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.

That Memory

This’ll be a little sappy.

Do you have memory, which you re-live often? The one that’s like a slide show in your brain, which comes around when you’re happy and when you’re sad. That one where you don’t even know if anyone else remembers (there's probably a ton of them, but there that one in particular, you know?).

Mine is coming back from church camp when I was an eighth grader. We had gone to the beach (for church camp, it was awesome!) it was a 18-ish hour bus ride home. This girl and I (church camp crush) had been flirty for a solid 12 hours.

Anywho she lent me her blanket so I could sleep. When I woke up she had fallen asleep in the back of the bus and looked cold, and here’s the memory: I wanted to give her blanket back, so the choice was this: either, somehow crawl to the back and be classy about it… or throw it at her.

So with all the matured wisdom of my eighth grade mind and all the romantic class I possessed within my body – I threw the blanket into her chair, and smiled at her. Because I was too nervous to give a pretty girl her blanket back nicely, even though I wanted to tell her I liked her so desperately.

My point in telling this semi-embarrassing story (she & I are still friends & she might remember this too) is to give a very real (& personal) illustration of learning. I mean, I could tell you to seize moments and do the whole carpe diem thing, but learning seems better.

Learners are what we are and will be. So learn. Learn from the sappy memory like mine above and from the massive moments encountered. Learn from the drunken old guy who hands you a tract in a bar. Learn in all things to give glory to God.

And then you can tell sappy stories to make a point. 

Ripped from the Journal: Am I lost?

Am I lost on the journey; have I doubled back in some same way before and again? There is a theme to these last few days, which haunts me. A theme well remembered from times before, a theme well spoken in my heart so much so it might be in the realm of a mantra.

Maybe I’m just less found than I guessed I was. Thinking I knew the path before me but never having seen or tread it before. Remembering the previous dark part of the forest and thinking this one so similar as to be one with the last.

Perhaps this is where I’m supposed to be. Returning to a familiar lesson to learn it again (kinda like my experience with Algebra). Or maybe he thinks it best I have my doctoral dissertation written on this field of study so as to be of maximum help to others.

Whatever the reason I am back to the same place and the trees look so very familiar and the undergrowth is becoming broken down in the path for either I’ve walked it time and time again or he has prepared a way for me.

Learn your lessons well and look to lean on the Lord the teacher of your soul. Because the pupil needs to be guided by the hand at times for the want in his heart is be waylaid by the tempting sight of a far off mountain. Yet he must press on towards the lofty goal set before him, though he often losses sight of it in the trees.