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.

God is Enough

You know I feel like a lot of times I think we all struggle with having enough. And yet having enough in a material sense just sounds impossible and ridiculous to us who know that the nicest, clothes, car, house, phone, and girl won't be enough for those that don't have God.

There is a song written my Lecrae called God Is Enough that I had playing in the back on my mind the one day. I kept on singing it and then all of a sudden it hit me. I no it might sound cliché, but really God is Enough.

Used to want a lotta things
All the stuff that's on TV
Education, cars, and clothes
Fashion lights and jewelry
(Focused on the wrong stuff)
Now I got my eyes on you
And now I know that

God is enough
God is enough
God is enough
You are enough
Never too much
More than enough
God is enough
You are enough for me

See God is enough, even more than enough, but never too much. I guess what I'm trying to say it that if I have God I have all that I need. God can give me the strength to get through anything. God is capable of taking on my sin so that I may live when I die. I can't do anything to try and cover up or get rid of my sin. I can't get anything done by my one strength because the strength I have has been given to me and a result of my own actions.

One of the reasons my God is great is because He is enough for me. Because He is enough I don't have to worry about the little trials and problems of this world. If God is enough why do I need anything else? If I don't need to have anything else that takes time or money, what can I do with that time and money to serve God? If we profoundly realize and know that our God is enough everything else just seams pointless, unneeded, and unimportant.

Bill Watterson's - Calvin and Hobbes

Recently I had been looking at my collection of Calvin and Hobbes strips and I realized how in the later days of Bill Watterson's strips he really started to put incredible meanings behind his words. What I did is combed through the later third of His works and picked out five I liked the best and spoke the most about life.



This first strip I find to be one of the most deep strips he ever wrote. All of it is pretty straight forward until the end where Calvin says "It's a lot more fun to blame things than to fix them." I feel like a lot of times this is exactly just what politics is. When there is a scapegoat to put the blame onto why bother fixing the problem? If we know who caused the problem, for some reason it is no longer our responsibility to fix it.





















Concerning this comic I feel like what Hobbes says at the end really shines a bright light onto what our culture can be like today. Sometimes we just throw morals and the things that are put into place to keep us safe out the window just to do something faster, easier, or a little better.



This one is just hilarious and speaks for itself if you read into it.



This is the reason we need God, we do make messes and we have to try again, without His help we will never be cleaned up and have the strength to persevere.



Accept new challenges and except the fear that comes along with new challenges. Only a new experience or mindset allow us to grow. Now that I think about it probably one of the big reasons Steve Jobs and others like him have been able to come up with great things is because they want to grow and learn so they take on challenges.

I know I didn't say to much in this post, but that's because I wanted the genius of the words to speak instead of me. The fact that we can learn important things from comic strips is a pretty profound fact. We can learn from a lot of experiences and things we take in, just like Calvin's dad would say "It builds character," hopefully these things will help us to gain wisdom and understanding.

The Dinner Prayer

Recently I have been thinking about the prayer we say before we eat each day. Now I understand its a good routine to thank God for the food we are blessed with and whatever else we may receive from Him, but I feel like maybe that's what it has sometimes been reduced to, routine. However, I also understand that sometimes even a practice that has become too much of a routine can still be beneficial.

Often times I feel like we just close our eyes and say a few words that we have probably said before without a thought towards why were doing it and even caring. Now I'm not saying this is the case for everyone, but I feel like we should probably revaluate what we say and why we say it every once in awhile.

The other thing I don't really like about it is that we are in the middle of a conversation interrupt it the name of love, thankfulness, or respect for God then as soon as the prayer is over we go back to what we were talking about. I just feel like talking to God isn't something we can just "jump" in and out of.

From what I have learned one of the main reasons we pray before we eat is to thank God for the food. However, I feel like to be able to be truly thankful and not just be saying words we need to have a realization of how much God has done for us and be thankful for those things. The dinner prayer is a expression of thanks just like worship is, so the dinner prayer is in a way pretty much worship. Just like I feel like we can't just "jump" into a spirit of worship I feel like we can't just "jump" into a spirit of thankfulness in prayer. The reason that is, is because there is a difference between knowing you should be thankful and actually being thankful.

