Unlike our pachydermous friends, we must forgive.
"bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive." - Col 3:13.

Now there are a host of things I constantly remember when I meet certain people, things ranging from minor perceived slights ("complaints") to large onslaughts of nastiness, which I must decide what to do with.
Most of the time I hear the demonic audience in the colosseum of my will chanting "kill!" (or something less dramatic but still ill-tempered) and giving the thumbs down as I face/remember people and choose how to think about them. And then the Holy Spirit chimes in with verses like this one.

After reading it, I decided that God's being really generous here. It says "Forgive, as the Lord has forgiven you". However, I don't think I can. Not that I don't think I can forgive someone, I don't believe that God asks us to do things He doesn't give us the power to do. However, when Jesus forgave me, I was 100% in the wrong, and He was faultless of all transgression, against me or anyone else. I will never face that situation. No matter what trivial thing anyone's done against me (and honestly, I can't think of anyone that has done me a terrible wrong. People have done terrible wrong to my friends and family yes, but people seem to pretty much leave me alone in the "terrible wrong" department) I will never be 100% innocent when faced with the decision (and command) to forgive.

"Who has ever given to God, that He should repay him?" - Good question. I am perpetually in His debt, but he asks me to follow in his example of forgiveness, even though he forgave from the moral high ground, and the only people I'll ever have to forgive are transgressors like me.

We are what we see
I want to look carefully
turn my head
and raise my eyes
fill my fingers
and I'll use these keys
to free some captive praise.
A provider of food and reasons
protector of peace
with sharp sword and strong hands
You take death like an old stuffed toy,
and shake it 'til I'm not afraid.
where has sin gone?
was it ever there?
Love stronger than
the pulse-stealing thing
Stand again in me

Encouragements and Exhortations

Due to the kindness of a friend from church who watched our herd of hobbits, Brandy and I were able to go out for an early Anniversary present almost a week ago now. We made it up to Seattle and enjoyed fish and chips up by the Ballard locks and walked through the garden near there. Then we went to a Tully's nearby and sat down to talk. It was especially good to have time to talk about our plans and hopes and thoughts. Before that day I really hadn't tried to organize them enough to present them in any sort of order, and here are a few.

I've had a sort of "drifting" feeling within the past months, of aimlessness - like I'm just existing. I've had doubts about the Lord's plans for us out here - maybe doubts isn't the right word, more like lack of interest. I've treated everything as it comes with indifference, like going to school, or my job, as a separate instance of life, not as a part of a greater unified plan.

Normally I hate planning, because it seems like things so rarely go to plan, and I don't like setting myself up for disappointment. But as I thought about it, I could definitely see the working hand of God in all that's happened with us over the past year. I am coming to believe that it's through my timidity in recognizing it AS the work of my Lord Jesus and the lax way I've talked about our circumstances and plans that have killed the zeal I should be burning with. "And without faith it is impossible to please Him". I had been asking God for specific things for the past three years:
#1. to send us somewhere, then receiving the word to Washington,
#2. I asked for a job, and believed I was being led specifically to the Job at SPU Security, and God not only brought us out here safely, but gave us a place to live, and out of many candidates gave me my current Job. When back in MN I looked at this job, I prayed about going back to school and in part applied with hope of getting tuition discounts.
#3. When I applied to go to SPU, I asked the Lord to give me a sign financially if I was to Go to school with his blessing. I got a full ride with grants and scholarships (didn't have to take out any loans) The amount I've been given to pay for school this year is almost exactly what it will take for a year @ SPU (almost 30K). If my Father hasn't done this, then who has? I could never have afforded this on my own. If it wasn't for my conviction that the Lord was taking us out here, I never would have thought to apply for the job @ SPU security, since they asked for someone with a B.A. in the listing, whereas I don't even have an A.A. .

God has given us a good church to go to here, with a pastor who is genuinely interested in us for the Lord's sake, and who takes the time to go through the "Men in Turn" leadership training with me and to keep me in the word and serving while waiting for God to move us up to the Seattle area. It's not many pastors who would be willing to give that time to someone they knew was only going to be in their congregation for a year. He also shelled out a chunk of cash to give me the resources for that program gratis, including the "Foundations for Pentecostal Theology" book and the Chuck Smith "Through the Bible" series. Because of his working with me I've memorized the first two chapters of Titus (which sadly enough is the first time I've ever memorized two consecutive chapters of scripture) and am now working on the 3rd. May God repay him for all he's done for my good!

