Devotional Blog: 6/14/2012: “When good isn’t good enough” Romans 8:28 This isn’t out of the book I am going through which coincidentally arrived in the mail from Thailand in our first round of boxes–this is one I am just going to write. If you’ve read my previous blogs in the devotion section or perhaps in my life section or such you’ll know how I was raised. In a faith that stresses undying, unwavering faith in God and that everything works toward his plan and purpose.

Devotional blog:

“You gotta have friends” and “where have you been walking?” 03/22/2012 and 03/23/2012, Psalm 119:45 and Proverbs 27:17

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

~Prov. 27:17

While there are quite a few entries in this book where I have agreed with her advice and position there are also those entries at odds with my sense of logic and spirit. Perhaps this is my lack of understanding…in fact, I guess it IS my lack of understanding. In this entry she encourages us to form friendships/relationships with those that build us up and help us make godly choices. Positive people who believe in you and want the best in you. Now none of this in principle do I disagree with. Absolutely, you want to be friends and have relationships with those that will be supportive and strengthen you. However, given this is a devotional and she mentions having friends that help you make godly choices and where to find them such as at Bible studies or support organizations etc. I am assuming she is encouraging us to have Christian friends and it sounds like this is supposed to be preferred exclusively. This isn’t first time I’ve encountered this type of argument…to only consort with those of your own faith lest you be tempted by the ‘dark side’ whatever it might be. I don’t understand why is it that I can supposedly only ‘learn’ from a Christian friend? I have Christian friends and non-Christian friends, why should I value the opinion or advice of one over the other? Though I may ultimately agree with one set of advice over the other, I still consider both equally.

More on this in a moment but I’d like to combine this with her previous entry about “Where have you been Walking?” In this entry she discusses how we need to be aware as Christians ‘where we walk’ in life and to be careful not to fall into ‘subtle’ steps away from the truth such as “spending more and more time with a persuasive friend who doesn’t acknowledge Christ or his principles; reading magazines that make me feel inferior about my body; listening to songs that glorify casual sex; or even walking to the beach instead of church on Sunday morning.” Again I have a lack of understanding here. Why is hanging out with non-Christian friends a ‘subtle step’ toward what is wrong? Why is walking to the beach instead of church on a Sunday, walking away from God? There are plenty people I know that walk to church three times a week and are far from God while other’s fellowship, pray and seek God in a park, on a beach, washing the dishes and I feel they have a stronger relationship.

My point? These entries suggest we have weak minds and little resolve. I don’t particularly like that.

Devotional Blog:

Burdens, 03/02/2012, Galatians 6:1-5, Romans 15:1-7

Are you a worry wort? I can be. I can worry about the most inane irrelevant things sometimes. Things I cannot control I worry about…I’m absolutely ridiculous sometimes, keeping myself awake at night worrying about things that are utterly pointless to worry about. And I worry about them at the MOST inopportune times as well…such as when I am taking off in a plane and I’m like–huh what if we crash? It’s really dumb as the statistics support me getting  pwnd by so many other causes before dying in a plane crash (1 in 7,032-lifetime odds, Source).

I find it funny that in the same source I have a 1 in 120,864 chance of dying by being pwnd by someones dog. In their wording–“bitten or struck by dog”. Ya that’s right, don’t you just hate it when Mitzy comes up to you and ‘bitch slaps’ you, haha, really bad joke–but really one day, her strike could kill you!

I digress…I think I’ve made my point about pointless worrying.

Devotional Blog:

The Word of God, 03/02/2012, 2 Timothy 3:16

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. ~2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)

So I figured I should start chipping away at all the dog eared pages in this devotional book that I’ve been neglecting. I keep up on my daily reading but somedays I have enough time to blog and other days I don’t so they end up dog eared for future contemplation. Oddly enough this entry is about ‘bearing each others burdens’ rather than the word of God but when I read it, I realized I needed to address the ‘word of God’ topic first. I’ll explain…

From the devotional: “We all need to make time for Bible study. David writes in Psalm 73:26, ‘My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’ (NIV)…Only as I make God’s Word a priority do I have anything to give. A Bible study should be a refuge, a safe harbor.”

