Another first... and an amazingly good one

For the first time in 20 years, I finally got somewhere productive in a "talk" with my dad. Previous to last night, our "discussions" would always degenerate into me storming out of the apartment and seething in the night for about half an hour and then returning firmer in my decision to never talk anything serious with him ever again.

Last night looked to be shaping out to much the same... but it didn't. After an hour, we were finally able to sort out the last six months of fighting and clash in particular. There was a particular thing that my dad did that would always start to annoy me, and then I would just shut down for the rest of the discussion and we would move nowhere, even if he was right (which I have to admit, he usually was.)

The discussion began when he brought up this past week where my system crashed and burned because I hadn't used my time wisely. He pointed out that it was most likely because of the fact that I was being incredibly undisciplined in terms of my school work and such. I didn't disagree. He's absolutely right. Where it looked like the discussion was going to break down, however, was when he started repeating some of the examples and points that he said (a particular habit that he has). When I tried to stop him, he started down the path of "there you go not listening to me again." Things got tense... but it defused and we were able to move on to what we were going to do about it... something that I wnated to get to the whole time, but that he thought that I was not willing to listen to.

In the end, it turned out to be that we were always defining the terms of the discussion completely differently. It's not that we weren't on the same page, we were in totally different books in different languages, but I don't think that was the main problem.

The main problem was that I had finally decided that, even if my dad had something good to say, he never said it right so I didn't want to hear it. I had resolved that if he couldn't get to the point and bring up some suggestions about the problem that he was raising within 15 minutes, that he was wasting my time. Maybe he was... but I was severely disobeying the Bible's command to honour my parents by even thinking along such lines.

The Bible says "Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land that the LORD is giving you." (Exodus 20:12). It also says in Psalm 118:35-36, "Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight. Turn my heart towards your statues and not towards selfish gain." For the past year, I have definately not been directed in the path of this particular command, but have turned my heart away from my father, and therefore God, and towards my own selfish desires. This may definately explain the severe lack of joy in my walk with God, and the frustration when I find myself trying to live in his Word day-by-day; this huge underlying attitudinal (probably not a word, but I don't care) problem was undermining everything else. If you could pray that God would continue to work within me, "transforming me by the renewal of my mind," (Romans 12:2) so that I might become a satisifed and frutiful child of God, and that I might be able to lead others to satifaction and fruition.

As Andrew said last week after we went sharing, "It feels good to be obedient." And how...

Kids... love em or hate em?

Once again, I was reminded of my incredibly volatile and easily triggered temper today at work. It was a particularly bad day.

Still recovering from my sickness, my nose is really stuffed... and I think I have a post nasal drip problem. That, in combination with the fact that I'm always projecting my voice at work thus drying it out, caused me to almost choke on my own snot three times today. That was quite unpleasant, to understate to the max.

And then there was this one particular group of kids that just wouldn't settle down. On top of the fact that we were already 5 minutes behind, I was getting stressed out trying to get the kids to settle down. I was so close to flipping out and telling them all to "shut the f&*^ up!" Of course that would have been horrible (not to mention probably would have ruined some little girl's birthday party)... so I was able to calm myself down enough to grit out the rest of my briefing and then get them in so that I wouldn't have to deal with them.

I mean... I know that I got a bad temper and all... but does something have to come along to remind me every other day that I do. It's mildly frustrating... seeing as how today was Sunday and all too.

On that... my work hired three new staff and therefore my labour is no longer required on Sunday. Very glad that's over with.

Blogging.....

I find solace in blogging. It is an excellent medium to share with large amounts of people that care for me while being sufficiently vague as to not spill out any dirty laundry online.

I hope that I've been sufficiently discreet in any serious personal matters... it would be kind of embarrasing if I hadn't.

I read an excellent post today about forgiveness and trusting in God. Many of you may have already read it (or are about to do so). It really kind of cut me to the quick, along with another thing that I listened to (this episode of Adventures in Odyssey) re: forgiving yourself. I know that God has forgiven me... but I can't find it anywhere to forgive myself. So now I want to go crawl in a corner, stare at the wall, and just be done with it all. (No, I'm not having suicidal thoughts... you can all be rest assured. I may be down in the dumps... but not THAT badly.)

