No one said it would be easy...

For what it is worth, I hope this post is encouraging, as discouraging as it may read.  It seems that the last few weeks of my life have been filled with a common theme that many of us struggle with in our pursuit of Christ.  I have been blessed with an opportunity to live in a close community of young men, who are passionately pursuing the heart of God, for the next few months…  and I could not be more grateful for this opportunity, especially now. 

Brothers and Sisters, followers of Christ, we have chosen a difficult journey.  The adventure that we have signed up for by following Christ is just that, an adventure. 

Will it be fun, exciting, and at times painful?  Yes. 

Will it be easy?  Absolutely not. 

Somewhere along the line we fell into this ideal that following Christ will mean an easy and prosperous life, free from hardship.  I do not know where we get such ideas.  When we study the Word, God never promises us an easy life for putting our faith, hope, and trust in him.  We have twisted God’s promise of a more fulfilling life to think that we will have a more prosperous, blessed, and easier way of life.

Friends, these are lies. 

No one said it would be easy. 

In fact, the Bible constantly reminds us of the difficulties that we will face (See: Matthew 6:34, John 16:33, Romans 5:3-5, James 1:2-4).  The Bible constantly reminds us of our need to be actively pursuing Christ (Romans 8:1-2, II Corinthians 1:8-11) .  The Bible constantly reminds us to be ready to face opposition, because it will come (I came across this great sermon my Mark Driscoll from Nehemiah 4 on this, if you have an hour please watch it).

Why do you think it so important to be in community with those who share your heart?  Why do you think we desperately need to spend time in prayer and reading our Bible? 

Because it [passionately following Christ] is not easy, especially when we try to do it alone. 

It is not easy to live by faith, when culture is telling us to take control of our own lives.  It is not easy to love others, when culture tells us that love is a currency, to be used for our own self-gain.  It is not easy to surrender everything, when culture tells us that we are defined by our material possessions, relationships, successes, and even failures. 

I hope you see the picture that I am trying to paint, if our lives are becoming too easy for too long… maybe we need to examine our heart.  Do I think that every minute of every day must be difficult to prove that we are following Christ?  No.  Yet, if our hearts are to glorify God we must know that we will run into hardship. There will be people who oppose us. 

However, we do have hope.  We have been promised life, and life to the fullest.  Additionally, we have been granted the opportunity to see the world through our Savior’s eyes.  If we remain faithful in our struggle with sin, if we struggle well, He will elevate us.  Daniel was spared from the mouths’ of angry lions (Daniel 6).  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were spared from a fiery furnace (Daniel 3). Elijah brought fire from heaven, on multiple occasions (I and II Kings).  Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, placed in prison, and was then elevated to the second highest position in Egypt (Genesis 37-45).  Paul and Peter faced constant imprisonment; James and Stephen were killed for their faith (Acts and pretty much the whole New Testament).  Jesus was conspired against, betrayed, mocked, beaten, and crucified…  These are who we should aspire to model our faith after.

Do I think all of us will face such extreme persecution?  No, but if the value of our lives were the salvation of countless others like these men and Jesus, shouldn’t we live in a way that stirs the pot a little?  Maybe a lot (we can only hope)?  I truly believe that if we surrender to God’s will for us, he will use us for great things… just like all of these faithful followers. 

If you have made it this far into this post, thank you for sticking with me.  While I am not the first to tell you, or at least I hope not, being a Christ follower will not always be easy. But God has not left us to do it alone either, we have our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we have Him.  What more could we need?

II Corinthians 1:9-10

“Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.  But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us.  On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,”

God, Here’s Your Reminder…

Let me just get right to it.

Today at ethos, my home church, Pastor Dave spoke on Matthew 6:19-34.  Now this is a scripture that I have read countless times, but have failed to reach many of the conclusions found in Dave’s message today.  Yet there was one in particular that really hit home. 

Our worrying is an open assault on God’s ability to care for us.

Think about your own prayer life, it is probably a lot like mine.  We go to God in our times of need.  Every little petty thing, the things we usually worry about, we remind God that we are in constant need.  Dave painted a great picture of a son asking/reminding his father of his every need.  It sounded insulting. 

I asked myself if I treated God that way... reminding Him of everything I need that week?  Instead of asking the Lord for wisdom, discernment, or a deeper intimacy and love for him, I find myself reminding the Lord of my need to eat and pay the rent.  Do not misunderstand me, I’m not convicted by my trusting in God’s provision.  He wants us to fully trust Him for providing, and sustaining.  Yet my heart wants to trust that God will provide, without spending my intimate prayer time reminding God of my “little” needs.  Instead, can I trust without reminding God that my rent is due in two weeks and ask God to bring me closer to Him, whatever it takes?  Maybe that just means really trusting for God’s provision down to the very last minute.  

