Contentment

Currently it is a season of love and change for many of my friends. While I am truly happy for them, I find myself facing one of my biggest opponents and one of the "Seven Deadly Sins". Envy is it's name. I watch as smiling pictures of woman I have come to know embrace their loved ones and show a nice shiny ring to the camera. Happiness radiates from the picture. I long for that, and if you know me, truly know me, you know patience is one of my weaknesses. It's hard for my to return to a state of contentment. Hard, but not impossible. A wise woman once told me "Jesus is not a tease" this wise woman shows me it's true as she is now happily engaged. I will have my time, but I cannot fast forward to that part of my life, no matter how much I want to. I am living in this season of my life, and must learn to be content with it of I ever hope to move on to the next. It is a struggle, but at the same time a blessing. One that I will happily face and endure. For God has a plan for all of us. It is simply a matter of letting Him guide us in His timing.

Forgiveness

It amazes me, every time that I mess up. When I set one toe out of line. How quickly my God forgives me. I am not perfect. Nor will I ever be. Perfection is unattainable on this earth. Yet it is our ever increasing desire that we would reflect Christ in all that we do. What then are we to do when we stumble, or worse fall? So often we want to hide these problems. Or perhaps pick ourselves up and pretend we never fell in the first place. If I place it in the far back corner of my mind, no one will see it, and no one will ever know. What brought this desire that we must be completely healed before we can stand at the foot of the cross? What brought this delusion that we have to fix ourselves before we can even dare to speak to God about our struggles.

One of my favorite characters in the Bible is a woman. She is not known for saving her people, she was not the mother of Jesus. She was a prostitute. A prostitute who would be welcomed into the Kingdom of God by God himself. Not the church, not the disciples. Not for her money or talent, but for her faith. It is her who would be a part of the lineage of Jesus. It is her to be mentioned for her faith even in the New Testament. It is her, who with her family would survive the slaughter of the city. God welcomed a prostitute who would do His good work. Not when she was done sinning. Not when she had her problems all neatly wrapped up and under control. "When we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you; for the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath." (Joshua 2:11 NASB)

Rahab the harlot. She knew who God was, and what he could do. She understood. God was there now. God wanted action now. Not later. God would use her just as she was. No different. You see we sometimes think, and are often told, that while we are in sin we cannot help anyone else. That as long as we have that plank in our eye who are we to deal with the speck in theirs. However that does not mean we cannot let our brother know of their wrong. "If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." (Matthew 18:15-17 NASB) We all sin, and if we are waiting for perfection to get help then we will never be forgiven. We will never get help. We will never be free.

Adult Life

Long time no blog, and man have my adventures been plenty. A lot has happened, I graduated for one. That was an adventure that took four years. Now I am only my next adventure. Finding a job. It sounds so easy, but I know it isn't. Mostly because I have tried for about four years to find one now. This comes with the fact I am moving with my family. All this is timed interestingly, but God has his plan for my life. I am sure of that if not of anything else. There are many questions currently in my life, where will I go? What plans will unfold? But mostly when? When will these things take place? God constantly teaches me patience through my trials, that my "instant gratification" issue I have is blocking me from trusting him. I have one month here in California before things will get moving. I have one month of unknown. I have one month of waiting. Of which I want to fight that one month with every fiber of my human being. I hate, and I do mean have waiting. Wait I must. I know God has a plan, I know I am called to great things, but I know I must be patient. I have many unanswered questions, but I have an all knowing God who can answer them all in time.

That Moment

The water bubbled over, too much wood in the fire, the bomb went off. What ever you want to call it I'm there. I'm a junior, and my life has gotten quite busy lately. Not only am I struggling with finals, I also am carrying a lot of emotional baggage. It's a tough time for me because my father goes to war soon, my mother is in California, and I am in Washington. That right there is enough to make me cry, but still more piles on. I am trying to finish strong and keep hope alive. For I have the greatest hope of all, but right now, I just keep nudging myself forward. It's funny, as many others are looking forward to their classes ending I can't look at it with the same light. A few days later I will be beginning another set of classes until the end of May. As people are happily going home I'll remain behind. I know I have hope...it's just really hard to see right now. "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30 NASB)

