Blog
Ransom Notes Keep Falling Out Your Mouth
Category: Random Updates
Oops, another 2 months without a post. Time to play catch up.
1 year anniversary was fantastic. I highly recommend Horshoe Bay for anyone looking for a nice vacation place near Austin. We went waverunning, spent time at the pool and psuedo-beach, had a few nice meals and some incredible desserts, and just had an all around great weekend. I very appropriate way to celebrate one full year of marriage.
Built my mom a website, working on one for Katie and one for Cameron. Also hoping to have a paying client soon, but waiting to hear back from them.
Teamworks is amazing. I absolutely love it. I know I already gushed about it in my last blog post from two months ago, but time has only made my heart grow fonder. God forbid, if anything ever happened to my current job, I'd be applying at IBM for a position as a Teamworks developer. :P It's fun, intuitive, and extremely useful. I get to work on a pretty time-intensive project in TW for the next couple of months, so that should keep me interested at work.
College football - less than 3 weeks away! Conference realignment stuff kinda fizzled, if you weren't keeping up. Colorado and Nebraska are leaving the Big 12 for the Pac 10, but Texas is staying put. Should be a fun season with Gilbert taking the reins of the offense and waiting to see if one or two running backs step up and become the primary RB. The defense should be stout, though. Any worries I have about the offense should be offset by how awesome the defense is going to be. OU and Nebraska worry me, but if we take one out of two of those games, we should get through the rest of our schedule without much trouble and still have a good shot at going to the conference championship game. (I really need to finish up my Garrett Gilbert website...)
Celebrate Recovery is going well. It's helping me put the focus in my life back where it needs to be - on God. Too often my spiritual life becomes a footnote or afterthought, instead of being the primary focus and everything else being in relation to it. It helps to have a bunch of guys who understand the kind of stuff I'm dealing with and are encourage me. If you don't know what CR is or have never been, check it out. There isn't a single person that couldn't benefit from going.
New house! We got all moved in a little over a week ago, and got the last necessary piece of furniture moved in last night (refrigerator). The house is really starting to take shape. If you haven't seen it yet, look out for pictures soon.
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
~Isaiah 58:8-9a
Why am I a Christian?
Category: Spirituality
A friend of mine asked me recently, "Why are you Christian?" This was my response:
I can't really say I've taken the time to answer that question, even to myself, in a long, long time. While I can't argue that growing up in church definitely played a pretty big role, that isn't the entire answer. No, I have evaluated my beliefs enough since childhood to know that I'm not a Christian because that's what I was taught. I guess I'd have to start with a simpler question in order to answer this: Why do I believe there is a god at all? I probably couldn't win a debate on the topic, but I can't believe that there can be a creation without a creator. If life is ever created from anything other than life, I'll have to reconsider this. But for now, I have to believe that a god that was able to create life from nothing exists because no other answer makes sense to me.
But why the Christian God? Part of it is that I want to believe in a personal god - one that cares about me specifically and is involved in my life every moment of every day. But that's not enough by itself. I don't believe in things just because that's what I want to be true. That is what I see in the world and in my life, though, and that is how the bible describes God. He is just, yet merciful. He is powerful, yet gentle. He is love - in so many ways, He is love. I think that's the aspect of God that I see most clearly in my personal life. The more I come to love others and be loved, the more I see the character of God. I love my wife with everything I have and everything I am. I love her unconditionally - there is nothing she or anybody else could do or say that would change my love for her. I can go on trying to describe this love, but whatever description I give will remain inadequate. This is what I feel describing God is like. This love I have for ginni is only a shadow of God's love. But that shadow proves to me that the sunshine (God's love) exists.
I could go on about the logic and reason that just makes sense to me, about sin and sacrifice and salvation. I could talk about the validity of the bible and how many original manuscripts there are that confirm the authenticity of the original writings. And while those things, among so many others, are very important and help confirm my beliefs, they do not make them. I did not decide to become a Christian based on scientific evidence or because someone told me that the bible is true.
Why am I a Christian?
Because I know that a god must exist or this world would not.
Because if a god does exist, then I must believe He left a mark on this world.
Because I see that mark, through love. So He must be a loving God.
Because I know that I am evil (deep down in my core, I know how bad I am, even if I don't let anyone else see it).
Because my evil nature should keep me from being with Him. I don't deserve it, not even close.
Because He has mercy on me, mercy that I need so badly.
Because He loves me, all of me.
Can vs. Will
Category: Spirituality
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
-Hebrews 11:1
I've been struggling with the meaning of "faith" lately. Obviously, Hebrews 11 provides me with a pretty simple definition, but it gets more complicated when I go to apply it. This has been a particular struggle in relation to healing. For example, I have absolutely no doubt that God is able to heal - there is no struggle there. I have full faith that the God I cannot see can perform miraculous acts in my life and the life of those that I love. What I don't know is what God will do. Am I lacking faith if I pray for healing, but am not certain that He will answer my prayer with a "Yes?"
My instinct is to say that no, God will often answer my prayers with a "No" or a "Not Yet." But what about "I will do whatever you ask in my name" (John 14:13)? Isn't there something to the whole "Your faith has healed you" stuff? But what if I pray for healing, believe with all my heart that He will do it, then He doesn't. Am I lacking in faith? Am I not doing enough? I can't believe that. I just don't believe that that is how God works. No. The best I can do is to believe that He has the power, ask Him to heal me, and believe that He is in control and will get me through it one way or another.
Evangelism, Without the Connotations
Category: Spirituality
My pastor said something in his sermon this week (and a few weeks ago) that has really stuck with me. He was going through the story of the Samaritan woman and pointed out what may very well be the most basic example of evangelism. In verse 29, the woman says:
Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did.
Forget what you know about evangelism (the preacher on the street corner, the tracts handed out at the mall, going door to door through a neighborhood). It all boils down to telling what Christ has done for you and inviting them to meet Him. I am not denouncing those methods I mentioned as wrong (they very well could be doing exactly what I just said evangelism is!), but that often the motivation behind evangelism is not where it should be. My goal isn't to be able to tell my friends how many people I've saved, or to pass out more tracts than you. It is to tell others about Christ because if He can do such wonderous things in my life, why wouldn't I want everyone I meet to know Him, too?
Evangelism has a lot of negative connotations in our post-Christian world, but it doesn't have to. Imagine someone was giving out a free product that cleaned your entire home for you. You take it and it works better than advertised. Wouldn't you tell everyone you know to get one for themselves? Would you be afraid of offending them, or would you tell them the story of what it did for you and where they can get one?
Now, if only I can take this and apply it...
A Husband's Responsibility to Grow Spiritually
Category: Spirituality
I've been married for 12 entire days now. As I adjust to living with ginni and married life in general, I am learning that every part of my life has been affected by our marriage. Spiritually, I've kinda just been on cruise control lately. And not the reading-my-bible-every-day-out-of-habit kind of cruise control. The if-I-don't-think-about-it-then-I-won't-feel-bad-for-not-doing-anything kind. I realized yesterday that this must change. I can't be content with complacency. I must find the motivation to grow - for her. I need to be the husband that I want her to have, and that involves spiritual leadership that I simply cannot provide in the state currently find myself. I must do better.
What does this involve? I'm not completely sure at the moment. But at the very least, I've taken the first step of recognizing that I need to grow. I hope I can find some motivation to keep up with spiritual disciplines over a long period of time, but for the time being, I've found enough to get started. My wife.
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