One of the Western Church’s greatest mistakes has been thinking homosexuality is a unique sin biblically; this mind set has, of course, led to Christians treating homosexuals with contempt because of ignorance. (If you disagree you should visit your local youth group, where one of the most common phrases you will here will be, “That’s gay,” or “Don’t be a faggot,”.) The only unique sin biblically is the sin of pride. Every other sin is equal, in kind, in that it is a distortion of God’s design for our lives. It is true that some sins impact our society worse than others. In this sense, and in this sense alone, it could be argued that the practice of homosexuality has worse repercussions in our society than many other sins; one of those repercussions is the loss of the traditional family, for example. Even still, there are sins that entail consequences worse than homosexuality, like adultery, which effects the health of the traditional family more directly than the lifestyle of homosexuals ever could; no-fault divorce is another great example. Because the Church’s moral and political stance against homosexuality among their own members is being challenged by secular society, the Church should respond appropriately and truthfully. But this should only be a defensive stance, not offensive. The moment the Church goes on the offensive by judging those outside the Faith, it becomes distracted from its true purpose: to be a light unto a dark world by offering good news, not bad. We are fools to cut off peoples’ noses and then offer them roses to smell. Just as a skilled doctor performs triage, the practice of prioritizing patients’ treatments based upon the severity of their condition, so to must the Church perform spiritual triage, and know what sins will only distract it from the greatest threats.

Of all the confusion surrounding the debate on homosexuality, the question of genetic determinism certainly remains the greatest: Do homosexuals choose to be gay, or are they born that way?

Every person struggles especially with some specific disposition. For some it is drinking, for some it is sex, for some it is lying, for some it is homosexuality, for some it is lust, for some it is judgment, for some it is gluttony, for some it is pride, and so on and so on. But our dispositions do not and should not define our identity, and thinking this way, in terms of homosexuality, is altogether inconsistent with the way we usually think about dispositions. A person with a homosexual disposition chooses to be gay for the sole reason that a person with an alcoholic disposition, for example, chooses to be an alcoholic. When you consider every other desire known to mankind—alcoholism, pedophilia, murder, depression, lust, etc.—homosexuality turns out to be the only disposition our culture treats as sacrosanct; it is the only desire that our society commands us to accept without rational evaluation. Our society teaches us to overcome most other desires because they are diseases, disorders, and biological impairments. This begs the question, on what moral or logical grounds can we separate homosexuality from any of these other desires? According to what reason should we support genetic determinism for homosexuality and not all other desires, such as alcoholism? While some of our desires certainly do correspond to our design, not all do. Finally, the question of whether or not a Christian can be gay is best answered by a few other questions, such as, can an adulterer be a Christian, or a liar, or a murderer? Jesus made it clear that we all fall short of the glory of God, and that all have committed murder, adultery, and lied in their heart; and it is the heart that matters most. The practice of sinful dispositions, not the dispositions themselves, are what separate us from God.

We as the Church should have been walking side by side our brothers and sisters fighting homosexual dispositions yesterday. Leaving any Christian to fight their temptations alone is a sure sign of ignorance and hatred, not love; and it is love, above all else, that marks the disciple of Jesus Christ. Local churches are hospitals, and in the truest sense. Assuming that by recognizing their sickness they desire wellness, gay Christians should feel just as welcomed into God’s hospital as much as adulterous Christians, for example. If local churches have support groups for alcoholics, why not homosexuals? The latter should be embraced with love just as much as the former; because “come to God just as you are” applies to both the heterosexual and the homosexual. Local churches should seek the latter out rather than avoid them. The Church should be especially known as the greatest supporter of homosexuals; not of their sexual practice, but of them as men and woman made in God’s image, and of those struggling to overcome a weary burden. The classic saying is true: Christians should love the sinner while hating their sin, and that includes their own. So just as the Church cannot love a person without hating their sin, it also cannot hate sin without loving the person who commits it. God calls you to genuinely love men and woman battling homosexuality while simultaneously opposing their disposition. But that does not mean avoiding walking along side them in a journey that will certainly be one of their toughest. No. It means grabbing coffee with them, and simply listening to their story—their own unique struggles with homosexuality; it means not trying to fix their struggle for them, because only God can do that.

