Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. - Romans 5

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Tumblr Transfer

Today I decided to give up tumblr, reducing it back to its original use of watching over people in the fellowships silently, and only because people are more willing to post what's in their hearts than share it face to face. I realized it has been becoming more and more of an idol and feeding into my pride over the past year, and even though it hasn't been too consuming I'm going to nip it in the bud before it gets over my head. It is pretty obvious that when people are spending more time in fellowship, discipleship, and just plain fun, they spend less time posting on social media, which is a good thing. People tend to just rant and complain or show off (heheheh me sometimes) on tumblr. I made my 100 (101) posts and that shall be the end to it.

Below are some posts from the tumblr that I'm moving back here that aren't already in this blog. I hope one day I can just share this blog, which is many times more honest and real than the tumblr, and has all of positive sides as well as my negative sides and immature past still dwelling in the bowels of this blog.

I did leave the hug post on that tumblr, probably the most real and honest post I made there.

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"A youth knelt down to pray and said, ‘God, I can sing so well I wish to sing for you. I can dance so well, I wish to dance for you. I can play music so well, I wish to play for you. I can think so well, I wish to invent for you. There are so much I can do for you. Please use all my giftings for your purpose and glory. I want to give you my best.’ God answered, ‘My child, thank you for willingly offering all your gifts to me. But those are not your best. Your best is your LIFE. Will you surrender your LIFE to me. When I have your LIFE, I have everything. I am interested in who you are not what you have.’ What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God." Eleanor Powell

Our entire life is an act of worship, a dangerous one at that.

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Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” 

I want to hear this from God everyday, and I want to be able to say this everyday

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"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
- The Lord to Joshua

My most favorite verse and the one I gave to my best friend at his wedding. May it sustain us all in times of victory and loss, in times of jubilee and times of lost hope, for God is always with us.

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“Few people arise in the morning as hungry for God as they are for cornflakes or toast and eggs.”
― Dallas Willard

R.I.P.

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The painful truth that I’m faced with is that social media is not the problem. My heart is. I’d distract myself with a box of Cheerios if that is all that I had. I’ve grown terrified of solitude. Of silence. I’m not even sure what I am running from anymore. I just know that my heart has an intense longing for distraction and it’s massively hindering my relationship with the Lord.
- Mike Leake

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"you never never never never never never never never never never never never outgrow your need for the gospel"
 - John Piper (and yes, the number of the word “never” is correct)

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"We have no right to judge where we should be put, or to have preconceived notions as to what God is fitting us for. God engineers everything; wherever He puts us, our one great aim is to pour out a whole-hearted devotion to Him in that particular work. ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’"
 - Oswald Chambers

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I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-­‐‑
faced, double-­‐‑chinned,black-­‐‑
haired, have a deep voice,
and wear glasses for reading,”
- C.S. Lewis to an avid fan (Dat humility!)

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“Rather, the difference is found in the motive, goal, and standard. John Frame writes, ‘The Christian seeks to change his tires to the glory of God and the non-Christian does not. But that’s a difference that couldn’t be captured in a photograph.’”
“’Calling’, he said, ‘is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction.’ When we reduce the notion of ‘calling’ to work inside the church, we fail to equip our people to apply their Christian faith to everything they do, everywhere they are”
- Tullian Tchividjian

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http://unspokenblog.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/my-wife-has-tattoos-marriage-new-birth-and-the-gospel/

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When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asked.

“Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

2 Kings 6:15-17
I’ve always loved the imagery in this verse. I also love the overflowing protection and hope God outpours onto us.

Seriously though, angels on flaming chariots? What POWER!

Let us not forget. He cares for us and will deliver. Matthew 10:28-31, Matthew 6:28-34.

