The Unworthy Saint

Let us agree that any good in this world is God’s and any evil is allowed by God. Therefore, if God is taken out of the earth equation, you would not be left with complete evil. Rather you would be left with nothing because by God everything exists and without Him nothing exists.

I feel like I’m running and running right now…so much to do and so little time!

I can never be a sun, but maybe a moon. I have no light of my own; I do not burn… but my hope is in reflecting the light of the one who does burn bright – God. Of my own accord I’m not even a shiny mirror, but a dull, cloudy, scratched up piece of tin. But God is patiently buffing and repairing my reflecting surface and by His grace I am able to shine some of His light into this dark place.

Someone asked me “can you help me get closer to God?” which I took to mean “any ideas to get closer to Him?”

My gut reaction was “I don’t know” but I kept thinking about it. The best advice I can think of is this – Imagine for a second that you are getting to know a person. Let’s say this person is a writer and an artist among other things. If you really desire to get to know this person as quickly and fully as possible, I think it’d make sense to do a few things.:

1) I would spend as much time with them as I could – in conversation, etc.
2) When I wasn’t in conversation, I would look at their life, the things they’ve done, what they’ve wrote, what they’ve created, the way they live.
3) I would find out what other people are saying about them, good or bad – but always looking for the truth.
4) I would do things for this person to show you’re interested in them and desire to be a part of their life.*

So if that’s the model for pursuing knowledge of someone, I’d suggest that be followed with God as well. The points above could be translated to:

1) Be constantly in prayer, worship, and, as much as possible, remind yourself that God is near at all times. Focus on, dwell on Him as best you can and try to get better at doing so.
2) Take time to read the bible (what He wrote), study and be in nature (what He created), and look at the way He lives (again, what He wrote in His autobiography, the bible).
3) Attend church, read books on God, but be careful what you intake. Make sure you’re only believing the truth. Be sure to compare human thought with God’s (the Bible). A few of my favorite Christian writers are: CS Lewis, AW Tozer, Frederick Buechner…
4) “In as much as you have done for the least of these, you have done for me” Serve the people around you in His name. If you make an effort to love and serve your fellow man, you will be showing your love for God, which always brings blessings and love from Him and strengthens our bond with Him. *

So that’s my advice. God is a relational being and should be treated as one – spending time with Him will always be the best way to get to know Him, but there’s also a place for reading about Him and seeing other people’s experiences with Him.

* number 4 was written and suggested by Misty. Thanks Misty!

So, this is a horribly sacrilegious thought that I had, but I found it funny so I thought I’d share it.

Did God create women to bend the man’s will that couldn’t be bent by the Holy Spirit? Cause, just observing life, I’m thinking that might be the case.

Oh my God! Hear my cry! Honor my plea! Pour thy grace upon me!

My flesh betrays my mind, my mind betrays my heart and my heart, my Father, betrays you.

It’s too much for me to bear! My sin overwhelms me! Lord, please take my burden! Lift me into your arms!

“But humility is more than just being able to admit being wrong. It isn’t thinking less of ourselves; it’s thinking less about ourselves. Obsessing over what you aren’t makes you as self-absorbed as the person who obsesses about what she is.”

-Gary L. Thomas, Putting Yourself Last

What if the point of relationship, or marriage, isn’t happiness but holiness?

—

That’s a paraphrase taken from the thoughts of many people including Gary L. Thomas in Putting Yourself Last.

This is both a public testimony of why I live the way I do, and a statement of intention to keep living and further live out the life I have chosen in Christ Jesus.

I am not perfect, but flawed and broken. The thoughts and intentions outlined below are merely the rules by which I attempt to live my life. Again, I am not perfect and quite often break my own rules. Never the less, this is the way I attempt to live and the reasons why.

Please do not take this testimony of life as a judgment on your life, should it differ from my own, but as an explanation for my own actions in relation to my beliefs. I do not wish to condemn others by my own thoughts or actions, but rather to tell people of the hope I have found in living for Jesu.

The “Rules” of Christianity and Why I Try To Abide By Them

Some people would say that rules restrict freedom, and to exercise your freedom is to break the rules. But if you break the rules for the sake of breaking the rules, you aren’t really exercising your freedom – the rules are still determining your actions. If, however, you objectively look at your circumstance and decide based on your goals what’s best to do, that’s exercising your freedom.

Most of the time rules have consequences if they are broken. Being free also, in my mind, doesn’t mean your ignore the consequences of your actions. Being free just means you can make a choice and accept what’s coming to you based on that choice.

I suppose all of this is to explain the idea of free will within Christianity. Most people would look at the rules of Christianity and say “If you’re a Christian, you’re not free – just look at the sacrifices, the rules. No getting drunk, getting laid outside of marriage, no gossiping, no lying, etc.” I think being a Christian is to be just as free as everyone else, however we believe there are consequences to our actions.

Generally Christians are trying to have a closer relationship with God – in part because we believe true joy is only found in God. The bible tells us that sin separates us from God (the reason being: God is wholely good and righteous, therefore He rejects anything which is not good and righteous – like sin. To be righteous before God involves believing in Christ Jesus and that He died for your sins for this very reason but that’s a whole other topic in itself). So every time we (Christians) make a decision, to get drunk or not, to get laid or not, we are really deciding whether we want to be closer to or further from God. We are free to decide, but we will have to live with the consequences of our decisions.

