Prayer Meeting

Don't forget to come to the prayer meeting on Friday!

When: Friday, 5/25, 7PM
Where: church sanctuary

summer reading

Proverbs 13:20 says, "He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed." This verse has reinforced for me the importance of reading biographies of those "who so walk," so that we may have them for a pattern. To this end, the short biographies and sermons at Desiring God have been a great encouragement.

So one of my summer projects is to read Christian biographies. What is the rest of the C&C planning for summer reading? Does anyone have recommendations? (Yes, this is an invitation for comments, but I think it may actually work this time . . . help me out . . . please.)

knocking down non-essential barriers

It was brought to my attention today that the old template for this blog, where the writing was light on dark, was hard to read. Is this one better? Was anyone staying away from the C&C blog just because you were having a hard time reading the words?

Anyhow, I hope this is better. If anyone is allergic to this template, do complain at your earliest convenience (I'll be accepting complaints in the courtyard between 300 and 400 at 2000 hours tonight).

trivial pursuit

Today I was poking around Facebook, checking up on friends from highschool, and beating myself up for being a failure.

I had a friend who had a dream back in highschool to be a PR and marketing rep for a big exciting company. She followed the dream, got the college degree, and has an exciting job in LA doing what she's always wanted to do. Another friend had a dream to be an actress. She, too, followed the dream to college and has since landed a job with a prestigious acting troupe. Another friend has spent the last half of his life wrapped up in a passion to be a journalist. From his first publications back in high school to an internship at a major paper in Washington, D.C., to a Master's in journalism to, now, a regular job as a reporter, he has followed his dreams and accomplished his goals.

I never really had a dream in high school -- not one that centered on one career, anyway. So it shouldn't come as any surprise that there was no career dream to be my guiding star in college, or that I still can't define life in terms of "I am going to be THAT when I grow up," or "I will be satisfied when I accomplish A, B, and C goals."

This struck as a depressing realization -- at least temporarily.

It's probably no coincidence that a quote from David Brainerd has been playing through my mind all day: "Life is too precious to squander on trivial things." Or that I'd clicked a link to this message to college students from John Piper.

I started to think about the way that God's people are described in the Bible -- the way that their lives are measured. Although people's professions are an important part of their stories and their reflection of God's glory (e.g., Joseph was an excellent manager, David was a shepherd, Jesus was a carpenter, Peter was a fisherman), God doesn't define His people by their worldly measure of success in a profession. He defines them by their obedience to and faith in Him.

This changes so many things.

In the world's economy, it may be important how many college degrees you have or what kind of car you drive or what your salary is. In God's kingdom economy, it's important that you obeyed Him and didn't say that unkind word to your brother or sister or parent yesterday. In the world's economy, it may be important that you have a 5-year career advancement plan, charting your way up the ladder to a better position. In God's economy, it's important that you obey Him if He tells you to get up early to pray tomorrow morning.

Not to say that those other goals don't have their place. Or that Christians shouldn't appreciate earnest dedication to a job and the diligent work that goes into it. And often obedience to His calling will lead us into excellence in a given career path. But our progress along that path is not how our success is to be measured.

Am I following my dream more earnestly than I am following Christ? Am I holding my dream more precious than I hold Him? Do I work to please and glorify Him or to please and glorify me?

Following Christ wholeheartedly will probably mean taking a path that is crazy by worldly standards. It will mean learning to operate in a whole different economy than the one the world encourages us to accept. It will mean pouring your all into something . . . and still being willing to lay it obediently at His feet and walk away.

But, oh, will it be worth it.

Blessed be the Lord,
who daily bears us up;
God is our salvation.

* * *
O kingdoms of the earth, sing to God;
sing praises to the Lord,

Selah

to him who rides in the heavens,
the ancient heavens;
behold, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice.

Ascribe power to God,
whose majesty is over Israel,
and whose power is in the skies.

Awesome is God from his sanctuary;
the God of Israel--he is the one
who gives power and strength to his people.

Blessed be God!

