Sooner or Later (Soren's Song)

In the early 1800's there lived a man named Soren Kierkegaard, who was convinced that most of the human race was living with blinders on. He believed that humans live empty existences, but there is something that can fill the void in our lives. Just as the other great thinkers we heard from on Sunday (C.S. Lewis, St. Augustine, and, of course, Jesus Christ), Kierkegaard understood that there is something missing from our lives, which leaves us feeling empty inside. Even the greatest thinkers of our generation, Tom Brady and John Mayer (this is called sarcasm), can figure out that no matter what we try to fill our lives with, nothing can satisfy our endless hunger for something greater. During a candid interview, three time super bowl champion Tom Brady stated that despite all his accomplishments, he still felt that there was something left he was supposed to do. Grammy winning artist John Mayer exclaims in one song that "Something's missing, and I don't know what it is". This desire is not left only for the philosophers, musicians, athletes, and celebrities, but it is coded in our soul. As we learned in the previous series, we are cursed with the knowledge of the way the world should be. We live inside the tension created by our separation from God.

This is why we stare at the ceiling in the middle of the night wondering if we're really alone or if things could ever change. We know that there is a God shaped hole inside of us all, and as Kierkegaard explained we're just living our lives, asleep at the wheel. Yet sooner or later you'll be faced with the truth that you were meant for something greater. Sooner or later you'll understand that you were designed to be in an intimate relationship with the God that not only designed the universe, but the innermost workings of your body. And sooner or later you'll realize that the only way you can approach God, is on your knees. See because we can only truly come into relationship with God when we, just like the woman at the well (John 4:1-28), take off our blinders, lay our weapons down, shed our pride, and embrace what God wants to tell us. Our pride and defenses create a wall between our Father and us, when are we going to realize that we need to tear down that wall? And the crazy thing is: Although, a lot of us spend many sleepless nights staring at the ceiling wondering if there is anyone out there who can heal our wounds, God is on the other side of the wall pleading for us to come to our senses, and let His perfect love heal all our wounds.

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Pray
That you can begin to shed your pride and defenses, and begin to embrace God's revolutionary love.

Mess of Me

We are the children of the quick fix. A people who are striving to get their needs met, but let's be honest, we don't want to do a lot of work. As a society we have worked for centuries to build a community which can synthesize life, in order for us to escape reality and our actual God given needs and desires. We have the desire to be in community with each other, but we don't want to face our own shortcomings or put the personal time in to building meaningful relationships; so, we pick and choose the aspects of our life we want, and post them on a social networking site (like facebook, twitter, or myspace) so that others who agree with our opinions can be our friends. God gave us the desire for a completely intimate connection with another human being, but I don't want to wait to get married to have sex; therefore, we choose to manufacture desire and intimacy with pre-marital sex or pornography. This is part of the reason drugs are so abundant in our culture, we're trying to synthesize a feeling or reaction.

This idea leads us to the untruth which we discussed on Sunday. We are given the need to love and be loved by our Creator, but we mess up our lives and we want a quick fix to get God to love us. So we try to get our lives in order or pray for a certain amount of time or memorize a series of Bible verses or forward certain e-mails or attend church long enough or a number of other things to get God to love us, and sometimes it feels like it works. Unfortunately, we also believe the opposite, that if we can get God to love us or love us more, than we can also do things that will make God love us less. However, the truth is God loved us before we were even born. Before we even knew what love was, God loved us, and there's nothing we can do to make Him love us more or less. Although, it's important to pray, study the Bible, attend church, grow closer to God, and those sorts of things, those should be a reaction to the love God's given us, not an attempt to trick God into loving us.

The hard part about all of this, is that it goes against our human nature. We can't believe that after all the things that we've done God would still love us, but that's the crazy kind of love we're talking about. Not only did God love us, but he gave up His own life, so that we could be closer to Him. The other reason some of us can't accept this love is that we didn't earn it, and our pride gets in the way. If there's nothing we could ever do to earn God's love, than we can't be worth God's love. Well, that's the beauty of grace, we get what we don't deserve. We don't deserve such an amazing love, but we serve a God who is amazing and loves us uncoditionally. This is why we often try to find a quick fix to earn God's love instead of humbling ourselves and embracing the perfection of love and grace.

Yet, there is still good news for those of us who have messed up in our lives (I'm guessing the percentage is pretty high), God has provided us a quick fix, a way for us to start over again. In a conversation with a highly spiritual man, Jesus explains that in order to enter into the kingdom of God one must be born again (John 3). Jesus promises us a fresh start for our spirit, a new birth with a clean slate. There is still hard work that must be put in so that we can live a life that is in accordance to God's good, perfect, and pleasing will, but we no longer have to manufacture love, because we can rest in the fullness of His love that has already been given to us. What a radical idea that even while we wound Him, the God of the universe still sent His love in human form to die for us. Why would we ever try to create love when we have already been given such a perfect, beautiful love?


