19 Feb 2010

Share

Tiger Woods’ Apology - What He’s Missing

Just finished listening/watching Tiger Woods’ apology to the entire world for his adultery. While everyone seems to sympathize for the guy and felt his anguishing pain through the gooping apology, I thought Tiger missed the point on it all.

He looked crushed, wore out, yet filled with Tiger Woods’ pride as he apologized to everyone in the entire universe. He begged that the media leave his family alone, unaware of the impact he has as a person in society. He spoke of reconnecting with his Buddhist past, hopefully finding the moral fortitude to press on and “change.” He is returning to golf sometime in the future: reconnecting with the only thing he can do well. And he’s returning to therapy…whatever that means.

What did Tiger Woods’ miss? He missed out on forgiveness. He apologized with near desperate pleas, casting tear-filled words into a heartless, scrutinizing society. A man does not recover from such sin on their own goodness. Romans 7:18 says, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” So Tiger Woods’ attempt to make this all better will NEVER succeed because “In Him [Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” Ephesians 1:7…not through anything else.

Tiger Woods is reaching out to Buddha…

…yet Buddha offers no FORGIVENESS or HOPE. Buddha only looks back at you through closed eyes…stone-faced and unloving.

19 Feb 2010

Share

The Known Universe (720p HD)

“In the Beginning GOD created the Heaven and the Earth.”

This is truly amazing. How could one even think this was all perfectly created by a “big bang”!?!

16 Sep 2009

Share

Death of a Vision or Coming of Fruition

I like to be melodramatic and talk about “death of visions” as if it is some 2012 end-of-the-world horror theory. “Death” has a good ring to it. When you tell people you’ve had a “death of a vision,” it makes them pity you. However, I’m starting to realize the whole “death of a vision” thing isn’t God.

Embracing the “death of a vision” mindset is like mourning over a miscarriage before the baby is even conceived. It’s planning and assuming misery.

When you go into something with a 50/50 chance perspective, a “death of a vision” mindset assumes you’re going to fail instead of succeed.

So how should I look at this whole thing instead? Sometimes on paper, reality just doesn’t look good. External voices drown out the still small whisper, and everything feels like a battlefield. It is in these times I want to hold up the white flag of surrender and cry out “Hear ye, Hear ye! A death of a vision has occurred!” Immediately, I forget how far God has brought me.

When I think I’m experiencing the “death of a vision” mindset, I need to persevere until the coming of fruition. There are thousands of stories in the Bible and in history where people got smacked down over and over, but they kept persisting. It’s like that comedic English drinking song, “I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.”

If Jesus saw everything as a death to a vision, no one would have been raised from the dead. Do we imagine Him running to some dying guy hoping to give CPR before it’s “too late”? Never. Jesus strolled to the place where the people were mourning and raised the lifeless form back to life! If that’s not the fruition then I don’t know what is.

Sometimes we need to push past the “death” that overwhelms us until we feel the life again. God is never far away. He’s just waiting on us to stop waiting around. You’ll fail if you think you’ll fail. You’ll see negativity if you want negativity. You’ll feel like God “isn’t in it” if you believe such lies. I don’t think I’m going to call anything dead until it is buried in the ground and rotted away into dry bones. God can always do a miracle.

Tags: jesus. meditation. love.

19 Aug 2009

Share

Breaking Necks

Below is an excerpt of a letter written by C.S. Lewis to a friend in the 1930s. Lewis had just become a Christian and was beginning to discover the seemingly impossible battle that rages between the Spirit and the flesh. This is a very relateable point brought up by the exasperrated Lewis:

During my afternoon “meditations,”—which I at least attempt quite regularly now—I have found out ludicrous and terrible things about my own character. Sitting by, watching the rising thoughts to break their necks as they pop up, one learns to know the sort of thoughts that do come.

And, will you believe it, one out of every three is the thought of self-admiration: when everything else fails, having had its neck broken, up comes the thought “what an admirable fellow I am to have broken their necks!” I catch myself posturing before the mirror, so to speak, all day long. I pretend I am carefully thinking out what to say to the next pupil (for his good, of course) and then suddenly realize I am really thinking how frightfully clever I’m going to be and how he will admire me…

And then when you force yourself to stop it, you admire yourself for doing that. It is like fighting the hydra… There seems to be no end to it. Depth under depths of self-love and self-admiration.

—lover

19 Aug 2009

Share

I ranted. -An IM with my bff-

  • After discussing the cyclical flaws of the day......
  • bff: [we] are stinkin rotten sinners! but Jesus loves you anyways!
  • me: sure, but we should move past that--because we have God inside of us. right.
  • bff: you are and will always be a stinkin rotten sinner
  • me: my flesh will. the spirit should be stronger than the flesh though. since i have Christ in me who has changed my heart.
  • bff: yes, Christ is greater and He kills the flesh, but you still are a stinkin rotten sinner saved by grace.
  • me: sure. you like to focus on that.
  • bff: nope...not really! i just always know that i am one! cause dude, i can't even read my bible without having some kind of sin!
  • me: I like to focus on the amazing love of God that transformed me and now I am one of His children—which amazes me. some people continually beat themselves with "oh i suck cuz i'm a sinner." I think that's an excuse and once you're committed to Christ is something you should be seeing less and less because we're transformed by the renewing of our mind and our focus is no longer carnal but eternal that is all only by the amazing, inspiring, humbling love of Christ and through that i can have confidence that He which hath begun a good work in me, will perform it until the day of Jesus.
  • bff: amen bro! preach on!
  • me: dang. i got on a roll. sorry.
  • ---
  • Conversation then transitioned to other things.