Proven Faithfulness

I wrote some time back about an experience I had with trusting God. My family was having a really tight time of things financially and I had sat down with a stack of bills and my check book. I looked at the stack of bills and estimated what I needed to pay them all and it equaled almost exactly what I had in my checking account. There was only one problem with that, I had not written my tithe check yet. I wrestled for a few minutes with not writing the tithe check this month, but in the end I decided to trust that God knew what He was doing and figured one or two of my bills would have to ride until the next paycheck. When I finished writing out all the bills there was one envelope left at the bottom of the stack, when I opened the envelope it was a refund check for just over the amount that I was short for all my bills. I realized that God did know what He was doing and He came through one more time.

Since then God has come through multiple times. A little over a year ago now Julie lost her job with the school district she had been working for and we didn’t know how we were going to continue to make our house payment. I was also going to have to stop going to seminary (I was going part time as a commuter student) so we could cut expenses. God provided Julie with a job on campus at the seminary and housing on campus so we could move there and I could go to school full time. He even provided a renter for our house that wanted to move in the same month that we moved on campus. In fact our renter is right now trying to purchase our house which will relieve us from the financial burden of paying the difference between the rent we get and the mortgage payment. God not only came through, but He did so in a way that we only could have dreamed of. Never did I think that I would be able to quit my job and become a full time student again.

Through all of this Julie and I committed to remaining faithful to our tithe and more when we could swing it. Most recently God has really come through with our minivan. We have had an unusual amount of mechanical trouble with the minivan this summer. First the harmonic balancer came off the front of the engine ($400), then we needed brakes ($450), and just a couple of weeks ago the radiator blew up while we were in Citrus Heights ($800). Through all of this mechanical trouble we have not had to finance one cent, we have had just enough cash in our account to cover all the repairs each time. We were even able to pay my tuition and books this semester with cash instead of credit card. Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, the money just didn’t appear out of thin air, I worked full time this summer for the seminary and that allowed us to have just enough funds to provide for all the unusual expenses. The full time work was God’s way of providing for all of the things that would pop up this summer. God has continually proven Himself faithful through this season of our lives and I truly believe it is because Julie and I have been committed to being faithful to Him with our time, our family and our finances, we have been blessed.

Lesson learned

I have just very recently had the privilege of being the proud recipient of my first F in my academic career. It seems that it is exceedingly important to pay close attention to the syllabus of a course in order to fully understand the requirements for success.

Let me explain further. I took two summer courses this year, these were the first summer courses that I have ever taken at Golden Gate and they are one week intensive courses requiring a lot of reading and reporting before and after the actual course itself. In my naivete, I neglected to pay close attention to the fact that in these courses all of the assignments must be completed in order to earn a passing grade. My first course required two post class assignments and I only completed and turned one of them in thinking that I could take the hit on my grade and still get a solid B or maybe even an A-. Normally in regular semester classes this would be the case and I know a lot of people that leverage their classes in this way. For me this was the first time I actually did not turn in an assignment at all, usually I would try to turn in something even if I did not feel it was my best work. Well as you can guess, because I did not complete all of the requirements for the course my professor, after a couple of email correspondences to make sure he didn't misplace my assignment, he assigned me the grade that I earned...an F.

At first I was really annoyed that I got an F, and even had thoughts of crying foul because this is a seminary and should be able to express some grace in matters where students make errors that would effect them in this way. But then I realized that my professor was just showing integrity to the course syllabus and to those that did all of the work to earn a passing grade.

I have been reading the book Soul Revolution by John Burke. In this book he outlines an experiment called the 60/60 that is designed to bring you closer in your walk with God. It works by having a watch that will beep on every hour and at that point you are to give the next 60 seconds to God in prayer, worship or however you choose to connect to Him. This is to go on for 60 days and at the end you evaluate your experience. I have been doing this as I read the book, and God has been showing me places where I have not been trusting Him.

