Memorial

So it's Memorial Day weekend, and we all know what that means.  It's a time to remember and honor fallen soldiers, the men and women who gave their lives to give us freedom.

When I heard those words at church this morning, I was sure that the topic was going to be freedom in Christ thanks to the sacrifice He made on the cross.  While that message is the basis of the Christian life and faith and would have been great to listen to, I'm thankful that I was wrong because the message reached me in a much more powerful way than a repetition of the story of the cross would have because it gave me a better understanding and deeper appreciation for Jesus' sacrifice.

Today's message wasn't a typical church sermon.  It was in the form of a video, a collection of interviews with various leaders from my church who each reported on the life and death of a particular martyr whose story impacted their lives.  The twelve disciples; Narcissa Whitman; Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Anne Askew; Jim Elliot; Martin Luther King, Jr.  These men and women dedicated their lives to the spread of the gospel, to making disciples, to living for Christ, even if it meant dying for Him as well.

For some reason the story of Jim Elliot spoke to me the most.  Maybe it was because I'd heard it before, or maybe because I'd seen The End of the Spear, a movie based on the story of his martyrdom.  Whatever the reason, the story set in motion a thought process that brought me to an amazing realization.

Too often we think of martyrs as people who gave up their lives, and nothing more.  We think of the incredible determination they must have had, their unstoppable devotion to God.  Sure, we thank God for giving them the strength to persevere to the end, and Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:10 that he "delight[s] in... persecutions."  But more often than not, we're impressed that a mere human being could be so devoted to something or someone that he would die for it.  We don't think about the joy they must have had at knowing that God was finally calling them home.  We don't think about the encouragement God had set them apart to be for the entire Christian world.  We wonder at how they could have been thinking about anything as the fire flickered and climbed up their legs, as their bodies were stretched and their bones pulled out of joint, as their flesh was peeled away, as each strand of the whip dug into their backs...

Or as each stroke of the hammer drove the nails deeper into their hands and feet.  We focus on the martyrs of history, but we forget about the Martyr.  And no, I'm not talking about Stephen (Acts 7:54-8:1).  I'm talking about the original Martyr, Jesus Christ.  We forget that He was even a martyr at all.  We only think of Him as a sacrifice.  We get all emotional when we hear stories of modern martyrs and anyone who has died for their faith in the last 2000 years... except for Jesus.  We talk about His death and resurrection as if it was no big deal.  We brush off the words "Jesus died for you" as if it were just dust rather than a direct wound to the heart.  We forget that He was a human just like us—of course, He was also God, but when we say that He left His throne in heaven, we mean that He gave up His power as God and resorted to human communion with God through prayer.  While Jesus was indeed God, He wanted to relate to us as much as possible so that we could see that everything He did would be possible for us through God, so He only used His power as God by praying to the Father and asking Him to perform the miracles He did.  Through prayer, if it's God's will for the moment, we can do everything that Jesus did.  But that's not the point.  Jesus was human.  He was born in Bethlehem to poor Nazarene parents.  He grew up learning the Scriptures like a good Jewish boy, and then He went around teaching like the prophets of the Old Testament.  He knew His mission and He was so strongly devoted to what He believed in that He went willingly with the guards when they came to arrest Him.  He hung on the cross by His own will, and He hung there until He died.  Yes, He was killed as a sacrifice to cover our sins, but like any martyr, He died first and foremost for what He believed in: that "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).  He loved the people He had come to minister to.  He loved serving them.  He had come into His mission field, the world, to be with them—with us—and to tell them that there is a God who loves them.  And He was killed for His beliefs.  Jesus DIED for us!  Think about that.

When a person is martyred, that's the end of his life on earth, but his influence never dies.  While his work is done, his story continues to work.  But Jesus differed in this way: After He died His story would continue to work, but His own work wasn't finished yet either.  He rose from the dead—let me say that again: He rose from the dead!—and walked with His disciples, telling them what they should do in the coming days, and even years, as His disciples.  The disciples had given up everything for Him, leaving their families and their jobs in order to follow the Man they thought would be the Savior of Israel, and He had been killed.  They must have been devastated because they were left with nothing but a bad reputation with the religious leaders.  Some returned to their homes to rebuild their lives, to start working again so they could earn a living and piece together everything they had lost.  But then news came from Mary Magdalene and the mother of Jesus that their Rabbi had risen!  Just as Lazarus had been raised from the dead, Jesus was now alive and well after having been dead for three days.  He was walking around dressed in white, looking as if He had never suffered apart from the holes in His hands and feet and in His side, and even the holes were like jewels, signs of His victory over sin and death.  And then He promised His disciples that He would send His Spirit to live in the disciples to guide them every step of their lives.  He ascended into heaven, but He had not left His disciples alone.  And then the Spirit came to them, and eleven of the twelve disciples (including Matthias, Judas' replacement) were martyred for their teachings.  Actually, all twelve disciples were going to be martyred, but John the Beloved survived his death sentence: he was boiled alive in hot oil and was released unharmed to die a natural death years later.

