One Sacrifice

Hello and good day to anyone and everyone who may stumble across this blog. Today, I am going to be talking about a neat topic, and it's a thinker, so just warning you ahead of time. Before I begin, I would like to give a quick shout out to my friend Blair Wong who is now blogging again! She writes some really good stuff, so if you want to check that out just go to blairrhymeswithflair.blogspot.com. You won't regret it!

Initiation sequence in 5...4...3...2...1...

How is everyone doing? Enjoying summer break? I hope so and I am excited to hear the stories from everyone when we see each other next. This summer I have been experiencing a pretty strange feeling, and I am not sure what to make of it. Part of me actually wants school to start back up again. Not the classes and everything, but just being on campus and being with the friends and family that all of us college students have made. I mean summer break is awesome and I am totally not wishing that it would end; however, I do have that desire to go back up to school. It's strange.

With introductionary (I made up this word) things aside, I want to get into the real core of this blog which is outlined by the title "One Sacrifice." Today, I am going to write some of the things that God has put on my heart about the verse Hebrews 10:14, and for those of you who aren't familiar with this verse (don't worry I had to look it up too), here it is, NIV 1984 version:

"For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy."

Hebrews 10:14

I don't know about you but this verse gives me goosebumps. It is such a powerful message crammed into this tiny sentence of just fifteen words. I am going to go through and break down some of the things that stand out to me in this verse, and then because I can't leave you without trying to make you really think, I am going to write about how this verse challenged me and how I think it should challenge you. Alrighty, call in the wrecking ball, it's time for a breakdown.

The first thing that instantly jumps out at me is the third word and that is "one." This word kind of has a double meaning in this context, and what I mean by that is the fact that it is seemingly so simple, but at the same time it is monumental. If you were to read only the first four words, "For by one sacrifice," you may think why is there only one sacrifice? That seems a bit lackluster. The bible calls us to be cheerful givers, but here Christ is only giving one sacrifice. But as you and I continue to read, we realize the importance and incredible weight of this one sacrifice. For it was by this one sacrifice that Christ made us perfect FOREVER. This verse is not something that is claiming that Christ only had to make one sacrifice throughout his life; but on the contrary, Christ's entire life was his sacrifice. I believe that too many people think that the only sacrifice Christ made was on the cross at Golgotha. This is the most prominent image of Christ's sacrifice, but when we think about it, Christ laid down his Glory, laid down his power, and laid down His seat at the right hand of God the very moment that He was formed in Mary's womb. When Christ became like man, He began the process of the ultimate sacrifice, which was completed as He hung on the cross and yelled, "It is finished." What a powerful image that is. That's the first thing that I wanted to bring up.

Coming around the turn in second place are the words, "he has made perfect forever." We have such a misconception of time, that it is scary. Our world functions on efficiency, rapidity, and speed. Have we ever even attempted to stop and think about what forever is. Through our everyday language and vernacular, we have desensitized specific words, and one of those words is forever. We so commonly throw around the phrase, "I'll love you forever," but in reality, the only person that we can truly love forever is Jesus Christ, because He is the only one who can sustain a relationship that lasts forever. One of the coolest things about this verse is that it defines the condition of how that forever relationship will be. In our lives, we all have our good times and our bad times. We know how awesome we feel in those good times, and we also know how miserable we feel in the bad times. But can you even begin to imagine what it will be like when there are no bad times. When by Christ's sacrifice, He has made us perfect. And He hasn't made us perfect for a day or a week, but forever. Because God loves us so much, He provides us a way to overcome our sin and share in a perfect relationship with Him for the rest of time. How amazing is that? I mean that gets me fired up.

