The other night, I was posed the question, “What verse has meant the most to you over time?” My answer at the time, and still is, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ (Matthew 22:37). I further expounded on the fact that to love God with all your heart is a completely devotional and relational side of our love. It is manifested in God’s love as shown through the interaction of His people. Loving God with all your heart is in turn loving God’s creation with all your heart. If we are like diamonds, reflect the light of God around our world, then we are truly loving God with all our hearts. To love with our soul is the to love with our true inner being, where the sacred and profane meet, where our fleshly bodies and the Holy Spirit interact. In my quiet time or when I meditate on God’s word or when I am ’still and know You are God’ is when I am loving Him with my soul. In worship I am loving Him with my soul. In brokenness I am loving Him with my soul. In our mind is the last, and often neglected one. Ravi Zacharias feels this is one of the most ignored parts of Christianity; it is strange that some evangelistic movements insist that we must not ‘reason’ out our faith (can anyone explain what’s going on in these people’s heads?) “So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind” (1 Cor 14:15). It is important that there be an incorportation of where our mind is with our spiritualy life. “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col 3:2). In our culture, people look at Christian’s as ignorant and unintelligent, believing in fairy tales and myths. God says that the wisdom and intelligence of the worldly people will eventually be made foolishness, likely when we reach heaven and these people are somewhere else apart from God, second guessing their opinions.

I have often focused much of my time on loving God with all my mind. Becoming a Christian in a college setting and through apologetics has allowed me to spend much of my time focused in that area (ie my web site). It is time for me to shift my focus into a larger interaction with God, an interaction where he can truly get to know me on an intimate level. I am often fearful that I would end up like one of those people who did things for the Lord my whole life but when I get to heaven, he will say that He “never knew me” (Matt 7:23). I do not doubt the promise of slavation and eternal life, but I doubt my own shortcomings. God is complete, and I am made complete in Christ, but I often feel that my being is so incomplete, I cannot fathom how Christ has made me complete, that I am truly a NEW creation, not just an old creation with new priorites. It is a difficult task to let go of who we are or what we have known, and post-modernist society doesn’t allow people to be “new” creations. But we are all equally created in God’s image and God’s standard is constant. It is easy for us to say that it is “just the way I am” or “that what I know,” but God would be thoroughly dissapointed in that. It renders the death on the cross as pointless. He has set us free, but we actively choose to continue to live a sinful life, often dumbing down our sins so much that they are no longer sins in our minds, they are just “who we are.” This is dangerous. It is also dangerous to ramble on much longer.

Question of the day: We discussed at Bible Study monday that desire is something God plants in us and we can choose to acknowledge that desire to seek Him, or get lethargic and have a ‘dead’ faith. Have you acknowledged the desire? Are you throwing your own kindling on the flame that God has lit in you? He has given you the match and the firewood, but we’ve got to keep putting the firewood on. He will stoke the fire sometimes, but we have to keep blowing on the embers.

“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.” – Albert Schweitzer

i’ve decided the purpose of college is not to educate or expand the mind, but to weed out those humans with weak immune systems and organizational skills, following some sort of Darwinian principals. come late afternoon/evening, my body consistently feels fatigued and i will go through a total week of hell and then get a decent week. my teachers don’t really seem to be to concerned with the amounts of homework they assign or whether or not we have any other work in any other class. this week has actually been decent, but i know come next week or the week after, my life will turn back into a living hell. oh well… i guess that’s the price i pay to earn that BA.

i made a grave mistake the other day of which i am mentally still paying the price of today. i made a very important person feel as though she was not good enough, wrongly thorugh my words. although my intent was of concern, the words came out all wrong. in this age where criticism and defamation comes left and right, people need nothing more than be edified for the acts that they have done or been working on. my mistake was not praising all the progress that had been made, but pointing out the distance still to go. THIS IS NOT EDIFYING. i am truly sorry to the person i did this to. my goal now is to start working on edifying those around me. i want to praise them for the things they do, for the more time i spend with my friends, i realize how good of friends they actually are. this will not change my sarcastic nature or the occassional “I hate you,” but more kind words will hopefully be spoken.

maybe i shouldn’t read josh and chris’ journals before mind, because i too wanted to praise the ‘guy time’ last night. a bunch of went bowling at alley katz for Quarter Nights. we had a great time, dispite this fat kid in the next lane who kept telling (pardon the word) ‘nigger jokes.’ the jokes were really offending me, but i found no way to tell a gregarious fat kid to stop, i don’t think you can. other than that, it was a great evening of guy-to-guy jokes, talks about girls, sarcastic clapping, and occasional spouts of “no drive, no five!” i guess i’ll get back to wasting my time on the internet now. here’s my question for today.