Clearly sitting at home and wallowing in sorrow does nothing... I think I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go do a devotion.

Goodbye... maybe you can check it out here.

For the second time in my life

I've dropped a course for the second time in my life. And get this... it's the same course that I've dropped twice now. My lack of time management and discipline has cost me 1500 dollars (this is including the fact that I still need to take this course.)

If you ever wanted to know the cost in dollar value of non-time management, there you go.

Now I've got to go to class.

And btw, I think I'm going crazy from lack of sleep. Everything's funny and trippy. Or maybe it's that high feeling you get from lack of sleep JUST before you crash and burn. Reminds me of what Brad said in response to Jess when she said she was bracing herself for a burnout.... Brad promptly responded in awesome Brad fashion... then don't.

Haha... too late for me I think.

On God's Will

My pastor at church is presenting a sermon series on discerning God's will. Unfortunately, for the last two weeks, I have had to miss the 2:12 service, because of work and such (yes my work is making me break the Sabbath... they're promising that hours are going down... but we'll see. If they don't I'm going to have to tell them that Sundays are a quittable offense.) but I'm glad I was able to make it this week.

He opened by sharing a story about how he was feeling down and depressed (much like myself a few days ago) and then he shared about his reflection on that and shared three insights that he realized.

1) When we live for pleasure and happiness, eventually we will despair, as there is no happiness apart from holiness.
2) When we try to do things according to our own wisdom, we deprive ourselves of the wisdom of God to lead and straighten our crooked lives.
3) Obedience is important to any spiritually fulfilled life. Without obedience, we cannot be privy to God's plan.

It made me think about the study in the Cru.comm series about walking in the Spirit and in Romans 8 where it says that without the Spirit is impossible to please God. When we are filled with the Spirit and live a life led by the Spirit, then not only do we demonstrate that Christ is in us, but we are able to truly commune with and glorify God.

Chang continued on by jumping to the meat of his message (that little blurb seemed out of the blue, and I'm not sure how to connect the two parts of the message) and talking about God's will. The passage that he preached out of was 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18. He then talked about God's will in a three part approach a) God's will for ALL his people, b) God's will in specific situations within the umbrella of his will for all his people, and c) God's will for you within those specific situations. I'm going to have to ask him about some specifics in terms of Biblical backup, but he then went on to say that even though it is not necessarily wrong for us to ask what God's will is for us in terms of the future career that we should hold, or the program that we should go into, etc. but that we need to think of the bigger picture and that God has an overarching will for ALL his people. And not ALL of God's people (i.e. children in the slums of Latin America, Christians in Sudan in fear of the government) have even the choice of going to university, or of having a decent career. We must not allow our little "needs" overshadow the greater will that God has for us, and then he began into the sermon.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 reads as follows:

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Chang broke this verse up into four parts, a) be joyful always, b) pray continually, c) give thanks in all circumstances, d) for this is God's will for you.

a) This is a command in the present iterative, where G0d is commanding us to be joyful now and to continue to be joyful until the end of eternity. I know I definately have problems with this one... and to put things in perspective, Chang gave a story about a girl that had been kidnapped and been put in a brothel where she was raped daily. When a rescue agency finally came to save her, they noticed sticky notes all over her wall. When the workers that raided the house took a closer look, they realized that they were Bible verses that she was memorizing. Despite the horrible conditions, and the most likely constant questioning of where God's will could be in her condition, she refused to turn back on her faith. One of the verses that was on the wall was Psalm 27:1-6.

b) To emphasize the continuous prayer, Chang talked about how difficult that it was to maintain long distance relationships without constant communication with each other. Relationships deteriorate if there is no constant communication, and this is why he said that we must pray continually. If we do not communicate with God and often, then we are letting that relationship deteriorate and we do not tap into the full potential of the power that one could get from such a relation.

c) Chang was quick to point out that God did not command us to give thanks for all circumstances, just in all circumstances. He will provide us the strength to endure through any circumstances we find in, and as an add on of my own, it reminds me of the verse in Romans 5:3-5 where he says that enduring in our sufferings eventually builds hope.

d) This brings us back to the bit that Chang was sharing about God's overarching will for all his people.

