David Crowder and I

So there was this cool program on my computer for a while that is no more. You just

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took a song and then pictures or video and it would splice them together. Then you could go through chunk by chunk and decide whether you liked what it did or not. There were a number of styles you could pick from like music video, romantic, comic book and a bunch of others. It was called muvee. Sadly it no longer works. I think it was one of those free trial things. Much of the thrashing around in the car was done on the way to Iowa one time. My way of staying awake when I drive is to just not pay attention to the road. It works amazingly well. I have been known to read, sing, take pictures of myself, take my clothes off and just about anything else you can think of. I should have ended that list with something else so that the whole taking the clothes off thing wasn't the last thing on the list. There was this one time where Steven and I were driving home...Well never mind. The pictures of a little girl going crazy are from Texas. She was actually doing Kung Fu with a peacock feather. The sword fighting is in Texas too. I was an evil Sith master and Jonathan was the Jedi. I beat him but I was sad about it because I found out he was my son. Confused yet. Enjoy the video.

By the way, doesn't that picture just make you feel welcomed. I can already here the call of pigs and corn. I should stop now.

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Heroes

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I have decided to break my trend of my posts having "B" titles. I confess there is much I want to talk about that starts with a "B" like Brotherhood and and Book Reviews and Billy Goats but I'll save that all for another time.

Lately, I have been watching the TV series "Heroes." Every episode fills me with trepidation because I'm sure that it is like "Lost" and they will kill off main people. So far, nobody has died that I liked. Anyway, I have been doing a lot of thinking about this show and what it all means. That's just the way I am. I have to analyze everything and find out what it means for me. So here is my deep theological reflections on "Heroes."

"Heroes" is about people with unusual talents. For example: Super fast healing, the ability to move through time and space, invisibility, and telekinesis. For many of these people their gifts are just starting to appear and they are trying to figure out how to use them. Most of them feel like they are alone. Fear of being an outsider keeps them from telling others about their gifts. There is a sense of shame like they are some sort of freak. One reason to stay quiet is that there seems to be a secret agency hunting down the "special" people. It is unclear what their motives are.

Hiro Nakamura is a Japanese office worker that discovers he can move through time and space. After seeing a great tragedy in the futures he realizes that he must do something to stop this event from happening. No matter what happens he recklessly pursues his destiny. He makes mistakes along the way, so much so that he has moments of doubt about his mission. He struggles with whether he is on the right path. But something always comes along to pick his spirits up and get him back in the game.

Everyone of us on earth is gifted in some way. Somebody might be a master chef while another person is good at listening and counseling. As Christian we have an added gift, well two I guess. First we have grace. Ephesians 2:8-9 specifically tells us this. Grace has been given to us as gift. Because of that gift we understand love to a greater degree and we can speak that love into other peoples lives.

Our other gift is a spiritual gift. This part is a little more difficult to figure out. Acts 1:8 says that we will be given power when the Holy Spirit comes on us. John 14:12 says that we will do even greater works than Christ, who is the ultimate superhero. Many people struggle with the idea of spiritual gifts and what their individual gift is.

I said above that the people in "Heroes" feel like freaks. Don't we sometimes feel that way as Christians. We feel alone, like we are are the only ones like that. It is easy to get discouraged and hang up the towel. but just like Hiro we each have a part to play. Whether we realize it or not we do have a part to play. Jeremiah says "for I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and future."

So many times I have questioned what the point of all my struggling is. What does my life amount to? Do I really have a purpose? Am I carrying out the Great Commission? Right now I am unemployed and I have been this way for a while and over and over I have been trying to figure out what the purpose of all of this is. Why is it that the jobs that I think should be simple to get I can get? How am I going to provide for my family? But then I remember that Jeremiah verse and all of the other promises that the Bible is full of and I know that God is in control. I am just a player in the game. I don't see the big picture where he does. None of us can see the big picture. What we must simply do is live our lives using the talents and abilities that God has given us.

In the words of Jesus Christ we must pray "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." I need to take my focus off of me and put it on Christ. Everything else will follow from that.

