Micro-Rewards

After being at home in NJ for two weeks, I was reunited with my car today, and after small group, I snapped my phone into the phone holder thing, and started driving home. As I was driving, a feeling crept into my mind - I felt like I was missing out on getting credit for something. I thought perhaps I was momentarily mistaken that I should get Fitbit steps for driving. Then I realized - I was missing out on getting Waze points. 

It’s interesting how I have grown accustomed to getting credit for everything I do in my life, from walking to driving. While I’m sure there’s some fancy psychological term for these minute, meaningless points, I’ll call them “micro-rewards” (I fully expect to collect some royalty on this term in some point in the future). Whether it’s Fitbit, Waze, Bing Rewards, credit card points, or Yogurtland card points, the expectation for receiving a reward for everything I do seems to have engrained itself in my head. 

Expecting recognition and reward for every deed accomplished seems so petty, but if I’m honest to myself, that’s how I often view work and spirituality. While rewards (monetary and otherwise) are an integral part of a healthy motivation of work, it really shouldn’t be the driving motivation for me, and I should not get upset if there are things that I do that are not recognized or rewarded. This temptation towards entitlement and applause is even more dangerous in relation to God, and I hope that I’m not living to rack up “God points” which are redeemable at my death. Rather, that all my good deeds would be driven by a pure love for God which is self-sacrificing and doesn’t demand a constant ticker of micro-rewards. 

Blank Check

This is going to be a short post.

Today, I was listening to an awesome David Platt sermon on the Great Commission (video/links below), and he brought up the common, almost over-used illustration of giving our lives to God as a blank check.

"As followers of Christ we have sacrificed the right to determine the direction of our life. The language we use all the time is blank check. Every one of our lives, a blank check on the table, no strings attached. Our plans, our possessions, our bank accounts, where we live, our lifestyle, our future, our dreams, our ambitions, all on the table. Whatever you want me to do, God, whatever you want me to give, wherever you want me to go, no strings attached. This is not for super-Christians, this is for every follower of Christ. This is what it means to follow Christ."

As I listened to David Platt rattle off this list of stuff to give to God (which he did incredibly quickly, making this transcript very difficult to do), my initial reaction was, "I don't think giving any of those things over to God would be very difficult." To a large part, this is true. I don't really care much for money and I'm not really attached to any type of lifestyle or a particular line of work. But what would I have a hard time writing on my blank check? Reputation and recognition. This probably isn't surprising to most of you who know me, as this is something that I've struggled with my entire life. And like most deep heart issues, it isn't something that can be fixed simply by behavior, but it's something that requires a reorientation of the heart, which often is frustratingly slow.

I plan to write more on this subject at some point in the future (I already started a blank draft for it last week!), so I won't delve much deeper into this. But I ask you: What do you have a hard time putting on that blank check?

Why the Great Commission Is Great - David Platt - TGC13 Missions Conference from The Gospel Coalition on Vimeo.

To My Spiritually Backslidden Friends

Colossians 4:12-13 - "Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis."

To my spiritually backslidden friends - my MCCC friends that I see once every few years and my AIV friends that I only see now during weddings - I'm praying for you. For some of you, I've known that you haven't gone to church in years and probably don't even self-identify as Christians anymore. Even though I didn't ask you about church or God because I didn't want to embarrass you or force you to pretend to care, your distance from God continues to break my heart. For others of you, your spiritual regression, though fairly recent, was not surprising to me. And maybe you even knew that I knew (or could guess) that you stopped going to church even before I asked you about it. And then there are the handful of you that surprised me with your renunciation of Christ and his Church, leaving me sad and speechless.

Whoever you are, I'll be your Epaphras. There was once I time that I was physically with you and could make a real difference in your life. But those times have passed, and for most of you, I am no longer in a place relationally or geographically where I can drag you to church or discuss spiritual things. Even though I can't engage you on what I believe to be meaninglessness and futility of life without Christ, I can and will struggle on your behalf in my prayers.

But I must admit that as one guy, I feel a bit overwhelmed - there are just so many of you and I am so powerless! As my mind sweeps through all of your names and faces, I simultaneously mourn and rejoice in my utter powerlessness to change you. Though my heart's combination of brotherly love and a prideful Messiah-complex makes me wish I could make a real difference in your life, the reminder of God's sovereignty and the gift of prayer is my lone hope and comfort.

And so I'll continue to pray. I pray knowing that I join in with the saints who love you and want to see you love Jesus - your mom and dad, your childhood church friends, your college fellowship friends. I pray trusting in the sovereignty and goodness of God, soberly aware that your salvation is not dependent on the number of my prayers lifted or tears shed. And as a weak, immature, oft-distracted, poor-man's Epaphras, the times that I struggle to struggle on your behalf in my prayers may be frequent, but I pray trusting that the same God who took a Lunchables of fish and crackers and transformed it into a feast can similarly transform my unworthy prayers into power spiritual weapons.

And obviously, I post this not to get spiritual high-fives but to let you know that I care, I'm thinking about you, and I'm here if you want to talk.

I love you all. Come home to Jesus.
Caleb

Speaking at AIV Fall Retreat

As many of you know, I've been super busy the last month with a lot of different things, so I haven't gotten the chance to post. One of those major things that took a lot of my time was preparing to speak at the AIV Fall Retreat [here's a link to my seemingly disorganized outline]. The "Fall Retreat" is what used to be the lock-in, and was held an hour and a half off campus (and only an hour from Fort Wayne!) at a sweet retreat center. I was excited and pretty well-prepared going into the talk, but as I learn every time, speaking is hard. Here are three reasons why speaking is hard and some of the lessons I learned from this experience.

1) Distractions while speaking really screw up your train of thought.

I don't know how pastors stay focused. Every turn of the head, creaking opening of the door, and slight noise from the audience triggers my "squirrel" reflex. On top of that, there's the need to suppress the mental distracted of audience members that are sleeping or not paying attention. It probably would have been much easier had the lights been bright in my face and I couldn't see any audience members, which was kind of what it was like when I spoke at Christmas Banquet. What actually helped me stay focused on what I was saying were those in the audience who were not only listening, but were actually watching me, as for some reason, the eye contact really helped (big thanks to tall Andy W, who seemed to really be paying attention and I would go back and look to for encouragement/refocusing because his eyes were fixed forwards towards me...and because he's so tall he was easy to see.

I can really see now why Pastor Jay always wanted us to be looking at him when he spoke, why teachers often told us to face forwards, and why we were often reprimanded for going to the bathroom in the middle of sermons. Sure, it was about respect and about paying attention, but I think that they probably also did it because it helped them focus and not lose their train of thought thinking about other things. My respect and amazement of Pastor Scott at Northpark has also skyrocketed, as he often preaches right through minutes of an old lady coughing. So out of love and respect for our speakers, let's try to arrive on time (and not have to walk through doors late), look at speakers, and try not to leave service unless you really have to.

2) Not knowing how you did screws with your head.

In the minutes following giving Christian talks or gospel presentations, I often think to myself, "Good Lord, I've screwed up mightily." I mentally go through all the mistakes that I made - the things I wanted to say but forgot and the things I could have said but didn't think of. After the Fall Retreat talk, I really didn't how well I connected with the audience, if the things I said were useful, and if it really benefited anyone. It's always at this point that I really get reminded of the primacy of glorifying God and a glimpse of the reality of the sovereignty of God. I'm reminded that in the end, the audience's response doesn't dictate the "success" of any talk - it's about whether or not I've been faithful to God in both preparation and delivery, and the reminder that I'm there to serve God and not man gives me some comfort. The reality of the sovereignty of God is then made very real again to me, as I have no choice but to give the result up to God, knowing that despite my mistakes and flaws, it's only God that can work in people's hearts.

3) Receiving feedback can screw with your pride.

