Gerald and Eunice are an older sight-impaired couple that lives on the other side of our block.  They are a wonderful encouragement in the Lord to me on so many levels!

The first time I met Eunice (80+ with a walker and sight impaired), she immediately started sharing with me stories of talking to elderly people near death about how they need Jesus.  She said:

We should be talkin’ ’bout the Lord!  If we can talk about anything, we should talk bout the Lord!  Everyone wants to talk about all kinds of other things.  But we should be talkin’ ’bout the Lord!

Today they called me up and Eunice told me about witnessing to a young Muslim woman who worked at a coffee shop nearby.  She said God opened the door and she had to take it.  She said:

We’re supposed to talk about the Lord!  So many Christians tell me “well I just can’t do that”.  Well you can’t if you don’t know the Lord!!!  But if you know the Lord, you CAN!  We gotta talk about the Lord!

AMEN Sister!  Such an encouragement!  It is so wonderful hearing about how the “blind” physically are helping the truly blind (spiritually) see the true light in Jesus Christ!  This frail and friendly woman is a powerful tool in God’s hands being used against the kingdom of darkness!

You were (or still are) a sinner helpless in sin and headed toward eternal death in the fiery furnace.  And if you are a Christian, then God saved you by paying for your debt of sin by sacrificing the life of His own son at the cross.  THAT is worth talking about!

Yes, carpet on the wall. It's coming off don't worry.

After God answered our prayer for some carpet, we began praying for the other needs for our new ministry space, especially paint.  Right now it is white with denim-blue carpet on the walls (see picture)

My friend told me about a paint store and I went by there and it turns out they are going out of business.  I e-mailed the owner and told him about what we’re doing and he said “come take what you need”!!!  God bless that man!  So we went and received about 25 gallons of free paint, which some very nice colors!  We got two 5 gallon buckets of super high quality industrial paint that sells for $95 a gallon!  God also provided Barett – who has painting experience – and Amy – an interior designer – both who volunteered their time and helped me figure out how much paint we need and what colors.  Praise God!  And to kick it over the edge, we also got 5 halogen lamps worth at least $20 a piece for free!

As we drove back with a car full of paint and lamps, I just kept saying “THE LORD!  YOU ARE SO GOOD!”

Look at all this FREE paint and primer

When I put samples on the wall (see the picture) I realized some will need primer.  So I asked God for some primer.  And some white paint (for the trim and to possibly lighten a couple color).  I then called my wife and she had just talked to her mom and she said her dad had some paint.  I went over there and he graciously gave us 7 gallons of primer, 5+ gallons of white paint, some carpet glue (which we’ll need for that free carpet), and a couple other 5 gallon buckets of nice paint.  Praise the Lord!

We look forward to seeing what God is planning for this place!

Oh, and by the way, God totally answers prayer!

14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14-15)

A couple months ago I was in a heated debate about storing up food and listening to Glenn Beck.  I stand that Beck is one of many that worship America over God, which I call Americolatry.  You can read more on my post that was posted on Justin Taylor’s blog a couple months ago.  (I’ll be posting more posts about that in the coming weeks hopefully).

During our conversation, she said “Haven’t you ever heard of being too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good?”

I thought, wow… that sounds so good it could be true.  But is it?

I was reminded of this conversation while reading Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love (READ IT!  Seriously!).  Here’s what Chan has to say about this in the context of talking about lukewarm Christians:

“Lukewarm People think about life on earth much more often than eternity in heaven.  Daily life is mostly focused on today’s to-do list, this week’s schedule, and next month’s vacation.  Rarely, if ever, do they intently consider the life to come.  Regard this, C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.  It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this” (p.73)

So what Chan is saying is that we can be too earthly minded to be of any earthly good! We MUST set our hearts and minds upon heaven in order to benefit both here and beyond.  Chan also quotes scripture about this that I commend you read and meditate upon:

18 For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. 20 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (Phil. 3:18-21)

2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. (Col. 3:2)