Also, a couple nights ago I was kicking students out of OMH at about 2:30AM (it's the physics and mathematics building, so the students would stay there all night to do homework if they were allowed to). I started talking to one of the guys, and as we began talking he asked about my work, and I told him why I went to work here in part-to study classics to learn Greek and Latin and learn the background of scripture better. Then I pointed out that it didn't have any occupational value but was only for my own enjoyment (which is a lie, since I want to do it to Serve my God and His people, but I've said that so many times in an apologetic way as if I was ashamed for going to school for something not technical or "practical" to make money that I'd almost come to believe it) But this blessed kid says "Well, that sounds like it will open up lots of opportunities to minister and serve God" and I again pointed out that I meant unlike physics, which he studies, my degree will have next to no money value, and he replied, "Well, that's why I study physics, so I can support people like you!"

I shut my mouth, and for a second almost felt like crying. I'd convinced myself almost that no one values what I want in my heart and felt the call to - to teach and feed the Word of God to men, and to go to school to supplement this. And here this kid in one sentence made me ashamed of my shame and encouraged me to no end, to think that there are people who so value the word of God and the office of Overseer that they would work to support it! God forgive me. But what that kid said stuck with me, and I have felt its encouragement 'til now.

God help me to encourage others too, I've been reminded how much it's needed!

So I told all this to Brandy, and she told me she's been in the same funk of not feeling like we're doing anything, and like I was going to school just to go to school, and a feeling of unreality regarding us starting a church.

And the more I've been thinking about it, I know I've got to recover a passionate love for God, and a pursuit of Him, and an "Abiding in Him". That's where all these desires came from in the first place, and I can't recover passions created by the lifeblood of Jesus Christ without being plugged firmly into his Vine, and drinking in His life. All these dreams are just that without him, and will be impossible to pursue without Him in me to give me works, to will and to work his pleasure-with pleasure.

Worship came out of my eyes
I poured out my soul
through the grate
down a hole
while my Idols lay still
as all idols will
now it's dripping in the dark
it's not like a set of keys
I can't bend hanger and fish it out
for a soul is a slippery thing
best kept for sure hands
and I need yours now
to forgive,
and fish it out.

Last night I finished "Evil and the Justice of God" (by N.T. Wright). It was an attempt to explain the relationship between..evil...and God's Justice... which I guess anyone could tell from the title. Basically a response to the old question: "If there was a Good God, why does he allow evil, he can't do anything about it, and therefore he's NOT all powerful, or he won't do anything about it, in which case he might as well be the devil". He does pretty well, I think, focusing mainly on what God HAS been doing about evil throughout history, through Israel, and especially through Jesus' death on the cross, and His Resurrection, guaranteeing the final realization of a New Creation that is free from evil. And what we as Christians are empowered and commissioned to do about evil in the meantime, looking forward to that New Creation as its creatures and living it out in anticipation here and now. One of the ways he highlights that we are to be doing this is forgiveness. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Forgiveness doesn't mean 'I didn't really mind' or 'it didn't really matter'. I did mind and it did matter, otherwise there wouldn't be anything to forgive at all, merely something to adjust my attitudes about'...'Nor is forgiveness the same as saying, 'Let's pretend it didn't really happen.' This is a little trickier because part of the point of forgiveness is that I am committing myself to work towards the point where I can behave as if it hadn't happened. But it did happen, and forgiveness itself isn't pretending that it didn't; forgiveness is looking hard at the fact that it did and making a conscious choice-a decision of the moral will-to set it aside so that it doesn't come as a barrier between us. In other words, forgiveness presupposes that the thing which happened was indeed evil and cannot simply be put aside as irrelevant."

And on Art, as a means by which we can educate our imaginations so they are able to anticipate the fulfullment of God's new creation in the future:

"Art at its best not only draws attention to the way things are but to the way things are meant to be, and by God's grace to the way things one day will be, when the earth is filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea....to the world already seen in advance in the resurrection of Jesus, to the world whose charter of freedom was won when He died on the cross. It is by such means as this that we may learn again to imagine a world without evil and to work for that world to become, in whatever measure we can, a reality even in the midst of the present evil age"