Slimy Tunnels

Sometimes pushing through hard times is a good way to learn, but sometimes learning is simply not enough. There comes a point where confusion can no longer be justified. It is this point where it is demanded of us to get back up from whatever brought us down.

I was talking to my good friend Tom a few nights ago sipping some coffee late at night talking about how things were going. I had told him many things that have occured earlier this semester and the setbacks that i had during. I particularly mentioned the lack of passion and the continual drain of hope that i had experienced in the pasy few months. Tom nodded his head and looked at me sympathectically. Then he asked a few probing questions like "what does that mean?" or "what did you learn?" But then he suggested something that rendered me silent for a moment/ He asked what i was going to do now.

After a while of making it through difficult times, it is hard to decide what you are going to do with the present circumstances. I had no no idea that i was obligated to do anything. I thought that i had pulled through and made it to the otherside, but if the point of the making it through a slimy, dark, depressing tunnel with rats and spiders was just so i could walk out the otherside and sit on the ground, then maybe i should re consider going through tunnels in the first place. If this is the case, tunnels suck and we should avoid them.

Funny thing is, we cannot avoid them.

Luckily, beauty can be found within these tunnels, but more importantly, beauty is found on the other side. Too many times have i sat down as soon as i make it through one. We need to press on and and enjoy the fruit of our patience sometimes. Sounds funny, but after habituating full-blown patience for a long time, it comes as a shock to actually get to enjoy something.

Practically, i need to plug myself into a program that can help me get involved in something that i love. I can't just sit around and get comfortable again. That's how this whole mess started in the first place! Sometimes, we need to get back up.

Love, Frank

Faith

How are you doing with your faith?

Haha just kidding. I don't even know what that question means. I feel like we Christians use this language a lot with out understanding the very surface of what we are saying. "How are you are doing with your faith" has some strange implications. It implies faith is something that you aquire by your own will. I believe that having faith has a decision involved, but i do not think that anyone can go into things deliberately in order to strengthen their faith. Everyone's faith will be tested through the course of time and by extreme boredom.

Faith is that thing that people fall back on when everything around them seems to be meaningless.

In Ecclesiates, Solomon seems to only see the world as vanity. The interesting thing is that vanity cannot recognize itself. When Solomon declares that the entire world holds no meaning, he says so on a very particular basis.
      He Knows that there is meaning in this world and that God's hand is somehow on it and that His promises will some true, but he looks around the world and sees no evidence of this.
               
This is faith.

When i came to college, i expected there to be seriously hard times. What i did no expect, however, was the immense amount of spiritual boredom that met me as i stepped into classes. Spiritually, I have been as dry as ever. It made me angry and i still am to some extent. Part of me desperately wants to have my passion back. That burning fire was what kept me going for so long. Now i have study the literary structure in the Old Testament simply in order to get a good grade on a test. Its boring. But sometimes, it is what is needed.

The passion won't always be there. But sometimes, it is up to us to decide if we still want to follow Him.
          Whatever that means.

Love, Frank

Dim Light

My roomate says some pretty hilarious things sometimes, but only when he really isn't trying. I would give some examples but you would not be able to concentrate on my blog at all after you heard them. He also says some very profound things when he isn't trying. As we were walking up to the cafeteria to get some breakfast one morning, Jake defined my college experience.

It was early, around 7:30, and the overcast sky sent a blanket of opaque light over our campus as we walked up leaf-covered steps. As we approached the familiar path a sudden memory strikes Jake as he notices the dim light coming from the lamp posts off to our right.
    "Its crazy that last night the light coming from those things was super bright and now they aren't doing anything."
I had to stop walking.

At home, my life seemed to have so much purpose. Like God was using me. I felt like i meant something. There is something about a private Christian college that, for me, tends to steal that away. Everywhere around me I see good people doing good things with good smiles on their faces. The opaque light of "goodness" almost seems suffocating at times. If the whole campus is lit up with the things that people are doing, it seems so so easy and tempting to turn my little light off.

