Jonah

Man, two posts in one night, sorry for that. This thought just came to me but it's a little large to simply add to my last post even though it's the same idea.

Anyway, in response to running from fear, I'm reminded of Jonah who ran from his task from God. He feared the reaction of the people and who knows what else. But in the end God reaches those He loves and leads them to complete the tasks He calls them to.

As Niccolo Machiavelli said, "The wise man does at once what the fool does finally."
Or as one of my favorite authors, J.R.R Tolkien says, "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."

Don't leave God behind in your life.

"This is Sparta!"

"Go tell the Spartans, passerby,
That here, by Spartan law, we lie."

The above is a translation of the inscription that was left on an epitaph for the 300 dead Spartans at Thermopylae. My focus however is on what Spartan law actually is, rather than on the battle itself. In the movie 300 it's stated that Spartan law forbids both surrender and retreat from battle. While that belief may not have been a strict law (the Spartans had no written laws), it is indeed the general Spartan attitude. However, retreat and surrender both have their place in following Jesus (retreating from sin/temptation and surrendering to God) I believe Spartan "law" applies to us in some ways.

My example for the application of this "law" is going to be our fears as humans. First, we all fear at least SOMETHING, and we usually fear many things. Now, the classic individualist will tell us that some fears are not "bad", they are simply a part of who we are and something we have to live with. However, this is completely wrong as the only thing we should fear is God. The Bible is filled with verses on fearing the Lord, and not needing to fear ANYTHING else in this world if we have faith in Jesus. So this makes the rest of our fears problems that in one way or another affect our lives - usually for the worse. It's possible to fear many things in this world before we commit them fully to God: we can fear people, fear being alone, fear talking about certain subjects, fear certain situations, fear commitment, fear criticism, and the list goes on. It's true that generally these fears aren't "wrong" to the point where our lives will be ruined but they are not beneficial to us in any regard.

This is where Spartan law applies. The answer to a fear and problem isn't to retreat, nor surrender; instead we must stand firm and face it like King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans facing 300,000 Persian warriors. It may seem impossibly hard to seriously consider what we fear and try to correct it, and that's because it's usually a large and defining part of us. For the non-math people out there, the Spartans were faced with a ratio of one man to every one THOUSAND Persians; and that's exactly what our odds feel like trying to face fears alone. But when we turn to God, our only true fear, and love, and ask Him for His help, the odds are all in our favor. And that's exactly what we must do, turn and face our fears with God in the lead - no running away, no hiding, no giving up, just fighting. It will bring struggle, it will bring pain, and it will bring out a warrior who is stronger and better equipped to serve God without the burden of fear.

Once again this post got long but I hope I stated my point and didn't wander too much.

In short, never retreat and never surrender to fear, only fight it with God.

Quotation

Heh, sometimes I quote myself, and this time I want to know if it sounds right. I think it sounds GOOD, in that it contains the characteristics of a fancy quotation; but I want to know if it actually carries meaning and advice.

"Our level of maturity is not determined by the amount of fun we wish to have, for laughter is a necessary ingredient to life, but by the degree to which we realize the need to outgrow our childish ignorance in respect to God."

Thoughts?

!Costa Rica!

i'm going to Costa Rica tomorrow at midnight...

i really don't have anything to say, just thought i'd say that. maybe i'll write a song about it while i'm down there. it's like something John Denver would do...write a song about a beautiful landscape.

i also hope to get up early and have some free time when i can continue doing my morning Bible reading. and it would be nice if i wasn't completely tired at the end of the day so i could continue that Bible reading time as well...i guess we'll see.

have a good life.

Schizophrenia

Sometimes my mind is so full of everything that it's racing at 100 mph and everything goes poorly. I don't like it; I can't concentrate and all that I want to do I don't think of doing until it's too late and blah. But I think I've figured out that it's mostly when I keep things all locked up and over-analyze it all and it's not good. So I'm going to start changing that, and I'm going to open myself up and share and talk and be myself because what I'm doing now is not helping. I mean, I like listening to everyone else and hearing all that they have to say, but I'm slowly learning that sharing my heart and mind is actual work and something I have to attempt to do.

This is not one of my better posts, it's just straight up what I'm thinking and it doesn't make sense. :)

Love or kindness?

"Never mistake motion for action." - Ernest Hemingway

Lately it seems like life has gotten me into this lull where the love that I should be showing through action has become nothing more than a facade motion that can be called kindness (not to say that kindness is not valuable, but it's in no way at the same level as love). This regression affects both my relationship with God, and my relationships with those around me; but I'll look at them separately.

1. Love is really a big word to get around and fully grasp, especially when we talk about "loving God". How does one show love for God in the first place? Spending time with God, talking to Him, devoting his life to God, praising Him etc. And when we love God we follow His commandments, we seek to be more like Him, we tell others about the Lord and how amazing He is, we glorify God, we trust Him, we put our faith in Jesus, and the list goes on. However, it all starts with actually loving God in our hearts, that the rest of these things come from; and sometimes we let Satan get to us and cause us to lose focus of that love. I realize lately that I've lost my focus on loving God with all I am. Sure, I still did my devotions each day, but it wasn't out of love, and it didn't bring me joy with a realization that I was learning about God. And I started skipping devotions for lack of energy, a morning here, a night there (I generally do one at each time). Also, it was harder for me to share with others God's Word; I still did, but when I wasn't actively loving God, how could I share His Word with love?

This is getting long so I'll cut to the chase in saying that basically, most of my actions still showed my relationship with God, but my love for Him wasn't the cause of it. Proverbs (one of my favorite books) says "People may be pure in their own eyes, but the LORD examines their motives."