In those times that I've prepared well, I've generally received positive feedback. And despite my self-doubt, the temptation to be prideful is deadly. I can go quickly from "I made so many mistakes: God work through it despite me" to having to remind myself, "Yes, Caleb, you are awesome and did awesome, but remember that nothing that you did means anything apart from God". Don't get me wrong. Positive feedback is great and I need it (constructive criticism would also be welcome) and it's my own heart that's the issue. Staying humble in the midst of praise is difficult, and I can't imagine the humility guys like Piper and Keller need to continually work on.

God's Will and Decision-Making

Disclaimer: Today is the first day I've given any of this any thought and I'm sure there are a bunch of non-sequesters and  logical fallacies in the post, so don't take my arguments as final. If you disagree or have more points, please comment so I can benefit from your input!

"God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." - 1 Timothy 2:4

As I was meditating on that verse just now, here are some of the thoughts that ran through my head.

• Man, this verse is so hard to believe sometimes.
• If God desires all people to be saved, what is keeping him back from doing it?
• I know that hell is still glorifying to God, as his justice is revealed. Maybe God's desire for justice to be desired keeps Him from saving all people. 

Once that last thought ran through my head, the following question automatically hit me: 

Does God have competing desires/wills that He needs to sort through and decide between?

After thinking a little bit about it, my response (as of today, may or may not change in the future) is no, God does not have truly competing desires and wills. Here are a few reasons why. [Note that below, I use "desire" and "will" interchangeably. Also, I am speaking exclusively about God's secret, sovereign will and not of his revealed will or his will of disposition. Also, if you were looking for a response to the initial question I brought up about sending people to hell, the previous link has a good response.]

1) Competing wills implies one is superior over the other.

If God is thinking and deciding between Will A and Will B, if he chooses Will B, it means that Will A was superior to Will B, implying that God had a less-than-perfect idea. Similarly, if God chooses to make a compromise Will C between Will A and Will B, it means that God's original desires Will A and Will B were not perfect and incorrect, which I believe God is incapable of. 

Another way to envision this impossibility is to imagine the absurdity of God making a pros and cons list to make a decision. God  simply cannot will something that has any cons. 

2) Conflicting desires implies that one of the conflicting wills cannot come to pass. 

Similar to the above argument, if God has two conflicting wills and decides between them, at least one of His wills does not come to pass. This cannot be, as God's sovereignty necessitates that His ordained will always comes to pass. 

3) If God needs to "think things through", He is not perfect. 

Does an omniscient, sovereign God need to spend time weighing options or making difficult decisions? If He did, wouldn't that make Him less than perfect, and thus not God? 

Conclusion

I think that in general, we try to think about God in our human, finite terms, which ends up being impossible. When it comes to will and decisions, God is a whole other animal. Whatever God wills, is. He doesn't make a mistake, and He always gets it right the first time. Actually, God isn't even in time and doesn't make decisions "in time", so there is no "first time" for Him. There just is. God exists at a whole different level of being, which obviously makes this all this brain-crushingly difficult to think about. 

This entire post was just a really long way of saying that I don't think that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit got together and argued about whether or not to send the Great Flood or whether or not to kill off Moses right before the people entered the Promised Land (did GRRM write the OT?). This also means that God did not compromise between his desire for all men to be saved and his desire to see justice done through hell. There is no alternate ending where all people are saved and there is no hell that God is keeping from us. As difficult as it may be to come to terms with, this reality that God has set forth is the greatest and best reality.

Related Post

Is Substitutionary Atonement Unjust?

Laziness and Holiness

“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.” ― D.A. Carson

The above Carson quote that Matt Chandler read in a sermon I was listening to struck me as an incredibly accurate picture of human nature and of the trap that we young believers fall into so easily.

Later in the sermon as Chandler elaborates what he believes "grace-driven effort" entails, he says:

"Grace-driven effort attacks the roots and not just the branches...We have deceived ourselves so that our actions, who we actually are and what is in our hearts are somehow separate. We think that we are not wicked and in need of repentance and we just need to modify this behavior. And so we set out to modify a behavior when in the end, you can’t mow over the weeds...If you have lust issues, anger issues, and slander issues, ten times out of ten what you have is a heart issue, not an external issue." - Matt Chandler

I believe that one of the most crippling "heart issues" that we younger, more immature believers struggle with is that of spiritual laziness. Usually when we think of root, heart issues, we tend towards struggles such as insecurity, unhealthy fear, and the idolization of romance, academics, career, money, etc. Rarely do we actually deal with spiritual laziness, as we convince ourselves that if we dealt with any of these other heart issues, spiritual disciplines will magically become easy. We think that once the "major" sins in our lives have been uprooted, prayer and Bible reading will instantly be more attractive and rewarding, when in reality, it is largely our lack of spiritual discipline that leads to those sins in the first place.

As Carson pointed out, we also believe the lie that once saved, we "drift towards holiness". We believe that spiritual maturity is a guaranteed inevitability and that sanctification is only hard and painful for the initial "big" sins that we also think we'll simply outgrow. Despite Biblical, historical, and and personal examples to the contrary, we believe think that following Jesus always gets easier and easier, making us less willing to immediately tackle the difficult spiritual issues in our lives, waiting for them to somehow resolve themselves. Thus, clinging on to a flavor of adolescent rebelliousness, we reject all calls for holiness and discipline as legalistic, optimistically and naively thinking that simply living longer will eventually yield greater holiness. This causes us to perpetually procrastinate the disciplines that we know we desperately need, convincing ourselves that one day those disciplines will come easily, but up until this point, that day has not yet come.

But we have it backwards. Spiritual discipline is necessary for Christian maturity, not the other way around. And while I think that most people would agree with that statement, it seems like few actually live it out. It wasn't actually until senior your in college that I got a taste of what mature Christian life looks like. I experienced both the richness and rewards and the sacrifice and self-denial of a deeper relationship with Christ as I engaged in multiple consistent spiritual disciplines for the first extended period of time in my life. These included good Christian reading, deeper Bible study, Bible memorization, meditation, fasting, and devoted prayer and intercessory time. I say all this not to brag about myself (there isn't much to brag about, really) but to point out how ridiculously small-minded and immature I was just one year earlier when I patted myself on the back when I remembered to crack open my Bible that day. While this have-you-done-your-devotions-this-week stage of Christian life is unavoidable, far too many of us young Christians are stuck in it for far too long, never making it to solid food.

While we create myriads of excuses for ourselves, refusal to pursue maturity and engage in spiritual disciplines is nothing more than spiritual laziness. It isn't jealousy or hatred keeping you from spending quality time in concentrated prayer, nor is it your struggles with lust that keeps you from spending more time with Jesus in the Word. Academic and social busyness seems like a good excuse for the lack of time spent reading Christian books and in personal reflection until you consider the amount of time you spend watching football on the weekends and Hulu during the week. It's also tempting to commit the Pharisaic error of equating participation in religious activities (such as Sunday service and Bible study) with a real personal relationship with God, but corporate religious activities never nullify the need for private disciplines.

Upon honest reflection, our excuses are just excuses, and for many of us, spiritual laziness is one of the root heart issue that needs to be dealt with in our lives. I know that it's definitely one of mine. Spiritual discipline takes time, pain, and patience to create and sustain, but we can be confident that Christ will honor those who pursue him.


Hebrews 12:11 - "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

1 Timothy 4:7-8 - "Train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come."

Post-Surgery Helplessness

Maybe I'm just dumb, but I didn't realize just how helpless I would be after surgery. For the first 24 hours, I couldn't get up to use the bathroom and had to use a urinal. After that, I could barely sit down on the toilet without help, and because I couldn't bend my legs enough to stand up, I needed both of my parents to help drag me off the toilet. I basically couldn't do anything by myself, and everything I did, even with help, hurt like hell.

