conviction

It's been a growing conviction that has risen from circulating undercurrents to a tidal wave that fell upon my heart only hours ago. I have been gifted with such a passion for Jesus, such a passion for His message and His mission, such a hunger and thirst for His Kingdom. I am obsessed. My zeal consumes me and I echo David Crowder: "What can I do with my obsession with the things I cannot see? Is there madness in my being? Is it the wind that moves the trees?" And again, "If I'm out of my mind, it's you, cause I'm crazy in love with You; inebriated by You, cause I'm head-over-heels with You!" I can't deny the passion that runs inside me; I find myself in league with Jeremiah when he cries out, "If I say, 'I will not mention him, or speak anymore in his name,' there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.'" (Jeremiah 20:9) I can't escape this, and the question David Crowder asked I ask over and over: What can I do with my obsession? And another: What am I DOING with my obsession?

I confess, sadly, that I am hardly doing anything. Part of me has drifted into the misperception that now that I'm in college, I'm learning how to minister. Therefore, part of me has come to subvertly think--though my heart knows it to be wrong--that my greatest duty is just to learn. No! My greatest duty, whether I'm in college or not, is to engage in the Kingdom and take on Jesus' mission of spreading the Kingdom! God has gifted me with such a love for His story, such a passion for teaching, such a heart of love, and yet I spend my free days sitting in my room and hanging with the 4N guys or just shooting pool and playing ping-pong down in the coffeeshop. I can't help but feel I am shirking not only my time, but God's gifts to me.

What am I doing with my obsession? Not much.

What am I doing with the gifts God has given me? Not much.

Should this change? I think so. It's the conviction that tears through my bones.

I don't know what's going to happen after I post this. I hope something happens. I feel that something will happen, and I need to take the initiative. I am in a wide league of others with the very same convictions. Some of my close friends have "organized" cheap outreaches down into Cincinnati, just going and treating the homeless people to a meal and showing them Christ's love. Others are looking into different opportunities to serve through government volunteer organizations like soup kitchens and such. I want to do something, I feel like I have to do something, not out of duty but out of love for the King. I have been keeping this beautiful message to myself: the gospel simply won't allow that.

We are called to serve others in humility. I haven't been doing it. I need to learn humility all over again (as if I ever did in the first place). We are called to take the gospel to all nations, yet I can't remember the last time I actually engaged in conversation about Jesus outside of Church circles (how sad is that?). I'm frightened, sure, but, as one of my friends said, "I'm just gonna be like Joshua when I go against the Philistines: bless it, God, but if you decide not to bless it as I expect you to, protect me!"

With my laptop broken and my gaming computer in Cincinnati, I've had a few hours of downtime to just read and contemplate. I am almost finished with my current book, "The Story We Find Ourselves In," and I constantly find myself nodding along with Brian McLaren's characters as they engage in spiritual conversation. In chapter 26, McLaren spent some time ruminating on the actions of the Holy Spirit in the life of a genuine follower of Christ. He comes up with three central actions of the Holy Spirit:

1) [God's Spirit] tries to be himself in you, while you're being yourself. In other words, he tries to live in you, so that you become a more Christlike person. I know that the word 'Christian' means a lot of different things to different people, but it's supposed to mean 'Christlike person,' and I think that's the first thing that the Holy Spirit wants to do inside you.

2) I think that the Spirit motivates you and guides you and empowers you to be part of the mission. I think that each person experiences this in a different way. In one person, the Holy Spirit energizes the desire to teach, and in another person, he gives an ability to care for the poor or to raise and give away money to good causes. Another person finds the Spirit motivating him to try super-difficult things.

3) The third thing is that the Holy Spirit tries to connect you with other people, so that what he does in and through each person is coordinated with what he does in and through another person, and so on. That way, it's not just a bunch of individuals working on the same cause, but it's people really united in one Spirit. And that's what the community of faith is supposed to be.

I would add one more:

4) the Spirit teaches us to embrace the Kingdom, guides us into the Kingdom and guides us to live out of it, and comforts us and speaks to us and basically lives life alongside us, whether we're preaching behind a pulpit or running a cash register at midnight. It doesn't really matter.

Happy Thanksgiving!

May God bless you with love, joy, and peace as you share the Kingdom with friends and family this weekend!

