The Cutural Differentiation - A Story

There is a tale taken from the expanse of time of a young lad who lived in outreaches of Seattle Washington. This lad was the son of two very nice and responsible parents. Ever since he was born he was in church every Sunday, so all throughout growing up God was always a huge part of his life. After growing up a little he started to really think intellectually and started to really read the Bible as more than just a book with stories. The stories had an overall moral and meaning, but throughout the stories there are many other important lessons that he really started to notice. For him it really seamed like he was getting somewhere new and real in his walk with God that he never really had when he was younger even though he knew God most his life. differentiation

As I said before his parents were responsible and wanted to train their son well in the ways of God. So to benefit his education and keep him from being exposed to all the evil influences that lie in the public schools they decided to homeschool him. Yes it did seem to limit his number of friends and some would call him "sheltered", but by the time he got to highschool we was glad his parents decided to homeschool him. When he turned 16 it was time for him to have the responsibility and experience of a job. It wasn't that the young lad was irresponsible because his parents had taught him much about responsibility it was just that getting a job was a part of that teaching.

The lad put in applications for a few restaurants, but never heard much of anything back. Eventually he was forced to apply at the one place in town he really didn't want to apply at, but they were hiring so he went ahead and applied. A few weeks later he was interviewed and got the job.

This restaurant in Seattle Washington was a place which was mostly filled with people that definitely  were not the desired crowed of people for a Christian. However, because of his parents desire for him to get a job he had to try working there and stick with it for a little while.

The next days he worked were days where he was exposed to pretty much everything he had always tried to stay away from. Most of the people he worked with had bad language problems, smoked, had tattoos, were not Christians, and made sinful connotations with the words they said. For the lad who had been kept away from most of those things most of the time during his life it was a culture shock and just a huge burden to constantly be bombarded with these sins he wasn't used to. The lad had to constantly make sure he didn't let the words seep into his mind, change his heart, and then become like them. Which was a big burden besides having a real job for the first time.

Often times the lad wondered why he a fine breed of Christians had to be with people that were totally not on his level. In a sense the lad felt like he was higher up on the imaginative American caste system. Then why did he have to be with these people and work with them he often asked himself.

Then one day he was listening to a new band he was introduced to and found one of the songs to be quite good sounding. However, when he actually started to listen to the words in the song they really hit him because it explained exactly how he felt about his experiences at his job. The lyrics also showed him where to find hope and he was finally able to start to understand why he had to work with those people. Its wasn't just because his parents made him do it, but because it was God's plan for him at that time. The song went something like this -

Broken hearted friends of mine
Lives of a lost and wasted time
And I stand watching with hot tears
Longing for you hearts to hear

And Jesus, Jesus don't you feel this pain?
They think I'm insane
I call on your name, Lord

The journey how to be that friend
For out of me you love for them
Cause they don't seam to understand
And I can not relate to them

And Jesus, Jesus don't you feel this pain?
They think I'm insane
I call on your name

And the greatest cry will rise from hell
Since Satan and his angels fell
Cause you take back the world you dreamed
Perfected for eternity

And I know that some will not come home
And that it hurts your heart more than mine own
But, you my God are in control
You'll never give up on my soul
In that I finally find my hope

The lad felt like he worked with those who waste their time and he could not relate to them at all because he had always been a "good kid." The lad knew that some of his workers would not make it to heaven when the time came for them to leave earth, but because God is always in control the lad knew that he had hope. Hope that he could keep from being influenced in bad ways and hope that he could influence others in good ways with God's help. Whatever the outcome of his work at his job he knew that he would not lose God or his love.

This tale is based on a true story. The song was written by Coastal Rise, is called Of Mine, and can be found on iTunes.

What is This Life all About?

I am no scientist, but I believe that I can reduce the equations of the whole universe that is known down to one word, love. God decided to create us so he could have domination over us, but he decided to give us the choice to love Him because he wanted real love. Now God doesn't need our love, but He wants our love. God wants our love so much that he sent His son to die for us to that we could live on after death with Him and praise His name forever. God did not send a "special" human, or one of his angels, but He sent His son who was as much a part of Himself as your are to yourself.

