gravity meets flight

counting the cost

“Nothing of earthly possession is too precious to dispense with if sin is for us the inevitable cost of retention.” [John Murray]

Behind every man should be a funny and theological wife

An exchange between Martin Luther and his wife Katharina: “Once, when Martin was so depressed that none of Kate’s counsel would help, she put on a black dress. Luther noticed it and asked, ‘Are you going to a funeral?’ ‘No,’ Kate replied, ‘but since you act like God is dead, I wanted to join you in your mourning.’ Luther got the message and recovered.”

“Give a gift. Change a life.”

Ana and I are in preparations to put together a plan to do Christmas different this year. Last year, instead of buying gifts for one another, we decided to pull our money together and adopt a child through World Vision. This year, we got really excited as we thought about our friends, family and church members experiencing the joy of giving together with us. We will be letting everyone know soon exactly what our goal is this Christmas, because we can’t wait to speak to you about why this is so important to us. We want to make a difference. We want to do something big, and we want to do it together with you. We hope that you will be able to join us this year in this endeavor as we seek to make an impact with what we’ve been blessed with rather than simply receiving more blessings. 

what is your life like?

Ray Ortlund: “The worst this life can shove down our throats, but with the nearness of Jesus, is heaven on earth. The best this life can give, but without Jesus, is a living hell.”

repost of an older blogpost: flirting

This is a repost of a blogpost entitled: ”my thoughts on likealittle.com” from months ago. I may add to this post, or actually finish another post I am currently working on about “bikinis, hip-hugging jeans, sculpted abs, and the gospel.” 

There seems no more appropriate time than now to broach the topic of flirting. There is a website that I’ve seen linked to Facebook that allows users to anonymously upload comments about people they see around campus. Before I offer my thoughts on the subject, I am aware that there are many areas in my own life where the Gospel and every-day living don’t meet. Flirting for many people is one of those areas where we struggle to have the Gospel come and meet us and transform us. I have kept everything  fairly short, generic, and simple, to allow room for further more fruitful and thoughtful discussions.

We often excuse flirting as harmless and many of us simply accept it as a normal part of our relations with the opposite sex. Attraction is a normal human phenomenon that is not inherently selfish or sinful, to not be attracted to beauty or to people would be inhumane. But flirting is more than mere attraction. Flirting is an outlet for our sinful motives. 

Flirting poses these three dangers: it is (1) self-focused, (2) selfish, and (3) and self-pleasing. 

1. Self-focused: We are by nature attention seekers. Flirters are attention cravers. By flirting we are satisfying a craving for attention, rather than the responsibility of serving. When we flirt we automatically direct the center of attention on ourselves and define the worth of others on the things we say about them. 

2. Selfish: There is no aspect of flirting that builds the other person up in any godly way. You say what you want, do what you want, to hopefully get what you want; and all of this takes place only after objectifying that person as the object of desire. This is inherently selfish and also degrading to turn a brother or sister in Christ as the fulfillment of some sort of selfish desire.

3. Self-pleasing: When you flirt, your highest hope is not that it will be reciprocated, although there is that hope too. The whole enterprise centers on you saying what you want to say so that you, crudely put, are pleasuring yourself. Call it stroking your ego. Call it feeling better about yourself. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how the other person feels as long as you feel good.

Flirting also poses these peripheral dangers:

Lust: We already do not take lust seriously enough, which is odd considering that Jesus warns us, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” [Matthew 5:28-29] Flirting doesn’t necessarily we are lusting after someone, but it definitely is playing with fire. It definitely does not help us to fight the lust in our hearts either.

Objectification: Our culture is constantly telling us to go get what you want and do everything it takes to get it. In terms of dating and relationships, the culture is mainly concerned that we find the person who fits the criteria of everything we want in someone. So we all objectify the opposite sex. God is however, more concerned that we become the man or woman He has created us to be. The Bible is more interested in me becoming the right kind of man for my wife, than it is with me finding the right kind of woman. Rather than a list of things we want in someone, we are to have a list of ways in which we can grow so that we may give them things like love, patience, peace, kindness, goodness. 

De-masculinization: There are too many boys running around in the bodies of men. Flirting represents everything a man of God should not do. If you are a godly woman or is striving more and more each day to become a woman of God, do not associate any longer with these boys. A godly man is a man of his word, says what he means and means what he says. He does not hide behind selfish comments. He does not merely seek his own good, but he is thoughtful, careful and prayerful in his intentions, actions and words. When a man becomes someone who is hasty, mindless, selfish, he is stripping himself of what God has intended a man to be.

indie-hipster = paying for music?