As i walked by these little lights, i couldn't help but to mock their eerie light as they struggled to resist my cynical opinions. It wasn't until later that i began to understand why lamp posts even existed.

The easy thing about living in an environment like my home is that it seemed to beg for light. There was an urgency in the way i let my light shine. I felt as if i were on top of a dark hill on a lampstand pointing to the creator of the world. Jesus burned with intensity through me and the radiance of His Father's glory was shown. At college, it seemed for me that this burning intensity became tame and foggy. It seemed omnipresent but not omnipotent. This was where i went wrong. Who am I to suggest that God changes who He is based on where I am? God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Yes, it may be hard to continue shining when it seems meaningless. But God will never be meaningless and our faith must be placed in that. We must trust the things that Jesus says and tells us to do. Why? Because it is good.

That night i returned down the path that had seemed so pathetic to me hours before and i saw what i had forgotten. The path once again looked like home. Full of intensity and mystery. The contrast of the lightness and darkness was so real. So beautiful. My light holds intense meaning regardless to what time of the day it is. And so does yours. It is not for us to decide what has value. The judge of that is God alone.

Love, Frank

Hard Times

Holy Cow.
College campuses seem to by like breeding grounds for stress and anxiety. If anyone feels differently, please share with me the number to your school's admissions office so i can transfer. This past week became one of the most difficult weeks that i have faced in a very long time. I had a week to re-write ten-page research paper, prepare a supreme court case speech, study for a large old testament exam, and complete my regular assignments. I got so stressed out and could barely handle the pressure. My roomate helped out a lot but he couldn't stiffle the messages that i was hearing.

"How are you going to keep your scholarships if you GPA is already struggling as a first semester freshman?"-- "Maybe social work shouldn't be your major if you don't even care much about getting an education?"--"Maybe you should focus more on your fall-back plan"-- "You really think you are good enough to keep up with work loads like this?"

These messages are what kept me in a realm of apathy for the greater part of last weekend. I got so behind in all of my assignments and would stare at a computer screen for many frustrating hours believing that i coulln't do what i wanted because i didn't have what it took. Once the day came, however, like in a typical sit com everything fell into place like magic.  I praised God for the work that, by His grace, He was willing to bless me with. It was yesterday afternnon that i reveled in His glory as i got to witness His mercy in my life.

But soon i had to quetion....

Why does it seem that hard times bring such a raw sense of God's power? Why are my eyes able to see God in a more clear way in the midst of adversity? Does God want me close and therefore want me to go through hard times?

Here is what Andrew Murray believes based on an excerpt about his reflections of John 15:3 -
   
        "What is the pruning knife of this heavenly Husbandman? It is often said to be affliction, but is this the tool He uses? How would it then fare with many who have long seasons free adversity; or with some on whom God appears to shower down kindness all their life? No; it is the Word of God that is the knife, sharper than any two-edged sword, that pierces even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit, and that is quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart"
                                - Andrew Murray

So maybe times that bring us closer to God have little to do with the circumstance and much more to do with what the circumstances reveal about our hearts by the power of the Word that was there in the begining and now lives with us in our hearts. Rejoice, and always abide in Him.

Love, Frank

Fear?

Sin is believing the lie that you are self-created, self-dependent and self-sustained
-Augustine


A friend asked if Jesus ever feared when he was alive. Now I am no theologian but it certainly got me thinking. What is fear and why do we have it? I know that this is such a complex question but hang with me because i might be on to something. And what if sin was as st. Augustine describes it? Is sin maybe simply the manifestation of the idea that everything is about yourself?

I feel like possibly the only thing that causes seperation might be when one believes in this lie.

Eve saw that the fruit was good and took of it and ate it because she believed that she could be self-dependent if she did so. I feel like we all do this. We all want to be self-dependent for some reason and i feel like we tend not to look at how damaging it is.