Not only does our worrying keep us from intimacy with God, it keeps us from trusting that God’s plans for us.  They are exciting, adventurous, and BIG plans, but we cannot let our worrying to openly assault God’s ability to care for us.  If we are caring for that which God will provide, we are incapable of being used for other things, amazing and God glorifying things.

In all honesty, there is sooooo much more to second half of Matthew 6 than just trust.  I really encourage any of you who are reading to listen to this message by checking out the church’s podcast (Sermon Title: More Like Jesus : Part 2 posted August 21st).

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds then.  Are you not much more valuable than they?

Matthew 6:26

In Grace and Love,

PBANDCY

A Perfect Story… With a Few Imperfections

Since reading Don Miller’s book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I’ve continued to reference life as a story.  It makes sense.  Everyone loves a good story, why wouldn’t we desire to live one?

Over the last few months I’ve started this little project, I write/talk to all sorts of people about what it means to be human.  Friends, family, strangers, and many of my friends from camp.  It has been the single most rewarding thing I have taken on, partly because in my own story I feel that this idea of “being human” will play a very important part of where I go and what I end up doing.

So after collecting my letters and going through my notes of conversations, I have decided that (actually it was most of the people that I have talked with) an important part about being human is being imperfect.  Or more importantly, how we react or respond to our imperfectness expresses our beliefs about being human. 

The truth is, we are imperfect.  We struggle with sin, we will disappoint someone, somewhere, at some time in our life, probably on multiple occasions.   Good thing the gospel reminds us that we are imperfect, finite people that God still wants to use us for His better story.  Thank the Lord for the witness of Paul, a person who was responsible for the mass murder of Christians in the early Church, yet after His encounter with Christ he became one of the greatest ambassadors for His glory.  And the Disciples, people just like you and me… imperfect…  yet when asked to surrender everything, they said yes.  When asked to be a part of a better story, they said yes.

Friends, our story is not about being perfect, we must be made perfect.  It is about knowing we are imperfect and being used for God’s perfect story.  Still, we have decisions to make, and at times we may make the wrong one; but thankfully we have a loving Father who so desperately wants to make us perfect, through Him.  I wish I could say that our journeys towards better stories will be easy.  At times it may be, but there will be many times that we are opposed because of the perfect story that has been set on our heart. 

If anything, our imperfectness should remind us of how desperately we need grace and how much we must depend on God.  We need to know that we are imperfect so that through us we can better demonstrate Love.  We need to understand that we are not capable of much without Him, but if we will let Him, He will use us to do great things. 

So understand that being imperfect does not mean that we are not useful, or that we are not capable of doing great good.  If our story includes the grace of Christ, we are capable of doing even bigger things than we could have ever imagined. 

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.  We implore you on Christ’s behalf:  Be reconciled to God.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

II Corinthians 5:17-21

Without Excuse

Photo taken from the summit of Castle Peak, Elk Mountains, Colorado.  14,265 ft.

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Romans 1:20

Live a Better Story.

I love Donald Miller.  The first book of his I read, Blue Like Jazz, was the first book that challenged me to understand faith as my own.  As much as I loved that book, it has taken me over four years to pick up another of his works, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  Sure enough, I came across this book while looking for another book by a different author.

God has a way with “perfect timing”.  I’ve wanted to read this book for awhile, but I don’t think I was ready for it until now.  These last few months God has occupied much of my thoughts with questions about life’s purpose and meaning, both for myself and for others.  Ironically, this is what Miller is writing about... at least that is what I believe I am reading about. 

Life (being human, purpose, meaning, whatever you want to call it) is very much like a story, it is our story.  Do we truly want our story to be simply about our pursuit of comfortable living?  Do we want our story to be simple at all?  I don’t. 

That’s where Miller’s challenge comes in.  Live a better story.  You and I, whether you believe our lives to be spoken into existence by God or not, have been given control of our own story.  The pages to our future are unwritten.  They are not written for me, and they are not written for you either.  You and I have the opportunity to write our futures, to write successes and failures, adventures and misadventures.  Or, we can write a simple story, of avoiding conflict, playing it safe, taking care of ourselves, not risking anything.  We can write a boring story, if that is what we want. 

Even though we have been called into existence for a purpose, our future is our own.  However, "writing" our story should still include learning to trust and depend fully on God’s plan for us, which I hardly doubt is a simple, comfortable, and meaningless life.  Still, He has created us for a purpose and given us the opportunity to live for something greater, live for something other than ourselves, live in faith.  This is the exciting part about being human, having the ability to make our own decisions, step out in faith, and live out the adventure that God has purposed us for.