If you think about it Lucifer falling from heaven, Adam and Eve sinning, and Jesus dying for us on the cross was all God's plan to be able to show us His love so that we would love Him by choice not because we must. I just think that it's insane to think about how God was willing to see sin enter his creation, mess it all up, see many men who were made very good die, and worst of all see His son die painfully so that He could get our love. That is an insane amount of love for us and desire for our love.

Suppose you went through what Job went through willingly so that you could show love to and get love from someone who you had complete power over and ability to destroy and recreate them. I mean a fair amount of people have said that they would die for their loved one. However, that is only one person to die for and death (if you know God) really isn't that bad.

Christ died for all people that have ever lived and took on all their sin! God is so righteous that He can't even have sin near Him! And yet He chose to take on all our sin just so that He could show His love for us and so that we could love Him.

People describe God's love as indescribable, incredible, or whatever else, but I think that there is no way that we can somehow put a word to how much God loves us. Therefore, I measure God's amount of love for us as unmeasurable. Profoundly come to partial realization of how much God loves you and your mind will be blown away. God did all of this around us for us so that we may love Him more and more each moment.

Lyrical Weaknesses

Proclaimer: The content in this blog post may be slightly offending to some people or some people may not agree, but I am just merely trying to state what I think.

So lately I have been thinking about worship songs. A lot of times I feel like we sometimes end up singing worship songs without really realizing what were singing. I know that we know that we are worshiping God, but are we thinking about what the words we say really mean?

Because of this realization of possible unrealisation of meanings I decided to start thinking about what I am actually singing when worshiping. Sadly what I have realized happens to not always be very good. I have listened and read the lyrics of some of our worship songs and realized that sometimes either the words and phrases are grammatically incorrect, confusing, or not always saying something correct.

I don't want to specifically pick out a song and explain what I think is wrong about the lyrics because I don't want to be going around critiquing and putting down people's work. However, I will say that I think that we should start to put real meanings into our worship songs. Put lyrics straight from the scriptures in, I don't want to be singing words that aren't correct to my savior. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I feel like there are a lot of Christian rap songs out there that are much more meaningful and doctrinally sound than most worship songs out there. However, this doesn't really fix our lyric problems because rap doesn't really work for congregational worship.

I think we should really evaluate the lyrics of the songs that we sing in church. If the words are not doctrinally sound I personally don't what to be singing them. Why waste my time singing songs that don't make sense or are not quite correct. However, I must say that even if the words are not exactly correct much more of worship is really about the heart and what we mean to say to God. To be honest I don't really think that its too much of a problem if the lyrics aren't exactly grammatically correct if our hearts are in the right place. Having good lyrics are very beneficial, but not exactly crucial.

Know what your saying when you worship, don't be just haphazardly sing the words. Profoundly examine what your singing so that you are not just "singing words".

Disclaimer: Now I'm not saying that all worship songs have problems or that the ones you play at your church do, but I'm saying that this is what I have realized from some of my observations of songs around me. I'm not trying to hate on worship songs, but just to examine them.

Mistakenlightenment

Every once in awhile I sorta feel like if I'm not suffering or going through a hard time I'm not learning something. Like probably almost all of the inspiration I get for my blog posts come from going through a period of trouble or questioning.

Everybody knows the phrase "You learn most from your mistakes." I feel like that statement is just so true. I know its sounds really weird, but when I feel like I'm not going through a hard time or have a difficult question I'm trying to get answered, I don't feel like I'm growing closer to God. If I don't feel like I need to fix anything I can't really push forward to find growth.

Now I must say that when I feel like I don't have and troubles or questions to get answered I am sadly being very hypocritical and prideful of myself. Seriously we are human and have faults, we are not like God who is faultless. So many times we must search out our hearts and minds for things that are amiss.

So what this really all comes down to is that when I feel like I'm "alright" and everything is going well, everything is not. There is no way I can think that I don't have a problem and not be prideful. So a lot of times the first step of being able to learn from your mistakes is knowing and realizing what your mistakes are. Only until you diagnose the problem can you fix it.

We must learn from our troubles and mistakes if we are going to gain knowledge and understanding.
Rejoice in the pain, sorrow, hardships, and times of struggle because they can produce much knowledge and wisdom if you learn from what those times teach. We should profoundly understand that there are great learning opportunities hidden in struggles.