what is prayer?
anyone want to venture opinions?
dimanche, octobre 30, 2005
haha, since warren says that my posts are too deep, which is why no one ever comments....
i present you with a conversation with a friend. in context...we're talking about awkward moments--namely awkward moments of my year due to guy/girl shenanigans.
Me: i've had enough mayo (awkward) moments to last me a lifetime.
Matey: no worries man. Ten years from now, none of this will matter. Either that or you'll be a mayonnaise tycoon.
a mayonnaise tycoon eh? yikes, SOOO sketch.
i present you with a conversation with a friend. in context...we're talking about awkward moments--namely awkward moments of my year due to guy/girl shenanigans.
Me: i've had enough mayo (awkward) moments to last me a lifetime.
Matey: no worries man. Ten years from now, none of this will matter. Either that or you'll be a mayonnaise tycoon.
a mayonnaise tycoon eh? yikes, SOOO sketch.
samedi, octobre 29, 2005
well here i am blogging again. i think...priyanka, you are the only one reading this...haha.
whatevs. i don't need an audience. i just need a way to remember.
So here's my thought for the day.
i am in the doubting phase of my rut. can you hear God? i can't. when you say "God told me this.." or "God spoke to me.." do you actually hear a voice thundering down from heaven? Because i certainly don't.
Don't get me wrong...i am NOT questioning the existence of God, i am not questioning His goodness, His mercy and His grace... i am not questioning who HE is. i believe the Bible is the truth--the WORD OF GOD, the only truth. So what am i questioning? At this point i am unsure. But i pulled out a book from my shelf, that i've honestly never read (beyond the first chapter) and it seems as though this is divine intervention. Because its addressing the issues that are tucked down deep in my heart. And perhaps, if you are honest...they tug somewhere down in your heart too. If not, you can be the 'Christian' that prays for my salvation, prays that i will not 'fall away' and become a 'heathen'. Of course, its appreciated..especially if you hear voices. If you do, talk to me. I might be filled with awe...or i might just diagnose you as schizophrenic--the Center for Addiction and Mental health is of course..just down the street.
So, before i bid you adieu...i leave you with excerpts from Philip Yancey's, Reaching for the Invisible God:
God is personal. Much of Christian theology, hammered out in the rarified atmosphere of Greek philosophy, obscures this plain fact by using impersonal phrases such as "Ground of all Being" or "Inevitable Inference" to describe God. But the Bible, both OT and NT, portrays a God who affects us and is affected by us. "For the Lord takes delight in his people," says the psalmist (149:4); at times God also takes great exception to his people, say the prophets. The personality of God leaps out of almost every page of the Bible. "God is love," says the apostle John. "Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." It would be difficult to get more personal.
Why, then, do we find it so difficult to relate personally to this God? At various times people tended to pray to local saints, who seemed more accessible and less scary[...but] modern evangelicalism summons us to know God, to talk to God in conversational language, to love God as one might love a friend. Listen to the 'praise songs' in modern churches, which sound exactly like love songs played on pop radio, with God or Jesus substituted as lover.
The same evangelical tradition that spurs us on to greater intimacy also invites abuse. "I asked the Lord what to speak on and he said, Don't speak on pride, speak on stewardship." "The Lord told me he wanted a new medical center in the city." "God is whispering to me right now that someone in this audience is struggling..." I know for a fact that some statements exactly like these are deceitful, from speakers who say them sloppily or manipulatively. The wording implies a kind of voice-to-voice conversation that did not take place, and the fudged report has the effect of creating a spiritual caste that downgrades others' experiences.
[...]
Frederick Buechner is a writer I hold in the highest esteem both for his craft and his Christian commitment[...]In his memoir, Buechner records a scene of tense anticipation in which he lay in the warm sunlight pleading for a miracle, for some definite sign from the Lord.
In just such a place on just such a day I law down in the grass with just such wild expectations. Part of what it means to believe in God, at least part of what it means for me, is to believe in the possibility of a miracle, and because of a variety of circumstances I had a very strong feeling at that moment that the time was ripe for a miracle, my life was ripe for miracle, and the very strength of the feeling itself seemed a kind of vanguard of miracle. Something was going to happen--something extraordinary that I could perhaps even see and hear--and i was so nearly sure of it that in retrospect i am surprised that by the power of autosuggestion I was unable to make it happen. But the sunshine was too bright, the air too clear, some residual skepticism in myself too sharp to make it possible to imagine ghosts among the apple trees or voices among the yellow jackets, and nothing like what i expected happened at all.
What he got was the soughing wind and the clack-clack of two apple branches scraping against each other. Had God spoken or not? Why wouldn't God use a vocabulary less susceptible to doubt and misinterpretation? For Buechner, at least, God did not.
While in his fifties Buechner spent a semester teaching at Wheaton College where he encoungered the familiarity of evangelical language for the first time. "I was astonished to hear students shift casually from talk about the weather and movies to a discussion of what God was doing in their lives. If anybody said anything like that in my part of the world, the ceiling would fall in, the house would catch fire, and people's eyes would roll up in their heads." Although he came to admire the students fervency, it seemed to him at first that their God resembled a cosmic Good Buddy.
whatevs. i don't need an audience. i just need a way to remember.
So here's my thought for the day.
i am in the doubting phase of my rut. can you hear God? i can't. when you say "God told me this.." or "God spoke to me.." do you actually hear a voice thundering down from heaven? Because i certainly don't.