In college, i question why i tend to be so proud about things that i acomplish and do well on. I also question why i become crushed when i feel inadequet about a paper or a class. It seems silly to bring this up but it needs to be said. Because it is not what you do that defines you. It is what has been done for you. 

The Christ has come. He died for the sin of man and destroyed the penalty of sin so that we could be be adopted into the kingdom of God. We are children of God because of what He did for us. There are tons of thoughts filling minds of college students that say who they are. Most are wrong, some are subjectively true depending on the time, but what is true no matter what for those who are saved is that they are a child of God. What greater confidence could someone attain?

Looking back on Jesus, maybe He was so aware of who He was that His confidence could not be shaken. This may have been why He never sinned. This could have been why He never feared. So why do we if we know who now lives in us?

Love, Frank

Be Angry

I have found that sometimes i give up on things. Like working out or getting good at ping pong or writting letters. I somehow become apathetic towards things like this. Sometimes i feel apathetic towards my spiritual life too. I normally have strong feelings and emotions regarding what path God is taking me down but every once in awhile it all drifts away as i begin to feel nothing.

I think is the most dangerous place for a person to be.

Note that i say person and not Christian. Because people have emotions that become vital to be expressed. Humanity has been created to be affectionate beings. This doesn't just pertain to the Christian "way-of-life". Actually, i think Christians are more prone to take this level of apathy to a scarier place. We let apathy in and pretend it's not there.

This is like suppressing a cough when you are sick in an attempt to convince others that you are fine. There is no logic in it and yet i can promise you that each follower of Christ has fallen to this at some point. I feel like a Christian campus is a cesspool of supressed coughs.

I guess what i am saying is that most Christians think that it is totally inappropriate to be angry. This ticks me off and makes me want to punch a wall.

I have found that i become much closer to God when i am up in His face yelling at Him. Like in Genesis when Jacob and God were wrestling for hours and hours, God used that time to truly empower and speak to Jacob about his calling and who he was as a man.

For God's and your own sake, get over what you have learned about political correctness and get angry at things that you find wrong and take them straight to God. Be angry about fast-food, or hippies, or America, or denominations, or things in the bible, or rich people, or whatever it is that you seriously think is wrong. You may be wrong and you may be right but at least you are passionate about something. And when you take these things to God He will show you who you are and affirm you in the direction that you are called to go.

Don't lose sight in the Chirstian fog. Remember that you are created in the image of someone who hates and despises evil and darkness. Let him show you what to love and what to hate. Just keep wrestling with the big guy.

Love, Frank

Recognition

Somehow, every person who chooses to do unwise things eventually comes to find that it was, in fact, unwise.

What i find interesting about this is that choice does not only have to be attributed with an action. You can also choose to believe something. You can choose to believe that basketballs are green. If you have seen one in a while and you walk into a conversation that explains the green nature of this ball, you may choose to believe that this is true.

What i find to be very sad in all of this is that we seldom recognize that we do this.
Therefore, we don't exactly know what we believe.
Our choices seem less reflected upon.
We become unable to discern whether we are doing wise or unwise things.

This is dangerous.

Being in a college campus, i find myself clinging to new ideas at a very fast pace without even considering how i view myself at times. This is understandable but not desirable.

If we are unable to recognize when we think that we are ugly or stupid or unlovable or worthless it makes something that is already terrible and turns it into something even worse. Thinking those things is bad enough, but when you think it without even seeing that it is evil and wrong to believe in this way, it does more damage. Somehow, the act of recognizing what is occurring in our souls often leads us to a state of panic. We become scared of coming to this point and even try to avoid it at times. I am here to tell you that if you want to live a full life, you must come to this point.

God doesn't need us to fix the things that are deep down. He's got that. He just wants us to give them to him. We can't do this without truly recognizing the specific things in our life that need to be address. It's terrifying, it's difficult, and it is extremely worth it.