The third and final thing that I want to pull out of this verse is the phrase, "those who are being made holy." So here we are and we are feeling pretty good because we just found out that through Christ's sacrifice we are going to be perfect forever. Forever. And then these words close off the verse, and it is almost like a reality check. We still have all the right in the world to be as excited about the fact that we get to be apart of perfection for eternity; however, as these last words mention, we also need to realize that we are still "being made holy." Not one of us is Holy enough to be able to stand before God by ourselves. We are constantly undergoing this process of sanctification, and we are constantly being made more and more holy through God's grace. Yes we have that perfect forever, but not now. We are all still mired in sin, mired in temptation. But what we do have right now is hope and knowledge. We are daily encouraged by the fact that when we stand before God, we will not need a list of our deeds, because when we as believers of Christ, stand before the Father, we get a perfect list, paid in full by the blood of His son. We witnessed perfection two thousand and some odd years ago, and we will witness it again on that Judgement day.

Now I want to touch really quickly on the challenging part (not to say that any of the above wasn't informational or challenging, but this is the direct challenge!) After reading and re-reading this verse, a question continued to form in my mind, and that was : "what is my one sacrifice?" Obviously, our sacrifices are not the same as Jesus, and they are not even necessarily the same as the people around us. However, we the ability to make a sacrifice for God. The only question is what is that going to be? For some of, we need to focus on strengthening our relationships with our enemies, which is a sacrifice. Some of us need to know the feeling of sacrificing personal finance on a paycheck to paycheck basis. Others may need to know or learn what it means to sacrifice for a friend. Whatever your sacrifice is, I encourage you to seek it out and pursue it. Romans 12:1 says: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship." Offering up our "one sacrifice" to God is our true and proper worship. So my challenge is that you would pray about what your "one sacrifice" would be, and then ask God how He wants you to better His kingdom through your sacrifice.

What a powerful verse. Thanks for tuning in to my thoughts this week. Remember to pray continuously and without stopping. If you knock, the door will be opened. Have a great rest of your week!

Signing off,

JD

Turning it All Around

Hey everyone. Sorry it has been so long since my last blogpost, but I have been spending a lot of time with friends and a lot of time outside so I am not really on the computer much. I hope all of your summers are going simply splendid, and I can't wait to hear some of the awesome stories that will result from summer 2011. As some may know, I had the privilege of going on the Chicago Vision Trip with Purdue Christian Campus House at the beginning of this summer. We went and stayed for a week, and some of the things we did and the memories we made are going to be with me forever. More recently, I was asked if I would give a short speech at Purdue Christian Campus House about the trip and some of the things that I learned. As I was thinking back over some of the things that I learned and some of the ways that God showed himself to me, my first realization was that I had a lot more to say than I thought. My second realization was that other people need to a deserve to hear what God had showed me during that week. So that's how we get here. This blogpost may be a bit long, but stay with it. Because in the end, it's definitely worth it.

God can do nothing for me until I realize the limits of what is humanly possible, allowing him to do the impossible.

Oswald Chambers

So in breaking down my trip, I want to touch on three main things that God really moved on in my heart. They are testimony, evangelism, and comparison. We'll start with testimony.

On the second day that we were in Chicago, we were given the opportunity to drive downtown and go to Pacific Garden Mission, which is a homeless shelter centered around the gospel. We were fortunate enough to have a tour guide come and show us around the entire mission, and man was there a lot to see. The way that Christ was working in that building was phenomenal and it was so neat to see others obeying the call of the Lord in actively running this mission. About halfway through the tour, our tour guide, who had been a delight up until then, stops us in an upstairs room and begins to tell us his testimony. He talked about growing up, going to college, and then finding himself getting into some pretty bad stuff. He went on to describe his lifestyle and some of the poor choices that he had made. And then talks about how Jesus pulled him out of all of his sin and all of his despair. You could feel our group's excitement as we stood and took in the story of the true power of Jesus. Then, he said that the Lord rescued him last August. That's really when our jaws started to hit the floor. I don't know if you have ever experienced this before, but you could spiritually feel the power of his testimony as he spoke it. We were all stirred by the man's story, but it wasn't until later that night that I realized that something about it was bothering me, and that God was using this man's story to point out something in my own life. I brought it up to the group at discussion time, and I was to bring it up again now. I speak for myself and for the group when I say that for most of us, our opinion or our view of the tour guide changed or was affected by his testimony. The thing that was bothering me was this nagging question: would my viewpoint have changed the same way if his testimony wouldn't have been so dramatic?