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"God’s presence is not the same as the feeling of God’s presence and He may be doing most for us when we think He is doing least."
- C.S. Lewis

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“You must ask for God’s help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.”
 - C.S. Lewis

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I asked God for strength, that I might achieve— I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey. I asked for health, that I might do better things— I was given infirmity, that I might do better things. I asked for riches, that I might be happy— I was given poverty, that I might be wise. I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men— I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life— I was given life, that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for—but everything I had hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all people, most richly blessed!
- A Christian Confederate Soldier’s Prayer

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http://vimeo.com/65391131

Tim Keller on Revival

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Sometimes when you hear an awesome testimony, read certain Christian books, or see the way another person sings in worship service, it’s easy to become discouraged. Why can’t I have a faith like that? Am I doing it wrong? Do I really get it? What am I missing?

This is a losing game … So much of church relies on emotionalism and “feeling God,” so when we no longer feel God, we think something is wrong with us. The truth is: the Bible never calls us to continually duplicate our highs. We’re called to remember the Most High in our lows.

If you tried to have a wedding every day of your marriage, it would get exhausting. Preachers often try to do this to you in church, and this is why we keep hitting a dead end. Churches try to whip up a sacred moment out of thin air, but instead should really be reminding us of the reality that Jesus is present in both our mountaintops and valleys.
- J.S. Park

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A.Z. Tozer on who the Holy Spirit really is.

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“Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.”
 - C.S. Lewis


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"…the path of wisdom was to learn to live in conformity with this unyielding reality. That wisdom rested largely in developing qualities of character, such as humility, compassion, courage, discretion, and loyalty. Modernity reversed this. Ultimate reality was seen not so much as a supernatural order but as the natural world, and that was malleable. Instead of trying to shape our desires to fit reality, we now seek to control and shape reality to fit our desires. The ancients looked at an anxious person and prescribed spiritual character change. Modernity talks instead about stress-management techniques."
 - Tim Keller

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I would suggest this video to any parent who is struggling with how to love a gay child, and to any Christian to how we as the Church should react to gay people and gay Christians.

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Stand for life 2014: Francis Chan, John Piper, John Ensor
Disclaimer: Graphic images and an even more graphic message

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"Following God may end badly"

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"God is enough. He is good. He will take care of us. He will satisfy us. He will get us through this. He is our treasure. Whom have I in Heaven but you and on Earth there is nothing that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart and my little girl may fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’ That makes God look glorious!”
 - John Piper

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The Idolatry of Youth Culture in Worship The church isn’t a concert hall or a lecture hall, but it is a banquet hall

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Reality - Paul Washer

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“The Scriptures have a clear theme that our doubts never disqualify us from embracing Christ and flexing out His mission. Instead it’s very possible that our idea of “on-fire-for-God” has been skewed by the perpetual weekly rock-show of Sunday emotionalism, and so we feel guilty when we haven’t topped ourselves from last week’s hype. I sympathize with churches that want us to connect this way because it’s a legitimate facet of our faith, but I don’t think our faith is supposed to be on-fire the way we’ve defined it today.I think a faith that keeps serving amidst trials and temptations and severe dry seasons is so much more attractive than the loudest voice in the front pew. And maybe we don’t have to measure ourselves on the amount of our faith, as if we are filling a bucket every week, but rather measure ourselves on the one who is constantly pouring out His grace for us.” 
-  J.S. Park

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Christopher Yuan's testimony
Seems like a good (and ironic) day to share this testimony. Heard it live when he and his mother both shared the testimony.
Notes on his testimony and how to evangelize to homosexuals.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fXhz6u0RzeGBPrhM0kpTzPNCjdAgGY9SVKdLUzkdL3E/edit?usp=sharing

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Definition of Grace

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“…for many years I simply refused to listen to the Christian answers to this question, because I kept on feeling that, ‘whatever you say and however clever your arguments are, isn’t it much simpler and easier to say that the world was not made by any intelligent power? Aren’t all your arguments simply a complicated attempt to avoid the obvious?’”