This was supposed to go in my personal journal on my computer, but as I was trying to log in it wouldn’t let me. Maybe I forgot my password or something. So, I guess you get to have it instead! I am sitting here with a tremendous pain in the middle of my gut, right in the center just below the ribcage. This is the same old stomach problem that came up for me right around the time Luke was 6 months old, 2 years ago. Now Corban is 6 months old. So, in sort of a self-diagnosis, I have been trying to think of what can be going on in this terrible tummy of mine! Does it have to do with being 6 months postpartum? Does my stomach have a hard time with nuts? Raw veggies? Food of any kind?? Am I stressed out? Ironically, I just gave up sugar and have been eating mostly plants, beans, nuts and seeds. Super healthy. This, in an effort to stave off bad health and bodily function problems. I have even thought oh so judgmentally for a long time now that if people would just eat better they would feel better and live longer. While this may be partially true in a perfect world, I obviously cannot count purely on eating well to have comfort for my soul, or even in my body! The only thing that does not change is God my Father, Christ my Lord and the Holy Spirit that woos me. There you have it, the one constant in my life. The one constant I would be terrified without. Thank you, Lord, for your steady hand and your unmovable existence.  You’re the only thing I know for sure.

Be true to your nature... your nature is being a "Child of Wrath". You can try and trust that, but I can sure tell you where it'll take you... I'll give you a hint: unending torment under God's Wrath.

“Have Faith in Yourself”

That is the mantra of today’s culture.  Every bookstore prominently displays the latest “self-help” books (the fact people buy more and more of them should indicate something of their efficacy).  Oprah is selling her spirituality that is about having faith in yourself.  Schools prominently push children to have faith in themselves.  Psychologists teach that people’s problems stem from not having faith in themselves.

Six years ago I was big on a book called “Think and Grow Rich”.  If you just put your mind to it, you’ll get rich!  Sounds like a great message right??!  Have faith in yourself!  I, like many in our culture (including Christians!) ascribed to a religion of “self”.  Have faith in yourself.  Worship yourself.  Glorify yourself.  I am ashamed I ever thought that was true.  I am even more ashamed that I purchased books about it.  And even worse… I gave them out to other people.  Oh man!

Here’s what the Bible says about your “self”:

2:1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph. 2:1-3)

Let me point out the highlights:

1)  You’re a sinner
2)  You’re dead (dead people don’t make themselves alive)
3)  You’re following the ways of this dead world
4)  Satan is your master
5)  You’re enslaved to your flesh
6)  Your nature is sin
7)  You are under God’s wrath for your sin, just like everyone else

So… does it seem to be a good idea to have faith in that?

But there is good news to those who humbly realize their fallen condition!

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:4-10)

I had a great conversation last night with a man from my neighborhood that I met in the grocery store.  My heart broke for him when he shared this (this is my best attempt at summarizing and repeating his words):

“I believe that that Jesus is coming back.  I believe there will be judgment.  I know there’s a lot that I SHOULD be doing.  But it is hard.  I sometimes lie awake at night thinking about it.  I want to change my self, I want to change my vocabulary and not swear so much, I want to stay away from pot and stop smoking cigarettes, I want to be a good husband and father.  But when I try to do those things, I get pulled away.  I start watching TV and then my mind goes elsewhere.  Or I get caught up in gossip or my friends get me to do something else.  I can NEVER seen to do it.  I’m always failing.  I lie awake at night wishing I could do better and thinking about what to do, but I just fail again and again.  I know God wants those things of me and I know I need to try harder.“

My friend expressed deep despair at being unable to DO the things God requires.  Think about that!

