Saturday, March 19, 2011

Laughing with God, my best friend.



Yes. I am listening to Regina Spektor right now.
Yes. I am listening to 'Laughing with God.'

God can speak through secular artists and really encourage me. Its not so much the lyrics of this particular song that has ministered to my spirit.
But the two phrases that really get me are "God can be funny", and "We're all laughing with God."
Does God really laugh? Does God have a sense of humor?
For much of my life i have usually viewed God as loving, compassionate, just, mighty, holy, the list really will go on forever. But for me, as someone who has an ever-present sense of humor, i have been seeing more and more lately that the LORD has a sense of humor. Maybe it's just because i look for the humor in any situation. Maybe my best friend, who created Heaven and earth, knows me so well and knows exactly what i need. He will speak to His children in a way that says exactly what they need to hear.

Let me tell you a story from this week. This happening to me seriously has made my whole week.

Before i continue with this story i have to say that, during these last two months in the Discipleship Training Program i have learned so much more than what i am going to share today. This is just something that really blessed me and is a result of my increased relationship with my Father in Heaven.

Monday evening. Conversing with my room mate Isaac over dinner we were discussing what we had learned in that day's classes. I really had seen a picture of the perseverance that the Christian walk requires.
I saw this picture of a man running full-bore, through a desert, running like He was being chased by something. He didn't stop to rest, he didn't slow down to get a drink of water, he didn't stop to check his facebook. He ran with a purpose, to get to the destination ahead of him. He is focused on the prize in front of him. He runs with a fervor, he runs straight and true, not turning aside to the right hand nor to the left. He falls down. But he doesn't stay down. He gets right back up and keeps running.
Not every single analogy here transfers directly over to the Christian walk. What i saw in that picture was how, during our life, things come up, trials, persecution, distractions, fatigue, etc., come up and can hinder our relationship with God. How we have to keep moving, we have to just keep running, following the Lord's leading, and persevering through those things, through the 'affairs of this life'.

This has been hilarious so far, i'm sure. But just wait, that was just to illustrate the story a little bit.

After talking about that picture of perseverance for a while, i said to Isaac,
"Just cuz i was talking about this, God is probably gonna talk me through some trial or something that i will have to persevere through. It always seems to work that way."

Little did i know....


We had a good time of fellowship that evening an concluded with a time of prayer together, Isaac, Dan, and myself.
I hit the sack at 9:30, tired from a late night the night before and the busy day, i set my alarm for 5:40 am. I was excited for a good night's sleep and a sweet quiet time with the Lord in the morning.
I laid down, shut my eyes, and tossed and turned, and tossed and turned, and rolled over, adjusted my pillows and blankets, re-adjusted my pillows, listened to the cows mooing outside, and repeated that cycle until 12:30 am. I was wide-awake and dead-tired. I was puzzled at my lack of ability to get to sleep. I know that often times there is sin that needs to be confessed or something that i am holding back from God and is causing separation between us. I searched my heart over and over again and could find nothing. I was thoroughly puzzled and a little bit frustrated that i couldn't sleep.
I put on some music and listened to that for an hour and a half. After the CD had ended for the second time i was still awake. At this point i had tried everything i could think of to sleep.
Finally i went and laid on the couch and tried to read my Bible.
It was 2 am and i couldn't focus on it. I finally fell asleep shortly after that, dreading the morning that was coming so quickly.
Tuesday morning i awoke at 6:30 and got ready for class. I was dog-tired and not looking forward to the day ahead. We had class in the morning, street ministry in the afternoon and prayer meeting in the evening. It was gonna be a long day and i knew it was gonna be a challenge to make it through.
I knew God had a plan and a reason for my sleepless night but i had no clue what that was yet.

THEN. (here comes the funny part. no really, it's coming up really soon.)

Halfway through the first class session it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.