I realized that for me, the answer was no. This was something that I had never even really considered, but in that moment, God used this man's testimony to teach me in an area that I needed to improve. He reached out and He showed me that there is a power in a testimony, no matter what it is, and that power is the redeeming love of Christ. We are all sinners, and we all need God's grace. There is no sin that is worse than the other, so when we compare testimonies, the only thing we should see is the fact that God's grace was enough to overcome the sin that was in each person's life.

This is a good transition into my next point which is comparison. During the week, we had the amazing opportunity to listen to Joel Hammernick (the leader of Sunshine Gospel Ministries) speak on topics like poverty, racism, and peace. One of the things that Joel also talked about that I couldn't shake was the topic of comparison. I don't have the direct quotes from Joel, but I can paraphrase a lot of what he said. I still don't have the answers about how we deal this situation, but I know that it is something that we can only hope to accomplish with God's wisdom and guidance. So here is what Joel had to say about comparison. This shook me, and I hope it does the same to you.

The first fact that we have to realize is that we live in a comparative world. We grow up and become adults under constant comparison. Do you play sports; which college do you go to; how much money do you make; do you drive a nice car? All these questions are comparisons to other people or things. It has become the way of life, the reason for things that we do in life, and the motivation behind our aspirations. The second fact that we have to realize is that there was no place in the creation story for comparison. God intended for us to live in perfect harmony with Him, with ourselves, with others, and with nature. Instead, that plan became altered when sin entered the picture. Soon after, we began comparing with the story of Cain and Able, and we haven't stopped since. But do we ever stop to think about the consequences of comparing. When we compare ourselves or any of our possessions to that of anyone else, we are more than likely to get one of two responses. Either we realize that in what we are comparing, we are "better," and that easily leads to a sense of pride or egotism. Or the other option is that we realize that in what we are comparing, we are "worse," and that can lead to a sense of depression or insatisfaction. God made us IN HIS IMAGE. He made us perfect, what more do we need to compare to? When we stand before God on judgement day, we don't need a list of how we were better or worse than someone else. We don't need a list of our good works either. Philippians three talks about being clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. So let us be clothed. Let us bask in this righteousness and let our hearts move away from a lifestyle of constant comparison.

Imagine the world that God envisioned for us: a world where instead of instantly jumping to compare, we jumped to praise of the gifts that God has given each of us. Instead of complaining about how "Tom" is so much better of a guitar player than we will ever be, why don't praise God for blessing "Tom" with a musical gift? Instead of feeling prideful, do we ever turn to God and thank him for the gifts that he has given each and every one of us? I struggle with this daily, and like I said earlier, there is no easy fix or answer to this. It is a day-by-day battle, and our only hope is to put on the armor of God.

To wrap up, I want to talk a little bit about what God taught me about evangelism while I was in Chicago. On multiple days, our group was able to go into the city and simply talk with people about life. One night, during one of Joel's messages, I remember him saying something very clearly that I rocked me, but it makes perfect sense. He said:

"You will never minister effectively to someone that you think less of."

Being a freshman at Purdue, I was blessed with an amazing group of friends and a fantastic community rooted in Christ. However, one of the things that we constantly struggled with was this idea of what does evangelism look like on a college campus? God calls us to live our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel, but how do we go beyond that? This quote from Joel is a good place to start.

In fact, it's the only place to start. Too often we go into evangelism with this mindset that we the envangelis-er have some wisdom or knowledge to impart on the evangel-ee. Like we are above the person and we having to help or save somebody. Rather, we should realize that every time we evangelize, we are doing so out of Christ's Love. Do we ever stop to think about how much the person we are evangelizing to can teach us? In fact, there are countless stories of people who go to evangelize and come out of the experience being the one who just got "taught a lesson."

If you made it this far, I thank you for your patience. I hope that you can get something out of these things that God put on my heart. Have a great rest of the week.

