My Brain is Full

It's time for one of those super honest blogs where I talk about something I'm struggling with and give you a little insight into the inner workings of David. Pardon me while I grab a chair and sit in it backwards, AC Slater style, and just rap with you about what's going on in my life.

I'm distracted. My mind goes a mile a minute lately. It's not like I have tons of deep thoughts going through my head at once. I'm not under the burden of genius or anything like that; I've just been easily distracted lately.

I'm pretty sure that the reason I'm distracted is because I don't allow myself enough quiet time to just get my thoughts out there. The other night I was driving home from downtown, and rather than turn on my iPod or the radio, I just sat there in silence. I usually stay away from situations like that because I really like music and honestly, with all of the bad stuff that's happened in the past year, sometimes I just don't like to be alone with my thoughts.

The thing that really bothers me is that the times that I tend to get most distracted lately is when I'm trying to spend time alone with the Lord. Maybe that's because I have to be quiet during those times and all of the thoughts just attack me at once. I'm not sure why it's happening, but I do know that it's frustrating. Whenever I'm reading any other book I'm fine, but when I try to read my Bible and connect with the Lord it's like I have a little Micheal Scott in my brain keeping me from naming the 13 original colonies (ooh, pop culture reference!).

So I have a plan, and I would appreciate some prayer that I implement it well. First of all I'm going to start allowing more quiet in my life. I'm going to have times where I'm not on the internet, watching TV, reading, or listening to music. I'm just going to get alone in my room and just sit there with my thoughts.

Second of all I'm going to put 2 Corinthians 10:5 into action. The way I see it, Christ is in everything, so no matter how out there and distracting a thought may be, it still connects to Jesus in some way. So whenever I'm trying to concentrate on the Lord and I start thinking about how great some blueberry pancakes would be, I'm going to take a second to thank the Lord for blueberry pancakes and bring it back around to Him. (On a side note, how great are blueberry pancakes? I mean honestly, thank You Lord for creating a dish that allows us to have something that tastes like candy for breakfast!) Everything can be brought back to the Lord, so that's what I'm going to do. My goal is to become a master of taking my thoughts captive and causing them to worship God no matter how out there they might be.

Friday Fun Facts

Okay, I'm going to try out this format and see how this goes. I'm going to try to start pumping out Monday/Wednesday/Friday posts. This week has obviously been a success, but let's see how long I can keep it going. I think Friday's are going to be my fun day where I just share something funny or embarrassing about myself for your enjoyment.

Currently, I'm not a fan of assigned small groups. I just think it makes more sense when stuff like that happens organically, but this was not always so. I led two different small groups during my time at Clemson. For one I took time to carefully plan out Bible studies and then got mad and frustrated when they preferred to watch Lost or the conversation went to places where even the demons went, "Whoa guys! That's a little much." By the time I got my next small group I was so burned out that by the end of it we were mainly just thinking of creative ways to shoot each other with an air soft gun.

Would FCA have approved of what we did weekly in the name of "fellowship"? Probably not? Was Joe Mata uncomfortable that time that he was the only one who showed and it was just the two of us? Absolutely! Was it good times that led to friendships that I still have? Definitely.

Either way, these two groups had one major thing in common. I started them both with the obligatory "I have no idea what I'm doing leading this thing, so let's share the intimate details of our lives" conversation. AKA the "here are my worst sins" conversation. AKA the "I used to drink a lot and look at porn" conversation. It's probably the most awkward way to get to know someone, yet I've embraced it twice for some reason.

You might think that I'm dumb for thinking that was a good idea, and you'd be right. You might even think that FCA was dumb to put me in charge of anyone, let alone an entire group of guys, to which you'd also be right. But you're forgetting the most important point in all of this: I found out how easy it was to get my closest friends to divulge their deepest, darkest secrets.

The Villain Has to Die

One thing you should know about me is that I'm a sucker for a story. Honestly, it's one of my weaknesses. I love to put up a facade that I'm a huge book snob who snubs his nose at bad writing, but honestly, I can get hooked to any narrative, no matter how poorly written it may be. It doesn't matter how weird and out there the story is, if there's a good flow to what's going on, I'm involved in it.