Stories of martyrs have always drawn some kind of emotional response from me, but Jesus' crucifixion seemed to lack that kind of power for me.  But now I realize that every martyr points to the example that Christ gave us.  So I hope that, from now on, you and I will both be able to look at martyr stories and remember our Savior on His cross: Jesus, the original Martyr.  This Memorial Day weekend, let's remember the Man who gave His life so that we could be free from the power of sin and death.

"It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." ~ Galatians 5:1

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed."

Mark 1:35

I've been writing a lot about prayer lately, and for good reason.  I mean, if that's what I've been learning about, shouldn't it be what I write about too?  Well, anyway, I've been reading R.A. Torrey's short book, How to Pray, and it's incredible!  I just finished it today, and I can't begin to tell you how powerful and convicting it was.  The whole book is great, but what really got me was what Torrey said in Chapter 11: "Prayerlessness abounds among church members on every hand. Some one has said that Christians on the average do not spend more than five minutes a day in prayer."

That hit me hard.  It's sad.  When I read that a couple days ago, Satan tried to get to my pride by telling me that my prayer life has been good enough this year that I'm not one of those people, that my scattered prayers throughout the day (which aren't unimportant) added up to at least five minutes a day.  But something still didn't feel right.  Of course there's no minimum time requirement for prayer in order to be a "good" Christian, but if your best friend lived right next door to you, would you be content to only talk to them five minutes a day (or less) at school?  Maybe it's just me (I doubt it), but five minutes doesn't come even close to being enough.  And it should be the same with prayer.  To pray is to be in conversation with God, and if God is our best Friend, then five minutes of prayer should be a mere fraction of the time we want to spend with Him—and not just the time we want to spend with Him, but the time we actually do spend with Him.

In Matthew 26, Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane with His disciples Peter, James, and John to pray, and in verses 40 and 41, Jesus rebukes the disciples for sleeping when they should have been praying: "'Could you men not keep watch with Me for one hour?' He asked Peter.  'Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.  The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.'"  "'Could you men not keep watch... for one hour?'"  Jesus went off by Himself into the garden to pray for an hour!  And He spoke as if this were a regular occurrence for Him.  In fact, Luke 6:12 says, "One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God."  The entire night!  He gave up sleep so that He could spend time praying to God!  And in Mark 1:35 we see that, when He did get His sleep, He would get up early in the morning to pray.  And Luke 5:16 says, "But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."  It doesn't just say, "Jesus prayed often."  It says that He "withdrew to lonely places and prayed."  When you withdraw away from the crowd to get peace and quiet, most people usually intend to be gone for more than just a few seconds.  Jesus spent long hours in prayer.  Frequently.

Personally, my prayers have always been scattered and short.  If you've been keeping up with my blog, you know that earlier this year I started praying while walking from place to place on campus.  While this increased the frequency and length of my time in prayer, my prayers were interrupted by distractions several times throughout my half-hour walks from my dorm to the School of Music.  Of course, now that I think about it, I'm thankful to God that He used that time to help my prayer life grow.  But that was only the beginning.

Yesterday and today were the first times I set aside periods of time specifically for prayer, and prayer alone.  And it was amazing!  Simply taking time to draw away from the world and to just pray felt incredible!  In fact, I was so absorbed in spending time with God that I was shocked to find that I spent an hour praying while laying in bed this morning!  Now, this isn't to brag, but today has been the best day I've had so far this summer (I've been at peace and had a sense of being filled with the Holy Spirit all day), and I'm convinced that it's because of that hour of prayer.  I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like if I prayed like that every day!

And what if we all did?  As Malachi 3:10 says, "'Test Me in this, ' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.'"  So let's test God and see what He'll do when we give Him everything and come to Him in frequent, earnest prayer.

