Thanksgiving

I give much thanks to the Lord on High for all that He has given me and will continue to bring to my life. Most recently, I’ve been able to thank God for bringing into my life a woman who is, as her kind mother says, my close friend and constant companion. This woman already means more to me than she knows and I feel blessed to have such a God-loving woman in my life. She brings happiness to me not only through her presence but also through the love I’ve received from her beautiful family.

This family was able to see my baptism, to see my acceptance of God, and to hear and read about the struggles that have brought me to Christ. Even after seeing my sin, they still opened up their home and hearts to me. I spent this recent Thanksgiving with them and with another lovely family that they are close to, and couldn’t be more overjoyed from the experience. Hunting with the men, playing with the numerous children, attempting to help with schoolwork, card games as a family, delicious food, the challenges of a grocery store visit, and the perfect silence that comes from two children sleeping in the back seat. This Thanksgiving was undoubtedly different from any I’ve ever been apart of and yet the thing I disliked the most about it, was that it couldn’t be longer so I could spend more time getting to know the family (and it would have been sweet to get a deer).

Before I left the family at the end of the week, I had the unexpected opportunity to have what I found out later was a special experience with my companion’s mother. It was very simple, she said goodbye to me and then we stood there with her patting my cheek and looking into my eyes. If it had been anyone else I might of found it strange, but something about it told me that I think I passed a test or the test. It was like being told that I was accepted and loved. Strange what such a simple act can do.

After I got back from the break, I heard some wonderful news. Apparently I was not only accepted by the mother but also by the youngest brother which yes I know it’s not that hard to my small children like you, but it still brought an abundance of joy to my day. During the family’s morning prayer, the youngest brother got to do the prayer and he included me in the prayer for the family. This may not sound so special to some people, but to me, it was the most wonderfully unexpected thing that I could be told.

So the break was fantastic, but am I missing something. I haven’t really spoken about God, right? Oh but I have. The family that enriched my break, not only did it through their company but also through their God-centered lives. We read through parts of the Bible and another Christian book and we each prayed for people we knew at one of our breakfast meals. They opened up their Thanksgiving to me, even though they did not have to. The mother was one of the most considerate people I’ve ever met, the father aided me as best anyone could in trying to get me a deer, the brothers all made me feel like a part of the family’s activities, and the sisters did their best to make sure I was the right guy for their sister. There was never once a doubt in my mind about whether or not this family is full of love and is all about God.

P.S. Also I may have met the most adorable child ever. (The second youngest child of the other family.)

“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4: 19

The Man in the Light

Wow. I mean WOW! Looking back on this past year and the boy who used to be, I can’t help but praise God. The boy no longer exists but he’s been replaced by a man, a young and short man, but still a man. A man who wants nothing more than to please God with his every action, deed, word, thought, and moment. The question I now face is no longer whether I want to have a God or to love a God but instead, how does God want me to serve Him? The purpose of my life is to live for Him, but where does that start? How can I truly live as a man in the light of God?

Let’s start by doing something simple and yet life-altering, getting baptized and joining a church, or even better let’s do them at the same time. That’s what I did this past Sunday. I was baptized by my campus minister in front of my family, all of the friends who’ve helped pull me through this past year, in front of my church (which minute’s later I became a member of), and in front of some unexpected guests (my girlfriend’s entire family). I wasn’t sure what it would feel like to be baptized, to finally have a moment that I had been waiting so long for to happen and to experience God’s love and grace completely renewed in me. First off, it felt cold ( baptism water is cold), but then it felt like something new and exciting and wonderful as well. I was doing it, repenting of all my sins before Christ and officially accepting Him into my heart, for Him to never leave me and for my life to be His forever. Even though that seems as if I was taking on such a heavy burden, it felt so much more like being liberated of my burden, being able to breath for the first time in my life knowing that while I walk with Christ, I will be loved and forgiven for all eternity.

That is just the beginning though. The baptism and joining a church may signify the end of a journey, but more importantly they shine a light on the start of my real journey. The more I think about the future now, the more I notice that all of the paths I want to follow have to do with God. If I’m going to be a engineer, than I’m going to use the money from that to raise a family and to help Christian organizations and churches, and hopefully some day use my engineering knowledge in missionary work around the world. On the note of family, I want to marry a wife who loves God more than she loves me, because I will always love God more than anyone or anything else. I want to raise a Christian family, I want to love my wife the way Christ loved the church, and I want for my children to grow up loving God and wanting for Him to forever live in their hearts. I would like for my actions and words around and toward people to reflect Christ. I want all of this and so much more, not because I want it to be about me but because everything should be about him. With Him I have everything while without Him there is nothing. If I’m not living for Him, than I’m not even living.

