God’s Response to Suffering

I’ve been thinking about suffering and pain a lot lately. I hope to go into more detail about the subject in the future, but for now I’d just like to examine one passage from Exodus. This is Moses’s encounter with God through the burning bush. The Israelites had been in bondage in Egypt for a long time now and were crying out to God because of their situation. God then speaks to Moses through a burning bush and says,

“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the land of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…”-Exodus 3:7-8 (ESV)

God does four things in this passage.

1. He sees their affliction

2. He hears their cry

3. He knows their sufferings

4. He comes down to deliver them

There’s so much to be said about each of these. God saw the pain and the misery of the Israelites and the evil that the Egyptians were afflicting them with. He heard them as they cried out to him, and he knew their sufferings. And finally, he came down to deliver them. Our God is one who acts. He is one who so desires to bring healing, redemption, and newness that he comes down to deliver.

In the midst of our pain, affliction, and suffering, God sees us. He hears us. He weeps with us and hurts with us because he truly knows our sufferings. And it’s his desire to come and deliver us. Let us not lose hope that he will.

How We Know God

We know someone by what they do, not by what they say about themselves. If someone came up to you and told you that they were kind, compassionate, responsible, punctual, and loving, but they never showed up on time or did their work or treated you respectfully, you wouldn’t believe a word they said about themselves. You would say they were irresponsible, lazy, and just plain mean. We know people by their actions.

The same is true for God. The Jews didn’t worship God because of what he said about himself. They worshiped him because of what he had done. He was the God who created the world and saw that it was good. He was the God who, when sin had contaminated the world, made a covenant with Abraham to bring redemption to a dying world. He was the God who split the red sea and delivered his people from Egypt. It was in God’s acts through history that his character was revealed. This is seen all throughout the Old Testament. Whenever God is praised for certain characteristics (especially in the Psalms), it is almost always in the context of something that he has done.

Our God is not a god who asks us to believe things about himself that we don’t actually see in reality. He is the God who reveals himself through his mighty acts of redemption throughout history. We know him by what he has done. And because of these things, we have hope that he will continue to act mightily to redeem mankind.

A Quick Update on My Life

Wow! I haven’t updated this blog in over two years. I suppose I should give a quick explanation of what’s been going on in my life before I start posting again consistently. Let’s see…

The last time I posted was while I was in the Fire in the Night Internship. I was an intern from July to December, 2008. After that I went back home to Georgia and started going to Gainesville State College. I wasn’t really sure why I was going, but I figured I would end up being some kind of music major. I really enjoyed the classes and the people there and was planning on going back the next semester, but then something strange happened.

That summer, My dad had to go to Kansas City to meet up with someone for his work, so I came along to visit My friends at IHOP and spend some time at the Prayer Room. The trip was pretty normal for the most part. I mostly just hung out with friends and went to the Nightwatch each night. After the last night of prayer, my good friends Rex and Kendall and I got together to pray over each other before I left. In the midst of our conversation, my friends basically asked me why I didn’t want to do school at IHOP in Kansas City. I couldn’t come up with an answer. In that moment I realized that what I really wanted to do was go to school at IHOP and do the Biblical Studies program all the way through. I had thought about it before but for some reason had written it off as an impossibility.

But in August of 2009, I moved to Kansas City for school, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I’m now in the middle of my third year of the Biblical Studies program at IHOPU. I’m also still on Nightwatch which means that I’m in the prayer room from 12-4 AM each night. Although it can be tough at times, I love doing school on Nightwatch. It’s awesome. I’ll be doing school until the Spring of 2012 (when I’ll hopefully graduate). After that who knows what might happen? I’m thinking about becoming a core leader for the Fire in the Night internship. I also might do some more school afterwards. All I do know is that I’m planning to be here for a long time. I’ve found a home in IHOP and in the prayer room that I don’t see myself leaving unless the Lord pulls me somewhere else. Anyway, until that time, I’ll have lots of classes and prayer room time to keep me busy, so I’m hoping to express some of my thoughts from those things in blog form. In some upcoming posts, I hope to explain more of my reasoning for being a part of the prayer movement and doing all that I’m doing. Until then, so long my friends.

