Death

My wife's dog passed away yesterday morning, she was 10 years old; in dog years that would make her 70 years old. Her passing brought about a lot of sad emotions. She will be greatly missed.

Nobody likes death, in fact I'm pretty sure everyone hates it. Death is probably the worst thing to experience here on earth. To lose someone and to not have that person around anymore is the worst feeling.

However, death is the destiny of everyone. No one will escape death, no matter what we try to do. We can exercise, eat healthy, have surgeries or lock ourselves in a room- each one of us will taste death.

But besides the obvious, why does death hurt us so much? Is it because we yearn to live forever? I think everyone, no matter what they believe, yearns for a place where there is no disease, no sickness, no death, no wars, no sadness, no tears- a place that is completely perfect. A place where we can see our dead loved ones again.

The Bible calls this place heaven. For Christians, this is the hope that we have. Death is not the end but a beginning. I'm aware that some people would call this "wishful thinking"; that a place like this does not even exist.

But I would wager everything, that all people despite their convictions or beliefs, long for a place like this. Even if they don't believe in a God or in a heaven, I'm sure deep down they would hope its true. Who wouldn't want to be reunited with their dead mother, father, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends and pets??

This is one of the reasons why I believe Jesus and Christianity is worth considering.

Remember the Dream

I was driving in my bus (yeah I drive school buses part time..lol..) and I was talking to God and I noticed something different in my prayers. Slowly but surely my prayers have become small, trivial and realistic. This bothered me for the whole bus ride. I used to love praying BIG prayers, asking God to do impossible things. But lately, it been prayers about merely surviving and getting by in life. I would pray for Church, but it would be small prayers like praying that we make rent and hopefully reach a few people.

This time in the bus reminded me that I had forgotten about the dream. It reminded me that my faith has become small. I can picture Jesus saying to me "Oh you of little faith", and he was right. The painful part about it was that I never even noticed how small my faith had become. I had let problems, struggles, and the stresses of life shrink my faith.

My time in the bus reminded me that I serve a BIG God! A God that does the impossible! It should always be an expectation not a hope, that God will do crazy-amazing things! When we started this Church, we had such big dreams and hopes. But lately it seems that many of us have forgotten the dream. We have settled for mediocrity.

Let us not forget the dream! Let us continue to dream BIG and have faith that God will do the impossible! Let us continue to pray and expect God to do things that only God can do. Never stop working, never stop praying and never forget who we follow!

Life without God

These past few weeks have been pretty rough, maybe a better word for it is overwhelming. There were so many times where I felt so anxious and so worried that it was taking over my life. The only way I could respond to it was to turn to God. I needed help. I needed to talk to Him and seek his presence.

These past few days I have been better. I've been more at peace and I feel more secure as I trust Him. It gave me a new sense of how much I need God; that I can't go through life without Him especially when problems become so overwhelming.

As I was going through this, I was wondering to myself how it would be like to not have God in your life . It's hard for me to imagine life without God. It would just be so hard. It would even be more stressful and challenging. I would have a hard time surviving. Like what do you do when you know you can't do it? What do you do when you fail? Who do you turn to when you need help and your friends and family can't? If we rely solely on ourselves, failures become even bigger because we have no one to blame but ourselves.

I wonder that perhaps we were not meant to rely just on ourselves- it would just be too hard. That maybe we are limited. Maybe there is a reason for that, maybe God likes it when we rely on Him, when we depend on Him, when we trust Him. I know some people would call God a "crutch". But I don't see it that way. I see it more as a loving Father and friend who has tremendous compassion to our circumstances that He is eager to give a helping hand.

Christians and the Mind

A lot of Christian experience is based all on emotions. Based on how we feel. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but I wonder if we have neglected the mind? If you ask many Christians today to tell people "what" they believe I'm sure many Christians are able to do so.

But if you ask them, "why" it's true, I'm willing to bet my house that many Christians have no clue. I really believe that is the problem with today's Christianity. Can we answer questions like "Is the Bible reliable?"; "Why is Sex before marriage wrong for you?"; "Why is drunkeness is bad?"

Can we answer these questions without using the cliche "Because the Bible says so...?"

If you use that, then I have a question for you-"why does the Bible say that?" Is it just for fun or because God had nothing better to do?

Here is a good article that I found at the Christian Post. I agree with the article whole heartedly.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20100120/apologist-youths-need-truth-not-easy-believism/index.html

The role of Obedience

A Christian's relationship with God should be the most important aspect of his life. It's a relationship that should be vibrant and alive. A relationship which values honesty and transparency- that challenges you, builds you up and refines your character. It is a friendship between you and God, not anyone else, just you and God. To fathom that reality is very hard to do-that the God of this universe calls you friend is mind boggling. It hurts my head just thinking about it. I can talk to God whenever I want. He is there always listening to my worries, struggles and even things that are probably meaningless like tv shows, sports and movies.

But the thing that we need to remember is that God speaks too. So often we love to take over the conversation and its just us talking- blah blah blah blah- and then bye God, see you later. We seldom take the time to just sit and stay silent- listening for God to speak.

But when He does speak, it becomes a moment of decision. We need to decide if we are going to obey or not. That's the thing I find puzzling with some Christians. They want God to speak; they want guidance; they want God to direct their paths- yet when an answer comes it's either not what they expected or it's too hard and painful to do- so they do their own thing. They take the path of least resistance. In other words, it's called disobedience. Then they wonder why life has gone so wrong. As much as it's hard to say, we reap what we sow.

A relationship with God also requires obedience. After all, we do call Jesus our "Lord" don't we? But I'm not sure why people don't take that seriously? Why don't we treat Him as such?
It's funny because we love to use phrases like Jesus is the center of our lives. But if we are honest is He? Can we tell Him honestly that we are having trouble revolving our lives around Him? Can we just admit that were just adding Jesus to our lives when its convenient? These are hard things to admit. But we need to admit it first before we can move forward.

If we truly believe that God knows best and in fact He holds the future, than no matter how hard or inconvenient it is we need to obey, not doing so will only hurt us in the long run.

New Years Resolutions

Here are my 2010 New Year's Resolutions

1. Eat healthier and exercise- limit the junk food

2. Don't be lazy!

3. Don't waste time!

4. Read even more books (I read a lot in 2009- but I want more!!)

5. Pray everyday!

6. Have more self-control when watching Raptor games

7. Listen to more Sermon Podcasts (at least 3 sermons a week)

CHUCK "Olympics" Promo!! It's sweet!!!