"I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night.  You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give Him no rest till He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth." ~ Isaiah 62:6-7

"Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize."

1 Corinthians 9:26-27

"I hear so many Christians murmuring about their imperfections and their failures and their shortcomings, and I see so little war.  'Murmur, murmur, murmur.  Why am I this way?'  Make war!" ~ John Piper

"'To whom will you compare Me? Or who is My equal?' says the Holy One. Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing."

Isaiah 40:25-26

"Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong."

1 Corinthians 16:13

"But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ."

 Philippians 3:20

“For the Christian, heaven is where Jesus is. We do not need to speculate on what heaven will be like. It is enough to know that we will be forever with Him. When we love anyone with our whole hearts, life begins when we are with that person; it is only in their company that we are really and truly alive. It is so with Christ. In this world our contact with Him is shadowy, for we can only see through a glass darkly. It is spasmodic, for we are poor creatures and cannot live always on the heights. But the best definition of it is to say that heaven is that state where we will always be with Jesus, and where nothing will separate us from Him anymore.”

—	William Barclay

The Words I Would Say; Sidewalk Prophets

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for Me." ~ Matthew 25:40

“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?  Can such faith save him?  Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?  In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” ~ James 2:14-17

“My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don’t show favoritism.  Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in.  If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, ‘Here’s a good seat for you,’ but says to the poor man, ‘You stand there’ or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet,’ have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?  Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?  But you have insulted the poor.  Is it not the rich who are exploiting you?  Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court?  Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of Him to whom you belong?  If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right.  But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.” ~ James 2:1-9

“Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.  Mercy triumphs over judgment!” ~ James 2:12-13

“Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess His name.  And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” ~ Hebrews 13:15-16

“And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right.” ~ 2 Thessalonians 3:13

"For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

Habakkuk 2:14

Isaiah 41:10

Isaiah 41:13

"O You who hear prayer, to You all men will come."

Psalm 65:2

"Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful."

Colossians 4:2

Since I’m going to be on Freshley Prayer leadership next year, I decided I should find some books to read on prayer.  Actually, my book search didn’t really start with that in mind, but when I found R.A. Torrey’s How to Pray on my Bible app on my iPod, I had to download it.  And it was definitely worth the download (plus, it was free, and you can find it online for free here).

The search really started when my mom recommended the book He Came to Set the Captives Free, by Rebecca Brown, to me.  The recommendation came with a warning that it would be a tough read and full of tests and attacks from Satan, and she was right.  There are some questionable points made in the book, but the time of its publication has to be taken into consideration.  (The author makes many references to rock music as a form of devil worship, as well as martial arts and yoga as satanic practices.  Obviously, we have a very different understanding of these activities now, so the reader has to be able to sift through the information presented by the author in order to tell what is true and what is simply her opinion based on the time period.)  But while several sections of the book leave the reader laughing at the extreme conclusions the author has come to, Dr. Brown also gives very good advice when it comes to prayer, especially in the case of spiritual warfare (in other words, praying against Satan and his demons and their attacks).

In addition to these, I also have my Perspectives textbook, which I really want to read from start to finish.  Sadly, while I was taking the class, I read very little of the book.  But it was obvious from what I did read that there was a lot of good material in the textbook and the study guide, and it’s definitely worth reading this summer.  And it seems like there would be a lot of information worth praying over while going through it.

I also have a book called Jesus Freaks: Martyrs, by dcTalk and Voice of the Martyrs, and in the back of it, it has a list of several countries where there is hostility toward or restriction against Christianity, and it gives specific prayer needs for those countries.

Along with this, I got a mass email from the Freshley Prayer interns today suggesting that we, as a Freshley Prayer team, start praying for next year’s freshmen, which we should have already been doing but which I’ve been having trouble remembering to do.

So clearly I have a lot to pray about this summer.  So if you’d like to help me, I would appreciate it if you would pray for me as I pray for all these things.  And of course, feel free to join me in praying for 1) protection from Satan’s attacks for all believers, 2) the spread of the gospel throughout the world and the opening of the hearts and minds of the unreached worldwide so that they can receive the gospel, 3) the preparation of the freshman class of 2012, not only at UGA but at colleges across the nation, to receive the Holy Spirit and to make disciples of all nations, 4) the opening of the hearts and minds of next year’s leaders in order to hear God’s voice and obey His callings for us so that His will would be done and His name would be glorified, and 5) the conviction of next year’s leaders so that we would feel a need and desire to pray for next year’s freshmen, and not just the freshmen but also for the unreached and all the missionaries worldwide, whether they be overseas or on the homefront, in churches or in the business world.

