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-emily
Today, I tested God’s love. I tested to see if He really loved even those who didn’t accept His love. I wanted to see His love extended beyond the walls of the church and bring in those who seemed indifferent to Him…
And He proved to me that He not only loves me, but He also loves those who have rejected Him, those who have heard yet have not received His good news. And this powerful, tenacious love will eventually draw them all into His presence, into His truth. Because God is so irresistible, so penetrating, so…LOVE.
Thank you, Lord. For all that you are.
-Manuela
Have you ever had your heart broken by someone?
Have you ever felt the bitter sting of betrayal from someone who promised to love you forever?
Have you ever had someone break their lofty promises to you?
Have you ever cried your eyes out because you felt such a deep sorrow over losing someone you treasured so much?
Have you ever felt your heart being trampled on because that person you gave it to decided it wasn’t worth very much?
…This must be about a fraction of what God feels whenever I sin and turn away from His love.
This morning, I read 1 Corinthians 8. It reminded me of a lot of conversations I’ve been having recently, about struggling with lifestyles we lived before, not knowing whether something is really sinful or not, whether it is from God or not. Yes, the Bible is clear on what is sin and what is not. No, the Bible does not have any gray areas. When it comes to issues of sin and what God expects of us, things are pretty clear. But there are hazy areas when it comes to, what kind of lifestyle choices am I allowed to make now? Am I guilting myself into this, or is it really from God? Because I believe guilt in itself is not from God. He doesn’t guilt us to stop sinning. In fact, I think guilt is one of the biggest weapons Satan has against us. He uses it to weaken and paralyze us from moving forward. But what about the little decisions that the Bible doesn’t explicitly address? Is that sin? Are we allowed to do it if its not explicitly sin?
v 6 says: yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
But, in v 7 it says not everyone knows this. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat such food they think of it as having been sacrificed to an idol and since their conscience is weak it is defiled. 8But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.
I think this is saying that the actual act itself is not sinning. Things are neutral. The act of drinking is neutral. Drinking doesn’t necessarily mean sinning. (Unless however, if its something thats illegal for you because you are underage, then duh, what are you doing drinking?)
9Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak. Is our acting out on our freedom causing others to stumble? 11So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. Wow.To think that I just destroyed someone whom Christ died for because I couldn’t give up something I had been so engrossed in deciding whether I was allowed to do it or not… it would break God’s heart. Paul is amazing, he says he would give up even eating meat if this causes a brother to fall. Such “freedoms” of this world that we hold onto seem so meaningless in the light of eternal glory to our God. If we are really living for our God, and only for our God, the hazy areas will become clear again.
those who use the things of the world as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away - 1 Cor 7:31
Last night, I did an intense workout at the RSF with Diane and her co-worker for the first time in a few months…. All I can say is, wow. I was beat. After almost 2 hours of straight pushing my body in ways it hasn’t been pushed in a while, I was about ready to collapse. The entire time, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my weaknesses, both physical and spiritual and how much I lacked discipline in my life, both physical and spiritual. I think the first part of Hebrews 12 perfectly sums up how I felt/what I learned from last night.
First, I warmed up on the elliptical, then ran on the treadmill, then did some stair runs, then lunges, then weight exercises, and then finished with some push ups. It was pretty painful. The way it made me feel opened my eyes to how weak my body had become since I’ve stopped pushing myself to exercise consistently. I’ve been slacking off a lot about taking care of my body this year. And I’m starting to feel the results in my lack of energy, weight gain, and how much weaker I’ve gotten towards sickness. (I got sick twice in two weeks this semester!) It also reminded me of my spiritual health, and how I am still so vulnerable to sin because I allowed it to take such deep roots into my life. I thought of all the times I would get frustrated at myself for succumbing to struggles that lingered from my past and questioning whether I had really changed into a “new creation” or not. But like my human body, I realized that my spiritual health is dependent on how much I push and discipline myself. I can’t expect a magical spiritual transformation overnight, just like you cant expect yourself to lose weight and be tones overnight without any exercise. Like PJ said in his sermon this Sunday, we need to go out to get our omer of manna everyday. We need to exercise daily spiritual disciplines, no matter how we feel that day. Because without it, we would die. I felt like I was putting up some sort of resistance towards sin, yet gave in so easily, blaming it on my weakness. But no, in Hebrews 12:4, Paul says In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. As I ran on the treadmill and pushed my body harder than I had in a while, I felt like this is exactly how hard my struggle against sin should be, if not more! In a sick yet Biblical way, I enjoyed making my body feel this way, defeated and desperate for water =)
Up to now, I think I’ve been taking the sissy route to facing sin. Read a few verses, pray, listen to some Christian music, and if that fails, just give in. And if I didn’t feel like doing anything at all, that meant that I had no Spirit in me. No, when the Bible says to struggle against sin, it means to beat my body and make it my slave… (1 Cor 9:27) Living the Christian life means going into strict training. (1 Cor 9:25) This means that even though I don’t feel like working out my spiritual body by reading His word or praying, I need to discipline myself to do it. Its called discipline for a reason after all. Although I felt so much pain in the moment, I was glad for it because it revealed to me what a mess my body had become due to slacking off. Without the exercise, I would have continued living in oblivion until some serious health problem showed up. It also meant I had begun my much needed training to whip myself back into shape and become healthy again. So starts the intense training of both my physical and spiritual body, to rebuild the temple of the Holy Spirit.
