Monday, December 15, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Blue Like Jazz
I have started re-reading one of my favorite books "Blue Like Jazz" and as I have been reading it I have discovered again why I always list it as one of my favorite books. The way Donald Miller writes about his connection with God and how he comes into a relationship with God is so challenging to me. Over the past couple of days I have been really thinking about my past and thinking about how far I have came in my relationship with God and reading through Galatians at the same time and remembering what it really means to be set free from the law and to really discover who God is and how to really experience freedom in Christ. It's just been a great couple of days in my devotion life and so what I wanted to do is as I read a great phrase or paragraph in "Blue Like Jazz" I will share with you. So this first one comes from the 1st chapter and Donald is talking about the 1st time he really felt guilt:
"The ideas I learned in Sunday School, the ideas about sin and how we shouldn't sin, kept bugging me. I felt as though I needed to redeem myself, the way a kid feels when he finally decides to clean his room. My carnal thinking had made a mess of my head, and I felt as though I were standing in the doorway of my mind, wondering where to begin, how to organize my thoughts so they weren't so out of control.
That's when I realized that religion might be able to hose things down, get me back to normal so I could have fun without felling guilty or something. I just didn't want to have to think about this guilt crap anymore.
For me, however, there was a mental wall between religion and God. I could walk around inside religion and never, on any sort of emotional level, understand that God was a person, an actual Being with thoughts and feelings and hat sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that doled out rewards based on behavior and, perhaps, chance.
The slot-machine God provided a relief for the pinging guilt and a sense of hope that my life would get organized toward a purpose. i was too dumb to test the merit of the slot machine idea. I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking the cherries might line up and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. What i was doing was more in line with superstition than spirituality. But it worked. If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn't, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer, and pulled the lever a few times. I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. But the fun never last."
OK.. i lied - it was a little longer than a paragraph. But I love this slot machine idea, because this idea was something that I really struggled with as a kid and so his thinking makes perfect sense to me. What about you?
"The ideas I learned in Sunday School, the ideas about sin and how we shouldn't sin, kept bugging me. I felt as though I needed to redeem myself, the way a kid feels when he finally decides to clean his room. My carnal thinking had made a mess of my head, and I felt as though I were standing in the doorway of my mind, wondering where to begin, how to organize my thoughts so they weren't so out of control.
That's when I realized that religion might be able to hose things down, get me back to normal so I could have fun without felling guilty or something. I just didn't want to have to think about this guilt crap anymore.
For me, however, there was a mental wall between religion and God. I could walk around inside religion and never, on any sort of emotional level, understand that God was a person, an actual Being with thoughts and feelings and hat sort of thing. To me, God was more of an idea. It was something like a slot machine, a set of spinning images that doled out rewards based on behavior and, perhaps, chance.
The slot-machine God provided a relief for the pinging guilt and a sense of hope that my life would get organized toward a purpose. i was too dumb to test the merit of the slot machine idea. I simply began to pray for forgiveness, thinking the cherries might line up and the light atop the machine would flash, spilling shiny tokens of good fate. What i was doing was more in line with superstition than spirituality. But it worked. If something nice happened to me, I thought it was God, and if something nice didn't, I went back to the slot machine, knelt down in prayer, and pulled the lever a few times. I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. But the fun never last."
OK.. i lied - it was a little longer than a paragraph. But I love this slot machine idea, because this idea was something that I really struggled with as a kid and so his thinking makes perfect sense to me. What about you?
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Our 1st....
Well our first ever Fall Retreat has come and gone. We took a total of 21 students up to the mountains for a getaway, hopefully to gain some insight into what God was trying to do in there lives. A few things that I have learned about doing a Fall Retreat:
1. It's hard work...It took a lot of energy, time and effort just in the planning to pull this off. It of coarse made it harder when my speaker could not make it and left me with the studying for it. But it's all good
2. Guys will be guys...dumb. Leon decided to kick at a water bottle on a post and missed the post and struck the post with his big toe. Which has made his toe black and pick and possibly broke.
3. You give a student a piece of wood for an illustration...there going to draw on it.
I gave the students the piece of wood for them to write down their fear, doubts or sins that keep them from doing what God has called them to do and I had them carry the wood around with them all weekend and most of the pieces of wood got drawn on. 4. Girls can clog toilets and continue to use them...which makes for a d (wait for it) lightful smell.
One of the toilets in our cabin was clogged....you would think that people would not use that toilet. Not these girls...they are troopers and contunie to just pile it all weekend. Nicely done ladies.
5. It doesn't matter how much food or drinks you bring....it will all be gone the first night. It doesn't matter with this group guys or girls VERB SM can eat anyone out of house and home.
6. When a student is giving a challenge...don't underestimate what God can do through that student.
I challenged Leon to give a devotion on what it means to grow up in your faith this weekend. He gave his devotion on Saturday morning (before he broke his toe) and he did an great job and I believe the Lord used him to connect to a few students.7. Before the weekend came i kept thinking that I was not going to be ready to give the messages and still be able to build relationships with students throughout the weekend. Even though I thought it doesn't mean it happens...God always shows up and provides a ways and I had a great weekend teaching and building relationships with student I new and some I didn't and it was also great to hear students really grasping ahold of what God was trying to teach them through the weekend and them making the commitment to attempt to move in the direction HE is calling them.
What a great weekend...Can't wait until Fall Retreat 09
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Weight Room Ettiquite
On Saturday I was in the weight room doing my work out and I was on my last set. When a guy that had been there the whole time I was doing his cardio came over and took the bars off the machine I was using and moved them to a new machine without asking me. There's a big sign on the wall when you walk into the weight room that goes over the rules and one of the rules is that you allow people to work out on the same machine as you in between your sets. I was and always be willing to do that. But theres a thing called Weight Room Ettiquite and maybe I am the only one that is aware of it because this has happened more than once. WRE stats that you don't jump in between someone sets without asking (even though there's big rule book plastered to the wall, you still ask) and you defiantly don't take the weights off the bars that make the machine work and move them to a new machine which completely takes it way from the person still using it. As you can tell I am still upset a little bit over this. But I will be ok? Tell me what you think? Am I acting out or am I correct in my thinking of the WRE rules?
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
SOX Clinch
My boys clinched a playoff spot last night and in doing so eliminated the Yaks. Yeah....World Series here we come..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)