Butterfly or Caterpillar?

I had the chance to do some traveling this summer, and it really opened my eyes to a few ideas that I have never paid much attention to. Something that has especially been pressed on my heart is the idea of transformation. You see in the scripture that we should live transformed once we know Christ, and you hear countless sermons on the concept of living transformed lives. Especially after camps and conferences, you hear numerous stories of students testifying that their lives have forever been transformed.

But I have to ask, are we throwing this word around and misusing what it really means to be transformed? I had the privilege of going to a tribal village in Orissa, India this summer and, it was here this concept really clicked in my mind. This small village consisted of four families who had been devout Hindus for generations. One night, from the jungles that surrounded their village, an elephant came and trampled their homes. In the midst of their turmoil, a Christian field worker went down to help and share the gospel with them. Long story short, all of these families found Christ and before rebuilding their homes, they built a place to worship God. I was truly blown away and when I asked the people there why they built the church first, one of the children replied with, “it is the least we could do after everything God did for us. He allowed us to live one more day; all we can do is worship Him.” I was in awe of their selflessness and ashamed of my twisted idea of ministry. The people they have become cannot be recognized by those who knew them before. These families were the greatest example of what it meant to live transformed lives.

Think about this; when a caterpillar is born, it is not the best looking, it is not really desired by many, it is extremely restricted, and quite honestly, its life seems a bit pointless. As the caterpillar matures, it eventually gains enough strength to build itself a cocoon, and later, it turns into this beautiful creature known as the butterfly. Do you think that right upon coming out of the cocoon, the butterfly feels safe and secure in its new form? I think not. I can imagine it must feel a sense of fear and unease because of this drastic change. If one was to put a caterpillar next to a butterfly and not know the process, they would never say they are one in the same. I think we can learn a great lesson from the life cycle of this caterpillar and perceive a new understanding on the word transformation. Have you ever seen a butterfly, after going through metamorphosis, act like a caterpillar? I sure have not. That would be absurd! Why would a butterfly with all the freedoms in the world live bound like a caterpillar? Sadly, many of today’s “believers” live the same way they did before they found Christ. They are still bound to the same sins, same worries and same fears. Many are too scared to leave their areas of comfort and trust in Christ causing them to never really live as Christ intended for us to live.

When we say we are truly transformed but then not live as if we are, the only change that has occurred is a change of appearance. We may dress and act the part right, but when it comes down to it we are still the same unbeliever we were before. It’s sad to think of the freedom Christ has promised us and yet we continually stay bound to our flesh. It is really easy to dress transformed but living it out is what really matters. So I have to ask, are you still a bound caterpillar or are you living as a transformed butterfly?

OneAmongMany

Don’t Judge a book by its cover

I know it’s been awhile but school’s just been a bit much, but nonetheless I’ve had a lot on my mind and hopefully I’ll be able to share over the next few weeks with you whats been going on in my head. I’ve recently been catching up with some old friends and have found this very disturbing reality among more than one of them. Many of them have quit trying to straighten out their lives because it seems as if everyone has thrown them to the curb and tagged them “unclean.” When I think of these individuals and the immense potential bottled up inside of them, waiting to just explode it kills me to think that it is because of “Christians” opinions that they have given up. It really tore me up and made me ask when did we start limiting who God can use? We have suddenly prepared a generalization of who God should use and if they do not fit these stereotypes they must not be “minister” material. I wonder what would have happened if we had been alive during biblical times; would we have been the ones to have condemned Christ? Christ was the son of an ordinary carpenter, he didn't come from a background of prophets and outstanding citizens. What made him qualified to be a minister let alone the Son of God? What about Moses? Would we have laughed when he came and said he would bring us out of Egypt, which probably would have taken 10 minutes because of his inability to properly communicate? I can go on and on throughout the bible because it is filled cover to cover of the least qualified being the one’s to make a difference. Be very careful of who you begin to kill with your words because you never know who is called to be the next David, Jacob, or Paul.

Think about this, when you decide to renovate part of your house, you begin with a layout and blueprint of what the room will look like. The construction company then comes and they begin to work, the first step is the breakdown. This is the most important process because it is in this process they get rid of the old and make room for this new beautiful plan you have in your head. It is also the dirtiest; there is trash, dust and debris everywhere. If someone was to come visit at this point and not know you are renovating they would very easily say that this house was not much of a house. What they don’t know is the plans you have drawn out for the room and what you are preparing for it to look like. This is often the process many members of our churches and youth groups are going through and all many people know how to do is say that “they aren’t much of a Christian at all.” What we don’t see is the plan God has set up for their lives, he has a beautiful room in the process of being renovated. Sure it may not be the nicest right now but once the construction phase is over and the room has been finalized no one will deny the beauty of this room. People will now be asking to come visit, to see this masterpiece when before they had simply declared it worthless. If we as Christians would allow God to do what he needs to in the lives of these individuals we would be able to see the beauty of what God has planned out.

