Friday Thoughts

1) Friday! I'm sleepy.

2) My friends from India are in town!

3) The book of Romans. Whoa.

4) Restarted Calvin's Institues of the Christian Religion, it's basically FREAKIN' AMAZING.

5) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Dear Sirus Black, you're my favorite.

6) 'Member that one time we lived in hell, I mean, Kansas?

7) Hung out in a dang cool church on Wednesday. (Look at da pichure)

8) I wanna see Brave. If you judge me I'll do something.

9) If you're not doing anything tomorrow night, be here.

10) Christianity shouldn't be man-centered. If it is, it's not Christian.

In the End

After all is said & when all is done; even then, even still we look to Jesus. Our hope & our great reward.

We can portray the gospel perfectly, we can speak it clearly, we can do it all ‘right,’ but even still some will not believe it. It’s not a failure on our part (even though some of us have been taught to think so). They just don’t have faith.

But discouragement for us is still there. We love them. We’ve been called to love them, the ones with faith and without. So it hurts when they don’t believe in the same life giving hope we believe in, it hurts badly.

But after we’ve said it all and done it all and loved them well (which won’t end until we’re dead), even then we still look to Jesus.

Not our actions or our words. Not our love or care. Just to Jesus.

Simple, right? Profound too. Just to Jesus.

Giver of life and love deeds and words. Everything.

It breaks us and makes us whole. It kills us and brings us to life. It softens us and emboldens us. Very simply we look to Jesus.

He’s the one who saves, who calls the dead to life and gives the life to live. He does it not us and our ability (or inability) to present the gospel in the clearest of fashions. Not the formula or the ‘Evangelist’ Jesus saves souls.

Boil all of our Theology and doctrine down to one simple thing; Jesus Christ came to save sinners for the glory of God. 

Funeral

I sat in a funeral for a young man this morning, a boy really. His daughter won’t remember him, she’s too young; she’ll look at pictures of ‘daddy,’ but’ll never know his voice, or what it’s like to be walked down the isle to her husband by him.

18 years old is far to young to die, but it happens all the time.

Whether the pressures were too much or the showing of love not enough, we’ll never know. But a gun, in his mind, seemed to solve the problems.

Sadly, for him it’s too late. His mother weeps and his father pushes all to not waste their life. The pastor said something about now being the time to think about eternity.

And though while I agree, we should think about eternity, that’s not what we should be worried about.

It’d be far better to think about Jesus and what he’s done, and not so simplistically as to think we only think about him for what we want. No, we think about him for and in all things.

Not just cause we get heaven through him, but because we get God in what he’s accomplished. Not just because we avoid hell, but more so because he gives us himself.

You see, if we only love him for what he gets us we don’t love him at all.