Thoughts on Grace - Albert Einstein's Teacher wasn't Special

And neither are you.

Just because you teach/lead a spectacular group of guys/girls says nothing about you. That is the equivalent of saying, just because your small group/disciplees are feeling particularly generous, that means you are a generous person as well.

Thats a bunch of crap.

You are generous, when YOU are generous, not when other people are generous.

That connection that is drawn from leader to flock is rather ridiculous.

His dad his him.

Repeated beats him. As a result he has massive anger issues, and deep depression/repression of many emotions.

And he's under your leadership.

If he spasms to a rampage, or some how fixes his life. This does nothing for you.

You are not what you lead.

God measures us by how we value and love him. And equally we are measured how we love people because of that great love. Notice though, our diligence is not measured by changes in people.

You could burn yourself alive caring and loving for a group of impatient students, and they never change. Should you mark yourself as a terrible leader? I hardly think so. God loves a cheerful heart, especially one that loves and yearns for those he leads.

In the same fashion, you could not meet up with your people, not talk to them, and not interact with them at all. Even if each one of your students plow on and become pastors, do you think your reward in heaven is great?

Maybe if its in coal.

Examine yourselves, note the anger, the laziness, and all sorts of evil things in yourselves. It is by THOSE things that you will know who you are. From the mouth pours the deep waters of the heart. It is what comes out of hte mouth of a man that defiles him. It is not his followers crooked ways.

Love those you lead. But still know that they are not your measurement. Your measurement with God is Jesus Christ, his righteousness, and how you deal and use that.

Summary: Even if you give everyone F's, that doesn't mean you haven't taught the material.

Thoughts on Grace - Seniors are people too

She was ugly.

She was in shock.

How did she end up in her mother's body? She looked like the crypt keeper!

Parent Trap then explored the daughter's life and the mother's life from a different perspective. A very different perspective.

They switched bodies.

Painful situation through painful situation, the daughter realized that her mother's life wasn't near so easy; the bills, the psychiatric occupation responsibilities, and the family obligations all piled up. And the mother understood that high school was not as easy as she thought, and a teenager's life is filled with pressures she could not imagine.

Not a bad lesson to learn.

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In the same way the daughter and mother underestimated each other's life, Seniors and Freshmen also too construe each other's positions.

Freshmen Assumption - they don't know anything, they need to be pampered, spoon fed, and always need reassurance. There can never be enough friends, fellowship, and efforts given to them. Freshmen will always have issues they do not recognize, and need to be shown it.

Senior Assumption - they know everything, they are leaders, and should put on some sort of effort, and they need no encouragement. They have enough friends, food, fellowship, and efforts should be given to those who are more fringy. Seniors have no issues.

How generalizations shall be the end of Christianity! We are people. We are particular persons. May we treat each other as such!

Seniors - How many seniors are burnt out from leading small group, or having to organize events. The smallest dorm swipe with a smiling freshmen face will cheer them up. How special seniors feel if invited by freshmen! Seniors are perhaps the more fragile of the two, because they understand the weight of the future.

Work. Money. Grad School. Grades. Keeping up friends that are continually more busy.

And on top of that, they understand the obligation to take care of those younger than they, and they are desperately trying to do everything.

Freshmen- Yes it is true that they need to be taken care of, especially at first, to be given wisdom and such. But they are not idiots, they will find their way, very quickly, and adapt very well. They ARE capable of being given responsibility, and are more than happy to lend a helping hand. Staff fear freshmen will fall away or are non-committal because of their fellowship attendance. Give them time! They are very capable people.

Some think that freshmen have no friends at all, and must always be reached out to have friends and contacts. On paper, its the opposite. Freshmen all together have hte most generic classes and have the most contact with random other people on their floor. If they can't find someone to relate to in that wide of a personality pool, who are you, that you are so special?

Overall - Time is not a maturity tool. Events and actions are the building blocks, not time. Those objects TAKE time, but time itself is no measure. People that pay their way through school grow up much faster than those who don't, no matter how many years it spans. Its the depth of events and interactions that build people.

All that to say: What is hte difference in 1st years and 4th years?

Academics - its a huge Difference.

Instituitional Familiarity - its huge Difference.

Personal Development - Almost none.