Check out this verse

“27But(A) God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise;(B) God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;”

It’s not always about who can look the part the best, and act the part the best. Because when it’s the weak people cannot credit them for what has happened; only God could have done something so spectacular through someone so unqualified.

OnEaMoNgMaNy

Life or Death? You decide.

Matthew 9:12-13

¹²On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. ¹³But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'^[a] For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

I would like to start by explaining myself before I even start. My purpose in writing this is not to bash on the church or any particular culture. It is purely to point out observations that have truly brought me to a state of brokenness. Sort of a continuation from my last blog.

Over the course of the past few years, since I really started to be in ministry, I have began to notice a few things that never lined up about the bible and our churches. (Please by no means am I referring to all. There are many churches that are depicting what Christ intended for us to be like.) I have many friends, who due to various issues and of pressure of life, fell to sin. In fact, I too fell to sin. But what really got to me was what happens when the church finds out, or even assumes about this sin.

What often happens is because of the fear of polluting the identity of who they are they choose not to do anything with these "sinful" people. What happens is we seem to forget that just because they are in a church does not mean they are not sick. In fact a high majority of the people in a church are sick. Maybe not on a physical level, but they are emotionally and spiritually gone but because of the fear of being disowned they feel the need to hoard everything and to act like everything is fine.

Think about this, have you been to a hospital waiting room before? If you have, you know that there are always people who have different problems, some more serious than others; nevertheless they are all in need of some kind of help. Imagine this, what if you were sitting there and all of a sudden this man who is bleeding profusely comes and sits next to you, trying to stay calm and collective. You become frantic and ask "are you ok????" All of a sudden he looks over to you and says, “O yah I’m fine. I’m here to get my son checked out.” You would instantly be like, "you are bleeding!!" And you would do everything you could do to find help for this man. Even if he didn’t want to admit his pain you saw a need to find help for him. What’s crazy is that then you would find people at the hospital who are ready and equipped to help this man. A cool thing I see about a hospital is that they will see everyone. They are not exclusive to economic standings or anything of that sort. Regardless of how serious or petty, they will still see them because they understand that if a person feels the need to be in a hospital, it is the duty of hospital workers to do what they are there to do.

Now do me a favor and refer back to the verse; Christ came here for the sick. In essence, he is calling us to be a hospital. If we see someone that is sick we are supposed to be there to say, "do not worry I am here for you." But sadly I have been to many states and to hundreds of churches and have seen the church being the worst depiction of what a hospital is supposed to be. And it really breaks my heart. When I talked to an individual who grew up in the church but because of a certain sin or addiction they are now excommunicated from the church. As sincere as possible looked at me and said, “If this is what Christ is about, I do not want it.” I was at a loss for words. How can we call ourselves “Christ”-ians and not do as Christ did? How do we walk around singing songs, having retreats, conferences, and youth groups but never acknowledge the lost or hurting as people we are to help.

This may be a bit hard for many of you to accept, but rather than being a hospital, I feel many (not all) church’s have become a graveyard. Rather than taking the sick and hurting and being there to comfort and help them overcome. We sure do acknowledge their sickness, but we then label them as dead and we dump them 6ft under hoping to hide the “smell”. We are scared others may begin to notice. We wouldn't want the surrounding churches to smell the dead in our church and wonder what is going on their. So we feel it necessary to hide it as much as possible.

I wish we could get to a point where we live out what we claim to be. We have people who are dying daily and ending up in a place where they don’t have to be. It’s about time to put our pride aside and say we will be the hospital for the hurting. That we will be in the world, but not of the world. We will be a reflection of Christ.

OnEaMoNgMaNy

What Makes Your World Go ROUND?

Over the last week and a half, or so, a lot has been going on in my mind; so for the next few weeks I will be attempting to share my heart with you guys.

Recently I’ve been hearing this idea that we should live "Christ centered" lives and that the key to everything is having Christ be the center of what you do. I also have been reading many books about how to live Christ centered lives and such, so I began to think. Why? What is this whole meaning behind Christ centered lives? You're probably like "that’s a stupid question," but seriously I couldn't find a specific Bible verse where Christ said "make me your center" (though I did see Christ say to follow him and leave everything else aside, and he will take care of you). Nevertheless, I began to contemplate what this is all about.

Lately, I have had many close friends who are ministers or “strong” Christians completely hitting a concrete wall and throwing everything away. They are all real strong in the ministry and love Christ, but all of a sudden, a certain occurrence happens and everything seems to shatter. I don’t get it though. Is that really what Christianity is about; to serve God in the good and not in the bad?

