Realignment

So we're three weeks into a new semester. I'm re-realizing every day how awesome this group is. Lately there has been such love amongst us, especially the brotherhood (the guys) that it's lead to many group dog-piles and a(n unusually) mass amount of hugs (mainly from Joel - I think we're in love).The addition of a new student, JB (Joel Baxley), from Wisconsin via Texas (he's got a great aeh-cennt) has been great. He's a roomate of mine for this semester (along with Joel and Bryan) and he's a character, alright. He probably tells me or Bryan that he's going to murder us 5 times a day. He's such a positive, passionate guy and he's got a real gift for ministering and worshipping. He's got a great voice and he's a talented piano and guitar player too. A real dynamic character and he's already impacting this group in a great way. He also loves football so it's good to finally have someone to talk to about that. He's a real leader and we've been playing a lot of sports (basketball, tennis, volleyball, soccer) since he's come. (He's a big guy... 6'3, many pounds.) Real loud and funny.

As a result I'm not really getting to bed before 12 anymore because our room is all about shinanigans when you put him, me, Bryan and Joel together. All the other guy-rooms hate us now because we wake them up in the middle of the night for various reasons. Like to ask them questions like "What image comes to your mind when you think of 'people drinking trees'?" (That one was mainly my fault.) But everyone probably wakes up by the sound of JB's laugh which vibrates the whole house. And then when we do get to sleep we drive Bryan crazy because we're all snorers. If we're real loud Bryan gets his pillow and smacks us across the face with it. Or in my case, he just gets JB to shake the bed (he's on the bottom, I'm on the top) and that does the trick.

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We've had great lecturers this semester. Class-favourite Werner Schreiber came and that's always a riot. He taught on 2 Corinthians. And as usual I learned a lot. A couple of notes:

In Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he defended his apostleship. He spoke of all the suffering he had to go through. (We only get to know who we truly are under pressure.) Being in suffering, hardships caused him to rely on God completely. Paul went into the fire, and he came out alright.
He was genuine in his actions and words. There was no hypocricy. He wasn't "business-minded" where personal gain (gaining materials, status, self-marketing) was important. "We crave acceptance from the world."
He wasn't a spin doctor, making Christianty sound nicer than it is - he told the straight up ugly truth.
He had integrity. (The same front to back.) He didn't market the Gospel based on its benefits. Come to Christianity for God, not for what God can do for you. "When you're preaching, you're gonna make them angry, or convert them."

God tests us to show us where we're at. Where our hearts are at. Problems/troubles aren't the problem, it's how we experience the problem. The perspective: How much does it mean to you? Turn to God in every circumstance.

Instead of telling the Corinthians what they were doing wrong, Paul asked "how will you respond?" He was very gentle with the topic of sin. (As Jesus came not to condemn, but to save.)

Chapter 7/
Sorrow
Wordly sorrorw thought-process: I can fix it. I offended man. Ends in a compromise - still bitterness lingering - only grows with time. Does not lead in change of behaviour.
Godly sorrow: I need God. I offended God. Get off the platform, admit mistake, humble self.

Repentence: (Turning from something - and turning to God.)
Worldy words: "Sorry." And then justify "but he did __________", "Yes, but..." Pride is maintained.
Godly: Not justifying sin. Taking full blame. "This is me. Yes, I am a sinner."
Heart's attitude: Brokenness.

Salvation:
Only when we admit brokenness - let the Lord work. (The exchanged life - give God our burdens, junk, God will give us His life, His perfection - He will renew us - working internally.)

Leaves no regret:
How does wordly sorrow lead to regret? Hung up on situation, lingering guilt. Explodes when you're 50. (Midlife crisis.) Conscience overload, memory full of past.
The blood of Christ cleanses us! We need to reformat the heart so the conscience goes!

Angry at self? (For repeating same sinful actions you thought you had overcome.)
Pride: Basis is: You think you're better than you actually are.
When this happens, it just reveals what is in the heart - we are never improved.
Human change is not possible through human.
We will always live in the flesh on earth. Our nature always stays the same. We never improve.
I am not changing, no. Nature always produces the same results. What changes is how much space we allow for God to be at work in us. How much of our insides is GOD SPACE?
The grass is green, why are you mad? It always is!
The flesh will always sin. Call our sins by their name. Don't make up a fancy word for what we do to make it sound better than it is. A woman who struggled all her life with aborting her baby: "Not until she admitted she was a murderer did she feel God had forgiven her."

Paul never sold, compared himself to others.
Bible exposes the heart - takes away the masks.

Boast in weakness as it is strength in God.

Why do preacher's kids grow up and turn away from God? They watch, know what they are like outside of church, when the masks are off. They see that what is being preached, and what is being done are conflicting with each other.

Paul always realized how much he had been forgiven. Do we know how much we have been forgiven? When things go wrong, will we say "oh this is off the scale! God must have left me!" etc. or will we ask God to convict us for the better.
Let God have the foreground, stay in the background.

We are loveless because we don't know how much we have been forgiven.

We're wasting away right now. The physical, material life is not the real life. The spritual life breaks into the material, our true self is not in physical form, but the everlasting spirit.

On evangelism:
No religion can change the heart.
Get involved with life issues. (As Jesus did with the woman at the well.)
Share life truth before Gospel truth. - About the heart: anger, bitterness, resentment, etc.
Have a relationship with the living God, not religion.

/....;;';..,/,/;---\ Sorry for the scatterbrain-ness.

