Starting Again

I’ve been down and out of this whole blogging thing for a while now.   During the summer I started having to go to bed early for work and for some reason I have discovered that I by far more inspired in the late hours of the night, hence the fact that it is 2 am now.  I don’t want to be so arrogant as to assume that people actually care about what my thoughts are so please don’t think I am doing this out of pride.  This is more or less a place for me to organize and record my thoughts at the time.  If someone happens to enjoy them or get something out of them then so be it, if not its not a loss for me.  Also, if you are a first time reader and are confused about the name, check out the very first post.  I thought it was awesome that I knew Hebrew so I incorporated it into the title.

Anyways, I have edited the “phrase” of this blog and it now says “Life is frightening”.  Recently this has been made very clear to me in a few ways.

One, is the diagnosis of one of my close friends from high school of cancer.  We have been disconnected for more than a few years now and haven’t really kept in touch.  He is a free spirit and really does the first thing that comes to his mind.  In high school he helped create a Jackass type film in which he did many many stupid things but I still contend to this day that it may rival the actual Jackass in some respects.  I need to get a copy of that.  He was rock climbing and fell from 20 feet and hurt himself.   He ended up having extended back and abdomen pain which was originally attributed to the fall but upon a further MRI it was revealed that he had a few aggressive tumors invading his body.  He just finished his second round of chemo and is responding and feeling much better, praise God.  His entries on his website have been interesting and compelling. http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jonpound Frightening.

Second, my family is moving on with their life.  My little sister is about to graduate from high school and that is super weird.  Obviously this is something that was going to happen, but ever since their move to my home its been weird for me.  They do things without letting me know, how dare they.  They went to Pittsburg for a weekend a while ago, a sort of mini-vacation, and never told me.  It’s not like they should have, but it still hit me for some reason.  I have felt more and more regret with the way I took my family for granted while I actually lived with them.  I know that is cliché to say, but its true and its frightening.

Third, I am being forced to make decisions now that are determining my immediate future in many ways, and that is terrifying.  This brings me to my point.  I have to make a decision on my internship real soon as to whether it will be a full 6 and 1/2 months over seas or just around 2 months.  I have now been dating Krista for 1 year now and as much as I would like to say she doesn’t affect this decision, she really does.  The thought of being apart from her for 6 and 1/2 months is terrible and is really influencing my decision, as are many other factors though to be fair.

One of the things that is making this decision so hard is the fact that I have always carried this strange belief with me that God is always going to call me to do the most difficult thing possible.  If I am given two choices then I will automatically be called to choose the most difficult one.  I don’t know if this stems from the fact that I have not lived a hard life up to this point at all and this is God trying to make it hard on me because its impossible for life to be fun and you get everything you enjoy.  I’m a cynic and a pessimist at home and I just always feel like I am supposed to suffer in life.  Thus this decision is difficult because, regardless of common sense and logic, I feel that God is calling me to make the bigger sacrifice and go overseas to the Philippines for the longest time possible.  This is terrifying.

Yet despite all this fear, I am reminded by a fantastic conversation that I shared earlier tonight with some good friends of mine.  The discussion eventually landed on our control that we have over our lives and ultimately the matter of faith.  This is something that I struggle with to a huge degree.  I like to control everything so that I know for certain what the outcome will be.  I want to control my friend’s life so that he is ok.  I want to control my family so I don’t lose touch with them like I inevitably will to some extent.  I want to control the length of my internship so that I can control Krista’s and mine relationship so I can control where it goes.  I want to know exactly what we will be doing a year from now and what our plans for the future will be and for me that means going overseas shorter.  I lack the faith to put my relationship in the hands of God and give him the control.  I want to retain control so that my plan unfolds because anything God has in store is silly.  I act as though my thoughts make more sense than the plan that God has for Krista and I.  I think we can all see the error of these thoughts.  I am not saying this automatically means that I need to go for the longer time, just that I need to trust God that whichever decision I make I will give control to him in it.

I won’t give control to God because I feel that I am supposed to be a martyr and always suffering for him as well.  I need to give my life to him.  Sometimes he will call me to be happy, sometimes not, again control is the issue.

As life becomes more and more frightening as the years come I am realizing that instead of tightening my grip on my plans, I need to completely let go and release them.  In the past this would seem paradoxical, but now it only seems logical.  It does me no good to have control of my life, it does me all the good in the world to have my life in God’s hands.

I am at a lot more words than I thought I would write so I’m going to stop.  Again, please don’t think I am preaching to anyone out there, I am just recording my meandering thoughts.  As you can see this may not even make much sense as a whole, but oh well.  Comment if you want, I appreciate any and all feedback.  Until next time I am up late and thinking, God bless.

