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Wednesday, March 23, 2005
out loud
hey guys. i sent some more pictures and it looks like there was an attempt to place them on this page, but it did not show up. i'll try to see what's going on with that and give you some more images soon. i tend to like nature stuff and less of the candid smiling people images, so those tend to be a rare sight in my collection of images.
i finally finished the book Wild at Heart and it gave me much to think about. one thing that Eldredge points out in the later chapters, just like C.S. Lewis realized, is there is a war at hand that we are loosing because we choose to ignore its existence. there is an Evil one. he hates that you and i are seeking the truth and trying to find the life God had intended all along for us to live. his best weapon is whispering in your ear, that what you are going through is all you. but you and i, we could not have created these thoughts. you and i are something entirely different from the words that the Evil one slips in our thoughts.
For example, jenny and i occasionally go through times where we doubt that we really and whole-heartedly care and love for one another. i talk as if i have more experience than i do, but correct me if i am wrong. there are voices in our heads that tell us our relationships, whether dating or friends or spiritual, are just superficial, that noone really cares that much about someone with all these flaws. i've seen it all the time in our group of friends and closer relationships. it is an insecurity that we think is from somewhere within us. yet we are the children of the One who's name is synonymous with Love. this can not be us, because we are defined by something much greater in goodness than we can even realize. the problem for me and i think for most of us is that to admit the voice comes from some other place is to believe in something mystical and risky; something we can not back up with any real tangible proof. that's the way the other side works. read screwtape letters and see if you hear some voice in your head telling you this is just fiction.
if i continue to believe that i am creating the evil thoughts in my head and that i am irreverably flawed, then i will never grasp the grace of Christ. He came to give me a new name and a new identity, something that lives for a transcendent cause and leaves a legacy marked only by an arrow that points straight back to Him. i have started to change. i have started to believe that i am something greater than the mistakes i always make. i started this with the suggestion of Eldredge from the book to ask God what my name is, and stay with the question until you get an answer. that means i had to listen to a voice, mystical in nature, something rationality tells me does not exist unless i am crazy. what did i hear? i heard that God saw me as he saw joseph (the one with the technocolor coat). check out that story. i did. i believe God was telling me personally, that i am capable of turning the worst of things into gold because God is walking me through life and encouraging me to relish the adventure. instead of a why God attitude, joseph's is a what do i get to learn now, what test do you have for me to show my strength is growing. and the closer he gets to his strength the harder it is to resist temptation and give in to another kind of validation. first it is sex. then it is withholding forgiveness. what do i want? the power or the adventure? i have made my choice. power sucks.
another thing i think i've missed in my relationship with God is that i treat it just as a spiritual thing. this the important and essential relationship i have, yet i never say anything to Him. i pray silently. i plead silently. He already knows what is in there, why have i never verbalized it for Him? am i afraid He would start to respond? inside the mind we have both the thought of our spirit and the thoughts of the Evil one i already explained. if we keep it only in our minds the thoughts get innertwined and we get confused about who we are and what our purpose is. i often get so distracted when i am just praying in my head. i drift so easily. but now i have started to speak out loud. the voice is not where the Evil one wants to be. so i encourage you converse out loud with the Father and see if you don't find something more refreshing than you can explain.
i finally finished the book Wild at Heart and it gave me much to think about. one thing that Eldredge points out in the later chapters, just like C.S. Lewis realized, is there is a war at hand that we are loosing because we choose to ignore its existence. there is an Evil one. he hates that you and i are seeking the truth and trying to find the life God had intended all along for us to live. his best weapon is whispering in your ear, that what you are going through is all you. but you and i, we could not have created these thoughts. you and i are something entirely different from the words that the Evil one slips in our thoughts.
For example, jenny and i occasionally go through times where we doubt that we really and whole-heartedly care and love for one another. i talk as if i have more experience than i do, but correct me if i am wrong. there are voices in our heads that tell us our relationships, whether dating or friends or spiritual, are just superficial, that noone really cares that much about someone with all these flaws. i've seen it all the time in our group of friends and closer relationships. it is an insecurity that we think is from somewhere within us. yet we are the children of the One who's name is synonymous with Love. this can not be us, because we are defined by something much greater in goodness than we can even realize. the problem for me and i think for most of us is that to admit the voice comes from some other place is to believe in something mystical and risky; something we can not back up with any real tangible proof. that's the way the other side works. read screwtape letters and see if you hear some voice in your head telling you this is just fiction.