Write this to Ephesus, to the Angel of the church. The One with Seven Stars in his right-fist grip, striding through the golden seven-lights' circle, speaks: "I see what you've done, your hard, hard work, your refusal to quit. I know you can't stomach evil, that you weed out apostolic pretenders. I know your persistence, your courage in my cause, that you never wear out. But you walked away from your first love--why? What's going on with you anyway? Do you have any idea how far you've fallen? A Lucifer fall! Turn back! Recover your dear early love. No time to waste, for I'm well on my way to removing your light from the golden circle." - Revelation 2:1-5

The Ephesians did everything right: hard, hard work; refusal to quit; they couldn't stomach evil; they were courageous in the cause for the Kingdom;, and they were persistent to the core. They were, in a real way, the "perfect Christians." But Christ found something wrong with them, and this "something" was so huge that it turned all their good deeds black as night and caused Christ to weep, "Do you have any idea how far you've fallen? A Lucifer fall!" While they were doing all the duty right, they had lost their original passion. Their passion for Jesus and Jesus alone had faded away and was replaced with something else, something totally unworthy. This grave fall drives Jesus to lament, "You'd better fix it now, or I'm gonna remove you from the light of the golden circle." When duty becomes more important than Jesus, we've abandoned the gospel. I believe that God would rather have five people who are passionate about Him but are always screwing up rather than 500 who do everything right but are without passion, being whitewashed tombs.

This is still a danger today. It's very easy to fall more in love with our Bibles than Jesus. It's easy to fall more in love with our prayers than Jesus. It's easy to fall more in love with our worship music than Jesus. It's easy to fall more in love with our families than Jesus, our careers than Jesus, our own lives than Jesus. It's easy to fall more in love with theology than Jesus. It's easy to fall more in love with Christianity than we are in love with Jesus. And all of these falls, even if they seem holy in a way--such as falling more for Christianity than Jesus--are seen in God's eyes as "Lucifer falls."

I enjoyed spending time with my good friend Tyler today. He and Kristen are up from Tennessee for Thanksgiving Break. My own Thanksgiving break doesn't start until Tuesday night. I can wait. My laptop is awaiting fixation, but I've got the desktop to keep me company, as well as a new game that is simply breathtaking in scope and grandeur. Forest, Caleb, John and I all relaxed today and watched television. Now the room is empty except for me and the television continues to speak. John is in Trevor's room, I believe, and Caleb is on the toilet.

Tomorrow I have three classes, but am only attending two. I might hit up breakfast with Forest after Acts class, which means I won't be attending Public Speaking. That's okay, though, because I have four skips left and since I've already completed my "final" speech, I'm pretty much no more than an accessory and pair of clapping hands the rest of the semester.

In the evening, my friend Ashley and I are going across the river to Newport on the Levee to see Chicken Little and then browse the mall and bookstore. It should be fun, I'm looking forward to it. Some people get the idea that we're dating, but we're not. It's hard to believe, especially at a Christian campus, but a guy and girl can be friends and do stuff together and not date. My dating life right now is virtually nothing, but that's not a change, and I'm okay with that. All in due time, all in due time. Right now I'm just enjoying life, pursuing God, and embracing more and more this Revolution of God that became a reality to us through Christ.

Leann, Todd and I were hanging out in the coffeeshop lobby, shooting poll and listening to Bobby Darin, when my good friend Caleb somehow kicked my laptop onto the ground. I was swing-dancing one minute and the next minute watching Caleb's face fall into a mask of horror as he tried many times, unsuccessfully, to get the laptop running again. I brought it home this weekend and now I sit in my sister's room, trying to get it to work, but... eek, no luck. Looks like I'll have to send for a replacement. Hopefully it'll come before Thanksgiving break is over. If not... Well, that wouldn't be good. The laptop is my lifeblood at C.C.U.

I'm here this weekend for the Christmas in Springboro, and of course to visit my friends and family. The college campus is absolutely dead--most of the kids are gone, some have already left for home for Thanksgiving break, and those who stay are at a missionary convention in Atlanta. One of my good friends is there and she says it isn't the most exciting thing in the world.

Sorry, Ashley... At least your laptop isn't broken! But I love you, Caleb!

Now to listen to some more of techno from the Blade Trilogy...

