Quick thought on Lazarus

^{John 12:10-11
10}So the chief priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, ¹¹for on account of him many of the Jews were going over to Jesus and putting their faith in him.

I came across this passage while I was reading the other day and was talking about it with Wade, Andrew, and Jordan and Wade made a comment about how you think the chief priests would get it. Just a little while earlier had been raised from the . So what would the point of him be?

This got me to thinking: wouldn't it be ironic and like a huge slap in the face for the chief priests if they did indeed kill Lazarus but it ends up he was one fo the people who were raised from the durring the crucifiction?

Silly chief priests.

Note: I realize this entry isn't very serious but it's still fairly Biblical and I just wanted to get that thought out in the open.

Foolishness

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written “He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness”
1 Corinthians 3:18

In all 18 years of my life I have never been seriously challenged in my faith. I’ve heard different arguments such as evolution and other worldviews but it’s all mainly been from a Christian standpoint. Going to a secular university however has gives me the opportunity to hear opposing views from people who actually believe them. Ethics is the most obvious example for me. I can’t tell for sure if my professor truly believes some of the ideas she’s teaching but she teaches as if she believes them completely.

We’re currently studying Socrates and Plato and other Greek philosophers and one of the points that have come up is Socrates opinion on creation. In short the “Demi Urge” who is the only real god was enlightened. He was surrounded by chaos though and took it upon himself to bring order to the chaos. He created the universe using matter that was already there and before everyone is born the Demi Urge shows each person’s soul everything there is to know about anything and also shows the soul which star they will preside on if they are good in life. And supposedly the shock of being born makes people forget everything they have been shown.

This theory seems ridiculous especially with the knowledge we now have of the space and our solar system and stars and such. But how many people really have the belief that if you live a good life you’ll go to heaven whether heaven is a star or clouds or another dimension. It’s still just as foolish as the theory about the Demi Urge. But people the world considers to be wise have taken in these ideas. The ideas that Socrates and Plato came up with are still followed by many and these people while thousands of years old are still considered wiser than any one else. Yet God has revealed to us how foolish and ridiculous their ideas are. Socrates based all his beliefs off of the idea that people know everything there is to know they’ve just forgotten it. It’s a ridiculous idea yet people still consider what he taught to be profound. But how can something be profound when it’s foundation is foolish?

New Orleans Part 2

I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff the last couple weeks. It seems hard to believe that that is all the time that has passed since the trip to New Orleans. It already seems like the whole trip is fading away into a memory. Something that I’ll be able to look back on and say “remember when?” I’m not sure if I can really say the lessons I learned down there will always be with me. I say this because I’m not sure if I really learned anything new. This seems to be a struggle that at least I deal with quite often. I’ve grown up a Christian and grown up in the church. I’ve heard so many sermons and Sunday school lessons that it seems like I never hear anything new (which all goes back to Ecclesiastes). I know a lot of this is a pride issue but also I think it’s because the basics of Christianity are so simple. Love God, love others because God loves you and forgives you no matter what. Now I say there simple but actually understanding them is a different matter. At the same time though I’m not sure how much someone can get out of a sermon, I’ve heard time and time again that Jesus loves me no matter what and that he can forgive anything. I have no doubt about that. I’ve heard that God blesses you through your giving. I’ve heard so many lessons on tithing I could probably write a book It’s gotten to the point where I rarely get much out of sermons besides cool verses. I feel like the five things that really help me grow my faith are these: Meeting in small groups such as kairos or prayer groups, Worshipping God whether it be in song or just meditation on his glory, spending time digging into the Bible, prayer and serving and putting his the things I have learned to good use.

Now back to the New Orleans trip

The trip allowed me to do all of these things. We got to work in groups, worship in groups, talk in groups, and pray in groups. We got to sing praises to the Lord whether it was during formal worship services or just having a good time in the vans. I was able to set time aside to continue reading through Luke. But by far the two greatest things I was strengthened by was the prayer and service. See I’m not sure if I learned any new lessons. It helped reiterate the power of prayer to me. And that’s something that I’ve really been thinking about these last few weeks. In fact you’ll probably see me write more about prayer soon. It was just incredible to be able to see so many people be prayed for and give us prayer requests. I got home and just had an urge to go around to random people asking for prayer requests. I didn’t, which I regret and I can come up with excuses why I didn’t and shouldn’t have but I don’t want to dwell on that right now.

As I just said the other huge thing was the service aspect. That’s why we went after all, to serve. At times I just sort of shut my brain off and did things there are points of time in my memory of the trip where all I can say is “I’m pretty sure I did such and such” instead of details it’s sort of like a giant block in my mind where it says “at this point in time I SERVED.” And I may be completely wrong on this but I see that as a sort of good thing. It doesn’t matter how you serve as long as you do it. I know what we did as a whole down there, and I know at least to some extent what is still being done down there. But the details aren’t what matter it’s the action. I don’t think I learned a whole lot from serving itself but it’s something I needed to do. It’s something we as the body of Christ need to do. I know we were where God wanted us doing what he wanted us to do.

