Pride. It’s huge.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t had things to blog about. Right now, it’s all about pride.

Pride is such a huge issue. I recently (by recently I mean as of a month or so ago) read “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis. (It’s a great read, by the way). One of the best parts in the book was the chapter on “the great sin” – in this case: Pride. The very last paragraph in the chapter says

“If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.”

As a disclaimer, I have never thought that I was not prideful at all; however, I have thought that maybe I’m just not as bad as I could be. Now, this, as C.S. Lewis kindly pointed out, is prideful in and of itself. As you can imagine, this is a pretty hardcore thing to realize. So now I’m at this place where I notice tons of thoughts that I think that are very prideful. Quick example: at work, I love it when I get the praise for the things I do. Also, I hate it when a certain person will get praise for their work, when they put in hardly any effort, whereas I put in tons of effort into what I did and get nothing for it. Basically, I shouldn’t need this praise to be happy and successful.

The Lord is where my happiness should come from – not from people telling me how good I am at something.

What’s your treasure?

A little background info: I have this internship at a place in southern Indiana for the summer, and I’m there with 4 other interns (all of us being from Purdue). I have to say that I am really enjoying making friends with all of them. I decided a long time ago that I will not go the entire summer without sharing what I believe. A couple of them have already heard my whole spiel on why I am a follower of Christ (or christian, if you will).

Now, on to my story. One of the guys I work with values money more than I have ever seen. It just breaks my heart to know that that is what makes him happy and that is how he is going to judge both his happiness and successfulness later in life. Not only did it make me sad for him, but it made me thankful for what I have. Praise the Lord that I have Him and my treasure is not money. I just cannot imagine basing my happiness on such a disposable thing.

If you’re the praying type, please pray for my friend at work and for me to be able to share more with him.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)

Yahweh-Yireh

The Lord will provide. That’s what the title means. It’s a pretty sweet phrase (found in Gen 22:14).

So the story around this phrase is the story about how Abraham is asked by the Lord to sacrafice his only son. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’d have one heck of a hard time giving up my only son. Heck, I have a hard time just giving up my free time. I really want faith like that though. To be able to give up something as loved as a son and to trust the Lord and have faith that He really is going to do what’s best for you, would be absolutely amazing.

I think that’s all I have to say about that. It’s pretty simple. Trust and have faith, and the Lord will provide. It’s not “He might provide” or “if you do this one thing for Him, He will provide”. There are no conditions on that other than to have faith.

Trust is a 4 letter word.

To start, I really like the band Cake. They have a song that is titled “Friend is a Four Letter Word.” I’m not sure what that four letter word is, but I could take some guesses. Either way, that’s where my title comes from. Sometimes trust is a four letter word. As in it’s hard to do.

To elaborate:

There are many areas in my life right now where I need to put more trust in God. One of the biggest is trusting that everything with Andy (my fiancee, who will be about 10 hours away) and me not seeing him for 6 months will work out fine. I came to the realization that the reason I miss Andy so much is because I worry that something will happen to him. Which, as you might have guessed, goes back to the base of me not trusting that the Lord will have His will done, and I will ultimately be okay.

Another thing that has been bothering me, rooting back to no trust is this: I had this friend, who suddenly became not my friend. What I mean by this is that I would’ve considered us pretty good friends at one point, and one day, things kind of changed for some reason, and now we haven’t talked for almost a month. And believe me, it’s not my fault we haven’t talked; I’ve made many attempts. So, in thinking about this, I realized that I am continued to be bothered by this because of one thing: my lack of trust. How, you ask? Well, I can’t trust that God has one heck of a good reason for this, and maybe I am just not meant to know that reason now. I just need to trust that there is a reason, and that this is what God wants for me for some reason or another.

Trust is a hard thing. And it is the root of my worry.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and et your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

Matthew 6:25-27

Dave and Jesus.

To start off, I must admit that I am a huge fan of Dave Matthews Band. I’m about 99% sure Dave is not a Christian, by any means, although there are times when he references God (or maybe a god) in his songs. I recently listened to a live version of a song called “The Maker” (sung by him and Tim Reynolds at the 4-22-07 show). Again, to clarify, I am not suggesting Dave is a Christian or that one should look to him for answers about God, but I had to ponder about some of his lyrics and their relevancy to me being a Christian. Here is it:

Lyrics to “The Maker”

Oh, Oh Deep water
Black, and cold like the night
I stand with arms wide open
I’ve run a twisted mile
I’m a stranger
in the eyes of the Maker

I could not see
for fog in my eyes
I could not feel
for the fear in my life
From across the great divide
In the distance i saw a light
John Baptist
walking to me with the Maker

My body is bent and broken
by long and dangerous sleep
I can work the fields of Abraham
and turn my head away
I’m not a stranger
in the hands of the Maker

Brother John
Have you seen the homeless daughters
standing there
with broken wings
I have seen the flaming swords
there over east of eden
burning in the eyes of the Maker
burning in the eyes of the Maker
burning in the eyes of the Maker
burning in the eyes of the Maker

oh river rise from your sleep….
(http://www.lyricsondemand.com/d/davematthewsbandlyrics/themakerlyrics.html)

Here’s what I liked about the song (and what I got out of it). It’s basically the journey of how one becomes a follower of Christ. To start off, the first verse is when he did not know Christ – black and cold, wanting something more (why his arms are wide open). In the second verse, he realizes that Christ is there waiting for him and knocking, and he saw the light. Finally, he is no longer a stranger in the eyes of the Maker – he accepted Christ in his life.

That’s kind of how it goes; at least in my experience.

“Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” ~Eph 5:19a-20

A Pillar of Salt? Seriously.

This past semester, I decided to buy myself a copy of “The One Year Bible”. Because one of the things I am not so great at is keeping a regular bible-reading schedule, I fell behind quickly. After starting this blog, I decided that starting to read that again would be a good thing…obviously, it’s the bible. Today’s reading was a little from Genesis (in addition to a part of Matthew and Psalms and Proverbs).

Here’s some background info:

So this character, Lot was told to leave his city by some angels who told him that God had decided that the city was in such bad shape, He was going to destroy it. So the angels told him to get himself and his family out of that place. So, after some hesitation, Lot gathered his fam and got the heck out of that place. So they’re running away to a small village, and Lot’s wife decides that she must be the curious one and look back. And what does the Lord do to her? Turn her into a pillar of salt.

My thoughts on this specific incident:

Lot’s wife did not trust the Lord when He said “do not look back”. She clearly was curious and disobeyed. Very similar to the whole Adam and Eve deal. It’s funny how our human nature is to question what God says not to do. Why can’t we just trust what He says and that be that? It sounds so simple typed out, but it it’s just not that simple.

(what I read: Genesis 19:1-26)

Why.

I suppose the first post should be a little about this blog. The impulse to blog came from my best friend, who incidentally has a blog. I decided this time around (I have had a blog before, just about my boring life) that I was going to choose to blog about a real something. So what is this real something you ask? The answer: well that’s sort of complicated. I consider myself a follower of Christ. One of the things I am supposed/expected/need to do is read my bible. So, I came to the conclusion that it would be beneficial (to me, most definitely, but hopefully to others as well) to blog about what I read out of my bible and/or any other Christian-related literature (which I honestly do not read often; however I have found C.S. Lewis to be an amazing man who has some great points and thoughts over Christianity and Christ).

There you have it. The purpose to my blog.