Not everybody sees the potential you see, nobody sees all the flaw.
But someday you’ll say to the world ‘here I am’, and then they will see you full; raw.
And beyond all the mystery, setting on the shore, is a gigantic bombardment of things you’re to do, never see it as more.
But within the green pastures lies something much stronger, who knows you just as if its own; a force not to recon but only to listen, a love like the first one to conjure.
And you run to this power, this king of it all, just to see exactly what’s to it; then you see him appear just out in the distance, and a nod of the head is his call.
But you trust he was there and always will be, until he returns again; but you seek more about him and his wonderful ways, and learn to be fishers of men.
I went to a different church this morning. This particular one was a different denomination than my church. I noticed few major differences, and I didn’t find anything distasteful. To me, your denomination is purely where you have settled, not your set beliefs. That being said, the sermon was on Prayer. His main points, to the best of my memory, were:
-We don’t take prayer or reading God’s Word seriously enough as Christians
-We make excuses for not doing those things
-We make prayer about ourselves
-We believe that our way is correct, and we are disappointed when God leads us in a different direction
-Sometimes we only listen to what we want to hear
-Rightly, we use prayer to communicate with God, and to listen to him
-We must come clean and repent before expecting him to answer prayers
-There are certain things we should not pray
That being a brief summary, I would like to say that I liked his tactful way of speaking. He used many self-examples to humble himself as a fellow believer. I felt really engaged and comfortable, not as if I was being commanded.
On the contrary, I disagreed with two of the above points. I refuse to call them heretic, because I believe his intentions were not as harsh as the statements. The two I disagreed with were the last two:
-We must come clean and repent before expecting him to answer prayers
-There are certain things we should not pray
I disagree with the first because it implies that we cannot stand before God and expect him to care unless we are clean or impurity, even though God says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NIV). If we can ask him for rest while weary and burdened, doesn’t that mean that we need not be clean to ask for help? To contrast, I see what he meant: If we repent first, (as the LORD’s prayer depicts), we are perfect because our sins have been washed away. Because we are perfect with God, we probably have his will in sight and are ready to accept his answer. Also, God may provide more favor to us if we are perfect. Though he knows best and will do his will, he tells us to pray continually.
In light of what I have learned of God, I would adjust it to this:
-Pour your heart out to God, but be careful to repent and confess also
I disagree with the second statement because some of the prayers in the bible, for instance, Lamentations 3 is all about how God has been horrible to him. These are written prayers. We can pour our hearts out without discretion. He will sift through our desires and reveal his will as he pleases. The speaker’s intention, though, was shown though his example: he once heard a man praying publicly, thanking God that he wasn’t as terrible as this other man. I agree, this is a misuse of prayer. Alone with God, though, do not hold back. Tell him how you feel!
Again, In light of what I have learned of God, I would adjust it to this:
-Do not use prayer for yourself, but to communicate with and listen to God.
Please do not take my word for it, but ask God about them. Pray :)
I love you all,
Jacob Techmeier
Don’t ask me what it’s like to have clinical depression, or to experience a family death. Don’t ask me what it’s like to curse God because of what I thought he did to me. Don’t ask me how it feels to get constantly made fun of or rejected because I love God. Don’t ask me what it’s like to constantly seek God and never find him.
Because I don’t know.
I am naive. It’s not that I don’t know about how the world works, but I just have not seen enough of it (thank the LORD) to have sympathy.
I don’t know if he made me this way forever, so that I can follow “see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil”. And maybe he did. I’d be fine with that. But there will always be something I can’t sympathize with. There will always be something I won’t know how to grasp.
My prayer today, LORD, is please give me understanding. I feel that I come too much from personal experience. Please help me to consult you, LORD. Always and forever my LORD, I pray amen.
I have always read it everywhere: “Don’t be judgmental” and ”Let God be the judge”, etc;
But I just recently discovered its meaning.
God says “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…” in John 8:7
These townspeople were about to stone a woman for committing adultery. And Jesus was like, ‘A bunch of sinners are going to stone one?’, So he rebuked them. And they dropped their stones.
I am here today to tell you that I am putting down my stone. I look at others and rebuke them inside my head all the time. I refuse any longer to be a hypocrite.
Thank you so much,
Jacob
Prepare for some heavy theology.
