Happy Valentine's Day!

The Lord's Mercy on Isreal

[14] “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. [15] And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. [16] “And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ [17] For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. [18] And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. [19] And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. [20] I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD. [21] “And in that day I will answer, declares the LORD, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, [22] and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel, [23] and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’” (Hosea 2:14-23 ESV)

What is wrong with you?

This is a video that we made for the youth group that I help out with on Wednesday nights. It's awesome!

It intro-ed the idea that we are all weird! and that we live in a broken and sinful world.

Watch out, that rainbow might attack you

I know a couple of girls that are afraid of balloons. Really? Balloons? Yes.

For example it was Valentine's Day and girls were getting giant stuffed bears and chocolate and roses and junk like that delivered to them in their classrooms. Well in walks about ten huge balloons and immediately this girl shells up. She huddles into herself at her desk and starts to cry a little. For balloons!

And then there are the people that are afraid of clowns. Clowns were created to make people laugh! How weird is it that something that is supposed to make you laugh actually making you cry? It's like telling an elephant joke and then someone covering their ears and crying because it scared them that an elephant was in the fridge.

So this makes me think... if people can be afraid of balloons and clowns, what else can they be afraid of? Rainbows? Flowers?

I can literally imagine a 300 lb. tough guy waddling down and street and then in a high pitched voice- "AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!! A 3 year old ballerina!!!!!!!!!" And then running off and weeping for fear of his life.

Sick.

Should have brought sugar along...

I'm sorry to tell about this, Colin. But the people, they have to know.

Behind my Grandmommy's old house in Alabama is a large field with a creek in some woods. The neighbor owns this land and raises horses in it. My cousin Helen loves horses and many a time I saw how the horses just came to her and she would talk to them and pet them, leaving me with the impression that horses are nice.

Not all of them are.

One day Colin and I leave the house bound for the creek. We take turns lifting the bottom string of barbed wire so that the other can crawl through and once we are over we notice a horse that I have never seen before.

When I was 8 I went with a group horse back riding and my horse suddenly decided to take a completely different route than my peers and I had cried because I was afraid that it would take me somewhere and I would never get back. So as we approached this horse in the back of my mind I knew that horses could be unpredictable, but I had seen Helen with these horses before so I knew that it would be okay.

Ten feet before we reached the horse, it suddenly reared on it's hind legs and started to neigh. Mouth open and eyes bulging I remembered hearing that horses could sense fear so I turned to tell Colin that we should not run, but walk away thus showing this horse that we had no fear. But as I turned to look at Colin I just kept turning and turning until I was watching my cousin with his back to me bolting it back to the barbed wire fence.

I wasn't going to be the last one there.

There is a Star Trek episode where the ship is locking up because of a leak on one of the decks and as the bay doors are slamming shut, one of the main characters dives just under it and rolls to safety. When I watched that I thought, "Wow, there is no way they did it that perfectly. They would need to crawl a little at least." I was wrong. I rolled under that bad boy as beautifully as I had seen on TV.

That demon horse came right up to the fence and stared us down as we stood, feeling weak and a bit silly, a safe 5 feet away.

Hope is a knowledge that something that we don't have yet will be enough. When we hope, it is not something that we already have, but a belief in things that will be. My hope is in Jesus, that one day I will be done running away from my fears and pains and will finally be safe.

GGGGGOOOOOOOAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!

When I was about a sophomore in high school, one of my best friends Andrew and I went on an e3 Mission trip to Bolivia to share about the wonderful news of Jesus Christ.

And my faith was far too small.

About halfway through the week Andrew and I were walking with our two translators (one of which was about to be picked up in an hour and go home because he was feeling really sick) across the neighborhood that we were working in when we passed a soccer field. We had passed this field many times before but today the schools had been closed, so there were several teenage guys doing what they had learned and had practiced every chance they got since they could walk: play soccer.

I looked down onto that soccer field and thought that these guys were really passionate about their soccer game and there would be no chance that they would ever want to listen to us. But Andrew looked down and saw instead of a soccer field, a harvest field.

So he led us onto the field to interrupt their game to offer a challenge to the unwilling listeners. We will play them a game to 5. If we won, they would listen to what we had to say, and if they won, we would leave.

Team Jesus: Andrew (who is an athletic baseball player), two native translators (one who is sick and goes home later), myself (who thinks this will end up in us doing the walk of shame), and one of their friends who they wouldn't let on their team and we called him off the sidelines to join our team.

Team Harvestfield: 6-7 Bolivian teenagers who have been playing and perfecting soccer since forever.

It truly looked like a David and Goliath situation. We creamed them. It was amazing to watch our ragged team beat their rugged one. And instead of us doing the walk of shame, we walked them through the story of the gospel and lead every one of them to Christ.

We should not have won that game. In fact we probably shouldn't have interrupted their game. But the love of Christ prevailed. is prevailing. and will prevail forever.

Eureka!

There are times when God gives me a small piece of the puzzle. And in those times I feel like there are miles more left to be discovered just above my head and beyond my reach. And although my head is working and churning to grasp the explosive, exponential yet finite abundance filling my head, I can feel this massive endless completed idea hovering above my reach.

It is like a huge juicy steak that I could never hope to digest.

It is like a giant hand has reached inside and has gripped the deepest parts of me.

It is like a mile wide balloon has inch deep roots inside my mind, filling it but being so much bigger than what I can grasp.

And there is so much left to discover, but through it He brings me closer.

God is so big.

tell that fairy that she can have them... Part III

So for those of you that like stats...

This past week in my struggle against teeth:

13 times my dentist has dentist has filled a tooth

11 shots that I have been given to numb my mouth

8 cavities have been filled

7 teeth have been worked on

4 dentist appointments

2 fillings have fallen out

There are times in your life when you look and realize that you just can't keep living the way that you have been. For me and this whole fiasco I have realized that I can't keep eating and drinking the stuff that I have been. My dentist told me that having an explosive amount of cavities is becoming incredibly common among college students because of one thing: soft drinks.

I think that one of the things about maturing and junk like that is that the realization that what we do really does matter. It has cost a lot of pain (and money) to fix my problem of drinking too much coke. And the same goes for in our spiritual lives. What we do, or lack to do, really affects how we live. I can tell a difference in myself when I have been diving into God's word and when I haven't read for understanding in a while. So I guess the question is, do we want to live with cavities in our teeth and soul or not?