It was hard for me to imagine that Adrian Peterson and RG3 went through exactly what I went through. Sure, they had underwater treadmills and personal physical therapists, but their first week was probably a lot like mine. Maybe even worse, because their legs are much longer than mine and toilets are basically all the same height. It's just so hard to imagine those who I consider strong and powerful humbled to the point of helplessness. When we turn on the TV, we see pictures of D Rose taking practice jumpers and Kobe standing with crutches in Staples. We don't see the tossing and turning at night and the moaning and groaning of constant pain. We see RG3 and AP rehabbing in a weight room and we don't see them needing help to use the bathroom or scratch their back.

This all might sound obvious to you, but I just never realized just how helpless even uber-rich super-athletes can become. I guess I just assumed it was like any old ankle sprain - that they just took some time off and magically got better. I never imagined that guys like AP and Kobe would ever be brought to the low point of not even being able to use the bathroom alone (Sorry I keep mentioning the bathroom. It just really stuck with me).

It hit me one Sunday having communion at Knox (I seem to get a lot of epiphanies there) what "This is my body broken for you" really means. Jesus is infinitely more rich and powerful than AP and Kobe and was brought infinitely lower. Jesus felt the shame of being helplessly naked in front of others and the excruciating pain the body can bring. If it was so difficult to wrap my head around the fact that rich, athletic guys could be brought low, how much more difficult must it be to understand how an all-powerful self-sufficient God could be brought low! Obviously I can't claim to understand it, but I'm glad that this experience has deepened, if even slightly, my understanding (of my lack of understanding) of the magnitude of sacrifice that Christ has made on our behalf!

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

taking the very nature of a servant,

made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross! 

- Philippians 2: 6-8

                

Previous Posts
Sleep - A Divine Gift

ACL Post-Surgery Week 2
ACL Post-Surgery Week 1
My ACL Reconstruction
My Torn ACL

Shattered Pride

Showing Off Church

Two weeks ago, the day after Iris' wedding, I brought some of my NJ friends to Knox for Sunday Service. I had long planned to bring them to Knox that day but only told them the night before, so I was grateful that they all woke up early to get ready for church. We all checked out, fit all of our luggage in the cars and hopped in, ready to go. Because I knew where I was going, I told Eric I would lead our two-car caravan, but I still put Knox's address into my GPS, just in case. My GPS had an estimated arrival time of 9:35, which would make us five minutes late, but that was no biggie in my mind. By now, the kind people at Knox must have gotten used to large groups of Asians arriving at church just a few minutes late.

[Skip this paragraph if you have a short attention span or do not know Michigan roads.] We drove down from the hotel, and my GPS told me to take 23 South instead of 23 North, which is how we got to Knox the day before. I thought that maybe the GPS knew a faster way to church, so I decided to go with my GPS and take 23 South. After all, I had it set to "fastest route", so it must be true, right? Turns out, it was leading us to take 94 and get off the Ann Arbor-Saline exit, which does make sense, as it isn't a far drive from that exit to Scio Church. However, what my stupid Nokia Drive GPS app didn't know was that there was a section of 94 that was closed, and that it was actually impossible to get onto to the Ann Arbor-Saline exit. So after looping around a few times, we just ended up going back and taking 23 North and getting off by Carpenter Street, which is what I would have done had I not listened to my stupid GPS.

All this is to say that we got to church 30 minutes late. The entire time while driving as the clock kept ticking and the estimated arrival time kept getting pushed back, I was getting more and more frustrated. I was pissed off that everyone had made the effort to get up early, only to have that all dashed to pieces by my poor navigational decision-making. I was thinking about the things that we were going to miss at church and the embarrassingly strange looks we might get arriving half an hour early.

We arrived at church in time for the end of the last song of the worship set, and took a seat inside during the announcements time. Sitting in the pew, I found myself still upset and frustrated, and I felt the God-to-Jonah-like question prodding my heart, "Why are you so angry?". After a little bit of thinking, I realized that I was upset because I wanted my friends to experience what I believe is a great Sunday service. I wanted them to enjoy the awesome traditional/contemporary worship, to see the music director use his head to direct the brass players while playing the organ, and I was disappointed that we had arrived too late and had missed most of the worship, including the congregational and personal favorites "Be Thou My Vision" and "Christ Has Conquered All." I wanted them to be blown away be the preaching, and I was secretly disappointed that Pastor Chuck wasn't going to be speaking this Sunday. I wanted them to be impressed with the church service as they had been impressed with the university campus. I was showing off church. And it wasn't simply out of vanity or selfishness that I desired all of these things - I wanted my friends to share in a central part of my spiritual development, and I wanted them to be blessed by it.

As I continued to think about these things while ignoring the announcements, I realized how warped my thinking was. To me that morning, church was about spiritually pleasing my friends, when in fact Sunday worship is actually about pleasing God. In my self-disappointment, I was reassured that just being there, even half an hour late, is an act of worship to God. And I was reminded that ultimately, it wasn't up to me, the worship director, or the speaker to create a genuinely awesome worship experience for my friends - it was up to God. And so with divine help, I laid it all down, freeing me to enjoy and participate in the worship service without being burdened by the anxiety of gaining the approval of my friends.

I think that we as Christians often fall into the trap that I fell into that Sunday morning - when we invite friends, both Christians and non-Christians, to our Christian events, we're often so concerned with their approval and enjoyment that we ourselves lose sight of the true purpose and Provider for these events. We steal glances at our visitors, seeing if they are weirded out by the singing and are interested and attentive during the message. We internally critique the sermon, cringing at every awkward or possibly offensive statement and laboriously taking mental note of the funny or insightful remarks for future discussion. As a result, we don't truly participate in the service, insincerely singing the worship songs and allowing the words of the sermon to go in one ear and out the other. Our anxiety blinds us, causing us to forget that it is God who draws and glorifies Himself. And in worrying so much about whether or not God will work in someone else's life through the service, we actually lose the opportunity to allow God to work in us. This attitude sucks the joy out of serving God, making ministry burdensome and sharing our faith excessively emotionally taxing, eventually completely burning us out.

So the moral of the story is this: Chill out, seek to please God, and trust that He'll take care of the rest. Also, the Nokia Drive app sucks.

God and the Expectation of Change

[I've recently been listening to an RC Sproul lesson series called The Consequences of Ideas, which is a survey on the history of philosophy. There is a lot of thought-provoking material presented, as any good philosophy course would contain, so I might post more reflections from the lessons in the future.]

Heraclitus was a pre-Socratic philosopher who believed that whatever is is changing (universal flux) and is the original source of the common saying, "You could not step twice into the same river." RC Sproul noted that Heraclitus is often credited with being the ancient father of modern existentialism, as the denial of anything that is fixed, changeless, absolute, or eternal can be traced back to the universal flux that Heraclitus championed.

I'm not going to pretend like I'm some expert on universal flux or existentialism (this post is actually only remotely related to those ideas), but it does seem to me that we live in a day where change is idealized and sometimes even idolized. From evolutionary and progressive worldviews, change is necessary for the betterment of society and the human race as a whole, and staying still and not changing (see: conservatives) holds us back from the better potential that could be achieved. From a more personal standpoint, we (especially as young people) see both internal and external change as necessary for maturation and personal growth. Not changing is often a sign of professional or intellectual ineptitude or personal immaturity.

Thus, I believe that we, young and educated people especially, have a certain expectation of change for all aspects of life. We anticipate technological advancement, participate in social justice movements, and engage in personal development and spiritual formation efforts. This expectation of change causes tension in the way that we view religion and ultimately the way that we view God. Just like past societal problems and technology, religious views, doctrines, and "interpretations" that are obsolete and out-dated ought to be amended for the betterment of the religion and its followers. After all, in our eyes, the age of a text or a belief do not solidify its meaning and reliability - it detracts from it.

