Matthew 4

Addiction is a tricky thing.

So is temptation.

So is the devil.

Basically, the devil sucks.

Temptation is all around us thanks to him. In fact, when you try to give something up it seems like more and more things tempt you than you realized before. At least that's the way its been for me. Especially recently after coming back from mission trip and sharing my testimony there. But temptation will find us in forms we never expected, you see the devil is sneaky like that. So what should we do when we feel tempted?
Something that has helped me recently when dealing with temptation is remembering and reading back over Matthew 4. This chapter is devoted to Jesus being tempted by the devil. The devil took him up and down a mountain and have him bread after forty days of fasting, all Jesus had to do was bow down and worship him. But Jesus held firm and if a tired and hungry Jesus can resist the devil who is offering the world to him (which is already God's anyway) then why cant I resist something so minuscule that causes me to sin?

This is where the application comes in. My application for this is a two-parter. 1: read Matthew 4. Re-reading Matthew 4 reminds me of what Jesus went through to resist the devil and gives me hope that through Him I can as well. The problem is that I can't always remember to to back and read that chapter, which brings me to numero dos. 2: write it down. Write it down in places I'll see it, i.e. desk, chair, tv, wrist, arms. The last two tend to be the most effective, cause its always with me. Does that give me the ok to get a tattoo?

Anyways those are the two ways that help me fight the devil, along with prayer, hope this helps you.


(Written from the floor of my best friend's house late at night after my last day of working and an awesome dance party with even awesomer friends)

Service

So anyone who knows me knows that service is a huge deal to me. And it is so easy for me to serve and show that servant's mentality and heart while on mission trip. But when I get home, I lose so much of what I so desperately want and strive to be. If that makes any sense whatsoever then my thought is why is it so easy to be a servant on a mission trip but hard back in the "life" or " home"? Stuff as simple as organizing a plan for passing out water to the thirsty or food for the hungry? Things I truly wanted to do and said I would do when I got back from mission trip.
(For those wondering, most people who we give water to will not have time for or want to talk, so my thought was to design a label for the water bottle that either shared the gospel or shared a few verses or even simply said "Jesus loves you" but for the past two weeks I have stared at that water bottle on the floor of my room as I pass on by.)
So what is it the fact that I'm leaving for college in a week and I'm scared out of ny mind?
Is it that I just don't know what to say about Jesus on a freaking water bottle?
Am I just too busy and too wrapped around other things right now?
Or maybe it goes back to my last post about how little effort I've put recently into my relationship with God.

I think all of these have a small say in the matter, but the last one hurts the most, cause its the biggest. Coming from a guy who loves to serve, and who wants to one day marry a girl who has a servant's heart and mind and yearns to serve her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and a guy who wants to have his first tattoo say "servant of the lord" or simply "servant", I feel like the worst servant right now. I certainly don't feel like I can say that right now about myself, because of the lack of effort.
And I'm saying all this on my phone from my best friend's living room floor that I'm staying with because I'm so sick of how quickly I came down from my mission trip high and how awful of a servant I've brought back in myself since team anywhere.

And I apologize for the rant I just went on.

But it gets me to this point: when I wake up in five hours, I go home, a place that,is comforting beyond do many levels, but also holds many temptations, and as I spend my last couple days at home, they will be spent serving, worshipping, and praising my God whose Name is above all Names and who is my Strong Tower!
Hold me accountable.

It's time to start being the servant I'm called to be.

