Often times I wonder why we fight battles we know we can never win. In Les Miserables, the students clearly are outmatched. And not the kind of outmatched like a football game in which they could fight hard enough and pull out a narrow victory. Neigh, they will die. It is strictly impossible for them to win.
So why do they fight?
John Lennon, a known non-fighter, did not fight wars, or poverty. He did not strive to eliminate death or evil. However, he did devote his life to the fight for peace, and about this he said "You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die."
He knew the costs of his war, yet he fought. Sometimes, you fight to lose, because without the will to win, you have nothing.
e. e. cummings said "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
We choose to strive for our goals, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Because we can never succeed fully, we fight day by day. Our lives will be a great battle, and every day we will be outmatched. But do we give up hope?
If we surrender and choose to ignore the war, we allow it to crush us, and we truly have nothing.
1 Timothy 6:12 "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses."
Our fight is unlike the fight for peace, the students' fight against the French government in Les Mis, and the fight to be yourself.
As Christians, our war on earth is bleak and seems hopeless, but we do not give up because in the end, we will have victory.
"Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and all eyes will see Him, even those who pierced Him."
Revelation 1:7
Cheers & God bless,
Austin
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Children of God
My last post was about the beauty and innocence of a child, and how we lose such unblemished faith. When I think of childlike faith, I picture a boy standing in a field, staring up to the stars and waiting, waiting and wishing, for a shooting star to float by. It is so rare, but he wants it, and he knows with all of himself that it exists, and that it will come.
If you are reading this, you probably know that I went on the Brasil mission trip this year. One of the key things I learned there was the power of a definite and bold relationship with my God. Now that I am home, it has taken me a good month to re-learn such knowledge, which I so quickly forgot.
We learn in Senior Bible class that religion says “I obey, therefore am accepted.” And that the gospel says “I am accepted by God and Jesus’ sacrifice, therefore I obey.” We obey God not because we need something from Him, but because we love him in a deep eternal way that we could never find nor fathom on the earth.
Why does a child obey his parents?
Out of fear when he is young, because he does not understand why he obeys. Upon growing, he comes to know and love his parents. They gave him life and love, and he obeys because he wishes to reciprocate that love.
(I am aware this is not always the case; bear with me)
Therefore, God pushes us to mirror this relationship that we are to have with our parents.
However, there is one thing forgotten in our Christian upbringing; something that makes a mockery of our last shred of pride and sense of self. We forget (myself included) that God chose us. Before a man can truly seek God, God must seek out the man’s heart. As Tozer says in Pursuit of God, “God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming.”
We now see that our gifts, bodies, and minds all come from the living God, but here we see that even the assumption that we came to Him ourselves is not entirely true. We are in no way perfect or beautiful, but through His eyes we are made both.
A childlike relationship with God gives us the humility, confidence, and peace to willingly love others and share in our brothers’ and sisters’ joys and downfalls.
Psalms 63:8 says “My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.”
Not only does this mean that He keeps us from falling into the shattered earth’s false embrace, but it also means that we follow Him while we are already in His hands. We are never alone in our servitude. I so easily find myself forgetting this; that I am always with God. We Christians get so caught up in our religion that God slips away from us. He stares down upon us, calling back to Him, but we cannot see Him.
God is personable and must be known and gathered as any relationship. We do not meet the love of our lives by one encounter of “hello” as we pass them by. Our spouses become such by constant friendship and love, and why shouldn’t God?
Tozer also says “It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table.” We are directly in front of God, but we do not yearn for Him, and fail to understand that we can in fact come to know Him.
Moses knew God directly; he saw Him in visions, in the burning bush, in pillars of cloud, and on top of mountains. But still, he yearned for God. He prayed to God, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory” (Ex. 33:18). He prays that God will continue to show His might and beauty to Him, though He was closer to Him than so many before him.
To sum up, God is with us always, and it is in His embrace that we may find our ultimate comfort. The ability to love like Jesus cannot come from any but Jesus.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
Cheers and God bless,
Austin
If you are reading this, you probably know that I went on the Brasil mission trip this year. One of the key things I learned there was the power of a definite and bold relationship with my God. Now that I am home, it has taken me a good month to re-learn such knowledge, which I so quickly forgot.
We learn in Senior Bible class that religion says “I obey, therefore am accepted.” And that the gospel says “I am accepted by God and Jesus’ sacrifice, therefore I obey.” We obey God not because we need something from Him, but because we love him in a deep eternal way that we could never find nor fathom on the earth.
Why does a child obey his parents?
Out of fear when he is young, because he does not understand why he obeys. Upon growing, he comes to know and love his parents. They gave him life and love, and he obeys because he wishes to reciprocate that love.
(I am aware this is not always the case; bear with me)
Therefore, God pushes us to mirror this relationship that we are to have with our parents.
However, there is one thing forgotten in our Christian upbringing; something that makes a mockery of our last shred of pride and sense of self. We forget (myself included) that God chose us. Before a man can truly seek God, God must seek out the man’s heart. As Tozer says in Pursuit of God, “God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming.”
We now see that our gifts, bodies, and minds all come from the living God, but here we see that even the assumption that we came to Him ourselves is not entirely true. We are in no way perfect or beautiful, but through His eyes we are made both.
A childlike relationship with God gives us the humility, confidence, and peace to willingly love others and share in our brothers’ and sisters’ joys and downfalls.
Psalms 63:8 says “My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.”
Not only does this mean that He keeps us from falling into the shattered earth’s false embrace, but it also means that we follow Him while we are already in His hands. We are never alone in our servitude. I so easily find myself forgetting this; that I am always with God. We Christians get so caught up in our religion that God slips away from us. He stares down upon us, calling back to Him, but we cannot see Him.
God is personable and must be known and gathered as any relationship. We do not meet the love of our lives by one encounter of “hello” as we pass them by. Our spouses become such by constant friendship and love, and why shouldn’t God?
Tozer also says “It is a solemn thing, and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God’s children starving while actually seated at the Father’s table.” We are directly in front of God, but we do not yearn for Him, and fail to understand that we can in fact come to know Him.
Moses knew God directly; he saw Him in visions, in the burning bush, in pillars of cloud, and on top of mountains. But still, he yearned for God. He prayed to God, “I beseech thee, show me thy glory” (Ex. 33:18). He prays that God will continue to show His might and beauty to Him, though He was closer to Him than so many before him.
To sum up, God is with us always, and it is in His embrace that we may find our ultimate comfort. The ability to love like Jesus cannot come from any but Jesus.
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
Cheers and God bless,
Austin
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