On Saturday I was blessed to get to spend a few hours with an old roommate of mine who now lives several hours away. We caught up on the events in each others’ lives (He’s newly engaged!) and shared how life has been lately. It was a wonderful, encouraging time, and I was reminded of the blessing of deep friendships.
And as I finished reading 1 Samuel this morning, I saw many parallels in the lives of Jonathan and David. Close friends, bound by a covenant to one another, they both always sought the best for one another.
In one of the many instances of Saul (Jonathan’s father) seeking to kill David, 1 Samuel 23 records the story of Jonathan coming to David as a friend. This time, unlike times past, his goal was not to warn David - for David already knew of Saul’s plan. Instead, Jonathan went for a deeper purpose. Read the rest of this entry »
I wrote previously about Saul’s timidity, laziness, and fear. He was so crippled by them that on the day he was to be announced as King of Israel, he hid himself in the baggage train and hoped he would not be found.
Sadly, Saul did not recover his manhood, repent of his shortcoming, and become a great king. Instead, Saul’s fear led to greater failures.
As king, Saul was prone to terrible mood swings, due to an evil spirit sent upon him by God. When Saul raged, no one was safe, not even his loved ones. Read the rest of this entry »
At times, I feel like I spent my childhood in church, having attended every Sunday and been involved in many other activities there. Then, during three years as a philosophy major at a major university, I shared classes and coffee with many students who were apathetic at best but often vehemently atheistic. That experience was a blessing, opening my eyes to the fact that there are millions of people who have no knowledge of Christ. I have been slowly learning that all people have a story and reasons for where they stand spiritually. But there are some common factors.
A new book from LifeWay Research addresses those common factors. Lost and Found looks at the unchurched young people in America, and it considers how they can be reached. The book is broken into three sections, each dealing with a different aspect of the situation. The first third is a detailed look at studies conducted by LifeWay, studies that probed the thoughts, feelings, and spirituality of unchurched people between 18 and 29. Then the authors, Ed Stetzer, Richie Stanley, and Jason Hayes, analyze four markers of successful outreach to young people, pointing out some characteristics of ministries to which the unchurched respond well. Finally, several churches with successful ministry programs were studied, and their advice is broken into nine common suggestions. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: evangelism, reviews
I am frequently haunted by the words in the Bible. I don’t mean that they appear visibly, like a ghost might, but that they force their way into my mind as I lie sleepless in the early hours of the morning. So, on nights like these, I get out of bed and go sit quietly on my front porch.
Several sections of Scripture weigh on my soul, but there is one that frequently returns to mind. Probably more than the rest, this one weighs on me because it is the words of Christ. In John 5, Jesus chastises the Jews, because they are seeking to kill Him for blasphemy. Having given many reasons to accept His divinity, Jesus closes with a criticism of their reading of the Old Testament.
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.
And I wonder: Do I know just enough about Jesus to teach a Bible study, to have a conversation about Him, or have I come to Him so that I may have life?
Those verses haunt me, reminding me that belief is vastly more than knowing and affirming a set of doctrines. Belief is coming to a living God, throwing myself at His feet, and searching through the Bible and in prayer to know more of Him.
Photo by trazomfreak and used according to the Creative Commons agreement
I know that God has plans for my life, and I know that He’s called me to honor Him in all my ways. And yet I’m not always excited about following His path. Some days I’d rather make small talk than discuss faith with someone. Some days I just want the easy life. Some days I just want to stay in bed.
By no means am I the only one that has felt this way, and I know that. We’ve all felt the weight of laziness at times. Even in the Bible there is a host of stories of people who felt the same. But the trouble is that the Biblical characters who wanted the easy life are the ones whose lives go terribly wrong.
I’m reading 1 Samuel right now, coming back to an area I haven’t read in a long while. Tonight I got to chapter 10, and I read about God’s choice of Saul as the first king of Israel. The story of Saul’s fall from grace and his eventual struggle with David has always stuck out to me, but I largely overlook the beginning of Saul’s reign.
Saul was chosen by God to be king. The Bible records that Saul was “a handsome young man.” It says that “there was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.” Saul, by appearance, was everything you could want in a monarch. But his character left much to be desired. When God desired to place him on the throne, revealing him as king, Saul was not present - the people could not see him.
“When they sought him, he could not be found. So they inquired again of the LORD, ‘Is there a man still to come?’ and the LORD said, ‘Behold, he has hidden himself among the baggage.’”
So tonight’s soul-searching means that I have to ask if I am living diligently. Have I embraced Christ’s call or am I hiding among the baggage?
Tags: 1 samuel
I’ve been thinking a lot about vengeance and pacifism lately, after having gotten into a heated discussion after watching the movie Taken with one of my roommates. How far-reaching should Christ’s injunction to love our enemies be? Could we be justified in taking a life if the life of a loved one is at stake?