The reason I love stories so much, I think, is because I love people. Characters always hook me and keep me coming back for more; especially villains! I love villains because they tend to have more depth than any of the other characters. Most of the time the villain is just a normal person with a skewed view on things. Like in real life, there's rarely such a thing as the evil scientist bent on world domination. Everyone tends to think that they're doing the right thing, even if the means aren't too great.

But once in a while, a story will give you a larger than life villain. This is the one who is more of a force of evil than a real person. The things that they do and the ends they long to produce just aren't redeemable. As soon as you meet this character you know that the only way for the hero to live is for that villain to die. The Wicked Witch has to melt in order for Oz to go back to normal. Agent Smith has to be deleted for there to be hope for humanity to be free of the Matrix. Voldemort has to die in order for Harry to live a normal life. The Emperor has to be thrown into the reactor for the galaxy to be free.

So imagine this: Christianity is born and is gaining a lot of momentum. Those in power are all speaking in whispers with one another, "We have to stop this." But none of them has to gall to go against the people to start the oppression. But one day, a mob gets angry and is incited against a man named Stephen. When asked to defend himself, Stephen instead decides to defend God, and in doing so, angers an already angry crowd to the point of where they actually do what had only been spoken of in secret before. Things get out of hand and they kill him. And in the shadows stands a man watching the whole thing. He looks like he could have orchestrated the entire spectacle himself. He doesn't throw one stone. He just stands there, approving of everything that happens. We just know that this guy is bad news. His brief mention is a hint that we'll hear more about him.

The next thing we know, this man, Saul, has made it his personal crusade to go from town to town and kill every Christian he can find. Reading this story for the first time, you just know that like the Egyptians, Canaanites, and Philistines before him, this is our new, larger than life villain. And the only way that we'll be able to solve the problem he creates is by killing him. If his goal is to kill all of the Christians, then in order for the heroes to succeed, he'll have to die.

But then there's a twist. This villain decides to go to Damascus to hunt more Christians. Everything changes here. You see, the hero does have to succeed. The villain does have to die for the things that he's done. The only problem is, when Saul goes to Damascus, we get the big twist that the Christians aren't the heroes of the story after all; Jesus is! And Saul is the villain, but he's not the only one. If Jesus is the hero, and the villain is whoever has wronged Him, then that makes the villain of the story everyone who has ever sinned against Him.

So what does Jesus do? He kills the villain of course. Saul doesn't survive his encounter with Jesus. The man who leaves for Damascus and and the man who arrives there are two different people. In the same way, the David who entered into a church one Wednesday night in seventh grade was not the same David who left. The old one was a villain; he had to die because the things he had done to the Hero were far too horrible for him to live.

Thankfully, in this story, the Hero has control over life and death. In this story, the Hero can bring dead things back to life. In this story, the Hero can make old dead villains new and good.

Stop Trying to Get Sin Out of Your Life

I feel like there's a pretty big mistake that I've been making for years and I've seen a lot of fellow brothers and sisters making the same mistake. That mistake is to try to get sin out of my life. I remember I was going downtown Saturday night and before I left, because there tends to be a few temptations when I go downtown, be it having a drink too many or letting my eyes wander to the girls all around me, I prayed for God to help me not sin that night.

I then felt the Lord give me a very clear realization about that prayer. Was that really my goal for the night? Was my only concern to just not do anything wrong? The Lord didn't put me on this earth to just "not sin". I'm here to bring Him glory. So my prayer changed from "help me to not sin" to "help me to see the opportunities to glorify You." This small shift will change everything! I guess that means it's not a small shift after all, but regardless, it's a necessary shift.

The problem with focusing on getting sin out of my life is that whether I'm actually sinning or just trying to stop sinning, my focus is still on sin! Here's how it usually goes for me: I pinpoint what I need to stop or start doing, I go a little while without messing up, I let my guard down with a good pat on the back, I slip up, I feel guilty, I feel even guiltier so that I think I can't approach the Lord, I stop doing it until I feel like I can approach the Lord again, repeat.

