this is why we don’t confront our roommates about their sin. it’s because its costly and its hard and you might get hated for it. there’s no promise its gonna work out great and they’re gonna love you on the other side.

this is why we don’t confess that we’re cheating to our professor. cuz here’s the problem, if you confess to your professor that you’ve been cheating, you may get kicked out of school. if you follow Jesus on this, it might cost you a ton.

if you don’t feed the need to have the right kind of body,  if you choose to say, ’you know what, i’m addicted to having the right kind of body so i’m going to stop exercising.’ you know what? you might get fat. it’s a real possibility.

if you get a filter for your computer, you know what? you might not get access to some websites you do need access to that are good and innocent.

it might cost you.

if you confess sin to one another, the really dark stuff, people might find out you’re a failure. it will be a mark on your name.

if you tell somebody about Jesus, people will probably think you’re crazy. there’s tremendous social cost to that.

if you give money away, you might not be able to afford the things you want.

if you don’t pursue the highest paying occupation in your field, you might forever be middle class or even lower class. and you might not get the things you want.

if you hold out for a boyfriend or girlfriend that loves Jesus, you might be lonely. you might be lonely your whole life.

if you stop getting high, you might be depressed.

if you love on somebody that hates you, that disagrees with you, who doesn’t see life and the world the way you see it, who’s hard to deal with and who’s weird socially and doesn’t give you anything back in return, you might not ever enjoy the relationship. you might not ever be noticed for pursuing it, and you might not ever have any sense of reward.

if you follow Jesus, its gonna be hard. there’s no promise that he helps you remove risk in your life. there’s actually promise that life will be difficult…

BUT

you can trust in the promises of God. instead of trusting in your contingency plan, you can come to Jesus with the sweetest prayer in all of scripture, Mark 9.24:
‘Lord, i believe. help my unbelief.’

and you can struggle with us, to figure out how to follow this gracious God. despite our faithlessness, God’s working, God’s redeeming, God’s establishing peace and he’s bringing grace. there’s joy to be had for those who stop trusting in the things of this world but rather trust in the work and the life of Jesus and begin to labor and look forward to the new heavens and new earth in which relationships will be a delight not a competition, in which our bodies wont break and sin and evil and pain will be absent.

There’s actually joy to be had in a broken and difficult world when you know that you’re bound for the promise land.”

Bend my hands and cut them off,

for I have often struck thee with a wayward will,

when these fingers should embrace thee by faith.

I am not yet weaned from all created glory, honour, wisdom, and esteem of others,

for I have a secret motive to eye my name in all I do.

Let me not only speak the word sin, but see the thing itself.

Give me to view a discovered sinfulness,

to know that though my sins are crucified they are never wholly mortified.

Hatred, malice, ill-will,vain-glory that hungers for and hunts after man’s approval and applause, all are crucified, forgiven, but they rise again in my sinful heart.

O my crucified but never wholly mortified sinfulness!
O my life-long damage and daily shame!
O my indwelling and besetting sins!
O the tormenting slavery of a sinful heart!

Destroy, O God, the dark guest within whose hidden presence makes my life a hell.

Yet thou hast not left me here without grace; The cross still stands and meets my needs in the deepest straits of the soul.

I thank thee that my remembrance of it is like David’s sight of Goliath’s sword which preached forth thy deliverance.

The memory of my great sins, my many temptations, my falls, bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of thy great help, of thy support from heaven, of the great grace that saved such a wretch as I am.

There is no treasure so wonderful as that continuous experience of thy grace toward me which alone can subdue the risings of sin within:

Give me more of it.

“you love god because he is god. thats the only reason. to love him for any other reason is for something or things that he does, and that should be secondary at best and serve to increase your love for him but not the basis. so hes god and youre not so you love him. and beyond that, he loved you first and he chose to RESCUE FROM THE PIT OF DESTRUCTION in his mercy. and he did it because he loved you and because he wanted glory. and you loving him gives him glory. AND HES FAITHFUL AND SWEET AND HAS NOT.EVER.LEFT.YOU.”

sin isn’t just an arbitrary list of things that a cranky God doesn’t want us to enjoy because he’s kind of mean… what it is is a description of the cancer that destroyed what was supposed to be beautiful.

the reason we hate sin is the same reason we hate cancer. the reason God hates sin is the same reason we hate disease… its because it destroys something that was supposed to be beautiful. this isn’t an arbitrary list… this is a list that is destroying creation.

our call to war against sin is not God hating on things we like. it is us living out before the world what it was always supposed to be like… us as a community becoming an advertisement of how the world was supposed to be. …we are to put sin to death because we are members of a new kingdom.