An Explanatory Apology

I offer an apology to you, my dear reader, for trying your patience so. I know how much you’ve been waiting, wishing, hoping, and praying that I’d return and grace you with my written presence. You probably saw my new banner and were filled with hope that perhaps it was a sign of a new post. But no…sadly, you were disappointed. And the post did not come. For this, I must ask your forgiveness. I hope that such a foolish decision will not be deleterious to our relationship.

But as regretful as I am of leaving you alone for so long, the truth is that I don’t really have much to talk about. Or I should say, I don’t really have much that I want to talk about. I’ve got a huge list of topics that I could write about so that I could spread my opinion all through the earth. But somehow that doesn’t seem too appealing.

There’s one thing that God’s been hammering into my head over and over and over and over and over and over and…you get the idea. It’s that all He wants me to do is be with Him. He doesn’t want me to worry about anything else but being in His presence, worshipping Him, and getting to know Him. You’d think I would’ve gotten something so simple into my brain by now. But no, He’s still got to tell me again and again. (And again and again and…)

It seems that each time He tells me, He reveals something deeper though. Lately, He’s been showing me how pointless a lot of our conversation is. Especially here at IHOP, people are always talking about something spiritual or trying to figure out some theological dilemma. We’ve got a lot of questions, so we spend a lot of time trying to figure out the answers. But I can just hear God asking why we’re worrying so much. We’ve got the rest of our lives for the Holy Spirit to reveal the deepest parts of God. Why do we have to have all the answers now?

God looks forward to slowly revealing Himself to us, so we spend the rest of our lives hungry and dependent on Him. He doesn’t want to just give us everything now and send us out to teach it. What gives Him joy is the journey of Him daily showing us more of Himself and having us fall in love with Him again and again because of it.

So if you didn’t get the connection between this and my lack of posts, here it is. I’ve realized that a lot of the stuff that I was planning on writing about was just pointless. There’s no point giving my opinions on stuff unless it’s going to really help someone or lead them to Christ. It’s gotta be for love.
And the angels danced and clapped there hands.

Shyness=Pride

Clay Edwards=Flippin’ awesomeness

We had our third Great Exchange class today, and it was fantastigorical. The last two weeks have been really good, but they were still introducing stuff. This week we got into the Beatitudes, mostly just the first one.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” -Matthew 5:3

This is the first of the beatitudes, and it isn’t to be taken lightly. People often think of it as  not bragging about stuff or thinking you’re better than anyone else. But being poor in spirit is so much more than that. It sets you up for everything else that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount.

If you read the Sermon on the Mount and somehow think that you can do what Jesus commands in it, you’re missing the whole poor in spirit thing.  To be poor in spirit is when, after you read what Jesus taught here, you feel and know that there is absolutely no way you can do it.  You realize that you are in a huge dilemma.  Jesus calls you to do all this intensely crazy stuff, and unless you have divine revelation and personal help from the Most High God (Elyon!), you’re stuck.

Oftentimes, when I look at what Jesus says to do, I try to think up all the things I’ll have to do in order to accomplish that thing.  I figure out how I’ll do it, and then tell God that I’m going to do my best on it.  But God realizes that what He’s asking is impossible without His help.  That’s the way He likes it.  He desires for us to need Him.  More than anything, He just wants us to lean on Him.

Until Jesus wipes all evil off of the earth and we get our resurrected bodies, we are going to have sin in our lives.  God knows this.  He doesn’t send us off to get clean, and then expect all of our sin to be gone when we come back to Him.  He wants to help us through the sin.  Therefore, we admit that we have no way of doing what He asks, and cry out for His help.  We give up any sense of pride in ourselves that says we can do it, and give ourselves to God.

How often have we heard the phrase, “believe in yourself?”  Every other movie or song is telling us to believe in ourselves, but Jesus requires the opposite.  He says that if you believe in yourself, you will fail.  We have to know that we cannot trust in our own self.  All reliance and trust must be in God’s mighty power.  He’s the only one that can get us through this.

The church has a very warped sense of pride.  They think that if you admit that you’re good at something, or are knowledgeable in some area, you’re being prideful.  This is so damaging to our spirits and completely unbiblical.  I’ve seen friends worry themselves to death because they think they’re being consumed by pride.