Sam

Real Church

Just recently I finished a book called “Real Church”, authored by Larry Crabb.  This is a fantastic and insightful look into what a “real church” is and whether or not we are exemplifying it today.  In the beginning of the book he describes an experience he had at a church he visited on a vacation once.  It was a good introduction because it grabbed your attention and got you thinking about the point of the whole book.  I think one thing that really laid hold on me is Larry’s age.  I know that sounds weird, but when I pictured him, I pictured someone in their 30’s or younger because I feel that our generation very easily questions everything.  But Larry is 63.  That hit me, if someone of this age and pedigree (he’s written several other books) is questioning church, then maybe I should listen.  I won’t tell you his end point but I believe the overall theme of the book is to never put God in a box and always always always expect more out of him.  Always expect something bigger and greater and don’t be content with what we have now.  Chapter’s 5 and 8 are also two of the greatest chapters in any book I’ve ever read.  They have to do with church in a roundabout way, but they deal with love and hope and these two things are described in a different way then I have ever heard.  I loved it, it was beautiful.  I would highly recommend reading this book, he takes a long, hard look at “church” and I think you will be surprised at what he finds.

So much so much

There are so many thoughts swirling about in my head right now…I don’t really know how to capture them all and give them all justice and enough time to be pondered appropriately…so we’ll bullet point this and see how it works.

• Scrubs is an amazing show.  I love it.  I realized one of the reasons tonight, not only is J.D. one of the funniest characters I have ever encountered, but the music in the show is just a line-up of some of my all time favorites.  Just recently they have played Coldplay, Ben Folds, The Fray, Keane, and Augustana.  Thats incredible.  The show makes me think so much too.  A recent episode chronicled the life and ultimately death of a woman they had been taking care of in the hospital for a long time.  In the episode they dump a large amount of sand onto the roof so they can take this woman to the beach one last time before she dies, since she can’t leave the hospital.  They ask her what she feels about dying.  She responds with,”I was never really afraid of dying, in fact, I used it as a motivator.  When you know there’s an end, it forces you to live.”  Dang, thats true.  The inevitable of an end forces you to value the time given.  If we view our lives as a limitless blob of nothing that continues into oblivion then we will never get anything accomplished.  Perspective is beautiful and something to be cherished when its given to you.  Perspective is what gives us passions in life.  This is clearly in focus with my recent experiences with Krista Lee this summer.  When our time seemed limitless at school it really forced me to take it for granted and to sometime focus on little petty things that did not deserve my attention nor worth it to bother our relationship with.  When the end is near, saying goodbye for a month plus at this point, then if forces you to cherish the times you do have and make it worth while.  It gives you a different passion that you can only have with a sense of urgency.  I don’t think this is a bad sense of urgency though, I think urgency can be in two forms, this is the good kind that only motivates you to make the most of what you have.  Application to life: pretty obvious, allow deadlines and due dates to motivate you to do better and make the most of the time God has blessed you with.  Allow the ultimate deadline of death to motivate you not to waste your life.  This may seem contradictory to a previous post about the need to not focus so much on the end that we lose sight of the present.  I guess my thoughts are morphing and moving and nothing is set.  Maybe what I’m saying here is that the end is necessary in order to focus on the present.

Staying up late makes me super motivated, but also super tired, I’m going to go to bed now and just post this one bullet, I promise more tomorrow though, I have too much going on in my head to let it go, I need to record them somehow, actually here are some quick bullets for my own memory:

• Heaven
• Loving Madison
• John 2:1-12
• Luke 8:42-48
• Mark 10:13-16
• Thats right, the Gospels are amazing, God is revealing a lot to me through them this summer
• A book review from Thomas Nelson on “Real Church” or something like that
• Relationships and their centrality to everything
• The Invisible? I took notes on my phone when I watched this movie
• Possibly my favorite movie ever as well, Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

We’ll see if I get to all this…we’ll see, at least there is a list there now for me to check off though so I don’t have to keep remembering this things in my head and putting a memo up there to blog about it.  I don’t even know if what I wrote above follows itself, it very well could contradict itself, those are just meandering thoughts listed…

Night

Blessings,

Sam

Theorizing

About heaven.

Also about how to solve the world’s problems.  I think we should remove everyone’s sex drive.  Boom.  Problems gone.  One of the things that infuriates me the most is the sex trade in the world and pornography and that whole department of nasty stuff.  I think the way to solve this problem is to remove everyone’s sex drive and make sex only for procreating.  Honestly, it would suck, but I think the lives it would save and the horrors that would cease because of it would be mind boggling and totally worth it.  I watched the movie Taken recently and I guess it just got me thinking about that type of stuff and how much I would hate if someone I loved was in that situation.  It works me up more than anything right now I think.  Think about it though, without a sex drive there would be no need for pornography…the sex trade…rape…there is probably more but if you ask me, removing those things from the world would be incredible.  I don’t know.  When asked if they could change one thing in the world what would it be, most people say to stop world hunger, I say to stop horniness.  Boom.