Teaching to Change Lives

To teach is not an easy task, it can be one of the hardest things we have to do in ministry. Just to reach others takes a lot of work in and of ourselves. We need to be relatable, real, and most important we need to be seeking knowledge ourselves. The idea of teaching is not an easy thing, but it's one of the most satisfying things we can do. Constant learning is something few professions require now a days. One of which is a doctor, the medical field is always changing and advancing. So doctors must have continuing education to stay ahead of different diseases and even gain new skills for helping their patients. Much like the doctors we also need to continue learning. There can always be something new to pull from the Bible for ourselves and for others. We should be constantly in the Word and learning from it. Also we can learn new ways to convey a message to our people (one example is for instance reading this book). The book mentioned a woman who was eighty-six years old when she died, yet just before she died she had written out her goals for the next ten yea! How full of life she must have been! At eighty-three she was walking around Israel telling professional football players to hurry up! That woman was a learner and was ready to show she wasn't too young to teach. Labels are a dangerous thing, they limit people and have a tendency to control how people flourish or fail. We recently talked about this in a devotions session during Choralons, I of all people firmly understand the devastation labels can have on a person. So I gladly spread the idea that we should cease labeling others, no more favorite children, and no more "worst-behaved" children. They are all precious and should all be treated as such, not one more than another, or one less than all. If God treated us in that manner I would be so low on the totem pole what hope could I have? "The Law of Activity tells us that Maximum learning is always the result of maximum involvement." I can fully get behind this statement. Often I learn most through doing, the statistics in the book even prove this is one of the best ways to remember concepts. That does not mean that something physical is always the best option. If there is no purpose to the movement then it is useless and a waste of time. Distractions, as an ADD kid I can relate to how distracting it can be in the audience. Not only is the audience distracting themselves but they can also distract the speaker. Even worse is how disheartening a distracted audience can be, it's enough to make you never want to speak again. The worst distraction I feel is when someone leaves, most people don't know how to handle it, the book actually talks about calling out such a person, playfully I'm sure. Much like anytime you speak you need to know your audience. In my situation I need to know the children I am teaching. This can be done in several ways, the first and best is to talk to the child themselves. Find out what they like, for instance we have one boy who I know likes Legos and Halo, so when I talk with him we talk about things like that. The next best thing I feel is talking to the parents about their children. Find out about sports, birthdays, recents events, all kinds of things. It takes a bit of time after church but it shows the children that I actually care about them and their interests. Also shows the parents that we really want to invest in their kids lives. You see, teaching is not the least bit about me. I am merely a vessel to be used for God. The way I teach is crucial to my mission. After all if I am teaching, yet no one is learning, there is a problem. A dangerous problem, my mission is to reach many for God, and if I am the one impeding my mission I should be the one to fix it.

Negativity

It's like a poison, a dangerous poison. I can't stand it, it's hard to listen to and to be around. I imagine it as a monster, just destroying and killing. It's enough to make me fearful and carefully watch myself and my actions. It grows and continues and kills. At times there is no stopping it until everything is dead. Titus 3:10 tells a lot about my feelings. Right now I can feel other people as the anger rises. It's crazy, but sadly it's a part of life. Life is too short to be bitter, at times that's hard for me to understand but I know I have to get over things.

I often feel like I'm looking at myself, I compare it to what I used to be. Is that what I look like? Is that what I sound like? I just want to ask, is that the kind of Christian I want to be? I know my Jesus, the one who gave his life for me, would want so much more than that from me. I want to put negativity behind me, I never want to see myself in that vicious little circle. It's such a horrible thing.

Made to Stick

For a book about making ideas stick I feel like very little has stuck with me. Though I know what was important because I highlighted it. Looking back the things I focussed on seem useful so it cannot be that this book is not very good. I simply feel it is over stuffed. There are too many stories and illustrations for my mind to cling to. All good stories and illustrations mind you, just too many. Before reading this book I thought repetition was something that helped an idea stick, but the book states otherwise. I had to sit and think on this, after all I use repetition myself. That was when it hit me, I use repetition yes, but for short term memory. It helps me for things such as tests and quizzes, but not in the long run. I need an idea that sticks so I will remember it, after all if I can't remember it why would the children that I teach? Simple has a negative connotation, when you think of simple in the church you do not think of the adult sermon. You think instead of what the children are learning. Simple is not, and should not be thought of like that. Instead of "dumbing" things down we should realize it is finding the core idea and give the idea quickly rather than draw it out. Not just for children, but also for adults. Ideas with profound compact meaning are seemingly the only important ones. You need to be able to pack a lot of meaning into a message. Much like the letter exercise, it was hard when the letters were gibberish, but easier when we could put meaning to them. For me it was like putting pictures to what I was supposed to remember instead of simply trying to recall the letters. Breaking a pattern is a great way to not only grab attention, but to make ideas stick. It leaves an imprint when you do something against the norm. Such as the "Enclave commercial" I can imagine watching the commercial as the book described it, shock and awe just picturing it. Curiosity is a great tool to utilize. From children to adults everyone has a natural curiosity that can be invoked. The book compared it to being a mystery, which is a great idea. Ask a question at the beginning, leave a few clues along the way, until you leave them with the solution. I am not saying this is an easy thing to do, but it can be very beneficial for you as the speaker and your audience to retain the information that you give them. Life for a novice and an expert are two totally different lives. They live and think so differently when it comes to their work. The novice sees concrete ideas as such, where as an expert can see things far more abstractly. Often times the two have a hard time communicating because a novice cannot comprehend all the words and ideas the expert may use. So how can we fix this? Bring the novices up to speed? Help them come to a middle ground? Oddly enough the answer is to bring the experts down. Details are important when you're presenting something. They give your ideas and presentation credibility. We love details as people, they make things relate more. If I talk about a ball, compared to talking about a tennis ball a person is more likely to remember the story about the tennis ball then the plain ball. They not only give you something to picture, but it can make a story more real. There are so many things we can do to get our ideas across. Many ideas can get across, but the goal is to make them stick. This book however I do not think this book was the best example of that. Instead of making things stick I received an information overload. In a sense the book was something not to do, simple was not there, details were there but overwhelming. I gained a few ways to make things stick, hopefully I will remember them.