God has gifted us all in different areas of our lives, and we should be proud of the gifts He has given us.  If He anoints me as a musician, I shouldn’t shy away from that.  I shouldn’t act like I’m not good at it or hide it or only play when I’m alone.  I should step out and play as loud and as joyful as I can.  It’s the same with any gift God gives us.

Shyness is one of the easiest ways to fall into pride.  It disguises itself as humility, and we embrace it as that.  But it is the complete opposite.  Shyness comes from a fear of what people think about us.  The term “fear of man” is used too often, but that’s basically what it is.  It’s an unhealthy fear of how people will respond to us if we are ourselves. It makes us act in a way that’s different from the way we want to act.  The worst part is that it draws us away from being the person that God made us to be.

When God tells us to step out and do something, and we say no, we are executing pride.  We’re saying that our fear of man is stronger than our fear of God.  That’s an extremely dangerous and stupid thing to do.  He is the Most High God, the beginning and the end, the Holiest of Holies, the Creator of the universe, and man is…man.  Man is so small and insignificant compared to God, and yet we act like his thoughts are more important to us than the Most High God.

True humility is being in agreement with what the Lord says about you.  Although you continue to make yourself darker and dirtier in sin, God sees past that and calls you beautiful.  If you aren’t in agreement with the fact that you are beautiful in God’s eyes, you’re acting in pride and shame.  It’s a tough sell to say that you must think you’re good-looking to be acting in humility, but that’s the way God does it.  If God says that you’re good at writing, then you shouldn’t tell people otherwise.  You shouldn’t be ashamed of it.

Anyway, take pride in the fact that God’s heart is ravished over you.  I’m sure I missed some stuff here, so I’ll probably be back for a revisit.  Thanks Clay for the awesome teaching. (And forgive me for ripping it onto my blog XP)

Until laterness calls.

[BTW, I had meant to post this yesterday but our internet was out]

Wait, we’re actually supposed to pray in here?

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted.  Over the past week or so, I thought of about a hundred things I wanted to blog about, and then I couldn’t decide which one to do.  I was going to write about the whole “I miss you” thing, but Rex and Kendall had already done that.  And nothing is worse than reading about the same thing on multiple people’s blogs.  Unless, of course, they were all talking about how depressed they were.  Hopefully that won’t happen with the awesome peeps at FITN.

But I guess since we’re all in the internship and this is basically all we’re doing, our posts are going to end up being about the same stuff…Silly me…

I’m having trouble focusing in the prayer room.  I keep thinking about my future, and what God’s going to do with me.  But God just wants me to look at him right now.  He’ll deal with my future when I get to it, but for now, He just wants me to focus my eyes on Him.  But that’s hard.  

God’s given me confirmation about some stuff in my future that I’m really excited about.  I want to let that excitement fuel a peace in me, but all it does is stir up anxiety.  Instead of telling God that I trust Him and can’t wait to see how He’s going to fulfill these promises, I keep asking Him questions.  How is He going to do these things?  What does He want me to do right now so that I’m prepared?  Or if anything, I’ll just sit and let my mind think how great it’ll be when those things happen.

It’s good to be excited and comforted by what God is going to do, but He wants to do so much with me right now.  I’ve had at least two or three words in the past week just telling me to focus on Him and nothing else.  You wouldn’t think that would be hard when I’m sitting in a prayer room for ten hours, but somehow it is.

I find it sad that I’ve spent the past month in this internship and most of the time, I haven’t even been focusing much on it.  I’ve spent more time thinking about how God will have changed me after the internship than I have on seeking out God to be with Him.

Hmph.  There’s a nasty disease that plagues a lot of blogs, and I think I’ll call it Narod.  My blog is in such an infant stage that I think I may be catching it.  Or maybe I’m just tired.

Yep

That’s it.  Good night.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Trepidation over Titles, Text, and Theology

One of my biggest fears is what people will think of what I do, what I say, what I write, etc.  Even now, I had meant to write about something that’s been on my heart, but gave up on it mainly because I couldn’t think of a title.  It’s silly.  Very, very silly.

Although, if I had written about something silly, I wouldn’t have had a hard time with it at all.  I would just write it down and post it.  There wouldn’t be any kind of worry or fear about what anyone would think about it.  It’s silly, therefore who cares if it’s bad.