Today I presented my final speech in Public Speaking, and I presented it on how we as the Body of Christ should be more generous in our lives and monetary blessings. This is a struggle for me and I spoke much from the heart as I stood before the class. In my speech I explored harrowing statistics, then wept over how the Body of Christ in America is often ignorant of the suffering around the world. I pretty much said that while there is nothing wrong with eating out, or buying a book every once in a while, or just keeping ourselves alive, there is certainly a call to a greater mission in the world than simply building ourselves a nest egg or lining our own pockets. This mission is the Kingdom of God, and when we are faced with the suffering around the world, there are two roads we can walk down: we can turn our back on the darkness and instead face an even deeper darkness--the darkness of ignorance--or we can embrace the darkness and pierce it with the light of the Kingdom God.

"We are called to spread God's Kingdom with our gifts, abilities, talents, and blessings--and this includes money."

Here are three organizations that exist to spread God's Kingdom through our monetary gifts:

World Vision
Save the Children
MakePovertyHistory

Todd and I were shooting poll in the coffeeshop lounge yesterday, and we somehow got into talking about dinosaurs. I think he asked me what I was into, and I told him, and then he asked, "So where do you see dinosaurs in the whole creation thing?" If you haven't heard, or haven't noticed--really, if you don't know me at all--one of my greatest loves is dinosaurs.

It always begins like this. A lot of people don't like the fact that I believe in evolution. A lot of people could even come to look down on me and see me as a liberalist who doesn't believe the Bible (although I might be a liberal, I do believe the Bible). I know there are Christians out there who believe that if we believe in evolution, we really don't belong to God at all. This is because evolution is always associated with atheism. What I want to know is, "Why?"

Evolution wasn't invented because people wanted to take God out of the picture. Honest, God-fearing individuals saw that there were things in creation that didn't seem possible with a literal six-day creation, and in their attempt to figure out what really happened, the theory of evolution developed. I think that, as followers of Christ, we are to embrace all truth, and that includes the fact that evolution has a LOT of evidence. As I told Todd, "Perhaps we should just stop trying to disprove the facts and instead dedicate ourselves to figuring out how it fits into God's ever-continuing story?"

So, as I paced around the pool table searching for a shot, I gave him my reply. "When I look at the creation account in Genesis, I see it as being full of symbolic and evocative language, not literal language... Evolution has a lot of facts. Sure, it doesn't have all the answers. And I know there are some holes in it that may be filled as we grow in our understanding... Evolution is an extremely complex process created by God which we may never understand. But on the whole, I see more truth in evolution than in six-day creationism. I believe God created evolution and has guided evolution throughout the history of earth. More and more evolutionists are coming to believe in the existence of God based on the sheer mathematical and scientific impossibilities of evolution if it is really random. Evolution carries a lot of weight, but I think God is behind it all."

"So you think dinosaurs are..."

"I think dinosaurs are God's creations as much as we are. I don't think they were made in His image, but I believe with all of my heart that they were designed by the mind and heart of God. Evolution, then, could be seen as the paintbrush used to create the masterpiece. But the painter is still God."

Oh! Teach us to live well! Teach us to live wisely and well! Come back, GOD--how long do we have to wait?--and treat your servants with kindness for a change. Surprise us with love at daybreak; then we'll skip and dance all the day long. Make up for the bad times with good times; we've seen enough evil to last a lifetime. Let your servants see what you're best at--the ways you rule and bless your children. And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, confirming the work that we do. - Psalm 90:12-17 (the Message)

Caleb came into my room yesterday and showed me this passage of scripture he had found. As he read it, I felt something within me ignite. This is the cry of Moses, and yet it is the cry of my heart, and the heart of Caleb as well. The prayers which I raise to God aren't foreign to Him. He's heard them all before. Something about that is comforting. This is what my prayer has been for so long now: "God, help me. Bring someone fresh before my eyes, someone good and grand and wonderful and beautiful, the one whom I am made for."