The words i had said to Isaac the previous evening, about how God would probably bring some sort of challenge my way because of what i had been talking about.
No sleep that night had been God's joke on me. He knew i was gonna have a long day on Tuesday so he brought me a pile of tiredness that i had to persevere through. It was not a cruel or mean joke, but a humorous little thing that best friends do to each other.
God's sense of humor is beautiful. It really is.
Suddenly i didn't mind the four-ish hours of sleep i got.
This brilliant little joke that God made with me made my relationship with Him seem so much more.....amazing. More real, more interactive. more... the word that i am looking for does not exist. Like the relationship that i have with my good friends.

When all this hit me it made me so happy.
God loves me. He loves me enough to make jokes with me.




Holy Humor, i love God!

Dodger

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

AHHHHHHHH

Friday.
its only 3 days from now. I be moving away from home.
Away from dinner made for me, away from sharing a room with my brother, which i have done for the past almost 19 years, away from my dear dear friends, and away from Momma.
In close to 19 years of life the longest i have gone with out seeing my mother is 2 weeks. and that was hard.
I am moving to Bend, Oregon for the discipleship training program. Its only for 6 months but i have never faced something like this. hard things that i have experienced before i can prepare and brace myself for, like getting a shot in my arm or something. but this is like nothing that i have ever done or experienced before.
A little,fearful, dumb part of myself wants to just stay here in my little bubble and live a comfortable boring life forever with my family and friends nearby, but i cant do that. Faith requires us stepping out into the cold, unknown, swirling waters outside the boat. Jesus called me, i said i would go.
Now it is coming fast and i cant stop it. i am excited so much to go.
Excitedandscaredandnervousandantsyandamillionotherthings.

I have no real clue what to expect from this time in my life but i know it will amazing. God will smash me, mold me, break me again, heal me, show me 1095216582778 amazing things about Him that i didnt know. I will grow in Him. Pray that i let Him have all my heart. I want to divorce the world form my heart. De-tangle myself with the affairs of this life. It is far too easy to get caught up with the little unimportant things in life.
BAHHHHH.
I need to DIE everyday to MY wants and desires and passions, and surrender to Yahweh's will and desire. It is so simple but not easy.

I will not be on the 'Net much while i am gone, but hopefully i will be able to update the world on my spiritual journey at the program every month. Maybe.

It is late, and i have more packing to do tomorrow, or later today. both actually.

Rog.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Thinkings about Faith..

(disclaimer: this all sounded alot better in my head)


What is faith?
Where does it come from?
how do we get it?

All these thoughts and questions starting pouring in and out on my 15 minute break at work today.
I turned to 'faith' in my concordance several times.

Mr. Voetberg had told me in discipleship class earlier this year that there was certain doctrines that you couldnt teach using, for example, an NIV Bible, but that you could teach using a KJV. And that was why he suggested using KJV.
But Bible versions isnt what i am here to talk about.

(maybe i am completely out in left field without a paddle here... so correct me if i am wrong.)

But one example that he used to demonstrate that point was that the KJV translates
Romans 3:22 as saying "Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference"
The NIV says "This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference"
Same verse, seemingly the same meaning, but they are actually presenting two different doctrines.
Ok so i promised this wouldnt be about arguing Bible versions.
But it got me thinking, i should look at what the rest of the Bible says about faith.
Is it in Christ or of Christ?

So my first point; How are we supposed to put our faith in Christ if we dont have any to begin with?
We dont just magically have a blob of faith to put wherever we want.
Where do we get it from?
We can't go to the faith store and buy the flavor that we like the best.
I think we have to be GIVEN faith. At salvation, we are given a measure of faith.

Some might argue with Romans 12:3(b)
"according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith."
But if you look at the context (Romans 12:1) Paul is addressing believers. God has given all believers a measure of faith.
Also, GOD is GIVING us a measure of faith, we are not giving our faith to God.

