You Are Here

I spent most of last week struggling.  Sure, I still read my bible daily--I couldn't live with myself if I ignored it entirely--but I'd scaled back how much I was reading. My excuse, Numbers is a really dull book.  The whole week, I'd oscillated between it and an in-depth study of Psalms I recently started.  By in-depth, I mean, I've started reading only one or two songs and trying to break them down verse by verse.  Really, what that means for me, is I've got to fight harder to seriously study every aspect of the Psalm.  It's like, I read it, I figure out what it's saying, why it was written, and the audience it was written for, then I take that and make a mental note of whom this would be good for and how it could encourage people in certain situations, and then, then if I cannot apply it to myself personally in the here-and-now, I move on to other things.

Ordinarily, or formerly as it may be, this would have been more than enough God time for me.  I'd feel spiritually refreshed, and in sync with God.  I'm a simple guy.  If the bible shows me an example of God using disabled people in spite of their pain or suffering, I'm happy.  If God reveals a nuance of his love for humanity that I'd never considered, I'm jumping up and down and singing praises in front of the drill press.

But, it's not just me anymore.

Too many people depend on my faith for their own walk with God.

I'm not saying they are my responsibility or that without me they wouldn't be able to do the whole God thing. God is God, and he doesn't need anyone or anything to fulfill his divine purpose in our lives.  Besides, we can't save anyone, no matter how hard we try.  Only God, through his mercy, saves.

What I'm saying is that God has placed these people and situations in my life for a reason, and all I know to do is give God the glory however I can.

I wish there was a step-by-step process to get help from the useless staff at a nursing home or encourage every doubting believer or reunite every broken love.  You know, something with faceless illustrations.


There's not--but there is a God in control of all these situations.

As much as I love helping people come closer to God, I still wonder how I fit in. My human nature yearns to see it's own desires fulfilled.  Last week was hard because I didn't always feel the strongest, or if I did, I pushed myself farther than I should have--and it hurts even to admit it--and I hate being stuck on a couch.  I worry I'll never have the strength to serve God in the way I want, even though I know he will sustain me and even without Muscular Dystrophy, I would never be strong enough to serve him without his strength in me.

It's a tough battle, even without all the people who depend on me for encouragement.  I hope you can see how broken and weak I felt.  I didn't understand how I could possibly be where God wanted me to be in order to glorify him most and become more Christ-like in my actions.

God snapped me out of it Friday.

Just like the day before, God had really shown me how blessed I was, and how many people he had placed around me who were imbued with the Holy Spirit.  Because of people like Catherine, Mary, and Crystal, I was seeing God work out my own problems.

That gave me the strength to ignore my own suffering and fight the many temptations dangling in front of me.  Seriously, God is enough.

I saw who I was without God, and how miserable I had been back then, and I hated that person.

After leading the French bible study, and being overwhelmed by God's presence in it, I wanted nothing more than for God to know my faults and lead me in the way everlasting.


But I have spared you for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. ~Exodus 9:16

Feeling Courageous

Ok, you got me. This is more about an upcoming movie than about the bible.

My church is reserving several theaters for opening night at the nearby movie theater.  Church goers are encouraged to buy their tickets through the church, and also to contribute towards getting tickets for the entire city's police precinct (and their wives) to come see the movie.

My plan is to buy three tickets tomorrow.  One is for a police officer, and the other two I'm reserving for myself.  There are two ideal uses for those tickets, in my opinion.  Me, Jonathan, the adorable single dude I am, I 'd love to take a Christian woman to see this movie with me, i.e. on a date.  I have someone in mind, but it's in God's hands if I go with her, since at this point, it's still a bit far off.

The other ideal use of the spare ticket would be for the friend whom God most wants to see this movie with me.  Considering the trailer promises a deep, make-you-read-ya-bible plotline, there's a lot of potential for God to speak through the movie.

In the meantime, I'm going to pray that God reveals whom should sit next to me in the theater, because I do not doubt there is someone God's pointing to.

Someone else

In the past month and a half-ish, I finished reading Revelations and started back again with Genesis. This time around, I've got more colored pens than I did when I started last time, so I'm keeping an eye out for the details I've yet to color-code, but more than that, I've been fascinated with how God's love works in the Old Testament. Most if not all Christians understand God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Sure, okay, nifty, but that's the New Testament God.

The Old Testament God is the exact same entity as the New Testament God, just saying.

God doesn't change, got it. Except, the Old Testament loves getting all nationalistic for the nation of Israel and the Jewish people. Considering,they're God's chosen people, I can't help feeling a little out of the loop.

But, God loved the world, not just the Jewish people. Where is that in the Old Testament? The New Testament tells us that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for we are all one in Jesus. Surely that doesn't mean before Jesus was born, God loved non-Jews (aka Gentiles) less than Jews.

If Jesus is the promised messiah, the promised savior of the Jewish people (which, praise God, he is!) and he told his followers to make disciples of all nations, then there should be some indication in the Old Testament of his awesome salvation being available to non-Jewish people also.

The first example that comes to mind is the promise made to Abraham, that through his offspring, the whole world would be blessed. I don't know about you, but I've always found that idea to be a bit vague. True, you can, by a long process of analyzing both the language used and the family tree of Abraham down to Jesus, and see that yes, it is theoretically possible that because of Jesus, all nations are blessed.

The only problem is that we're back at the idea that all non-Jews before Christmas 0000 were screwed. Sucks to be them.

I use a purple exclamation mark in the margins of my bible when I discover a verse that shows God's love for non-Jews or the faith they have in him. Sometimes, I put the exclamation mark in parenthesis to indicate the possibility the verse shows God's love for non-Jews or their faith in him. I've only made it halfway through Numbers since starting the bible over again, and most of the purple exclamation marks I've drawn had parenthesis around them.

A few verses in Numbers 15 did not.

Numbers 15:13...blah, blah...when one of God's chosen people by birth brings an offering he should do it like this...Numbers 15:14...when a foreigner living among you presents an offering to the Lord, he must do it the same way...

Wait, what?

Numbers 15:15...same rules for native born and foreigner living among you...You and the alien shall be the same before the Lord.

Say again?

Numbers 15:16...the same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the alien living among you.

For some odd reason, I feel like there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free but Christ is all, and is in all.