Effort

So I just got home from a Texas Rangers baseball game, I am a big fan of the team and the game, and to be honest I was embarassed to be at that game.  The lack of effort shown by a team that gets paid millions of dollars total to play the game was less than my old high school team, which at times put out little effort.  The left fielder threw the ball in to the short stop and it bounced a couple times, not a great throw, then he let it go through, as the fielder rounded second and could've easily taken third base.  There were more instances of this as the game progressed and it reached a point where I legitimately believed they had given up. 
But something happened in the last inning that really put me over the edge, the Rangers got a base hit.  It was an infield hit, and the infielder made a bad throw and went into the dugout, so our runner was able to take second base because the ruling is if the ball goes out of play (which includes the dugout) the batter gets the next base.  Now you may be thinking, wow what a huge break, they must be pumped up now and excited, well our runner sure didn't show it as he WALKED to second base, not jog, not run, but WALKED.  To me, this showed that he had given up as well and didn't care about the outcome of the game.  The rest of the game proved my point as the batters watched good pitches to hit and swung at bad pitches or dug themselves into holes that they could'nt get out of.  Bottom line, the Rangers effort tonight sucked and was a poor excuse for a major league team.
Now I know that no team can win every game and I know that no team can have the same great performance as other games, but it was something about the EFFORT that stuck out to me tonight.  And the word EFFORT keep hitting me, and I finally realized why.  Ever since I returned from mission trip, I have given God less and less of my effort.  I left that mission trip wanting to do several things:
Spend more time studying the Bible using the methods we used in our devotional times.
Plan a label for the water bottles and times and dates to go out and hand out water bottles and talk to people about Jesus.
Remember - Ekklesia, Matthew 4, Serve (which falls moreso into the above statement)(ask me about those later).
Remember what God did and not forget it.

Brothers and Sisters, I need your help.  Team Anywhere, you may be able to provide more help because we share this experience, but I am opening this to everyone.  I need your help to hold me accountable to doing these things and remembering what God did during that week.

 Help me as I try to put more effort into my walk with Christ

God - Budziszewski w/ an ending from Shew

God is like nothing we could have imagined.

God is utterly other than us - other in a way we express with the world holiness.  Yes, He dwells within each Christian, but He's not you.  He isn't the same as you, He isn't a part of you, and He isn't a "higher" you.  Yes, you're made in His image, but you're not Him.  You're not the same as Him, you're not a part of Him, and you aren't a "splinter" of Him - nor will you ever be.  He doesn't depend on anything else because He is what everything else must be explained by.  Although we can know what He has taught us about Himself, we can never comprhend Him completely because He is greater than our minds.  Anything He wills, He can do.  He not only holds supreme power but He also uses it.  Nothing can defeat Him and nothing can happen contrary to His will.  He is also supremely good - light with no darkness.  Although evil is real, He detests it and brings it to judgment.  He knows everything, He pays attention to everything, and nothing escapes His notice.  He's not just a What in three Whos - one God in three persons:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  There is no one like Him.  He is set apart.  He is what He is, and there was never a time when He was not.

God is utterly intimate with us - intimate in a way we express with the word love.  He's our father.  He's our master.  He's our brother.  He's our shepherd.  He's our husband.  He's our friend.  If you think these are "just figures of speech," that's fine.  But remember tha figures of speech are always mere shadows of the real thing. 

Maybe you don't want God to be that holy.  Maybe you don't want to be loved that much.  Maybe you don't want to be loved that much by something that holy, for our God is a consuming fire.  None of that makes a speck of difference to Him.  Though we can reject His loving pursuit, God is relentless, inexorable, and utterly unfettered in His pursuit of us.  He empties Himself, pours Himself out for us, to the point of death, whether we want Him to or not.  He crushes out sin.  He is utterly opposed to whatever in us opposes Him.  He wants us to be holy, to be set apart for Him.  And He expects us to like it!

25 of us are about to embark on a journey to Haiti, and for the most part, we don't know what to expect once we get down there.  A mixture of excitement, nervousness, wicked out of our pants scared are just some of the feelings we are going through right now.  Satan must be wicked out of his pants scared too because obstacle after obstacle has been placed in our path especially over the last 24+ hours in attempts to derail us from the ultimate goal, Jesus Christ.  In the end we know this, Satan's attempts will be futile as Jesus' light continues to shine through the darkness.  Church (church means every follower of Jesus Christ,) we need you to pray for continued financial support to pour in, for our safety during this time (10-17), but above all, that God's will be done. 

God is God and God is good.

Tonight

I always wanted to be a singer, wanted to play the guitar and become famous.  I'm working on the guitar part, but the vocals are definitely not there, and neither are the lyrics.  But this is a poem I wrote late one night after I had fallen to Satan's ways.  I'll explain it in depth later.