And about conspiracy theories.  I would also like to dedicate a paragraph to the recent celebrity deaths that have been happening and use it to take another opportunity to explain why Obama is the anit-Christ, like every good Christian should.  My friend Greg, at http://greg-loesch.com/blog/, and I were chatting recently about the multitude of recent celebrity deaths and thinking about how weird it is.  My weird imagination went into movie mode and made it a sort of story that could only happen if you mix the Da Vinci Code and Watchmen.  What do Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Steve McNair all have in common?  They were a part of a secret society that protects the world from annihilation and Barak freakin Obama found out about it.  I mean come on, really?  Like he doesn’t have enough going against him in the Christian community already, now he has to go and do this?  Might as well start calling him Nikoliy Carpathia and planning his funeral that he will resurrect from later.  These celebrities, while on the outside seem to be weird people with problems, secretly they teamed up to stop countless attacks on humanity.  Now, to quote Watchmen, I think someone is going around picking off costumed heros.  I can only imagine who is left on the list of Mr. Obama, I have a feeling that Bob Sagat, Barbara Streissand, Vince Vaughn, John Voight, and George W. Bush himself are all in grave danger…there, I bashed Obama like a good Christian.

Also, I realize I said heaven above and I’ve got thoughts on that too…but those are for another time.  Community, thats where I think it all ends, I’ll just say that for now.  Relationships like the previous post.  Heaven is different than what we think I think.

Blessings,

Sam

Timing

Ugh, I’m inspired right now, I want to write something deep and thoughtful and insightful…but I’m also super tired…so it will come tomorrow maybe I think…

Just know that God loves relationships and I think he uses them more than anything to bless people.  Relationships are where we started with God, it is what God demands of us now with Him, and it is ultimately where humanity will end up with God…I’ll expound later.  I’m just blessed.

Sam

My Screw Up

This is out of no where, but I felt it necessary just to record some of my feelings.  This is more or less of a journal post as opposed to Biblical “insight”, but we’ll see where my thoughts take me.

Scrubs just made me cry.  I don’t really feel bad admitting that because this episode, the 14th of season 3 is one of the best pieces of film I have seen.  I think I feel confident saying that.  For those of you that haven’t seen it, for the purposes of this post I’m going to ruin the ending.  So stop reading at this paragraph and let me know and I’ll sent you the episode or direct you to where you can watch it first if you don’t want it spoiled.  I want to emphasize how good this episode is and that I would probably prefer if you watched it first but if not, its up to you.

First I want to say that Scrubs may be the most underrated show ever.  Not only is it laugh out loud funny in so many ways (I love Zach Braff btw) but it is very thought provoking and sentimental.  I’m planning on catching up through season 8 if I can find it this summer.

But this episode is about how Dr. Cox’s best friend and brother-in-law dies of lukemia.  It is not evident until the very last scene that he passed away and its a beautifully produced and written episode.  The brother-in-law, played by Brendan Frasier, is still a character throughout the episode but in the end turns out to be an apparition in Dr. Cox’s mind, a figment of his imagination if you will.  Dr. Cox is in denial about his death until the very end when he shows up at what he thinks to be his son’s birthday party, but it ends up being the funeral.  Cox blames J.D and himself and Brendan wouldn’t allow Cox to go to the funeral until he owned up to these two things.  He made hims apologize to J.D. and say that there was nothing he could do about it.  J.D. felt an immense amount of guilt because he was there when Brendan died and said that there was nothing that could have been done, Dr. Cox felt otherwise and blamed J.D.  Cox also blamed himself because he left the hospital to take care of something at the exact time his brother-in-law coded and died.  He felt that he could have saved his life.  2 days later and Brendan Frasier still following him around and us still not realizing that he was dead, Brendan convinces Cox to forgive J.D. and also himself.  I have now seen this episode probably 4 times, I’ve known it was coming every time since the first viewing (obviously) and I’ve still cried every time.  I don’t know what gets me so much about this episode.

