No one ever said it was going to be easy and that it would all turn out the way that you exactly planed. "So then, why do I assume that it all will be?"
A dear friend captivated my attention for a good week with love and wisdom that came from a place of maturity that I didn't know was there. Same age as me, this person gave two truths that all would benefit greatly from!
Truth #2:
It's not about you and your relationship with God; it's God and your relationship with Him. I have been very stubborn about my dreams for my life...and it's cost me in my relationships, including God. I allowed my concept of God's will for my life to be more important than God's relationship with me. And all along I wondered why I felt stuck! How 'bout that?! The hand I extended to reach out to him was the hand I used to push him back.
One of my major problems is I'm over analytical and it's because I take myself way too seriously. Even when I mean well, I sometimes face resistance in my prayers and my worship. Amazingly, I know what He's thinking towards me: "Trust me...trust me...trust me..."
This is not a race. There is no need to have to prove to anyone how spiritual you are. Regardless of how far along or how much to come short in comparison, this is about simple purity, simple truth, simple faith. We are in Christ. He is in us. When you have Christ, you have everything. Why do we need more?
To look to yourself is to not look to Christ. To not look to Christ is to not see him as the only one. He is therefore insufficient to you - His blood, His favor, and His benefits. Living life is something that God has given to us to indulge in, with what he has predestined us for. We are not wanted by God for what we do FOR Him, but for what we do TO Him. God's commitment to us is relentless and for lack of a better term: stubborn. There is no escape from God's favor and love, as His own. An honest answer to God for the way he is towards us would be, "Leave me alone!"
Can anyone put a restraining order on God? You'd have to have God himself to carry it out.
The question that I'm sure the reader is left with is, "Why, then, am I not convinced of the presence of His benefits in my life?"
I say again...cast your eyes upon Jesus. Look full to his wonderful face and the things on earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
The cool thing about a relationship with God is that it's personal. It is not dependent upon the people around you and it is not dependent upon your performance. Love keeps no record of wrongs and rejoices with the truth. When I see how much God loves me, I find that I am right where I belong: In him and having him in me.
I now have a hard time beating myself up for my failures because the standard that I held myself to is no longer in sight. Yes there is a holy and sacred standard...and it is LOVE.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Harsh realities: 1
No one ever said it was going to be easy and that it would all turn out the way that you exactly planed. "So then, why do I assume that it all will be?"
A dear friend captivated my attention for a good week with love and wisdom that came from a place of maturity that I didn't know was there. Same age as me, this person gave two truths that all would benefit greatly from!
Truth #1:
Consider your community among your greatest priorities. A pastor friend of mine always reiterated with his 200+ congregation that the first things in his life was God; second, his kids; third, his wife, and fourth, "you". Then he had the rest of his businesses, his horse ranch, his ministry projects, etc. If the man were to up and leave, or drastically change careers, it would affect more than just himself or his family or people he knew, it would affect people he didn't know and would affect the social change that he was fueling. I wonder if any of us would consider ourselves as cornerstones in some structures that we have be grafted into by our communities? Do we see what God sees for our lives, in the context of the season that we are presently in?
There is a degree of leadership that we already have which we will give an account for in our stewardship. No matter how big or small, if you take your responsibilities seriously, you will be confident enough to handle anything. If you take your role as a parent seriously, you children will later look back and realize who lucky they were that you were their mother/father. Relationships in the Kingdom of Heaven last forever and are an investment that carries over into the New Earth. How are we treating the relationships we have now, knowing that we would treat everything in Heaven as heavenly?
"The earth is the Lords and everything in it."
"What you do unto the least of these, you do unto me."
God's work is in people, and God's will manifests and is expressed through people. Our decisions on what we want to do with our lives should consider this. Otherwise, we will always live unto ourselves and remain empty.
To bring it all home, my dearly beloved friend told me, "In our conversations, I've shared with you how I consider the communities I am with (or want to be in) as the basis for where I want to live and what I desire to do. So far, all I have every heard you talk about is yourself, with no regard that the things you do would severely impact the people who love you." I never thought I could have ever been so selfish in all my life! I never really thought I was loved as such, to begin with!
Truth #2 in next blog entry.
A dear friend captivated my attention for a good week with love and wisdom that came from a place of maturity that I didn't know was there. Same age as me, this person gave two truths that all would benefit greatly from!
Truth #1:
Consider your community among your greatest priorities. A pastor friend of mine always reiterated with his 200+ congregation that the first things in his life was God; second, his kids; third, his wife, and fourth, "you". Then he had the rest of his businesses, his horse ranch, his ministry projects, etc. If the man were to up and leave, or drastically change careers, it would affect more than just himself or his family or people he knew, it would affect people he didn't know and would affect the social change that he was fueling. I wonder if any of us would consider ourselves as cornerstones in some structures that we have be grafted into by our communities? Do we see what God sees for our lives, in the context of the season that we are presently in?
There is a degree of leadership that we already have which we will give an account for in our stewardship. No matter how big or small, if you take your responsibilities seriously, you will be confident enough to handle anything. If you take your role as a parent seriously, you children will later look back and realize who lucky they were that you were their mother/father. Relationships in the Kingdom of Heaven last forever and are an investment that carries over into the New Earth. How are we treating the relationships we have now, knowing that we would treat everything in Heaven as heavenly?
"The earth is the Lords and everything in it."
"What you do unto the least of these, you do unto me."
God's work is in people, and God's will manifests and is expressed through people. Our decisions on what we want to do with our lives should consider this. Otherwise, we will always live unto ourselves and remain empty.
