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 ...