I think the main thing is how Brendan goes touring around the world cause he knows he’s dying but neglects his relationship with Cox.  Cox is upset because he wasn’t spending time with him but gets over it once he is there.  I think he is even more upset later in the episode once he realizes the death because of all the wasted time that could have been spent with his brother-in-law.  I think that that was partly why he was so mad at himself as well.  This gets me.  Wasted time gets me.  The irony of it all is that I worry a lot about wasting my time that the worrying causes me to waste it in the first place.  Its a trick of the devil, I’m convinced of this.  I think I realized the other day that one of the things he does is make things in the future seem so grand and awesome that we look forward to it so much and forget the present.  I could possibly go as far as to say that he convinces many Christians about how awesome heaven is that they lose their effectiveness here on earth because of it.  I know thats weird to say that the devil uses heaven for his own purposes, but I honestly believe it.  I think that too many Christians are so excited about heaven that they don’t even worry about others here on earth.  In one sense I think it is a very selfish thing.  To worry that much about how much you are going to enjoy heaven is wrong, I think.  But it is a very delicate balance because I know there is a lot in this life that is disheartening and discouraging and the promise of heaven and a new community is what gives a lot of people hope to live for something.  It is difficult, very difficult.  There is a balance there and I don’t know what it is.  I have not given it nearly enough thought to accurately say something as this thought literally occurred to me 3 minutes ago.  I think it goes along with the theme of selflessness and humility.  I just can’t see God looking down on us for only focusing on the relationships around us in order to accumulate more souls for the end.  I do not want people to think that I think that we should never focus on heaven though, like I said it is an important source of hope for us.  I’m just saying that too often we worry, and I think worry can be a good thing aka look forward to, and we lose sight of the real reason we were put on earth.  What exactly that is, I’m not sure either, but I’m learning and God is teaching me and revealing things to me.  I guess this post is contrary to my foundational beliefs in that it is a little personal and self-serving, forgive me, this is just a revelation that God is giving me because of how much I struggle with it I think.  This summer is a good example.  I am looking forward so much to certain things that life is just passing by and honestly, there isn’t a whole lot of life to waste.  That worries me, that I’m wasting to much of my life, and that worrying wastes more of my life.  It’s a vicious circle that I’m stuck in right now and I think God is trying to teach me to get out of it.  I think this is more than just worrying though.  This is also a lack of faith on my part.  This is where much of the worrying stems from I think.  I think it also stems from my pride and the fact that I think I can get by on my own and I worry about getting by on my own instead of humbling myself and realizing I can’t do it on my own.  I should be worrying about my lack of faith and pride more than anything.  I’m trying to think of a good Bible verse now to make this all seem Biblical, but nothing good is coming, I mean I can come up with a verse about worrying, but nothing thats really special at the moment.  I think this post was more or less of a self-realization of my own accord, but I hope so much that it could help someone else too.  I’m sorry if it doesn’t and I just wasted your time with this post.

Welp, that is what Scrubs did for me tonight.  I did not expect that. Dang.  I think that episode also has shades of a lesson in valuing relationships, but I’m tired and am interested to see what happens in the next episode, so that post will have to wait.  Now I am going to watch the follow up and see what happens.  God bless.

Sam

Painful Faith

New thing: I’m gonna state whatever tunes I’m listening to or obsessed with at the moment of the post…

Let’s Get It Started, Black Eyed Peas

I realize this is very long…so if you don’t have a lot of time I would ask that you just skip to the end and just read the last bullet point, thats kind of the focus of this whole thing and the reason for the title. : )

When I think about posting it always seems like a long and arduous process and I put it off and put it off…for no reason cause once I sit down it just flows and really isn’t that bad, I guess more than anything I’m afraid of what people with think of the post and thus put it off so I don’t have to worry about that…who knows…insecurity and pride prevent me from doing a lot in life, I’m trying to get over it though…

Today is Father’s day and the somewhat normal message was taught at church, it was kind of from a different angle than normal I think, but very good.  I love my pastor.  He is probably the most godly man I have ever encountered and I thank God that he blesses our church with him.  He is the perfect example of humility, probably also the hardest thing to be in this day and age and my respect for him is incredible.  My associate pastor that I’m close with made the bold statement that the reason our church is so successful is because of the ultimate humility of Dave, and I agree.  Its fascinating and something so very rarely seen in today’s society, Christian society, that its kind of sickening.  Sorry, just had to get that out there.  Well I looked at the bulletin and I saw the name Jairus and for some reason my mind went immediately to the tragic story in Judges with the man who sacrificed his daughter…and I thought…neato, this is going to be cool, how can he tie this story in with a Father’s day message?  And then I looked at the passage and saw it was in Luke 8 and all my hopes were dashed…kind of, it was still a super good sermon that hopefully I can talk a little bit about later…maybe…but now I want to do what he didn’t and talk about Jephthah, the man I originally thought the sermon would be on…

I’m assuming both of you are familiar with this story…but just in case you aren’t heres a little background.  Israel is super messed up during the book of Judges.  They are on a constant swing from bad to good to bad to good and over again, God is constantly sending them these super heroes to save them and show them their sin.  If you ever want a great picture of God’s mercy…look at Judges…cause dang did the Israelites screw up so many times…over and over.  Also, this is the most entertaining book in the Bible, at least from a guys point of view.  We love the action and killing and stuff.  Shamgar, little known judge, kills 600 people with and oxgoad…what the heck? really? really? This story is only one verse too, Judges 3:31, btw what is an oxgoad?  Apparently it is just a stick with a pointy end used to goad oxen…kind of self explanatory, but nonetheless fantastic and almost unbelievable.  Samson some how managed to wrangle up 300 foxes.  Umm excuse me?  I don’t know what the point of all that was, but read Judges thoroughly if you haven’t, it’s fascinating.  It’s also important to note that the Judges never have it all together, they are not some perfect Superman sent from the heavens to save all of humanity, but instead normally just humans with problems, but God uses the problems, super encouraging if you ask me.  But back to Jephthah…