A week or so ago in a conversation with friends I stated that scripture will never ‘convince’ me of whether someone is ‘right or wrong’. No one will ever ‘win’ an argument with me only using scripture. I think I’ve even stated in previous blogs that I refuse to go tit for tat on Bible verses for various reasons aside from its just plain tedious and I feel its more ‘posturing your verse memorization prowess’, rather than attempting to make a valid point. For the first time now, I am wondering why that is. I am a Christian after all and I believe in God’s word, why isn’t God’s divinely inspired word enough to convince me of someone’s argument?

Devotional Blog:

Christian ‘Culture’, Depravity and Salvation, 2/29/2012, Ephesians 2:8-9

I love meeting new people, hearing new points of view listening to life adventures, life realizations and commiserating on mutual experiences. So 2012 is a leap year and there was no entry in my devotional book for this day so this is my own devotional. Honestly I do have any number of pages in the book dog eared to write about as I am fantastically behind in my posting, but I find I enjoy writing more when I am writing about something that is currently bothering or inspiring me. Enter today’s topic.

I had the pleasure of meeting someone with a very similar upbringing to myself and we bantered back and forth about being children having grown up in the church. Children who grew up in the church, most likely said their ‘salvation’ prayer at a young age, went through the ‘Christian’ motions growing up, sunday school, youth camp, retreats, revivals, door to door evangelism, whatnot. We ‘shunned’ the people we were supposed to shun or hate, we accepted the people that fit into the Christian box and we were encouraged that the greatest calling in life is that of ministry. Christian culture surrounded us, we memorized verses, held our hands up in deference to God during worship, allowed people to pray for us, we prayed for people, we knew all the ins and outs of the culture and we really didn’t have an understanding of what true ‘salvation’ was…but of course we were saved…weren’t we?

Devotional Blog:

Topic: “Spending Time”, 12/27/2011, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

This entry encouraged us to log our time for one week to see where our ‘priorities and passions’ were in our lives.

So a week from Sunday to Saturday (7 days) has 168 hours in it. Of those 168, I was alseep 53.5 hours…an average of 7.6 hrs/day. Although Saturday skews that as I slept 11 hours on Saturday and and if I just look at the work week, I slept an average of 6.9 hours/day. Apparently on the weekends I like my sleep, not to mention as the week progressed I got worse at getting up on time. My alarm goes off at 6am, I managed to get up and go work Monday and Tues at 6:30am. Weds and Thurs that got later and I managed to get up and go to work at 7am…on Friday it was 730am. A lot of wake-up fail!

So 168 hours in a week minus 54.5 sleeping = 113.5 to account for waking hours…which we’ll soon find out isn’t an altogether true statement…doh!

Devotional Blog:

Topic: “Confused?…go Back”, 01/24/2012, Jeremiah 24: 6-7

How does one ‘hear’ from God? This is a loaded topic for me…

“I will give them hearts that will recognize me as the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me wholeheartedly” -NIV, Jeremiah 24:7

 

“After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.” -NIV, 1 Kings 19:12

 

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” -NIV, Rev 3:22

Confused? Always. I bumble my path routinely in an effort to ‘hear’ God and know what his plan and purpose for my life is. I say the prayers, I keep so still as to nearly faint from not breathing enough, I close my eyes and meditate during worship, think of things I’ve learned, listen to pastors and mentors more learned than me…

Majority of the time I think I must be on the wrong channel…cause all I ever get is static and I rarely know what exactly it is I am doing wrong.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: “Pretty Good Company”, 12/29/11, John 12: 20-28

