Just a Thought

You know how we’re on this planet spinning a thousand miles an hour, and our planet has this rock spinning around us, and together, us and our moon, along with 7 other planets and their moons are orbiting this giant ball of fire that’s 90 million miles away that provides enough heat for us to survive, and yet that ball of fire is only one star among billions in our galaxy, which is only one galaxy among hundreds of billions in our universe? Me too. Let’s call that wisdom. But have you ever realized it? Has it ever hit you, and you are suddenly overwhelmed by the size of our universe and your relative smallness? Let’s call that revelation. I love that. Wisdom may be to know, but revelation is to feel things as real as they really are. I want to feel the reality of my life as vivid as it truly is. I want the eyes of my heart to be enlightened, that I would be aware of the reality of my existence and the existence of Jesus, the existence of this God who gave it all for me, and the existence of this Spirit that lives in me. Sometimes it hits me. But I find that most of my life is distracted. Most of my life is spent caught up in the irrelevant, but oh, that I would take the time to remember what life is and to meditate on it until reality hits me. I think part of life is walking into a greater, less distracted awareness. Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus that God would give them a Spirit of wisdom and revelation. I don’t just want wisdom, I want revelation; I don’t just want to know it, I want to feel it. I’ve met those who could cry tears of awe and joy at the very mention of Jesus, and who are so full of an awareness and wonder that it awakens others to the reality as well. I want to live like that.

Just a thought.

Good Theology

This second week of my DTS was led by Danny Lehman and was focused on the character and nature of God. We talked a lot of deep theology, and it was amazing. We compared Calvinism and Arminianism, free will and predestination, we talked about the trinity, we looked at the natural attributes of God and the moral character of God, and we learned and wondered and questioned. But I think the most important thing Danny taught was that God is infinite and personal.

I really think we have to be careful lest we make God into a formula, lest we make God into an equation or an object that we can study through a microscope. God is a person, three persons in fact, which means we can perform the most thorough study of who God is, and yet never know him. It’s true that knowing about God and his character is valuable. And what a privilege it is that God has revealed so much about himself to us. Throughout the Bible God tells us what he is like. We hear of his strength and his knowledge, his wrath and his justice, his mercy and his kindness. And I believe that there is something in us, let’s call it conscience, an awareness of what is good and true, and when we see God for who he really is, we can’t help but fall in love with him. But I also believe that one of the worst things we can assume is that we’ve figured God out. As soon as we’ve broken God down into a list of attributes and behaviors we forget that we were made to look at God in all his mystery and majesty and get lost in who he is. To think that we’ve figured him out, or even mostly figured him out, is utterly arrogant and even dangerous, because such thinking can cause us to stop searching and seeking after God. After all, if God hasn’t helped us out yet, and we believe that we’ve experienced most of him, then why keep seeking him?

So as we dig deep into the characteristics of God and learn all we can about his nature, let that never distract us from the fact that God is infinite and personal, and to know a person you need not information but relationship. If we know him as a person and can trust him as a person, than when we run into things we don’t understand and wrestle with questions like why suffering happens or predestination versus free will, it won’t cause us to give up on figuring him out, but will cause us to want to know him more. May all of the holiness and mysteriousness of who God is only lead us to love him more, for if our theology determines anything apart from the goodness of God, than it was futile, and all our efforts were in vain, for we missed who God truly is.

Outreach Location Revealed

Probably the most exciting part of this week was learning our outreach location. We knew the moment was coming, and as some of the other schools began to find out our anticipation grew. We walked into the classroom on Wednesday night and whether it was logical deduction or a pure gut feeling, we knew we were about to discover where we would spending life from April through June. The previous Friday we had been given four options and the opportunity to write down our first and second choice. We had 30 minutes to pray and decide where to go, but I knew within seconds. As the locations appeared on the screen I immediately knew where I wanted to go, but felt the Lord say to put my choice second and His first. As the Middle East appeared on the screen, I knew that’s where I was supposed to go. After 30 minutes of wrestling over whether I really heard God or not, I went with what I had initially felt (there may or may not have been a coin flip in there too). Between that moment and Wednesday night, my heart had completely changed, and there was now nowhere I would rather go than the Middle East. After a hyped up time of revealing our outreach location, involving a scavenger hunt and wild introductions to what team members and staff would be joining us, we finally began to realize that we were actually going to be missionaries. As the Middle East team met afterwards, there was an excitement in the air, and if they told us we were leaving that second I swear would have been ready. We all shared our equal amazement and desire to go love on the people of the Middle East.

Even in the short time since I’ve found out, my life has begun to change as I look toward this next season of life. I have begun to feel God’s heart for the people there as their faces have fill my thoughts and prayers. I’m attempting to learn the dialect of arabic of where we’re going, and so I’ve made friends with some people here from the country we’re going to. I can’t tell you exactly what country that is for safety reasons. I also have to go by a different name. Apparantly calling out “Israel” in the Middle East is frowned upon. I’ve yet to think of a good alternative. As far as what we will do there, it’s really up to us and what we feel the Holy Spirit call us to do. Some probable options are serving and caring for the Syrian and Sudanese refugees, sharing the gospel of Jesus with our Muslim neighbors, and assisting the local churches in their ministries. But what we all look forward to the most is that we just get to be with Jesus, doing what he loves to do.