But writing something serious, that’s dangerous.  If I made one mistake, people could think I’m stupid and never listen to what I say.  They would probably just blow me off when I started talking about something I knew a lot about.  And that scares me.  I’d lose all the respect I have from people.  Of course, if all I ever talk about is silliness, I doubt many people would have much respect for me anyway.

It all sounds extremely stupid when I say it like that.  That’s probably because it is extremely stupid.  I know that basically everyone I know says things that are wrong, and I still respect them and listen to them.  I don’t call them stupid or hit them over the head with a rainstick.(At least, I try not to)  I just accept that they’re not perfect and love them anyway.  I know my friends would do the same for me.  Yet, I’m still so scared just to express my opinions.

Because of that, most of the opinions I express turn out to be from someone else.  I’ll take what I’ve read or heard from others and act like they are my thoughts.  This doesn’t work out too well, especially when I’m  asked to defend my views.  If I’m just stealing someone else’s thoughts, my (fake) opinions have no depth and therefore no way or place for explanation.  Is it really that hard to have your own opinions about something?  No, it isn’t.  And I do have mine.  I just seem to push them back behind the opinions of those that I respect.

One of the things I really want from these six months is to learn how to stop putting so much defense around myself.  I’ve put up so many walls built from fear and lies so that I don’t have to show who I really am.  It’s so much easier to make up lies about how I think and feel rather than just show my true thoughts.  Talking about llamas is much simpler than talking about myself.  Sharing poems that are silly and stupid is much easier than sharing ones that I think are actually good.

Basically, what I’m saying here is that I want to be found vulnerable to God and to my friends.  I admit it.  I’m scared about what you all will think when you read what I write.  But I don’t want it to be that way.  When I write, when I sing, when I play, I want to be completely vulnerable.  I don’t want to fear making mistakes or doing something wrong.  I don’t want to give up just because I think that what I’ll do won’t be good enough.  I want to give my best and accept that by doing so, I’ll end up getting better at it as I go on.

Anyway, I’m not trying to complain or rant by talking about this.  I just want to get it out in the open, so I can get myself to start working on it.  I’m tired of hiding things and embracing lies.  While I’m here, I want every hidden thing to come out, every lie to be confessed and thrown away, and I want to be found completely raw and broken before God.  That seems to be the only place where true peace is.

Of course, all of this in no way means that I’m going to stop being silly or having fun.  That would be rather boring.  My favorite part of my relationship with God is how silly it is.(Mostly how silly I am when I’m with Him XD)  I’m just trying to stop acting silly/stupid to avoid being serious and expressing my thoughts.

Thou hast rocked my world if you’ve read this far.  Boo yah to you.  You deserve a cookie or something.  Leave your name, phone number, address, and library card number in the comments, and I might just mail you a cookie or some kind of sweet little treat of goodness.

Well I’ll update you on what I was going to talk about later.  For now, I sleep.  Guten Nacht.

 

 

P.S. By placing your information in the comments you waive all right to privacy/any kind of personal life.  I then obtain the right to sell your information on the black market/ebay.  W007!  I win.

Excuse me sir, but there seems to be a root in your canal.

My canals have been rooted.  My gums have been grounded.  Today was a sad day.  My teeth cry out in agony and despair as the pain gushes through my nerves.  Pain I’ve felt, but this…this is agony.  Words are unable to describe it.  Songs cannot touch the depth of emotion.  Even the most intense game of charades could not express the pain and misery that I feel.  Pain.  Misery.  Sadness.  They are the triplets of horror.  They join together like a Christmas tree joins together with lights and ornaments.  But this is no Christmas party…..

Hmmmm, there’s still a long way to go before Christmas.  I need a better metaphor.  Eh, I’m not getting anything.  But anyway, that might have been a little bit of an exaggeration.  Strike that.  It was an exaggeration of elephantine proportions.  Though you wouldn’t know that from the way people have treated it.  For the past month, whenever I’ve mentioned the fact that I might be getting a root canal, people have acted as if it were just about the worst thing that could happen to me.  In all actuality, it really wasn’t that bad.  I wasn’t even drugged or anything and I never really felt any pain.  Even now, although my tooth is sore, I don’t feel bad.

