"He Got it"

"All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me, Go therefore and make disciples off all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

When J.R. Vassar was being ordained, people were coming up to the front of the church to pray for him. One older pastor came by with a bit more fire then the rest, he grabbed Vassar by the shirt collar and puled him close to his face. He then growled:

"Don't ever let the great commission become something that you only read about."


When young I went to church, I heard many sermons, but few did i listen to, few do I remember. One that is clearly burned in my mind was just a story. I am not sure who preached this, if if it was Dennis Jerry or Don Williamson, it could also have been someone else. They just told a story about someone who got it. It has been years, but this has stuck with me:

A guy graduates from college, at some point previously his life was radically changed by Jesus. With his degree from some prestigious school, he bought a plane ticket and flew to some third world country where people didn't know about Jesus. He landed in the airport there, and got into a taxi, he asked the taxi driver to take him where he lived, where the taxi driver lived. The driver asked why. The guy explained that his life had been changed by the love of Jesus, and that he want to love the people where the taxi driver was from to show them this love. As they started to drive, the guy asked the driver what was a need in the place where he lived. The driver explained how they really needed a community day care type thing in order for parents to work to bring in enough money to feed their families. The guy starts a day care in the taxi drivers neighborhood. He loves the people there, when they ask why he told them about Jesus, and they asked more about Jesus. Then a church was planted in the village and the lives of the people began to change as they turned to Jesus with their sin, were washed clean, and were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Whoever preached this, simply said:
"He Got it"

I heard this as a kid and i was confused, I was confused because it was clear to me that this was not what my church was like, this was not what the lives or people around me were like. I figured out that there was some difference between what Jesus taught and how we were to act. I learned that we were nor perfect and rested my case there. My prayer from here on is that if you agreed with my last line, if it has become a similar thought to how you think, my prayer is that this would land in your lap like a grenade and blow up your world view.

As i grew i decided that people were good, just not perfect, and that was how it worked. I based my beliefs on thoughts on what I thought was nice, on what wouldn't offend anyone.

It stuck with me thought, "He Got it"

There was a significant break between my life and his. I thought about being like him, I wasn't so sure about going to another country, but the fullness of how he got it, of how he did what Jesus said, I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be like him, then people would talk about me in churches and I would be famous, and have lived a really great life, even if i was short. I missed a part of the story, the guy I told you about, he was killed, I think that he was eventually shot by another religious group.

God is big and he has changed my life, he has shown me the folly of my religious past, the folly of taking scripture to mean what i want it to. The folly of forming my ideas around the culture that I live in rather than around the eternal story of God. He taught me, sometimes quite directly, sometimes, though men and women who's lives he had previously changed. I was shown that i was wrong to think that people are good but not perfect, an idea that keeps us from needing Jesus. I learned that I was selfish, motivated to satisfy my own desires, often using the church to do that.

I had thought that people were goos because if i thought that they were bad, I would be condemning them. I didnt know that we are all condemned for our actions, for our sin, for our rebellion against God. I didint know that on the cross God died for my sins, that his death, was payment for all the crap that I have done.

And because i didnt know that, I was sinful and separated from God, I didn't have the Holy Spirit in me, and had no idea of the standards of God, so I settled. I settled for putting in some effort, aware that I couldn't really do what Jesus taught becuase I was not perfect.

Then God dropped a grenade in my lap, gracefully, lovingly destroying the lies that I belived in.

I was a selfcentered person, trying to be my own god, using Jesus to make my self out to be a good person, I chased after idenntity, after value trying to be someone. Then I got the grace to know that I wasn't good enought, and that I didnt have to be, but that Jesus had paid in full the dept, the hurt, the sin, that I had accumulated over my life, and I was being offered a new life, a life different from the past, where I now live for God, I am able to do this not because of my goodness, but becuase I know that I am not and the Holy Spirit now is in me, puching and pulling me, calling out my sin, leading me on.


I get it. It is all about Jesus. I count my life as nothing. I am just God's I am not nice, not good, not wise, not humble, or good at writing as you know by now. but I am his, I am holy by the cross.

I want you to know this, i want you to come too, I want you to get it.

And on a final note, if I die and you are still alive, you bette make this story clear at my funeral, that it is all about Jesus, in a much more real way that you think.