At Fuel I talked about my romantic struggles. I talked about how much I wanted a girlfriend, how it hurt so much sometimes, and how often it looks like my life will be lonely, how often it looks that I will never find "her". Here at college, my attempts at such discoveries have ended in dead-ends, and that isn't encouraging. I'm not completely broken and withered, though; I spent a lot of time just listening to the voice of God all day yesterday, and He seemed to say, "Everything's going good. Don't worry about it. You'll be fine." And then He reiterated what He always says: "Just wait. I'll come in and things will change." I trust Him. I trust that He knows what He is doing and I trust that, in time, my life will reflect Psalm 40:

I waited and waited and waited for GOD. At last he looked; finally he listened. He lifted me out of the ditch, pulled me from deep mud. He stood me up on a solid rock, to make sure I wouldn't slip. He taught me how to sing the latest God-song, a praise-song to our God. More and more people are seeing this: they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to GOD. - Psalm 90:1-5 (the Message)

Right now I am waiting and waiting and waiting. My prayers are rising up to God and He hears them all. The time will come when the waiting will be over. He will lift me out of the ditch of my loneliness, pull me from the deep mud of my incompleteness. He will stand me on a solid rock to make sure I won't slip. My mouth and life will continually erupt with thankfulness; my heart will rejoice at the blessings He's poured upon me. I will embrace my wife and play with my children, my laughter and love spilling out a song of joy to the King who listened to my prayers and lifted me from my despair.

I am thankful for all the friends, guys and girls, whom I have here and at home to keep me moving even when things don't seem to ever "work out" the way I wish them to. And I imagine God is shaking His head and smiling, perhaps thinking, "He has no idea what I have planned for him!"

The class on Sunday went extremely well. It started off sluggish but the Sr. Highers got into it and we had a heckuva good time talking about God, Jesus, and discipleship. Every time I teach a class, whether it goes well or not, my passion for teaching is enflamed once again. There is something about teaching that just stirs my soul in ways other things cannot.

At first I thought my preaching on Sunday wasn't up-to-par. I felt rather discouraged about it all. Truth be told, I didn't do much rehearsing and that rubbed off on the message. I just didn't feel like God really wanted me to rehearse. I know that sounds crazy. But afterwards several people approached me and told me, in more words than this, that the message--a message delivered from my heart--spoke to them. One of my friends pulled me backstage and said, "That is exactly what everyone in there needed to hear." Maybe, in the loss of eloquence and the expressions of simplicity, God's voice was easier to be heard in the hearts of his children--or in those whom he desires to be his children.

Well, it's 7:40 a.m. here on campus and I'm about to start another week of classes. It should be fun.

Yesterday I was in the coffee shop buying a veggie wrap and a blueberry muffin (the muffin was for my Messianic Jewish friend, a great guy who has tremendously fresh insights on Yeshua ben Yosef), when one of my friends came in and was letting me meet her parents. Anyways, I am trying to pay for my food and talk to her and her parents at the same time when my cell phone rings. I see it's Jeff so I excuse myself and learn that he wants me to give the message on Sunday for Fuel. I am quite excited.

This weekend should be fun. I'm also teaching Sr. High class, and we're going to be discussing "What does God really want from me?", teaching out of the book of the minor prophet Micah. In the evening, I am giving a message entitled, appropriately-so, "Why I love Jesus." I am focusing on the fact that he was a Jewish Rabbi and he calls us to be his students, and I am going to tell everyone the four things that have drawn me to him: his teachings, his life, his mission, and his calling. I will close off by encouraging them to pursue Yeshua, the Jewish Rabbi who works in and around his disciples to change the world for good.

This is, I believe, what I was made for. Teaching and preaching the Message. I was talking to my Messianic Jewish friend, and I told him, "Just teaching and preaching the Message is so exhilerating. It's like a never-ending adrenaline rush. When I'm teaching or preaching, I feel like I'm really alive." My prayer is that God will speak through me, that he will whisper his words into my own voice and the hearts of the listeners as well. It's all for Him, after all; I'm just a mere stagehand.

contemplating grace

God has been teaching me grace tonight. The dictionary.com definition of grace is this: "a disposition to be generous or helpful; goodwill. Mercy; clemency." I've always associated grace with mercy and clemency, but never really approached it in its other aspect: a disposition to be generous or helpful; goodwill. It is simply astounding to me: despite all our sin, despite our sinful natures, despite all the times we sin (either on accident or on purpose, either once a day or forty times a day), God's grace through Jesus lavishes upon us not only mercy and clemency, but generosity, help, and goodwill! God doesn't just take our sinfulness and stomp it underfoot, nor does He just throw it to the bottom of the ocean; He makes a move forward, holding out His hand to help us, being generous with His love and joy, and He even blesses us with His goodwill! He calls us friends, not just acquaintances, and He walks with us, talks with us, smiles with us, laughs with us. Grace isn't just about being forgiven, it's about being brought up into intimacy with God.