So what is this faith that He has given us?
This question became a little less blurry for me today.
Look in Hebrews 11, the good ol' faith chapter.
Verse 1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"
Faith is proof of God. It is the substance of God.

substance: the actual matter of a thing, as opposed to the appearance or shadow; reality.
Because God has given us a measure of faith, we, the new creation, are evidence of that faith.
we ourselves are not faith, but the result of faith in our lives is tangible, visible evidence.
Faith is the the actual matter of a thing, as opposed to the appearance or shadow of it, it is irrefutable proof of Christ in us.

I see the difference between having faith of Christ and putting faith in Christ like the difference between God reaching out and rescuing us from sin and us trying to reach out far enough to take hold of God.
We can not save ourselves. we couldnt die to pay for our sins. It was Christ who did it. It was Christ who saved us.
If we are the ones putting OUR faith IN Christ the makes our salvation a product of works. Ephesian 2:8 proves that idea wrong.
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God"

"IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD"

IT says gift, not reward, not compensation, not payment, faith, grace and salvation are all a gift from God.

Another question that i thought on was 'if faith is a gift, how do we get more?'

Romans 10:17
"So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God"

Faith increase comes thru the most basic acts that a christian can do.
Read the Bible and spend time praying and talking with God.
simple.
but not always easy.

So hunger for the Bible as you hunger for food.

Battles have been won in history without and blood shed by one side trapping and then starving the other guys.
If we dont eat food we get weak and will eventually will die.
If we dont build up our faith, we get weak.
We have to keep repairing and restoring our "shield of faith"
Ephesian 6:16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
Satan wants to weaken our faith (shield). if we do not stay supplied with faith our shield will be less effective or even non-existent.

One of my favorite quotes is by John Piper.
"EAT BIBLE"

and that i my encouragement to you today.
Eat Bible as often as you eat physical food.

Praise God that He has given us each a measure of faith.
Our faith is of Him, and because He has given of this faith, we now can trust that He will give us what we need to grow.

Galatians 2:16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

Galatians 3:22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

All this to say that our faith comes from the Lord, and is not just 'in' the Lord.
sorta like the comparison of how we are supposed to be in the world, not of the world...
except it is the other way around.
our faith is a part of Christ, not attached to Him.
a part of His body. not just connected to it.
An ear, not an earring.

That is all that my now mushy, tired, 1 am brain can remember from the thoughtversation i had with myself this afternoon.




(Please correct me if you feel i have not spoken the truth in this matter.
I have been wrong before... )

Labels: , , ,

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Faith Trip

Two day faith trip.
Me and Joel.
On the two hottest days of the year so far.
Just the clothes on our backs, a Bible, and a water-bottle.
Why did i stick God in a box?
He jumped out of that box... yeah, He likes to do that.