In an attempt to frame this and put all this is some kind of perspective, I will say this: Hell is eternal separation/damnation from God, while sin is temporary separation from God (if you confess and repent to Christ).

It is my personal goal to know Christ and pursue Him to the best of my ability – which is to say that I want to be close to, and not separated from, Him as much as possible. And that’s why I attempt to do those things which help me to stray from that which the bible calls “sin” or “evil” – it’s the separation from God from which I flee, not the action itself (whether it be premarital sex, drunkenness, lying, etc).

Intentional Living

There are other things I do, or refrain from doing, that you would not find described in the Bible as either “good” or “sinful” – in some instances the Bible leaves us to decide what is good and bad for ourselves as we are all different and different things lead different people to sin. I call these things I do, or this way of life, “Intentional Living” – these are things (tools) I use to submit myself to the Lord so that I may be better able to worship Him and not fall into sin. I do not uphold these things perfectly, I am far from perfect, but these are a few of the rules or ideas I have set forth for myself so that I might be a living sacrifice to God:

I do not drink at all, because I know myself, my flesh, to be weak and I know how hard it would be for me to not take drinking to an extreme – to be drunk, and thus be in sin.

I do not sleep in a normal “bed”, but on a flattened cardboard box, because I know that comfort makes me lazy. I do the work I do (art, etc) as worship to my God and to be lazy for me, is to not worship. It is for the sake of worship that I also do not have a couch, or many chairs in my apartment. This also serves as a reminder to me that this life is temporary, that this is not my home, but that my home is Heaven.

I put up signs in my apartment to remind me of God’s presence. Whenever I see a sign I attempt to break my thoughts from that which I was dwelling on and turn my thoughts to God – whether in worship, praise or prayer. This is so that I might dwell on God rather than the worries of this world.

I eat salad, vegetables and drink smoothies (I’m not a vegetarian) at home in an effort to take care of the body God has given me. I also work out periodically for this same purpose. With the exception of smoothies, I generally don’t love these things but I do them for the glory of God and out of respect for His creation. I also don’t drink sodas or coffee and try to stay away from caffeine and artificial sweetener for these same reasons – so that I might be healthy and thus able to work and worship longer.

I serve my gifts. No matter day or night, wherever I am, if I get an idea for an art piece, I will write the idea down. I believe that God has given me a gift and it is my responsibility to be a good steward of that gift – therefore, my life is devoted God and the service of the gifts He has given me.

In Conclusion

So this is my life: a mixture of attempting to abide by God’s law (in the Bible), and attempting to abide to the rules I’ve set in place myself (in an attempt to submit my flesh to Christ). The life I lead is not for everyone, but I can testify to the greater joy I have found in Christ as a result of this way of life.

I have tried giving into the flesh, not abiding by God’s law, and the resulting separation from God is quite literally Hell. I can honestly say that no true joy ever comes out of sin, but out of obedience to Him; I have found this to be true in my own life, through my own experiences.

Nothing can describe the awesome feeling of being in God’s presence, delighting in Him. And I know it sounds weird, comical, and borders on sounding insane – I guess that’s why you must experience God to understand the feelings I try to describe.

I do not condemn your way of life if it is different from my own, but I encourage you to ask yourself how it’s working for you. If you feel some hole, some unrest, some want inside of you that you can never satisfy with money, sex, relationships, alcohol, clothes, food or anything else of this life, I urge you to try filling that hole with Christ. I urge you to pursue God with me – to try out my way of life. I have no doubt that once you experience the joy of Christ, you’ll never be the same.

If you have more questions for me, or if I have left something unclear, please just send me a note. I have tried to explain things here to the best of my ability, but I know I didn’t cover everything and would love to answer any questions. If you are interested in trying my way of life, interested in living for Christ, but don’t know where to start, let me know. I can point you in the right direction and help you get started. The beginning is merely asking, in prayer, God to take your life over.

Jesu loves you and He is always faithful.

God bless,
-Philip

A side note – When I say He, Him, Jesu, Jesus, Christ, God, His, I am referring to God. I believe in one God, eternal in nature, creator of all things in Heaven and here on Earth. I believe in the Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son (Jesu, Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit. I believe that Christ became a man (100% man and 100% God at the same time… go figure that one out), died for our sins and rose again on the 3rd day so that we might be declared righteous in God’s sight. I believe that the Holy Spirit dwells in each and every believer in Christ and intercedes with prayers on our behalf.

Another side note: The reason I post this is not to look “holy” or “good” (Trust me, though I try to be, I am neither of those things as much as I’d like. If Paul is the chief of sinners, I shudder to think what I might be) but to explain my actions in Christ. This is an attempt to show the world the joy in my life, the reason for it, and the path I have found in my pursuit of it (joy in Christ).

Someone once described our sin and God’s forgiveness as this:

We go out, like little childrens, and play in the mud. We get mud caked every-which-where and come tramping into the house. God picks us up, strips away our muddy clothes and washes us clean (forgives our sins) in the tub. After He has washed us clean, we run back to our old dirty clothes and, in our ignorance, put them right back on again (go right back to our old sins again).