Now is the time for me to not only say that I’m going to live for God, but to actually start doing it fully. Now I must be a man in the light so one day I may kneel before The Man of the Light and praise His name forever and all eternity. I must help to bring the nations of our world to Christ so that they may kneel beside me and worship in all the tongues of the world. This is not an easy path that I’ve chosen, following God will never be simple or easy, but now that I know God, the choice to follow Him is an easy one. I love God, and I want everyone else to love Him too.

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

John 8:12      

Dawn

            Our story is now on that same boy from earlier, the boy with all the confidence but also the boy who is finally realizing that maybe his confidence is in the wrong thing. What if my confidence shouldn’t be in myself? What if there is something bigger out there that I’m just not understanding? What is it that all these people around me have, that I just don’t? These are just a few questions that our boy had in his mind, while he was also experiencing a depression beyond what he ever thought possible.

            Our boy is in college now, surrounded by freshmen who all want to find their cliques and upperclassmen who either don’t know he exists or who want him to join their clique SO badly. He sees all these people and only actually sees a ton of strangers, people he doesn’t know and doesn’t care about. All the boy wants is to go home, to see his old friends and his family, to bask in his old easy life rather than this one with all its work and struggles. This is only the beginning of what were the worst few months of this boy’s life. The more he thought about home, the more he sunk into a deeper depression which he thought the only way out of was to just go back home, so he did. Multiple weekends that first semester were spent driving the many hours home to see the friends of old.

            The more time he spent at home, the better the boy came to realize that home wasn’t right either and that somehow his college was the place he needed to be, he just had no idea why yet. With the depression of grueling classes, being seemingly friendless, and constant loneliness creeping in, the boy finally did the only sane thing, listened to his father’s advice. He started looking into some campus ministries and found one that didn’t initially fit what he wanted (strange music) but somehow became the place that he would truly find a home in. The campus minister for the organization (Reformed University Fellowship) began to have a few talks with the boy while also helping him to get a ride to church with some other RUF people, and our boy even began to attend weekly freshman bible studies. Now remember, this is the atheist boy from not too long ago, the boy who didn’t care about God, but apparently also the boy who just didn’t know how much he needed God.

            As weeks past, one special weekend came when the boy decided to go home again cause he was still so unsure about college. As he was at home, he had one of his greatest moments; he missed his friends from college all of a sudden. In that moment, he realized what it was that his friends had that he had always wanted too. God! God was the key to any true resemblance of happiness. Without God, life was empty, pointless, just a string of events that were leading to a cold grave. With God there is life, with Him there is everything. The boy was no longer just attending RUF on Tuesday nights but instead was participating in every bit of RUF and church he could get his hands on. He found friends in RUF that he learned to love deeply and found a best friend that only strengthened his journey to God. He started to wonder. Who is this God? What is the true meaning of what Jesus did for us? How will this change everything?

            The boy looked back on his life and noticed that he kind of despised the person he once was, not because it was a bad person but because that person didn’t know the truth. The boy wanted to shout from the rooftops that “he loves Jesus!!!!” I admit that I make the boy’s transformation sound sudden, but in reality this period spanned over about a year and soon I will tell you where he is now but not in this post. This post is about the boy finding a flicker in the dark, or more importantly, God finding him in the dark. The boy all that year couldn’t stop thinking about one thing that he heard his pastor say multiple times in church. “You are more of a sinner than you know, and you are more loved than you could possibly ever imagine” or something close to that. That line is amazing because I am a sinner and I am still loved.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

a boy in the dark

         Our story begins quite simply, with a boy and his foolish ways. We open up on the view of a school in the rearview mirror and nothing but an endlessly bright future in the windshield ahead. The boy believes that the future is his for the taking, that with determination, will, and strife, he can do anything. His mind is sharper than the average person’s and not only his understanding of people but also his ability to manipulate those people is something he thrives on. These are the skills he will use to propel himself into the world and show the world who’s in control now. He will do it all on his own just because he can.

         While attending the school from the mirror, our boy conquered its halls quite well. He wasn’t the top of his class but not far off, never the star athlete but far from unathletic, always involved but rarely sticking out, and always in love but never understanding what that meant. He spent his days messing around with friends and never having to worry about homework and tests cause public school was a joke. Since he very rarely ever got into trouble, got great grades, was involved in the school band, and mostly had friends who would have been considered the “good kids”, I doubt anyone ever thought this boy was anything but a “good kid” himself. Even the boy, with all his conceit and self-centeredness, never thought that he might be missing something.