Moreover, God himself ought to change, if he indeed was the author of such antiquated beliefs. He's already changed from being the grumpy, vengeful tyrant of the Old Testament to the loving, gracious benevolent ruler in the New Testament, hasn't he? Is it not expected that God would continue to change as society advances and sheds God's old laws in search for newer, better rules that fit?

I truly believe that in our idealization of progress and change, we have found it increasingly difficult to come to terms with the fact that God and His laws do not change. We have a harder time grasping the idea of perfection (as if it was easy to begin with) and how perfection is unchanging. What does it mean that God doesn't change? What does it mean that His law doesn't change? Do we really believe that God is perfect? Do we believe that His law is perfect? Is it really true that God couldn't be a better God, and what does that mean for all of the suffering in the world? Must something be unchanging to be perfect? Or does something need to change to remain perfect? How do God's immutability and perfection relate to one another?

There are some questions that I think that we young, progressive-leaning Christians ought to spend some time meditating on, lest we be swept up in the storms of public opinion and personal doubt without having solid foundation to stand upon.

Hebrews 13:8 - "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever."

Related Posts

Is Substitutionary Atonement Unjust
Louie Giglio and "Thought Crime"

Thoughts on "Judgementalism"

Sleep - A Divine Gift

As mentioned in a previous post, the single most difficult obstacle in my whole ACL surgery experience has been my inability to sleep well. The soreness of my knees has made it difficult to fall asleep and painful stiffness wakes me up multiple times a night. The first couple of weeks after the surgery, I woke up around once every two or three hours, sometimes laying awake for an hour or more just begging God to put me to sleep and pleading with my body to go to sleep. The last few weeks have been much better for me, as I only wake up completely once or twice throughout the night, though my tossing-and-turning-filled sleep still hasn't been great. In the last five weeks, I have only slept once continuously for more than 6 hours, and that was after a ridiculously tiring day on my camping trip last week. 

I've always taken a good night's sleep for granted. A trait inherited from my father and perfected in college, I've always had the ability to fall asleep easily anywhere at any time despite noise, light, or other distractions. Thus, I've never understood the struggle of those who have trouble sleeping and secretly considered most claims of insomnia to be gross exaggerations and general falsehoods, never expecting to experience it personally. Difficulty walking and hurting knees were expected after surgery, but I had no idea that disrupted sleep would torment me the most.

Below is a passage of The Life of Elijah, an awesomely dense book PB and I started reading together years ago and I still haven't finished. When I first read the passage weeks before my surgery, I found it very odd that AW Pink would spend a relatively large chunk of  a chapter talking about the seemingly misplaced topic of sleep. In my recent struggles with sleep, I've found deep meaning in Pink's digression on the subject, realizing that I was blinded to God's grace and taking His gift of sleep for granted, and it was only in my affliction that I gained sight of how important sleep is. 

I know it's a fairly long excerpt, but I highly encourage you to read it all carefully, reflecting on the state of your own heart and giving thanks to God for his mercies in your life. 

"[Elijah] 'slept under a juniper tree,' v.5. But the force of that is apt to be lost upon us, in this God-dishonouring day, when there are few left who realize that 'He giveth His beloved sleep,' Psa. 127.2. It was something better than 'nature taking its course': it was the Lord refreshing the weary prophet.

How often is it now lost sight of that the Lord cares for the bodies of His saints as well as for their souls. This is more or less recognized and owned by believers in the matter of food and clothing, health and strength, but it is widely ignored by many concerning the point we are here treating of. Sleep is as imperative for our physical well-being as is food and drink, and the one is as much the gift of our heavenly Father as is the other. We cannot put ourselves to sleep by any effort of will, as those who suffer with insomnia quickly discover. Nor does the exercise and manual labour of itself ensure sleep: have you ever lain down almost exhausted and then found you were 'too tired to sleep'? Sleep is a Divine gift, but the nightly recurrence of it blinds us to the fact.  

Alas, how little are we affected by the Lord's goodness and grace unto us. The unfailing recurrence of His mercies both temporally and spiritually inclines us to take them as a matter of course. So dull of understanding are we, so cold our hearts Godward, it is to be feared that most of the time we fail to realize whose loving hand it is which is ministering to us. Is not this the reason why we do not begin really to value our health until it is taken from us, and not until we spend night after night tossing upon a bed of pain do we perceive the worth of regular sleep with which we were formerly favoured? And such vile creatures are we that, when illness and insomnia come upon us, instead of improving and repenting of our former ingratitude, and humbly confessing the same to God, we murmur and complain at the hardness of our present lot and wonder what we have done to deserve such treatment. O let those of us who are still blessed with good health and regular sleep fail not daily to return thanks for such privileges and earnestly seek grace to use the strength from them to the glory of God."

- The Life of Elijah by AW Pink 

Previous Posts

ACL Post-Surgery Week 2
ACL Post-Surgery Week 1
My ACL Reconstruction
My Torn ACL

Shattered Pride

A Little Lesson on God-Reliance - Preparing Bible Study

The other day, I started reading chapter 3 of David Platt's book Radical (which I recommend as a easy but challenging read), which is entitled "Beginning at the End of Ourselves - The Importance of Relying on God's Power". Here are some quotes from the first section of that chapter (SPOILER ALERT).

"The question for us, then, is whether we trust in God's power. And the problem for us is that in our culture we are tempted at every turn to trust in our power instead. So the challenge for us is to live in such a way that we are radically dependent on and desperate for the power that only God can provide."

"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability."

"As long as we achieve our desires in our own power, we will always attribute it to our own glory."

"While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God."

After reading that, the next day, I read this from The Life of Elijah

"Where there is a man who takes his place in the dust before the Most High, it will soon be made apparent before others that a power beyond his own energizes him."

I'm not always the most observant of people, but it seemed to me like God was trying to tell me something about humbling myself and relying on Him! But deep down, I didn't really believe that I needed him for anything at the moment. I was prepared to lead a devotional at prayer meeting on Wednesday night, and I had some great insight into the passage I was going to lead so I was totally psyched to give the short talk on Daniel 1:1-7. I was also in charge of leading our small group Bible study on Thursday night on the entire chapter of Daniel 1, but since I had insight for that first section in Daniel 1, surely I was going to have more great insight into the rest of the chapter, right?

So Wednesday rolls around, and I'm all prepared to give my devotional at night, and I planned to prepare the Bible study after prayer meeting. I give the devotional, and I was pretty happy with how it went, but after I got home, I all of a sudden felt dead tired. For some reason, I just wanted to roll over and die fall asleep. I guess my body was telling my that 3 days of work after a long vacation is too much for me to handle. Anyways, I read the passage, made a few notes and observations, but couldn't seem to really get anywhere with it, so I just went to bed at around 10:45. I set my alarm for 6:45, which is around half an hour earlier than I normally get up, so I could spend some more time to prepare the Bible study and finish preparing it during lunchtime.

Turns out, I woke up at 7:45, got to work later than usual, and it just happened that I was so engrossed in my work that I didn't take a short break to eat my lunch at 3 (this NEVER happens). I resolved that I was going to spend the last 45 minutes before I left to prepare the Bible study. And so I did. I read and reread the passage. I circled stuff here and there and wrote some questions that might be applicable. But really, I had nothing. Nothing was coming to me. I sat there with my face hands on my head and admitted to God that I had nothing, and that nothing was coming, and just asked Him to bless the Bible study. Praying for the Bible study was my last resort. And so I spent some time praying for the Bible study because there wasn't really anything else I could do.

And praise be to God, the Bible study was much better than I could have imagined it. Even though I didn't really have any real good observations during my prep time, everyone else had great observations and insights, and I felt like the participation and discussion was better than it normally is. We had a great discussion about the passage followed by a good time of sharing. It was awesome, and without a doubt, none of this was my doing. It was all God. I didn't really know what I was going to say or what direction the study was going to be, but God somehow made it work. It isn't that things will always work out this way, and not preparing well isn't an excuse to test the faithfulness of God, but I'm grateful that God used this opportunity to remind me of his grace and power how much I need to rely on him and not on myself. After all, it's never up to me how "good" a Bible study is, so I need to be seeking His will and power more often.