Happy Birthday Edgar Allen Poe, Born January 19, 1809. Odd way to start a devotional post complete with topic title and Bible verse by saying happy birthday to a man whose poetry and stories are often of the macabre gothic nature and depressing, but now that I’ve piqued your curiosity, stick with me…

Today’s entry is about walking into the dreams that God has given us in our lives. The visions, the promises, the hopes…and perhaps not getting to see or experience the fruits of our labors, our suffering, our patience. The author (Pam) goes onto to say, ‘you are not alone’. You are not the only one to receive great promises only to never see them come to pass in your lifetime or as Moses did, stand at the border and watch your people walk into the promise led by another man. How heinously frustrating. You do everything you believe God is telling you to do, you walk through the doors, you invest time, faith, money, more time, more faith….you sit and watch as others experience the joy that comes from their dreams or promises coming to pass and you sit. You sit, telling yourself to be patient, telling yourself God has not forgotten you, telling yourself that you want things in God’s timing. Then you look up and you say God WHEN is your timing!!!???  And you cry out…you cry out.

Ok after yesterdays sidetrack event of commenting on a blog I’d read entitled “I’m Christian unless you’re gay” (read it if you get a chance), now, back to the book…

Devotional Blog:

Topic: “Trust”, 11/27/2011, Jeremiah 31:1-6 and Ruth 3:5

In this section the author, Pam, goes into what it means to have a trusting relationship. She opens with something Ruth said in the Bible: “I will do whatever you say”–what guy wouldn’t want to hear that from a woman? Sorry guys, she was saying it to her mother-in-law. I find the concept of trust interesting in that I have some friends that are incredibly trusting and some that have some incredible walls built up…hell you need some seriously specialized climbing gear to get up the smooth face of their walls.

Then you inevitably ask the question ‘is it worth it?’ Which is terrible I know, they are your friend after all. But it is exceedingly frustrating to think you are making progress only to find yourself on a temporary ledge with your friend laughing at you from above…continually saying ‘you don’t know me, you can never know me’. At that point I’d just rather rappel down and call it a day. Of course self-discovery and self-trust is an ongoing process and I’m sure I’ve frustrated many a friend as well, even though I wouldn’t say I put up walls…I think rather its just a fundamental misunderstanding of personalities. You build an image of what you think someone is in your head and when that turns out to be untrue it throws you for a loop. Not because they misled you but because you built this image that wasn’t who they were inside. Its not a matter of ‘good or bad’, its just not who they were and you have to step back and decide if you are going to take the time to dispense with all your, perhaps years of, preconceived notions and really get to know the person for who they are. Sometimes we are able to do that, sometimes circumstances prevent that option.

I used to say I was very ‘guarded’ didn’t really trust anyone–but who am I kidding…its not who I am. At best I had phases of distrust that ended up evaporating as the event that triggered the distrust faded. Personally I’m a pretty open book, people don’t have to work too hard to read me. At first I was insulted because I thought of myself as a chameleon, I could put on whatever face was required and they’d never know ‘me’. So when people said  I was easy to read I was aghast…and here I thought I was this great actress. This was when it was ‘hip’ to be mysterious…ya, no, I’m not mysterious haha. I was in theater from 6th grade up through high school and some in college and didn’t get bad reviews. As an actress, ok I didn’t suck, but as a person–who am I kidding–I suck at hiding my feelings. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t stubborn. Which I know probably drove some of my friends and boyfriends and family insane, knowing something was dreadfully wrong but not being able to truly pry it out of me.

This past weekend Tyghe and I went to the beach thankful for the ability to escape flooding Bangkok, play some frisbee and enjoy the beach. We went to Phuket, a highly built up island in southern Thailand that is run for the most part by the Thai mafia from what we’ve been told and perhaps has links with Russian mafia as well–given the influx of so many Russian tourists, and all three languages (Russian, English and Thai) present on the island, it wouldn’t surprise me. In essence many who travel to Phuket accept the fact they will be overcharged for everything…absolutely everything. But I am not going to talk about our holiday…Tyghe will do a great job of that on his blog so see that for the vacay story and I believe he mentions what I will talk about. His blog will be a great sum up with pictures–the happy stuff which was indeed happy and I had a great time in that respect. Instead I will highlight one not so awesome experience as it resulted in an interesting topic related to faith. This is not a ‘devotional blog entry’…it’s a life entry…life based on faith.

