Blood, Sweat, & Tears...

Come Be a Nobody for Christ

2010-11-19T18:33:00.001-08:00

John 3:30

There was an Asian Holocaust....30 Million. Medical experiments. Comfort women. All by the japanese... A racist ideology. The japanese people still don't understand... Even now the chinese and koreans still hate the japanese. So why am I there? Because Jesus said love your enemies. But I love the japanese people. I would give up my life for these people to know Christ. But there is a dark history. Only one percent of the population know Christ. They are lost. They are sexually lost. There are millions in the sex trade. 75% of sex tourists in thailand are japanese. They are relationally lost. One million are hideki, people who completely disengage from the world. They sleep all day and come out at night to buy ramen, porn, and go back into their places. So I'm asking you to become nobodies for Christ. I'm hoping the best and the brightest will come out into the missions field. To do what God has made you to do in a place where people don't know christ. You will become a nobody to reach people. I have a challenge. Give a tithe to missions. (along with your tithe to church). But really give sacrificially. Don't give from your disposable income. Give the best to God. Not the change you found in between the sofa cushions. Give your best.Give scandalously to the glory of God. Stop trying to win the rat race. Instead make all this money to give to God. You are the richest people in the world. True worship of God begins at the point of sacrifice. How will you measure your life? There is only one measure that matters. What God thinks of us... Did Jesus die so we could be comfortable, to be rich, to raise kids who can grow up to make money? No... He died so we would no longer live for ourselves.

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far too easily pleased...

2008-11-02T19:57:00.000-08:00

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

- The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis

Avoiding love...

2008-10-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it.What I know about love and believe about love and giving ones heart began in this."

- C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Susanna Wesley on sin

2008-07-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

"whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."

My Choice

2008-06-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

I want my breakfast served at eight
With ham and eggs upon the plate
A well-broiled steak I'll eat at one
And dine again when day is done.

I want an ultramodern home
And in each room a telephone;
Soft carpets, too, upon the floors
And pretty drapes to grace the doors.
A cozy place of lovely things,
Like easy chairs with inner springs,

And then, I'll get a nice T.V.
- Of course, I'm careful what I see.

I want my wardrobe, too, to be
Of neatest, finest quality,
With latest style in suit and vest
Why should not Christians have the best?

But then the Master I can hear
In no uncertain voice, so clear:
"I bid you come and follow Me,
The lowly Man of Galilee."

"Birds of the air have made their nest
And foxes in their holes find rest,
But I can offer you no bed;
No place have I to lay my head."

In shame I hung my head and cried,
How could I spurn the Crucified?
Could I forget the way He went,
The sleepless nights in prayer He spent?

For forty days without a bite,
Alone He fasted day and night;
Despised, rejected - on He went,
and did not stop till veil He rent!

A man of sorrows and of grief
No earthly friend to bring relief;
"Smitten of God," the prophet said
Mocked, beaten, bruised, His blood ran red.
If He be God, and died for me,
No sacrifice too great can be
For me; a mortal man, to make;
I'll do it all for Jesus' sake.

Yes, I will tread the path He trod,
No other way will please my God,
So, henceforth, this my choice shall be,
My choice for all eternity.

- William McChesney (Missionary to the Congo)

Creed

2008-03-19T08:22:00.000-07:00

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy's OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes,
UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven hell God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behaviour that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds
and the flowering of individual thought.

"Chance" a post-script

If chance be the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky,
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

- Creed, Steve Turner

Quiet Desperation

2008-03-18T10:03:00.000-07:00

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

- Walden, Henry David Thoreau

The Madman

2008-02-12T08:38:00.000-08:00

Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]

2008-02-08T11:17:00.000-08:00

"And all the time-such is the tragi-comedy of our situation-we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity'. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful"

- The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis

A Part in Search of a Play

2008-02-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

"Again, in the ultimate fantasy of war, wondering: What's that on my shoulder? Pips? A crown? Hands raised to their caps to salute me, mine raised to salute others. Why? Or yet again, in the even more ultimate fantasy of sex - Whose is this body lying beside mine? To what end? How did it get here? How, for that matter, did I? Watching my own body making bizarre movements, emitting strange groans, in relation to this other body, as though I were in no way concerned. Like seeing oneself on television - a figure on a screen, a stranger, a speaking shadow whose words seem to come out of some immense cave; dry and remove and dead. In this sense, it is possible to look back on a life as so much footage. Or, better - a scene that has often come into my mind, both sleeping and waking - I am standing in the wings of a theatre waiting for my cue to go on stage. As I stand there I can hear the play proceeding, and suddenly it dawns on me that the lines I have learnt are not in this play at all, but belong to a quite different one. Panic seizes me; I wonder frenziedly what I should do. Then I get my cue. Stumbling, falling over the unfamiliar scenery, I make my way on to the stage, and there look for guidance to the prompter, whose head I can just see rising out of the floor-boards. Alas, he only signals helplessly to me, and I realize that of course his script is different from mine. I begin to speak my lines, but they are incomprehensible to the other actors and abhorrent to the audience, who begin to hiss and shout: 'Get off the stage!' 'Let the play go on!' 'You're interrupting!' I am paralysed and can think of nothing to do but to go on standing there and speaking my lines that don't fit. The only lines I know.

There are so many plays to have a part in. As it might be a great love scene; flesh to flesh, and eternity in your eyes. Nonsense! That comes from Antony and Cleopatra. Or a great drama of action; firing off-stage, alarums and excursions, a dashing salute. 'Sir, I caught the spy!' Nonsense, again! Leave that to Fleming. Or a political satire, Trollopian, Disraelian, with the part of an eminence grise for me. Or rather, declivete. No, that will never do either; render unto Snow the things that are Snow's Or a majestic voice on the telly - a voice, though, that is for ever Dimbleby. Or a typewriter mightier than the sword; meaning Don Quixote's, of course. So many and so varied plays, but never a one with my lines in it. Yet I remain ever more convinced that at last I shall find the play my lines belong to, and speak them. Like choristers waiting to sing; hearing unfamiliar music rumbling from the organ; poised ready, and then - the notes they are waiting for, the tune they know. Uplifted, their faces shining and glorious, they pour out their song, filling the air with confident, full-throated notes."

- Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge

Faith or Manipulation

2008-01-31T11:32:00.000-08:00

"I have spent the majority of my life accosted by society’s attempts to manipulate me. I can see through light shows, flashy presentations and sales pitches with ease, and my cynicism abounds. Which is why cheesy graphics on a screen create an automatic distaste and the immediate reaction to shut off whatever is about to be presented to me. I am desperate to hear those who tell me that to live out the faith of Christ will require my death. Those who will say "many are called but few are chosen," unaccompanied by lights and laser shows. Those who believe that the clear and concise truth of a gospel, that was and still is offensive to many, can stand on its own."

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