Midnight Moments

" 'Stop judging others, and you will not be judged.' For others will treat you as you treat them. Whatever measure you use in judging others, it will be used to measure how you are judged. And why worry about the speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying, 'Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,' when you can't see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log from your own eye; then perhaps you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye." Matthew 7:1-5 We're all hypocrites on some level, aren't we? None of us have it all together; we all have something we want to hide. But imperfection, our fallen nature, sin-- these are the things that unite us in our humanity. So why are we too proud to admit our weakness? Why are we so quick to point out the inadequacies of others but fail to allow our shared failings to bring us together? We are united in...

I had a choir director in high school that encouraged us to make “loud” mistakes. We were a timid, young group so many of us would hold back if we were unsure of a note, but he told us if we didn’t make our mistakes audible, it could never be corrected. Looking back on my choir days, I’ve found that this is an applicable lesson to real life. Now, let me clarify, I’m NOT encouraging purposeful sinning. What I am encouraging is taking risks. I once heard that often times discovering God’s will means doing what you think is God’s will and when it falls flat, trying something else. God does sometimes reveal His will to us (and by will, I mean personal fulfillments of an individual’s role in the grand scheme of the Gospel story), but sometimes we need to just step out in faith and be proven, or disproven. If you’re like me, the idea of taking risks sounds a bit, well…risky. Control is so much safer. But if you’re like me, you’ve learned that trying to personally control everything is tiring...

I have a knack for losing things. Big, important things. Like my car for instance. On Tuesday and Thursday I have a one o'clock class so I sometimes will spend the two free hours beforehand after my morning class to grab lunch and read or study at Solomon's Porch, a little cafe in town right near the seminary. I usually park in the parking lot at the bank right down the sidewalk and walk to class from Solomon's Porch when I've finished eating. The bank and cafe are only a few minutes walk across campus from my apartment but on a couple ocassions, including today, I forget to walk back to my car after class and proceed to walk home. On arriving home I notice the absence of my car in the driveway and have to turn around and walk back across campus. As I was walking back across campus I noticed a bumper sticker on one of the cars in the smaller parking lot on the seminary property that I had to walk through on my way back to the bank parking lot. The bumper sticker was an ...

My most recent blog had to do with the purpose of prayer. In a conversation about this while in the middle of writing said blog, I was enlightened to an analogy of prayer I hadn’t thought of before. God is our Father, and regardless of His omniscience (all-knowing ability) He is a relational God, and in His role as Father He wants to hear from His children. In any relationship we want to hear how our friends, children, significant others, etc. are doing, feeling, thinking, and experiencing. No one wants to hear second-hand that their best friend got that job they interview for, or that their closest relative got engaged and failed to tell you right away, or that your child made the honor roll and didn’t excitedly come to tell you when they got home from school. Yes, God already knows what we’re thinking, what’s going on in our lives, what were worried about, or what we’re hidin...

In the life of a Christian, a few main activities are generally thought of as necessary for spiritual health: reading your Bible, fellowship with other believers, and prayer. Reading your Bible is a key measure in learning the heart and character of God and how we are to interact and respond to Him. Fellowship with other believers gives us accountability and encouragement in our walk with Christ. Prayer at the most basic level is communication with God. It is this last spiritual "discipline" I would like to engage in discussion about for this blog. So often prayer becomes ritual or a list of "God do this" and "God fix that". In regards to ritual prayer, this is clearly missing the point of prayer. Prayer is both commanded and explempified in Scripture. Jesus Himself prayed to God on several occasions. Many of these moments He would escape the crowds that followed Him to hear His teaching and pray in private to the Father for renewed spiritual strength. In ...

I recently got an email from a woman at the church I started attending several months back inviting me to the Women’s Bible Study she hosts at her home on Monday nights. I unfortunately have a night class on Monday nights this semester, so I hit the reply button to tell her thank you, but I won’t be able to attend this semester. I addressed her by name, then continued to write the body of the letter then clicked the send button. As the box indicating my message had been “sent” popped up, I noticed her name was spelled “Bethaney” rather than the usual “Bethany”, which was how I had wrote it when I replied to her email. I shrugged it off assuming she probably was used to people misspelling her name. I then proceeded to laugh at the fact that I had seen the correct spelling when I opened the email, but still misspelled it when I emailed back! I was so used to seeing “”Bethany” spelled the “normal” way that my mind didn’t even notice the difference. It’s as though it autocorrected t...

I recently came across a book entitled, “The Christian Atheist: Believing in God, but Living as If He Doesn’t Exist”. While I didn’t read the book, the title intrigued me and got me thinking: how many of those who call themselves “Christians” live this way? We continue to live like the small child who believes he can’t be seen simply because he is covering his eyes and can’t see his parents. We can’t see God, so it won’t matter if I indulge in a secret sin here or there, as long as no one knows, or no one sees. We proclaim a faith in Christ, but live as those His sacrifice means nothing. In my Method & Praxis class one Monday night, we were discussing Kant’s impact on theology and the modern church. Kant taught a philosophical outlook on the world that consequently reduced religion (of the Christian persuasion) to moral living and God to a Santa Claus type figure. I think this is the brand of Christianity a large number of believers have adopted. We opt for the package deal n...

