About Blogging

I have been thinking a bunch about blogging. I haven’t quite quit, I have just been doing it more on my personal blog. You see, I created a blog that is just between me and God and that is where I do my prayers. Many of my own personal prayers without my wife anyway. It is funny because I seem to do better when I am writing it all out. I feel as if when I hit the send button that I am lifting my prayer up to him. I can get personal with him. I can praise him. I can intercede for a friend. Not necessarily the conventional way of doing things, but it is an avenue that helps me to connect with God. I wonder how many other ways there are that someone can connect with him that isn’t the mainstream norm.

I am glad that I have a God that will listen to me. I don’t have to do anything special. I don’t have to do it way too cerimonial. I can just sit and gaze into the heavens and know that he hears me and listens to me. What a mighty God we serve. I thank him for all of his loving kindness, grace and forgiveness. There is no other like him. He is my God!

Praise Be To God, Christ the redeemer, and the Comforter of all.

February 5, 2010 0

Passion

At the beginning of this semester Dr. Woo asked us to introduce ourselves to the class and tell the class what we are passionate about. Sitting about halfway around the room and listening to all the wonderful things that people were saying made me think, “What am I passionate about.” Finally I settled on archeology, but realized that it was not my passion. It is enjoyable just like comics, movies, and stories but I cannot say that I am really passionate about them. They are just interests.

I really do know what I am passionate about. I was just afraid that it would sound too egotistical. I don’t know why because it really isn’t. My passion is “I want to make a difference!” I want to make a difference in the lives of the people, in my family and in the family of God, in the Kingdom of God, and in the community. I believe this is the desire that God has placed in my life and I need to pursue it in the best way I know how.

Many of you don’t know it but Chaundra and I had a few people praying for us to help us find out God’s will is for our lives. For 40 day we had them praying to help us understand where God is calling us. To be honest we had begun to think that we were being called into the Mission Field. At this point we don’t know if that is where he has called us in the end, but many people felt like we need to concentrate on the answers that God is providing for us now and step out on faith in those areas; even if we don’t understand His direction. God desn’t show us the whole plan. He only shows us what we need to know at the time that we need to know it. Pastor Keith was right when he thought “These guys are going to be more confused after these forty days then when they began.” It was very confusing, but I think that the clarity comes in waiting for the right moment and following what God has for us now. I know what passion God has given me and maybe that is the best place to start. Bob McMahon gave us this verse and I am clinging to what it has to say.

Micah 6:8 (New International Version)
⁸ He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Beyond what we know that he is telling us personally to do, we need to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God. For after all, if we are walking with him, He will always be where He wants us to be. My suggestion is to find your passion and walk humbly with Him.

March 4, 2009 1

Can Tongues be a Crutch?

I know this will probably could cause a stir, because I know many of my friends believe in speaking in tongues. Right now I am reading a book called “Are Miraculous Gifts for Today?” (www.amazon.com) and it talks about four theories on it. I have to discuss the book with one of my teachers and I am interested in what it will have to say about it. Am I against tongues? Well that is a whole other blog that I can save for another day. The question that I do want to pose however is, “Can Tongues become a Crutch?” I was talking yesterday with a friend of mine who is still a fairly new Christian and he is in a Pentecostal church. I am Southern Baptist now but this is part of my background so I know a little bit of the teaching on it. However, he said some things that caused me to contemplate this question. “Can Tongues become a Crutch?”

First what is a Crutch?

Crutch – www.dictionary.com
1. a staff or support to assist a lame or infirm person in walking, now usually with a crosspiece at one end to fit under the armpit.
2. Anything that serves as a temporary and often inappropriate support, supplement, or substitute; prop: He uses liquor as a psychological crutch.

I do want to say that crutches are not always a bad thing, if it is being used for the purpose that it was made for, but it can also be something that can hold you back as well. Usually crutches are temporary so that someone can heal properly, till they get back on their feet – so to say.

I have another friend that sometimes stutters that I have seen utter tongues under his breath while praying before that helped him get a grasp on his words as he was praying. In this case I would say that it probably is not, because it helps him not be so tongue tied. LOL! I have even seen it in other application that I cannot deny that something was happening. Although I disagree with how it is taught in many ways, I have seen some fruit by it.

The reason that I am asking the question is that I wonder if at times people don’t use tongues out of the fact that they don’t know how to talk to God straight and in their own understanding. I am in Seminary and have trouble talking to God at times. It comes many times because of the distance that we cause between him and us. Walls we erect, or have unconfessed sins, and so forth and so on. All these become barriers to us and God in our pray life.

Sometimes I think that it would be easier to just say something that I don’t understand just so that I can talk to him, but what good does that really do? We got to remember that even silence before God is prayer too. Tongues may be directed to God in some “Unknown Language” but how do I know when to give God the glory for the answer, if I don’t know what I asked him? If done in public, there always has to be an interpreter – what happens when there is not one? How do I know that I don’t just sound like someone out of a funny farm who is just creating words like some kid struming his lips as he makes sound? How do I know if what I am asking for is something that I am really wanting to deal with? Sometimes God asks us to do difficult things and how would you know that you are supposed to do something if you don’t know what you said?

It is all confusing to me on how this benifits the Christian life. I know that Scripture states that Tongues edify the person, but Paul also says that he would rather have some Prophecy (teaching gods message) because it helps edify the whole church instead of the individual. Do people use it as a Crutch because we don’t know how to talk to God? Do people use it because they are supposed to talk to God and they don’t want to take the time to have a meaningful conversation with him they can understand? If it is a crutch is it a bad thing?

Please if you do answer and someone has an opposing view – be kind. Please don’t take this as an attack on this theology, I just want to know your thoughts.

February 25, 2009 1

Word of the Week: “Dawns New Day”

Tomorrow marks the dawn of a new day. The First Black President will take office and will go down in the History books as such. Some are fearful for what this means, others are showing their hate, while others are in awe of a truly magnificent new day. I cannot say that I voted for him because of the Political views, but I have to admit I think that he is trying to do something that Dr. Martin Luther King would be proud of. He is trying to bring together the nation into one. It does seem fitting that the Inauguration is the day after Martin Luther King Day. King said that, “He had a dream, where a black man and a white man, Jew or Gentile, Protestant or Catholic would come together.” I think it is time that we do our best to bring the Conservative and Liberal together as well. After all they can be just as hateful to one another at times. This marks Obama as a man that has the ideals of a Hero and although I did not vote for Him, I will hope and pray for him to bring the nation together. Not everyone will like what he does. At times, I am going to hate his policies, but either way I will accept him for who he is: The President of the United States. So for this week I bring two different passages of Scripture and it deals with praying for our leaders and our responsibility as Christians to his authority, as long as it does not oppose scripture and God’s Mandate.

1 Timothy 2:1-6
www.Biblegateway.com (New International Version)
I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.

Titus 3:1-2
www.Biblegateway.com (New International Version)
Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.

January 19, 2009 1