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I gotten this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too — for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist — in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless — I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality — namely my idea of justice — was full of sense. Consequently, atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.”
 - C.S. Lewis

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[From senior demon to junior demon] Now comes the joke. The Enemy described a married couple as “one flesh”. He did not lay “a happily married couple” or “a couple who married because they were in love”, but you can make the humans ignore that. You can also make them forget that the man they call Paul did not confine it to married couples. Mere copulation, for him, makes “one flesh”. You can thus get the humans to accept as rhetorical eulogies of “being in love” what were in fact plain descriptions of the real significance of sexual intercourse. The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce, affection and the family, humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire which they call “being in love” is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy. The error is easy to produce because “being in love” does very often, in Western Europe, precede marriages which are made in obedience to the Enemy’s designs, that is, with the intention of fidelity, fertility and good will; just as religious emotion very often, but not always, attends conversion. In other words, the humans are to be encouraged to regard as the basis for marriage a highly-coloured and distorted version of something the Enemy really promises as its result. Two advantages follow. In the first place, humans who have not the gift of continence can be deterred from seeking marriage as a solution because they do not find themselves “in love”, and, thanks to us, the idea of marrying with any other motive seems to them low and cynical. Yes, they think that. They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life, as something lower than a storm of emotion. (Don’t neglect to make your man think the marriage-service very offensive.) In the second place any sexual infatuation whatever, so long as it intends marriage, will be regarded as “love”, and “love” will be held to excuse a man from all the guilt, and to protect him from all the consequences, if marrying a heathen, a fool, or a wanton. - C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters

For whole chapter of the book (and the whole book itself), see here:
http://www.bestlibraryspot.net/fantasticfiction/2010/139/5919.html

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I don’t really like this blogger (he is pretty arrogant), nor do I agree with all of his points, and I can care less about the topic at hand. But this post is hilarious and brings up several very good points. It is worth a read.

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“‘Welcome, child,” he said.
“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.” 

- C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

Let us continue to grow in our understanding of God’s sovereignty and His Love, day by day, year by year.

God defying physics.

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"if you think the author of Genesis condones slavery, polygamy, bride selling, male patriarchism, and primogeniture (firstborn), then you haven’t figured how to read. Every time, it brought devestation”
"heh…you think Genesis is primitive? So now we live in a society where a female’s looks won’t affect her success in her life in modern liberated NYC? Oh how we have overcome our primitive human nature in this day and age"
-Tim Keller, paraphrased, obligatory sarcasm

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Continuing to remind myself of the greatness of God.
Today, I was flipping through my old journals, and I found this quote from my sister, lyricsnlyfe.
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image


Bread. Something that has always been a symbol of provision, regardless of what form it takes.

After the Korean War ended, South Korea was left with a large number of children who had been orphaned by the war…relief agencies came in to deal with all the problems that arose in connection with having so many orphan children. One of the people involved in this relief effort told me about a problem they encountered with the children who were in the orphanages. Even though the children had three meals a day provided for them, they were restless and anxious at night and had difficulty sleeping. As they talked to the children, they soon discovered that the children had great anxiety about whether they would have food the next day. To help resolve the problem, the relief workers in one particular orphanage decided that each night when the children were put to bed, the nurses there would place a single piece of bread in each child’s hand. The bread wasn’t intended to be eaten; it was simply intended to be held by the children as they went to sleep. It was a ‘security blanket’ for them, reminding them that there would be provision for their daily needs. Sure enough, the bread calmed the children’s anxieties and helped them sleep.”
- RC Sproul, The Prayer of the Lord

What are the anxieties we have in our daily lives? Getting the right grades? Finding a job? Seeking a relationship? Providing for our family?

Remember what our piece of bread we hold in our hands, and He who provides it.

Give us this day our daily bread

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Christian Love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. If we are trying to do His will we are obeying the commandment, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.’ He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must not demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.
—  C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (via allisonyhuang)

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“I have a notion that what seem our worst prayers may really be, in God’s eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling and contend with the greatest disinclination. For these, perhaps, being nearly all will, come from a deeper level than feeling.”
 - C.S. Lewis

All I’m gonna say is, don’t give up talking to our heavenly father.

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“But,” said Lewis, “myths are lies, even though lies breathed through silver.”

"No," said Tolkien, "they are not."

"…just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth."

"We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil."

"You mean," asked Lewis, "that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case," he said, "I begin to understand.”


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http://adam4d.com/box/

Don't put God in a box, but also don't use that as an excuse to attack someone.

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