So here is my question to you (and me).  When someone else tells our story, what will they say?  Will it be about comfortable living, free from risk?  Or will it be about struggle, conflict, and adventure?  Do you believe that God has written us into existence so that we can live comfortably, or for something more?  How will we live a better story?

Psalm 139:16

“All the days ordained for me

were written in your book

before one of them came to be.”

Brown paper packages, tide up with strings… These are a few of my favorite things…

It has certainly been awhile since my last blog post, but camp has kept me far from my computer for most of the summer.  With that said, it’s been hard to capture my experiences as they happened.

While I met a lot of incredible people who I now consider amazing friend, the “theme” for this post was inspired by one, Sarah Daniel.  She was one of the first counselors I met at camp, and before camp even started she asked, “So Cy, do you love camp yet?”  I won’t lie, I initially thought Sarah was a bit crazy, but I was wrong…  She just loves camp, she loves when other people love camp, and now she loves that I love camp. 

So here are just a few reasons why I love camp:
(I'm sure I missed some important ones... so if you would like to add, please do)

The unforgettable things that kids say and do, they really do say the darndest things… I love camp.

·      Camper on our overnight, “If I snare a dear, can we eat him?”

·      Camper 1: “What was Jesus’ last name?”
Camper 2: “Christ, duh.”

·      Camper:  “Cy, have you finished reading A Brief History of Time (A Stephen Hawking book on the theory of relativity, time travel, and why we are on earth) yet?”
Me:  “Kenny, you gave it to me this morning.”

The pool, the diving board, Swim Olympics and Belly Flop competitions… I love camp. 

"FLYYYYIIINGGG FIIIISSSHHHH!

Suffering through the days when there was no coffee, but totally relying on each other to do so...  I love camp.

Counselor hunt, war paint, ninja outfits, hiding on top of the basketball hoop... I love camp. 

Mikie/Cy, Life/Death, Good/Evil...

Working rental camps, staying up late playing board games, sleeping through breakfast… I love camp. 

Thanks to camp, my brother and I have the satisfaction of knowing that two pairs of these pants exist... and we own them both...  I love camp.

Assist goes to Emily Sumners and Sarah Daniel

Talking to each other in our "Ms. Kim" voice, because it's so awesome... I love camp.

Dressing ridiculous for camp dances, and dancing so hard that your entire shirt is soaked in sweat…. I love camp

Hippy Dance with Jal, Myself, Mikie, and Shaun

Having a birthday at camp, and feeling incredibly loved… Camp birthdays are the best...  I love camp.

Co-counselors...  I love camp.

Ryan was my only co-counselor this summer.
So grateful for this guy.

Getting my chest waxed in front of camp during the two week session, all thanks to my brother…  I love camp. 

"Kelly Clarkson"

Waxing my brother's leg and armpit...  I love camp...  and I love my brother.

About to wax Mikie's armpit.

Storms in our little tin cans, also known as cabins… I love camp.

Playing Mafia, telling jokes, and sharing riddles with the campers till late, knowing how hard it is going to be to wake up for that breakfast bell and loving every minute of it… I love camp.

Getting to shave your facial hair in a way that is usually culturally unacceptable, but at camp is totally okay, arguably… I love camp.  

If that doesn't say "America", I don't know what does.

Prank night… I love camp.

Ropes Staff and talking about "our feelings"… I love camp. 

Sharing deep conversations, hearing the hearts of new friends,  and writing letters between cabins… I love camp. 

Making “True Life: I love camp” with Sarah… I love camp. 

Being able to spend this summer with my brother and Ben, couch surfing and generally just being up to no good… I love camp.

Ben, Mikie, and I at the Sounds Game on the 4th of July with
our friends from camp (Emily Sumners is the only one pictured)

Showering with ginormous spiders, and being perfectly fine with it… I love camp. 

Hearing where many of our campers come from, where they are going home to, and knowing that you’ve influenced them in a positive way in the short time they spend at camp…   I love camp.  

Some of the youngins' at trading post

Learning to play new songs on the guitar, thanks to Ben for the lessons and Sarah for her Guitar…  I love camp. 

Spending the whole summer getting to know and working with some amazing people, hoping that they learned just as much from you and you did from them…  I love camp.

Summer Staff and the magical Danger Ranger

.I LOVE CAMP.

May you...

Compliments to Katilyn White for sharing this benediction about becoming human, author unknown. 

May you be blessed with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you will live deep in your heart.

May you be blessed with anger at injustice, oppression and the exploitation of people and the Earth, so that you will work for Justice, Equity and Peace.

May you be blessed with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you will reach out your hand to comfort them and change their pain into joy.

And may you be blessed with foolishness to think you can make a difference in the world, so that you will do the things which others say cannot be done.

As God’s own, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, and patience, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, and crown all these things with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Glory be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, it is now, and so shall be forever and ever. Allelujah! Amen.