I really enjoyed that sermon today, and I feeled that it would be good to remunate about this and share it with y'all.

Although i'm wondering who reads this anymore... nobody comments and it makes me sad :(

Inspired by Ryan Lawrence...

I decided to google my own blog. I was ALSO able to find my own blog. Not only was I able to find this blog, but my devotional blog as well. It scared me.

And apparently if you google Ryan Lawrence's blog, the top four hits is the main site, two comment sites, and Matthew Hughes blog.

It's... scary... those crazy guys from Google.

I dunno

It's 2:11 AM in the morning and I'm feeling depressed.

Depressed because I have an assignment due on Tuesday that will require me to read through at least a 100 pages of case law.

Depressed because I have an essay due on Wednesday that's worth about 20-30% of my mark and I haven't really started ANYTHING for it yet.

And yet I know that I should probably be doing work instead of being depressed about not having it done. And yet I don't feel like doing work.

Dude... I feel like I'm in blah land. Having had to wait for the bus for an hour at 12:15 AM doesn't really help things at all.

Blah.

Watches and the Spirit

Ever since I was little, I have had a bad habit of losing my watches very easily. I remember getting a watch as a Christmas present when I was eight years old and losing the watch about two weeks later. My parents never bought me another watch again.

Over the years, I have had a couple more watches since then, and I've managed to keep them for more than two weeks (one I even kept until it broke beyond repair.) But the stigma of being a constant watch loser never left me - in the minds of my parents and myself, I would lose a watch very quickly if I didn't watch out.

This past summer, my sister went to Korea and as a gift for me, bought me a watch. I was pleasently surprised, and yet cautious about where I put it, when i took it off and took special note of wherever I put it. Sometimes I wouldn't even take it to school for fear that I would take it off at some point (the feeling of a watch on my wrist feels foreign to me and I jiggle with it) and then forget to put it back on. Today I regretted this particular paranoia as I had to write a midterm and was without a time piece to make sure that I was on track with my time. Although I was fine, and nobody minded me using my cellphone as a watch, I know that such a tactic cannot last as a long term solution.

As I was thinking about this, I began to think about my spiritual walk with God. Now, I'm not really in fear of "losing" my faith... instead what I find myself doing is leaving it on the wayside feeling that I don't need it or have alternate methods of making it through my day (having a watch vs. using my cellphone) and then suddenly a day comes along where I should really be equipped with the Word to fight off temptation or to really be a witness for the Lord, and I'm just not prepared.

I forgot to bring my watch as it were, and I got caught not knowing the time of day, nor being able to give it to someone else.

Confessions of a movie junkie

Yes... I realized that I'm a huge movie junkie. I've also decided that it isn't an ENTIRELY evil thing, and so I should stop treating it as such. Instead, I will take what John Wiersma talked about addictions this summer to heart and take proper action towards controlling my amazingly easily addicted person.

The first thing that I'm doing with it is practicing my writing skills in a movie review blog. You can glance at it to see the type of movies I'm watching, and reprimand me if you think that I probably shouldn't be watching such films. In my defence, I generally try to avoid the films with mindless violence, sex and debauchery. If the film that I view has that in it, it was because I wasn't entirely expecting it and I seek other things to glean from that particular film.

The other thing that I've decided is to try and discipline this habit (that became somewhat unmanageable last year. Those of you that know me from Toronto C4C know that I can quote many a movie line. Most of that knowledge is from the summer of 2005, although it continues to expand every month.) No more than three movies a month is my limit. I've already watched two, so after one more, I cease til next month. Not only will that relieve the stress on my wallet, but it will also ensure that I use it as a reward for completing work instead of as an unhealthy escape from reality.

That's all for now. If anyone else has any suggestions on how to refine the above, I'm wide open to suggestions.

