Close your eyes...

Ever thought about what the phrase, "Walk by faith and not by sight," means? I particularly like the part about "not by sight." I like to think about that literally for my spiritual life. Sometimes I'm so ready to plan my own life and the steps I will take that I forget to trust God. I am not perfect. So, my choices, if I'm making them apart from God, won't be perfect. Therefore, my steps won't be perfect and I'll fall. But Christ is perfect. If I let Him guide my steps in the path of righteousness, my ways will be perfect.

Have any of you done a ropes course or trust exercise (sometimes known as "team-building activity")? Well, sometimes, people have to pick you up and put you through spaces in tires or guide you along a wooded trail without touching you. I don't know about you, but it's hard to trust someone to take your life and well-being into their hands.

When I think about my spiritual life, I see how sometimes I can say that I'm trusting God, but I'm still watching what else I could be doing, and even though I am letting God direct my steps, I trip over other things like pride, hurt, hatred, frustration, etc. I wouldn't call it "blind faith," but I think that making sure I'm not comparing what I'm doing to what I could be doing is like closing my eyes. I want to live for God and I want to walk in the steps of righteousness, but I've noticed that if I'm allowing myself to be distracted by all the sin and temptations around me, I trip up.

So now I pray that God would take His hand
And cover my eyes and make me rest in Him.
I pray that He will direct my steps
So I will not stumble
And make the temptations dim;
So all I can see is His glory
Etched in His crucified palm.
And I'll be forced to reflect on His glory
And dwell on the things of above.

"A man's heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps." (Proverbs 16:9)

The Intense Workout

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a sports fanatic. I don’t do sports or watch sports; I know hardly anything about them. The most sports I watch is an occasional football game and the Superbowl. One day I was thinking, though, about the work that goes into being a good athlete. It takes practice and precision, endurance and patience to get the game right and to keep going through the physical or mental pain and discomfort. Christians are sort of like athletes: not like the ones who are merely on a junior team, but like the Olympic athletes. They train for the biggest and hardest games of the year against other skilled athletes of the world. First let’s take into account the work it takes to qualify for those games. An Olympic athlete has to put in at least 6 hours of practice a day to be even barely acceptable for the competition. This means studying, preparing, seeking others’ advice, and doing the actual game many times.

When I think about it, Christians tend to think that an hour a day is a long time to be spent as a devotion to God in prayer and searching His Word. We think that an hour a day must be enough time with God to prepare us for the spiritual competition in which we engage every day. If every Christian put in 6 hours of prayer and searching the word every day, then we would be even more prepared to face the battle against sin and temptation. An athlete would never be able to enter the Olympics if he or she only entered 15 minutes of practice a day. Thank God that His mercy fights for us when we are not prepared to! There is no way that we can carefully take care of the responsibilities that God has given us and pray and read the Bible for 6 hours of our day. Only by the grace of God can we conquer the day.

Lessons from the Ropes

Doing teen service at CGN this year, I got to meet a lot of new people. I also got to strengthen already standing relationships. Our leaders decided, on the second day of our being there, to use our free time in doing ropes course. Imagine this: first off, we hardly know each other. Second off, we are going to now be lifting each other and carrying each other. Third, we are going to be catching each other when they either purposely fall, or lose their balance. That's crazy. No one knows anyone's strong points or strength.

The first thing we learned was who were the cautious and scared ones and who were the daring and courageous. Slowly, as we tackled the various obstacles, we learned who were the leaders and who were the back-up plan people and who were the followers. You might think that straight off, the daring and courageous were the leaders. To my surprise, one of the less daring stepped up and led the group and was ready to think out how to overcome every course. The sweat was abundant and the physical pain sometimes great, but that's when we learned more about each other. We learned who were the compassionate ones and who were those ready to care for the hurting. Later we saw who had the most physical endurance and to our surprise the strongest people of our group were the smallest.

Later that day, we talked about how it all went. Our leaders mentioned how doing the ropes course is just like going through the Christian life. It's challenging (believe me, it's wayy harder than it looks). It gets hard. But you cannot do it alone. There is no way for you to walk out on a tight rope without someone else to keep your balance (unless you are really special). You can't get over a smooth 15-foot wall without someone to lift you over or hoist you up. And you always need someone to make sure you don't fall and to encourage you to reach for that rope you feel like you can't grab. In the Christian life, we need other believers around us to hold us accountable so that we don't fall and to encourage you along the way. That was really cool and I just thought I'd share that :D

What the Heavens Declare

How many times have you sat outside and looked up at the stars or poked your head out the window of the car to stare up at the moon? You admire a sunset or (for those early birds) a sunrise. You can't very well look up at the sky and not believe that this all could not have happened by chance. It's all so perfect and beautifully put together; there must be and intelligent design behind its face. But it gets really crazy when you go farther out than your eyes can see. When you go to other galaxies and see the different make up of each, and that God has named every one of them and knows their place in the universe, you get this picture of how big God's knowledge is. When you see how big those things are and see how small earth is in accordance with the rest of the universe, you wonder what the psalmist wondered: "What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?"

I don't know about you, but I was astonished when I saw this on Louie Giglio's "Indescribable." This is the Whirlpool Galaxy.

Pretty beautiful, huh? In reality, all those pinkish clusters are scary star incubators that are producing stars every second. The Hubble telescope decided to aim their telescope in the middle of this galaxy. This is what they saw:

I don't know about you, but that looks pretty close to a cross to me. Can you believe it? The heavens are there and they are declaring everyday that God is here, God is real, God is powerful, and He's loving. His promises are everywhere. Those stars up there aren't doing anything incredibly important except giving God all the glory. He knows all of the millions and billions of stars and galaxies by name and He knows yours too and cares about you right now. We have such a big God and He still wants to have a personal relationship with us. That's an amazing God right there.

Look up Louie Giglio's "Indescribable" if you ever get the chance. It's on youtube.com. It's not that long, but you will be blown away by what you will see and hear.

For Spring to Have Sprung

Do you think that maybe God designed nature to make us laugh at our lives sometimes? For example, the past few days have been dark and dreary, cloudy and sometimes rainy. The grass is all brown and full of dead leaves and sticks. It's supposed to rain like this for a while. But I know that at the end, the grass will start getting greener, the leaves will come out on the trees, a few flowers might pop up!

And then, it'll rain again, and there'll be thunder and maybe lightning... and it'll be dark and cloudy again for a while. But after that, the grass is even greener, the leaves even bigger, and the flower buds even more abundant.

Sort of like our lives- every once in a while God rains down on us lessons and trials, trips in the road. But eventually, it stops, and our lives are more enriched, our minds more mature, and our walk with God more fortified.

But we so quickly lose hope when the rain starts. We think that the darkness will never end, the thunder will never cease. If we just looked out the window, we'd see that the end of the Lord is very merciful. We buckle under the weight of the raindrops, we forget that the taller we stand, the fuller we'll grow.

Did you know that after every rain, there is a rainbow? You don't see it every time because the sun has to be at a certain angle, and you have to be at a certain distance for the sun's rays to reflect off of the water molecules in the air.

Yet another one of God's object lessons! After every trial, temptation, and lesson God gives to us, His promises are always sure. His rainbow is always there. Even though we can't see it, it's proven to stand.

It amazes me how thoughtful and detailed God has been in His creation. Such a wonderful thing to be able to see God's work of art, and see our lives. It's like watching an artist paint a picture based on a feeling that you have-- only better.