“It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” (Philippians 1:29) How have you suffered for Christ today?

well… the academy awards are on, so i figured this was a perfect time to update my blog, since i have no interest in the awards. as most the people who read this know, i played my show at the ox last night with josh doody (whose links is on the left of the page). it was quite a turnout and i thank all who came out. after reading josh’s blog about the show, there’s not much left for me to say. “practice makes perfect. Lots of practice makes for a good show”… this is essential. i felt ill prepared for the show, and i felt that was reflected in our performance. i don’t think i’ve ever walked away from a show with a positive experience, but maybe that’s just the hyper-critical brain talking. i felt my vocals sucked or people were bored with the setlist or whatever. i do appreciate all the kudos given afterwards that helped my confidence some, but it just doesn’t quell the feeling. i am glad josh got to sing, though. all he needs is the opportunity and motivation to keep furthering his music career. other than that, i don’t have much to say about the night until i hear the recording. i will set up a link to it when i have the mp3s.

over a conversation the other day, i really feel led to start volunteering at the local salvation army or other ministry based service group. amongst the people i know or am friends with, there is a total lack of service to the community. James 2:26 states that “faith without works is dead.” I think we have a mindset that if we are involved in a christian group or go to church or even lead a youth group, that we are doing the works. i have a feeling that james was talking about an act of service, likely to the general community, christian and non-christian. just living a good christian life, helping out our roommates, or giving our friends rides when they need them is not quite enough of what god wants out of us, though all those things are great. people want to see christians living out their faith in the real world, offering a service to those that need service, that we “give even a cup of cold water to the least of [his] followers” (Matt 10:42), or that we have the mindset that “if anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). i want to make it clear that we are not saved by our works, just our faith in the christ of the bible, but this idea is important. there are two beams on the cross. the vertical one shows our relationship with god and devotion to his word, will, and spirit. the horizontal beam shows our connection with our world, where we can take the vertical and render it effective in our lives and amongst those around us. it’s time for christians to get back out into the world and get their hands dirty, just as jesus did. he didn’t come just so he could have ‘bible study’ time with the disciples or to hang out with the same crowd that already knew who he was, he come to feed the thousands and to heal the sick and to love on those who lost all knowledge of what love is. it’s time to resuscitate our faith, for it has become dead.

Well, I’m coming up on four in the morning and I still have another four pages of my paper to write. I at first was excited about my topic and felt that I was going to be reward with the educational content, but it has not happened yet. I am writing about the life of Albert Schweitzer, a missionary in the early to mid 1900s who won a Nobel Peace Prize. In our generation, I think very few people know who he is, though he made the cover of time as a Christian missionary and is known as a great theologian in the early to mid 1900s. I am writing about his theory on the ‘reverence for life’ which is based on this statement:

I am life that wills to live in the midst of other life that wills to live. I must interpret the life about me as I interpret the life that is my own. My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine. And not only other human life, but all kinds of life: life above mine, if there be such a life; life below mine, as I know it to exist. Ethics in our western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relation of man to man. But that is a limited ethics. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals too. – Schweitzer

It is a fascinating proposition, one that Christians today tend to ignore. There is a very practical ethics within the church today, spawning from the individualized protestant theology, that has taken a boundless ethic, one that includes animals, nature, and people outside our sphere of influence, and excluded it. Our ethics are now based on our man to man relationships with our friends and aquiantences, but it no longer includes ALL of God’s creation. I want to propose that this start to be changed. We are not good stewards of the world that we are suppose to till and keep, and if we don’t start taking the role of a ruler with the earth as our loyal subjects, we may be dethroned.