What am I doing?

Blogging today seems kinda dry for me.  However, I need to get at least one post in for this week, so I'm not trying to catch up over the weekend.  I feel like the past week and half I have been spread everywhere. I don't think it's going to slow up anytime soon either.  

Staying this busy is something the plagues our culture.  We spend so much time doing things, but are we actually doing anything?  That is what I sit back and ask myself at times like this.  I really begin to wonder how this affects myself. I begin to think if all this stuff that I'm doing is really making a difference. 

I think it's hard at this point to be able to justify not doing some things though.  As a college student, if you plan on succeeding after college you have to be preparing yourself for the workforce after graduation.  So I spend my time involved with things that are targeted at doing that such thing.  These things take up time though and I have to assess how effective I am in each of these markets.

As I assess this I come to find that I may be able to be effective in these places, but am I enacting change? Moreover can I enact change?  I believe that what I do is important, but is it something that builds towards the ultimate goal?  

I believe that everything a person does can point to Christ.  Or at least it should point to Christ.  The only way it won't is if it is done in sin.  With that I ask myself if I do things out of sin.  I believe that at times I do, I mean everyone does at one point or another.  

I bring all of this back together and I say that what I'm doing has purpose, that I am leaving my mark in places, however I don't believe that sometimes I forget to point things towards Christ.  That part is the most important of all too.. 

This is where I stand right now.

All that is inside me Screams..

There is something about the thought of leading a congregation in what the Lord wants that is daunting.

It can leave a person feeling empty inside and wondering if they are where they need to be in order to deliver a message.

People on the outside say pray, have faith, ask for grace.  God's grace is sufficient.  Sure God's grace is sufficient.  But what about the cheap grace that Paul warns us of in Romans.  What about the passage in James that talks about knowing what to do and then not doing it is evil.  What if the person isn't doing what God wants of them and in consequence isn't near enough to God to hear what it is that He wants in Him?

People don't think about that. People think that if you are at the point where you are willing to stand up and talk about your faith, that you have everything together.  What I don't think the majority of "Christians" know, is that people in ministry struggle with sin just as much as they do.  People in ministry might even struggle more, because Satan would rather see them fail then one of the sheep.  Cause if you take out the shepherd, then you have free reign on the sheep.  Crazy thought right?

What needs to be realized is that all Christians are the same.  All sin is weighed the same.  Which is really crazy if you think about it.  However, that means if I'm dealing with a sin of lust and you are dealing with a sin of forgetfulness, they are the same.  I'm not sinning more.  Sin is sin and it needs to be dealt with.  

As Christians we are all called to the same mission.  Pastors don't have a "higher" calling.  We are all called to actively advance the gospel in every shape and form.  Some are called to do that through leading a group of Christians others through being a light in the work place.  But, if you are not holding up to your end of the bargain, well this is where that verse in James comes in, it's pure evil, cause you know what you are supposed to be doing, but you aren't doing it.

We are supposed to be growing continually closer to Christ.  We are supposed to be in the world and not of it.  Instead we worry about what car we are going to purchase next, or where we are eating after church.  If we are close enough to Christ, we will know the answer to both of those questions.  God will be so present in our lives that we will know exactly what is of Him and what isn't.

If I had Jesus in a little bitty box

Growing up in church, sometimes you hear the word "Hypocrite" either said by people inside or outside the church.  Most of the time you think of that person as hopefully not you, or at least hopefully people don't know that it's you.  I know I've been there.

As I've grown up I came to realize within myself which I assume happens with everyone else that we have different faces that we show to different people.  This way we can still feel Christian but sometimes not be "overbearing" right? At least that's what we tell ourselves, when however it's more because we are living in such sin, we feel we have to put on a front to our other fellow "Christians" to hide that we don't have everything together.

I thought that I was overcoming this, and I really feel that last year I did overcome the initial problems encountered with this issue.  I have begun to realize though that as college students specifically we compartmentalize things.  This is a good thing if done properly, but when done with our walk with Christ I feel it could be border line sin.