We also actually spent a good amount of time during Bible study discussing self-reliance, and one of the guys reminded the group of the following awesome verse, which pretty much sums up this entire post:

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

- 2 Corinthians 12:9

Nick Saban's 48 Hours

Nick Saban's self-allotted 48 hours of enjoyment for winning the national championship is just about half over. In case you missed it, he said in his post-game interview that he gives himself two days to enjoy a national championship before buckling down and starting to prepare for the next one. If you haven't seen it, the video is embedded at the bottom.

I had already heard Saban talk about how he doesn't allow himself to enjoy championships much in his 60 minutes interview (his interview begins at 10:30). If you haven't watched this video yet, you totally should, especially because Michigan football is featured in it. Anyways, here's a transcript of the interview.

Interviewer: How long will you let yourself savor a win like that, a win over Michigan?

Saban: When we won the national championship, about two hours after the game, somebody said, "You don't seem very happy". And I said, Well I'm just worried about what the issues are going to be for next year, 'cause something's happening.

Interviewer: So you allowed yourself a whole 120 minutes of pure pleasure?

Saban: Not very long..

Not very happy?! Just two hours after attaining the highest possible achievement in college football? Wow. Just two hours after winning a national championship, Saban was already anxious about the next one. Even in the post-game interview yesterday, when he was asked "Are you satisfied?", Saban couldn't help but qualify his answer saying, "Well, I'm satisfied with this team." Saban couldn't say that he was satisfied, especially when there's another year of football coming up and another team to coach. Even though he won the championship 3 of the last 4 years, it still feels like Saban's stuck in a rat race, along with all the hundreds of other college football coaches, that probably won't end until he retires.

This isn't a post to denigrate Saban in any way. Actually, I'm convinced that it is this mentality of Saban that makes him so great, and it obviously rubs off on his players, who continue to play hungry and stay discontent with anything less than a championship. But still. Doesn't it seem crazy that someone could only enjoy one of the greatest accomplishments in sports for only 48 hours, or even just 2 hours?

Ravi Zacharias says, "Author Jack Higgins has said that the one thing he knows now that he wished he had known as a younger man is that when you get to the top, there's nothing there." Being at the top doesn't bring true contentment. Winning doesn't bring lasting satisfaction. Often times, success actually reveals the emptiness inside of us.

It's precisely this emptiness of success that made Primetime Deion Sanders to Christ. He realized his loneliness and emptiness after winning the Super Bowl and called up one of his Christian friends to ask about Jesus. He says:

“I remember winning the Super Bowl that year, and that night after the game I was the first one out of the locker room, the first one to the press conference, and the first one to go home. And I remember my wife, Carolyn, saying to me, “Baby, you just won the Super Bowl! Don’t you have a party downstairs or something to go to?” And I just said, “Nah,” and rolled over and went to sleep. That was the same week I bought myself a brand new $275,000 Lamborghini, and I haven’t even driven a mile before I realized, “No, that’s not it. That’s not what I’m looking for. It’s got to be something else, I’m so hungry.” [Full testimony here]

"When you get to the top, there's nothing there." I don't think there's anyone who understands this quite as well as Nick Saban.

"Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done

and what I had toiled to achieve,

everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;

nothing was gained under the sun."

- Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Highly recommended related Ravi Zacharias talks - The Problem of Pleasure, What is Worthwhile under the Sun?

Living as a Closet Moderate

My Experience

It's really no secret that Indiana, and Fort Wayne especially, is extremely politically conservative (even though Obama won Indiana in 2008, surprisingly). I consider myself a moderate who has been increasingly leaning left, and I currently plan on voting for Obama again in a month. However, I can count on one hand the number of people in Fort Wayne who know my political leaning.

It may come to a surprise to some of you that I've, for the most part, kept my political leanings a secret, given my headstrong, stubborn, arrogant, and argumentative nature. I haven't spoken up about it for various reasons. Obviously, I don't want to start unnecessary arguments and break relationships with others. Also, I get the feeling, especially from the older people in the church I attend, that if I "came out" as a moderate who is going to vote for Obama, my "Christian-ness" will come into question. I can't help but feel like if people found out I was going to vote for Obama, people would wonder if I was actually a Christian or not. Let's not even get to whether or not gay marriage or abortion should be legal.

The most troublesome reason for not speaking up, however, is that I've never really gotten an opportunity to speak up. I was never asked what I believed. It is assumed, that as an evangelical Christian, I am part of the right-wing movement and am going to vote Republican. I've never been asked on my position on gay marriage, abortion, war, capital punishment, or healthcare. Rather, people speak about it around me as if it was a universal truth that Mitt Romney is the correct "Christian" choice for the presidency, and that everyone else must be blind, misguided, or anti-Christian. It really isn't what they believe that bothered me so much as it is the nonchalant dismissal of all dissenting opinions, without, in my opinion, a responsible consideration of the merit of those beliefs.

And so here I am, every Wednesday at prayer meeting, listening to anti-Obama rhetoric, mentally mumbling to myself how so much of it is flat out lies and how clearly biased and uninformed some people are. And I've realized that it wasn't before long that I started basing my identity at church and in Fort Wayne in general around my political standing. The identity that I had before, which was "the short but good-looking guy who's the only Asian in the room", has shifted to "the short, good-looking Asian who is secretly going to vote for Obama." It's really hard to describe how this happened, other than politics jumping to my mind whenever I interacted with, or even just thought about, certain people in the church. My view of others also gradually warped, as I started mentally categorizing people as right-wing nuts, instead of valuing the various non-political aspects of their lives. Instead of loving, I started judging, even though judging was the the fault that I so hated, as it got me here in the first place.

There grew an invisible divide, a canyon that only I could see, between myself and those who expect me to be Republican. It is impossible for me to really feel close to anyone to whom I can't even share my political views with. All other interaction begins to feel superficial, as I can hear myself questioning what would happen if they knew I supported Obama or that I didn't care much about gay marriage. This inability to be honest about politics and worldview has become a barrier from trust and any truly meaningful relationship.

Eventually, this judgement and its subsequent divide turned into resentment. I resented that I was expected to hold certain political beliefs as a Christian, and I resented others for holding those expectations. My heart grew fiercely defensive at any mention of politics, leading me to be increasingly irritated at any opinion of politics that was different than mine. All attacks on Obama became attacks on me, as I started taking everything more and more personally. I looked down on everyone who I thought was blindly right-wing and uninformed.

I'm glad that God's revealed the condition of my heart to me, as He's reorienting my heart towards love rather than judgement. I'm grateful for the MAC training that God's brought back to mind, as I've red-lined hard for a while without even realizing it. I'm still working on my love and humility, so please continue to pray for me in these areas.

Exhortation/Encouragements

So what's the takeaway for all of you, who are probably reading this in relatively open-minded campuses in relatively diverse and healthy ministries? I hope that you remember to never assume that other people believe everything that you do. Just because someone doesn't speak up when you're talking about something doesn't mean they don't have a different opinion about it, especially when you are discussing things in groups. Gently ask people for their opinions on important topics, and always lovingly leave room for disagreement and dialogue. Avoid unknowingly creating invisible barriers between your group and other people. Otherwise, you may end up with people that secretly resent you, your group, or all Christians.

Remember that others don't always need you to agree with them, but just that you respect them and their ideas without disregarding them for certain opinions or beliefs that they hold. And even if you truly believe that you would still love someone even if they disagree with you in some area, perception is everything, and if they don't feel that way, then you are still erecting that invisible barrier that is a stumbling block for them.