I tell you all of this because early this morning I was reading and praying and God revealed to me the true reason I received an F in my class. It was because I was not trusting Him. I had allowed myself to become overwhelmed in my circumstances and not gone to the one person who could help me through, God. I had been blinded by the immediate situation and in my effort for a quick and easy solution I had chosen the easy way out and just not done my final assignment. This did relieve the stress I was under, however because I neglected to check the syllabus to see how this would actually affect my grade, I had inadvertently placed myself in the situation where I had failed the class. Had I gone to the Lord, I no doubt would have found the strength to complete the requirements for the course as well as fulfill all of the other obligations that I had converging on me at that time.

Tough way to learn a lesson about trust, but there are worse ways for God to reveal truth to you. I just attended the Willow Creek Leadership Summit this last Thursday and Friday and one of the themes that came out from the many different speakers is that failure is an option. By that I mean that we need to allow for failures so that we can become a better success in the future. Failures are learning opportunities, in our personal lives as well as in our leadership positions. We need to make room for failure and not look at it in such a negative light, most often failure is just the gateway to success and God is preparing us through these opportunities.

So as I continue to proceed through my academic ventures God has revealed to me that He wants me to trust Him and seek Him even in my school work. Not a new realization but a very clear reinforcement of the principle that will guide me for the rest of my career.

As I realized the lesson that God was teaching me very early this morning I decided to email my professor and thank him for the failing grade. I explained the lesson God had taught me through the experience and thanked him for being a part of that lesson. I am looking forward to seeing how he responds to a student thanking him for a failing grade.

As a side note, if you are looking for a way to grow deeper in your relationship with God, I recommend the book Soul Revolution it will challenge you and make you appreciate the relationship that God really wants to have with you.

It's only been three months...OK three and a half

OK, I know it has been over three months since I have posted anything, and my last post was really kinda lame. So here are my excuses 1) I'm a full time seminary student and it really takes a lot of my time 2) I'm a full time seminary student and I have to write a ton and I have trouble forcing myself to write anything much less a blog post (even my poor cousin suffers because I just don't feel like answering emails that take brain power and typing skills...sorry Teresa) 3) did I mention I'm a full time student and after all the writing and studying is done I really need to spend time with my beautiful wife and three wonderful kids. So there you have it in a nutshell, all the excuses I could think of for not posting to my blog.

Now for the good news, I will be posting again soon. I just finished two really great books and I want to wright reviews for you to read. One is fiction and the other is non-fiction. I know what your thinking, I've only been out of classes for two weeks and already I have two books read. Actually I've read four books, but only two were worth writing about.

Well, that is all I had to say for now. I just wanted anyone who cared to know that I am alive and I do still have a couple of brain cells left so I will be posting again soon. I also plan on being better about posting during the next semester of classes. I hope to be posting shorter, but more frequently. I also have plans to post more on small groups in the near future. Now that I've said it you have to hold me to it.

Theology Question

For anyone that has ever wondered what kind of questions theology professors put on their exams, here's one.

You have been asked to counsel with a family in the church, whose son was one of the victims of the serial killer Charles Bonin. They are perplexed since hearing that Bonin reportedly accepted Christ on death row. They have asked you to explain how God could forgive Bonin, when the nephew murdered by Bonin had yet to accept Christ, though the nephew had participated in some of the youth group events. "How fair is it that Bonin is in heaven and our nephew is in hell?" How could you use atonement metaphors to guide them to comprehend more of God's grace through the cross of Christ in their difficult context?.

This is an actual question that might pop up on my theology mid-term exam on Thursday. Feel free to leave your answers in the comments, I would love to see the different takes on this question. I will post my answer next week after my exam is over.

Theology Reflections

I have decided to post a copy of an assignment that I did for my theology class. It is a reflection on the doctrinal witness to the person and work of Jesus Christ. The kicker to this assignment was that it could only be 2/3 of a page long. This was alot harder than it seemed.

Please, if you read this paper leave a comment. Treat it as if you were my teacher and you were grading this paper for content within the parameters. I welcome the insight and criticism (constructive please).