We learn to compartmentalize due to our courses that we are taking.  If we don't separate our social lives from school, but live in both of them then we will end up focusing on one more than the other.  So we begin to do this in every aspect of our life, even taking Christ out of parts of our life, because we don't see a "need" for him there.

In all actuality we need Christ in everything, if he is not in everything, then we are holding onto sin.  We have not truly surrendered our entire life to Him.  In order for us to see true transformation and a complete picture of what Christ wants for us, we must no longer put Christ as a section of our life, but include him in everything.

Preach It!

There is something about the mystic of preaching that never ceases to amaze me.  I embarked this past month on preparing for my first Sunday morning sermon.  I have actually known for almost 6 months that I would be speaking, but in the middle of the summer I realized that what I was originally planning on speaking on was not what the Lord wanted, so instead I went where I've always felt lead for my first sermon.

My topic however is not what I wish to blog about today.  The entire process behind preparing to speak in a church setting is wherein the topic of todays blog lies.  As a person prepares to speak on a spiritual topic, they have to prepare themselves mentally and spiritually for the heaviness of the topic.  They must remove all other distractions.  This is something that I have had a hard time with in recent times.

I feel at this point that these distractions are meant to take my focus off of the topic at hand.  For me as should be with every speaker you have to be practicing what you preach.  Or at least working towards it.  In James, (The Message) it says:

 "As it is, you are full of your grandiose selves. All such vaunting self-importance is evil. In fact, if you know the right thing to do and don't do it, that, for you, is evil." James 4:16-17 

 This takes it to an entire level.  It actually scares me somewhat.  Because I get so caught up in life, that I can forget what I'm here for.  I can even forget what things may be considered "wrong". 

I keep praying that the distractions will leave me, however I feel that as long as I am still sitting border line with where I am, then they will stay; continually tempting me to sit where I am, or fall in the opposite direction for where I need to be.

Sin, Repentance, & Redemption

Recently some things came up in conversation and I began to consider the implications behind them.  I'm really not going to get into details behind the conversation, but the conversation got me thinking about some things.

When a person is caught up in sin, regardless of what it is, it seems like a good idea at the time.  Sometimes you may not even realize that it's a sin.  Then you look back at it and years later in conversation, you realize how crazy sin is, and how you live with the consequences of it even after it is over.

Sometimes I feel people get caught in a rut, and don't see a need, to get out of the position they are in (in relation to sin).  So they just continue down the path that they are on.  The whole notion that "I'm not good enough to come to Jesus" and "I'm already too far gone to change."

There are two sides to this situation, just as there are two sides to most things.  There is the side of the lost person and the side of the Christian person.

In the side of the Christian person, dealing with sin, whether it be habitual or one time, it must be taken care of.  Otherwise you are sinning more (if that makes sense).  The reason why I say this, is because as a follower of Christ, we have realized (to some capacity) that we are sinners in need of a Savior.  However we are not allowed to freely sin.  As quoted from Romans 6: 1-2
"¹What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ²By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"

The passage continues through verse 14.  Here's the thing though, we are called to no longer live in sin.  The moment we become followers of Christ, we are called to become more like Him, we are called to begin a process of daily growth towards becoming more like Christ.  As followers who should know this thing, if we continue in sin the same sins we were in formerly in a habitual manner, then we are using cheap grace, which is what Paul is cautioning against here in Romans 6.


A person who is not a follower of Christ has different expectations because they do not understand what it's like.  Ephesians 2:8-13 talks of how we are saved by grace through faith.  It continues on to say it is not what we do that saves us, it is our faith.  However in James it also speaks of how faith without works is dead.   What you need to gather from this though is that everyone is saved by grace.  Grace is mercy, clemency, pardon as stated from the linked  dictionary above. 

People get caught up in "Getting right" before they come to God.  The thing is though, Jesus did not say "you're healed, now get cleaned up and then follow me"  no he said "Go, and sin no more"  Jesus doesn't require you to be perfect in order to follow Him, what he does require is a will to change.