so i was strolling through some of the $5 mp3 albums on amazon and they have a whole section of “best indie albums of 2010” and it got me thinking, there probably isn’t any data for this, but I think part of the reason why companies and stores make sure they support these “indie” bands is because they know people actually buy these albums, as opposed to some teenage kid going out and torrenting the new justin bieber single. it’s been proven that people who actually care about music and care about the musicians who are trying to make a living doing this will go out and spend their money on it. i think it was radiohead who offered one of their recent albums for what their fans actually thought it was worth to them, and most people actually spent money on the album instead of just downloading it for free. then there’s websites like noisetrade.com, which i hope is making money, because it has some really good artists who literally offer their music for free because it gives them exposure, in the hopes, and i say hopes, because i’ve been guilty of not giving back, but in the hopes that someone will appreciate their music and donate $$ to the artist.

now this isn’t some tirade against piracy which would be easy enough to do, but i think it’s odd that the indie hipster thing to do nowadays is actually pay for music. that somehow it’s become a novel concept that you actually give something to get something. i know indie hipster folks are easy to poke fun at, and yes they lord it over their friends that they know bands that you have never even heard of, but i think for the most part, they’ve paid to earn that stupid and obnoxious right.

prayer for gloria and madison

mood: seeing every little wrong in other people and being upset that they haven’t changed or worse yet, haven’t even tried to change. 

death makes us acutely aware of a sense of the fair and unfair, of right and wrong, and yet the Bible holds out the truth that God is in control, that God loves, that God has a reason for and behind everything that happens. 

and when i see brokenness i am not humbled, i am angered. i see the sins of other people and i am angry. the world reacts the same way. the godless world is enraged at the way the world is. why shouldn’t it? yet we all wrestle with this frustrating sense of hopelessness. frustrating because even those who know what Christ has done don’t always fully perceive, nor can they perhaps, that which God and God alone knows and is doing. and as things are being restored, we experience the pains of restoration. we are even more aware of the brokenness. and we are greatly deceived at times.

Christian hope does not reside in the possibility of change and restoration, but it resides in the absolute reality of it. We lose hope because we wonder if things will ever get better. But death is not a cause to lose hope, because in Jesus Christ we have already seen that hope is not only possible, but true. 

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” [John 14:27]

my thoughts on likealittle.com

There seems no more appropriate time than now to broach the topic of flirting. There is a website that I’ve seen linked to Facebook that allows users to anonymously upload comments about people they see around campus. Before I offer my thoughts on the subject, I am aware that there are many areas in my own life where the Gospel and every-day living don’t meet. Flirting for many people is one of those areas where we struggle to have the Gospel come and meet us and transform us. I have kept everything  fairly short, generic, and simple, to allow room for further more fruitful and thoughtful discussions.

We often excuse flirting as harmless and many of us simply accept it as a normal part of our relations with the opposite sex. Attraction is a normal human phenomenon that is not inherently selfish or sinful, to not be attracted to beauty or to people would be inhumane. But flirting is more than mere attraction. Flirting is an outlet for our sinful motives. 

Flirting poses these three dangers: it is (1) self-focused, (2) selfish, and (3) and self-pleasing. 

1. Self-focused: We are by nature attention seekers. Flirters are attention cravers. By flirting we are satisfying a craving for attention, rather than the responsibility of serving. When we flirt we automatically direct the center of attention on ourselves and define the worth of others on the things we say about them. 

2. Selfish: There is no aspect of flirting that builds the other person up in any godly way. You say what you want, do what you want, to hopefully get what you want; and all of this takes place only after objectifying that person as the object of desire. This is inherently selfish and also degrading to turn a brother or sister in Christ as the fulfillment of some sort of selfish desire.

3. Self-pleasing: When you flirt, your highest hope is not that it will be reciprocated, although there is that hope too. The whole enterprise centers on you saying what you want to say so that you, crudely put, are pleasuring yourself. Call it stroking your ego. Call it feeling better about yourself. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how the other person feels as long as you feel good.

Flirting also poses these peripheral dangers:

Lust: We already do not take lust seriously enough, which is odd considering that Jesus warns us, “But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” [Matthew 5:28-29] Flirting doesn’t necessarily we are lusting after someone, but it definitely is playing with fire. It definitely does not help us to fight the lust in our hearts either.

Objectification: Our culture is constantly telling us to go get what you want and do everything it takes to get it. In terms of dating and relationships, the culture is mainly concerned that we find the person who fits the criteria of everything we want in someone. So we all objectify the opposite sex. God is however, more concerned that we become the man or woman He has created us to be. The Bible is more interested in me becoming the right kind of man for my wife, than it is with me finding the right kind of woman. Rather than a list of things we want in someone, we are to have a list of ways in which we can grow so that we may give them things like love, patience, peace, kindness, goodness. 

De-masculinization: There are too many boys running around in the bodies of men. Flirting represents everything a man of God should not do. If you are a godly woman or is striving more and more each day to become a woman of God, do not associate any longer with these boys. A godly man is a man of his word, says what he means and means what he says. He does not hide behind selfish comments. He does not merely seek his own good, but he is thoughtful, careful and prayerful in his intentions, actions and words. When a man becomes someone who is hasty, mindless, selfish, he is stripping himself of what God has intended a man to be.