There have been many challenging thoughts in my mind lately. More self-evaluation of where I’ve been and where I’m going to.
One of the thoughts I’ve been challenged on is my future education. What are my motivations for attending Moody. Sure, I’m learning about God and I enjoy taking the classes, but ultimately where am I going with it? Will I be called into ministry? Am I ignoring something else that God has made me for? Ironically, it was during one of the classes that I was taking five weeks ago, Biblical Spirituality, that really challenged me on this thought. To use a phrase used recently, “Am I acting like a cup, when I should really be acting like a plate?”
Another challenge in my life is that my wife will be gone for about six weeks. This is the longest that we’ve been apart since being married. I’m going to really miss her. Not because she does the laundry, cleans the house, or makes the meals. I’m going to miss having her near me. I am going to miss spending time together with her and just hanging out with her. To borrow a phrase from a popular Chicago song… “Wanna have you near me, I wanna have you hear me sayin’, No one needs you more than I need you”…
One more challenge (last one for this post), that I’ve been thinking about is how God is. He is the great “I AM”. Our youth pastor recently did a message on God and how He is beyond time. I was talking to my dad about this on the way up to Appleton for my niece’s birthday party and he shared the following illustration from Norman Geisler that may help others in the youth group to wrap their head around last Thursday’s message. It’s like a football game being video taped. The tape has all the information on how everything is played out. God has the video tape. However we, the football players, don’t know how everything is going to turn out, so we need to do everything that God has called us to do in the game. God is outside of time as He has the video tape, however we are currently constrained by time within the game. So because God is able to be outside of time, this is how the sacrifice of His Son is sufficient for the sins that we have committed and will commit in the future. Does this mean however, we should freely sin? Romans 6:1-4 reminds us…”What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
Philippians 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
If you’re feeling discouraged and you know you’ve trusted in Jesus Christ as your savior, yet you find yourself struggling with sin or the things of the world – take some quiet time with God and read this verse…. and talk to Him about it.
-brian
Posted from North Chicago, Illinois, United States.