For this man who walked the earth... He was more than a prophet More than just a "good man" He was LOVE For this man who suffered and bled... He suffered more than just pain He suffered rejection, lonliness, and hatred He suffered for us "What greater love is there than this: that a man should lay down HIS LIFE for His friends..." For this KING who left His perfect throne For this MAKER who created you SPECIAL For this SAVIOR who TOOK YOUR PLACE "For the wages of sin is death... but the gift... is eternal life... through salvation..." For this forgiving, loving, righteous LORD... Will you not live your life for Him? He gave His for you... "So what now? Shall we go on sinning?" ABSOLUTELY NOT! His sacrifice is TOO GREAT for us to take it for granted... For this Christ... What will you choose to do?

Growing up in church I’ve always heard the phrase, “Come just as you are” thrown around but I’ve never really thought about what this means. As I was worshipping in service Sunday morning, the meaning hit me. God is holy, yes, so we should never enter His presence in a flippant manner, but with reverence and humility. However, God is also merciful and longs to meet us where we are, in our sinfulness, our brokenness, and even in our doubt. The power of coming into the presence of a holy, merciful God in the right spirit and bringing all our baggage is an encounter with this God who has the ability and desire to change us from who we were to who He wants us to be: a whole, joyful, righteous individual full of the life God intends for us and free from everything that keeps us in oppression and bondage. It in worship and in the presence of God Almighty that transformation is possible. During the MOVE conference as Asbury Theological Seminary this past week, this reality became more evident...

I’ve always been somewhat critical and only more recently a cynic, but seminary has made into a sermon critic monster. Not so much of the style or presentation of the speaker, but most definitely of the theology and exegetical ability. Proof texting is generally the biggest faux pax of ministers—using verses out of context to support a truth that may be biblical, but is better proved elsewhere in Scripture. Bad interpretation of Scripture is another common issue with many of the sermons I’ve heard in the past. One such misinterpretation I heard in a recent sermon was the following: “I don’t have to like everyone, but I do have to love everyone”. Is that really what the Bible teaches us? Is that what Christ exemplified in His earthly witness? Is that really how we interpret the verse that states, “They will know you by your love”; as some tolerant, impersonal, passive love without an emotional backing? I’m not convinced this is the case. According to 1 Corinthians 13 (the “love”...

A few years back, after committing to my call to seminary and ministry, I had a breakdown. A close friend was on a rocky spiritual path, straddling the fence between God and the world and about ready to fall off on the side of world. I had had countless conversations trying to convince her of the potential God had for her life and everything she would be throwing away by walking away from God's call on her life. She was not the only one of my friends I had had these sorts of conversations with, and time has convinced me she won't be the last. I remember breaking down in my dad's office at church and telling him, "I'm so tired. I'm not making any difference in her life and I'm sick and tired of beating her over the head with the truth when she doesn't care." He somberly looked at me and with pain in his voice told me, "Welcome to ministry." Have you been there? You're exercising everything in your power-- prayer, lectures, pleading, bi...

"We cannot understand the meaning of Grace without understanding the concept of God." This was the opening comment to my Method and Praxis class. It hit me like lightning and struck quite a personal note as well. This is at the root of our dysfunctional relationship with God. We don't truly take the time to know His character and nature, so therefore we cannot understand or see how He is working in our lives and in our world. All our unbelief and misunderstanding of who God is and how He relates to us and how we are to relate to Him stem from a warped perception of God. This may be because of upbringing; perhaps we had a poor relationship with our parents or a traumatic experience that produced a sense of God as an unfair, unloving, impersonal deity with no concern for our well-being. Perhaps we grew up in an ultraconservative household or religious community that caused us to view God as a vengeful judge waiting to strike us down if we do something wrong or make a mistak...

The Bible is not kid friendly. For the most part, many of the stories in the Bible, are too scary or complicated. The result is often a view of God as an angry Being who will kill you if you disobey Him. Either that, or you end up just confusing the child. Somehow I think this may be the case for older hearers of the Biblical stories as well. Like all pieces of literature, the Bible has an audience, cultural-historical context, and authorship that must be studied and understood in order to more fully grasp the full range of meaning of any particular text, and even more so to understand the text as a whole. Thus went my thought process as I lay awake late one night, physically exhausted, but unable to make my mind shut off. From there I began trying to formulate an explanation of the sin-salvation story as I would tell it to a small child or even a new believer of any age. It was in the midst of this that I had my epiphany. As I was mentally unwrapping the story of Creation and ...