Thanks, and God bless!

Onward Christian Soldiers, by Petra

Free Me; Hyper Static Union

In Jesus' Name

Every Christian knows that we add “In Jesus’ name. Amen” to the end of our prayers. But why do we do that? It’s not just tradition… at least, it’s not supposed to be. But it seems like the meaning of “In Jesus’ name” has lost its importance over years of repeated use.

Praying in Jesus’ name (John 14:13-14) doesn’t mean that we ask for something and add Jesus to it in order to get an answer. It means that we ask for things according to Jesus’ will. When you do something in someone else’s name, you do it because the other person would want it to be done. For example, let’s say you go to the store and you see something you know your friend would want, so you buy it. You know him well enough that you know he would want that thing from the store, so you buy it “in his name”—you buy it because you know he would buy it if he were there. It’s the same with praying in Jesus’ name: we pray for the things Jesus would pray for because we know Him so well that we can tell what He would want. We don’t just pray for whatever we want and offhandedly say, “Jesus would want this, so God will do it for me.” Praying in Jesus’ name involves getting to know Him so that our prayers—our will—would not be our own, but His.

So prayer is more than a simple list of needs and wants. Prayer is a form of communication to get to know Christ more intimately, and it is an indicator of your relationship with Him. The better we know Jesus, the more we understand His will; the more we understand His will, the more we pray for His will to be done; and the more we pray for His will to be done, the more He gives us what we ask for because what we ask for is what He wants to give. So basically, the closer we get to God, the more powerful our prayers become. Not that they weren’t powerful before, but the more we know Him, the more we pray for His will to be done rather than our own will; therefore, we will receive our desired answers to our prayers more frequently. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” When we want what God wants, He is more than happy to bless us and grant us our requests, because they aren’t our requests but Christ’s. So as we continue to be sanctified through Christ, our will begins to overlap with His more and more. That’s why James says, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:16).

Now, I understand that this may be a little bit confusing when you look at the cases where non-believers “prayed,” asking God to reveal Himself to them if He’s real, and God answered and changed their lives forever. But if you look at Psalm 37:4 again, it says that God will give you “the desires of your heart.” God has given every person a need, a desire, for Him in his or her heart. So even from the beginning, a prayer for salvation matches up with God’s will, “for I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!” (Ezekiel 18:32). And the more we acknowledge our need for Him, the more we desire for His will to be accomplished, the more we will see the truth of John 14:14: “You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it.”

So I'm really excited to be on the Freshley Prayer leadership team next year.  I can't wait to grow closer to God in prayer and to grow in my understanding of His will so that my prayers, through Christ, will be a powerful weapon against the enemy.  And the great thing is that I don't have to wait!

True Faith

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

—	CS Lewis (Mere Christianity)

Cannot Keep You; Gungor

I’ve gotten caught up in the Gungor craze.  And for good reason—their music is great!

The Earth is Yours; Gungor

Words

Shortly after arriving back in Athens after the Jamaica mission trip, I was spending time in the Russell prayer room (RPR) with some friends, and we were talking about hearing God’s voice, which had been a major topic while we were in Jamaica.  One of my friends, Josh, started talking about different ways we hear God: through His Word, through direct conversation in prayer, through visions, through other people, etc., and he said that He speaks to me most noticeably through His Word.  And I agree.  When I want to hear from God, I go to Him in prayer and in His Word.  The worship songs that reach me the most are the ones that quote Scripture.  When someone needs encouragement (something I’m not great at giving on my own), I reference verses on the topic.

And I’ve been finding this more and more lately.  For example, two nights ago I was in RPR with Josh and another friend, Melissa (their friend Zack, who I haven’t really talked to very much, was also there for a little bit, but he wasn’t there for this part of the story), and we prayed with each other before we left.  I prayed silently while Josh prayed out loud for Melissa and Melissa did the same for Josh, and as I was praying, Bible verses and song lyrics flooded into my mind: “A mighty fortress is our God”; “I long to dwell in Your tent forever and take refuge in the shelter of Your wings” (Psalm 61:4); “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him,” “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from Him” (Psalm 62:1,5); “Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10); “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe” (Proverbs 18:10; this specific verse didn’t come to me verbatim, but the chorus of “Strong Tower,” by the Newsboys, kept repeating in my mind, and I’ve been finding myself calling on the the names of the Lord in my prayers: Elohim, El Shaddai, Prince of Peace, the Great I Am, Yahweh, Jehovah, Emmanuel, King of kings and Lord of lords, the God of all creation, the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judah, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, etc.), and more.  And I felt God’s strength as these words ran through my head, as if the verses became my prayers and God answered all of them on the spot, saying, “[My word] will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

Sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough words of my own to share, like any and all encouragement and teaching I have to give come directly from the Bible and not from my own wisdom or experience.  But I’m learning to be okay with that, because “man does not live on bread alone,” (or his own words), “but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).  When my words fail, God’s Word won’t.

“For the Word of God is living and active.  Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” ~ Hebrews 4:12

A New Level

I was just thinking that I haven't been posting on my blog very much lately because there hasn't been much that I've wanted to write about.  It's not that I haven't been learning anything from God, but what I have been learning is more personal stuff than anything else.  While I am still reading my Bible, much of what I've been learning has been more the kind of stuff where you see something cool in a verse and you want to apply it to your life...  I had no idea how hard it would be to explain this.  I'm learning, but it's not necessarily learning in the sense that I can teach someone else what I'm learning, and it's not so much learning as it is God telling me His plan and calling for me.

As I was thinking about it, I became discouraged.  I like being able to share what I'm learning, but if I can't teach what God is teaching me, then my blog has no use in this time of my life.  I felt like, even though I know there's a ton of stuff left for me to learn about God from the Bible, maybe I've already learned all the teachable stuff about the Bible.  Then I realized how ridiculous, prideful, and stupid it was for me to think that.  There's always something to learn from the Bible!  God is always teaching us, whether or not we realize it, and He teaches us so that we can teach others.

Now, when I thought that there wasn't much left for me to learn from the Bible, my perspective was not so much prideful as it was discouraging.  I want to learn more!  This can't be all there is to learn; there has to be more!  But then God showed me something: I'm on a different level of learning than I was before.  Before, I only learned surface level teaching and encouragement, but now I'm learning what it means to grow in relationship with Christ.  In earthly relationships, there are some things that couples keep between themselves, and it's the same in our relationships with God.  Even among groups of friends, there will be things that someone will share with one friend but not with another because the relationship may not be the right kind to share certain information.  For example, in high school I would talk about band stuff with my band friends and stuff about the Bible with friends at TNT.  (This was before I got to UGA, where the majority of my friends are in both band and Freshley.  But even within my Redcoat friends there are still a few people that I'll talk to about band stuff while I talk to others more about my studies in the Bible.)  It's the same way with God: He has different things to share with each one of us, and some of those things are meant to stay between us and God.  The truth is that some things can't be put into words to even attempt to share with other people, so we have no choice but to keep them between us and God.  And that's where I am now.  While I am still learning things that I can share with others, I'm also learning things that are meant to encourage and strengthen me and bring me closer to God personally.

So if you're in a similar place, where you can't seem to put your thoughts about God into words, don't be discouraged!  You're still growing.  You can be certain that God will see to it that you know as much about Him as you need to for every situation in your life.

Summer

All these good-byes…  It’s depressing.  In high school, everyone always looked forward to summer because it meant no more school, no more homework, and plenty of free time to spend with friends and family.  But in college, where homework is optional and you practically live with your friends whose homes are hours away, you begin to dread summer.  Well, it’s not really dread, but you stop looking forward to it so much.  You can’t just drive to the local park to hang out with your friends because some of them live halfway across the state and others live in completely different states.

But I want to get out of this mindset.  Maybe driving long distances isn’t as big of a deal for me anymore because I went on that 23-hour road trip a few weeks ago (and I wasn’t the one paying for it), but I’m looking forward to traveling to visit people.  Plus, being home means I get to spend time with all my friends from high school who either go to other colleges or are still in high school.  (Until this year, I never really hung out with people outside of school/band, so now that I’ve seen how great it is, I’m looking forward to actually getting out of the house and doing stuff this summer.)