Theology Reflection #1:

As in any aspect of our faith, there needs to be a balance in how we understand the person and work of Jesus Christ. Throughout history there always seems to be a draw from one side of the spectrum to the other, either the personhood of Jesus is emphasized at the expense of his deity, or the deity of Christ is emphasized as the expense of His personhood. I don’t see how it is possible to have more of one and less of the other, or how you can separate one from the other. I think that in order to have an effective savior you have to have a person Jesus.
I think that Jesus had to be born from a human mother in order to begin to fulfill all the requirements of being fully human. If at any point He was to have skipped a step He would not qualify as a savior. He would not have experienced every aspect of human life therefore being able to relate to us completely. If at some point our sin had been born out of an experience that Jesus had not been able to encounter because He skipped that step of humanity, He would not be able to save us from that specific sin. However, because He did go through every step of humanity from birth to death, and did not sin, He was uniquely qualified to be the sacrifice necessary to fulfill the debt of sin that mankind owed to God.
I think that the miracle of a virgin birth was necessary because it signified that from the beginning He was deity. Not only did this fulfill prophesy but it necessitated the infusion of God to complete the process of procreation without a human father. If Jesus had been anything less than completely God, He would not have had the authority to forgive sin, and therefore would not have been able to atone for our sins on the cross. He also would not have been able to have authority over death in order to take up His life again allowing Him to ascend back to heaven in bodily form.
Going back to the idea of balance, I think that we often spend too much effort emphasizing the work Jesus did on the cross or explaining what took place in order for Him to be completely human. I think we do this often at the expense of the actual life He lived and ministry He had. Certainly Jesus could have been fully man and fully God and died on the cross for our sins, but without the ministry that led up to that point, we would not have known that it ever took place. Jesus had to be the controversial teacher that He was on earth or else the work on the cross would have been ineffective because no one would know about the free gift of salvation because there would be no witness to it.
We often go from birth narrative to passion with little or no time spent on the life and ministry of Jesus when we witness of Him. We do this at the expense of our ability to relate to Him. His entire life and ministry is an explanation of how we are to relate to His humanity and His deity. It’s the instruction manual on how to have community with the totality of who He is not only as the Son of God, or Jesus of Nazareth, or Christ the Messiah, but all of Him balanced together. Without this balanced knowledge of Jesus Christ there is an imbalance to how we react to Him as believers.

Greek

Due to the large amount of brain cells that it requires to learn Greek in one semester, I regret that I have not posted in quite some time. I hope to remedy that situation soon, however I am taking another Greek class this semester so my post volume will remain low as long as I don't drop the class. I hope to post soon.

Xa/rij u9mi=n kai\ ei0rh/nh a0po\ qeou= patro\j h9mw=n.

Words Matter!

The vast majority of communication is through words. Yes, I know we communicate through pictures and music and by using expressive motion, but in today's society we do far more communicating by words than any of those other things. We speak face to face, we speak over the phone, we text message, we blog, we email, we even occasionally use pencil and paper to write letters (archaic I know). The growing majority of our communication is just words.

The importance of words wes brought to my attention this morning when I was doing my devotional reading in Proverbs. Verse 12:18 drew my attention, "Reckless words peirce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." Just let that verse sink in for a minute. "Reckless words" how often have do we just say whatever comes to mind without really filtering the consequences of our words? I am truly guilty of that, I often joke about not having a filter I just say whatever I'm thinking at the time. But the fact of the matter is this kind of speaking without thinking can really effect the way others percieve you.

"Reckless words" in text form are even more common. How often does it occur that you find yourself having to explian a text or email, because what you wrote was misunderstood and either cofused someone or offended someone. I have even read emails that seemed like they were almost yelling at me, when in fact they were just instructional in nature.

Lets take this to another level. What does it look like when Christians write blogs or responses to public domain conversations and we don't choose our words well? What kind of damage do "Reckless words" do in an environment like this? Do we communicate "healing" or hatred?

Proverbs 12:13A says, "An evil man is trapped by his sinful talk," and Proverbs 12:14A, "From the fuit of his lips a man is filled with good things." Twice Jesus reminds us in Matthew that the words that come out of our mouths are formed in the heart. Paul urges in Ephesians 4:29, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen."

The Bible speaks much about how we speak. How do we use our words? Are we reckless with our words or do they bring healing? Our words reflect who we are on the inside, these passages mentioned above all speak to that. As Christians we need to think really hard about how we view our words and how our words are viewed by others.