Seniors can easily relate to depression in freshmen. Feeling betrayed by friends, or feeling like you have no friends at all relates to all ages. Dealing with sin, personal shortcomings, or bad expectations, these battles do not die with age, if anything they are amplified. People's problems are not that far apart.

It would be ironic, but maybe effective reach out to tired seniors. Tired seniors who have given their life to school and realized they have so little left, and find it refreshing to see/know a people that still want to be friends with everyone.

Freshmen activities are meant to reach out to those who are fresh and new. But if you think about it like this:

Freshmen - new to school, new to freedom, new to the buildings
Sophomores - new to taking care of younger frosh, new to planning ahead, new to taking school serious
Juniors - new to apartments, new to worrying about internships, new to worrying about work
Seniors - new to worrying about jobs, new to leading small group, new to no longer being lead

Summary: Push Freshmen Outreach Events, just realize that its everyone's first year at something.

Bigger Jars - I think therefore, I am

Cuz your mom told you so.

Thats how early ages of though were structured. There were general traditional ideas that everyone held to, usually passed down person to person. It was then accepted by all people that this was "true". The church was the fundamental authority, and many of the philosophers of that age were believers.

The believers used philosophy not to explain god, but to understand their faith. God was, the starting point of philosophy, and its proofs had God as the source.

Then came Descartes.

Could anything be supported by evidence and arguement?
Was there anything he claimed to know that could not be reasonably doubted?
If he found something, it could be a foundation upon which he could build everything else he knew.

There was one thing he could not doubt.

This is brilliance.

It made no sense to doubt his own existence as a thinking thing. For once he doubted it, he proved its truth. Then came the saying:

"I think, therefore I am"

Notice, now the justification of knowledge starts with Man's senses and man's interactions.

Following, Descartes was unsure of how to justify other knowledge. He soon concluded that if he had a clear and distinct idea of something, then it must be true. Knowledge was then justified by the Human Consciousness, by humans being hte observers interacting with the world, the object. This is also characteristic of empiricists (think empirical, or base form [as in chem]).

Kant took it a step further.

Can it be taken a step further?

Before Kant, the mind and senses were viewed as passive inactive objects. People might see or touch the same object and give differing information, but it was considered that their senses were basically passive. But that all changed with Kant.

Kant argued that the senses and the mind structure information and make judgements on it also. In other words the mind is very active in interacting with the world and objects.

This brings up another question, if this is true, can anyone be right about anything? If i ever see a green door, how will i know it is green? It could be my mind reacting with the door color, it could also be my age, and my eye seems to be reading "green".

So Kant argued that no one can see things as they actually are. He is assuming all men equal at this point. Further philosophers took this premise and ran with it, emphasizing the effect of the mind interacting/affecting reality consumption.

Summary: You think, therefore you are, unless your mind is all wack and telling you that you are a bear.

Bigger Jars - File Folders for Life

Chaos.

Consider the varied amounts of species. And within those species, even more variation. There are different classes, and orderes. These beings are built off of innumerous building blocks.

And thats not even including the interaction between the huge cosmic inventory. Thousands if not billions of seemingly random events and reactions.

If your room was in "chaos", what would your mother say?

Organize.

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And that is exactly how Modernity started.

The Enlightenement.

This project was formulated to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic. Philosophers wanted to add up all the specialized culture for the improvement of day to day life.

They wanted File Folders. For everything.

Langdon Gilkey identifies 4 general characteristics
1.) Contingency - the world around us is a product of causes that are not rational, purposive, or necessary.
2.) Relativism
3.) Temporality or transcience of all things - (Everything turns to crude, or is in the process of turning to crude)

3 Axis of thought

A.) Epistemics -Foundationalism vs. Skepticism
B.) The Philosophy of Language - Referentail or Emotivist. (Does the words actually represent reality as it is, or does language say something about ourselvse?)
C.) Understanding Reality - is the universe sand, or like strings? AKA Individualism or Collectivism.
4.) Autonomy and freedom of man.

Summary: Cleaning your messy room wasn't easy. Organizing the universe isnt any better

Thoughts on Grace - You Get What you Want

His name was Midas.

Midas was a good and kind king. For his kindness and forgiveness He was granted one wish. The king thought for only a second and then said "I wish for everything I touch to turn to gold." And so it was.