if i continue to believe that i am creating the evil thoughts in my head and that i am irreverably flawed, then i will never grasp the grace of Christ. He came to give me a new name and a new identity, something that lives for a transcendent cause and leaves a legacy marked only by an arrow that points straight back to Him. i have started to change. i have started to believe that i am something greater than the mistakes i always make. i started this with the suggestion of Eldredge from the book to ask God what my name is, and stay with the question until you get an answer. that means i had to listen to a voice, mystical in nature, something rationality tells me does not exist unless i am crazy. what did i hear? i heard that God saw me as he saw joseph (the one with the technocolor coat). check out that story. i did. i believe God was telling me personally, that i am capable of turning the worst of things into gold because God is walking me through life and encouraging me to relish the adventure. instead of a why God attitude, joseph's is a what do i get to learn now, what test do you have for me to show my strength is growing. and the closer he gets to his strength the harder it is to resist temptation and give in to another kind of validation. first it is sex. then it is withholding forgiveness. what do i want? the power or the adventure? i have made my choice. power sucks.
another thing i think i've missed in my relationship with God is that i treat it just as a spiritual thing. this the important and essential relationship i have, yet i never say anything to Him. i pray silently. i plead silently. He already knows what is in there, why have i never verbalized it for Him? am i afraid He would start to respond? inside the mind we have both the thought of our spirit and the thoughts of the Evil one i already explained. if we keep it only in our minds the thoughts get innertwined and we get confused about who we are and what our purpose is. i often get so distracted when i am just praying in my head. i drift so easily. but now i have started to speak out loud. the voice is not where the Evil one wants to be. so i encourage you converse out loud with the Father and see if you don't find something more refreshing than you can explain.
Friday, March 18, 2005
Friday, March 11, 2005
turning into a monthly update
okay, sorry i don't do more of these.
school started two weeks ago and i am comfortable so far with the material we have learned. the way it looks and works at the elementary stages compare to spanish as expected, but people who know french seem to pick up on the ear side much quicker. there are many nasal sounds that resemble french. the class is a group of 38 students, mostly from europe, but rarely more than one or two from the same country. name a county and see if we have a person in our class from there. (jenny and david excluded i think the class would survive the challenge.) it makes an interesting mix. the professor, when she is not speaking portuguese is speaking english so that makes me feel a little more comfortable, and provides me with understanding where others may struggle. this has created an opportunity to help and serve the others in my class. they all know english, but some are not as fluent as others.
i was sick at the beginning of this week. i was weak, dizzy, and nauseous, but that is gone now. thanks for the prayers even if you didn't know what i was going through.
i am beginning to realize that ministering to students is a very slow process. we were asked to set some measurable goals, weekly and long term, for this internship and they were hard to come up with. i see this ministry as something hard to plan for. you just need to go and build relationships where the people are. then i can do what i love to do: ask the hard questions. i guess that is my goal for ministry, to be more intentional in asking tough questions to know people on the inside. but with this i need wisdom, because to listen is one thing, but to advise or suggest is another.
ron is also pushing us to get involved with a second ministry, kind of like a side job. i've thought about helping with the girls who run Young Life for this area. they have no guys as leaders and it would give me a chance to interact with a different group of minds in a different part of their lives. furthermore, youth give me energy to do stuff, when i would only sit around, talk, and have coffee with college students. these ministries will most likely conflict in their time schedules, so keep me in your prayers as i decide and learn to juggle both activities.
school started two weeks ago and i am comfortable so far with the material we have learned. the way it looks and works at the elementary stages compare to spanish as expected, but people who know french seem to pick up on the ear side much quicker. there are many nasal sounds that resemble french. the class is a group of 38 students, mostly from europe, but rarely more than one or two from the same country. name a county and see if we have a person in our class from there. (jenny and david excluded i think the class would survive the challenge.) it makes an interesting mix. the professor, when she is not speaking portuguese is speaking english so that makes me feel a little more comfortable, and provides me with understanding where others may struggle. this has created an opportunity to help and serve the others in my class. they all know english, but some are not as fluent as others.
i was sick at the beginning of this week. i was weak, dizzy, and nauseous, but that is gone now. thanks for the prayers even if you didn't know what i was going through.
i am beginning to realize that ministering to students is a very slow process. we were asked to set some measurable goals, weekly and long term, for this internship and they were hard to come up with. i see this ministry as something hard to plan for. you just need to go and build relationships where the people are. then i can do what i love to do: ask the hard questions. i guess that is my goal for ministry, to be more intentional in asking tough questions to know people on the inside. but with this i need wisdom, because to listen is one thing, but to advise or suggest is another.
ron is also pushing us to get involved with a second ministry, kind of like a side job. i've thought about helping with the girls who run Young Life for this area. they have no guys as leaders and it would give me a chance to interact with a different group of minds in a different part of their lives. furthermore, youth give me energy to do stuff, when i would only sit around, talk, and have coffee with college students. these ministries will most likely conflict in their time schedules, so keep me in your prayers as i decide and learn to juggle both activities.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
discovery
Hey guys. Sorry I’ve been absent for a while in writing to this blog. I’ve discovered that there is a lot of me that I need to work on, and it has taken some time to collect my thoughts into a message for you.