Quite a few scattered thoughts in there but I hope you can get the gist of it all.
God bless

One last thing, there are a couple of places where people who went on the trip have posted pictures you can see them all at these places:

http://spaces.msn.com/members/wadedara/

http://spaces.msn.com/members/carfreakgm/

http://spaces.msn.com/members/yrdnal2000/

The First Instalment of the New Orlean Chronicles

We've returned from our mission trip to New Orleans and praise God for the opportunities we had there. The main thing we did while we were there was "gut" houses. We basically took all of the drywall, insulation, furniture, carpet, tile, etc. out of the house so it could be rebuilt. Other tasks included tearing down a garage, and cutting down trees. All in all the destruction even after all this time is still incredible. The first house we did was smaller and smelled horrible. The carpet was still completely soaked and you could see a path of puddles where you walked on it. We completely gutted that house so it was just the ourter bricks and the studs and some wiring and a water heater.
That night Bill the fearless leader of the group took us all out to dinner with one of the ladies whos house another half of our group had gutted that day. We went to Landry's Seafood and all had a jolly good time with food and fellowship with our new friends from Littleton Church of Christ (and a fun fact ends up that is the church that my boss at Pump it Up attends).
The next day we woke up bright and early at Tammany Oaks Church of Christ who were kind enough to house us and who have been hosting volunteers since the hurricane first hit. We had breakfast and a morning devo and went to a house with a car flipped on it's side and a ruined garage. We flipped the car and emptied all the stuff out of the garage into the culdesac where it was then dumped by city officials.
After we finished that we split into two groups again and one group went to tear down another garage that had collapsed on itself and my group which consisted of most of the Folks from Kairos went to cut down trees and hall them to the side of the road (see second picture)

That's all for now but I will definately continue to post the rest of what happened later.

Luke 22:43 and the Garden of Gethsemane

A few nights ago I went to read my Bible and didn’t know where to read so I randomly found a passage. It just happened to be Luke’s account of the Garden of Gethsemane. I didn’t think I would find anything new since I had read it multiple times before and had heard countless lessons and sermons that addressed the happenings before Christ’s death. Right after the verse where Christ asks God to remove the cup, however, I noticed an awesome verse I can’t recall every noticing before:

Luke 22:43
Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him

The very next verse is one that is often referred to, however.

Luke 22:44
And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling upon the ground.

So many things can be taken out of this one little verse. First God didn’t remove Christ’s trials but he did send help. 1 Corinthians 10: 13 says the same thing only more directly:

1 Cor 10:13
No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.

I’ve heard that verse quite a bit too but it’s just incredible to see how many times God used Christ to show his mercy and love.

The other thing I took from the verse in Luke is that hard times won’t quit just because God is helping you. Even after the angel appeared and strengthened Jesus he still struggled so much that his “sweat became like drops of blood, falling upon the ground.”
God doesn’t always give you a magic wand to wave and make everything better but he does give you the strength and tools that you need to get through.

II Corinthians 12

I read II Corinthians 12 the other day and it is such an amazing chapter. I don’t know what led me to read it but it is incredible. I highly encourage you to read the whole thing but if you just want a couple verses to read be sure to check out vs. 9-10. They don’t mean quite as much with out the context of he rest of the chapter but they are still incredible no matter what.

A Thought on Harry Potter

Sorry again no post about Ecc. I reread the chapter 3 a couple times but I think I was led to spend some time thinking about this instead:

I was up until almost 2:00 am this morning finishing the latest Harry Potter book. When I only had about 15 pages left I realized something that almost made me grimace: I was on the edge of my seat. I really cared about the fictitious characters and the plot and the ending. In itself that isn’t bad but then I thought of the night before and what would probably happen before I went to bed after I finished the book: I would probably open my bible to some random place in the New Testament and read 10 verses just out of force of habit. If I was tired enough I would probably only actually read 3 or 4 and just briefly skim the rest. How could I be so enthralled in this fictitious book that I had read all 6oo pages in less than 3 days and yet I couldn’t take the time to spend time reading more of the most truthful book in all of creation.

It’s not just Harry Potter I do this with that just happened to be the book I was reading at the time. But how many times do we do that? As humans we would rather read a bunch of words thrown together by someone who has an imagination (that was given to them by God) than read the words of the very God that created our language.

Indeed I did read my usual 10 verses before I went to bed and try as I might to stop myself I skimmed a few of them. How could I be so selfish and close-minded?

In my opinion there is nothing evil with Harry Potter (we can get into the whole stumbling block issue later). I don’t honestly think there is anything wrong with getting engrossed in a book either. No where in the Bible does it say ‘read the Bible or you’ll go to hell” (as far as I know). But it is part of growing closer to God. You can be Baptized and accept Christ as your Lord and savior and be saved without really meditating on the Bible. However how are you supposed to know you are saved? How can you know when you screw up if you didn’t read what counts as screwing up. The Bible is such an incredible book. At times it seems to drag on but if you can get passed the long lineages and the repetition of parts than you can find so many incredible lessons.

I pray that someday I could get to the point where I have an unquenchable thirst for the words of my Lord. I hope that one day I will be to the point where I’m on the edge of my seat because I’m reading the Bible. I don’t know how to get to that point besides to pray that God will lead you there and to continue to read the Bible so you can understand it better. I hope you will pray the same thing.