Buried and Risen in Christ,

Signing off,

JD

This Place About to Blow

Hello all! Okay so first things first, I want to point out that just because the title of this blog is a reference to a Ke$ha song, that does not mean that my iPod consists of songs most commonly listened to by a teenage girl. As much as I cannot stand most of Ke$ha's songs, they are so catchy that you can't help but want to dance to them. That isn't to say that I can dance, but I think that dancing is more about enthusiasm than ability. I youtubed (its weird that search engines have become common verbs in our culture i.e. google it) awkward dancing and this is the first video that came up was this. Not quite sure how I feel about it.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THESE DANCE MOVES BEFORE?

Okay so moving forward. This weekend I had the privilege of going to my friend's lake house and it was awesome! The friendships formed and the community was a great way to really kick off summer. After arriving back home tonight, I was relaxing and decided to write a short blob about the weekend. Being away from everything and just being able to spend three days with some fabulous people really made me excited for this summer and the potential that it could hold. How much fun could result in three months? I guess we will have to wait to find out. But the only thing that I do know is that: "This Place About to Blow!"

Well hopefully it's about to blow. Most everyone can relate to at least a tiny sense of fun that arises when you have firework sitting in front of you and your holding the match or lighter, ready to see the display of colors. However, some of us have also known the awful feeling of lighting the firework, waiting in anticipation, then watching as it splutters and dies without any real explosion. I feel like this metaphor can be related to most of our summers right about now. Our summer is the firework, sitting right in front of us, waiting to take off and dazzle in the night sky. However, we ultimately hold the match. Are we going to stand back and keep a potentially unforgettable summer inside? Or are we going to strike the match that makes our summer explode?

On facebook, I stumbled across a wall post that said: What would you do if you knew you only had 24 hours to live? I've heard this before and while it is a good question, I think that one that applies more to this blogpost is:

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU KNEW YOU ONLY HAD ONE SUMMER LEFT?

Maybe you could take an epic cross-country bike trip. Maybe you would take up a hobby, or two, or three. Maybe you would get back in contact with that friend you stopped talking to a few years ago. You have an entire summer! Maybe your summer is about to blow open and you dont even realize it yet.

Whatever your summer may contain, be sure to make the most of it!

Signing off,

JD

"This Guy Over Here"

Schools Out for the Summer

MUSICAL LINK
This guy is creepy. The chorus is what I was going for.

How's everyone doing? Its been a long while since I really put up a blog post, but I was thinking about getting back into it this summer. That's right. This SUMMER! It is a crazy feeling being done with school. I think I speak for all of us who moved on and took the step into the college lifestyle in saying that we can still remember those first days when we were moving all of our junk into a then barren room. For some, you didn't know your roommate very well and you were thinking about how that was going to affect your freshman year. Others like myself knew our roommates from high school, and so the transition wasn't really that difficult. Most of us probably arrived at college and quickly realized that we were no longer the smartest person, the most athletic, or the best at whatever random skill we claimed during high school. Now as we sit back, relaxing on our couches in our parents houses, we have our freshman year under our belts. I want to go through in this blog and just mention some of the things I learned from this freshman year. To kind of go along with that, I am going to ask some questions along the way so maybe you can think about your past school year also. And as a disclaimer, although I am referring to the first year in college, these things that I have learned and the questions i'll ask can really apply to anybodies past year of school. So I guess the first question I want to ask is: did anyone's first (previous) year go exactly as they thought it would?

I know for me the answer to this is a definite no. I came into college knowing that there were going to be a lot more people, a lot more parties, and a lot harder classes. It turns out all three of these things were true, just not in the context that I first thought. Going from a school of 500 kids to 40,000 kids is quite a jump. I know that not all of you are cut out for the big college lifestyle and so some may have ended up going to a school that has fewer kids than your high school. However, at a school like Purdue with so many students, I thought I was just going to get lost in this sea of strangers. Looking back on my freshman year, there were times where I felt a bit overwhelmed by the insane amount of people; yet, I was completely surprised at how easy it was to run into people that you knew. Before I went off to college, my dad tried to really impart on me the importance of being a "connector." Well, on a campus of 40,000 other people, sometimes that seemed like a daunting task. But as the school year went on, I quickly began to realize that if you put in the effort to meet people and are willing to sometimes step out of your comfort zone, campus becomes a whole lot smaller. You may be walking to class and run into five different people that you've met previously. SO because of this, I think that lesson number one that I took away from freshman year is to always be willing and open to meet someone new. People have awesome stories, and you'd be surprised by how many people just want somebody to talk to. Two quick things before we move on to the next point that I think are important are to always make the effort to remember someone's name. People like it when they are called by their name. It shows that you care and are making the effort to create a friendship. Secondly, don't be afraid to make friends with older students. People generally have this mindset that older students mentor younger students, and this is often true; however, people learn from each other, no matter the age difference.