Listen. Show them love. Offer your support. Share your own struggles instead of your own helpless opinions.

At one point I walked outside to get fresh air and saw an elderly man in a wheel chair waiting at the bus stop. He was nicely dressed—ironed khakis, polo shirt, a goofy ball cap only the elderly can wear, one shoe untied. He seemed the friendly grandfather type. There was anxiety about him, though. He kept dialing on his cell phone but looked confused; something was really bothering him. He gradually began to look alarmed. And then he wheeled on over to me: “Young man, I hate to ask you, I really do, but I’ve been trying to get ahold of my daughter for the last three hours to see if she’s okay and I think I ran out of minutes. I would be much obliged if you let me use your phone.” I gladly slung out my iPhone, dialed his daughter’s number, and he finally got to talk with her for awhile. I was glad to play the hero role in this short story drama that filled the mundane moments of being stranded in a ghost-town. When he finished talking with her, though, he graciously offered to share his hotel room (the Hilton hotel, actually) with me for the night—apparently I even looked stranded. My flight did not depart for another twelve hours; that gave me plenty of time to sleep, eat a hot breakfast, and depart from Dallas surprisingly happy. Somehow my path had crossed with the Good Samaritan’s. I was saved.

You would think I took him up on his kind offer; that would be the reasonable thing to do. But you would be wrong: “Wow, that’s really nice of you sir. But, you know, I think I’m gonna stay here until my flight departs . . . just in case. But, really, thank you for such a kind offer.” Instead of 12 hours of creature comforts with a warm bed and a hot breakfast—and this was the Hilton; we’re talking good food here—I stayed behind in a ghost-town of an airport and continued my routine: sleep, walk, vending machines, chuck pennies into air-vents. But why did I not take him up on his offer? It was not because his offer was too kind; I was dying to sleep in a bed before flying back to St. Louis, and bacon, eggs, and french toast sounded superb. And it obviously was not because I had better things to do back at the airport; I had jack crap to do. No, the reason I turned him down had more to do with me—but not in a positive sense. Somehow my mind rationalized that this man, this sweet, grandfatherly figure of a man, might possibly … now get this … steal something of mine while I was sleeping. Are you kidding me? Sadly, no. It was then and there I realized how sad the human condition is: that when a friendly man in his 70s offers to share his hotel room with me out of the kindness of his heart, trying to help a young guy out, my first thought is that he might steal my wallet. People, what kind of elderly person stays in the Hilton hotel and steals a few bucks from a broke looking college kid? But that’s how the story goes. Because somewhere in my untrusting heart I looked for the worse in this man before the best. And while he was a stranger I had just met in an abandoned airport in the middle of the night by a bus stop, who very well could have been a lunatic—or even, let us just say, a serial killer—he was harmless, and I was an untrusting idiot.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is a wonderful story. But Jesus would have been dumbfounded if the the person who needed help in the story refused it. While it’s true that many people in the world should not be trusted, that is, at best, a general truth. Looking back, I suppose there are two types of trust: trust you earn and trust that’s simply given to you—the latter being something like the simple, good natured hope in the human spirit of generosity. But only total depravity could justify denying the second type of trust. But that would mean feeling right about turning down an incredibly generous offer from a senior citizen in a wheel chair. Oh, how much of an idiot I can be. Do your heart some good: get over your distrust of everyone and accept help when it’s offered.