This goes for everything. Offhand remarks about girls. Using the word "gay" inappropriately. Assuming the people around you don't struggle with same-sex attraction, identity, pornography, sexual immorality, drug abuse, self-image, etc and being insensitive about those issues. Public expectations of certain people to be a certain way. Perpetual teasing of any denomination, doctrine, race, tv show, movie genre, music, lifestyle, etc. You never know who you could unintentionally be pushing away.

I hope this doesn't come off as me on a moral high-ground, preaching to all you inferior Christians. If there's anyone guilty of malicious teasing and callous insensitivity, it's me. I've actually been approached, engaged, and rebuked about it more times than I'm willing to admit. In fact, chances are that I've personally hurt you, the reader, whoever you are, at some point by doing exactly what I'm saying not to do (and for that, I'm sorry). And I'm obviously still nowhere from perfect, and God is still working on my soul. But it's only now being on the other side of things that I've really gotten a tiny taste of what being "in the closet" about anything feels like. It sucks.

Colossians 4:5-6 - "Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone."

Philippians 2:3-4 - "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others."

1 Thessalonians 5:11 - "Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing."

Justice for Penn State

The NCAA just lowered the boom on Penn State. Sixty million dollar fine, 4 year bowl ban, all 1998-2001 wins vacated, and a reduction of 20 scholarships per year for four years [src]. For some reason, it feels too soft, too harsh, and just right all at the same time.

The $60 million fine, post-season ban, and scholarship reductions feel just about right. The University, the "system" that is responsible for the coverup of these horrendous, perverse actions will suffer massive, mainly financial, losses. We're hearing about decommits from football recruits, and I wouldn't be surprised if general enrollment plummets these next few years. It may be a long, long time before PSU as a university as a whole recovers from this.

The vacation of wins from 1998-2011, 112 wins in total including six bowl wins and two conference championships, seems a bit harsh. The intent of the vacation is clear - it's a straight shot at Joe Pa's win record, dropping him from first in wins to 12th. This aim at Joe Pa is warranted, but hugely unfair to the players that played in those 14 seasons, who had nothing to do with the coverup. It's unfair to the fans, who witnessed the wins first hand. I've always been a big opponent of vacating wins, as it's completely retroactive. If there's one thing this whole Sandusky/Paterno fiasco has taught us, it's that you can't change the past, which I think the NCAA is trying to do.

But for some reason, this all still doesn't feel like enough. The people really responsible for this haven't received their due punishment. Joe Paterno has the refuge of being dead, Sandusky is still alive in some prison somewhere, and others responsible for the coverup haven't even charged criminally yet. There's part of me that wants so bad for Joe Pa to be alive to face the music, to take the stand, to suffer further public humiliation for his failures. The taking down of the statue isn't enough. The renaming of the library (which hasn't happened yet) isn't enough. And let's not even get started on Sandusky. Lifetime in prison for him isn't enough. Execution even seems merciful for the man who raped little boys and made them perform oral sex on him. My stomach turns just at the thought of it.

These sanctions are a good start, but I can't help but feel like justice hasn't yet been served, that the students and former players are being punished too harshly while Paterno, Sandusky, and the others involved in the coverup aren't being punished enough.

Justice can never be fully dished out in this life. We can take comfort in knowing that Paterno and Sandusky will one day have to answer to their Maker, and will have to answer the God of heaven and earth, Righteous Judge, the Creator of the broken little boys, face to face. Thank God He is a God of Justice.

Joe Paterno and the Depravity of Man

On the Magnitude of Space and Time

Our questions are never completely and fully answered. Growing as a Christian, there are questions that I face that I find difficult to answer in different chapters in my life. For a good portion of my college career, the main question that bothered me and nagged at me was the question of natural disasters. Why would God allow them to happen? This is probably because of the various natural disasters that happened in the recent past - Katrina, Haiti, South Asia, Japan. For these doubts and questions, I usually have head answers that I already know. If someone asked me questions on my own doubts, I could answer them. But deep down, I have yet to fully come to peace with those answers.

For me, the question/doubt that is nagging me right now is really hard to describe and articulate, but I'm going to try anyways. It has to do with the bigness and vastness of the universe. Basically, given the enormity of the universe, is it not arrogant to say that of all of the universe, the millions of stars and lightyears, God especially loves humans so much that He sent his son down to die for us? Now I know Romans 8, and I know that God is here to redeem all of creation, but I can't help but think that it all just seems so human-centric. Why would God decide to plan things such that something as insignificant in the universe, such as human beings, have a special ability to communicate with him? Why would God choose to bless a single life form with his special revelation on a tiny planet in a tiny galaxy in a single universe, to which there could possibly be parallels?

And put space aside for a bit. What about time? Time just rumbles on. Humans have only been able to communicate via writing for a few thousand years. What will the gospel look like in another 10000 years? Or 1,000,000 years? Will humans even be recognizable then, or will some sort of natural or man-made evolution have happened? Space is vast, it is but finite. Time, however, is a number line that never ends. Will people a million years from now be able to understand that God came as a man and died on the cross for them? Will not Christianity seem more and more bogus and insane as time passes? Will the Bible avoid becoming completely obsolete as our forms of communication shifts completely away from text?

These doubts have been in the back of my head for a while, and I think about it every so often, but reading Isaac Asimov's short story The Last Question really makes it all come back again (I highly recommend reading it - it's pretty mind-blowing). We often forget just how small and insignificant we are when measured by time and space. Atheists, like Isaac Asimov, seem to have a significantly more firm grasp on the magnitude of the universe and the finitude of humanity. But this insignificance in time and space also leads to a certain hopelessness and meaninglessness. It's all sort of hard to describe. In a way, I think it's beneficial to periodically ponder our smallness in comparison with the universe. How much smaller are we in comparison to an infinite God that holds the entire universe in the palm of His hand! How much more remarkable is it that he loves us! Who is man that You are mindful of him?! This love is a great mystery, and one that I can't wrap my head around, and I doubt I ever will fully, in this life or the next.

Even though I find it incredulous that a God would care about a single species on a tiny speck of a planet in the enormity of the universe (and the space of all possible universes) and I find it unbelievable that such a God would invade time at such a precise time as to interact with humans that are more or less experience many of the same things I experience, I hold on dearly to the empty grave. Though I have not yet in my head reconciled these things, I know that Christ rose from the dead. Christ rose from the dead! I do not know why this universe was allowed to exist, and I do not know if there exists universes parallel to this one. I do not know what the human race will look like ten thousand years from now, and I do not know when time will end and Jesus will come back. But this I know - that Christ was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day he rose again! It is on the resurrection that my faith rests. And if he didn't, we of all men are to be most pitied.

Loneliness and Christ

As I was driving back to Fort Wayne from Northville, where Jonny, Johnny, Nathan, Cory, and I had lunch, I was hit by this huge wave of loneliness and sadness. It's been over a month since I last visited my AIV friends in Ann Arbor, and I've gotten kind of used to the quiet, solitary working life in Fort Wayne. I didn't realize how much I missed late night talks, impromptu prayer sessions, hugging it out with brothers, and having fun, silly conversations with people. Not only did I really get that awesome, familiar sense of community in my short time in Ann Arbor these last few days, my heart was also riled up to God's mission, as the excitement, passion, and burden for the Church and the lost came flooding back to me as I participated in AIV events and talked about the chapter with friends.

The thing is, I haven't really been feeling too lonely in my last few weeks at Fort Wayne. So why was I feeling it so strongly all of a sudden? This is what I realized - Loneliness is most keenly felt after leaving intimate fellowship and community of any kind. I think anyone who has gone through any kind of break up or has left a great, tight community (especially of believers) knows that deep sense of loneliness that I'm talking about - and the closer and more intimate the community or relationship, the deeper the sense of loneliness.