The beautiful flowers in his garden turned toward the sun for light, but when Midas approached and touched them, they stood rigid and gold. His lovely daughter, at his loving touch, turned hard and fast to gold. His water, his bed, his clothes, his friends, and eventually the whole palace was gold. The king grew hungry and thin, for each time he tried to eat, he found that his meal had turned to gold.

And he starved to death.

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Ever have an intense desire for something? Have you ever been filled with the certainty, that a single accomplishment, a single possession, a status that you reach was the single important piece of the puzzle that you had been missing?

Be careful what you wish for.

You may get what you want, but at what cost?

If you desire a close group of friends, a knit group of partners, what will the cost be? Count the cost. If you desire to fit into a group to be loved and known, what will you pay? Will you pay with your morals? With your character?

And if you desire material possessions, what will you trade for them? Your precious patience? Your contentment? Your calm manor?

So becareful of your strong wants. Even becareful of strongly desiring knowledge. Who knows what you will lose because of your pursuit?

12Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Colossians 3

Summary - Learn from Midas. Don't let your desires starve you. You are what you desire, desire to be perfected by God.

Thoughts on Grace: Speaker Amplifiers and Whales

Whales stormed the waters.

The little boat bobbed up and down at a growing pace at the activity below it. The whales surrounded and paced the boat for almost an hour.

The boat had been equipped with an underwater speaker system. For the last hour or so it had been imitating whale calls.

Speakers.

For a whale, there is almost no distinguishing of a speaker system and a real whale. Well, that is of course unti they try mating with the ship.

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My heart is filled with a thousand songs,
singing the glory of calvary,
with every breath,
lord how i long,
to sing of Jesus who died for me

How we love the songs, and how the music carries us higher. We sing, we close our eyes, in meditation to only hear the melody of hte instruments and the singing of the group. It is a sweet thing. We sing so loud in fellowship, and in church.

And our talk is so small.

Especially with this song. How our talk does not match our song.

Our words are so plain. But more than just plain, they arent even roughly the same content as our worship songs. There is a great divide between our singing and our speech. Our singing is to the level of passionate spirit possessed people, but our speech?

Little Children.

"God is good"
"I'm learning"
"He means so much to me"
"Isn't God good?"

Where are all the adults? Where is the refined explanations of college level intelligence? Where is hte explanation of the paradoxes and the wide valleys of love of God. How weak our praise of God is in regular conversation.

How so very weak.

Maybe its the heart.

How we do not love our Father God because we do not see his graces. We do not understand the divine power upholding our molecules. We do not see the ideas he places in our heads. We do not realize that we are a combination of our parents. We do not see the amazing complexity that we have friends! They too are combinations of parents. How we are all chosen before hand to become companions in life.

Maybe its the language.

Maybe all we know is "good", "great", "mighty", and "awesome". So buck up and read some books.

People may be like speakers singing as spiritual giants, but where are the real whales of faith that bellow, are immense in size, and expansive in prescence?

Take a look at yourselves and match up peoples. Either Match up your words to your songs, or understand what kind of person you are when the music fades.

Summary: When the music fades, and all is stripped away, will you be a speaker or a whale?

Thoughts of Grace : Your Disciplee never dated Mary Beth

Some people act like this isn't true.

Kevin dated Mary for 2 years. It started off rocky, with Mary incessantly hinting her desires to Kevin. Kevin caught on, and they began to date. Kevin was liked her a lot, but as time went on, problems arose. Kevin had problems being content, communicating, and making dating a priority. Mary's strong desire at the beginning of the relationship still prodded along moving Kevin faster and faster. Kevin soon felt as if he could not keep up, and so he ended the relationship.

Kevin all the while was discipling 5 guys.

Kevin learned much from dating Mary for 2 years, about his lackings in the Lord, and also in marriage and in love. How he understood how much Christ loved the church, how those 2 years of struggling in patience and character had helped him realize how much more he needed God for even the minute to minute moments.

He poured his experiences into his 5 guys.

In the years following, he watched as 2 of his guys, Sam and Neil began to encounter similar situations as Kevin and Mary. Both Sam and Neil began to replay what Kevin had seen in his life earlier.

Kevin began to fume.

It seemed as his group of guys would not listen. And to top it off, it seemed that the other 3 guys he was meeting up with would not take their need for Christ seriously. He became frustrated because no matter Kevin's emotion or diligence and urgency to talk to them, they seemed to be apathetic. Top add sugar on the cake of pain, Sam and Neil began to follow Kevin's dating footsteps, despite Kevin's disapproval.