And especially for everyone who’s been involved with campus ministries, specifically the Wesley Foundation here at UGA, the summer is an opportunity for individual growth.  Throughout this year, we Freshley kids have been growing together, meeting lots of new Christian friends and learning about God through each other and with each other through the Wesley/Freshley leaders.  We’re around each other so much that there’s very little we can hide.  When we learn something new, we’re very rarely alone in the matter, and we just can’t keep it to ourselves—we have to share it with someone.  Our friends see our gradual growth throughout the year.  But this summer is a chance for us to grow on our own.  For three months, we get a chance to grow with other friends and by ourselves with God.  Plus, we get to share everything we’ve learned this year with all our friends back home.  And come fall, we’ll get to come back completely new in Christ.  We’ll have a whole summer’s worth of experiences and learning to share with each other, and we’ll be able to encourage and teach each other in ways we never could have if we had been learning the same things together year-round.

So come back next fall with stories to tell, lessons to teach, friends to reunite with, and a God to praise!  Make good use of your phone/Facebook, and make the most of these next twelve weeks of summer.  It’s all for God’s glory!

2 Timothy 3:16-17

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."

So yesterday my small group leader Michael and I took Michael the homeless man (too many Michaels...  I need to start using nicknames.  From now on, small group leader Michael will be Paul and Michael the homeless man will be Peter.  I know that's not much of an improvement for some people, but it'll have to do for now) and his wife Melinda (we thought she said her name was Kayla, but apparently not because she corrected us yesterday) to church with us at Watkinsville First Baptist.  We only stayed for the college Bible study, but what we were there for was great!  At least, I thought so.

See, Peter and Melinda (this is going to be weird... haha), along with their fierce advocacy of the book of James (faith without deeds is dead), are very much caught up in the book of Revelation and the signs of the end times that are popping up all around us.  They are convinced that all the natural disasters occurring—the tornadoes in Tuscaloosa and north Georgia, the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, Hurricane Katrina, etc.—are signs that the time of the Tribulation (the seven years before Judgment Day) is no more than a month away, and that the Tribulation will begin when Obama the Antichrist issues a law that all currency world-wide is to be done away with and replaced with a mark, like a barcode, on each person's right hand (the mark of the beast).  (While the part about the mark acting as the new currency is completely possible, I doubt that Obama will be the one to enact that law, especially not in the next month.  But we'll just have to wait and see.  If it does happen, consider this your warning: DON'T GET THE MARK.)  Anyway, because Peter and Melinda are so focused on other things about the Bible, they didn't get as much out of the study of Mark 11 as they could have.  But that's not the point of this post.  End side note.

After leaving church, Paul and I took Peter and Melinda to Five Guys for lunch downtown again.  And while we were there, we had a few... disagreements.  Well, not really disagreements/arguments so much as someone calling someone else out for something.  The night we first met Peter and Melinda, Peter expressed a slightly faulty understanding of purity: while he understood that purity involves abstinence from premarital sex, he left out Jesus' statement that "anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28).  So while I was ordering my food after Paul had bought Peter and Melinda's lunch, Paul had a talk with them about purity.  Although I wasn't there to listen in, Paul said that they seemed to open up to hear his views on purity, and they seemed to accept the correction as being God's truth, which is great because they're very close-minded about a lot of things (the certainty that the Apocalypse is a month away and the idea that smoking tobacco isn't wrong (which I'm not saying it is) because it isn't any more harmful than gasoline fumes, for example).  So praise God for that!

But then Peter called me out for something.  I fully deserved it, but it came across as a harsh accusation.  Peter asked us what a certain passage said (he knew what it said, but he wanted us to see for ourselves), so Paul looked it up.  As he was looking for the page, I complimented Peter, saying (not verbatim), "I'm really impressed by how easily you can rattle off Scripture references.  I can quote verses, but I'm not great with knowing exactly where the verses come from."  (Peter and Melinda are both surprisingly good at making references to specific chapters when they're talking about a certain topic.)  Peter caught me off guard when he replied, "Of course not!  It's because your mind is on this world.  You get too caught up in your studying" (I laughed inside; I do my work, but if there's anything I don't get caught up in, it's studying) "instead of spending time in the Word.  Me, on the other hand—I don't have anything to focus on except God's Word."  (This was similar to something Peter said earlier while we were at church, that Paul and I, compared to Peter and Melinda, are materialistic people.  While I do agree that we're slightly more materialistic than they are because we have more than they do, I wouldn't say that that makes them innocent of materialism.  After all, the majority of Peter's lecture last Wednesday was on the fact that he needs "a place," which he can't get without money, which he can't get without a job.  But again, that's beside the point.  Maybe I'm still a little bitter about his accusation.  God, forgive me.)

