is what i have to look forward to in New Mexico, while we are changing lives and simultaneously having our lives changed by seeing how powerful God's love is in transforming, even in the smallest seeming of jobs. how, even if no one ever notices, God notices, and such unseen obedience is worth it because God cares.
that was about the last hour of the day. the first real hour of my day began with running, which made me tired, followed by stocking my mom's vending machines. i ended up at Border's and read for about an hour in Lee Strobel's Case for Christ and Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts, both of which were reawrding in knowledge, both of which pointed toward the obvious conclusion that God provides and He is in the right and we should be spending our lives trying to get to the right, the truth. after stopping at the library, i returned home, sleepy and tired, and continued cleaning my closet. phong and jojo stopped by and picked me up to go sell space pens, which was somewhat successful (i need to go to Sam's club tomorrow to try to get permission to sell there on wednesday). a return to home after that was met by cleaning my closet more, the joy of eating dinner, followed by the cleaning of my room and phong stopping by to join me in my quest of reading. going through 1 Peter, but i only got through the first chapter because i was tired and i spent most of the time getting through the last chapter of To Own a Dragon.
in a brief conversation with mike, i referred to one time when he spoke of the importance of developing confidence and how one would go about doing so. i was interested to learn this had actually been picked as part of the curriculum during the missions trip, in which i will hopefully be enabled to lead some small group discussions or worship sessions, God willing. i told him i thought that was cool because i had chosen confidence as one of my goals for this "week to get it back." the only thing he told me was to pay attention that i had confidence when i asked the question - i knew what i wanted in asking it. could confidence be knowing what you want and simply going after it, completely regardless of any fear that you may be ridiculed or treated differently or hurt in some way? and that even in falling on your face in attempt, you did the right thing and won't regret it? anyways, that's my definition for tonight. interesting how God works. peace be with you all.
"we have to live it out. and that, in turn, increases our faith. it's like any relationship, you have to dive in, you have to let the relationship change you. we do that by obeying God. we submit to Him like a kid does with a father. Scripture says if we love God we will obey God. our occasional failures or our repeated messes don't negate the truth of that. It's cause and effect...we try to make obedience the cause and love the effect, but it doesn't work. we will eventually bag the whole thing. love comes first"
"people who have the authority of awful experiences, experiences that educate them toward empathy, and yet still have within themselves hearts willing to forgive. this, he went on to clarify, could be accomplished only through a deeply buttressed spiritual life. these people will be wounded healers. it makes you wonder, doesn't it, whether or not AGod calls specific people who have specific pain into the authority of empathy? we are the ones who will wrestle with security, who will overcome our fear of intimacy, who will learn the hard task of staying with a woman and our children, who will mentor others through the difficult journey of life, perhaps rescuing them from what we have been rescued... it is that we would not be arrogant victims, but wounded healers. i can only perceive this as a dignified calling."
today is not particularly a day i will forget, at least until the missions trip. today was a day of work and becoming closer to God, ending in an hour or so long praise session outside on my driveway with Phong. God is so amazing, to be in the presence of Him is life-changing. it is not something i want to forget. how everything about God is everything we could have asked for. we are blessed in that He provides us with everything that we need and He knows the best for us and He loves us - in that, He doesn't change. He always has His arms wide open for us, even after we turn our backs and stumble and don't meet His standard. it is amazing that we have the chance, and that He would give His life to let us experience real life.
how God has this calling for us, and it is only completely necessary that we give everything we have to it - that we give Him our lives. that in doing so, we will be with Him, we will have secured the opportunity to really know Him. how, even with trials and tribulations and temptations to come, if our faith in God and such a willingness to be obedient would be so strong, we would really know what it feels like to be closer to God, to know how great God is and how great it is to be able to be with Him. how our lives have been designed so that God is the only one who will ever work for us and how it is only completely essential that, our lives in His hands, we do what He tells us to do with as little hesitation as possible to spread His name and His light.
how this missions trip really will be life-changing for everyone and how we will be changing the world, and how we really don't have limits and we go out into the world right now and be ready to set examples of maturity. how there is the falling american public and the other end of the spectrum contains kids like us who are trying to understand what it means to love, and we call ourselves Christians, because Christ is at the center of our lives. how great it is to be able to say something like that - "yes, i am a Christian" or "yes, i have given my life to God." how great it would be to do such a thing. God's more than willing and ready to take our lives and transform them into something so much more rewarding and fulfilling - it is still our stumbling to understand and listen to Him. and even in such misunderstandings and shortcomings, God has patience and does not condemn us. He doesn't tell us we're not good enough and that we don't deserve to follow Him. He never turns His back.
if we could just never leave a moment like that, then we would know what we have to look forward to. what it means to really be with God forever. what it means to know that this is what life is meant to be - and how silly it would be to decide to spend life on instant gratification instead of this master scheme, from a God who, let's face it, is more relevant than ever and could not be any more important than He already is. to make a point: there would be nothing better than to give everything to Christ and to stay in such an awareness that any doubts or temptations would be instantly crushed by God's presence. this is what i have to look forward to in New Mexico, while we are changing lives and simultaneously having our lives changed by seeing how powerful God's love is in transforming, even in the smallest seeming of jobs. how, even if no one ever notices, God notices, and such unseen obedience is worth it because God cares.
that was about the last hour of the day. the first real hour of my day began with running, which made me tired, followed by stocking my mom's vending machines. i ended up at Border's and read for about an hour in Lee Strobel's Case for Christ and Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts, both of which were reawrding in knowledge, both of which pointed toward the obvious conclusion that God provides and He is in the right and we should be spending our lives trying to get to the right, the truth. after stopping at the library, i returned home, sleepy and tired, and continued cleaning my closet. phong and jojo stopped by and picked me up to go sell space pens, which was somewhat successful (i need to go to Sam's club tomorrow to try to get permission to sell there on wednesday). a return to home after that was met by cleaning my closet more, the joy of eating dinner, followed by the cleaning of my room and phong stopping by to join me in my quest of reading. going through 1 Peter, but i only got through the first chapter because i was tired and i spent most of the time getting through the last chapter of To Own a Dragon.
in a brief conversation with mike, i referred to one time when he spoke of the importance of developing confidence and how one would go about doing so. i was interested to learn this had actually been picked as part of the curriculum during the missions trip, in which i will hopefully be enabled to lead some small group discussions or worship sessions, God willing. i told him i thought that was cool because i had chosen confidence as one of my goals for this "week to get it back." the only thing he told me was to pay attention that i had confidence when i asked the question - i knew what i wanted in asking it. could confidence be knowing what you want and simply going after it, completely regardless of any fear that you may be ridiculed or treated differently or hurt in some way? and that even in falling on your face in attempt, you did the right thing and won't regret it? anyways, that's my definition for tonight. interesting how God works. peace be with you all.
posted by D. Chang at 7:51 PM
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