If there is one thing life teaches me over-and-over, it's that, to put it simply, "I suck." I really do. I echo David Crowder in his song Wholly Yours: "But the harder I try, the more clearly can I feel the depth of our fall, and the weight of it all; and this might could be the most impossible thing: Your grandness making me clean."

Wholly Yours is, as it speaks to me, a song totally about grace. And David Crowder confesses what many of us hide: we pursue perfection, we pursue righteousness, but we mess up a lot. Sometimes our failures seem to drastically outweight our successes. It sickens us, disturbs us, disheartens us, depresses us. We clam up, curl into fetal positions, and whimper as we hope--pray, and pray like we've never prayed before!--that God will pass over us, that He will see the blood on the door and let us live.

The problem is, we don't understand grace. We think we need to earn grace, or at least earn our forgiveness. So when we sin a lot, or mess up big time, we think, "Oh no, this is it, now He's pissed," and we shiver in our beds and look outside at the flickering lightning, wondering which one will be heaven-sent through the window, killing us as we sleep. If we understood grace, understood that grace isn't based on what we do, but based on what Jesus has done, and if we understood that it isn't just about forgiveness, but God inviting us into the divine-enriched life, perhaps we wouldn't find ourselves, in a sense, mortified, but, rather, timidly approaching the Throne, bowing down before God, and pleading, "Consume me!" As David Crowder writes in Wholly Yours: "Here I am, all of me; finally, everything! Holy, holy, holy; I am wholly, wholly, wholly... yours. I am wholly yours. I am full of earth and dirt and you!"

David Crowder begins his song, "I am full of earth; You are heaven's worth. I am stained with dirt, prone to depravity; You are everything that is bright and clean, the antonym of me. You are divinity! What a certain sign of grace is this: from a broken earth flowers come up pushing through the dirt." This is truth: as I am, flesh-and-blood, I am full of sin, I am stained with the sinful nature; this sinful nature sticks its head out in various outward performances of sin. Contrasted to God, I am pitch black and He is pure and snow-white. I am a sickly, frail, insignificant human and He is the Divine King, the Creator of the Universe. And here is the sign of grace: through my broken, decrepit, sinful life, a flower of hope, a flower of beauty, comes poking through the dirt, brilliant and lovely and unparalleled in splendor! Grace.

The most difficult thing with grace is accepting it. By our natures we want to earn it; we're uncomfortable with just taking something so big, so huge, so beautiful, something that is not just forgiveness, but is also an open channel of intimacy with God. All my life I have struggled to accept forgiveness; I have usually tried to earn it somehow, either by punishing myself or doing something extraordinarily good, trying to rack up points with God and just "feel better." But the heart of grace is this: we don't deserve it and we can't earn it; it's God's gift to us. He wants intimacy with us, and we get to choose whether or not to engage with that intimacy.

So where do I now stand? Do I keep on sinning, confident in the grace that God bestows on me? No! I see what grace is. I see how awesome and beautiful it is. I see how filthy and prone to depravity I am. I see the dirt and stain in my life. And then I see, at first, that flower poking through. And then another flower, and another. And as I mature, as my intimacy with God deepens, the handful of flowers becomes a garden, then blossoms into a tropical forest lush with all kinds of colors and ripe with the songs of birds and the crawling of insects, buzzing with life. This is the act of grace on our lives. I come face-to-face with this, and I fall shaking before God, and weeping tears of joy, tears of thankfulness, and I echo Lawrence Tuttiet and cry out, "Father, let me dedicate!"

Father, let me dedicate, all this year to Thee,
In whatever worldly state Thou wilt have me be:
Not from sorrow, pain or care, freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer, glorify Thy Name.

Can a child presume to choose where or how to live?
Can a Father's love refuse all the best to give?
More Thou givest every day than the best can claim
Nor withholdest aught that may glorify Thy Name.