As I’ve discussed, read, prayed, and thought through the issue, I’ve become more firmly entrenched in my belief that pacifism should be the way of life for a Christian. Grace and mercy should be extended in all circumstances. Reading through Seeking Peace and Gandhi on Non-Violence: A Selection From the Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, I’ve found myself respecting those who have been willing to fully embrace a life of nonviolence.
But last night, as I sat in Breakaway on the Texas A&M campus, I was convicted by the words of Ben Stuart. He taught on 1 Samuel 24 and David’s own struggle with pacifism. Refusing to kill his enemy, David instead cut the corner off of his robe. Afterwards, it is written that “David’s conscience bothered him because he had cut off the edge of Saul’s robe” (v. 5). Although no physical harm was done, David still felt the sting of conviction. When Ben taught on that verse, he covered modern situations in which we are faced with a similar dilemma between vengeance and forgiveness. In many ways, we perform evil actions out of a desire to punish those who have harmed us.
I realized then that I am guilty of repaying evil for evil when I gossip, when I speak evil of friends. I don’t take out my vengeance in the form of physical attacks, but when I slander my friends for their shortcomings, I have taken matters into my own hands. I am attempting to get back at them for the harm they have caused me.
Today I am working through all the areas in my life in which I need to work more diligently to share the love and grace of Christ rather than repaying others with evil. I’m praying that God would give me strength to quietly repay harm with love.
Dr. Earl Henslin’s latest book, This Is Your Brain on Joy, incorporates cutting edge research in a work designed to help readers balance their mood and restore their brain’s health. Using SPECT technology (SPECT stands for single photon emission computerized tomography!), Henslin has been able to identify major regions of the brain and decipher the causes of many of our mood swings and other erratic emotions.
That fancy technology maps the brain, allowing trained professionals to understand human behavior from a very technical perspective. Dr. Henslin does a marvelous job, in this book, of simplifying his findings down to a level that is easily understood. His goal is not to sound impressive; rather, he works very diligently to keep his explanations as accessible as possible. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: reviews
So far I’ve been accepted to four law schools, and each of my acceptance letters has been different. The most recent stands out far above the rest for something very minor - the dean’s handwritten note at the bottom. All correspondence I receive from schools seems to be signed by a dean or an associate dean, but until George Washington Law sent me this acceptance letter, I hadn’t seen any full notes.
For all I know, Frederick M Lawrence writes a similar note to everyone they admit to GW Law, but his words were well-chosen and have stayed in my mind for the last few days.
Joshua, you are an impressive young man. I hope you will bring your unique and ideas and experiences to our law school community.
He may, in fact, write the same note to everyone, but it doesn’t read like a preplanned note, and I appreciated him for it. Writing the note probably took less than a minute of his time, but that small effort made that school considerably more appealing to me.
Because of his note, I’ve begun to wonder how many opportunities I have daily to make small gestures that would mean a great deal to someone. So I’ll try to smile a bit more, I’ll plan to make a few phone calls just to catch up with friends, and I’ll go out of my way to encourage a couple people this week. None of it’s going to take much effort, but it might just lift someone’s spirit - and that would be worth it all.
Tags: encouragement, law school
(This is a repost of an idea from July of 2005.)
*Disclaimer: This post will discuss Country music. Anyone not from Texas, or otherwise excused from enjoying Country/Western songs may experience slight nausea or a ringing in the ears after reading the following entry.*
I should start by saying that I’m not a musician and that I’m far from being labeled “musically inclined,” so my taste in music as well as my opinions on music have absolutely no credibility whatsoever.
Although I enjoy many Christian songs and a number of Christian bands, I find myself disheartened and disoriented if I listen to Christian radio for very long. Although that sentence could be made into a post of its own, I’ll leave that topic alone for now by simply saying that contemporary Christian music is usually too individualistic or too cheerfully playful for me to enjoy.
I’ve found that I often learn more about God and am subsequently drawn closer to Him through secular songs than I am through the large majority of Christian songs. I particularly like Country music because of the deep emotions that the songs express. Country songs feel like a glimpse into some of the deepest parts of the human life, and I find myself looking inwards to identify those emotions inside myself. Observing human behavior and emotion is often a spiritual experience for me as I learn new things about God through the people He has made in His own image. Read the rest of this entry »
I am incredibly stubborn, and I know that I’m not alone.
I know what I think, and I know that I think it for good reasons. You can argue with me, but you’re not likely to change my mind. It’s not that I’m right in every case, it’s just that I think I’m more likely to be right than you are. (At this point, I could turn this into a post on pride being the deepest sin in our hearts, and I could cover all the ways pride manifests itself. Perhaps in another post.)
I know that I’m stubborn, and obviously I’m willing to admit it. In fact, I don’t generally see it as a bad thing. One needs to have a backbone and a willingness to stand up for what he believes.
But when it comes to growing in righteousness, to being conformed to the image of Christ, my stubbornness can become a sin. Romans 12:2 shows that Paul clearly saw Christian life as a continual becoming. An ongoing change. He wrote, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Read the rest of this entry »