All major religions would agree that God loves us, but some doctrines are works-based. This means that they believe that we get saved because of the good things that we do.
Trinitarian gospels argue that salvation is by grace through faith. This means that God’s grace allows us to be forgiven for our sins, and they don’t directly affect our salvation. The commitment and repentance we give to God is what matters. It may slow us down in our relationship with God, but it doesn’t determine our salvation, as long as we repent and feel shame and remorse.
My evidences for this argument are, of course:
-The authenticity of the New Testament Bible, which clearly states that we are saved by faith. A few of the endless list of verses are here: (http://carm.org/verses-showing-justification-by-faith)
-For God to be love, he must love himself, (the Trinity), first.
^{“In other words, to declare that God is love is to confess that God is Trinitarian. In the very nature of God there is a continuous outpouring of love, communication, and oneness because God is a relational community of love.”}*
To summarize these arguments, I believe that the New Testament is 99% accurate. Therefore, the instances of, ‘it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith, so that no one can boast’ and etc;, are also true, which says that God is love. I also believe that for God to be a loving god, he must love himself also. To support that statement, I also have evidence:
-Each time a doctrine strays from Trinitarianism, salvation becomes about works. I believe this happens because God cannot be Arian (http://tinyurl.com/72v3po6), and be a loving God (We see this in Islam, Mormonism, Hinduism, among others).
Also, God is morally perfect. If he wasn’t, we wouldn’t have a conscience. We believe that God put our conscience there.
There are only 2 ways to have a relationship with a morally perfect being:
1. Be morally perfect
2. Be forgiven
Knowing what we know, there is no way to be morally perfect. Therefore, we must be forgiven. And our AMAZING GOD has grace. He wants a relationship with you. Despite his morality, he seeks us for a relationship though forgiveness by grace.
Conclusion: God is Trinitarian, and therefore, God is love. Amen.
Thanks,
Jacob
*Quote from Doctrine by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears
If you are a teen or a parent of a teen, you have probably noticed something about the population in general:
Girls have low self esteem, and guys are jerks (as a stereotype)
I believe this stems from 1 thing: A false view of love
Let me break it down:
Girls think that love is perfect; that every person has a soul mate. They seek that guy and fail to find him, so their standards for guys get lowered due to discouragement. This leads them to the guys that ‘make them feel good’.
Guys think that love is beauty; that the prettiest and easiest-going girl is great. When they find a flaw, they run away from commitment. They fail to find personality traits redeeming, and are driven by what girl ‘goes the farthest’.
To summarize, Guys are visual, Girls are emotional, and each is on its extreme right now.
Girls seek a guy who is deep, Guys seek a girl who satisfies them physically.
So, now we have guys who think they can get away with sexual harassment, and girls who are being stomped to the ground because they can’t find their ‘soul mate’. Guys are scared of emotions because girls make themselves quickly vulnerable in relationships, and girls are self-conscious because guys only pay attention to ‘hot’ girls.
How do we fix this?
First of all, I think we seek love too early. In biblical times, people got married at 13, 14, 15, 16. We get married at 20, 25, 38. This means we must abstain from those pubescent desires we al have for a much longer and more awkward time. God says love should be patient*. Look first toward God. Let him lead you to the relationships you should be in. Just like Max Lucado says, “A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her”. Likewise, men also.
Secondly, get your view of love from Christ. God describes true love in *1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and Ephesians 4:2-3. He uses words like ‘humility’ and ‘patience’. This means that you don’t love for yourself. You love for your partner and God. You commit yourself to another person who you think you can spend your life with in order to glorify God. This doesn’t mean they should be perfect. This doesn’t mean that you should find everything about them beautiful or interesting. It means that you commit to them for better or worse, etc;. The wedding vows aren’t a joke.
Lastly, if your relationship is chronically unhealthy, end it for the better of you and them. God doesn’t want you in that relationship. I promise.
Love is the only thing that lasts forever (1 Corinthians 13:8); Let’s get it right!
Love you all,
Jacob
Acceptance? You live on this Earth and you want acceptance? How many times have you met someone you can accept every little thing about? How many times has someone accepted everything about you? And you want acceptance? Sorry to break it to you, but if you look to things here on Earth to give you acceptance, you are gonna be rejected your whole life, and you will never understand it. You will wonder why you were cursed with such bad luck and why people are so mean. What you are missing is the love and grace of the LORD Jesus Christ. He will give the only true acceptance.