To bring it all home, my dearly beloved friend told me, "In our conversations, I've shared with you how I consider the communities I am with (or want to be in) as the basis for where I want to live and what I desire to do. So far, all I have every heard you talk about is yourself, with no regard that the things you do would severely impact the people who love you." I never thought I could have ever been so selfish in all my life! I never really thought I was loved as such, to begin with!
Truth #2 in next blog entry.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Reflections: Fighting the religious spirit. (part 2 - end)
Why did I feel obligated then to PROVE God to people, since people all had a hard time swallowing what I had to say? I didn't know my Father well enough; to know him as my refuge, my vindicator, my advocate, and my PRIDE...as in if I have His approval, I need none other for approval. "Oh, now I see, yeah. You were right all along Jonathan. Your god is God. Our Bad." I was never asked to fight for Jesus as though Jesus needed any help in defending the Truth.
It was a revelation of peace and joy when I was cloaked with the approval of God that if verbalized would have said, "I didn't use you to break into UCSD, I used UCSD to break into you." I love my Jesus very very very much. In all of this I grew to hunger for fellowship with Jesus more and more. I want him badly because there's more to him than I ever thought before. This is the place that the generals of the faith operated from and this is the power that overcomes the world (yes, even our faith).
In our pursuit for revival, unity, and justice, we can easily serve out of the mental and not the spiritual. It's not about trying to measure-up. It's about who you belong to. Don't fight the battles of your Father and don't fight the battles that that Jesus has already won. This is the religious spirit of Hell that is out to make our relationship with God sour and hostile. The fight we fight is by doing the opposite: do nothing and observe God doing everything, trust him and never under mind His heart towards you.
So in all this, I say, are you hungry enough for God that you will not run with the crowd? Are you hungry enough that you will not do what the supposed "hungry" do? Are you hungry enough to want to worship God with pure, unadulterated worship? Are you hungry enough to wait on him and welcome his operating power in your life? Are you hungry enough to seek his eye and no other woman's or man's eye? Are you as hungry as Paul when he said that the greatest gain was all a great loss for the sake of turning Jesus' face??? Dare you say, "I know God?"
Come with me people. I will go with you too.
Much love!
It was a revelation of peace and joy when I was cloaked with the approval of God that if verbalized would have said, "I didn't use you to break into UCSD, I used UCSD to break into you." I love my Jesus very very very much. In all of this I grew to hunger for fellowship with Jesus more and more. I want him badly because there's more to him than I ever thought before. This is the place that the generals of the faith operated from and this is the power that overcomes the world (yes, even our faith).
In our pursuit for revival, unity, and justice, we can easily serve out of the mental and not the spiritual. It's not about trying to measure-up. It's about who you belong to. Don't fight the battles of your Father and don't fight the battles that that Jesus has already won. This is the religious spirit of Hell that is out to make our relationship with God sour and hostile. The fight we fight is by doing the opposite: do nothing and observe God doing everything, trust him and never under mind His heart towards you.
So in all this, I say, are you hungry enough for God that you will not run with the crowd? Are you hungry enough that you will not do what the supposed "hungry" do? Are you hungry enough to want to worship God with pure, unadulterated worship? Are you hungry enough to wait on him and welcome his operating power in your life? Are you hungry enough to seek his eye and no other woman's or man's eye? Are you as hungry as Paul when he said that the greatest gain was all a great loss for the sake of turning Jesus' face??? Dare you say, "I know God?"
Come with me people. I will go with you too.
Much love!
Reflections: Fighting the religious spirit. (part 1)
...while attending UCSD, the temptation to want to blow the whistle and to scream "Jesus" in-front of my Christian and non-Christian friends was unreal. My intentions were innocent and nobel but "truth and no love" doesn't make a difference. I learned something about myself and others around me: how hungry are you? The thing I first understood was the kind of hungers I had (attention, overthrow, worship, etc.). I was hungry for God, but not hungry enough to trust him and to obey him according to what he's made real to me. I felt pressure to act a certain way, do something when others did nothing, or whatever...and it was like this in both the Christian scene and the non-Christian scene.
You hear about what other mighty men and women of God have done before and ask yourself, "Given what others before me have done (or some today are doing), what I am required in this present moment?" I think about Jesus when he was in the wilderness and Satan poked at his identity in God, trying to make him prove himself that he's really who God's called him to be: The Lamb and the Name above every name. When you consider how the temple high priest said to Jesus, "Surely if you are the son of God, come down from the cross and we will know..." Jesus knew he was not obligated to that request.
...please read the rest on the next latest post...
Friday, March 30, 2007
The first of what will soon be many...
My old blog from when I attended UCSD is messed-up (greathollanfindsjonnywise.blogspot.com). Here we start again. The problem I am facing now is I don't know what will be the right content to publish for this blog. I can talk about culture, technology, science, true-life inspirational stories, and revelations I get from reading the Bible...or what not. I know that I have an audience but some people (i.e. employers) who would like to see my blogs before considering me for an opportunity to contribute to their company/organization might write me off before I have an chance to even say, "Hello." Information is so much more sensitive to people in America yet somehow we feel the urge all the more to publicly profess our secrets to a people who might just glance and possibly muse on what has been disclosed. There you get into politics; not the kind which legislates laws over people, but the kind that makes you want to win everyone's favor.
All people want is for other people to like them. I thought we were over this in Jr. High. :-)
All people want is for other people to like them. I thought we were over this in Jr. High. :-)
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