Another preconceived notion that I had coming into college was that it was going to be this insane party life, and not to make any one out there too excited, but at times it is. I had this mindset that even though I have never been a partier before, when I got to college, the social life would tell me that partying = fun. And that is exactly what happened. However, what I was not expecting and something that I really grew from during my freshman year was the simple fact that even though partying is equal to fun for most people, it is not the grandmaster equation for a college experience. The amount of fun that you have is what you make of it. I was fortunate enough to be able to be surrounded by a great group of people who had similar definitions of what fun was. So on a friday night, instead of going to some frat party or going to someones apartment, we were able to all get together and play card games and watch movies. These experiences with my friends defined the amount of fun I had during my freshman year. It was important for me to realize that I didn't need to join a fraternity or go to a highlighter party just because I had to feel like I fit in to the social aspect of college. SO because of this, lesson number two that I learned over my freshman year is that your friends have a major influence on the amount and what kind of fun that you have during college. For some people, that is the Greek system. But it doesn't have to be, and that is an important lesson that I took away.

Finally, I came into college knowing that classes were going to be hard. And oh is that an understatement. I know that some of you breezed by, not even having to check twice to see that you were pulling good grades. Others of us learned what it felt like to be sitting up at 4 a.m. studying of writing a paper just to try to keep a B in a class. The level of difficulty of your school year is pretty much tied back to your major, but even then, college classes are just difficult in general. Many of us learned what it was like to have professors who didn't really care to learn your name. Others had professors that they would go out to lunch with on a daily basis. It really just depends on where you went to school and what classes you were taking. But many of us had to learn how to really study, how to really write a 8-12 page paper, or how to survive a class where your entire grade was based on three midterms and one final. However, what I learned about college classes my freshman year is that you get what you put into it. I know that people have said that before, so it really isn't anything too knew or exciting, but it really is true at the college level. Classes turn into a reflection of the amount of work that you are willing to put in. SO, because of this, lesson number three that I was able to learn was the fact that even though classes were pretty difficult, if you put in the hard work, you will reap the benefits, most of the time. However, sometimes just don't work out like you want. But it's all about how you respond and pick yourself back up.

So I want to ask one more question before I wrap things up. This summer is an opportunity for each of us to really take some time and either get better at some things, or fall back into bad habits that we had before we went to college. So my question for everyone who is about to go on summer break is what will your summer consist of? What will be the defining moments of summer 2011 and what will you learn? I look forward to a great summer and I hope that you will follow me as I attempt to record some of it.

Thanks for tuning in and I hope you have a great rest of your week!

Signing off,
JD
"This Guy Over Here"

Feed My Sheep

Hey there! I just wanted to start by saying that I hope that you are having an awesome day! For Purdue Students, it's the monday before spring break! But of course, all the professors think it is necessary to put a test the week before spring break so for most of us, including myself, this week is going to to be stressful. So i just wanted to provide everyone with a little study break perhaps, and more importantly a quick refresher about God! Let's do it!

So the title of todays post is Feed My Sheep. Not literally. For one that would be very creepy and two I do not own sheep so good luck with that one. Before we really start getting into the good stuff, I wanted to open things up with an awesome video I found on youtube (and for those of you out there wondering, no I did not go to youtube and search for sheep videos. I had already seen this one.)

WATCH THIS AWESOME LINK BEFORE YOU CONTINUE READING.