So it started when Joel called me on wednesday and wanted to work out a time to do our faith trip. I had finished discipleship class at least a month before and was supposed to do my faith trip after that but i just got reallly busy with work and life... but thats okay because God had a better plan. :)
The first thing God did was work out my schedule so i could even go. i didnt have two days off in a row and i didnt think i would be able to work it out to get them off.
My boss doesnt like me changing her schedule. at all.
So when i got to work the next day and looked at my schedule it was changed. i had tuesday and wednesday off. i hadnt said anything to her. it was cool.
So we met at coffee outfitters in adna at 8am tuesday and our goal was to get to Pe Ell which was about 20 miles away. It seemed like a doable goal... at the time.
Prentice blessed us with a free coffee and we started out.
Not two minutes down the road Ben Booher passed us in his car and turned around to talk to us.
He encouraged us not to experiment with our faith, to take our faith seriously.
that was really encouraging. There is no warranty for our faith, if we really have it, it will work. Period.
he prayed for us and we continued on our way, walking down an old railroad track that had been turned into a walking trail. Just walking and talking. Encouraging eachother and catching up on life.
After a while we got off the trail and started walking along the highway... which alot hotter and sorta scary sometimes... semi trucks passing ten feet from you going 60 mph is frightening... i almost got blown over a few times. ;p
Then my allergies started bugging me something bad.
my head was about to explode. uhg. it was not cool.
so joel prayed for me. that was a smart thing to do.
We kept walking and talking, picking up shiny things off the side of the road.
I saw something on the side of the road so i picked it up.
It was a little pill bottle. My first reaction was to just put it down and leave it. I figured it was probably an empty bottle of something bad...
but i didnt put it down, i kept looking at it. i scraped off the dirt so i could see what it was... it said allergy medicine.
I was like, yay, a empty bottle of allergy medicine... but i shook it and it wasnt empty.
I assumed that it was at least partially used so i didnt want to use them but when i opened the lid...
IT WAS STILL SEALED.
and it was not expired.
seriously what are the odds of finding an un-opened, un-expired bottle of allergy medicine on the side of the road?
pretty stinkin slim if you ask me.
So i took some.
And praised the Lord for His incerdible bounty.
Hallelujah!
So we kept walking and walking and walking, taking a break, eating a chapter every now and then, praying, sweating... but we didnt stop to talk to anyone because we were focused on getting to Pe Ell.
THAT was a bit of a mistake.
We decided to stop at rainbow falls and have some lunch.
As we were sitting there digesting Luke 11 and a few Psalms we were both convicted that what we were doing was pretty pointless, we had walked 12 miles and had not shared the Gospel with a single soul. Why would God continue to bless us if we were not doing anything for Him?
Our goal was to share the Gospel, but we had shifted our focus to getting to Pe ell.
And similarly, in our Christian walks we often just focus on getting to Heaven, our destination, but once we are saved we cannot affect our destination... only what is inbetween here and there. We are not in a fight for our souls, if we have given Christ control of our lives then our souls are secure in His arms, instead, we are in a battle for others' souls. the souls of those who do not know Him.

We got up after a while with a new focus; to share the gospel, that was why we were there, after all.
We tried to talk to a biker-lady at the park but she wanted nothing to do with the gospel.
Continuing down the road, the first house we came to we knocked on the door and talked to guy who lived there.
He was a christian, in need of some fellowship i think, we stayed and talked and fellowshipped with him for well over an hour.
he asked us where we were trying to go so we told him that we were going to try to get to a lady in our church's house. We knew she lived nearby but we didnt know where.
He offered us a phonebook and a ride over there.
We accepted and he drove us there.
After we thanked him profusely for his kindness he left us with these words:
"KEEP YOUR FOCUS ON GOD, AND GOD ONLY"

We walked up the lady's house and found her in her barn, feeding her dogs.
She was surprised to see us but she lets us hang out.
She lived alone so we offered to help her out with anything on the farm but she couldnt think of anything to do. So we just spent the evening talking to her, we did a Bible study, and talked some more.
All this time she didnt offer us any food. And we, trying to follow the rules of the faith walk, didnt ask for any.
about 930 she said we could sleep on her porch, gave us some blankets and stuff and we bedded down for the night. Right as we were almost asleep she walked up with a bowl of strawberries and told us to eat them.
They were the BEST strawberries i had ever had. Oh man.
"chew them really well so we get the most energy out of them" said joel.
We both slept fitfully, which is about as good as you sleep on a porch, and woke with the sun.
We got up and decided to clean up her porch which was rather a mess. We did that for a few hours, got it waaaay cleaner that it was. She fed us some toast and hardboiled eggs. it was good.
We finished her porch and got ready to start back.
She told us that was going into town that evening and offered to pick us up if she saw us.
So we headed back towards town, determined to stop and knock on every door we passed.
So we did. The results were shocking.
First guy; christian.
second guy; christian
etc
etc
etc
etc
get the picture?
We talked to one guy in particular who was superrrrrrrr encouraging. Like alot.
He had been anointed by the Holy Spirit to be able to understand and teach the Bible.
Dude i wish i could teach like he did. He spoke exactly what joel and i needed to hear.
Another christian.
another christian.
One lady who wasnt a christian; *gasp* she didnt want to hear what we had to say.
She said that religions were like fruits, some were apples and some were oranges, you just had to find out what one you liked the best.
Then another christian.
Then a looooonnnngggg stretch of spread out houses, big dogs. and no trespassing or you will be shot signs.
Then joel's leg starting hurting really bad.
We rested on the side if the road for a little bit, ate some more Bible, and rested some more.
Soon thereafter Barb, the aforementioned lady, whose house we stayed at drove by and picked us up.
We drove home, God taught us alot, increased our faith, and showed me that i can go a whole day without food.