Psalm 68:19, 32-35

being the grown-ups

This is a good article:

The Fruit of Immaturity

It is written primarily as a challenge to guys, but is not a bad reminder for girls.

The Faith Door

On campus at my university there is an automatic door that I have come to think of as The Faith Door. For some reason I haven't been able to pinpoint, I habitually doubt the promise of automatic doors, expecting one day to barrel straight into a deceitful supposedly-automatic door and hit the glass full-on. I just don't trust them to open.

And when it comes to automatic doors that come close to convincing me that they really really have no intention of opening [to borrow a Southern-ism:] The Faith Door sure do beat all.

That door waits to open until the absolute LAST second -- until your nose is a millimeter away and your breath is making fog on the glass.

During the first half of the semester I'd approach The Faith Door tentatively, hoping if not to avoid the collision at least to minimize the impact. But lately I've been trying just to walk through it without any hesitation, trusting in it to open.

On Monday, as I made my reckless approach, I tripped on a doormat, slid, and ran nose-first into The Faith Door, which, sensing my approach, graciously opened and let me out (just like it said it would).

It was a close call.

But it made me think about what living by faith is all about.

Like the automatic door, God has made promises about what He will do. Unlike the automatic door, He leaves us with absolutely no doubt that He will.

So often I count myself as "walking by faith" when I am still approaching the faith door haltingly, tentatively, and full of doubt. How can I, instead, trusting fully in His promises, continue full speed ahead?

Reading the Gospels recently, I've been struck by how often Jesus commended and responded to the faith of those who approached Him. To have faith in Him is to recognize His Godhood, His powerfulness -- it is to bring Him glory.

Then on Monday night Nate pointed out that in many of the psalms the psalmist looks forward to what he will do in the future in response to God's fulfilled promises, which he takes as a given in verses like Psalm 42:11:

Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.

All over the psalms we see a pattern of trust in God and expectation of His deliverance and His blessing -- no matter how dark things look in the present.

The true test of our faith is not what we say but the way we live. Do we live second-guessing His provision in the present and doubting His promises for the future? Or do we live in sure-footed reliance on those promises, trusting Him to do wondrous things?

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:1-2

ready or not . . .

The other night on the way back from a FAITH visit, Nate and Brendon and I saw a couple big flashes in the sky (BIG flashes!). In the aftermath of the big-flash-sighting, something came up about the sky lighting up when Jesus comes back.

Thinking about His coming, my heart sank.

I want so much to see Him, to know Him, to be with Him in heaven. But in that moment I heard myself think not now, not tonight, I'm not ready . . .

C.S. Lewis wrote about this thought in his essay "The World's Last Night":

The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph. This seems to some people intolerably frustrating. So many things would be interrupted. Perhaps you were going to get married next month, perhaps you were going to get a raise next week: you may be on the verge of a great scientific discovery; you may be maturing great social and political reforms. Surely no good and wise God would be so very unreasonable as to cut all this short? Not now, of all moments!

But we think thus because we keep on assuming that we know the play. We do not know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. We do not know who are the major and who are the minor characters. The Author knows.

Lewis concludes:

We cannot always be excited. We can, perhaps, train ourselves to ask more and more often how the thing which we are saying or doing (or failing to do) at each moment will look when the irresistible light streams in upon it; that light which is so different from the light of this world -- and yet, even now, we know just enough of it to take it into account. Women sometimes have the problem of trying to judge by artificial light how a dress will look by daylight. That is very like the problem of all of us: to dress our souls not for the electric lights of the present world but for the daylight of the next. The good dress is the one that will face that light. For that light will last longer.

Each of us will face that light. It may be in the glorious moment of His second coming. Or it may be the other side of a moment of horror like so many experienced last month at Virginia Tech. Or in a car accident or in a hospital ward.

I don't want my heart to sink in that moment.

"Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

“Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you that he will make him ruler over all his goods.

"But if that evil servant says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying his coming,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him and at an hour that he is not aware of, and will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Matthew 24:44-51