If you have questions, feel free to ask me, but more so, read the bible, and ask God to grow you to him, ask him to reveal himself to you that his revolution of Love will take over your life.


If you think your a Christian, and the great commsion has become soething you just read about, ask God to change you, to take over your life.

Jesus Terrorist

Terrorist
Jesus has changed my life and I want the world to know.


I want to tell people about the human eye and how amazing it is. When my organic chemistry professor taught in class I thought that after hearing it everyone would know for sure that there is a God. The sight that we all take for granted happens as follows: a photon is released as atoms explode on the sun, then it races to earth at light speed, then hits something, bounces off, comes into my eye, hits a molecule giving it the energy to twist, the molecule then untwists, releasing an ion, creating a signal, that our brain processes into what we see. This takes my breath away, what a complex system; it is hard for me to think that human eyes could have developed by random chance.

If our eyes didn’t happen by random chance then God is real: God designed our eye and made the entire universe. He created us. Created us for a relationship with him, God wanted real relationships with us and so made the choice to give us free will. The pain this causes God is the pain of seeing your child stick their hand in a fire and burn themselves, repeatedly. That’s what happens when we chose sin; when we choose to invest our lives in things other than God: when we look for Love Peace and Joy in things of the world. When we sin; we find that it doesn't satisfy the craving that it advertises, and eventually our stubbornness gives out and we move on. Then as we start investing out lives in towards Gods plan, that is; Gods intimate plan for your life, we find that the hole that that sins infomercial claims to fill is suddenly no longer and that our lives and our lives fit together almost as if there is master planner running the whole thing. In this, when we chose to love God: to live for God, because He is all that is worth living for, we find the relationship that God made us for. We are given the opportunity to co-labor with God, this far most the most thrilling thing that I have ever gotten to do.


This story is possible because of Jesus, because God is 3 parts in one and one part, the Son, came to earth as Jesus: the God man. Fully God, Jesus gave up his God power as he came to earth and became fully man, living as one of us. He did things that bend what we know as normal though faith, prayer and the Holy Spirit; another part of this Trinitarian (3 part) God. On earth Jesus taught, healed people and invested his life in 12 guys. Then Jesus was killed, he was hung on a cross for claiming to be God, funny cause he was. Jesus died on the cross, he stopped breathing and then one of the executioners stabbed him with a spear, and Jesus' body leaked out blood and water. Smart doctors say that that means pretty conclusively that he was dead. The body was put in a tomb of some famous guy who was still alive and thought that Jesus was pretty great, and then a really big rock was put in front of it, and then two Roman soldiers were assigned to guard it. If something happened to the body the solders got killed, that is how serious their job was. 3 days later some women came to treat the body and were terrified by an angel who told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. This risen Jesus then appeared to about 500 people, enough to show that is wasn't a hoax, spent time with the 12 guys that he had invested in, and then ascended to heaven.


By Jesus dyeing, God paid the price of all of our sin. Making it possible for us to be in relationship with him despite all the crap we have done.


As I stepped into this story with a little naïve faith I was met with a real God much bigger than the god that I imagined. My life began to change, and has turned around. Christians talk about being dead and then alive, this is how I felt. It was as is for my whole life I had been barely surviving and now I was fully alive. I had stumbled across this thing that my heart had been desiring all my life, and my first reaction is to share this amazing thing with other people.


If you found a whole mountain of cookies that were absolutely the best things that you had ever tasted, you would want to tell people about them, to share this delicious taste. I wanted people to know about Jesus. I wanted them to know that their lives could be so much more. I became like a terrorist. I wanted them to hear this story, to know it in their lives. I wanted their lives to change like mine was changing as so they would have this new life.


My motivations were not all pure, I wanted people to believe what I believed because there is strength in numbers, I wanted to bring people to church because them I would be being a good church kid.


I wanted people to know the story so badly. That was my desire and the means of that was all I knew: my mouth. So I talked and I preached and spread the story of the Man-God thing, Jesus, in any way that I could. I was mainly a jerk about it. I cared more about the message than the people and I became a terrorist, a terrorist because I didn’t love people but wanted them to hear my message.


The motives for sharing the story got twisted and I was sharing to share and not because I loved people and cared about them.