After I got past the sudden urge to defend myself and retaliate, I realized that he was right... to an extent.  Studying school material is a chore for me; although I enjoy learning and making music, practicing/studying is, as for most people, a tedious task.  But that doesn't mean that my grades are unimportant to me.  As far as my inattentive, restless mind (undiagnosed ADD, maybe?) will let me, I try to get the best grades possible.  And because classes, schoolwork, organized activities (band, Freshley/Wesley, Team United), and my own poor time management take up so much time, the first thing that gets crowded out of my schedule is my time alone with God, my quiet time studying the Bible.  And that needs to change.  A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that during SPAM, my time spent reading the Bible decreased rather than increased, and that, in my situation at that point, that was necessary.  But now I've been convicted by God.  I have a Bible for a reason, and it's so that I would read it.  So even though Peter could have been more considerate in how he put it, I'm thankful that he said it because God used him to say, "Michael, I wrote you a letter.  Why haven't you read it yet?  Am I not the most important Person in your life?  Then act like it!"

Revelation 5:5

"Then one of the elders said to me, 'Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.'"

Whatever You're Doing; Sanctus Real

Whatever You're doing inside of me,
It feels like chaos, but somehow there's peace.
It's hard to surrender to what I can't see,
But I'm giving in to something Heavenly.

Whatever You're doing inside of me,
It feels like chaos, but I believe
You're up to something bigger than me,
Larger than life, something Heavenly.

Whatever You're doing inside of me,
It feels like chaos, but now I can see
This is something bigger than me,
Larger than life, something Heavenly.
Something Heavenly.

James 2:14-17

"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

For the first time, I was hit full-force by the truth of these verses this week. Wednesday night, my small group leader Michael, Tucker (a fellow ManVan crew member from the Freshley fall retreat), and I went to visit Robert, the guy Michael and I met downtown the other week. We stopped by his trailer, but he wasn't home. His brother met us in the driveway, not sure what to think of us, and sent us on our way to find Robert downtown. (We left for Robert's house at about 7:45pm and came back to downtown Athens around 8.)

We never found Robert. But we did meet a homeless couple after about 20 minutes of walking: yet another Michael and his wife, Melinda. We saw Melinda sitting on the sidewalk eating, so we walked up and asked if there was anything we could pray about for her. For a while she didn't respond. Finally, she said, "Well..." but was cut off when Michael walked up and asked what we wanted. (He was a little drunk on whiskey (he told us himself), but he had enough of his mind about him to be conscious of what he was saying and to remember it later.) The rest of the night was one wild roller coaster ride of faith. God had so much to share with us through him, so much that I can only remember bits and pieces of it. The rest is stored away somewhere in the back of my mind, never to be brought back until something causes me to need it.

But what I do remember has already shaken me these last two days, and my understanding of real faith has grown because of it. At first, it seemed like Michael was going to go off on a rant on us. When he asked what we wanted, we told him what we had said to Melinda: that we were wondering if they wanted prayer for anything. This seemed to hit a sore spot for Michael, and he started off by saying (not word-for-word), "See, here's my problem with Christians who go around saying, 'I'll pray for you': That's all they ever do. They say, 'I'll pray for you,' and then they do nothing about my physical needs. What I really need is a place, a job and somewhere to stay. But nobody bothers to ask me why I'm homeless. Go ahead, ask me why I'm homeless." We asked, and he said, "Thank you! Nobody ever asks why I'm homeless. They just say they'll pray for me, and they never get to know why I need prayer, why I'm out on the streets. I'll tell you why: I have seizures. Epilepsy. I got a head injury years ago when I fell 15-20 feet from the top of a ladder and landed head-first on the concrete. Now I have seizures every five or six days or so. In fact, the other night when those tornadoes went through Tuscaloosa, I had three seizures in one night. I've had two in one day before, but never three. If you don't believe me, ask Melinda. Now I'm not allowed to work because I'm considered a liability to businesses. If I were to ever have a seizure on business property, the managers know that I could sue them, so they refuse to hire me. Even certain stores and restaurants don't let me in anymore because I've gotten hurt at some of them because I had seizures there. But I can't help it. I can't help that I have a medical problem. I can't help that I can't have a job because of it. I can't help that I'm homeless, but people look down on me and other homeless people anyway, thinking they're superior to us. But they don't know our circumstances because they never take the time to get to know us like you three have." (I'm not trying to lift myself above anyone else. I'm repeating what Michael said as accurately as possible, and he made sure to repeatedly acknowledge and show his gratitude for the fact that we had taken the time to listen to him.) "I'm a strong believer in the book of James: Faith without works is dead (James 2:17). What good is it if you say, 'I'll pray for you,' if you don't do anything about a person's physical needs (James 2:15-16)? All that does is make people think you're a hypocrite. 'Christians' walk by homeless people every day and don't even spare a passing glance. Is that how Jesus lived? What does it say? 'The Son of Man has no place to lay His head' (Matthew 8:20). Jesus Himself lived as a homeless person, and 'Christians' look down on the homeless. When they do that, they look down on Jesus!"