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. - Hebrews 12: 11-12
~ Manuela <3
So, when we first thought of conversation partners and wrote them out last week, I was very worried about how my relationships with the people I had chosen would be affected. Having chosen my best friend from middle school, Ho-Young, whom I haven’t seen in almost 5 years and with whom I haven’t been staying in constant contact, I was worried about how she would react to my attempts at reconnecting. We got in touch again via Skype at the beginning of last semester, and although I was happy to see her I was also very caught up in missing my old life in Paraguay and feeling lonely and homesick (at that point hadn’t had a revival of my love for God yet) and so when I started bringing up my involvement and attendance at Living Water over the past couple months I think I put Ho-Young on the skeptical fence and remind her of the hardest part of our friendship years ago when we disagreed on God’s involvement in fortune and grace. I was just talking to her earlier on gmail and was just rambling about the China mission that I might have come across as too forceful or enthusiastic, because she outright told me she was not interested in the topic of Christianity at all.
I’m feeling pretty discouraged right now, which I know is due to my own lack of confidence in evangelism, but please pray I don’t lose hope or forget to trust in God’s involvement and timing. I’m meeting my dad tomorrow night for dinner for the first time in a month before going home for Spring Break, and he’s very skeptical of my involvement in church and the China mission and I’m very fearful he’ll be closed off (he and my mother and brother are also my conversation partners as intellectual/complacent believers). I don’t want to use my mumbling words to get across, but rather have the Lord speak through me, that my family and friends back home I’m planning on speaking to might truly understand. I try to tell myself it’s OK even if they shut me out, as long as they hear the Word, but I know I’m weak enough to crave their acceptance and allow myself to be molded by their ideals, which I don’t want to succumb to and grow complacent again. If you guys could just keep me in thought/prayer for confidence and boldness through the Spirit this coming decisive week, I would be so thankful!
-Elena <3
I tried looking for Emily’s neglected email about our conversation partners… Sorry, Emily. I just couldn’t find it in the sea of emails that is my inbox T.T
So I decided to just post about my conversation partner stuff on tumblr instead because its easier.
My partner is culturally Christian. He grew up going to church but I don’t think he knows what it means to live as a Christian, or if he’s even encountered God in a real life-changing way yet. He’s talked to me about his views and past experiences with the church. He believes, but not urgently. God and Jesus is an impersonal factor to him at this point, just something to be contemplated from a distance and at his own pace, over the span of his lifetime. He also has a gf who is agnostic. She definitely influences him a lot and questions a lot of things about Christianity. This keeps him from wanting to delve further for himself and I think he’s in a complacent spot right now in terms of his spiritual journey.But he enjoys our conversations about God and openly accepted to be my conversation partner.
Im supposed to meet up with today and have our first chat, but he asked if he could bring his girl friend….this kind of threw me off my loop because since they’re at different points of their spiritual journey and come from different backgrounds, I usually tend to cater my approach accordingly. But when they’re together, its hard for me to go anywhere deep in either direction because they influence each other and it gets complicated…
So I really need God’s grace on me today. I need Him to use me and for His words to speak through, not mine, His wisdom, not mine. I trust that God will handle this situation perfectly in His accord. That is all =)
Thanks for praying!
~ Manuela <3
So heres an update to my post below about the events from yesterday:
I ran into the kid from the bus again today in front of Crossroads. When I saw him a second time, I seriously did a double take and knew this couldn’t just be coincidence. God must have sent this kid my way…
I walked over to him, said hi and this time asked him for his name. Thomas :)
Hi Thomas! Glad to have met you. You and I are going to be friends from now on, I know it. God loves you, and wants you to get to know him personally. I hope you’re ready!