After thinking about it for a little bit, it hit me that in his incarnation and eventual taking on of our sins, Jesus voluntarily chose to leave the intimate community and fellowship of the Trinity and take on humanity. I'm no real expert on all this Trinitarian theology stuff, but from what I know, the community and the fellowship between Christ and the other two members of the Trinity wasn't as infinitely intimate and infinitely perfect while Christ was on earth as it was before the incarnation. Not only that, when we talk about and imagine the suffering of Jesus on the cross, we almost always think about the physical suffering that Jesus experienced, not really being able to describe the spiritual suffering of Christ. In that passion accounts in the gospel, outside of Jesus saying he was thirsty while on the cross, the writers never record Jesus complaining about any of the physical suffering that he endured. Rather, the only cry of pain that Jesus makes is recorded in Matthew 27:46 - "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" The overwhelming pain of loneliness that Jesus experienced as he took on the sins of the world, when the infinitely intimate fellowship of the Trinity was broken, is absolutely unfathomable for us mortals. As I mentioned before, the intensity of the pain of loneliness and broken relationship is magnified by the intimacy of the fellowship in the relationship, which means that the  infinitely eternal, intimate, and perfect fellowship of the Trinity points to an infinitely painful separation and break of fellowship. For any of you that could relate to that pain I mentioned earlier (either through a breakup or a move of some sort), Jesus experienced that pain times infinity - suffering that we cannot even begin to understand.

Jesus knows what it feels like to be lonely, and he endured all that suffering so that I can come in relationship with Him. And I'm grateful for that.

"Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

- Hebrews 4:14-16

 Related Post - New Insights into Suffering

Boasting in My Weakness

"So to keep my from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep my from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. 

For when I am weak, then I am strong."
- 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

I have to admit that I've been slow to show vulnerability and weakness in all my time at Michigan (and my entire life, really). I'm not a very vulnerable person, and not that many people actually know that much about me. Yesterday was a hard day for me. It isn't every Sunday that you break down crying while praying alone in a church pew during worship, only to have a man you half-recognize put his arm around you and tell you to come sit with him. It isn't every Sunday you go up to ask for prayer from elders you don't recognize of a church you've only been to once. God really convicted me this morning during Sunday worship of this 2 Corinthians passage - of boasting in his weakness, and that's what I'm here to do.

I'm a weak, weak man. I really shouldn't even call myself a man. I'm a weak, weak boy. I'm a crybaby. It's often hard for me to pray out loud without choking up in tears for whatever reason. A friend recently told me that she has observed two things about guys - that they are stupid and that they are emotional. I don't really want to endorse this opinion for fear of losing all my guy friends, but I do know that this is true for me. It's so easy to always be stoic and look tough on the outside, but I'm really actually quite emotional. I am weak. I struggle with loneliness. It's hard for me to be alone, without friends to lean on and hang out with all the time, and in truth, it's even hard for me to ask for help. It's also hard for me to accept my singleness, of which I am often ashamed. I cope with loneliness by digging into books and getting a big head, both of knowledge and of pride. I am a needy man.

God has taught me so much in my weakness. I've learned how weak I am. I've learned that I can't rely on myself. I've learned how much I need brothers around me to care and pray for me, and I've learned not to take these brothers in Christ for granted. I've experienced the faithfulness of God through my times of deepest worry, and I've felt the warmth of God's embrace in my tears shed. I've understood more deeply the peace in clinging to God's sovereignty, and I've learned to appreciate how Jesus, my high priest, can sympathize with my weaknesses. God has shown me yet again how sinful and unholy I am, and he's displayed to me the comfort of his grace. And obviously, when I say I've learned these things, I really mean that I've grown in these areas, as I still have an eternity to truly learn it all, but God has really worked in my life through my weaknesses.

I'm not posting this for pity. I'm posting this to boast in my weaknesses in Christ. Don't feel bad for me - rejoice with me that God is making his power known in my life through my weaknesses! Jesus sees through the walls and barriers that I put up. Jesus knows how much of a scumbag I am. Jesus knows that I'm not as tough and emotionless as I pretend to be. Jesus knows how weak I am. And yet he loves me. Jesus loves me even though I'm a crybaby, and he loves me even though I'm weak. Jesus loves me so much that he died for me, even though I suck!

Thank you God for reminding me how much I suck and how weak I am and how much I need you. Use my weakness for your glory, and make me strong in my weakness. Your grace is enough for me.

Somewhat-related Posts: 
New Insights into Suffering
My Lack of Suffering

New Insights into Suffering

Some of you know that recently I went through certain pain that I've never gone through before (if you don't know, I would appreciate it if you didn't ask), and I understood a little better God's grace through suffering. I'm going to apologize ahead of time if this post is incoherent and scatter-brained. In truth, this post is more like a collage of different thoughts I've had in the past few weeks. There's just absolutely too much that God has done in my life these last few weeks, and it's kind of difficult to organize it nicely and make it all make sense.

After it all, the key lesson I learned is that a concern with God's glory is the only way to get through suffering. I realized that I would never make it through any pain focusing on myself, and that the only way to get through it all is to be focused on God's glory, seeing the ways he is growing me and preparing me for the future.

I read the following passage for my quiet time this morning:

Acts 4:40-41 - "and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name."

The morning after it all happened, when I was driving up to Nathan's, I listened to a DA Carson lecture on suffering (which can be found here), where he presented a lot of good points to suffering, and in which he mentioned the above Scripture. He said that the apostles rejoiced in their suffering because it was their first taste of suffering, and Jesus had promised them persecution, but so far in their ministry, everything had been going their way. Jesus had told them to take their crosses up daily (which isn't a light statement) and to follow him. Carson said that the disciples must have been thinking "Hmm...everything is going awesomely. People are accepting the gospel, and everyone seems to love us. But Jesus had told us that we would suffer. Are we doing something wrong?" They rejoiced in their suffering because they knew that they were glorified God and were in his will! This is also my prayer - that God would give me suffering so that I can rejoice in serving him and having the honor of being dishonored for his name. After spending the weekend with Nathan, driving back, I for the first time in my life sincerely asked God to give me more suffering. It was the weirdest thing in the world, how the Spirit would lead me to such a prayer! I asked God, "God, if it will bring you more glory, give me more suffering. I want to suffer for you." I asked God to make me suffer more for his name's sake, praying with the faith that God will sustain me in my times of suffering. I never in a million years would have thought that after such a difficult weekend, I would ask God for MORE suffering! God is good, and his Spirit has really been working in my life. Glory to God.

Today at work, I listened to a Paul Washer sermon on my phone (which I highly recommend and you can watch here), and man was it convicting! I don't always agree with the way Paul Washer approaches things, but there is a real seriousness of his faith that he exhorts to have. It really got me thinking about the seriousness of my own faith. In a segment of his talk (starting here), Washer talks about how in Romans 10:9, when Paul says "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved", he talks about how we often take public confession of Christ extremely lightly, and how the audience to whom Paul wrote faced execution for a public confession of faith.

Brothers and sisters, we need to take our faith seriously. We need to be training ourselves now so we are equipped to serve God more fully. We need to be holy, because God our Father is holy. We need to have radical love for others and be bold in sharing the gospel. Above all, we need to be concerned with the glory of God. Whatever we do, may it be for his glory!

For those of you who took Conformed to His Likeness with me at Compelling this last fall, if you remember, Pat (the leader lady) recommended us read the Book of Martyrs. I've been wanting to read it for a while, and lucky for me, it's free for the Kindle (thanks again, Mandrew!)! Actually, the entire book is also available here in PDF format if you want to read it. I just read the first chapter, and it's incredibly difficult not to be moved. The gospel MUST be true for all of these men to die for it. It must be! I know that especially for us unschooled Asian-Americans, we don't really know much about our church fathers, so I just put the first part of the first chapter into a nice little table so we can see the suffering that our church fathers went through. I hope you are as moved as I was when I first read it, and I hope that you'll go take a look at that PDF and read some of it for yourself!