I pray that this blog serve as an encouragement to you just as Ando encourages Hiro. Go forth, and live life. Dare to dream and pursue those dreams with reckless abandon. Live dangerously for Christ.

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Blog ads

So I am learning all sorts of stuff of about blogging. You will notice on the top and bottom of the page there is a Google search thing. Also on the left there are ads that Google thinks fit with my blog from AdSense. We'll see how long that one sticks around. I am curious to see what sort of things it thinks people that come to this site will want. So far there is online businesses and dating sites.

It's funny to me how many dating sites there are. A couple of people I know have used these and had little result. For those of you that went to Central Christian College and remember Justin Gillette he was very proud of the fact that he used eHarmony. He said he had a lot of good conversations with girls from it. Of course, that is not how he met his wife but whatever.

Did you know that an alligator can run as fast as a horse? I love Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
Okay, I'm done now. Pay no attention to this entry. It is entirely silly.

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Brokenness

A while back my pastor gave a very stirring sermon in which he ended it by asking if anyone was ready to be broken. The congregation responded whole-heartedly. I started puzzling over the whole concept of brokenness and what it all means.

So what is brokenness? It is being hurt, not whole. When you break a plate it is no longer usable. It is in pieces. It's purpose is now gone. When a relationship has a break up it is no more. There is pain. When a car breaks down it can no longer move. It is useless until it is fixed.

When we ask for brokenness what are we asking for? It seems like we are asking to be hurt, to be torn apart so that we are no longer useful. We are asking to be without purpose.
But isn't purpose the very thing that we all seek. We want to know what the point of our life is and we sure don't want to be hurt. We don't want to be useless.

When we seek brokenness we are not pursuing that as an end in itself. If that were the case, we would have a church full of people in terrible pain wasting their lives away and doing nothing about it. Brokenness is the beginning! It is the concept of something being destroyed so that it can be rebuilt. But why fix what isn't broken.

Aha!
It is broken. See, a long time ago a certain couple hanging out in the garden disobeyed God. This error forever changed man's relationship with God. Romans talks about how sin entered the world through one man. When that sin came upon mankind a distance was put between us and our Creator. Adam and Eve lost a piece of themselves and everyone since then has been born without that piece.

When we look at the Genesis account the first thing that Adam and Eve notice was their nakedness. This was because in that moment the source of their value and meaning was stripped from them. Before, their appearance didn't matter because God poured His love into them and they knew that everything they were was God's. I think that when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God they became separate individuals and therefore, they felt that their meaning came from them personally. You can read more about this theory in Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What.

So we were broken. Because of that sin we are not whole. Unfortunately, we continue to sin which makes the break worse. It's kind of like we got a bad cut on our arm and instead of cleaning it we throw filth into the wound. This festers so much that disease spreads through the arm and can eventually kill a person. The only way to stop this disease is to cut off the arm. We must break the broken to be free.

When we pray to God for brokenness we are asking Him to get rid of all the filth that has built up over time. Before we ask for God's cleansing we often don't even realize just how screwed up we are. We have lived in disease for so long that everything has to be stripped down and started over. That is why Scripture says that they old is gone and the new has come. Ephesians 4:23 speaks of being "made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self."

I think like with any break, asking God for brokenness will hurt. Parts of you will be exposed that you never knew about. But I think that ultimately the reward is worth it. If we allow ourselves to be broken, to have who we think we are completely stripped away, then we will emerge a new and better person. It is the same way with a broken arm. Sometimes it has to be re-broken for it to heal properly.

Are you ready to be broken? Am I ready to be broken?

Beginnings

This blog is an exploration. An exploration of our lives and what true freedom is. And I mean freedom of any kind: freedom of choice, life, death, politics, religion, and so on. What does freedom really look like and how do we attain it? That is not to say that we are not already free in one since or another. But are we completely free? How do our choices impact those around us? Maybe this rambling makes no sense. If that is the case then please join the discussion to make sense of it.

This blog is open to comments from anyone that is willing to be open-minded and thoughtful of others. Maybe it is silly to say this but I don't want to see any name calling, swearing, crude or racial slurs. In essence. Be nice.

Let the journey begin.