I felt I needed to blog about this because this experience just reminded me of God’s never-ending, unlimited, bottomless grace on me.
After shopping at Trader Joe’s, I was waiting for the bus, when a “random” guy came up to me and asked if I knew when the bus would come. At first glance, I just assumed he was another Cal student and brushed him off with a polite, “Sorry, I don’t know.” After my response, he peered into my grocery bag, then proceeded to sit down next to me on the bench. Taking a deep sigh, he started talking about how tired he was and how he’d walked so much today. I asked him where he was coming from, and he said Oakland. He had just come back from the rally against budget cuts to public education. But then I later found out that he wasn’t a Cal student but actually a senior at Berkeley High School. After carrying on the conversation for a bit, he stopped to ask me how much the bus fare was. $2. (What a rip off! )
As we kept talking, I started wondering if God was trying to tell me something about this kid. Why was he talking to me? What were his needs? Did he know God? The conversation was interesting but in my head, I immediately thought of inviting him to Seeker Sunday and began to wait for a chance to steer our conversation in that direction. Excited and a bit nervous, I bust out my best empathy skills, and started hearing him out to see when I could jump in with my own agenda.
Then, we saw the bright blue lights of the bus in the distance, about a stop away. He asked me once again how much the bus fare was…then started rummaging through his backpack to find money. Thats when the light turned on in my mind and I suddenly realized what was going on here.
He needed bus money. That’s why he started a conversation with me, a random stranger at the bus stop. Thats why he asked me how much the bus was, twice. Eureka indeed.It wasn’t because he was necessarily interested in any of the things we were talking about, or in who I was as a person. Maybe he was, but that wasn’t his motive for engaging in conversation with me. He had exactly one thing in mind, to get what he needed from me. Before he could even begin to act out his monologue of, “where’s my wallet”, I took out my wallet and thanked God for the little cash I happened to have (exactly $2) at that moment. I took out the money and gave it to him, saving him from a drawn out performance. I don’t remember if he thanked me or not. As soon as I paid for his bus ride, he didn’t say another word to me and went to sit as far away from me as possible, avoiding all possible eye contact.
On that bus ride back I reflected on that moment. I wasnt exactly sure how to feel or what to do. I thought of going up to him and at least asking his name. Should I take advantage of this opportunity and tell him to come to my church on Sunday since I paid for his bus ride? Should I feel duped or angry? Then, I realized that this must be a tiny fraction of what God goes through when He has grace on me. When I come back to Him, he still loves me to the fullest and gives with all His heart even though He knows I’m going to turn on Him and sin all over again. All too often my heart is one of receiving as much as I can from Him. Even though Im walking and engaging in a relationship with God, Im also always thinking about what I can get from the relationship, what He can do for me. And even though God knows this all too well, He never fails to give, to love, to have mercy.He also doesn’t use His grace to demand things of us, unlike my idea of asking the kid to come to church in exchange for my money. He just gives, and gives, and gives.
In that moment, through those thoughts, I took the rest of that bus ride to pray for him, whatever his name might have been. I asked that God would be with him, and that he would have a chance to someday hear about the ultimate fare someone named Jesus paid for him.
~Manuela <3
Hello dear small group brothers and sisters! :) So today during service when we sang the song, “Humble King,” at the very end of service, it really reminded me of what we talked about in small group about empathy!
The lyrics of that song, “You are the God of the broken, the friend of the weak,” always remind me how comforting and perfect God’s love for us is. It always lifts me up when I am down. When I am broken, God is there to lift me up and heal me. But the second part of the chorus, “I want to be like you Jesus, to have this heart in me” is what spoke to me today.
God is always there to comfort people in need, to be a strong support for others. I was reminded today that I can also be comfort to people in need, to listen to people if they are hurting, to take that extra step to find out what’s wrong. It’s so easy to get wrapped in my own troubles and ignore the needs of others. I’m not good at talking to people I normally don’t talk to (sorry Manuela!!) but I can talk to people that I am close to, and I can provide comfort to them. Like Pastor Josh said in large group two weeks ago, we should examine our prayers and thoughts and see how self-centered they are. So this week I am embarking on this new journey of loving others and putting their needs before mine. With that being said, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and see you on Wednesday :)
Love, Ashley
