Stranded

While having dinner with a few friends recently I recollected a story from a few years ago where two friends and I went hiking up a mountain trail in New Mexico and ended up being stranded. Every time this story comes up we get in an arguement about whether or not we got lost, but the fact remains that we found ourselves in a situation where we needed to be rescued.

My friend Daniel has hiked this particular trail several times, so we decided we would make an adventure out of it and hike up the trail. The hike up was tough, bit it was amazing. Beautiful view from the top. But that’s not where the story gets interesting.

We had heard of an alternate route down the mountain and we decided to take another route down and locate it. This particular route was supposed to take us to another well-known trail and would make for a nicer hike down then the way we came, so we decided to take it. The problem was, we never found the point at which we were supposed to shift direction and head towards the other trail, so we ended up stranded on the side of this mountain, with hardly any water and the day starting to wane.

Daniel snapped a pic with his handy iPhone:

Luckily, we found a spot with cell phone signal and managed to get someone to come and pick us up.

So, what’s the point of this story? When I was thinking about this story today, I kinda drew a parallel to our own lives. So many times, we think we know where we are going, so rather than trusting on good direction and judgement, God's direction, we decide to take another route...and we often end up stranded, and in need of rescue.

What would life be like if we just trusted in His direction rather then always looking for another way?

RE: Cheesy Christianity

I’ve gotten a lot of responses on the blog I published early yesterday morning.

Here’s one that was emailed to me that I thought I might share:

“Jesus, Paul, and John did it.  (Matt 5:21-26 ,Acts 17:28, Revelation).  Remember... to a Jew religion and life were the same, much like materialism is today in our culture.  We recognize that both religion and culture need to be transformed by the truth of the Gospel in order to save the souls of men.  The early Christians did the same by celebrating the birth and resurrection of Jesus on days that once celebrated pagan deities.  I don't care for today's phrases because, in addition to being shallow metaphors, they lack any communication outside of the Christian culture.  One could say it gives an opportunity to share what the shirt means, but I believe it is much deeper and meaningful if we share with our words as a result of compassionate acts of service.  Perhaps it would change the perception of Christianity to the world if we begin to show more love by getting out of pews going to our neighbors and begin to take the batteries out of the political machines and bull horns.”

Mike

Cheesy Christianity

I grew up in church, so I’ve spent my whole life around Christian t-shirts, logos, and sayings. There’s one thing about almost all of them that really annoys me. They’re usually cheesy. For example, “God is my Hero” instead of “Guitar Hero”. This one is a big hit lately. Growing up, I remember the “abreadcrumb & fish” shirts that were everywhere in Christian stores. Its all the same message: Take some well known pop culture icon, saying, or symbol, and mix it up with something that promotes the Christian message. I find this disturbing. Since when did it become OK to take the message of the gospel and mix it up with the symbolism of the world?

When try to associate Jesus with these icons, people tend to remember the icon, not the idea, and miss the point entirely.

I think we should let Jesus be Jesus, and let Guitar Hero be Guitar Hero. Why should the two intertwine?

Just a thought.

I came across this video on YouTube a while back, and its one of the things that comes to mind when I think of Cheesy Christianity:

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A Tiny Speck

Since Wednesday, I’ve been doing a bit of traveling out west, spending a couple of days in the Grand Canyon and spending around a week in Glorieta, New Mexico for a college ministry conference.

The Grand Canyon was incredible. Its one of those things where you look over the canyon and you realize just how small and insignificant you are compared to the big wide world around you.

I’ll include a picture so you can see just how amazing it is.

My friend Brittney took this while we were hiking along the south rim. I felt so small.

It reminded me that we’re but a tiny part of this wide universe that God has created. Even though we are so small, we can have such a huge impact.

All we have to do is trust Him.

Have Church Van, Will Travel

In a few short hours, I'll be leaving for a little trip that involves a 2-day stint at the Grand Canyon and a week-long camp at the Glorieta Conference Center in beautiful Glorieta, New Mexico.