Devotional Blog:

So you’ve probably noticed by now that (1) I don’t always post every single devotional topic/entry from the book and (2) sometimes they are out of order. I am caught up to the current date in my reading but I choose only to post on those topics I come across that matter to me or that I actually have something to say about. Do you all really want to hear my thoughts on menopause??? Ya I didn’t think so…and it was two days of devotional time in the book. Aside from the fact I couldn’t relate remotely to what she was talking about, I didn’t really feel the need to expound on the subject. Nor do I feel the need to tell you all about when I got my first period. Fair enough? Plus some of her topics that she attributes to the various verses are just well meh or too gooey and I’ve quite frankly nothing to say about them. So with that…lets get on with the topic today.

Topic: “Pursing praise”, 10/8/2011; Proverbs 7:13-27

In this section the idea of ‘pursuing praise and accolades’ is discussed. How some of us are so hungry for recognition we strive for it, we live for the ‘kudos’ of other people and she talks about how spiritually unhealthy that is. Ultimately she states that the only kudos we should look for are from God by living our lives to please him and that what other people say to us shouldn’t matter. Easier said than done is what I was thinking. No one likes to ‘suck’.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: Slippery Slopes, 9/22/11, John 15:1-11

So I realize the author only has a page to get these topics aired out given this is an ‘on the go’ devotional, but this one…

Excerpt: “In my twenty-plus years of ministry, I have seen the slippery slope in many a woman’s life. She didn’t ‘mean’ to have an affair. She didn’t think a few glasses of wine would lead to alcoholism…”

And then she spends the rest of the section on women who ‘unequally yoke’ themselves to unbeliever men and how that leads to a slippery slope of marrying a non-believer and how that’s not right…I could tell she was trying to find a way into this topic specifically so she could spend the majority of her time there. Now I have grown up staunchily ingrained with this belief system. Don’t unequally yoke, don’t date a non-believer, don’t associate with non-believer men…And Christianity isn’t the only faith to somewhat ‘demonize’ (ok that’s a strong word) relationships with the non-believer. Infidels to islamic extremists, it doesn’t even have to be religion–mixing of cultures historically was taboo as well. An Indian buddy of mine during my internship at Yale said that his family specifically told him in college to ‘have as much fun as he wanted’ but marry an Indian girl. During the 1940’s in Russia it was unthinkable for a Jew to marry a Christian…and many of these values/divides between religions and cultures remain today.

This whole manner of thinking rather religious or cultural –I really hate it.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: Who is God to you?, ⁹⁄₁₈-¹⁹⁄₂₀₁₁, Ezekiel 34:25-31 and Psalm 34: 8-14

So I grew up your ‘typical’ Christian kid or perhaps ‘typical’ isn’t the right word since I was raised more on the pentecostal/evangelical side and many other Christian sects think we’re pretty nuts…fair enough. I grew up in with a Christian bent toward pentecostal/evangelical due to where my parents chose to go to church. We started out in Calvary Christian, fairly conservative along with Cornerstone Christian churches then moved into the Vineyard ‘movement’ which was akin to house churches (they were usually small) and they popped up in random places whereever there was space…a strip mall vacant store, a school gym, another churches rec room, someones . To me the Vineyard churches felt very odd…sort of like the ‘hippy movement’ for Christianity. But this was my perception as a young child…

On a side note: It was in a Vineyard Sunday school where I learned about communion and received a piece a bread which is supposed to symbolize the body of Christ/Jesus…at which point I turned to my friend and squeezed the bread to ‘make it talk’ telling my friend ‘jesus loves you’…my sunday school teacher was not amused…

We attended such churches til I was 11 and moved to Hawaii. In Hawaii we attended a First Assembly church which was really small and has since expanded enormously to have satellite chapels all over the Pacific Rim and a congregation that I’ve seen attend at most 1,500 people–yowza! When we first started going I think 50 people on average…maybe 75-80 would attend. The church went from being a First Assembly Church to breaking off into it’s own entity now called King’s Cathedral headed by Pastor James Marocco, a man with several degrees including a Ph.D. from reputable universities such as USC. The man knows his history and theology.

