“Knowing you would fail and fall and finally get back up again, and from the failure understand that it doesn’t matter. You are mine. I have bought you, and no matter what you do, you will always be mine. I do not see your failures…. I see only the man you will become.” -Return of the Guardian King, by Karen Hancock

Reading this passage towards the end of the book really struck a cord with me. I just sat there and reread that section again, and again. I felt it speak directly to me, a hint of God and His truth revealed as a glimspe in a moment of time.

I struggle with failures and even the fear of failing. I feel like if I fail, that just proves that I am imcompentant. Period.

Part of this is the fact that I set too high of standards for myself, expecting that I will be able to achieve these aspirations with little realistic effort. I also tend to refuse to try to achieve perfection within this goal. If its not done to my specifications, to my desires, to my expectation, why should it even be done by me?

Too often I find that I am hurting myself by taking on too much on my own. I set myself up for failure. And amid that failure, I beat myself up over it.

A song that quickly comes to mind is by This Beautiful Republic:

What if I said of all you did, that none of it would really matter?
And if I said of all you have that all of it is torn and shattered?

Questions are not easy
When nothing can satisfy.
Life is more than these fears and failures
Fame is just a lie.

Ultimately, the things that I do, create, plan, develop, and even manipulate do not matter in the eternal scheme of things. Yes, God can, and does, work through these things, blessing and growing us amid these struggles. But it does not matter eternally if I fail or succeed at them.

What does matter eternally is the fact that I am chosen. And because I am chosen, God knows what He can and will do with me, how He will shape and mold me. He alone knows what I truly will become, what potential lies within me. He sees what He can make and create within me, and not what I am now.

This is a blessing, an insight to revel in the fact that what I am now, amid and amongst my fears and failures, is only a shadow of what I can and will be. I will always be His. And He sees the man that I will be.

Stories are awesome! Stories are my favorite. When I was a kid, I loved reading stories, of any nature. And as I was introduced to the Bible, I found that I really and utterly enjoyed reading the Old Testament–to clarify it was one of those cases that I loved to read the Old Testament over the New Testament. I mean, I liked the stories in the Gospels and stuff, but I didn’t really like much else because it wasn’t story oriented (I have since grown to appreciate the New Testament, and it seems that things have switched).

But I loved reading about Joshua getting tricked into an alliance with local enemies that the LORD had commanded them to destroy (Joshua 9). Or about the various antics and exploits of the kings of Judah and Israel (1 & 2 Kings), or about the man of God who disobeyed God when he was tricked into resting and feasting with a deceitful prophet and not completing a journey commanded by God and so he died and was mauled by a lion (1 Kings 13).

Yeah, these exciting, gruesome, bloody, and outrageous stories enthralled me. They taught me that there was such a thing as righteous and unrighteous men, and that sometimes righteous men do unrighteous things. Yet they also taught me about God and his seemingly ambivalent desire for both Justice and Mercy. These elements that I mentioned are themes at the heart of every story ever conceived: good vs. evil, need for revenge, inspiring redemption, forgiveness, a desire to make things right when they have gone wrong.

Conflict. No story is told without it. Otherwise, the information being told would be just that, uninteresting data flowing out of a mouth (or typed or written out by hand). What makes a story interesting, enjoyable, and memorable is conflict. But if you think about it, we ourselves have tons of stories to share, even if we think otherwise. It all depends on the way we look at things.

We all have our share of conflicts (the glass is have empty), but we also have our share of stories that could be told (the glass is half full). I think that is why people tend to like optimistic people better: they tend to share their stories as exciting struggles they have experiences, whereas pessimists tend to just look at them as conflicts that must be over-come….and that’s it.

I know more often (and by default), I am usually apart of the latter group. But I still know and enjoy stories–reading them, watching them, listening to them, singing to them, experiencing them, etc…. They will never cease to amaze me. I think that Jesus knew what he was doing when he told parables to the people….he captured our attention, and proclaimed hope to us who were and are lost in ways that we could comprehend.

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen.  They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening.  But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon no longer be listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life. . . . Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies. -Dietrich Bonhoffer

In  today’s world, we live in a civilization of constant noise and buzzing about every conceivable topic imagined. Heath Ledger just died. Brittany has new secrets. An Australian girl’s liver transplant gave her a new immune system. Hillary, Obama, McCain, Huckabee, and Romney are at it again. Tennessee is now pushing Grass-oline. Will the Giants defeat the unbeatable Patriots in the Superbowl?

We also hear about the latest Christian thing that is being pushed: the best contemporary Christian music groups such as Casting Crowns, Mercy Me, Michael W. Smith, Chris Tomlin, Skillet, Switchfoot, Mandisa; the latest social groups like Invisible Children, Compassion, Hands and Feet, ONE; the latest books that come out like (another!) Left Behind, Frank Peretti, Andy Stanley, Joel Olsteen, John Eldridge, Karen Kingsbury; or even churches that boast great accomplishments and numbers like Mars Hill, Northpoint, Grace Fellowship, Calvary, and even FCC of Kernersville and East Unaka Christian. These are all examples of the Christian marketplace where everyone has something to say, to tell, to boast, to glorify, to critique, to compliment, reiterate. And it’s all just more noise.

Even on a small scale in the Milligan bubble, we constantly hear about the latest feature of the new Liberal Arts Building, or the latest gossip about dorm life, or where President Jeanes actually got all the money to recently finish completion of his mansion. These are also examples of the noise that is engraved into our lives.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that these things are bad, or these things are good. I am addressing the fact that they are still examples of constant noise in our lives. Yes, noise is an essential part of the community experience, it is considered a form of communication. But reading the quote by Bonhoffer above makes me think  about the fact that we are always sending out messages, but how often do we really listen to what is received?