While I was sitting in the dentist uber-chair, waiting for the worst experience of my life, there was a man in the room across the hall who was screaming and moaning like he was giving childbirth or being murdered or something.  It was scary.  The worst part was, the scary death sounds came after my dentist left my room and stopped right before he came back.  He was evil.  I just knew it.  All I could think was that he was going to be a mix between Steve Martin’s dentist in Little Shop of Horrors and Johnny Depp’s Sweeney.  As long as he didn’t start singing, I would be fine.

It turned out that he was neither musical nor evil.  That’s a good thing.  Although it would have been much more entertaining if he had tried to serenade me and my teeth.  Maybe…

I don’t really have much else to talk about right now.  I’m bored and ready to get back to Kansas City.  Being home is no fun when you have to avoid the ones you want to see most.  It’s no fun at all.

Comment, comment, comment.  I need comments.

Buh bye.

Behold! I am doing a new thing.

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  Well apparently you do perceive it if you’re reading this.  I was reading Isaiah 43:19 and decided to follow the scriptures and do something new.  This being that I am starting a blog.  Yep, you’re looking at it.  This is….MINE!  Finally, I have somewhere to post my deepest, darkest secrets and have them revealed to the world.  At last, I can reveal my most depressing thoughts and gain pity from people I don’t even know!  BWAHAHAHAHA!

Hmmmmmm, but do I really need to dwell on depressing thoughts and work at gaining pity?  I think the answer to that question would have to be a big fat(and I mean really fat)

 NO!!!

It seems that 90% of all the blogs I look at are always just a place for people to talk about how crappy things are and then tell how much they wish things were better.  I definitely don’t want this to be like that.  I’ll write my thoughts down, and I’m sure I will feel confused and weird sometimes.  But I never want that to become the focus of what I write.

So Pez–you may be asking–if you didn’t start a blog to gain pity or dwell on how depressed you are, what did you start it for?!?!?  Well, that’s a very good question.  I commend you for asking.  The truth is, I’m not really sure.  I guess I figured that since I can’t talk to half of my friends–and I don’t really get much of I chance to talk to the other half that much either–I could at least have a place for people to check and know that I’m still alive.

So yes, if you’ve found this blog, I AM STILL ALIVE.

Okay.  So now that you know I’m still alive, you’re probably wondering what in the world I’m going to fill this blog with.  Surely I’m not just going to update on how alive I am.  That would be rude and extremely unfulfilling.  Don’t worry!  I know how deep your Pezzy desire is.  I won’t let you down.  Or at least I’ll try not to.

I’m still not really sure what I’m going to write here.  I mean, I’m in a prayer room for at least six hours a day, so I’m sure I’ll have some spiritual insight to put on here.  But I don’t want this to become one of those preachy, teachy blogs.  That’d get boring after a while.  I’ll talk about what’s going on in my life.  If I get a really cool revelation, I might share it with you all.  Though many of my revelations are between me and God, so don’t expect a ton of that.  I’ll probably put up a silly story or badly rhymed poem every so often, just for fun.

I want this to be fun.  I don’t really want to have some uber point that I’m trying to get across.  I just want to write like I’m talking with my friends and hope that some of them will actually spend time reading it.  I don’t want you all to forget about me for goodness sake! XP

Anyway, I do have some rules.  Because this internship is a time of consecration, I’m not allowed to talk to girls over the internet, texting, etc.  So I’d appreciate it if girls didn’t comment on anything here.  That would ’cause me to want to reply, and I really don’t want the temptation to break the rules.  Guys though, please do comment and just say hi or something.  It’ll at least let me know that I’m not wasting my time here.

If my peeps back home will read it though, I’ll keep it going.  Cooliness dudes.  Well, here’s a riddle to keep you occupied while you wait for another post.

There once was a man

Who had a Sedan,

But his car never worked nor had gas;

Then he woke up one day

And shouted horray,

As he heard his car playing jazz

He ran to the car

For it wasn’t very far

To find what had fixed his machine

But all that he found

Was the musical sound;

And his car was nowhere to be seen

 

The question is:  If the jazz music didn’t come from the car, where did it come from?