This concentration not only leads to constant failure, but it leads to me feeling like I'm not good enough for Jesus and bypasses everything having to do with grace so that it becomes about what I can and can't do.

When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus' response was not any of the "thou shalt nots" but it was to love God. So my goal as a Christ follower should not be to stop sinning, but rather to love God with all of my heart. And Matthew 6:33 tells me that when I do this, other things just kind of fall into place. When I love God, the effect is that I sin less in the same way that when I love a friend I don't do things that hurt them, but instead do things to let them know that I love them.

One Year Later

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor can'st thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones and rest their delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, sickness dwell,
And better then thy stroke; why swell'st thy then;
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, though shalt die.

From Holy Sonnet X by John Donne

I'm Back, Baby!

Wow, so it's been a while since I've come on here. Last September I set the goal of writing four entries a month. I celebrated this by never blogging again after September. So, to say the least, my writing is a little rusty, so I ask that you bear with me a bit.

Life has been pretty crazy since last September for me. Actually, life has been pretty crazy for a while now if you've been keeping up. I think that that's just how life is and how it's going to be for a while. Growing up you never really pay attention to all of the change going on because it rarely effects you. It's like we make this gaping assumption that the way life is when we're kids is the way life has always been for everyone around us before we ever showed up.

Life is always changing. So far my life in 2010 is nothing like what it was in 2009. And my life in 2009 was vastly different from life in 2008. Maybe I'm wrong and it will slow down eventually, but I just don't see that happening.

All of this is why I find it important to blog and to journal. Life in interesting. Even a life as seemingly mundane as my own is interesting. These past couple of weeks I've been reading about David in 1 and 2 Samuel and I've almost made it through the Psalms once this year. What I find most interesting about the things I'm reading is that I'm reading writing about David's life, and he's such a man after God's heart that when I read about him I learn about the Lord. That's what I want from this blog and my journal. I want to write about life and I want people to learn about the Lord because of it. I want someday for my grandkids to pick up my journal and not just learn about who their grandpa was, but to learn about the love of God through my life.

So, with that in mind the blog will take a different shape. The biggest change will be that I'll actually be making entries. But other than that, I have mostly used this thing as a chance to write a devotion, which I will definitely continue doing because I love sharing what the Lord is teaching me, but I'll have more "Life of David" entries just telling you about what's going on in my life or what's on my mind. We'll see how that goes and whether or not I'll actually stick to it.

If you actually enjoy reading my blog and you see that I haven't written for a while, feel free to yell at me about not writing. That's a freebie for the one of you who'll probably read this who doesn't happen to be my mother.

Fruit of the Spirit

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing John Flowers speak at Kingdom Culture. Though I'm not exactly sure of what he said that sparked these thoughts, I know that since then I've been thinking about the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5 says that the fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And for the longest time I've always thought that the reason that these were explained were because when I received the Holy Spirit, I received these as well. But now I'm beginning to see that this can't be an accurate view of these verses.

There are two problems with the view that the fruit of the Spirit comes when you receive Christ. First of all, not every Christian possesses all or any of these at any given time. And secondly, there are non-christians who oftentimes do.

So what I'm thinking is that this fruit isn't supposed to be seen in the same light as the gifts of the Holy Spirit (which are things which only Christians possess), but rather an indicator of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If I see a clerk showing patience with a rude customer, I'm seeing the Holy Spirit work in them. If I see a kid full of joy, I'm seeing the Holy Spirit give it to them. If I see a teenage couple show self-control in their physicality, I'm seeing the Holy Spirit at work.

This view is so encouraging. It turns the fruit of the Spirit into a highlighter for where the Lord is at work. It shows that even when someone wants nothing to do with God, He still wants something to do with them. Whenever you see one of these things, they're practically screaming, "The Holy Spirit is working here!"