Now, it’s not true that our society doesn’t believe in ethics and morality whatsoever. Popular atheists of the day, Christopher Hitchens, for example, argue that we can have things like morality and ethics without God. But my intention isn’t to argue that point here. I only mean to point out the fact that the more we divorce ourselves from God, the more confused we become as to why we should live according to any normative morality. What follows is confusion, but not about things like morality and ethics—no society can survive without such ideas. It’s much worse. Instead, we’re now confused about God. We don’t know why our forefathers believed in Him in the first place, and, much worse, we don’t know why we stopped believing in Him to begin with. This is the hangover we’re currently suffering from: the fact that the last several generations before us left the reservation in search of “freedom”, but only found anarchy, and, what’s worse, have left my generation to deal with the consequences. One of those consequences is the belief that’s been manufactured and sold to us that popularity is better than truth, pure pragmatism. You can see this, of course, in our society’s emphasis on political correctness: don’t say what’s true, only what’s decidedly popular among elite liberals that were educated at UC Berkeley. So it’s no surprise that the questions we’ve lost answers to—the meaning of life, objective truth, what it means to be human, etc.—are the very questions that continue to plague the average man struggling to understand his purpose in this world painted with only grays. And now we’re starting to find out how much we need black and white to navigate our way through this abstract, but very concrete world.

But the reason that Christianity is being privatized and marginalized today is because, for one, it’s offering a cure to a world that doesn’t believe it’s sick. Whereas Paul preached good news to philosophers in Athens who were searching for a cure to their brokenness, Christians today preach good news to people who don’t think there ever was or is bad news. In affect, today Christianity’s core message—something along the lines of, “There’s something wrong with you, and here’s the cure.”—is thought of as a horrific nightmare rather than any sort of good news. This is why C.S. Lewis said that the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts. Today, the market place of ideas is not so much a thriving metropolitan of diversity as much as it is a wasteland of half-attempted and abandoned ideas. I think what’s necessary for progress now is for things to get worse in our society before they can get better—much, much worse. The truly bad news is that our generation has no fight left in it, only mere apathy. The decadents of our society will drive it into the ground further while the idealists, those few still fighting for meaning and truth, regretfully watch in horror, knowing only a death of sorts could bring new life to our society. In the end, our generation will go down in history as the generation of incredulity, a generation that died by drowning in a sea of grays.

“Who gave us a sponge to wipe away the whole horizon?” Friedrich Nietzsche

But grace is a bitter pill to swallow because it entails humility, and there is nothing easy about it. Humility is all about doing the one thing that is so incredibly contrary to your human nature: accepting defeat. Now, obviously, this doesn’t mean giving up altogether; on the contrary, it means exact opposite. Because unless you know the nature of how bad your circumstances are you’ll never be able to overcome them. And that’s where humility comes in: it’s the process of realizing that, unless you’re humble enough to accept grace, you really are screwed. By choosing to live by pride you choose to die, but not in the positive sense. Thus the paradox Jesus gives: “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” Pride makes you fight to hang onto everything in this life, while humility makes you realize that nothing in this life is worth hanging onto save grace. And that is why grace feels so costly, because it rips to shreds every bit of pride in you, taking away the very thing you’ve built your entire life on. The result? You’re freed from a losing battle, and, consequently, you understand that grace costs you nothing that’s worth keeping.

Freedom from pride brings freedom of life. The only freedom pride brings is the freedom of self-destruction—God certainly gives us that freedom. But laying down your pride is a life-giving decision, because you’re giving control of your life over to God, the one being who can manage your life perfectly; and only a perfect being can ensure total peace instead of total anxiety. Naturally, you don’t have to worry about your life being in the wrong hands anymore; namely, in your own fallible hands. Instead of worrying over whether or not you made the right choice, allowing God to break your pride completely and accepting His grace entails enjoying the knowledge that no matter what happens in your life, no matter how bad you mess up, God is in control; he won’t let your life slip into a meaningless disaster that would otherwise send you into a state of complete apathy. But being humbled means being shown your place, specifically, that there is someone out there greater than you; not greater in degree, but in kind. And at the end of the day, no matter how prideful you are, you desire to give your life over to someone capable of handling such a impossible and screwed up mess; you long for someone who can make right what’s been wronged. Freud called it wishful thinking, but Jesus called it humility. Pride will ultimately lead you down a road that ends in embarrassment. As Chesterton wrote, “Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot.” If you act as God and live by pride you’ll end in lunacy; if you act as a human and live by humility you’ll receive the Crown of Life. No matter what your pride tells you, no matter how great its promises, it lies. Humility might be a bitter pill to swallow, but it saves your life. In the end, pride will kill you.