Why do I say all this? Because this is what I grew up in. I didn’t question my faith growing up, it just was what it was. People lifting their hands and dancing in church? Ok…sure. People getting prayed for and ‘falling out in the spirit’…ok no worries. People receiving prophecy from pastors or prophets…this was all on par with my upbringing and it wasn’t ‘alien’ to me, though I’m sure all of this in one place might freak out a non-Christian or Christian with more sedate upbring in the faith. Our church in Hawaii wasn’t like this to begin with, they went through a series of ‘revivals’ and before y’all have nightmares of some backwoods area of a southern state…it wasn’t like that–I think.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: Breaking patterns of trauma, 9/15/11, Isaiah 57: 12-14

This entry in the book was ‘interesting’ and amounted to saying ‘get over yourself’ at the end or you are going to seriously $#@! up your kids. The simplicity in which she treats this topic bothered me a little. Now, I agree I just ‘summed’ up the topic above in one sentence but her approach and link to the verse was unclear to me until the end and I still was like…does this make sense in light of her ‘verse of the day’….so I dissected it.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: Rights and Responsibility, 9/14/11, Colossians 4:2-6

So this was a discussion of role models and if by becoming  role model you give up your ‘rights’ to do certain things…ala movie or music stars having fits, getting into drugs or whatnot. Granted getting into drugs isn’t a ‘right’ for anyone let alone the famous but apparently it’s all the worse because those who are famous become role models whether they like it or not. It reminds me of the quote from Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility”; which surprisingly enough was not originally coined by Spiderman comics but rather Thomas Francis Gilroy in 1892, it has also been attributed to Voltaire (Voltaire. Jean, Adrien. Beuchot, Quentin and Miger, Pierre, Auguste. “Œuvres de Voltaire, Volume 48”. Lefèvre, 1832). Whether history or marvel comic the statement rings true.

Devotional Blog:

Topic: A reason you are ‘here’… 9/11/11: 1 Timothy 2:1-7

I thought it uncanny and eerie that I should read about this today…it being the 10th Anniversary of the World Trade Center tragedy. Last week in my perpetual hunt for books I came across several accounts of ⁹⁄₁₁, no doubt because the anniversary was coming up so they were encouraging people to read the first person accounts and stories surrounding that day. There are a lot of first person accounts from survivors and from those who watched and tried to help. BBC wrote an article asking the question “Is there a novel that defines the ⁹⁄₁₁ decade?” and sums up the novels and stories that have come out of ⁹⁄₁₁ since it happened. I ended up downloading to my Kindle “102 Minutes” by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn which has had incredibly high ratings about the collapse of the world trade centers towers and “Who they Were” by Robert Schaler, which discusses those who ‘jumped’ from the towers during that day and others which forensics teams struggled to identify; which has received mixed reviews. It is widely supported that “Tower Stories: An Oral History of ⁹⁄₁₁” is also one of the best books about what happened as well.

Simple perusing of the news pops up hundreds of accounts from survivors all of whom struggle with memories from that day, people, friends, family they lost and why they survived…why them. Artie Van Why wasn’t actually in the towers but in a building next to them, him and co-worker ran out to see what happened then ran toward the towers to help amidst falling debris and people. He says that he always thought that when you fall from high enough you are dead before you hit the ground…but he realized that these people were very much alive holding their arms out as if to cushion the impact as they fell. When the towers collapsed they all ran…he made it, his co-worker did not. [his story here].