I guess what this all boils down to is weather you are truly thankful when you are thanking God for the food. I think we should profoundly evaluate what and why we pray before we eat. If we are to do everything wholeheartedly for the Lord I don't think we should treat it as some sort of routine.

Why do we love?

This past winter I was able to go to a concert that featured Moriah Peters, The Rend Collective Experiment, and Tenth Avenue North. The singer of Tenth Avenue North, Mike Donehey, is really good at speaking and explaining things he has struggled with in his life and how he was able to get past those troubles.

Mike mentioned something that I really related to. He mentioned how often times he felt like he didn't love God enough. He just wanted to just tell his heart to love God more, but that's not how it works. Mike said something along the lines of:

If I'm not loving God enough its because we don't know God's love for us enough.

I have felt like I didn't love God enough many times. Being in a relationship with God revolves around loving God, but why would you love God? I feel like we don't just love to love, but often we love with a reason behind that love. If we have no reason to love God we won't love Him. So what is our reason behind loving God?

We have a reason to love God and not just one, but many reasons to love God. The main overarching reason is that He first loved us. If your unsure of how much God loves us look at what Jesus did on the cross and look at what He does for us each day. However, God's love is uncomprehendable so we will never really understand just how much He loves us until we meat Him in heaven.

The point is simple, if you want to love God more gain more of an understanding of His great love for you. 1 John 4:19 profoundly expresses all that this post is about.

"We love because he first loved us."

God Is Great

The other day I was singing the lyrics of a song and then all of a sudden I was struck by the words and their meaning.

Superhuman - Andy Mineo
I am not a star,
I'm just a product of grace that's still in the process,
and I don't gotta be great, because my God is,

Andy Mineo is trying to say to his fans that being a man who stands on a stage and sings to a crowed of people doesn't make him a superhero. Our worth isn't a result of what we can do that can produce money and fame. Our worth and greatness is found in Christ.

The really cool thing about Christianity is that we don't have to be anything, actually we aren't anything. None of us have any worth on our own, our worth is in Christ. Plus because God never changes, we never have to worry about whether or not He is great enough.

I find this truth to be every reliving because I now realize that I don't have to become something I never can be. I don't have to be a superhero because my God is greater than any superhero. I'm actually so bad that I'm still being fixed up and forgiven by God through His amazing grace.

God is glorified by my failures, because when I mess up it just shows how much better and great my God is. God is great isn't some cliché thing that all Christians say at dinner time, the truth is that God is truly profoundly great.

Socrates Meets Jesus

I read a book this year called Socrates Meets Jesus. Basically what happens is Socrates gets time jockeyed to the year 1987 and is enrolled at a college in Massachusetts. After many days of conversation filled with logical content and classes Socrates reads both the New Testament and Old Testaments of the Bible to learn about this thing called Christianity. Since Socrates lived before Christ he never knew about Jesus and what He did. Near the end of the book Socrates is in a Christology class debating with the professor and classmates about the validity of Christianity. By that time Socrates had met Jesus and come to know Him as  His savior and wanted the others in the class to know that Jesus was real and what He did was really true.

Socrates was fervently debating with the professor about the resurrection of Jesus. The professor thought that the disciples stole Jesus' body to make it seem like He was raised for the dead. However, Socrates asked:

"What did these disciples get out of their lie? When someone deceives another, the deceiver is always motivated by some thought of advantage. What advantage did the disciples gain by their conspiracy?"

One of the classmates names, Ahmen, responded with:

"I will answer that question for you, Socrates. I'll tell you what they got out of it. They got mocked, hated, sneered at, jeered at, exiled, deprived of their property, their reputation and their civil rights; they got imprisoned, whipped, tortured, clubbed to a pulp, stoned, beheaded, sawed in pieces, boiled in oil, crucified, fed to lions and cut to ribbons by gladiators. That's what they got out of it."

I really liked this statement because its so true. People don't die for a lie. People don't go through torture for what they know is myth. God is real, what He did happened, and it has a lasting affect on our lives. We wouldn't follow God and become martyrs if He didn't do anything for us.

We don't live for a lie. God is real and He is profoundly moving in this world. Would you die for what you believe in?