In stretching my mind and perspectives of mission and development through my college courses and my short time of living and interning in South Atlanta I had already at this point come to have a certain cynicism about short term missions trips and an un-Christ-like distain for those who take part in them. Yet at the same time, when I look back on my personal experiences of short term missions, as well as several of my friends’; I know that they can be incredibly impactful, edifying experiences. In immersing myself in the neighborhood I lived in and in the work I was undertaking in South Atlanta, I met a roster full of challenging souls. I met vocational ministers who have dedicated their whole family’s lives to transformation of a neighborhood and a city, people who have given up lucrative careers, worldly comforts, and any kind of security to live in, invest, and neighbor (the verb) in a place they saw God at work. I met seasoned prayer warriors, too aged to fight physically, but waging war on darkness through faithful intercession for their community and loved ones.

In the face of such challenging souls, I felt lame, pale and void of hope of making any lasting impact on the community I committed one measly summer to. Then came the Yankees. As if my own frustrations of feeling ineffectual were not enough, in came a group determined to save the heathen of the South (yes, I’m over dramatizing). They came with an agenda, and they were determined to see it through and have tear-jerking stories to pack away with their sleeping bags and Nalgenes and take back to their shining suburban homes. Please forgive the dark humored sarcasm, but it is certainly accurate of my feelings as the group, after only ten minutes of having arrived across the street, was airing complaints about air conditioning, lighting, toiletries, showers, and washing machines.

After a week of neighboring the Yankees, seeing them in action, and working in close proximity with them, I began wrestling:

How do we bridge the gap, the gaping divide between well meaning Christian service and transformational community development? There are those who recklessly throw themselves into helping without recognition of the potential that helping has to hurt. Even to those of us who recognize the potential destructive effects of helping, the effects seem to be inevitable at times. The truth of the matter is that we are all called to minister, we are all called to reach out and to give; we are all called to relational community. So how do we do it? How do those who are in it for the long haul, invested in to lives and communities work with those who only have a few weeks or months to offer in service. How do those who know the stories of their neighbor’s childhood, the history of their community, and who fight daily and over years to empower and better their neighbors in the smallest and yet most profound ways, relate to those who jump in without context in hopes of making an immediate and drastic difference. The frustrations can be monumental and divisive to say the least. It is certainly tempting to simply close the door in cynicism to those who quite fairly are naïve, ignorant, and impulsive. We however are not to raise such walls with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

One of our Lord’s final imperatives on this earth was that we should be bound in Unity by the way we love and treat each other. This also and especially means in ministry. As far as the convergence of long and short time missionaries and ministers, I believe this calls, even demands, a more intentional approach from all involved.

Long time, committed, and invested ministers must accept those who offer their time and resources temporarily understanding that the greatest payoff may not be immediate, but a seed of awakening planted in the hearts of the temps. Those taking part in short term trips must approach their mission with great humility borne of proper perspective. The aim should be to support those who are in it for the long haul, who have the relationships that will last and have dedicated their lives to them.

I’ve not given up hope on short-term missions/ministry; but here’s the challenge I will continue to wrestle with and I challenge you to as well: how do we bridge the gap? Challenge your thinking, your planning, and your support. Committed warriors, have patience with we who are young and naïve but are full of passionate zeal. Young in the ministry, recognize how ignorant you are and how far there is still to go, but don’t become disheartened. Let’s fight to maintain unity and honor our Christ in the way we approach ministry from wherever we come at it from.