Don't get me wrong...i am NOT questioning the existence of God, i am not questioning His goodness, His mercy and His grace... i am not questioning who HE is. i believe the Bible is the truth--the WORD OF GOD, the only truth. So what am i questioning? At this point i am unsure. But i pulled out a book from my shelf, that i've honestly never read (beyond the first chapter) and it seems as though this is divine intervention. Because its addressing the issues that are tucked down deep in my heart. And perhaps, if you are honest...they tug somewhere down in your heart too. If not, you can be the 'Christian' that prays for my salvation, prays that i will not 'fall away' and become a 'heathen'. Of course, its appreciated..especially if you hear voices. If you do, talk to me. I might be filled with awe...or i might just diagnose you as schizophrenic--the Center for Addiction and Mental health is of course..just down the street.
So, before i bid you adieu...i leave you with excerpts from Philip Yancey's, Reaching for the Invisible God:
God is personal. Much of Christian theology, hammered out in the rarified atmosphere of Greek philosophy, obscures this plain fact by using impersonal phrases such as "Ground of all Being" or "Inevitable Inference" to describe God. But the Bible, both OT and NT, portrays a God who affects us and is affected by us. "For the Lord takes delight in his people," says the psalmist (149:4); at times God also takes great exception to his people, say the prophets. The personality of God leaps out of almost every page of the Bible. "God is love," says the apostle John. "Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." It would be difficult to get more personal.
Why, then, do we find it so difficult to relate personally to this God? At various times people tended to pray to local saints, who seemed more accessible and less scary[...but] modern evangelicalism summons us to know God, to talk to God in conversational language, to love God as one might love a friend. Listen to the 'praise songs' in modern churches, which sound exactly like love songs played on pop radio, with God or Jesus substituted as lover.
The same evangelical tradition that spurs us on to greater intimacy also invites abuse. "I asked the Lord what to speak on and he said, Don't speak on pride, speak on stewardship." "The Lord told me he wanted a new medical center in the city." "God is whispering to me right now that someone in this audience is struggling..." I know for a fact that some statements exactly like these are deceitful, from speakers who say them sloppily or manipulatively. The wording implies a kind of voice-to-voice conversation that did not take place, and the fudged report has the effect of creating a spiritual caste that downgrades others' experiences.
[...]
Frederick Buechner is a writer I hold in the highest esteem both for his craft and his Christian commitment[...]In his memoir, Buechner records a scene of tense anticipation in which he lay in the warm sunlight pleading for a miracle, for some definite sign from the Lord.
In just such a place on just such a day I law down in the grass with just such wild expectations. Part of what it means to believe in God, at least part of what it means for me, is to believe in the possibility of a miracle, and because of a variety of circumstances I had a very strong feeling at that moment that the time was ripe for a miracle, my life was ripe for miracle, and the very strength of the feeling itself seemed a kind of vanguard of miracle. Something was going to happen--something extraordinary that I could perhaps even see and hear--and i was so nearly sure of it that in retrospect i am surprised that by the power of autosuggestion I was unable to make it happen. But the sunshine was too bright, the air too clear, some residual skepticism in myself too sharp to make it possible to imagine ghosts among the apple trees or voices among the yellow jackets, and nothing like what i expected happened at all.
What he got was the soughing wind and the clack-clack of two apple branches scraping against each other. Had God spoken or not? Why wouldn't God use a vocabulary less susceptible to doubt and misinterpretation? For Buechner, at least, God did not.
While in his fifties Buechner spent a semester teaching at Wheaton College where he encoungered the familiarity of evangelical language for the first time. "I was astonished to hear students shift casually from talk about the weather and movies to a discussion of what God was doing in their lives. If anybody said anything like that in my part of the world, the ceiling would fall in, the house would catch fire, and people's eyes would roll up in their heads." Although he came to admire the students fervency, it seemed to him at first that their God resembled a cosmic Good Buddy.
vendredi, octobre 28, 2005
ugh, you know those days where you're stuck in a rut? and you realize you've been in the rut for a long time?
yeah. that's me. hello stunted growth.
its lame to say i haven't been growing as of late...but its quite the truth. the time i spend with God seems so...BLAH, and i never learn anything new--namely because i'm just going through the actions, but not really WANTING to spend time with Him.
my friends are growing at tremendously rapid speeds, some even overtaking me..and i'm crawling at less than a micrometer per second. and its all my fault. additionally, i live with one roommate who doesn't believe, and another who doesn't know what she believes...called to be like Christ in both of their lives, and i don't even know how to do that, and i'm doing a pretty shoddy job at it.
So what next? well. i'm starting by dragging myself off to church tonight, even though i hardly feel like it. we'll see what's next.
yeah. that's me. hello stunted growth.
its lame to say i haven't been growing as of late...but its quite the truth. the time i spend with God seems so...BLAH, and i never learn anything new--namely because i'm just going through the actions, but not really WANTING to spend time with Him.
my friends are growing at tremendously rapid speeds, some even overtaking me..and i'm crawling at less than a micrometer per second. and its all my fault. additionally, i live with one roommate who doesn't believe, and another who doesn't know what she believes...called to be like Christ in both of their lives, and i don't even know how to do that, and i'm doing a pretty shoddy job at it.
So what next? well. i'm starting by dragging myself off to church tonight, even though i hardly feel like it. we'll see what's next.
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