the end.

Friday, June 18, 2010

The EPIC faith adventure of hiking and more! Part 1; The Journey There.

Me and my buddy Jon were going on a hike for the weekend!
We had it all planned out; meet up at my grandma's house on thursday afternoon, get to bed early, get up early in the morning and leave first thing, hike up friday afternoon, chill in the beautiful Horseshoe Basin all day saturday, leave sunday morning and drive home when we got back down the mountain, get home safe and sound.
Hahaha.
Riiiiiight.
GOD had a much bigger and better plan.
Here is how it really happened....
First thing was that Jon didn't get there until about 11 pm and we still had to pack everything in my car.
like, he hadn't even put his clothes into his hiking pack.
We were just hangin' out, getting everything packed up, and just having a good time.
then all the sudden it was 12:30 am and we were still up, doing stuff, having fun.
*sigh* so much for getting enough sleep.
Then the thought crossed our minds **maybe we should just leave now and sleep when we get there if we need to**......
i was cool with it but i wasn't sure if it was the wise thing to do.
So we prayed about and felt like we should. (and in retrospect it was a reallllly good thing that we did)
seriously.
So here we are, 1 am, we'd both been up since 5 am the previous morning, leaving on a 6+ hour drive.
We were ambitious idiots. ( i will prove this again later) But GOD would work it out for good.
In desperate need of energy drinks we stopped in Olympia to get some.
We. were. buzzy. caffeine will do that to you.

the drive there was good, uneventful and smooth. We didnt talk about much of anything important. caffiene will do that to you.
We stopped in Loomis, which is the last little piece of civilization before you get into wilderness.
Jon got a vanilla coke to go with the steaks he had brought to cook over the fire.
He was stoked.
All was going to plan.
We stopped at this old power plant building next to the road and took some pics.
It was cool. nothing more than four gray walls but it was cool.



We hung out there for a while, played around on it.
It was probably about 9:30 am... but it felt like 3 in the afternoon.
We started driving (very slowly) to the dirt road that would lead us to the trailhead at about 10 and saw some AMAZING views and scenery. It was truly incredible.
I couldn't imagine how anyone could go hiking and not realize that GOD made this.
It was so obvious! It was breath-taking.
I passed over a few small patches of old snow along the road but i didn't think much about it.
THEN.
I saw another patch of snow coming up so i accelerated in order to make it through.
BAD.
BAD PLAN.
It worked for a few feet, but, about 30-40 feet into this snow patch we stopped.
I was still pressing the gas, but i was getting no where.
I was quite literally spinning my wheels.
ARRRGH!
We got out and looked and sure enough, my tires were sitting there in two, tire-shaped holes in the snow.
Yup, we were STUCK. Stuck good.

More coming soon, Rogerdodger.

(Story continued in Part 2)

Friday, June 4, 2010

Edward Cullen has nothing on me.


Seriously
i look like a vampire.
i am hiding my teeth rather well wouldn't you say?

Thursday, June 3, 2010

5 AM

Dear awesome people.
I am pretty sure we were the coolest group ever at conference. period.
Thank you all for the amazing memories we made at 5 in the morning.
(and to whom it may concern, you know who you are, i hope i dont blow your cover. ;))