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Pray
That God's love will become evident to you, as you learn to rest in it.

Gimme Some Truth

The human psyche has this amazing ability where it can legitimize any action, thought, or philosophy that it wants to. Put simply: As humans, we can rationalize our behavior or personal philosophies, in order to make ourselves feel better. All of our thoughts and decisions are based upon a series of "truths" or "realities" that we choose to believe. If I make myself a sandwich the truth that I believe is that it will satisfy my hunger. When I go to see a movie, hangout with friends, or play video games the truth I believe is that doing these things will entertain me. Although these truths are obvious, there exist several truths that have been corrupted by sin and our own nature.

For example, if I choose to continue to procrastinate about a project or simply not turn in my homework, the truth I believe is that God doesn't care about my schoolwork or that my school only affects me, therefore, I can study how I please. However, according to scripture we know that God wants us to do everything as if we were doing it for Him (Colossians 3:23-24). When I gossip or talk about or towards somebody with a malicious heart, the truth I accept is either that, they deserve it (for some reason or another) or because they're just words and that person may or may not ever hear them than its ok. Why would we believe this when we know that God wants us to speak words of love and encouragement (Ephesians 5:4)? As we learned on Sunday, we often convince ourselves that something is true, because it justifies our behavior, and the longer we convince ourselves the more we believe it to be true. The danger lies in the fact that the longer we live in a lie, the longer we live under the bondage of our sin, and we can never be truly set free.

How do we escape the lies that we've accepted as truths? We have to accept God's words in John 8 to be true, and live under them. Christ states that if we begin to follow the teachings of the Bible, then we can know the truth, and the truth sets us free.

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." -John 8:31-32.

The first step is to begin acting on what you all ready know. We all know simple truths that we choose to ignore or corrupt, begin living out those truths, and you will begin to be set free. Next, you have to understand more, begin reading the Bible, and applying those teachings to your life. If you don't have a Bible, one of your youth leaders can get you one. If you don't know where to start, open to the New Testament, and start reading the Book of Matthew (it's the first book). Learning about how Jesus lived his life, is the best way to learn how to be more like God (because He was God, if you didn't know). As you begin to learn and apply the truth that God has revealed to us through His word, you will begin to be set free from these "untruths”, which will eventually hurt you. Don't wait any longer, the longer you allow yourself to live under these lies; the harder it will be yourself to be set free.


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Pray
That God will begin, through His word and your obedience, to set you free from the "untruths" in your life.

There Will Be A Day

When natural disasters destroy an entire community or when divorce breaks up a family or when a disease strikes someone that you love and care about, it's often difficult to feel that we serve a God who is great. Even though we learned earlier that the curse of our sin causes tragedies like these to occur, when the truth becomes personal we begin to forget it, and assume that God is responsible or negligent. However, there is good news that rises from the ashes of a shattered world, God promises that there will come a day when those who have chosen to live for Him will be in a place with no more suffering or pain. On Sunday morning, the band performed an uplifting song (There Will Be A Day by Jeremy Camp) that celebrated this day, and was written by a man who understood suffering.

Jeremy Camp is a Christian singer-songwriter who most might consider, based on his positive songs, someone who has lived a privileged life. However, the truth is that when Camp was twenty-three he lost his young wife to ovarian cancer, they had only been married less than six months. Although this might be reason for many to discard God as either non-existent or cruel, Jeremy Camp pens a song which has been played on Christian radio for the past six years, called I Still Believe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgJrflQ0Qwg). The song claims a faith that God is still faithful and great, despite the horrors of the young widower's reality. The kind of faith that could be responsible for both of the aforementioned songs mirrors that of the author of the majority of the New Testament of the Bible, Paul. In his letter to a church in Rome, Paul states:

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. -Romans 8:18

What both Paul and Jeremy Camp understand and what we often forget when we're in the midst of tragedy, is that the sufferings caused by the curse of sin do not even compare to the glory and joy which those of us who follow Christ will inherit when we're in heaven. This is the evidence that God is great and God is good, because even though He had to punish sin, He still took our punishment on Himself and created a way for us to return to Him. Because there will be a day when there is no more divorce, no more cancer, no more hurricanes, no more pain, no more ridicule, no more crime, no more reasons to be afraid, and no more death. God in his great love has made a way for us to be free of the curse of our sin, and we shall wait patiently for that day.


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Pray
That the knowledge of heaven can relieve the pain and stress of our present sufferings.