In our video lectures we were taught to be more passionate, and more in awe of the Bible. Russell Kelfer says we should tremble at His Word, and hang onto every word in anticipation.
God is looking for a broken and humble spirit, and a literal awe just at the mention for the Bible! He took the example of food and meals. We don't generally miss a meal in a day... if we do, we're very aware that we do it. Yet how often do we miss a day of reading the Bible? Too often in my life. His challenge was that we should actually skip the eating of physical food to spend time with our spiritual food if we 'don't have time for the Bible'. "If you treasure it enough, you will find time."

In our second video lecture, Charles Price spoke on 1 Samuel. We can easily reduce God, or living godly to a formula, or a pattern. We're to look for Bible principles, not patterns. Jesus didn't want us to think He always did things a certain way, He was creative! He was always doing something out of the ordinary. People thought if they were healed by touch, everyone was healed by touch. Others thought they were healed only by His word - they thought there was a formula to healing. So what did Jesus do? He healed a man by spitting in his eye!

Notes:
Why hasn't God removed my suffering? He is strengthening us.
God makes the message simple. Is it so simple that we have missed it?
The patterns of life are changing - you are becoming wise.
Submit our agenda to HIS agenda.

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A couple days ago we had a guy from Christchurch come teach us in the morning about street evangelism and then in the afternoon we went out in pairs and put what we learned into practice in Timaru (30 minutes south of Geraldine). Cara and I go together like PB&J (we're opposites in many ways but we love each other (enough that we don't kill each other at least) so it worked ... just watch, Cara will kill me in a few days) so we paired up together and it ended up going really good. At first we kind of wandered around and were really nervous about approaching but after getting rejected a few times it was all good and we just went for it. Most of us were worried about getting rejected and taking it personally but suprisingly we didn't. We just moved on, trying to find someone who was willing to talk about God or the Bible. (We weren't "bible-bashing." ie. Shoving the message into their faces. We gave everyone the option to stop the conversation right away if they didn't want to talk about such a subject.) So yeah, it was cool - we'd dare each other... I'd always tell her to go up to the old ladies. There were four business people approaching us and Cara was like "I dare you to go up to them" jokingly but I just went up to them and asked them if they wanted to talk a bit. None of them wanted to share so that was that, but it got to the point where I didn't mind asking people what they thought of God (even groups like that) which surprised me because I've never been a fan of the idea of approaching strangers at all. After an hour or so, Cara and I settled in a coffee shop and did a Bible study together and thought about what to do next. Neither of us were feeling too interested in getting rejected some more but after some prayer we went out again and I was able to get a good meaningful conversation with one guy sitting on a bench. He was an "ex-Christian" who left the church because he was upset with the congregation which alienated his daughter because she had been making some mistakes in life. He said he'd have to forgive a lot of people before going back... he was really receptive to what I (God) said (through me) and I told him I'd pray for forgiveness for him and I'm hopeful for him. (I'd be great if you could too. He's really on my heart right now.) From there our time was up and we met back up and shared our interesting stories (some had very odd, cool experiences) and overall, I think we all learned a whole lot about how we're most comfortable witnessing to others. This day was really cool because before going out we spent a lot of time in prayer and everyone was really on fire and I could just feel God flooding the place, pouring into our lives. Lately I've found such an immense amount of passion and awareness of God around us. Simple things like "Isn't is amazing God gave us the ability to do this?!" (- Michael, talking about how we bend and twist our legs in such weird ways while hacky-sackying) really uplift the spirit.

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This weekend there was a folk festival happening just down the road from the Crossing. Amber had gone on Friday night and said it was great so I biked out to the festival with her on Saturday to check it out. The atmosphere was really cool. It was a bit cult-ish, as it looked like one big (hippie) family gathering. Everyone there probably went because they went as kids and kept the tradition going by bringing their family. As the music was going, there'd be long-haired kids sword-fighting with sticks on the paddock below. The festival took place at a farm - there was a tent attached to a house and a stage - it was really low-key but they did have lights and microphones and amps things like that. The first group up was an acapella group and they were awesome. The sang a song called "Mother Nature" and then they sang "Amazing Grace" but to a totally different melody/song structure. It was great. The next few acts were also great - there was a bit of banjo so I was happy about that - but then there were also a few groups which were rather forgettable. At around 10pm there was an intermission and we went down to the bonfire and met a lady from England who had met the same YWAM group that Amber had met in Nelson. It's incredible how many times we've ran into people who have also ran into the YWAM group. We stayed a bit later and saw a couple of Canadian folkies take the stage and then left so we'd be back by curfew. It was incredibly hard biking back to the main road in pitch black lighting but we made it eventually and got back right on time.

In the morning I went to the Anglican church beside the folk festival because I was hoping some of the musicians would be there to play a bit, but none came so it was just me and 15 other older people. I was well greeted by the parish and the other members as they were happy to see a student from the Crossing visit them. The service was cool - lots of readings and hymns that I missed. "Be Still and Know", "Breath on Me, Breath of God", "Here I am Lord, it is I Lord..." and a few others. It was weird having communion with real wine as well. Overall cool experience.

Three easy Bible verses to memorize! (Amber and I have realized we suck at memorizing verses so here's three we learned this week.)
"Be joyful always" - 1 Thessalonians 5:16
"Pray continuously" - 1 Thessalonians 5:17
and...
"Jesus wept." - John 11:35

...gotta start somewhere!

Still working on my hobbit-feet... they're getting better...