I got to thinking; maybe these people are really on to something with this Christ centeredness. Maybe Christ was hoping we would understand this hidden truth without him spoon feeding us. As I was laying in bed, frustrated with all the nonsense going on, I looked out the window and saw the sun. I started to think. Why does the earth spin or rotate? What is causing the earth to constantly be in motion? What is it that allows the earth to actually stay in place rather than just randomly go through the universe? I started to look it up (yes, I understand it is a bit on the nerdy side). I began to see the reason the earth is spinning is because of the gravitational pull from the sun and its desire to stay in orbit around it. It's kind of as if the reason the earth is actually still in place is solely because of this pull coming from the sun. I then started to look up what would happen if the earth decided to orbit itself. What would happen is that the earth would actually no longer be able to contain life. It would be too far from its source. If the earth one day decided to say that "I’ve been with the sun for enough time and I understand what it can do, but it's time for me to take some time away and do this on my own," every bit of life that existed on earth would fade away. The ability to possess life will also be taken away. Sounds dumb, huh?

Think about what we do so often. We acknowledge that the Father is there, but we decide that we can continue to acknowledge him and do some stuff on our own. We lose focus of what should be our driving force. Rather than having Christ as our center, whom we should revolve around, we decide to let money, power, acceptance, pride, relationships, education, and ministry (yes, I said ministry) be the driving force of our lives. We begin to allow these various things become what “makes our world go round.” What we fail to realize is that there is only so long we can let our lives revolve around these different areas because sooner or later, life will cease to exist. We forget that we actually can’t survive on our own, and sometimes, it is until we get to this point of extreme desolation that we realize we cannot survive without the Son.

OnEaMoNgMaNy

What's it Worth?

2Co 13:9 For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for.

2Co 13:11 Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.

The KJV says we pray for your perfection, but what pops out to me is the word restoration. If you look throughout the old testament the word restore is used on multiple occasions. Promising of nations, lives, families all being restored. So i began to think why did Paul aim for this perfection or being brought back to a place of complete restoration? Why did he say your restoration is what we pray for?

Imagine this you just move into a house, the people that owned it before you left some of their furniture in the house and said to just keep it. Upon looking at it you question whether you should even keep it because it looks so worn out and eh. But you decided to see what you can do with it. You then go through the restoration process and at the end of this process this piece of furniture is one of the most beautiful things you have ever seen. Turns out its actually an antique from the 1900's. Not only is it beautiful it is worth a lot of money. In fact it is now valued more than it ever has been. So think about this, when this piece of furniture was first bought I'm sure it was of much worth and it looked beautiful but as time progressed it began to collect dirt and it lost its shine, it lost its luster. So now over a hundred years later you come and you decide to give this ugly piece of furniture a chance to be something so you take it through this very strenuous restoration process with no promise of a positive outcome but just a hope. In the end what ends up happening is after the restoration process this piece of furniture is actually worth more than it was worth when it was first made. Its brought to a place of new riches the value of it cant quite be explained because it is worth so much.

Now i go back to what Paul was saying, "Your restoration is what we pray for" i think he is saying, "hey all you guys who have messed up and all this dirt added up and you feel so worthless God is wanting to restore you." BUT get this when God restores you he doesn't just bring you back to the place you were. He restores you and your value, for a lack of better terms, to greater than it was before. You've been restored to a point of complete renewal and because of all the ware and tear you've been through you can now do so much more because you know so much more. I think we as people just need to see that God has promised to Restore to us what we once had. If we can stand firm on his promise the things we can accomplish are ridiculous. Now if we continually let ourselves believe the lie of the devil that we aren't worth anything or we aren't good enough we ill just keep collecting dirt rusting and we just let it go like this the rest of our lives. I think its time to believe in his promise and receive restoration in our lives. Until you are restored you can not live up to all you were created to do.

OnEaMoNgMaNy

I Am?

John 8:58-⁵⁸"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"

You are. I am. What does that mean? Does it mean He is the good and not the bad? Does it mean He is the answered prayer but not the unanswered prayer? HE is? We as a society, I feel, have a misconception of the statement Jesus makes when he says, "I am." When He said that it was all inclusive. "He is" the answered prayer and "is" the same when the prayer is not answered. "He is" healing for the sick but yet he "is" still when one is not healed. He is.

We are so quick to make the statement that if "its" not happy go lucky "its" not God. Is that to say if it is true, and God is not merely happy go lucky would you not believe? Is his blessing everything you believe in? Because if its eeek...we may just have an issue. Because when my God said, "I am," he was acknowledging that he is not the one that says your life will always be swell with no problems. See we have made God some sort of genie but instead of 3 wishes we expect endless wishes. We think, "If i sing some songs, go to church my life will be A okay, and God will then owe it to me to bless me." Our thinking couldn't be any more twisted. Until we can understand that "He Is." i don't think we will ever quite grasp the trueness of the Father.

Think of this when you go on a cruise it will say that it is an all inclusive trip or cruise. The cruise never promised that the weather would be bright and beautiful the whole time. You go on fully understanding that storms actually may come up, but since you are aboard the cruise ship you tell your self it is still worth going because you can still be under that protection of the ship. You can still be sheltered in the Storm. Jesus never promised that life is all happy and beautiful but He says, "I am" with hopes of us understanding even though there may be a storm he is forever sovereign and we must just trust in his never failing love.

OnEaMoNgMaNy