-britton wood on col 3.5-11– the mortification of sin; http://www.buzzsprout.com/16

there’s just so much to say. its just different here.

i sleep at least 8 hours a night. i drink hot tea daily, despite the temperature. its not weird anymore that there are cows on the streets. hotels i once thought were dirty and that i’d never get used to sleeping in are not a big deal. i’ve learned to desipher my way through conversations with people who know only a little more english than i do hindi. i don’t feel like i have to cram a million things into my day and not do any of them well. a city on a hill means something. no matter how distracted i am when being in the Word, i know its all i have.  fellowship is precious, so i’ve learned to see it just as that. its a treat to find someone here who understands my sense of humor well. being on the internet is only as appealing as i make it to be. what made my stomach churn to smell 3 weeks ago, i hardly notice anymore.

i don’t miss home like i thought i would. i realized i can survive without the things i used to count as a necessity.

not everything has changed for the better in my one month of being here, though.

i’ve begun to see people more as faces in a sea than creatures made in the image of my God. people bowing to idols don’t shock me like they did. children begging for food, decorated in worn clothing and old and broken bangles doesn’t move my heart like it should. i notice the red string wrapped around wrists and the orange dot on foreheads of the perishing less and less.

oh Lord, what will you do with this hard-hearted servant?

if i can be honest without offending anyone, i’ll confess i’m dreading coming home. i’ve only been here for a month, so maybe that will change, but as it is the idea of being back to the business of school and work and life bothers me more than i ever thought it would. i miss you who i call family, but i fear that what God has done in my hard heart since being here will be forgotten among the classes and chaos. this is where i want to be. this is what i want to do. i want to spend he rest of my days loving these people, in this place.

oh God, please, don’t let me forget what i’ve seen, what you’ve done, what you’re doing among these people. i don’t want to forget where you’ve brought me from, what you’ve taught me, the high price you paid for my soul.

you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

deut 5.15

anyway, (oh, the green and underlined disappeared… nice) im gonna jet cuz im really tired. but thanks for your prayers. i miss y’all and can’t wait to tell you this stuff in person.

also, i don’t know if i already mentioned this, but i sang kareoke in an indian pub the other night.

Thus says the LORD:

cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD. he s like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see any good come. he shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. he is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the steam, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of the drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.

God says to his people, you are CURSED if you trust in man or in the flesh of his strength… you will see destruction. you will be like a shrub in a hot dry desert, with no water in sight. you shall see no good. you will dwell in the dry places in the wilderness. you, shrub that survives on water and sunlight, will be living in a land of salt, that will ultimately dehydrate and kill you.

then he says to his people you are BLESSED if you trust in me, your loving God and Savior who has been continually faithful to you when you didn’t deserve it and patient with you and has shown you grace upon grace because i am a good God. trust in me. you’ll be like a tree. with roots that extend to the streams. when calamity comes, you will not have fear because your leaves will remain green. when the year of the drought comes, you wont be anxious about where you will get water or how your needs will be met. you will not even cease to bear fruit. i have provided before and i will continue to provide. you are blessed.

so, knowing this about God and seeing that he is continually faithful and has rescued me from the dominion of darkness, why is it that i continually trust in myself and my strength and my timing? why do we do this? every single day, instead of taking leaps of faith, i stay on the land that i know is safe and secure. imagine if every time God provided me with an opportunity to trust him and not myself, strengthen my faith, leave my life of shrubbery and join with him producing fruit, i took the opportunity.

i ran across that on paasta (pastor) willis’ (aka, dustin willis) blog and i thought it was pretty stinking interesting.

this comedian’s an atheist and he has pretty strong feelings about Christians not telling non-believers about Jesus. 

“how much do you have to hate some body to believe that everlasting life was possible and not tell them about it?”

now i would remind you, brothers, of the gospel i preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word i preached to you — unless you believed in vain. for i delieved to you as of first importance what i also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordances with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…

romans 7:24-25

wretched man that i am! who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

isaiah 53:5-6

but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

When darkness seems to hide His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.