But at the right time, Christ made atonement for our sins once and for all on the cross, His and ours, and now we stand justified before the holy God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Jesus sits forever at the right hand of the Father, continually offering His own blood to satisfy the requirement for this justification, this “right standing” before God.  Then God sent His Ghost: His Life – The Spirit.  It dwells within us and makes us finally, truly alive.  We are adopted as His children and are no longer children of wrath.  These are fundamental truths to our faith.  Doctrine.  The Gospel of God that is older than the Earth, and will outlast everything we see.

But there is another fundamental truth that Paul speaks about in Romans 8.  The truth that we are heirs with Christ in His suffering, as well as His glory. This is something that we tend to glean over in the consumeristic “disneyland” of America.  We tend to forget that we are called to suffer for the cause of Christ.

But there are places in the world where they don’t forget.  Places they can’t forget the pain and suffering because it is part of their daily existence.  Places like China, where one million worship Christ in secret churches held in basements and livings rooms.  Where believers are often arrested, beaten, and even executed for preaching the gospel of Christ.  Places like India, where Hindu extremists beat and murder Christians, and women keep their rebirth in Christ secret from their husbands, for fear of being beaten to death.  In Iran and Pakistan and Morocco and Saudi Arabia and Nepal.

Their belief in Jesus Christ goes hand-in-hand with their suffering.  The cross is their greatest reality.

Here is another reality: It is in these places that the Gospel is advancing with the greatest success.  Why?  Because it is in the face of hatred and persecution, under the daily threat of death, the faithful are desperate for God, and find all their joy and satisfaction in Christ alone.  He is their wellspring of living water.

Pray that we in the American church would be this desperate.  Read the stories of these amazing individuals who pick up their cross and daily face the injustice of religious persecution. Pray that they would be able to stand through his fiery trial, and so then to advance the Gospel in the face of death.

Pray that they understand that suffering is part of the Christian life, and that we would understand this as well.

Now: become aware, and get involved.

John 15.18-25
Acts 5.41
1 Peter 4.12-19

www.joshuaproject.org
www.persecution.com
www.desiringgod.org
www.brookhills.org

So in all fairness, I know I have an unusual thirst for knowledge.

Yet now I’m starting to realize that I don’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. That’s to say the least. And to make matters worse, not only do I not like this, but the Western culture I live in doesn’t like this either. My culture values intellectual confidence far more than it values intellectual humility. It values mere answers rather than valuing both the answer and the process that leads one to the answer. And although I know I must be confident in certain things, many things, I also know I must be humble in how much I don’t know. And this is incredibly important, because it’s exactly in knowing you lack knowledge that you then want to seek it. But this is where I’ve failed in basic epistemology. I’ve forgotten, my culture has forgotten, that what you know is only half of it. The other half is how do you know what you know?

You see, the last few weeks I’ve been reading the Early Church Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, etc. And I learned something profound after reading so many personal letters between these figures, their autobiographies and their biographies. And that is this. They had nothing to rely upon to strengthen their faith besides themselves and the Holy Spirit. They didn’t have the canonical Bible like we have today. That’s huge! Sure, they had a few to several books now found in the Bible, but I don’t think I’ve ever stopped to think about what that meant for them exactly. That means they had to do all the hard work that I know enjoy all the fruits of: grueling analyzation of every text now found in my Bible (and even those that didn’t make the cut), prayer and fasting to decide which books were spiritually authoritative, forming ecumenical councils (no small task, people) that dedicated their lives to ensuring all future Christians would have an official language of their faith, and dedicating themselves to learning philosophy to defend their beliefs against complex heresies like Arianism. All so that their foundation of Christ upon which they hold fast to the faith would be greatly strengthened all the more by a common language known to all believers everywhere. And they did all of this knowing they could be martyred.

Many of them were martyred.