I must admit that I haven’t done a good in depth study of this and some of what I say will be memory from class, but these are just my observations.  Upon first glance there is nothing to see here from a parental or fatherly point of view.  What can we gain from a man who made a silly promise and ended up having to sacrifice his daughter? Anything? I think we can take at the very least 1 thing from it…maybe more if you guys can think of anything…here we go.  The background of the story is that Jephthat and his band of merry men are more or less outcasts from the Israelite community and are actually not in Israel but across the Jordan in Tob.  Thus making him and unlikely candidate to be the savior of God’s chosen people, I mean if they rejected him what good can he be to them then? (They rejected Jesus).  I’m not anti-semetic by any means, I’m just saying.  For reference this story takes place in Judges 11.  I want you to read the whole passage, its kind of long but just the whole chapter 11, but dang is it full of good stuff, as I read it I was just thinking thought after thought, hopefully I can record them all and have them all make sense.  As I’m reading through it I’m seeing much more to gain from this passage than fatherly advice and I’m excited.  Its just amazing how God leads you and teaches you, Scripture is just the best.  I love it.  Here we go: random thoughts in bullets:

• The first thing the passage says is that he is the son of a prostitute, a bastard if you will.  This is why he was driven out of Israel and an outcast.  His merry band is referred to in the ESV as “worthless fellows”.  In the NIV it is “adventurers”.  The Hebrew word is “req” and the noun literally means empty, worthless, for no purpose, men of no principle and reckless.  Very interesting if you ask me, it appears that Jephthah attracted all the misfits to him.
• It turns out that the Ammonites attack the Israelites and they go to Jephthah for help.  I would love to be a fly on the wall in this situation.  Jephthah had to either feel completely in control of the situation or completely flabbergasted(thats right I used that word) that they would even think to approach him after they hated him and made him leave Israel.  I can see the head officials wandering meekly into this camp of ruffians that Jephthah maintains, looking around disgusted at the foul words and barbarian actions of the men around them.  As they get to Jephthah’s tent they are second guessing themselves wondering if this was really what they wanted to do.  The leader turns around to leave but the people behind him turn him back insisting on this choice.  Jephthat of course knew they were coming the whole time and made them sit in trembling silence for a long time as he contemplated what he was going to do.  I have a feeling that Jephthah was in complete control of the situation and knew exactly what was going on with the Ammonites and probably was just waiting for the leaders to approach him.  I can see this as a similar situation to what Joseph dealt with with his brothers in Egypt.  For some reason I can see this epic scene unfolding in my head as though it were in a movie.  I hope i described it so you can maybe see what I am seeing : ) Jephthah’s first words to them are awesome.  I love his response.  I believe that they stated the obvious, asking him to come be their leader, to come be their “get out of jail free” and be their last ditch effort at saving them from the Ammonites.  Jephthah says. “Did you not hate me and drive me out of my father’s house?  Why have you come to me now when you are in distress?”  Boom, roasted.  Jephthah just says, you hated me before, drove me out of my home and force this life upon me, now give me one good reason why I should help you.
• It is interesting what happens here.  At face value I question Jephthah.  He agrees to help them , but only after they promise him control over all of them.  He pretty much makes them grovel and beg a bit and then says if you make me the head over everyone, then I will save you.  Man, that is wrong.  That is not the right reason to do something, in my opinion.  He should have saved them out of love, as hard as that would have been to do, loving his enemies is what should be going on.  I don’t really know what to make of this.  I think maybe God is teaching the Israelites a lesson through this…love everyone #1 because I told you to, regardless of them being born of a prostitute or not and #2 you might need their help some day.  It sounds selfish I know, but I think God is telling them, look, if you wouldn’t have driven him out in the first place you wouldn’t be having this problem.  But then that makes me wonder if they hadn’t have driven him out if he ever would have formed his band of worthless men and in turn had someone to save Israel… kinda a big what if if you ask me.  Does this mean that Israel’s hate saved them? Is this an example of cruel irony in the Bible?  Again, I’m not sure what to make of this, its puzzling.  Overall, Jephthah does do right in one aspect of this, he gives the credit to God.  In verse 9 he says that if the Lord gives the enemy over to him then he will be their head.  This is so important and possibly redeeming to the whole situation.  The fact that Jephthah gave the credit to God is huge.  This seems to maybe make everything ok to me.  I think the most important thing we can do in our lives is always give credit to God for everything…but expounding on that is another huge post that I will get into at a different time : )  So this may just be a jumble of words and thoughts…but I hope its somewhat coherent and makes you think a little about the situation, was Jephthah right? Or was he wrong? Does doing the right action for the wrong reasons make the action wrong?  What about the wrong action for the right reason(is that possible? did i just make that up?)? I don’t know, those are some deep questions that I did not think I would get into in this post…
• The next bit is Jephthah asking the Ammorites what is up.  Important to note: Jephthah does not fight first, but he first looks for the diplomatic solution to solve things.  And the funny thing is, this whole problem could have been avoided if the Israelites had obeyed God in the first place when they entered Canaan for the first time ever.  This is something that came back to haunt them over and over again, especially in this book.  Another brief history lesson…go:

Quick note:I had no idea this would be this long… I will clarify at the end, but just wanted to let you know that this is all flowing out of something I wasn’t even intending…I’m happy…but the original point that corresponds with the title is actually rather tidy and neat and relatively short…so if the title isn’t working for you right now…it will…I promise : ) I am going to bed right now, Its conveniently 3:33 am, I will finish this tomorrow…again, just taking a heck of a lot longer than intended…

and its tomorrow, as I read over some of that its kind of weird, I was in a weird mood last night for writing so just have that in mind : )

And the brief history lesson begins here: When the Israelites first entered the Promised Land and crossed the Jordan they defeated a few of the major enemies in the land, including Jericho and Ai, but after that the land was divided for the tribes to take control of and each tribe was in charge of eliminating all of the Canaanites within their territory.  Instead of doing what God ordered them they took the easy way out and allowed the people to live under them, which caused much more trouble than if they would have just followed God from the beginning.  This is why the Ammonites are pissed, they claim the Israelites stole their land…which is true.  Jephthah attempted to talk reason into the king of Ammon but he refused and they ended up having to fight.

• Before Jephthah goes to battle he makes a weird promise, or tragic vow at the Bible words it.  He says that if God delivers the battle to Jephthah that Jephthah will then sacrifice the first thing that came out of his door way.  Now I wish I had a commentary to study this with, or Bible dictionary or something, because this just seems so weird to me.  In my mind, the only thing that will be coming forth from between the door posts of his house would be a human being…unless customs are different back then and animals are kept in the house, which I need to find out, then pretty much Jephthah is committing to a human sacrifice here. I’m trying to wrap my mind around this because Jephthah explicitly says that he will “offer it (the Hebrew can also mean “he”) up for a burnt offering”.  There aren’t many ways to interpret “burnt offering”.  I don’t know if Jephthah was stupid or what.  I do appreciate the basis of what he is trying to do though, give credit to God and prove that he believes that God can do it…which is why I think there is something I am missing here.
• As expected, the Lord delivers the Ammonites into the hands of Jephthah and victory is theirs.  As Jephthah victoriously approaches his home, he sees his daughter run towards him singing and playing a tambourine…which is the last thing he wanted to see.  The Bible says that Jephthah immediately stopped where he was and tore his clothes and told his daughter what was up.  This was his only child.  He would now have to sacrifice her.  I absolutely love her response.  This is how I know that Jephthah was a good father.  This is a good judge of whether or not a parent has “succeeded”.  ( I would like to say that I am speaking mostly from ignorance though because I am not a parent and am only 19 years old, this is not a subject I am incredibly familiar with, but these are my thoughts regardless).  Depending on how you interpret this, his daughter submits to her father and says that because it was a promise to the Lord he cannot go back on it, even though it seemingly costs her her own life.  One day, I hope my children are this faithful to the Lord.  One day I hope my children can say that they are willing to sacrifice everything for the Lord.  This is how you can tell that Jephthah raised her correctly, the fact that she was so willing to follow God, he taught her that if anything in life is necessary, its following God.  She had to have been an amazing daughter and woman of God.  Again, I give credit to Jephthah though, he did something right with her.  She asks if she can have 2 months beforehand to go into the mountains with her friends and have a good time before she is sacrficed.  Jephthah agrees and when she gets back the Bible says he “did with her according to his vow that he had made.”  People argue as to what this exactly means.  Some say that God would have never required him to actually kill his daughter and instead she was just dedicated for life long service in the temple.  I tend to take the other road though and say that she was literally sacrificed.  I don’t know what Jephthah was thinking, but I believe that he was expecting some animal to greet him…it doesn’t make sense…I know, but how else can you explain the phrase of a burnt offering?

