Strength in God

So while reading 1 Samuel I can to the point where the future King David was being basically chased by Saul. Now get a little bit of perspective on this. Saul was a mighty warrior, the first ever king of Israel, people loved him and looked up to him. Then he screwed up, so God decided that he would no longer be the king of God's people but that someone new would be. God chose David and of course you know the David and Goliath story...same David. So the people began to brag about David and pretty much thought he was amazing. So Saul got jealous and started chasing him to kill him because he didn't like the idea that the next king would not be from his direct family. Well as much as Saul hated David, his own son Jonathan absolutely loved David. He knew that David would be the next king and he was a Godly man himself.
Well anyways, to get to what this is really about, just imagine having to live with all this, knowing that a well known and loved man is trying very hard to kill you. You would probably get down on yourself. But listen to what happened:

"And Saul's son Jonathan went to David at Horesh and HELPED HIM FIND STRENGTH IN GOD." (1 Samuel 23:16)

The whole time I was reading all this stuff before thinking David is really a man consumed by God. He just seems like the perfect Christian. But then I read this and think, whoa, he wasn't perfect, he was losing strength in God. But hey, duh!! Only Jesus was perfect and had that kind of faith. It's crazy that we think of these "heros" in the Bible as being the perfect people, but you see that they all mess up some how. David loses faith and Moses did too. So if we think how easy it is for those who have had such close relationships with God to lose faith, think how much easier it is for those of us to lose faith. Scary huh? I think so. But what is awesome about it is that God placed someone in David's life to help him find that strength when he was losing it. This shows the importance of our christian relationships. We have to be accountable for one another and watch out for one another.

"Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds."
-Hebrews 10:24

So what I took away from this passage is that we all screw up. It's what we do, but by having those friends and that support to help lift us up, we can make it through the hard times. We just have to encourage one another in our faith.

Call me sin, I'll say loved

I'm reading this book right now called Out of the Salt Shaker and Into the World by Rebecca Pippert and if you get the chance I would encourage reading it. It talks about how to be evangelical as a way of life, not just as something you do once a year on a mission trip or twice a week when you run into a poor victim. Anyways, so I'm reading about how we need to clarify the meaning of words that can easily be construed by non-christians and Becky (as we call her) gave an example of how she explained sin to a friend. Read:

"You Christians say we are all sinners"
"Do you know why? The Bible says it's because something very, very precious has been broken. If we wern't so significant, if we didn't have so much meaning, then it wouldn't be so sad. It's only when somehting precious has been broken that we can say, 'How tragic!' That brokenness is what the Bible calls sin. That's why God hates it so much. Sin caused something extremely precious to become dehumanized."..."[Sin is] anything that makes us less than we were created to be."

Okay so hold up, wait...what?? I always thought God was just jealous because we were worshipping other gods. I mean I knew he loved us, but I thought it was mostly just out of jealousy and wanting those he created to praise him so he could love them. I know, now that I think about it, that's pretty naive. But here she says that the reason God is angry about sin is because he cares so much and the fact that sin is pulling us away and making us less than we were created to be, it just infuriates God.
I don't know about you, but I think I have a totally new perspective on sin.

Here I Am

So if you have ever read the story about Samuel you know the part where the Lord called him 3 times and he kept going to Eli saying "here I am, you called me." Finally Eli realized that it was God calling Samuel and he told Samuel to answer "Speak, for your servant is listening."
Anyways, I've been seeing a lot of this passage in the last few months. I've seen it in a few different lights and I think it's a pretty interesting passage. First, how often before we became Christians did we feel God calling us, but we just didn't know it was him? I know I had that, all my life I kept answering to other people and other things "Here I am", not knowing that God was the one pulling at my heart trying to get my attention. I think sometimes we still do that even as Christians. God is wanting us to do something for him, but we think it's something completely different. We feel it necessary to run for president of a club because we think we can lead people, isn't God the one that gave you that ability? And how do you know he isn't giving you an opportunity to witness by showing strength to this group of people? Just an example.
Secondly, Samuel says, "Speak for your servant is listening." Man I wish I could say that is what I say to God all the time. But dang, I know I don't. But when I do listen to God, life is so much better. And you always know when you aren't listening to God, because you can feel it in your heart and hear that little voice inside your head telling you different, but you try to convince yourself that this is what God wants. It's so silly, but we all do it, at least I think, I know I do. But working on it.
So here we see what we need to improve on in our daily walks of life. We need to realize that God is calling us to do certain things and that in everything we do we serve him. Not only that, but we need to listen to what he tells us. And here's the kicker, by listening to what he says we might just end up doing what he wants.

Can you hear me now??

Okay so I finished reading Judges the other day and I realized something about God's choosen people. We suck! Oh my gosh, every few years the people would fall back into their disgusting ways and then beg God to send someone to save them when things weren't working out. Didn't they know that this is what he had promised if they didn't follow him?? He told them blantantly, I will ruin you if you turn away from me. But they kept following after other gods trying to find something better and then in the end always running back to God.
It made me look at my own life and wonder, how often do I do the same thing? How often do I try to find peace in the world and then come running back to Christ when everything else falls through. I've found that the thing I go after most is love, for some reason I just need love. And that's okay, God gave me that desire to love, he gave it to me so that I would desire to love him. But I always find myself looking to friends and family and boys trying to find that support and in the last year it has really hit me that I don't need any of that to find true love, because the love that I have been granted is so much better than that. God gave his son, he doesn't leave me when I suffer, and he never uses me for his on pleasure.
So I challenge you to think what it is in your life that pulls you away from Christ time and time again. I encourage you not to be like the Israelites of that age, stick with God, he will make you prosper when the time comes. Remember, "Condsider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith develops perserverence. Perserverence must finish it's work so that you will be mature and complete. Not lacking anything." -James 1: 2-4