         Our boy in the car, with all his ambitions for power and money, was so sure of what he wanted for both his present and his future. In his present he would live like today was his last day, he wanted to experience every part of life no matter what it cost. He was willing to sacrifice family, friends, and girlfriends if it meant his happiness level increased. Going into college, the goal was to join the frat, meet the girls, and PARTY. Sure, school work would get done when there was time, but the degree was only going to matter so that later on he’d be bankin’. There was no God to be seen anywhere in the plan cause the boy was teetering on the edge of atheism. He may have gone to church every Sunday but his attention span during a sermon was close to 70 seconds. The plan sounded full proof, right? Riiiiight.

         Turns out, the plan never goes as planned, and luckily for the boy, this plan turned upside down on itself. When a boy who’s lived the majority of his life with the same set of friends, has never had to try in school, and always had most everything handed to him, suddenly is dropped into a school with no friends, a hard major, and no structure to hold himself up by, the boy loses it. Life didn’t make sense and everything was depressing. The boy began to realize that maybe he didn’t have it all together, maybe he couldn’t do it all on his own, but what could help him? The question really was: who could help him?

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29

Hopeless Romantic

I’ve heard these two words used more times than I can count and in far too many different contexts. The average person just doesn’t know what the hopeless romantic is, because even though many people may feel that their chances at romance are hopeless, they still aren’t hopeless romantics. The hopeless romantic is not one who hopes for a relationship and yet never does anything to gain it. It is not a person who envisions the perfect relationship but time and time again just fails to grasp onto it. The hopeless romantic is far more than these feeble things, these trivial attempts at happiness or love, the hopeless romantic encompasses the entire essence of what a relationship can be, of what happiness should be, of what love could be if given a chance.

            Last year, I had a very kind man tell me that he and I were much alike, that he considered himself a hopeless romantic and that he perceived me to be one too. This struck me as odd because to be honest, I’d never considered myself to be a hopeless romantic, more importantly I just assumed my thoughts about love, happiness, and marriage were just like everyone else’s. (Disclaimer: If you knew me in high school than you should know that I changed quite a lot in my first few months of college, so the thoughts I’m speaking of are not the same ones I had back then.) Admittedly, I did know that some of my thought processes towards relationships were and still are very similar to women’s thought processes- basically overanalyzing. If you want to know what it truly means to overanalyze, just think about the fact that I waited 3 and a half months to ask out a girl this year, and during that time I basically thought up every scenario, except for the one scenario which actually played out, crazy how God seems to make stuff like that happen.

            Okay, back to the real subject at hand, the hopeless romantic. First off, hopeless romantic definitely seems like an ironic statement, if I’m using ironic correctly. The hopeless romantic is not hopeless, in reality the hopeless romantic is actually full of hope, constantly hoping beyond hope that relationships will go as planned or at least go along a similar route as the plan. Hopeless romantics spend an amazing amount of time thinking about every possible outcome of each decision that could be made both in preparation of a relationship and then within a relationship. They take overanalyzing to a whole new level and try to do whatever they can to prevent anything from messing up because after you spend a ton of time creating a pretty awesome relationship in your head, its definitely annoying when things don’t go as planned. Now this does make hopeless romantics sound pretty intimidating and kind of high strung but this isn’t really the case. The H.R. may desire to create a fantastic relationship, and may do lots of thinking about who that relationship should be with, but even they know that a couple is made up of two people (and God) so therefore things will never go as planned, which just makes it that much more exciting.

            Now, while the hopeless part of their title seems ironic, the romantic part rings to be very true. The romantic part may not always be what the average person pictures to be romantic but the H.R. is in fact quite romantic in their planning and more importantly, in their understanding of love. They are capable of creating the most romantic scenes you might ever imagine even though those scenes are likely to never occur because as I’ve said, life does not follow the plans or whims of man. While the romantic gestures they create may not ever come to fruition, the love that the hopeless romantic feels is not only quite real, but also boundless and knowledgeable. The H.R. understands what it means to love someone with all their heart, is able to spot the differences between love and desire, and wants more than anything to share their love.

            In some ways God could be seen as a hopeless romantic but more of the ultimate hopeless romantic. He’s able to see how all scenarios will end and thus is the creator of all love. He was the first one to ever love because He loved us. When we spend time looking out at the sunset over a calm sea, watching the light reflect off a snowy mountain, or even sitting by the one you love enjoying each other’s mutual silence, God created these events, God created every romantic event. God doesn’t have to spend his time planning every possible scenario of the relationships of our world, because He already knows the one scenario that will play out. God’s love isn’t hopeless or necessarily hopeful, it is perfect, it is all knowing, it is never lacking, and it will never fail. God loves us all, even though He knows that many of us will never go to Him and will never love Him back. God now waits for us to come to Him, to love Him more than anything we’ll find on this earth, so that the hopeless romantic can finally be reunited with all that He loves.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-8