Unlike myself, these men had to start with essentially nothing. They didn’t have the “right answers” like I have today, answers that were refined through genius minds such as Augustine, through giant intellectual periods like the Middle Ages, and reformations like Martin Luther’s. They were laying a foundation for their Faith while at the same time defending attacks against it and all the while working in darkness, so to speak. In fact, have you ever seen construction workers trying to finish a concrete foundation in the midst of heavy rain and during night time? I have, and it’s insane. They have to mix the concrete, pour it, strike the excess, level it and smooth out the surface. And if you don’t think that’s hard enough, try it sometime. It’s back breaking work. But then you should try doing that while also protecting the concrete from heavy rain that can ruin the mixture of the crete—making it set too fast or too slow—while working with minimal lighting—making it difficult to tell whether your surface is truly level and as smooth as you think it is. And to make it an accurate analogy, try doing all of that while being under physical attack and having to give your life up to ensure the foundation sets like it needs to in order to withstand the stress it’ll be under for who knows how many millenniums. From what I’ve read so far, that seems to be a good picture of the Early Church at work before Constantine.

But the “foundation” of the Christian Faith is standing just fine today, people.

So not only did these godly men accomplish their improbable, monumental mission, but they accomplished it well. Were their mistakes made? Yes. Because every foundation is bound to endure stress cracks. But comparing fruits and sins of certain Christians today with these Christians wouldn’t be wise. For many Christians today, sex, money and power are the greatest temptations. Do you know what the greatest temptation was for many of these early Christians? Yes, you guessed it: causing their own martyrdom, and a horrific one at that.

I say all of that to say this. I know a lot of answers to a lot of questions, especially concerning my faith. A lot of my Christian friends do, too. But I’m just now realizing I don’t know how to defend those answers on my own, at least not like the Early Church Fathers learned to do. I’ve heard Francis Chan ask something along the lines of, “What would the Church look like if everyone in the Church lived like you?” This is a good question, and another question should be asked: What would the Church look like today if we (my generation) were the Early Church Fathers? Would we even have a canonical Bible today? Would we be able to philosophically dismantle heretical teachings like Arianism, or universalism? Would we be able to teach the Bible to the persecuted church by memory? The questions could go on and on, but I’m afraid my generation would utterly fail to answer these questions in the positive.

I’m afraid that as of now I would fail to answer these questions in the positive.

And so, I’m now realizing that answers aren’t enough. They might be enough for us today, but they aren’t enough to ensure the stability and flourishing of a future worldwide Church. The Early Church Fathers knew this. We have to struggle to understand the answers for ourselves, not merely take our inheritance as Christians without understanding the blood, sweat and tears that produced it. A few weeks ago a professor told my class that in a survey of hundreds of Christian students attending Biola—one of the most respected Christian institutions in the world—only three (maybe five) percent of them knew the Ten Commandments. What a wake up call. When our generation of Christians is considered in the scheme of church history, it’s safe to say we’ll be one of the greatest anomalies: the greatest access to the Bible in all of history, and yet the least knowledge of it; the greatest opportunities to defend the faith intellectually, and yet the most anti-intellectual; and on and on and on.

The right answers are good, but they aren’t good enough. I need to start learning for myself, and stop being so content with manufactured answers that pacify my intellectual fears. I need to struggle more with what I know. We all need to do this.

Growing up in the Midwest of this “great” and prosperous nation we all know of as the United States of America has had a very interesting toll on my mind and soul, giving me a false idea of “joy.” As I spent my lifeless years wasting away, being told to follow my heart, looking out for myself and myself alone, looking for pleasure in the meaningless and tasteless entertainment of my society, false love, pornography (which led to the objectification of women who I sorrowfully and regretfully could not adequately and truly love), bad jokes, hatred, and a numerous amount of other things of this world, all while so blindly labeling every single bit of it “joy,” there has been a still, small Voice preparing my heart, mind, soul and body to the point where my whole existence and all true joy would be revealed to me.