I’ve been reading a book called Wild at Heart by John Eldredge and it is mind-altering stuff. I have discovered that the things I have gone through in the past 10 years are a response to me neglecting who I was created to be. God created me to be a man who would live an adventure, fight battles with confidence, and find a beauty to rescue (I am paraphrasing the Eldredge book). I think the only one of those three that I truly understood before starting to read Wild at Heart was that I have a desire to rescue a beauty. In other words, I have known that I needed a woman in my life to share my life with, and I strongly believe that I have found her, and her name is Jenny. However, my life to this point is a wreck of self-degradation. I have always lacked confidence in me and I often have thought very little of myself. This is my heart wound, my deepest flaw, and with it comes the message that I do not have what it takes.
I believe that this wound manifested itself in the symptoms of low self-esteem, depression and contentment in pornography and other sexual impurities. I have always been a passive person and these are all passive responses to the wound, letting the brokenness win. When depressed, I was giving in to what I saw as my hopeless destiny. Low self-esteem I cannot remember living without. Pornography became my passive response to thinking I was incapable of dating someone. I had nothing good to offer, so why try, and even when I wanted to try, I shot myself down.
By the way, if the U.S. is ten years behind Europe in the cultural perspective, then sex will be victorious. Pornography is everywhere here. The newsstands have Playboy out front, the television has public and regular cable channels that pretty much show X rated movies, the commercials leave little to the imagination, and the Internet cafes are public porn viewing facilities. We say that sex sells in America, but we are wrong. We tease with sex. Here they sell with sex. The point of me telling you this is not to brag or to tell every man in America to move to Europe, because I know that is what you are thinking. The point is to say that I and hopefully you need to fight within ourselves to eradicate our dependence on the passive release of pornography and other sexual impurities. If we do not, then we will miss out on what we were created for, to discover a woman’s total beauty.
As for the other two purposes to life, I am still discovering what those are about. Why did God create man the way he did? What does that mean for me, and who I need to become? Somewhere in the discovery of adventure and poise for fighting a battle, I believe I will find confidence to be. Sometimes guilt hangs over me like a cloud, and I like to hold on to it because it seems to justify the old me. However, living like this has destroyed me in the past and I am realizing that my greatest battle is against my wound. I will not succeed on my own, but suddenly I remember that Jesus covered me over with His self-sacrifice so that I am not the guilty one. I do not always live like this, just ask Jenny, but I am learning and experiencing renewal. As for the adventure, I think I am discovering a passion for writing.
I’ve been reading a book called Wild at Heart by John Eldredge and it is mind-altering stuff. I have discovered that the things I have gone through in the past 10 years are a response to me neglecting who I was created to be. God created me to be a man who would live an adventure, fight battles with confidence, and find a beauty to rescue (I am paraphrasing the Eldredge book). I think the only one of those three that I truly understood before starting to read Wild at Heart was that I have a desire to rescue a beauty. In other words, I have known that I needed a woman in my life to share my life with, and I strongly believe that I have found her, and her name is Jenny. However, my life to this point is a wreck of self-degradation. I have always lacked confidence in me and I often have thought very little of myself. This is my heart wound, my deepest flaw, and with it comes the message that I do not have what it takes.
I believe that this wound manifested itself in the symptoms of low self-esteem, depression and contentment in pornography and other sexual impurities. I have always been a passive person and these are all passive responses to the wound, letting the brokenness win. When depressed, I was giving in to what I saw as my hopeless destiny. Low self-esteem I cannot remember living without. Pornography became my passive response to thinking I was incapable of dating someone. I had nothing good to offer, so why try, and even when I wanted to try, I shot myself down.
By the way, if the U.S. is ten years behind Europe in the cultural perspective, then sex will be victorious. Pornography is everywhere here. The newsstands have Playboy out front, the television has public and regular cable channels that pretty much show X rated movies, the commercials leave little to the imagination, and the Internet cafes are public porn viewing facilities. We say that sex sells in America, but we are wrong. We tease with sex. Here they sell with sex. The point of me telling you this is not to brag or to tell every man in America to move to Europe, because I know that is what you are thinking. The point is to say that I and hopefully you need to fight within ourselves to eradicate our dependence on the passive release of pornography and other sexual impurities. If we do not, then we will miss out on what we were created for, to discover a woman’s total beauty.
As for the other two purposes to life, I am still discovering what those are about. Why did God create man the way he did? What does that mean for me, and who I need to become? Somewhere in the discovery of adventure and poise for fighting a battle, I believe I will find confidence to be. Sometimes guilt hangs over me like a cloud, and I like to hold on to it because it seems to justify the old me. However, living like this has destroyed me in the past and I am realizing that my greatest battle is against my wound. I will not succeed on my own, but suddenly I remember that Jesus covered me over with His self-sacrifice so that I am not the guilty one. I do not always live like this, just ask Jenny, but I am learning and experiencing renewal. As for the adventure, I think I am discovering a passion for writing.
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