Here was my reply:

Brother, I need to share something with you.  You can’t do those things.  You cannot.  (Long Pause)

Let that sink in.  You can’t do the things to please God.  Why?  Because you are a sinner.  Even if you knew what God requires you cannot do it.  You simply cannot do it.  (Long Pause)

But there is Good News!  God can do it.  God can do it in you.  First, God knows this about you and loves you so much.  He saw that you were dead in your sin, that’s why He sent Jesus!  That is why you need to be born again (talking about that is how this conversation started).  Being born again is when we’ve put our faith in Christ, realized salvation is only in Him, and yielded ourselves to him, then Jesus sends the Helper, the Holy Spirit, to come and do that work IN us.  THEN we’ll be transformed by the renewing of our mind instead of conformed to the pattern of this world.  Then we’ll be dead to sin but alive to Christ.  Then we’ll be able to seek God’s will instead of our own.

And you know what happens then?  The Holy Spirit changes us.  The Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 5 that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control.  You want those right?  You want self-control right?  Because right now, under sin, you cannot have it, you cannot control yourself.  But through the Holy Spirit, you can.

But Satan lies to you to make you think you can do it.  Satan points out your sin and how you don’t match up to God’s standards, which is true.  He then points out what you should be doing, which may also be true.  But then he tells you that you need to try harder.  That’s the lie right there.  Satan wants you to try harder.  Why?  Because he knows you’ll fail.  He knows that you’ll choose sin and you’ll be distracted by the world.  Then you’ll despair at your failure and feel even worse that you do not meet God’s standards.  It becomes an ever-increasing cycle of guilt and despair.

We talked some more then he invited me up to his place to share this with his wife.  A few days later we had them over for dinner and we studied Romans 7 and 8, most especially:

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. (Romans 7:21-8:2)

We figured free carpet would be really nasty (like the ugly carpet pictured here), but we got some great carpet that is blue with multi-colored accents. Better than I could have picked out really!

So you may or may not know, but we have leased a ministry space in the Philips neighborhood of Minneapolis and are in the process of updating and renovating the space (I’ll share more about our needs on our blog soon, but if you have furniture to donate – especially couches, chairs, and standing lamps – then contact me!).  As part of that we needed new carpet both upstairs and in the basement.

After our meeting yesterday Ryan and I walked out of the NCD office building and were talking while getting into our cars.  The last thing I said to Ryan was:  ”We really need to pray hard about getting carpet!  That’s the first step.”  I got into my car and prayed for some carpet.  I then started backing up.  As I pulled back, a big dumpster came into view which had previously been hidden behind a UPS truck.  I could see large rolls of carpet sticking out the top.  I pulled back into the spot, got out, and walked over to look at it.  Ryan was already driving away but saw me in his rear-view mirror and stopped.  He got out of his car and asked if God had already answered our prayer.  I climbed into the dumpster and took a sample.  It was blue patterned commercial carpet, mostly unstained and lightly used.  It was not even covered in snow yet, which meant it was literally just put outside within the last hour.  ”Yes, God has provided!” I replied.  It is perfect carpet for the basement (we’re still praying for nice carpet for the main area upstairs!).

This was a huge confirmation for our plans for this ministry house!  We do believe God is in it!  You don’t get that kind of instant answer to prayer every day!  Praise the Lord!  There is NO doubt that God is here, that God listens to us, and that God can and does answer prayer!  Indeed, it says in 1 John:

14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14-15)

I listened to this and it completely confronted me in the ideas I had though about as “relaxing”.  Although Kaelin and I had been shifting in this (we usually watch sermons together as our together time), I still held onto many other ideas of relaxing that I am not sure are Biblical or even really “relaxing”.

What John says is such an incredibly interesting contrast to what the world does.  It actually is a totally different contrast to what most Christians do.

Listen especially around 2 and a half minutes in.  Really contemplate what John is saying there.  What exactly is he doing to relax?!  Wonderful stuff. (I’m not saying you need to do the exact same things.  You’re probably not old enough to get the Old Country Buffet discount anyway.  But it is good to see where his heart is and where he is getting filled at.)

This video was a big influence my desire for Kaelin and I to read the Bible together (aloud) as a couple this year.

Male mouse with two X chromosomes

My step-dad passed this along to me.  It says that they found mice that can be created male without a Y Chromosome (in other words, without a father). View the article on Science Daily.com.