There is much to say concerning the pursuit of happiness. In our western society, we are constantly told about this road to happiness. Our school systems are daily drilling it into each and every student’s mind to pursue happiness, as though this is something that will actually last or fulfill us or essentially give us “meaning”. Now let me make something clear. Happiness is most definitely a real feeling—a very surface-level feeling to say the least. However, there are some things that I have personally come to realize through my own stupidity about this pursuit. In our pursuit of happiness, we slowly begin to neglect the Truth, to neglect our true function to not live for ourselves, and, overall, to neglect our Creator and our fellow brothers and sisters that are placed around us. In this pursuit we will wander the furthest away from Truth; losing both sight and knowledge of true joy and love only found in Him, and things that are not about ourselves.

Now, I am not a man of old age, or a man full of wisdom, but throughout my life I have been encouraged to seek out what is best for me, to go after my dreams at all cost, and to follow my heart (side note: Jeremiah 17:9), as I have already mentioned; you know, a sort of narcissistic and hedonistic lifestyle, to say the least. Now I do not want to be a “Debbie-downer”. Happiness is just fine. We will be happy at times, just as we find ourselves in other emotional states. But my point here is to explain that when we blindly pursue happiness, we fall into temptation and a snare and into many other disgusting desires that we think will actually fulfill us, giving us some sort of “meaning” or some sort of worth. This is a very harmful thing to pursue. We will find true joy in the times of giving, the times of trial, the times of hardships, the times of suffering, the times of worship. We all must join together as brothers and sisters. We must look out for one another before looking out for ourselves and must love each other as Christ has so loved us. Happiness comes and goes but joy is found in the presence of our beautiful, lovely, and lowly King.

In 1908, a child by the name of Malcolm was born to Annie and Henry Muggeridge. Malcolm became a very wise man; a man who much truth had been revealed to. As I began to read the words of Sir Muggeridge I came across some things he said that literally left me flabbergasted.

“I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus.”

“There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness . . . is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase ‘the pursuit of happiness’ is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world.”

We, as followers of the beloved Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, have to stop giving ourselves over to the things of this world. We are filling ourselves up with these meaningless pursuits of this world (riches, happiness, etc.). When we deny ourselves and deny our pursuit of this world’s objects of happiness we will realize what joy is. It is now up to you to find this joy that I have attempted to speak of. You will then know the peace that surpasses all understanding.

No more me, only you and only Him.

No more pursuit of happiness, only pursuit of Him and His kingdom.

No more Chase Carson, only Yeshua.

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah (pause and reflect).

When my entire being is like a desert, you are my source of living water. When I walk in the wilderness and am dying from my journey, my hands shaking and my knees giving out, you come to save me (Isaiah 35:3,4).

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When my sins overpower me, like a weight too heavy for me to carry, You don’t withhold mercy from me (Psalm 40:11,12). When my heart utterly fails me and I find myself driven to my knees with no where else to turn, you are my Deliver (Psalm 40:17).

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When I abandon what I know is right, You leave all others behind to come find me (Matthew 18:12,13). No, even if I decide to travel to the far most corners of the world, in a city unknown to all others, and leave all good things behind me, still you are there with me and make camp near to me for my protection (Psalm 139:11). Others will give up, but you never do.

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When I screw up, and have lost respect, trust and good reputation because of my sins, you discipline me hard because you love me (Hebrews 12:5,6). Only then do you call me a legitimate son (Hebrews 12:8). Only then do you catch me back up with where I was supposed to be in the first place in life.

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When the seasons of friends change, and I’m found by myself once again, you remind me that you’ve always been closest to me. You are my best friend, only you have my back like a true soldier in war. You get me like nobody else ever could. You constantly teach me that we are a band of brothers together. Hoo-rah!