(Previously posted on my facebook page; with some slight changes) I had an interesting revelation while flushing my toilet (yes, while flushing my toilet). I usually don’t have to clean my toilet bowl very often; maybe once every month or month and half. It had been probably longer than that since the last time I cleaned it, with being gone and busy with work, babysitting, and classes. As I flushed my toilet, I noticed the toilet bowl was quite filthy; and I mean FILTHY! It was a disturbing realization for two reasons; (1) because I live alone, I knew the filth was all mine and (2) this meant I had to actually buckle down and clean it! To supplement my income (working barely 10 hours a week at a daycare doesn’t exactly pay the bills) I babysit/nanny and clean houses here and there. I never used to enjoy cleaning when I was living with my parents mostly because I never really needed to clean much outside my room and the downstairs bathroom that I used. My mom would occasionally gu...

In "Who's Afraid of Postmodernism", James K. A. Smith breaks down some commonly miscontrued "bumper sticker" views of Postmodern thinkers Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault and puts them in their proper contexts to help believers understand how postermodernism can actually help revitalize the Church. One of the "bumper stickers" Smith seeks to recontextualize for us is Jean-Francois Lyotard's claim that "Postmoderism is incredulity towards metanarratives". This statement seems, on the surface, to reject the Biblical narrative as being a source of reliable truth, but Smith breaks down Lyotard's thought process to show that storytelling is at the core of all belief systems. The issue is whether or not the story can be validated in itself or needs outside validation to be counted as sound. The "metanarrative" is such that is relies on something outside itself (another narrative) in order to be validated. The Bible, therefore, is no...

It's been a few days since my last blog-- I've been brainstorming and researching for a book idea, which I may be posting a preview of sometime soon. As I was doing my devotions today and reading through the book of Luke, I made an interesting parallel. I was reading the story of the feeding of the 5,000. Let me give you the recap: Jesus has just finished teaching 5,000 people (this only counts the men; there were more people than this if you count women and children). He ask His disciples an impossible task, "You twelve...feed those 5,000 plus people." All that was available was a little boy's lunch of 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. I can imagine the disciples were a little confused, if not also irritated at Jesus' audacity, but then something amazing happens. The little boy, probably realizing the impossibility of feeding so many people with his lunch, willingly hands it over. Then Jesus blesses it and miraculously the food keeps multiplying enough to feed EV...

My freshmen year of college I discovered the band "The Rocket Summer". The band is actually made up of Bryce Avery, a short, blonde, hyper guy whose musical talents are most likely the result of ADHD. On his recorded albums all the instruments and vocals are Bryce, while on tour he travels with a full band and switches to different instruments for different songs. His energy and passion is evident in his intensely energized upbeat melodies and clever lyrics. His newest album, "Of Men and Angels" focuses mainly around the themes discovered in 1 Corinthians 13, better known as the love chapter. The title track, however, couples the love theme with a yearning to only pursue what leads to the heart of God in the end. The lyrics of this chorus caught my attention the first time I listened to the song: "Here I am dear Lord Tasting hints of fame I don't want it anymore If it's not You that I gain Wanna fall on my knees Don't wanna fall from Your peace...

I was recently driving home from the mall when I encountered two teenage girls standing on either side of the road with buckets. They were raising money for teenage suicide prevention. I rolled down my window and handed the girl a dollar, the only cash I had on me, and in turn, she handed me a pamphlet with statistics about teenage suicide rates and a list of possible signs that someone is suicidal. At the bottom of this pamphlet was a quote: “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” This got me thinking about human perspectives of suffering. We all suffer; believers and non-believers alike. Matthew 5: 45 tells us that the Lord “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”. No one, not even believers are immune from troubles and suffering. On this subject, C. S. Lewis explains, “The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.” So if suffering and problems are a normal aspect o...

"If God is good, why is there evil"? Ah, the age old question, often used to blame God for the evils of the world or deny His existance all together. The church I attend on Sunday evenings, a church of about 10,000 people, is doing a series on this very topic. Based on the book by Randy Alcorn, the series addresses this question, giving Biblical answers to the issue of a good God co-existing with the evils in our world. Answering this question seems to trip up a lot of Christians. Now, when I say Christians, I don't just mean individuals who say they believe in God and go to church and know a few key Bible verses. I mean individuals who have come to a believing and saving faith in God the Father and accepted the forgiveness and redemption that comes with the death of His Son, Jesus, repented of their sins and embraced the power of His resurrection in overcoming temptation and the power of sin in their lives and live a life surrendered to Christ's character and will. N...

It seems my most inspired moments come when I least expect them, and rarely when I actually need them. As a seminary student slaving for the next few years studying theology deep, philosophical thinking and theologically fueled conversation are typically the norm. Living alone, however, I spend a lot of time simply inside my own head mulling over the complexities of the divine and pondering the deeper contentions of human nature. My mode of expressing the epiphanies that come to me late at night or while I'm doing dishes in my apartment is generally writing; a method that often goes unread by anyone other than myself. Therefore, in order to share with anyone in the web community who has a curiousity or interest in the areas of the spiritually significant or divinely dichotomous can share with me in my mental mullings. So, friends, welcome to my blog; to the world inside my head. Proceed with caution; things could get weird.