This last bullet up above is what the title of this post means…painful faith is what is required of us.  Jephthah was required to sacrifice his daughter for reasons known only to God, but the faith that Jephthah needed to do this is astounding.  Either way, whether he had to literally sacrifice his daughter or just dedicate her to service, he was still giving her up.  I guess thats the point that got across to me more than anything, that faith is painful and if it doesn’t hurt you aren’t doing it right.  Christianity is not a pain free easy process, its hard and grueling.  This is probably why I hate the prosperity gospel so much.  Not everyone who becomes a Christian will be blessed financially and so forth.  If so, what could you then tell a young convert in Africa who dies of AIDs before they get too old, that their faith wasn’t strong enough? That they didn’t believe in God enough? I shudder to think of anyone who actually believes that, it almost takes more faith to live in terrible conditions like people in third world countries than it does to live in America.  I have so much respect for persecuted Christians.  I hope something can be gained from this long excessive post.  I have something else I wanted to say about parents and Jesus but I’ll save that for later, this is long enough.  Please comment and give me feed back or ask for clarifications, this kind of turned into something much bigger than expected.  I hope you got the point of Jephthah being a good father though, contrary to what you would think at first glance.  Thanks for reading, if you did get this far.  3000 words later I’m finished.  Dang.

Blessings,

Sam

Individualism

I’ve been thinking about that last post and wondering what the balance is between individualism and a communal view on Christianity.  I cannot help but think that the Catholic church gets it much better than Evangelicals do in this matter.  I say this because the focus of my last post was how I can get my relationship closer to God so that I can get to my ideal heaven and boast about my relationship with God.  I wonder if perhaps we get it wrong sometimes.  I think that we tend to put too much focus on the me me me in our relationship with God because we are so concerned with ourselves getting to heaven.  We do not truly know what selfless love is in this type of Christianity because typically we only Evangelize once we feel comfortable that we are strong enough in our faith.  That may be the correct way to approach it, but I’m just wondering how much the individualistic culture we live in has negatively influenced Christianity.  I guess the point that I am trying to hypothesize here is that we should always first and foremost be concerned with everyone else’s relationship with God and in turn ours will come to fruition.  Does this make sense? How do you feel about this?  I have been thinking about this for a while and maybe its my adverse view of our culture and things about it that make me sick and how I want to leave the country but I feel like this even transcends too much into our choice of churches.  I always hear people say , I’m not getting fed or this church doesn’t cut it for me.  I wonder how self-centered those comments are or how accurate they are.  I realize there is a certain aspect of church that needs to help foster spiritual growth, but I feel like all too often we only look to see how we are being helped and not see maybe the many possibilities that we can help others through a church and maybe that through this helping others is how God wants us to get fed.  Maybe its different from one person to another, maybe its just a matter of opinion, I’m not sure right now, but I can’t help but think that maybe we lean too much into individualism, I’m just trying to figure out where that line is and where to draw it.  To clarify when I stated that Catholics have it better than us above, my understanding of the Catholic faith is that they view us as taking part in the divine will of God instead of our view of God coming down and taking part in our individual lives.  I like both views, our(when I say “our” I refer to Evangelicals) view demonstrates a little of God’s immense love for us but the other view also demonstrates the little say we have in this whole process, how helpless we are apart from God, and how we are just a small part of the big picture.  It is important to have both in our lives, but like I’ve said, I wonder what the line is between the two, or if there even is line, one could be completely right and one could be completely wrong, I’m just spitballing here.

Here’s what we are going to do to try to study this a little, Scripture is where we should go for everything, in my opinion, so we are going to study post-Christ New Testament and make a note of every verse that seems to support an individual faith and every verse that emphasizes a communal faith.  I have a funny feeling we’ll have a little of both but it will still be interesting to see and maybe it can help get to the bottom of this.  Right now I am leaning towards the communal Catholic view, I really like the humility it takes to believe that, but thats just my thought right now.  Let me say that if there is one thing I have learned so far in life, its that humility is the bottom line to everything, everything stems from humility, it seems like such a simple word and a simple concept but it is so diverse and it affects EVERY area of your life, I promise, hopefully I can formulate my thoughts good enough about this subject to post, it is something I am very passionate about, but that will come later.  For now I am going to split up the New Testament and assign books to the 3 of us and we will convene via chat room or something so we chat about our findings, if you have a lot of work either of you and this doesn’t work out thats fine, I have plenty of time and I’ll make up for it, I just want to include you in this.  If you want me to do the whole thing I will, but again I don’t want this blog to be about me me me, I want you two to participate so I can learn from you, but if you are busy completely understood.  I hope this makes sense, I can explain it more over the phone or video chat if you want.