My current most favourite song

Man... worst grammer in the world in that title. But I'm not changing it!

So yeah a few weeks back I was just perusing through the music videos at Yahoo! Music and I was just letting it scroll through when I came across a song which I had heard many times on the radio and enjoyed, but never knew who it was.

I find out the titles of all my songs from Yahoo! Music. It was "Savin' Me" by Nickelback. Not only is it a great song (yes you can stick your fingers in your mouths and pretend to gag at me... I like it) but the music video's pretty cool.

check it out if you get the chance. Unless your too busy. Then go do your work, like I should be doing. I'm just unwinding after an exam that I feel pretty good about.

You'll need a Yahoo account to watch the following link.

Weirdest thing

I decided to get off the bus early and walk home, from Bathurst and Steeles. Figured it should take about 30 minutes, and it would give me a perfect time to walk and pray. But I was praying (thoughts wondering but always snapping back to where they were supposed to be) when i realized I'd been walking for thirty minutes and I had no idea where in the world I was. I sort of knew, but not really, I walked for another 5 minutes, totally distracted from praying now and walk out to the first major street and find myself on Bathurst when I should have found myself on Yonge.

CLEARLY i had gotten all turned around and walked back in the direction from whence I came. Clearly the champagne and wine I had earlier that night (plus not really concentrating on where I was going) seriously affected my judgment.

In the end, what should have been a 30 minute prayer walk ended up being an hour long prayer walk. It was excellent. I finally realized that spending time with God was not something that was just "another thing to do" but the only REAL thing to do. Everything else (schoolwork, work, and yes, even C4C Ministry things) was a "thing to do" but not spending time with God.

Also, a discussion that I had earlier with a friend of mine became all the more focused in my head. She asked me two questions that really got me thinking... and I decided to pray over those two questions and think about them some more. Although I could sincerely answer yes to the first question, I could not answer yes to the second, and so am forced to back down from a certain proposition that has been rolling around in my head. Some of you may know of what I speak. That still doesn't deal with the emotions, but I'm sure that those will be addressed in just as timely a fashion. And who knows.... maybe the answer to question two might become yes? But that's speculation and for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, its just gibberish.

I also realized how much I appreciate and enjoy cold weather. I LOVE it. Walking around in North York with just the bare minimum of bundles (thin sweater, leather jacket, scarf) spending some SERIOUS alone time with God and enjoying the dark cool night is something that I don't get too often. I think I need to make a point of doing this more often.

The Master Plan of Evangelism

Now that I look at that title again, I realize that not only is it the truth, but it is such an amazing pun, seeing as how Robert E. Coleman keeps on calling Jesus "the Master." Hehe...

I've been delinquent in my readings on this book, but I decided that it might be a good idea, seeing as how I'm studying it. After reading the first three chapters, it's like a light went off in my head. Robert Coleman talks about three things in those three chapters: he talks about selection, he talks about association, and he talks about consecration. The selection chapter was pretty straight forward, though I did wonder about how we can be as selfless as Christ in the greater motivation of discipling men (and women) who will continue to work for the larger goal of salvation. How do I do that without making it look like favoritism, for I am not Christ.

And when I initially heard the association part, I was very confused. How was I supposed to take all that time to spend with the guys in our discipleship group, being with them, demonstrating spiritual leadership and principles to them, while stil having a life of my own. But I realized that I was asking the wrong question, for the principle of association is not that of a discipler associating with his disciple (in this modern time of Jesus not being physically present with us on earth) but it is that of the discipler showing the disciple that he must be in constant association with CHRIST, not me. How foolish it was of me to think that was what Coleman was even suggesting. I pray that Christ may live through me such that I may be able to point those that I disciple to the ultimate discipler, Jesus Christ. That I would be so full of the Holy Spirit, that, as it says in 1 Peter, every word that comes from my mouth will be of God and every action that comes from me may be from the strength that God provides.