Bonhoffer makes an incredible point when he identifies listening as a spiritual discipline. It is a discipline that helps us stay in communion with God. Anyone can talk, and chatter away about nothing. But why are we afraid or uncomfortable when there is immense silence?

The alternative rock band, Anberlin, claim that the reason is because of the power in the silence: Anberlin - A Whisper & A Clamor

Growing tired of bedside resolve
Public display of depression
Something’s got to give now
Something’s going to break down
I grow tired of writing songs
Where people listen but never
Hear what’s really going on now
Tell me what’s so wrong now

(Chorus)
Clap your hands now all ye children
There’s a clamor in your whispering
Clap your hands tonight
Hear what the silence screams

For most who live and breathe
Hell is never knowing who they are now
Tell me who you are now
Finally safe from the outside
Trapped in what you know
Are you safe from yourself?
Can you escape all by yourself?

Chorus

It’s not the lies that you sing
But what the silence will scream

Chorus

Hear what the silence screams!

This power that is in the silence is exactly what Bonhoffer is referring to. Because God is in the silence, and God works and gives his power through the silence. If we as Christians are to live with His power, we first need to live within His silence. Next, within that silence, we need to listen. Listen to what God is saying, listen to what our brothers and sisters are saying. Not just hearing them speak, but actually comprehending their communication. Communication is a two way street, and if we are only talking and making more noise, we are missing out on the view from the other side of the road.

Feeling cold, feeling empty
Set the stage, where you want me
And this crowd right before me doesn’t care that I’m dying
And the audience stands with their eyes fixed on the preconceived version of me
I’m so betrayed by your hopes, but I will not hide myself for your peace of mind

Oh, but Child
I’ve got vices like any other man

Raise a boy to a cynic
Take his love, and then let it turn into something passionate
Something sick, something rabid
And I want to keep myself from caving
I don’t hate you, I just hate where I’m heading
I’m left here asking, when did I trade in my bleeding heart for a selfish win?

Oh, but Mother
I’ve got vices like any other man
Vices that you’re not used to
Vices that’ll make you think less of me

Leave me numb, leave me jaded
She’s a dream, I just play dead
I’ve been blessed, I’ve been hated
She’s the constant, and I’m her addict
She’s the only peace in this world, uneasy
While I bite my tongue to keep from breaking
The heart that I’ve spend my whole life seeking
The only heart I’ve ever needed

Oh, but Lover
I’ve got vices like any other man
Vices that you’re not used to
Vices that’ll make you think…
Oh, but Lover
I’ve got vices like any other man
Vices that you’re not used to
Vices that’ll make you think less of me, less of me

Feeling cold, feeling empty
I am low, unworthy
Bleed the God, bleed the blessing
Like a vulture feasting
I’ll exist as if I don’t feel conviction of my ignorance to my perfect prison
But I feel the stabs on my wrists and ankles every time I try…

To forget you
To forget you

Oh, but Jesus
I’ve got vices like any other man
Vices that you’re so used to
Vices that won’t make you think less of me
-Dead Poetic - “Vices”

Saturday at TCTC was awesome. It was an early morning, but it’s ok. We went to a seminar where Sherry McCrady of Highlands gave her amazing testimony, and then we went to a class for guys on Men’s struggles (read: sexuality, etc). In this class, the guy who spoke had a Tennessee accent with a slight lisp that made it hard to listen to without laughing.

But afterward, we went to the main session where we were first introduced to the band Lost & Found, a duo of two guys singing fun songs about God, Jesus, stories from the Bible and life. Slinkies creep into their songs every once in a while as well.

But then Jayson French came on, and delivered an awesome sermon about the American church’s handling of worship. He described it as Existentialist Worship, a motive to participate in worship just for what we can get out of it by feeling good. I really liked this point, because he explicitly made a dichotomy between the need for emotion in worship, and the existential desire for emotion at this point and time to feel satisfied right now, which is the wrong way to worship. This has been something I have struggled with, because I do agree we need emotion in worship, but I did not feel like it was a right type of worship if the emotion was just for the sake of the feel-goodness that I have seen from others and myself. Of course, the immediate reaction is to swing the opposite way and say worship is not about emotion, which is tempting to do. But this explanation of Existential Worship makes sense to me, since existentialism is a philosophy I know of and have discussed with friends. Yet this connection never really occurred to me until it was explained today. I probably have more thoughts on this later, but I am just reporting facts right now since I need to get sleep ASAP (driving back will be killer tomorrow!).

We went to Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, where our fearless youth minister had ranch dressing spilled all over her jeans by a pretty cool waiter from Serbia. That was an experience for everyone!

We went shopping for a little bit afterwards, and I found a few good deals on books at a Book Warehouse, so Yay! More reading material!

Later that night we went to the last night session. We were able to get seats near the front this time, and just as I sat down, low and behold, my friend Laura Kellicut sits down with a few of her crew in our same aisle. We had some good discussion, but it was neat to be able to have a friend outside of EUCC around for a little bit. After some random performances by different students, Jayson French came back on and gave an explosively astounding message on holiness, and announced to the congregation that sin is sin and it separates us from God.

What you tolerate now, you will eventually accept into your lifestyle later. -Jayson French

His message was completely gripping and God-centered, the Holy Spirit moved throughout that place, and student after student came forward to make a decision.  All four of our high school students went down, and one of them made the choice to accept Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior! I am so excited for her!

Worship with the Aaron Pelsue Band was a fabulous way to end off the night. God moved through the place, and stirred hearts genuinely, not just out of existential worship. May it be genuine. Amen.