Tonight you've won
Because of you, I have fallen,
Far too long you've kept me from His light,
Well that ends, tonight.

Listen carefully Satan
You're winning streak is over
Your evil ways have no place here
And your days are numbered.

As I stand here tonight
I know my Lord is moving
Moving closer
To ending your reign.

For that day will come
Where you will fall to His wrath
Nothing can save you,
Nothing will save you.

For on that Day even you will bow
Not out of reverence, but humiliation
For God's mercy extends to me
But you, God has no mercy.

So leave here O wretched one
You have no right to dwell here
You're finished
He has won.

Now forgive me father
For I have wronged you far too long
Lord, I ask tonight be the night
I return to You, to Your Arms, Home.

As I stand beside You
I become stronger than he knows how,
And in this hour
we begin our attack.

Father with you by my side
And Your everlasting Water,
My Water gun is ready
To take down the evil one.

So tonight we charge to Hell
Carrying with us, Your tools of life,
For with this device, Satan,
Your life, will end.

It begins tonight, Lord,
And I stand before You.
Embraced by Your Love,
Nevermore, will I fall.

Who Read's This Blog?

I'm going to take a break from the series that I had planned to write for just a bit and I want to ask you a simple question.  Do you read this blog?  If the answer is yes, I ask that you comment with a simple yes, you don't have to put your name, or any information about you, I just want to see if anyone is reading this site.  If the answer is yes, then included in your comment, write what you want to discuss, because this has been mostly one-sided and I would love for it to open up to you, the readers, on what you would like to talk about. 

Friday, April 30, 2010 - Letting Go

Senior Night for baseball...

This night was 14 years in the making.  For fourteen years, I played baseball, the last four with a great group of guys who I am definitely going to miss and already do.  So let me walk you through the entire night.

Senior Night is the last home game of baseball for the seniors on our team.  Pretty self explanatory.  Anyways there were ten of us, and only ten of us played, besides a junior who came in relief.  Anyways, the game was a tough one, not only emotionally but the game itself was a typical north crowley come from behind fashion, sadly it did not turn out the way we had hoped.  We lost 6-7, story of our season, half of district games were lost by one run.  And for most of us, this was our last game.  Less than half of us will go on to play college baseball, and less than that may make it to play longer.  But for me, this was it, this was my last game, and it still truly has not set in yet.  But I do feel very fortunate, my last time in the field I caught the last out on a flyball in foul territory, and the last time up to bat I hit a base hit to right field, so I do feel very blessed that is the way God decided to end my baseball career.

But it was after the game that hit me the hardest.  Every other member of the NC Baseball program, freshman through junior lined up around the base path and shook each of our hands after we walked out to the mound with our mom and dad as our dads threw our last pitch to us.  This was the emotional part, and I did it last.  I was the last Senior of '010 to round the bases and step on homeplate in the 2010 season. 

So did I have any regrets?  Well, I would love to say no I didn't have any regrets.  However, I would be lying to you, and I am a horrible liar so you would have figured it out anyway.  My only regret is that I did not keep God involved in the game as much as I had planned to.  But that is the funny thing about plans, often times they never end up the same way you had planned, hehe, planning the plans never come out how you planned.  This year I did a better job of it, but I will never be able to meet my expectations because I set the bar way too high for me to ever achieve.  But that's okay, because everything that happened during my four years of baseball has formed me into the man that I have become now.  Both athletically and in my relationship with Christ. 

A friend of mine once told me that, in a nutshell, God had given me this gift of baseball, and I had held onto it for too long instead of giving it back to God and letting Him use it my life to glorify Him rather than myself trying to use it to make me happy.  And he was right.  I held onto baseball for so long because I never wanted it to end.  But as I caught that last out, as I got my last base hit in my final at bat, and as I rounded the bases for the last time in a baseball uniform, I stepped on home plate, signifying a full circle ending to a great baseball career that would not have been possible without God, and with that final step on the plate, it was time to let go.  It was time to let go and give it back to God, and since then, that connection with baseball is not the same, but that is perfectly okay because God is bigger than a game of baseball.