Sam:Acts, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, Hebrews, Jude, Revelation

Krista:Romans, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, James, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John

Kearstin:1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon 1 Peter, 2 Peter

If you have a problem with the books assigned please let me know and it will be easy to switch, thanks for your friendship guys, sorry again if this is just rambling but like I said I’m not proof reading anything : )

Blessings,

Sam

Getting started

So this is what I had in mind, starting a blog where I try to type out all that I learn or am taught this summer so that you two can then read it.  I like this idea because I feel like I can type my thoughts well instead of verbalizing them, I hope this is ok with both of you.  I want this to be a place of sharing between the 3 of us and I am going to try to be as transparent as possible with two of my closest friends, hopefully you can be the same back to me.  I really hope that this helps you guys because if it doesn’t then its kinda of a failure… take this blog as a small token of how much you both mean to me and how I can pay back even a little of what you have done for me.  With that out of the way, let me first explain the name of the blog.

Ahi ashere, as you might guess, is Hebrew.  I wanted to give this blog a personal feel, something that will make me take ownership of it, so I thought that not much would be better then to have a special name that means something to me.  Let me teach you what it means as well.  Ahi ashere is commonly translated to mean “I am who…”  This may seem familiar to you, it is from Exodus 3:14, the passage where Moses asks God who he should describe the Israelite people has sent him.  God simply answers with one of the most powerful names ever: I am who I am.  The name of this blog is just the first two Hebrew words, adding the third would have been long and hard for even me to remember so I shortened it.  So now you know a little bit of Hebrew, ahi ashere means I am who and comes from the name God gives himself to Moses in the burning bush passage in Exodus 3:14.  Like I said, I wanted a little personal feel for this blog and as I am typing this I am realizing that hopefully I can use this to keep up on my Hebrew and maybe teach you guys a little as well.

I also want to give a disclaimer right now as well: you give me too much credit.  It’s that simple.  I am flattered by you guys and how much you praise me but please don’t put me on some pedestal or anything because there are many out there who could show me up any day.  In my humble opinion, I have so much to learn, which is why this will be an interactive experience where you guys chip in as well.  Its as simple as this: if you don’t chip in, I stop writing.  I can’t do this alone as with anything in life and you guys are going to help as well : )

Let me share with you my favorite Bible verse ever to start this and explain how it supports this idea of trying to help you guys with your faith, why it made me think that this was actually a good idea : )

Jeremiah 9:24 “but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.  For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

Ugh, this verse makes me cry.  It moves me so deep, I can’t describe it.  It means so much to me, hopefully I can impart a little bit of that to you, but I think a lot of it is personal and can’t be described in words.  As both of you know I am a super competitive person, so I am always comparing myself and competing with everything with everyone and always looking for something to boast in.  I can boast that I have the best friends, that I have the most beautiful girlfriend, that I have the best taste in music, that I’ve been to the coolest concerts, honestly it goes on and on.  It’s wrong.  I need to not do it.  It is so deeply ingrained in my attitude that I struggle with it a lot.  This verse speaks volumes to me.  The only thing that I should ever boast about is my relationship with the LORD.  The only thing worth boasting about on this earth is not of this earth.  This should have so much value in our lives.  This verse is explicit, nothing else on the earth is worth our effort except that which will strengthen our relationship with God.  That is a bold statement.  Stop for a second and think about it.  The ONLY thing that we should ever work towards is a stronger relationship with God.  How often do we exercise this? How often do we WASTE OUR TIME? How often? Think about it, anything that wastes your time is anything not spent getting to know God better.  This is a fantastic thing for me to remember this summer that I am realizing even as I type this.  Thank you for encouraging me to do this and thus realizing this truth.  I need to not waste this summer and the only possible way not for me, or you guys, to waste our collective summers is to use the time wisely and strengthen our relationship with God.  This can be applied on a broader scope too.  This can be applied to our whole lives.  Don’t waste your life.  How do we not waste our lives? A wasted life is one not spent in relationship with God, a life well spent is one spent deepening a relationship with God.  To go back to explain the beginning of my ramble, I hope that in some way this summer I can help strengthen your relationship with God, because so much value should be put on this I feel it necessary to help you in any way that I can and hopefully for you to help me in return.  Because this should be the only thing our lives are moving towards, I find it important to try to help both of you.  That is how this verse led me to do this.

I’m sorry that I ramble so much, when I get typing it just flows out of me.  I would like to say as a disclaimer that I hate proof checking any paper and I refuse to do it for this so I apologize for any errors but I’m not going back to check for them, its too much work.  Thank you for your friendship, I appreciate both of you so much and I hope that I can help you one day boast strongly of your relationship with God, as this verse says, because it is the only thing we should be concerned with.  I also hope this is what you were looking for, I’m sorry if it isn’t but this is what I felt led to do.  There was something else I wanted to say…oh yeah…sorry if I just ramble as well, I’m not going for something super formatted and stuff, I’m just going to type what I’m thinking and I want you to type your thoughts back as well, like I said this is going to be interactive and I’m going to need active participation with comments and what not from both of you : )

1,237 words later at 2:45 am,

Blessings,

Sam

(not all posts are going to be this long, don’t get used to it)