Michael had so much more to say (three hours' worth! And remember that he was drunk too!), but I feel like this is where I need to stop for now. I really don't remember much else besides this topic, which kept coming back throughout our conversation. It sounded like his initial rant was going to consume the entire conversation, but Michael eventually took a turn in his speech and made it known that he is a Christian, but that he hates lukewarm Christianity and "Christians" who are content to go to church on Sundays and have no other involvement with the body of Christ, who profess their faith but have no deeds to prove it.

What was really convicting for me was when he said that no one ever takes the time to ask why he's homeless and that nobody does anything to help except pray. (Don't get me wrong: prayer is powerful. But God doesn't just call us to pray and leave all the work to Him. Sometimes the answers to our prayers come from our own actions.) We can never know a person's circumstances unless we ask them, and we'll never know the kind of help they need unless we know their circumstances, and we can't know what they need prayer for if we don't know what kind of help they need. General prayer for homeless people is good and all, but the strongest prayers are the ones that address specific needs with an intense longing for that need to be fulfilled, as if the person praying were the one who needs the prayer fulfilled, which can only be accomplished by building a relationship with the person being prayed for, just like in witnessing and discipleship.

The thing that hit me the hardest was the fact that we need to do more to help homeless people. Like Michael (my small group leader, not the homeless man) said during that three-hour conversation, "The whole significance of the term 'homeless people' is the word 'people.' They may be homeless, but they're still people just like the rest of us." We, as a church body, need to spend less on building church buildings and use more of that extra money to help the poor and needy. And I personally need to devote myself more to helping the homeless, especially here in Athens, where I will be living for the majority of the next ~3 years.

BUT physical needs are not of primary importance. The gospel is the priority, but meeting physical needs is necessary in order to open doors to share the gospel. And in providing for both needs—spiritual and physical—we are to be in discipleship with each other, both teaching and learning, because God has so much to teach us before we return home to Him. Jesus Himself devoted the core of His ministry to pouring into His twelve disciples, and we are to do the same, building godly relationships with one another that build us up and push us on toward the goal, the prize promised to us in heaven.

It's amazing what you can learn from a homeless man. But James says in chapter 2, verse 5, "Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?" We have a lot to learn, and we'll only learn it if we get out there and start serving. "For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many." ~ Mark 10:45.  (This verse took on a strange new meaning that night because Michael kept saying that, since he's twice our age, he should be the one ministering to us because the older man should be the wiser one.  Although, that's not completely biblical, we didn't argue.  Before we left, I still wanted to pray for him, even after his whole rant about people asking if they can pray for him.  But God had a different idea: He wanted me to ask Michael to pray for us instead.  That caught all of us off guard, and it was a ministry in itself.  Michael had told us that he had spent the night before in deep conversation with God for well over an hour, so it was interesting getting to hear what his conversation may have been like.  And even in his prayer, he continued to teach us, so I see now why God wanted him to pray for us.  We finally went our separate ways around 11:30.)

To wrap up the story, Michael, Tucker, and I went back downtown again today and took Michael and Melinda to Five Guys for lunch, and then we went to Starbucks for Frappaccino Happy Hour.  It wasn’t much, but we had to start somewhere.  And now we’re taking them to church at Watkinsville with us Sunday morning.  I’m really excited to keep ministering to them and to keep letting them minister to me, and I hope to be able to help them in a physical way somehow.

If you want to help, please pray that Michael will be healed of his epilepsy so that he can find "a place," a job and a home.  And also pray that his wife Melinda would be able to find a job so that they can gain the funds to pay off their medical debt built up from their frequent hospital visits because of Michael's seizures.  And if you live in Athens or go to UGA, visit a few homeless people downtown yourself and get to know them.  That will influence them more than any amount of material giving.