I don't really know how to share the story by loving people. I think God is teaching me that now by placing people around me to love, to love and exchange lives with showing them the love that I am given: showing them the story of Jesus with my life.




Love
God, I don’t know how to love very well. I love selfishly and shalowly. I love when it is easy and when I get things in return. Jesus, I confess that I am no good at loving; can you love through me and show me how to love those around me?
God I am not good at these things. I am good at being a jerk, thank you that you see more in me than the jerk that I express.


Thank you for the opportunity for a new tomorrow: for the chance for a tomorrow that is different from the one that I have been sowing with my actions, my selfish worldly actions.

Jesus that we would love like you Love, this is my prayer.

reasons to blog, digging for truth.

I think that this Jesus god-man thing is real. That is what this is all about. I grew up going to a church because that is what my family did; sometimes I thought that all the old people there had been tricked for their whole lives into believing in this ridiculous idea of God. I was pretty hurting as a kid, no more than most people hurt as they move through middle school and high school, I just didn't have very good defense mechanisms to the hurt. I didn't really know that the hurt that I was experiencing, the loneliness, the desire for more and feeling of failure, was a hurt because things had always been that way. I was a scout and liked doing things outside, someone from my church asked me if I wanted to join this youth group thing that started with a week of camping in the woods. I was down with the woods, and said I would do it. Pretty soon I didn't want to go, I am not sure how it happened, but when the week of camping started I was unwillingly there. I felt good about it at first because I knew the camping territory and was granted immunity on the not being allowed to have knives rule. A lot happened that week, what really blew me away was that I was included by most people; even the pretty girls were nice to me. I was pretty cool, I think that I wore a visor upside down at that point in life; I also had this technical fanny pack - backpack thing, the pinnacle of cool. Regardless I was welcomed into this group of about 30 kids, a few of which were really locked on to this God thing, their lives seemed different, and I wanted what they had. Then on Friday night something happened that was not like any part of life that I had experienced. We had church like stuff each day, we sang some songs and someone would read from the bible and tell us a little about it. We were singing one time, I was in the back of the room, and I was filled with this feeling. It creeps me out when people say that they were filled by the Holy Spirit, I am not sure exactly what happened but I felt like I was filled up with something and I this idea came into my head, not words but an idea. I was studying bio at the time and the word niche came to mind. There was a place for me. Words don't do this experience justice; I knew that God had a place for me, something for me to do in the world. I was made for a reason, learning that is the sum of what happened inside me that night. Later that night I prayed for the first time for real, It was something like, 'God I think your real I want to know you, I want to have what those other kids who know you have, I want to fill the niche that you have for me.' Back to regular life after this week camping. I felt left out and this God think made me feel like I was in. I was lonely and this God thing gave me friends, I was a looser and this God thing made me cool, at least cool in the Jesus group. It served my purposes and so I was in. Faith came easy because it didn't require much, there were many people around me who thought that this thing was real and so I didn't question it much. So now I am 21, from the time that I was 15 until now I have grown significantly. I have learned more about this Jesus god-man thing and have made significant changes to my life. As faith required me to change things, I began to question whether it was all real or not. If this story if fake, then there is no use in walking this walk. I was aware that my faith came easy as a child and wanted to harden it, to strengthen it, to dig for what truth I could find, if the story is not real, then I want out, there is no use wasting this life for something that is fake. That is what this is about. I think that God is real and that really changes shit. If Jesus died and was resurrected, and God is working to share this story with the word so we may be redeemed and live in relationship with God, then that is where I want to invest my life, nothing else comes close to counting. There is nothing as thrilling as getting to co-labor with God.Sometimes when people ask me about this God thing I go on the attack telling them about God. If I have done this to you I am sorry, I have often fell into arguing my point instead of sharing honestly. I totally have doubts, and struggle with the idea that this story is real. The bible says seek and ye shall find (Matt 7:7) {I used the old word for fun, the bible also says ‘the one who seeks finds’ in a more modern translation}. I want to dig deep, seeking, I want to do this in blogging form so my friends, people at umass and other places, can see how I think and so that we can all dig deeper together. This is about seeking, if you have questions, please email me or facebook me and I will dig into them with you.