2. All life comes from God, and all things are in His hands. I've come to realize that when I focus on God first and foremost, He helps the other parts of my life work better as well. When I stopped focusing on God, I stopped showing love in my other relationship as well; and this is where the "kindness" comes in. I was still "nice" to my family and friends, and did all the small things like holding doors or getting something, minor details. But it feels like I did those things just because it was kind, not because I wanted to serve my loved ones selflessly and give of myself. It's easy to "spend" time with someone you enjoy being around when you have fun with it too; however, I've found it's harder to "give" time to someone to do something that's not enjoyable to you. In the same way I was still kind, but it seemed that I lost my will to devote my energy, thoughts, and such in order to please, encourage, and better the lives of my family and friends.

That all got very long very quick, but that pattern for the last few weeks kind of hit me today with Mother's Day and all the talk of and showing of love. Anyway, I feel rather devoted now to following through on showing my love, first to God, and then to those in my life.

I'll just leave with a classic DC Talk line that sums up all that I just tried to say, "Luv is a verb", and I'm still learning how to do it.

An online game of tag?

Apparently, I have been tagged by Man Transformed, and the game goes something like this..."Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. You need to tag others and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!"

This is going to be interesting...

1. I love history. In fact, I love history to the point that I pull up random facts and such that I've read in books or heard on the History channel. The ironic part being that I can remember something like Roman battle formations and strategies from 2000 years ago but not what my parents told me to do 20 minutes ago. They don't like that...but I try. :/

2. Ravi Zacharias is one of my favorite speakers. He's a very wise man and I enjoy him both for his speaking ability (especially his voice!) and the way he can form arguments to battle some of America's biggest problems today, Antitheism and moral relativism.

3. When my sister was born (and still a very small baby), I licked her forehead. I wasn't much older, about 2 or 3. I'm not sure if I thought she would taste good or something but either way she's grown up into a very sweet young woman. ;)

4. I'm Scottish. One dream of mine is to someday backpack around Scotland for a month or more and see all the highlands and cities and such. And perhaps work as a sheepherder for a summer, that would be amazing.

5. I don't like writing. This is actually a very complicated subject. I don't like writing as in, by hand, in pencil. If I have to write by hand, I always do it in pen; not sure why, but I think it looks better. However, I enjoy writing things if I can type them, because I can type extremely fast it's much more comfortable for me.

6. I collect movie ticket stubs. At some point after one movie or another I decided I wanted to know what movies I had seen; and now I have quite the nice stack.

7. I dislike the current idea of "church" across the world. I've always read and understood "the church" of the Bible to be the all-inclusive name, or group, for ALL the believers in Christ. That those who truly follow after God, and have put their faith in Jesus ARE the Church, and they should stick together in support of each other and in their following of the Bible. Now, that's not to say one church building...simply one church; rather than all these denominations popping up everywhere. To me it seems rather simple that those with faith in Christ should simply follow the Bible for what it says; and be in fellowship with those who are also saved. Perhaps I'm ignorant in thinking that because there's only one Bible, there should only be one interpretation of it and only one following of the Truth contained in it. I didn't mean to rant, I simply think true believers should be united as one body of Christ, not as a dismembered corpse.

And now I'm supposed to tag people...well, I'll have to come back and edit this post later to do that, I need to get to tennis practice.

Time

Time is such a weird thing to spend time thinking about. But with seniors moving on and life progressing, it's something on my mind.

But really, what I'm thinking about is time in reference to God. It boggles my mind to think of God as unchanging, even though I know He is. To think that the God I talk to everyday is the same God who created Adam and Eve, the same God who talk Noah to build the ark, the same God who all the prophets talked to in their prayers, and the list goes on. And then to think that God will be the same when I'm old and gray and still struggling through life; He'll be the same God with the same ultimate wisdom and guidance for my life that He has now. Granted, my relationship should most definitely change as I grow closer to God. However, who God is will stay the same, and only my knowledge of God and His will grows larger. Like a masterpiece of art that's on display, but covered up by a large cloth; and each day of my life I pull on the cloth to see a little more of the work behind it.

That truth of God's perfect, unchanging nature, is so reassuring that it overwhelms me. To know that whoever enters or leaves my life, God will be there the same way He always was and always is. God is just so good...

Identity

so...i suppose no one reads this and thus no one cares, but i'm going to describe my name so as to clarify what it means and such.

basically, i was doing the whole "what kind of classy 'describe myself in a simple way that sounds sophisticated' name could i use", and it made me think about our identity as humans. so to start, Adelphos is Ancient Greek for 'brother', the kind of brother as in 'fellow Christian' (the same brother you read/have notes about in the New Testament); and Jason is just my first name.

really, our true identity is that which is eternal and is determined by our place either in, or out of, the family of God. i thought about how to describe myself...tennis player...music lover...Christ lover...etc, etc...and i realized, so many of those things weren't really me, because they weren't going to last. who i am as a soul, or in spirit i guess you could say - as in, the part of you that's going to continue on to either Heaven or Hell when your body dies - is what determines who i am. when i die, i won't be a tennis player, or smart, etc...so identity isn't based on characteristics, i won't be a heterosexual male...so identity isn't based on sexuality (key point with homosexuality), and it's not based on achievements, values, likes, possessions, or anything like that. in truth, we either identify as a child of God, or not. in the family or out. because when we die, that identity WILL last - for all eternity even.

so realizing this, i decided the best way to describe myself was as a child of God. and being that i recently finished reading through Acts (which was written in Greek and thus contains many uses of the "brother" i talked about earlier), i thought it would be neat to signify that i was a 'brother in Christ', or of the church. the cherry on top being that i did so in the same language as Paul did a few thousand years ago, which i think is cool. :)

anyway, that's my story, thanks for reading.

Hi

Hello to you
my reader dear,
I wonder who
would come so near,
to read my words
and see them too,
with the last 6 this line
has nothing to do.