Disclaimer: For the "not sure" spots, I mainly put it there because the book doesn't say explicitly and I didn't go research it, but hopefully I can do a little better research online and come back and update them. I have added links to some artist renditions of the apostles' martyrdom if I could find them.

Apostle	Year of Martyrdom	Place of Death	How he died
James the Great (son of Zebedee, brother of John)	AD 44	Judea	"As James was led to the place of martyrdom, his accuser was brought to repent of his conduct by the apostle's extraordinary courage and undauntedness, and fell down at his feet to request his pardon, professing himself as a christian, and resolving that James should not receive the crown of martyrdom alone. Hence they were both beheaded at the same time. Thus did the first apostolic martyr cheerfully and resolutely receive that cup, which he had told our Savior he was ready to drink."
Philip	AD 54	Heliopolis, in Phrygia (Upper Asia)	Crucified
Matthew	AD 60	Nadabah, Ethiopia	Slain with a halberd
James the Less (former brother of Jesus)	Not sure	Jerusalem	Stoned by the Jews, and "finally had his brains dashed out with a fuller's club"
Mattias (Judas' replacement)	Not sure	Jerusalem	Stoned, then beheaded
Andrew (brother of Peter)	Not sure	Edessa	Crucified, with two ends of the cross on the ground.
St. Mark	Not Sure	Alexandria	Body was dragged to pieces
Peter	Not sure	Rome(?)	Crucified upside-down upon own request, as he didn't find himself worthy to die in the same way Christ did.
Paul	AD 67	Rome	Beheaded
Jude	AD 72	Edessa	Crucified
Bartholomew	Not sure	India	Cruelly beaten, then crucified
Thomas	Not sure	India	Thrust through with a spear
Luke	Not sure	Greece	Hung on an olive tree
Simon (the Zealot)	AD 74	Britain	Sawed in half. (The book said he was crucified, but the great internets says differently).
John	Not martyred	Patmos(?)	Pulled out of a cauldron of boiling oil, then exiled to the Isle of Patmos. He was the only apostle who didn't die a violent death.
Barnabas	AD 73	Cyprus	Stoned to death

We see this list of great men, and we complain about having to get up early to do our quiet times!!! GOD FORGIVE US FOR OUR UNHOLINESS AND SELFISHNESS.

A great Paul Washer sermon on taking your faith seriously (thanks Mark!). The first one is good too. As I said before, I don't completely agree with the way he presents everything, but it's definitely still worth struggling through.

1 Corinthians 12:8-10 - "Three times I pleaded with the LORD about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

God, make me a martyr for you. Father, bestow upon me the privilege and joy of suffering for you. Use me in any way, O God. Teach me how to serve you more fully. God, humble me. Include me in this impossible mission you have for the world. God, I want to serve you. I want your gospel to be made known. God, I want to die for you, confessing Jesus as Lord. Give me faith, give me endurance, give me love, give me patience so I can better serve and glorify you. God, help me to serve you well right now. God teach me to sacrifice. And God, I know that it's not by my strength, but by your Son, who died on the cross for me. It is only in his power that I can do anything at all.

Related Post: My Lack of Suffering

Hard Work Pays Off

1 Timothy 4:8 - "Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come."

This last semester, I've lost almost 25 pounds! Allow me to show off a little bit. I weigh myself every time I go to the CCRB and I record it when I get home, so here's a graph of my weight this last year.

It all started a few months ago when Renjay and I decided to get up and to run and work out together, and we got up nearly every morning at around 9 to exercise. The first two weeks we ran, I lost around ten pounds, and keeping up the exercising, God's graciously "taketh away" what he had previously given to me (LOTS OF FAT). Not only have I lost weight, God's been working in my life through different spiritual disciplines that He's helped me keep recently.
Last year I started living a significantly more spiritually disciplined life, and this semester God continued to work through these spiritual disciplines to continue to transform my life. The Bible (Paul, especially) parallels life with running a race, and there are numerous little lessons and anecdotes that I've learned from exercising this semester, but there are two lessons about spiritual disciplines that I've gained that I want to focus on.

Running is hard, and when I run, especially when keeping a good pace, I find myself having to battle the urge to stop and to take a break. I need to repeat to myself "I can do it, I can do it" to battle the "I can't do it, I can't do it" that my body wants me to hear. A lot of running is mental, so running is often about putting your mind over your body and just taking steps when your body doesn't want to anymore. Running often hurts, but afterwards, I usually think one of the two following thoughts: I either think "Wow, that run wasn't actually not too bad..." or "Man, I'm hurting right now, but it was a great workout, so the pain was worth it."

1) The pain isn't actually as bad as I thought it was.

Sometimes after running, I finish feeling pretty good. I may be breathing heavily and sweating profusely, but I may feel great despite really needing to mentally struggle through much of the run to convince myself to keep going. I realize that the pain I felt when running really wasn't that bad, and that I just needed to put mind over body and just run. Similarly, I really believe that after keeping a spiritual discipline for a long time, we will look back and realize how small the sacrifice we made is, even if it felt really big and hard at the time. Actually living a disciplined life has given me a little more perspective on life, recognizing the minuteness of the sacrifices I make to keep the spiritual disciplines. For example, it may hurt a little bit now to commit to sleeping early and getting up earlier than we needed to do quiet times, but in the long run, it really is quite a small sacrifice. I think that part of the purpose of keeping these spiritual disciplines is to prepare us for when God calls us to something bigger and even more challenging. If we can't honor God by obeying him in the small, how can we expect to be obey him in the big?

Luke 16:10 - "One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much."

Another way to think about it is that as we mature, many of the problems and challenges we face in the past all of a sudden seem so trivial. You know how you look back to your middle and high school years and remember the "big" struggles and hardships that you went through and you realize how silly it all was? Similarly, I'm at the point where I look back at when I struggled a lot with keeping quiet times and reading Scripture and I don't understand why I had such a difficult time just opening my Bible every day. I hope that someday I'll be able to look back and wonder about the days (which would be now) when I wasn't able to sit down an intercede for and hour straight or fast for an entire day.

2) The reward is worth the pain.

Often times, trials that we face and pain that we suffer is very real and can't be downplayed as some other spiritual disciplines, but we know that God always works all things for the good of those who love him and there is something that God wants to accomplish in our lives, whether in this life or for eternity.

Sometimes, we can see the fruit of our suffering in the present life. We often see that from self-discipline and God-discipline, the fruit of greater Christ-likeness in holiness, perseverance, and righteousness begin to be more evident. We see transformation all the way from the inner depths of our heart to the outward behavior we display.

James 1:2-4 - "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Hebrews 12:11 - "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."

The suffering we go through is also preparing us for eternity, as we begin to develop now what we are going to experience forever. In much of our discipline and suffering, we are storing up for ourselves treasures in heaven, and even though I'm not sure what exactly that looks like, the Bible says that God will reward each according to what he has done. Also, because of the glory and the greatness of what we will experience in eternity with Jesus, all that we experience now, both the joy and the pain - will pale, comparison to the eternal life that is ahead of us. This hope for the future is what kept Paul going, despite being flogged, stoned, and almost killed multiple times.

2 Corinthians 4:17 - "For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."

Not only that, this hope for the future is also what kept Jesus going! Jesus looked to the future, to "the joy set before him", so that he was able to endure the cross for us. The joy that Jesus looked forward to is the same joy that we can look forward to - a life where God's people are again in perfect relationship with God!

Hebrews 12:2 - "Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Life is hard. Life hurts sometimes. But one day, because we know Jesus, we're going to be able to look back at all the pain and the suffering and the hurt that we've gone through and say the same things I said after running. For some disciplines and sacrifices in life we can say that the pain wasn't as bad as previously imagined, and for other suffering and trials, we can see that the reward of "an eternal weight of glory" is worth it all. Let us remember the reward that we have in Christ!