Friday's Thinking Thoughts

1) The glorious moment your professor tells you the 20 page paper that was suppose to be due in five days is now due in two weeks.

2) Was able to interview the franchise holder of Chick-fil-A. I reminded him that my boss and I called four years ago. They're late, but here so it's okay.

3) The next year of grad classes are planned. No more 12-hour semesters. Yes, I learned a valuable lesson - listen to your mom/dad/boss/girlfriend/friend/kat.

4) Leading worship this Sunday at Journey the Way. Kinda nervous and excited.

5) Reading "The Horse and His Boy" it's my favorite Chronicles of Narnia book.

6) Psalm 23

7) "'Pull over!' 'No, it's a cardigan, but thanks for noticing.'"

8) The next three weeks will be filled with fun! And by 'fun' of course I mean papers, projects, presentations, finals and the like...

9) When you laugh so hard you cry with your roommates. Good times.

10) Maybe it's true; that the thing you rail against and hate the most is the thing you're most prone to fall into. For me I hate the idea of a theology centered on man. Where God is forgone for feeling or emotionalism. When God is seen as a vending machine not as the terrifyingly majestic and gracious God he is.
Yet, it is true, I'm prone to fall into feeling and emotionalism when God should be centered on me and my wants. When the beginnings of my thoughts with God are not, "Be my Shepherd," but rather, "This is what I want, so provide it, now."
I hope you see the juxtaposition. While in my mind I serve the law of God, that of who he is as revealed in Scripture and in my heart I serve the law of my flesh. Romans 7 is being written again in my life by the actions and inactions of a heart and mind at war for the supremecy of Jesus in my life. So, like always, this verse must be the reigning peace over my heart, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Rich & Difficult

Learning.

A lot.

Often.

Always.

Or else.

There’s a couple reasons for this post, sure one of them is grad-school - it’s nuts-o - the other is JtW, it’s going swimmingly and we’re all expecting God to do massive things, O and my personal life is just full of change. Yet still more, or rather in each of these, I’m learning.

"Rich and difficult."

That’s how I’ve been describing life to folks who ask how it’s going. Rich and difficult.

Rich because everything is new and different and – for now – beautiful, I hope that never changes, the striking reality of the real. I hope it always hits me new from week-to-week and night-to-night and morning-to-morning, that it’s all so much goodness I can’t stand it. Literally, I can’t stand it, it’s all I can do to kneel let alone stand.

Difficult because I’ve never worked this hard in my life for anything let alone three different things all at once. Yet I’m not doing the work - the bystander is being worked on again – still. Reading and writing and presenting, classes have never demanded more. Work is on the brink of God-only-knows, the scariness of the unknown is right there, right in our faces. Personal stuff is something of a strange covalence of tragedy and fairy tale (no movie can touch the living reality). It’s difficult.

Life is paradox.

There’ll come a time when I’ll be older (further away than tomorrow) and remember the late nights and early mornings, the books and the faces, the stretching and the resting, and by the grace of God thank God for giving me richness and difficulties.

Reacting To My Post

I wrote a post for Journey the Way yesterday about why singles should look forward to a listening through a marriage series. Here are the points:

1. Because we, most of us, hope to be married someday.
Whether the desire is in our hearts at this moment or not doesn’t really matter. Societal influence has told us since we were tiny that part of growing up is getting married. Sooner or later he/she will come over our horizon and we’ll get married. We need to be preparing for that eventuality. So it’s wise to sit in a marriage series.

2. Because we don’t know everything.
We’re young and dumb… at least that’s how I phrase it. We don’t know everything; we should not be arrogant enough to think a marriage series will not/cannot apply to us. Wrong. Learn to learn. Someday we’ll look back to this series and praise God for the grace it was to learn then as opposed to learn by failures. So it’s wise to sit in a marriage series.

3. Because we need to learn how to be biblical men and women.
Now is the time to become godly men. Now is the time to become godly women. Now is the time to learn our places and roles in marriage and aim at attaining the beauty of being men and women sold out for seeing God glorified in our marriages.

4. To grow up.
Rather than playing X-Box or gossiping over her makeup, we need to be mature. Grow up and believe the gospel. To have an aim, a mission, in life and be headed in that direction, to be able to look into our future spouse’s eyes and say, “I’m going there, after the glory of God, will you come with me?”

5. To see our future children love Jesus.
Oh, that our kids would love Jesus more than us their parents! Oh, that we would be singles praying earnestly for our unborn children to be fervently in love with the gospel! Oh, that our sons would aim at nothing less than God glorified! Oh that our daughters would be women who are lost in the beauty of Jesus their Lover!

It's true, I'm looking forward to learning about marriage even though there's still time before I get married. Every cynic I've spoken to who has a wife or husband is glad for the relationship, intimacy, and wholeness. So sure, there may be no need to be overly (sophmorically) excited about a sermon series, but there is a hope to care about what's said, and a wanting to learn.

"Learn to learn." (Probably one of the best lines I've written in a while and I'm sure someone else did it first.) If ever there comes a time in our lives when we aren't learning then we've missed something and are now the misguided and seemingly useless. Because one who isn't learning isn't helping.

Lastly, to my children - those little ones yet unborn - I've prayed for you since the day I believed the gospel. Those lines above - yea - those are for you. 

This should be a stretching couple of months. And it ought to be worth it.

Middle of the Week Thoughts

1) I'm preaching this weekend at Journey the Way, so writing for the blog hasn't been a priority.

2) All of John 17 in one sermon. Buckle up.

3) I will be eating at Chik-Fil-A today.

4) The Church has always been the plan of God. (Ironically enough what I mean by 'always' is always.)

5) I cannot confirm or deny I started doing some sort of, ahem, 'work-out' this week. If I did, don't worry about it. If I didn't don't worry about it.

6) I'm wearing flip-flops for the first time this summer... I feel like a sell out.

7) The Gaslight Anthem.

8) I need to improve my grilling skills.

9) Re-getting Grace. Still.

10) This Song