If in mercy Thou wilt spare joys that yet are mine;
If on life, serene and fair, brighter rays may shine;
Let my glad heart, while it sings, Thee in all proclaim,
And, whate'er the future brings, glorify Thy Name.

If Thou callest to the cross, and its shadow come,
Turning all my gain to loss, shrouding heart and home;
Let me think how Thy dear Son to His glory came,
And in deepest woe pray on, "Glorify Thy Name."

If we must in grief and loss Thy behest obey,
If beneath the shadowy cross liest our homeward way;
We will think what Thy dear Son once for us became,
And repeat till life is done, glorify Thy Name.

sing me something sad, soft and delicate

Neo picked up the conversation again. "There's one other surprising thing that the second creation story in Genesis suggests to me. It's something shocking, maybe put best when it's put in a way that borders on heresy: God is not enough, the story says. That has nothing to do with any deficiency of God; it has to do with the storyline God had in mind for us. God doesn't want to be the only reality in our lives, the only relationship in our network, the only message on our screen... [T]he Creator wants man and woman to find each other, as a lost part of themselves. And so in the story we have the man and the woman, naked, together, both innocent and passionate, not ashamed to see and be seen, to know and be known, to need and be needed, to want and enjoy another being given by the Being."

Brian McLaren, in The Story We Find Ourselves In, captures what my heart has been telling me for quite some time now. I want to find a woman, and be naked with her emotionally, spiritually, mentally, holistically. I want us both to be innocent and passionate, not ashamed to see and be seen, to know and be known, to need and be needed, to want and enjoy each other. I know it's not all about sex. Sex is a side-note, a blessing in itself, but it is not the epicenter. The epicenter of romance, from which everything--including sex--flows, is a holistic communion and belonging between two people of different sex created by a real and passionate God, completing each other and forming one person.

There are lots of worship songs out there with the lyrics, "You are enough for me, Jesus." And technically, He is enough. But for the full enjoyment of life, as God made it to be lived, there is within us a deep and implanted desire that tells us, almost blasphemously, "God may not be enough." And this feeling has always drawn up deep wells of pain, convincing me that I have fallen short of the dedication I need for God. Brian McLaren continues his rave, as the character Kerry ruminates on Neo's words:

"In the Genesis story, the rib is taken out of Adam--by God! God seems to want Adam to feel incomplete on purpose. God nicks a part of him on purpose! That means that Adam is--meaning we are too--incomplete by God's design!"

A lot of people take this literally, believing that God literally took a rib from the chest of Adam and from it created Eve. I disagree with that. I think the Genesis narratives are more symbolic and evocative than literal. I actually have a lot of faith in evolution and believe that it is one of God's coolest creations. It spawned dinosaurs! The story of God taking the rib from Adam, to me, shows us that we are incomplete without Eve, because Eve is a critical part of us. Adam (man) is designed to be with Eve (woman). Neo drives this point home:

"It's wonderful, isn't it?" Neo urged. "The story is telling us that we were designed to be incomplete and unfulfilled in ourselves as monads, as isolated individuals. We feel an ache in our side, like some part of us is missing, so that we'll always be looking outside ourselves for belonging and connection, for it is not good for a person to be alone--not in this story!"

We were not designed to be alone. Sometimes the message we get--or at least the message I've often gotten--is that we who are passionate about God shouldn't worry about the opposite sex, shouldn't worry about romance. But Genesis--the beginning of the Story!--seems to say otherwise. I believe that romance in the Kingdom of God is beautiful, wonderful, transcendant, holistic. This is the romance in which I so strongly desire to engage. I was created for woman. Woman was created for me. We are meant to be together, and there is nothing wrong at all with having a strong desire for romance. It is a part of being a worshipper and follower of God. However, we must be careful, for we are:

"[c]aught between two dangers: a hyperspiritual danger that says, 'It is good for human beings to be alone, so all they need is God,' and a hypersecular danger that says, 'It is good enough for human beings to be with the other created beings; forget about the Supreme Being from whom all being and blessing flow.' Neither of these options is good enough. The only viable option in our story is for us human beings to enjoy the company of both our Creator and of our fellow creatures: our brother sun and sister moon, our brother fox and sister fruit bat, and especially of our mates--either sexual mates, or mates in [the] Australian sense of the term, our friends--in whom we find a lost part of ourselves restored to us again."