What is the problem in Kevin's group?
None of them dated Mary.

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if you are leader/caring friend, please please go easy on those you share truths with. Many of the pillars of truth, mountains of resolve, and valleys of intimacy have come from long real life experiences.

Many experiences which your listeners have not had.

So how can you expect them to grip to truth to the same degree that you have? How can you expect them to feel the connection of pain you feel? If you have fallen from the Lord, and scraped yourself back up, consequence after consequence, truth after truth. How can you expect anyone to have the same devotion if they have never fallen?

So, the next time you want to lead a holiness crusade among your circle, perhaps you should evaluate the pre-requisetes of the passion that you wish to replicate. Is it off of a event that only you experienced? Is it off a personal weakness that only you seem to share? Is it a difficulty in the bible? Is it based off of a problem that only you struggle with?

Ask, and consider what kind of response you are to expect from those who are under you. Always take anything more, but don't expect too much. They never dated Mary Beth for 2 years.

Summary: "You had to be there" means more than you know.

Thoughts of Grace: There's something not right if you hang your apples on the tree with wire

Imagine you go to your Grandma's house and go to her legendary Apple Tree. You extend a hand to reach for a piece of taste apple goodness.

But something is wrong.

The apple is fine. But the tree is dark, disfigured, warped, and crumbling. The apple is attached to the dead tree arm with a thin piece of wire.

The apple is as good as ever.

But that doesn't change the fact the tree is extremely dead. Even if magically the tree made that fruit, it will not make fruit anymore.

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People often treat applications the same way.

Hear that Jimmy stopped watching Pokemon, cuz the creatures weren't real, and taught him to live in a dream world? Well, before you burn all your paraphenialia, consider this: What idea in Jimmy caused him to come to that conclusion?

You see, applications and changes in lifestyle should be the blossoming of the mind and concern for the soul.

It would be something like - the next time you hear someone giving up say, playing video games. Don't just drop the games, ask the reasons why they did it. if you cannot find out more information, take all new lifestyles for holiness with this thought:

They saw a part of their relationship with God rotting. Which part was it? And is there a rotten patch in me?

So the next time someone gives up Watching Tv, go and pray and see how you are doing with the lord. Don't apply anything yet. Let the lord show you where you need to trim and prune. If we do this, we will fix the tree of thoughts that will bear many fruits of application. The more we are diligent to develop the tree of consciousness, the more and various fruits will be produced.

Remember, all changes in lifestyle show a change in thinking and in valuing the world vs. God. So when you try to put on new application, strive to put on a change of heart and mind, rather that of behavior.

And when your small group leader/discipler tells you what he has been thinking, think on it! Talk about it! Let the understanding you get from those talks shape your actions in your sliver of life. Consider all the ideas and truths! Think of them over and over again! The word never returns empty, your convictions will come, and your actions will then be compelled from within, and not from without.

Summary: If a tree has no fruit compared to other trees. No grandma will polish the fruit that grows on the tree. She will not take fruit from one tree and place it on the other. She will water the trunk. Even more than the fruitful trees.

Thoughts of Grace : Speeding up by a 1 ft/sec is different for the tortoise than the hare

Shannon got a B+ in Calculus.

Hear me?

Shannon got a B+.

Shannon is the expressive writing type. She loves writing papers, posting on the web, journaling, reading great books, drinking coffee in conversation.

And she cannot do math.

Hours and hours of tutoring. Many many cheez-its, cups of water, dinners, and crumpled sheets of paper. And yet she still struggled.

But not today.

Shannon got a B+.

I on the other hand got an A-.

But my mom was a Calc teacher. Lemme phrase that differently. If my mom cut herself and started to bleed. She could integrate the volume off the top of her head, and then tell me the differential rate of blood loss. She uses calculus in shopping! SHOPPING!

Basically i never studied for calc. The teacher liked me, and I found the class rather boring.

So Who would stand better before God?
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If you had any brains in you, Shannon would. How often we do not measure the difficulties in our peers. Our friends are not good at everything, my friend. We do go to UCLA, but heaven's help you if you arent good at Math AND Language.

but Tim, are you arguing for relativity? Are there no absolutes?
There are absolutes:
1. Love the lord your God with all your heart soul and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

These are absolutes in principle, and should never be mistaken. But at the same time, these are relative and different in their MANIFESTATION.