The third chapter on consecration hit me like a ton of bricks. Jesus called those who were obedient to him, and those who were not willing to accept the terms of his discipleship were left to leave him as they would. Jesus had no time for disciples that would not give their all for him. The question is, do I give my all for Christ? Am I worthy of Christ's time in that I am taking up my cross and truly following him? How can I know this if I'm not even sure of what it means in my particular circumstance to take up my cross and follow him? Is there more to what I need to be doing at this present moment, or is it enough.

Now far be it from me to suggest that my actions could do anything to save me; that is not my intended implication at all by the above paragraph. Instead what I wonder is if God were to take an account of the things that he asks of me, whether he would say "Well done, good and faithful servant," or would he embrace me and say that I'm still his Son. Though both are desirable, clearly the former of having run the good race and done all I could for the LORD is the thing that I desire most of all. How do I know if I'm am being fully obedient to the LORD? I guess I could start by getting on the ball with the discipleship group that has been entrusted unto me and I pray that the LORD will reveal the rest in his good time.

The value of solid Christian counsel

Just tonight, I poured out to someone something that's been on my heart and head for awhile. To preserve the sanctity of privacy all names will be preserved and no particulars will be revaled. Besides which it would kill me more than anyone else if this information got out.

But that's not what's important. This person gave me some seriously solid Godly advice and I SERIOUSLY appreciated it. I very rarely get a chance to talk with anyone deeply about anything, and this made me glad that I have people to talk to on a serious level, deeper than the surface of things.

What would I do without people from campus for christ? I have yet to solidly build any connections at my church (I actually haven't been for a week, and I'm going to have to miss the main service that I go to this week as well). What can I say, that one week sojourn away from the Christian bubble that I chronicled about at the beginning of September 2006 continually makes me realize how much more inspiring and awesome good Christian fellowship, conversation and discipleship really is. I wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world.

A Call for accountability

I realized that there is one particularly bad habit that i have.

This bad habit is the constant act of promising to myself that I'm going to do something and then not following through with it. It was one of the few things that I kicked myself about while I was at Summit.

Speaking of which, Summit was quite the awesome. There were a few moments when I felt like I'd been struck with lightning. The first was when I went to the session on how to share the Satisfied booklet. I've had the booklet shared with me a lot, but I don't believe I've ever taken the time to share the booklet with someone else. But as we were going through the session (btw Sean Cullen is the man) I came across the part of the booklet where it quotes the verse in Galations about how when you have the Spirit, you desire the things of the Spirit. It then reminded me of all those verses in Romans that constantly remind about the fact that the sinful nature desires things of the world (which do not please God) while the Spirit desires those things of the Spirit(which, conversely, do please God.) It's not a new revelation by a long shot, but it gave a new spin to the Spirit filled life of which I had never considered before.

The other lightning strike (well, more of a decision if you will) was that I decided to trust God in terms of finances (I was really worrying about that, this having been the first year that I actually had to use OSAP), and go on a summer project. And who knows, maybe the Lord will be merciful and will allow me to go on an international project as an intern. That would be quite the awesome. It might also help me to make a decision about the other decision that I'm trying to make about after I graduate. Ask me about it sometime, but it's not something I'm quite ready to broadcast over the Internet.

I'm STOKED about what is going to be happening at York this year, and I'm grateful that God has seen fit to allow me to be a part of that. All glory to the LORD.

But that was a REALLY long aside about what I wanted to post. I even posted this, and then forgot about the main point of the post until after I looked at the title.

Something that I decided to do was that I would be much more faithful about sharing on campus. Even though I hold that it probably isn't one of the most effective ways of seeing people come to Christ in this current society, there are still people that respond to it and there are still seeds that are sown when we do this. And it is definately faith stretching for me. So the plan is this. While I'm on the bus, I'm going to find someone to sit down next to, instead of sitting on one of the individual seats and just start talking to them, but not necessarily about spiritual things. The reason for this is to get over the butterflies that still jump into my stomach when I think about going up to talk to random people, and if those conversations do turn to spiritual things, well all the better. If those of you that check this blog out could keep me to that and ask me how I'm doing in terms of this decision, I'd appreciate it.