So, to quote Brian McLaren in A New Kind of Christian, where do I go from here? I cannot escape my desires for romance, nor can I escape my passion for God. The two are, in a sense, intimately connected. Right now I don't have someone with whom to share romance, but I am passionately running after and with God. It is far better to be intimate with God and not have a romantic relationship with a woman (it sounds weird, but I say 'woman' because I am in college) than to have romantic girls flocking all around you and yet be a foreigner when it comes to God.

I'm not going to obsess over girls. All that brings is heartache, depression, and anxiety. No, I've been content over the last week or two to just live my life, building relationships as they come. If I sense something romantic evolving in my relationship with a girl, I will pursue it, for better or worse. I wholly believe there is a 'girl' out there for me; it is not biblical, but it is what God has been telling me for the past four to five years. This is no excuse to hole up and expect a girl to fall in my lap, but I'm not going to lose sleep over combing the campus grounds for the "one." God will bring her to me; I will be attracted to her, she will be attracted to me, and with God's help, we will engage in romance for the rest of our lives. It may take a few different dates with different, wonderful girls, but I believe I will be there someday, and my wife and I will grow a family in a small house and we will worship, serve, and pursue the King together.

Brian and I got bored this evening so we spent four hours driving around. Our task was to get off the interstate at Big Bone Lick, then make it back to Cincinnati Christian University without touching the interstate once. It took us a little while. Along the way we stopped for Wendy's, listened to Chris Tomlin and David Crowder, hung out in an old, backroads graveyard and gazed at the stars, visited one of Brian's kids at her job in Kroger (he's a youth minister), and we even chased a deer on foot and barely missed a ferry over to the Ohio River (plan on hitting that next week). We used a small, rickety bridge to cross the Ohio River, but only after we took time to walk down to the bank and urinate within. So don't drink the river water. More exciting than the other days of the week, I assure you. But I had to crap the whole time. At least it wasn't too bad.

Lectio Divina

In Public Speaking I gave a how-to speech on the spiritual discipline of lectio divina. It is a spiritual discipline that trained me to hear the voice of God in my daily life. God, coming through the discipline, has changed me, molded me, and spoken to me on so many different levels, and He continues to do so to this day. It was my pleasure and joy to share this with the class, especially when I had some friends who were suffering and could definitely use God's clear voice in their lives.

There are 6-8 steps of lectio divina as practiced by the Benedictine monks, but Eugene Peterson simplified it into four easy steps for the laymen (like myself): Read, Think, Pray, and Live. David Crowder does a wonderful discourse on lectio divina in his book, Praise Habit. I wrote an essay on it for English a few weeks back and it's on a new blog of mine, just for posting my college essays and such, and you can check it out here. I really encourage you to look at it and give it a whirl, try it on for size. The discipline is beautiful because it lets the Eternal Beauty come to us and speak to us. Here's a small overview if you're pressed for time:

Read. We read the scriptures in a pre-modern lens. We don't look for principles, theories, or three-step answers to our questions. We read it in a meditative and devotional light. We select a passage (I prefer the psalms) and meditate upon it, letting the words come to us, letting the Spirit pierce us with emotions, feelings, thoughts and concerns.

Think. We dwell on the piercing acts of the Spirit. We dive into introspective contemplation and dwell on what is being felt and experienced. The question that we try to answer, the question at the forefront of our minds, is, "What is the Spirit saying to me?" Since we cannot adequately answer the question, we go to the One who can and does.

Pray. We ask the Spirit to reveal what He is saying to us. We pray for understanding. This is a conversational prayer, and our major role is simply to listen to what the Spirit is telling us.

Live. This is oftentimes the hardest part of lectio divina. It is tempting to listen to the voice of God, hear His words, and then go on through life completely forgetting them. It's easy because a lot of times, what the Spirit tells us isn't exactly something we want to hear. But we must act on what the Spirit reveals to us. It is so very important.

The point of lectio divina is not us, it is God. The process of lectio divina is useless; it is God coming through the discipline who transforms us, molds us, speaks to us. The first practice of this discipline may seem unfruitful, for we are not naturally inclined to hear the voice of God. It takes work and patience. Sometimes the discipline can take as few as ten minutes, but sometimes it will take even several hours! But this discipline is so very rewarding and a huge part of my spirituality.