Look at Wrestling. Look at the Olympics. There are varying degrees of strength. People love/think in different ways. God looks at the heart! Remember the widow who gave all she had to the church! It is to your personal proportion that we will be measured!

Get C+ in classes? Maybe you only have a C+ brain.

Get A without working? You need to understand to do all things unto the lord.

My friends, my friends, know your friends better. Know where they are weak, know where they are strong, and rebuke and encourage them accordingly. May the scared sophomore be praised for hanging out with one person. And may the outgoing person be rebuked for not caring about the people he meets.

And may God receive the glory, for only he knows the hearts of men.

Summary : The hare failed to use his allotment of talent, tortoise won because he had heart and diligence in his full capacity. He probably got a B+ in Calc too.

Thoughts of Grace : Happy Happy Fun or Joy?

"You betrayed me!" She screamed.

She had been starved. Shaved of her long beautiful hair. Cold had nipped at her for weeks. She had hung from shackles and drowned in freezing water, with constant questioning. At the end of man painful weeks, the interrogator gave his ultimatum.

"Tell me where your friend is"

"No."

"You know you will die."

"Yes, it will be better to die around the side of a dumpster than to give up"

In her imprisonment she found a note, written in such small writing so small it would have been mistaken for scratches. The note was a letter written by a previous prisoner. She wrote something to the effect:

Though they take my hair, my dignity, my hope, and my life, there are those few inches that they will never take. They will eventually take my life, but never will they take that small part of me. Fight for it, never give them those few inches, though you will be snuffed out.

After her refusal, She finally understood. To give up the information and to live would be a empty shell. But to die and hold on to that one piece of information, victory - even though it would be the end of the race.

Her interrogator paused.

"You fear nothing then. You are free to go"

Free to go?

She paused and walked out. The corridor became a hallway, and the hallway a room. And in that room resided a man.

Her friend. Her friend she had tried to protect.

"You betrayed me!" Why would he put her through all this?

"You were always afraid, of the government, death, pain, and i wanted to free you of it. Do you now see? You fear nothing. Not even death?"

"I hate you!" She screamed. Tears were flowing.

"You will soon see"

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What does that disturbing story have to do with Joy?

I will not reference the dictionary this time, since Joy uses Happiness in its definition.
I personally call "Happiness" the temporary external rejoicing and pleasure it is often dependant on objects or circumstances outside the body.

Joy I will define as the internal rejoicing and pleasure, that which does not change.

Treasures in Heaven

19"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.

Matthew 6

We love birthdays. We love good food. We love good friends. We love good fellowship. We love a good bible study.

Sometimes they just arent good.

And we scramble! We claw trying to reassemble that external dependant happiness much like this:

Psalm 63

A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.

1 O God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you,
in a dry and weary land
where there is no water.

Our only problem is that we fill our mouths with Happiness, and try to maintain that. How we should learn to develop the springs of life within our soul. Our capacities are so weak for containing Joy.

What is an example of Joy?

Joy is that silent agreement of the bibles pronouncement of God, though your peers deny it and mock you. You are battered, you are tired, but you shall not give in. That is Joy.

You watch your friends go through a difficult trial of disease, or loss, or destruction, but you see them flounder and being to wrestle with God's hand upon their lives. Who in this world can rejoice at afflictions other than those who have promises in God's word to deal with them! That is joy.

And even when you feel the steel grinding in your heart battling selfishness, and you press on, to set your thoughts in the mind and well being of your neighbors. That is Joy.

So count it all joy my brethren when you are distressed by various trials, for you know the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be full and complete, lacking nothing. (james 1)

Lose some happiness because of Christ? Think. How much joy do you feel? How much agreement do you feel with God's word? Though you have every reason to despair and complain? What will you do, oh child of God?

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In application, how much do we teach our freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, that Happiness comes and goes with Objects and events, and should be pursued with as much effort as our meals that come and go. Joy, on the other hand, is pure protected Gold. The agreement and since peace that faith in the bible and in God brings are the inches that will never be taken away from us. Not by sword, not by word, not by fire.

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Summary: Inches matter. If you do not grow in inches, hold on to those inches, and press on even more, how will you stand up tall in the face of adversity. Cherish Joy. Seek the Joy that is not found in events or objects or people.