Who knew you could have so much fun with sheep? Major props to those guys though. Last week, I posted something called chasing, and I just gave a brief intro into the question, "What are we chasing?" A lot of times, I think that we get caught up in the world and we end up chasing something that we know can never bring us an everlasting joy like Jesus will. That was a quick recap of last week. This week, I want to turn our attention to this verse:

John 21:17 "The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.""

So here Peter is, standing around talking to Jesus, and Jesus pops the question on him, "Do you love me?" First of all, this is a big question coming from anybody, but coming from Jesus, the Savior of the Universe, God's own son, this is HUGE! And to add insult to injury, Jesus goes on to ask the same question two more times! So now Peter is dejected and just like of course! I've said it twice before what are you looking for. And it's really interesting what Jesus's response is. He doesn't say, "Good, just making sure," or "Haha got ya I know you love me." Instead, He simply says, "Feed my sheep." I can picture the other disciples or anyone else who heard this exchange looking around scratching their beards. What sheep is Jesus talking about? And what do you feed sheep? But in these three words, Christ gives us so much. It is a command on how we should live our lives, and not just any command, but if you delve deeper into it, you can really see where Christ was coming from.

Oswald Chambers, a christian author, rights a devotional called My Utmost for His Highest. I got the idea for this blog from one of his devotions, but I thought that the concept was so true that I had to share it with anyone who was willing to read it. Jesus calls us to feed his sheep. Well who are his sheep exactly? I can't sit here and tell you exactly who the sheep you are supposed to feed are, but I can tell you that Jesus has some pretty extraordinary sheep. Not every sheep is going to be pristine, white, and flawless. Oswald Chambers describes these are sheep in this way. He says, "some sheep are going to be unkempt and dirty, some are awkward and pushy, and some have gone astray." However, God loves each of them nonetheless and His command for us to feed them. We are to practice God's overflowing love and carry out His commands, regardless of who the sheep is or what it has done.

When we look at is this way, we can clearly see that the love that we are supposed to be practicing, the love of God, doesn't focus on any prejudices or attitudes that we bring to the table. We have all of these preconceived notions about who people are supposed to be, act, and live, that sometimes we allow these notions to get in our way from practicing God's true love. This kind of threw me for spin because so many times, I think that I try to show God's love to somebody, but in most cases, it is always within my own bounds. THE LOVE OF GOD KNOWS NO BOUNDS! It does not judge, it is holy and pure, and it is something that we should strive for everyday.

I have to get going now, and I hope that some of this makes sense. Think of how much of a better place we could make your environments if you were constantly aware of trying to demonstrate the true love of Christ. I want to leave you all with a verse that I read today that really made me excited and got to me.

Romans 8:37 - "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us."

We are conquerers in Christ. Have a great day and a great rest of your week!


Your brother in Christ,

JD

Chasing

As I was at Brunch Bunch this past Sunday, I had the opportunity to talk to two of my friends about my plans for the future and some of my goals I would like to see accomplished. We talked about what the balance was between having our own goals and completely trusting in God's plan for our lives, or if there is even a balance. Coming into college, I had all of these goals and plans for this career/lifestyle that were being more fueled by my personal desires, and since then, I've really tried to align my desires with those of God, and to try to follow the path that he has for me. This isn't always easy, because it's not like God has this neon sign pointing here that say, "This is the way to go!", but with faithful prayer, I think that we can learn what God has planned for our lives.

So one of the responses that got raised at brunch about this conversation was, "How do we know what God wants us to do?" As I said in the line before, obviously prayer has a huge part in it. 1st Thessalonians 5:17 calls us to "Pray Continually." If we look back through the bible, the people who seemed most in line with God's calling were the ones who talked to him the most.

I think that one of the most important things to realize is that even though God didn't highlight and define the specific path that we are supposed to follow, He still instructs us on how we should live our lives. In 1st Peter 1:16, God says that, "for it is written, "Be holy, because I am holy."" This is such a strong command, that packs so much into so few words. With this statement, God basically tells each of us the standard to how we should live and conduct ourselves.