I am absolutely stoked about this trip. I am hoping that being able to get away from the distractions that come with home will allow me to learn some new things about myself, and about the exciting future that God has in store for me.

Pray for me. Pray that God speaks into my life in a real way over the next week-and-a-half. I'm sure I'll have a ton of stuff to talk/write about it when it's all said and done.

See you on the other side. Keep an eye on this space, I'll try to post a little bit while I'm abroad. My loyal Mac will be traveling with me. :)

Genuine Friendship

Last night, I had a conversation with a friend of mine about the value of genuine friendship. We talked about how hard it is to come by, and how we diligently seek it out, and cling to it when it is found.

It strikes me as odd that such a friendship would be hard to find in the church, but is. There are so many people in the church who have an skewed idea of friendship. We have a tendency as humans to seek friendship out of selfishness. What I mean by that is that we seek out friendships to serve our own ends, whether it’s to cure our own loneliness, or for some use that is beneficial to us. But this isn’t genuine friendship.

Genuine friendship is born out of a desire for true fellowship. We were created to build relationships with the people around us, and when we seek to do that in a way that is glorifying to God and is out of a desire for a pure form of fellowship, it breeds this genuine friendship.

Another key ingredient to this rare friendship is love, and I think it’s safe to say that many of us have a very skewed sense of what love is. In 1 John 4:8, we see that Love is Christ. Love comes from Christ, and its only through Christ that we discover this love.

So, genuine friendship is born out of a desire for true, Godly fellowship, and bound with love discovered through Christ.

I think when we grasp these concepts and we find and make these friendships, it makes us stronger in the end. We have someone who’s there to help us in our daily walk, someone to help us up when we fall, and to cheer us on as we succeed. We also have someone there to help keep us accountable.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

        -Proverbs 10:17

I want to be that kind of friend. I want to be someone who pursues true fellowship and loves with a love that can only come from Christ. Someone who my friends can rely upon, both for support and accountability.

I want to be a true friend.

When Plans Change

One of the earliest questions kids get asked as they are growing is: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” From the time we are old enough to form sentences till around 10 or 11, that answer usually is “a firefighter”, or “a police officer”, or “a soldier.” From pre-school till I was about 10 years old, the answer for me was always “a pizza man”. I loved pizza. It was my favorite food. I used to beg for pizza almost every night. Naturally, I wanted to be a pizza man. I wanted to throw the dough the old fashioned way. I wanted to make kids smile when I made their favorite pizza.

That, of course, changed as I got older (if you are reading this and you are still inspiring to be a pizza man, please do not feel offended). My dad introduced me to computers at a young age and since then I’ve been fascinated with them. I learned my way around them quickly, and decided that I wanted to fix computers. This pleased my parents, since I can make good money doing that, and it was something I loved to do.

I started college and began pursuing a degree in Information Systems, which would help me achieve my ultimate goal. I’m currently near the end of that degree program. I’m on the edge of jumping head first into the career that I’ve wanted since I was 11. One might say that I have my future already determined and planned.

But I’d like to hit the brakes on this for awhile. I think I was planning all of this without input from God.

I picked up My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers and started reading through it. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about the book and she told me to check out a couple of devotionals from earlier this month, so I did. These particular devotionals talked about the danger of planning without God in the picture.

These passages really gripped at me. You know, my whole life, I’ve known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what I’ve wanted to do with my future, but I went through some serious life-changing experiences in the past few months, and these caused me to rethink everything that I planned.

It made me realize that all of my planning didn’t really take into account what God might want me to do. Oswald wrote in those devotionals that when we plan without God in the picture, He often brings us into experiences that cause us to rethink our plans, and I’m convinced that this is what happened to me.

Where I was so sure before, doubt now lingers above my head like a cloud.

Where is my future going? Right now, I have no idea, but I have every intention of including God in those plans.

Pray for me. Pray that I can allow God to be the chief motivator of my decisions and that I’ll do what’s best for Him, which is ultimately what’s best for me.