God created all the things of this Earth with inconsistencies. He made science with questions that will never be answered. He made certain emotions, phenomena, and occurrences inexplainable by means on Earth. He made this all this way so that we would wonder why and look to him for answers. God states how faith works clearly in Hebrews 11:1 -
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Be careful, though, not to take this verse out of context. Some people would say that this means that whatever Christians hope for will come true. This is wrong. According to Wikipedia, “The primary purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews is to exhort Christians to persevere in the face of persecution.”
This means that the things that we should “hope for” are things that glorify God. We should want what God wants. Now let me promise you, God’s goal for you is not based on acceptance. John 15:18 and 19 say:
“Keep in mind that if the world hates you, it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you”
If you are following God, do not expect acceptance. If you are accepted, maybe you don’t want to be. Ask God about his plans for you.
With love,
Jacob
LORD, you’ve called me to something bigger than ‘living it up’; you’ve called me to something bigger than constantly sinning against you because of conformity.
You have more in store for me than the world could ever offer me. You ‘know the plans you have for me’ (Jeremiah 29:11). You understand my trials and struggles. You see me fall and help me up. You encourage me as I move on, because your plans for me will work if I pursue them. Your plans are best for me, so I trust in you. You know how I feel all the time. You put your hand out for me to grab. You ‘will never leave me nor forsake me’ (Hebrews 13:5-6). God, you made me before the world was.
Therefore, I trust in my creator. I trust that you laugh at my jokes. I trust that you smile when I put the talents you gave me to use for you. I trust that you will do what is best for me: whether or not that is what I ask for. LORD, you have never done me wrong, and I trust that you never will.
By pure faith I trust in you, because you are my LORD. I strive to hear you say the words you repeated throughout the bible:
“Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
Thanks,
Jacob
True living begins when life is through, but God has labor for me here. To live is Christ. To die is gain. God has a plan. Work for him now, die for him later. (Philippians 1:21)
Life here IS CHRIST. Not for Christ, not with Christ. IS CHRIST. The life I live here is by faith. (Galatians 2:20)
Your choice: Live a worldly life for 70 years, or live by faith in prep for God’s gift of Heaven.
Remember, You have a choice.
Contrary to popular belief, how you prosper comes not by how ‘good’ your faith is. You also probably have a different idea of what is god for you. You want good things to happen to you, but if you constantly have good things happening, you will have no reason to build a foundation on God.
You may argue, “God doesn’t make bad things happen.”, and you are right in most cases. God doesn’t just always make bad things happen just so that you have to rely on him. He just makes the best of those tragedies. He uses those to strengthen you and make you wiser.
If we don’t have one basic understanding, we cannot rely on God:
God knows what is best for you. He has plans for you, (Jeremiah 29:11-13) and he only uses bad things for the better of his kingdom.
We also need to understand that Earthly things being taken away might not be so bad. We tend to unconsciously elevate objects, relationships, friendships, emotions, technology; I could go on.
We need to stop at the sight of these struggles and just pass them to God. He will heal it if this is the right time.
God also says, ‘ask and you shall receive’. Most people don’t realize that this is in the context of a person that is very well committed to God and would be listening to what he wants. After listening to what God wants, we just develop a better and better system of making decisions that God would also want for you.
Praying about things such as the curing of illness might seem silly to some. But remember the miracles. They happen. God may not grant those wishes for the curing of an illness, but those wishes come from emotions, which God understands.
My point in this post is to endorse John 16:33 (these are Jesus’ words):
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have over come the world.”
God says that you’re gonna have trouble. Crap happens. Tragedies happen.
‘But take heart!’, says the LORD, ‘I have overcome the world.’
God says that the world has trouble, but He has overcome the world. This implies that God can overcome your issues that seem OH-SO-BIG.
I get the image of David and Goliath. David overcame Goliath not because of his great faith, but because God’s will was that to show the Philistines that the God of Israel was stronger than any war.
I am here to tell you that God is here to helo you. He loves you and wants what is best for you. However, that doesn’t mean you get everything you want. God is not wishing well.
Thanks,
Jacob