This got me thinking. Are we really pursing God and attempting to "Be Holy?" or are we trying to match up to the worlds standards, while being a generally good person? So I guess the question of this becomes, what are you chasing. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Passion Conference this past January, and Louie Giglio spoke one night about freedom, and what it meant to have true freedom. So many of us are trying so desperately to obtain this sense of freedom, and in that desperate search, we begin to fill our lives with things that we think will give us that feeling. The way that Louie described it was imagine if we had this chain that we carry around with us. The chain is our desire to get this "true sense of freedom" that the world does such a good job of telling us we need. We go around attaching our chain to different ideas, to other people, or to relationships. The list is endless, but what it boils down to is that most of us are so willing to attach ourselves to anything besides Jesus. And I guess my question is, why do we chase after things of this world, when Jesus is the only one who can break all of our chains and set us completely free.

Why do we need the world now when we are given a paradise in Heaven?

Along with God calling us to be holy, he also calls us to be perfect. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus says, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect." At first, I was a bit put off by this verse, because the bible very clearly says that we are all sinners, and that we have all fallen short of the glory of God. So why would God call us to do something that He then goes on to say is virtually impossible because we are all sinners. After a lot of thought and talking with some friends, I think that God had to call us to perfection. If He called us to anything less, eventually, someone somehow would reach that level. So He calls us to perfection, not because he is trying to make life impossible, but because with Him, life is possible and that is what we should be striving for. A perfect and holy lifestyle.

That's all I have for right now, but as you go throughout this week, try to stop and think about what or who you are chasing. If the answer to that question is anything but God, then try to identify what you have latched your chain around and begin to break the hold that is separating you from a satisfying life in the pursuit of God.

We are a house of Worship.

JD

Repeat

Hello, and welcome back. It's been a while since I last wrote on here. I've been on quite a roller coaster since I last blogged, and so I am going to tell you a bit about that now. Since my last blog, I took college finals. That was an experience to say the least. I finally got to see why all of my high school teachers always said they were preparing me for something. Yup, thanks high school teachers. Christmas break was good, it was short in the same way that it was long. Kind of confusing. But over Christmas Break, I was privileged to go to Passion Conference in Atlanta Georgia, and did that blow my mind. It was awesome, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone and everyone next year! Let's fill the Georgia Dome! I came back up to school, ready to see my friends again, and it has been an exciting three weeks so far. I think that that catches you up to speed a bit on my times. Lets move on.

Do you ever feel like you do the same thing over and over? I think as college students, we sometimes get sucked into this class- homework-friends-homework-sleep-class routine. I don't know if this rings a bell to anyone else, but I sure know the feeling. Sometimes, it takes something really small to break us from that routine, such as a odd text message that we receive or a slight change of plans that ends up being for the better. Sometimes, its a bigger action needed to lodge us out of this routine trap that we fall in, such as a lifestyle change, or a random radical decision that most times is not for the better. The thing is, I don't know what it's going to take to break each and every one of you from this routine, or whatever routine you have in your lives. Cause let's face it, we all have routines, whether they be big or small. It's part of who we are.

I think that more recently, I have been in this routine of questioning things, and it is really annoying/scary at times. I question why I am killing myself in engineering, or why I am trying so hard to maintain all of these new friendships. I start to question one thing and then the snowball starts rolling rolling rolling down the hill that no body wants to fall down. So how do I break it/did I? Well for me, I got a wonderful opportunity presented to me in the form of a snow day! I got to sit back and not really do a whole lot, which allowed me one day, in the middle of my week, that I didn't have to go to class, didn't have to worry about homework or friends or anything else. This was my day to do whatever I wanted with.
But you know what I found out from this day more than anything, is that the homework, the friends, and other things, are a part of my life. They are who define me in a sense. Even on my snow day, I still did some homework. I still hung out with some friends. I still put on my smile.

I guess you could say that I wanted to write this tonight for all of the times we as people get into those 'blah' moods. I know its not like a constant thing in most of our lives, but when they do hit, man are they hard to get out of. I hope everyone has a great rest of your snow day, and I can only hope that school is cancelled tomorrow as well.

Signing off,

JD