Survivors of any terrible experience grapple with survivors guilt…the perpetual question of why me? Why did I survive. I am sure soldiers go through this trauma as well after coming from a fight where they saw fellow soldiers fall and die. The documentary Restrepo deals with this in their portrayal of a group of Marines who were sent to the most dangerous part of Afghanistan, The Korengal Valley, for deployment…not all came back.

Survivors of the holocaust oftentimes will tackle the emotions and convictions that come with being the only survivor in their family and having witnessed such atrocities enacted on them and their friends. I wrote about this in an earlier blog after having visited the Holocaust museum in D.C.

Though we all might not ascribe to the same belief I am sure many of us wonder about our purpose for being here, why we survive things while others do not, how watching someone die makes you realize how infinitesimal your life can seem and how easily it can be snuffed out. There are those of us that ascribe survival and such as “God’s providence”…we have a purpose in life and we will not be taken, not die, til that purpose is completed. This is the general thinking. But as soon as that purpose has been accomplished–poof…time for snuffing and many accept that, although the prospect of death is still hard to grapple with. Not so much because it’s ‘death’…I think many people are more terrified of ‘how’ they might die than actual death itself.

In the end, for those left behind or those that survived, the question remains…were you saved/spared for a reason? Do you have a purpose to accomplish greater than yourself though you may not know it?

Disclaimer: The devotion section of this blog is merely my attempt to seek out understanding of what I believe, why I believe and the practical application thereof. I am by no means a ‘perfect’ ‘holy’ ‘religious’ person as commonly evidenced by my previous blogs–but then again, no one–absolutely no one is. But I do have an unabashed faith in God and identify as a Christian. Everyone seeks ‘enlightenment’ their own way depending on their experiences in life and their faith or lack thereof. Agree, disagree–my views are just that…my views and contemplations. Sometimes it helps to write them down.

I’ve never been good at devotions. I grew up in a Christian , first church I went to was Calvary Christian in Costa Mesa, California…I want to say I also went to school there? It was a really long time ago…met my first best friend in school there in pre-school/kindergarten. I recently reconnected with her on facebook after 26 years of silence between us when my family moved.

My younger sister was always amazing at devotions, wrote in her journal diligently always talking to God (praying). That was never ‘me’. I loved books but devotional books were also SO dry, or way to ‘candy-coated’ religious fluff for me to stomach. In my pre-teens I attempted to read the entire Bible in a year–lasted 3 weeks-ish. I was a rather odd pre-teen…I had a rather morbid fascination and read about the Holocaust more than my devotions or the Bible.

So my mom bought me a book “Devotions for Women on The Go” by Stephen Arterburn and Pam Farrel and I’ve started going through it. Now granted I’ve only read like 8 of them and to be honest its a little ‘sunshine out the @$$’ for me, but I will persevere because despite that it is succeeding somewhat in making me think about my own life.

The book is dated, one page of ‘devotion’ per day and I started Sept. 3, 2011, my goal is to get through a year of this and see what happens…if anything, and to generally muse about my faith in comparison to ‘whats out there’ and how others of my belief system and other belief systems see the topics/values covered. This first entry will be long as I play catch up over the last several days. So this’ll end up a walk through my own faith as well I suppose…who knows, lets see shall we?

William Borden was born into great wealth and attended Yale in 1905, but if you do a search on William Borden on the internet you won’t find great business dealings or a discovery of a new drug…he died at 25.  And to many his life was a great waste.

We learn we are lovable or unlovable from other people…

Book: Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

“My friend Kurt used to say finding a wife is a percentage game. He said you have to have two or three relationships going at once, never letting the one girl know about the others…Kurt believed you had to date about twenty girls before you found the one your were going to marry. He just believed it was easier to date them all at once. Kurt ended up marrying a girl from Dallas, everybody says he married her for her money. He is very happy…”