Obligation

People have always told me how God's work should never be an obligation or even a burden.

They're right. 

We should serve God with joy in our hearts and love for what we do for his kingdom. But I can honestly say I only know about a handful of people who serves with joy. There are times where I feel burdened by the things I've done or am doing right now. How did something so joyful become a joysucking job? 

Most people point at the person and call them out for their lack of passion. Maybe its true and that person has yet to figure out how great of a job God has placed in our hands; how important of a job and amazing it is that we're even allowed to contribute a little bit of ourselves to serve his kingdom. Maybe the person still needs to understand that. But maybe, the leaders are also setting up this "you're obligated" environment for those who serve under them. 

I've seen it so often how leaders would tell their members to serve with joy and don't do it for the wrong reasons. But when some members decide that they will not take part in certain things, guilt tripping automatically comes into play. Sometimes people's walks are even questioned (sounds extreme, I know, but its happened). No matter what these members have done before or sacrificed for God, this one time "no" becomes something used to question their walks. How would that make your members serve with joy? Leaders probably justify it as "I'm encouraging them to act with God in mind" but I see members act to shut their leaders up much more often. 

I understand how difficult it is to want something to be done and people just don't want to do it. But I think there's a clear difference between encouraging and flat out manipulating. Priority, I believe is something that most people gotta figure out for themselves and we can give them a nice gentle push towards the right direction from time to time but it should never be forced. 

To those serving the Lord out there, I hope we will all remember that God deserves our time and efforts. Nothing is greater than he and doing his work should be up there on our priorities list. But that should also happen with a genuine heart. Most of us know what we need to do or what we "should" be doing but when we do these things without a sincere heart, our intentions for doing them is literally because its a "christian thing to do". 

"It is not what you do as a Christian that determines who you are; it is who you are that determines what you do." -Victory Over Darkness by Neil Anderson 

Stuck

Have you ever been in a place where you just felt stuck? Things are going wrong in life and you have no idea where to turn or who to go to. Somehow more and more things seem to be messing up and the ditch you're stuck in just gets deeper and deeper. Even for those of us who know God's there find it hard to turn to him when we're stuck in a deep ditch.

So what do you do? Are you trying to find the way out? Or are you just sitting there moping? Quite honestly I mope a lot. But I know the solutions out there. Sometimes the answer isn't obvious at all, sometimes it's not even the answer we wanted but it's there. And trust me, his answer will always be better than whatever we could think of. We just gotta trust that God will reveal it to us when the time is right.

I know I know it's a lot easier said than done. But if we hold on to our belief, if we just hold on to God during these rough times... Things will surely get better. He will never leave us, let alone when we're dying inside some dark depressed ditch. He will carry us out and heal our broken hearts. There's no greater comfort than the one from God, I guarantee that.

It's not easy to rely on God since we're taught to handle things on our own. So let's learn to hold onto God right now, together. Let the comfort of knowing he has great plans to come after this nasty storm fill us with peace. Let us trust and rely fully on God, together.

Identity in Christ

"Have you ever cried yourself to sleep at night thinking you're inadequate and wish to be somebody else?"

My church's college fellowship is studying a book called Victory Over Darkness and that was one of the questions asked by the author.

I'm sure most of us have been through a time in our lives in which we have felt worthless. Sometimes people might say hurtful things and we buy into it. Or sometimes we lie in bed thinking about all our failures and feel incompetent. Sometimes we may feel like we're not good enough, pretty enough, successful enough...etc. It just never ends. A lot of things in life can lead us to feel..well..like crap.

And the reason is? Society has it made so we believe our worth comes from what we possess in life; whether its outer beauty, achievements, material possessions, or even relationships. Society has made it so that even certain personality traits are valued more than others. Those who possess more outgoing and well spoken traits are obviously valued above those who aren't. That's just how the world is.

But is that how the world should be? Or was even created to be?

satan made it so that we would buy into these lies. It keeps nagging in the back of our heads every time we seem to lack something or when we fail at doing something until one day thats all we tend to see about ourselves. The thing that is destroying most of us inside out are lies. Nothing but complete false ideas. God would never look at you and say "You lack all these things and that's why I don't love you as much." We're more precious to him than anything in the world. He loves us despite our sin; nothing in the world can make him love us less if he can love us despite all the crap that we do. Not one sin is better than the other, therefore not one person can be more of a sinner than the other. He asked those who are rich to give up all they own to follow him. He doesn't find our riches impressive at all, all that we possess don't leave earth anyways but they do sometimes, oftentimes, get in the way of us following him. Those who wish to have other's traits; God created all of us to be different parts of the body. Each and every part need each other to function. If we were all to possess the same traits, nothing can be done, there would be only one job in the world.

We gotta start looking at ourselves with God's standards. Yes, we will mess up from time to time and it will be disappointing on our part but God forgives us and we need to too. Don't beat yourself up over the things that God has already forgiven you for.

God doesn't create junk. Each and everyone of us are his masterpieces. It's time to stop believing in lies but see ourselves for who we really are, the precious children of God.

Note to Self: Rely and Trust

"Why in the world does God think I can handle this right now?"

This thought pops into my head countless times a week. There's constantly something going wrong and so much needs to be done yet there's never enough time.

I just don't get it, he created me, he should know by now that I can't handle any of these situations.