This is interesting given Jesus was born from a virgin woman.  This provides some evidence of a way that Jesus could have been born male without a XY chromosome pair to be added to the mix from a physical father.  Kind of interesting.

No matter how it ended up happening, we can still know that God did it even if it is impossible for us.  As Jesus said:

With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. (Matt. 19:26)

If you are what you eat, this woman is chalk.

Yesterday we were discussing if it is safe for kids to eat chalk.  Looking it up online, I learned that lots of people actually enjoy eating chalk and do so regularly.  One woman said she eats 2 sticks a day, more when stressed.  Like anything bad for you, eating chalk quickly becomes an addiction.  Being addicted to non-nutritive food is called “pica”.

This is completely opposite from the way we try to eat, which is maximizing the nutrients per calorie, which is called being a “nutritarian” (Dr. Fuhrman’s term).  We do this because quite literally:  WE ARE WHAT WE EAT.

Take for instance my typing right now.  My fingers are literally made up of cells built from the food I’ve eaten in my life.  My fingers can move because of the energy from the food I ate today.  I can think of this post because of both the food I ate that built my brain cells and the energy from the food I ate that allowed me to think and formed those cells into thoughts and thinking patterns.

Eating chalk will probably not kill you (as one person pointed out on a forum, it is probably better for you than Doritos).  Well, at least not in small doses.  But it does prevent your body from getting what it needs and if all you eat is chalk, you’d surely die.

Just like what we eat builds our bodies, what we intake with our mind shapes our thoughts and feelings, which consequently shape our actions and even our physical appearance. If you think negative thoughts, you will feel worse, you will have a down-case appearance, and your behavior will also change.  What we set our minds on literally transforms us inside and out.  That is why Scripture tells us to:

2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:2-3)

The Apostle Paul tells us this because our new renewed self in Christ is “is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:10).  That means that our knowledge of God which comes through thinking on the things of God transforms us into the image of God, which is Jesus Christ (see Col. 1:15).  So we become more like Jesus as we set our mind on the things of God.

What are you ingesting with your mind?

In the past during the Holidays, my wife and I have spent many nights hanging out together watching movies.  This year, God confronted us on that and instead led us to spend most evenings reading Bible together.  We did watch one movie (“It’s a Wonderful Life”), but that was it.

Why was this?  Because quite literally:  WE ARE WHAT WE WATCH/READ/THINK ABOUT.

If it is a good movie, I might spend 2.5 hours watching then AT LEAST another 2.5 hours thinking about it through the next few days (which doesn’t count how my dreams are affected).  So for one movie, I might spend 5 hours of time thinking about the content of what I watched.  That WILL transform me in how I think, act, and feel (the power of movies is shown in how many people got post-Avatar depression).  All of this begs some questions:  Is my life there?  Does it build me up?  Will it make me more like Jesus?

Sometimes (although I think rarely) the answer is yes.  Watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” actually did draw me to think about God quite a lot, but that is also because the whole movie is about God intervening in a man’s life.  But mostly, the answer is a big fat NO:  this will not make me more like Jesus, this will not help me on my walk with Christ, and this will not be honoring to my Lord (which is the chief end of man and thus my purpose in life!).  And ultimately, the things I watch are usually more vivid and engaging than God’s Word, which makes me think about “things above” (God, His Word, His Deeds, Heaven) less and think about “things on earth” (like sex, violence, or even things that are “funny” or “clever”) more.

Now consider all the TV shows, commercials, YouTube videos, news stories, blog posts, Facebook updates, books, and even conversations that you ingest every day.  Are those propelling you toward Christ or drawing you away?  Are you ingesting only “chalk”, only things that do not nurture your mind and heart but rather provide no nutrients?

If you are what you intake (watch, read, etc.), then what are you?

Please go read your Bibles.  I beg of you!  That is the one thing God commands us to ingest.  See my post about reading the Bible in a year.

I also highly recommend watching this speech on “The Life of the Mind and the Love of God” by John Piper.