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When I feel worthless after comparing myself to others and their success, you remind me that you personally made me in your image (Genesis 1:27). You remind me that success to You is different than to the world. You came not to be glorified, but to serve all people (Mark 10:45).

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When all is crashing down upon me, You are my refuge from harm (Psalm 142: 5). Your goodness builds a fortress around me in the midst of a storm and lets not one thing harm me. Father, you are the only safeguard I need. You offer your jaw to be struck when punches are thrown my way, because you Father do not have a glass jaw (1st Peter 2:24). Only you can take the worst of hits and stand (Exodus 15:3,4).

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When I don’t understand life and how meaningless everything can appear to be, you remind me that there is nothing worth going after in this world besides You (Ecclesiastes 12:13). All the fame, pleasure, reputation, and good fortune are only temporary: they are like mere shadows and dust. Only you are worth pursuing, Father. Only You, Father, are good (Mark 10:18).

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When my family and friends have been mistreated and wronged, and I cannot help secure justice for them, you tell me that vengeance is yours (Romans 12:19). You teach me that justice delayed is not justice denied. Even more Father, you find perfect ways to make good things from the bad (Romans 8:28). Yes, even more, you invite these that have been wronged into your beautiful mansion and host a party for them in front of those who did them wrong (Psalm 23:5). You anoint us and the party we enjoy together.

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When I do not know how to love, and am a burden to those around me, you teach me how to love by loving me first (1 John 4:19). You do not play favorites, but you have sent your son to the point of death that all of mankind, with no exceptions, would be saved (John 3:16). Lord you out-do me in love every moment of every day.

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When I am on the verge of losing it, and fear that I have no way out of my pain, to the point of death, You are my way out (Philippians 4:13). In my worst depressions, insecurities and moments of  stubborn pride, you break me down so as to build me back up with perfect stability (Matthew 7:24).

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When I write songs and play my guitar to worship you, but do so with an empty heart, you crush my vanity and remind me that justice for the oppressed is what you desire, not superficial acknowledgement (Amos 5:23,24). No, you desire all of me like a jealous lover (Exodus 34:14). The first thing you command of me is to love You with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength (Luke 10:27).

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When I do not know what plans to make for my life, and what is most important so that I might make You happy, You gladly tell me that You first desire that I seek Your kingdom and righteousness (Matthew 6:33). Only then will all the other cares of my life—my family, friends, career, financial needs—be taken care of well before your eyes.

When I am weak, You are strong Father. Selah.

When those moments of uncertainty overtake me, and I do not know who I am, you remind me that in order to find myself, I must first find you (Jeremiah 29:13). Not only that, but you remind me that it was you who was the joy of my teenage years (Psalm 43:4). You are the God of the past-times I remember so happily. (Psalm 74:12). And you are not done with me yet.

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Jesus, my Father.

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4.18, “the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” God is spirit, and we are called to worship Him in spirit. We cannot perceive this on our own. The Holy Spirit, the life of God dwelling in our flesh, must reveal this to us. He gives us the ability to behold that which is immaterial, and to savor that which is eternal. The Spirit allows us to value the invisible God in the person of Christ, and though the world sees us as fools, to invest the whole of our existence in this truth. He allows us to endure hardship, and pain and suffering of all varieties in order to display His glory and grace. (2 Cor. 4.1-18)

This has never made sense to the world. It will never make sense to the world. The world hated Christ for this truth, and it will hate us for it. The lives and deaths of the apostles attest to this. The Spirit came upon these men, most of whom were uneducated tradesmen, and revealed a secret and hidden wisdom that all the wise kings and philosophers could not grasp. Nor will the intellectuals and debaters of this age perceive it, unless illuminated by the Spirit of the living God.

The prophet Jeremiah says this:

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight. Jeremiah 9: 23-24.

Wisdom, might, riches. All things we can see. All things that will end.

Love, justice, righteousness. All eternally valuable concepts that are only truly made real when revealed by the Spirit of God in our lives.