But thats the thing, he never expected us to. (atleast not alone) Philippians 4:13 says "I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength." Our strength comes from God, we need to rely on him to get through these obstacles. We live in a broken world, things will always go wrong but the reason why we get overwhelmed and worn out isn't because we're given more than we can handle, its the fact that we keep trying to do something we were never asked to do on our own.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." - Philippians 4:6-7

Trust and rely on God with every situation you're going through, he will protect you and bring you peace. 

Safe Haven

Think back to when you were a child.

What did you do when you heard a scary noise in the middle of the night? 

I'm pretty sure most of us (if not all) would answer "hide under the blankets". 

That place between our blanket and bed somehow brought us comfort and security, it was our safe haven.

I don't know if I'm the only one that does this but I tend to categorize the different areas of my life (ex. home life, school life..etc.) When things get rough at one of the areas, I turn to another to find comfort. Freshman year, I was going through a lot of problems at Stony so I looked for peace and comfort within my home church. When things got rough at home, I built up a safe haven at school. I'm constantly running away from one thing by hiding within another. It worked for a while, that is, until God made me realize what I was doing. 

Some of us are so preoccupied with finding a physical kind of comfort on earth that we fail to realize that God has already built us a safe haven...within himself. He's the ultimate comforter and I can guarantee that you will never find anything more comforting than him. God is always right next to us, ready to protect and love us. Yet we as humans love taking matters into our own hands. Some of us run away from our issues, constantly seeking for a new place to dwell so we won't have to go through any discomfort (or pain). Some of us fight to the death to protect ourselves (we find security within ourselves) but end up hurting people in the process. We do all these crazy things to find peace, security, and comfort when really God was ready to provide us with all of that from the start. 

These safe havens that we build up on earth, whether its in ourselves or in other people, makes us blind to what God has in store for us. And sometimes it takes the taking away of all of our safe havens for us to realize that we've always had the ultimate one. What it all comes down to is, are you willing to come out of that blanket and let God protect you instead? 

QOTD: Abortion

I am not trying to offend anyone with this question, it's just a random thought that popped into my head today. I am pro-life though, for those who may be wondering. 

I remember someone telling me how pro-choice people believe that before a certain period of time or even before birth, the baby inside a woman's womb isn't considered life. What I'm wondering is, if a pro-choice person were to suffer a miscarriage during that period of time, would it be contradicting for them to mourn over the loss of their child?

Someone (a pro-choice person that I know) said it wouldn't be because when someone chooses to have a child, they expect the thing in their stomach to form into a baby and they can picture the life that it will become, and that's why they mourn when its lost. But that statement came off very confusing to me because then wouldn't the deciding factor of whether its life or not depend on whether we want it to be life or not? But then how can we consider one pregnancy to be life and another not?

Pharisees

A pharisee to me is someone who appears christian but their actions speak otherwise. The definition I found online states "A hypocritically self-righteous person." I think its about the same thing, they're basically hypocrites. 

Not many things in life can actually make me angry to a point where my heart is in so much discomfort but this...this pisses me off. Before you start thinking "oh you're being a hypocrite, you're hating on them, God calls us to love..etc." My anger really has nothing to do with the people but everything to do with the action. I even get mad at myself for the same things some times. So don't worry, I don't think they're bad people nor do I hate them.

What bothers me the most about modern day pharisees is pretty much summed up with the cartoon up there. These people try to portray this image of being a "perfect" christian. They go to church every sunday, talk to all their friends about Jesus, pray before every meal and snack and drink and...piece of candy. They're probably serving God as a leader somewhere.

But these very people are also the ones who go out and bully the gays. They're the ones who go up to people and tell them they're going to burn in hell. They're the ones who think its ok to act on God's behalf and punish those who sin. These are the very people who claim to love God and yet they're the very reason why other people don't want anything to do with Him.

I went to a conference last year and we were told to go out and outreach to people we meet on the streets. My team and I met this guy outside of our hotel. He was just sitting there in the cold so we bought him some hot soup and talked to him about Jesus. He had this sense of anger in his voice when he said "the reason why I don't want to believe in God is because of how messed up the history of Christianity is..think about the crusades, why would I want to be a part of that?"

It breaks my heart to know that christians are the very reason why people detest God. The crusades happened so long ago and yet the consequences of their unloving actions are affecting people to this day. It's not fair to Him. God didn't do anything wrong, we're the ones who do bad yet everything we do reflects who he is. We really are his ambassadors. Us, as christians, represent God on this earth (we're NOT God though). Our unloving actions really can affect the way others view Christ. I'm not saying we all need to act as perfect as we can. We're not perfect, we're human and we will sin. God knows that and he forgives us. But what I am saying is that we should strive to live and love the way God wants us to. It's not easy, people can be so un-loveable sometimes but this is what God has called each and everyone of us to do.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." 

                                                                          -1 Corinthians 13:1-3

The problem with some christians today is we claim to be doing all these things for God. But if we forget to include LOVE in the equation, can we really say its what God wanted us to do? He called us to love people, even those who are different from us. He loves us all the same and he wants us to love people in that way too. A genuine love and concern for the people in this world. Billy Graham put it really well when he said this "It is God's job to judge, Holy Spirit's job to convict and my job to love." Let God do his part, and let us focus on ours.

"We love because he first loved us. If anyone says "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: whoever loves God must also love his brother."

                                                                        -1 John 4:19-21