Fidelity

“Every year in the United States, we spend more than $10 billion on church buildings. In America alone, the amount of real estate owned by institutional churches is worth over $230 billion. We have money and possessions, and we are building temples everywhere. Empires, really. Kingdoms. We call them houses of worship. But at the core, aren’t they too often outdated models of religion that wrongfully define worship according to a place and wastefully consume our time and money when God has called us to be a people who spend our lives for the sake of His glory among the needy outside our gates?… Like the rich young man in Mark 10, every Christian has to wrestle with what Jesus is calling us to do with our resources as we follow Him.”

-his book Radical…read it.

Instead of dwelling on our inability to not sin, our inability to not have idols, our inability to not struggle with sin, let us WORSHIP God. We all know we have sin, we all know we have idols. After you have confessed that and repented of that-worship the one who actually deserves our worship. Turn away and just be with Him. Worship and be satisfied in Him and in His presence-then you will see your false gods dwindle. 

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” Hebrews 12:28-29

God is enough. At the end of the day, regardless of my circumstances, regardless of my mood, regardless of my season of life, YOU are enough. Being in your presence is enough. Worshiping you in Spirit and truth and ENOUGH.

“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and truth.” John 4:23-24

The reality is, I deserve hell. But you have saved me. You have allowed for me to be in your presence. You live in me. What an overwhelming, incredible, and beautiful truth. Jesus, you are enough. 

“For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Colossians 1:13-14  

Rejoice! To us, a Savior has been born. Emmanuel, God with us.

“When a finite value [becomes a center of value by which other values
are judges and] has been elevated to centrality and imagined as a
final source of meaning, then one has chosen what Jews and Christians
call a god…To be worshipped as a god, something must be sufficiently
good to be plausibly regarded as the rightful center of one’s
valuing…One has a god when a finite value is worshipped and adored and
viewed as that without which one cannot receive life joyfully.”
-Thomas Oden

      1. What do you most highly value?
      2. What do you think about by default?
      3. What is your hightest goal?
      4. To what or whom are you most commited?
      5. Who or what do you love the most?
      6. Who or what do you trust or depend upon the most?
      7. Who or what do you fear the most?
      8. Who or what do you hope in and hope for most?
      9. Who or what do you desire the most? Or, what desire makes
you most angry or makes you despair when it is not satisfied?
     10. Who or what do you most delight in, your greatest joy and treasure?
     11. Who or what captures your greatest zeal?
     12. To whom or for what are you most thankful?
     13. For whom or what great purpose do you work?

“Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good
things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on
anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build
our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry…
Instead of telling them they are sinning because they are sleeping
with their girlfriends or boyfriends, I tell them they are sinning
because they are looking to their careers and romances to save them,
to give them everything that they should be looking for in God. This
idolatry leads to drivenness, addictions, sever anxiety,
obsessiveness, envy of others and resentment.” -Tim Keller

I am reading a great book right now and in it has a Muslim woman’s testimony of why she wears the hijab. It speaks for itself and I greatly admire those women. 

Here is what she said…

“A few years ago, I also decided to start wearing the hijab. The hijab is a head cover for women that covers the hair but does not cover the face. When some of my friends at the university saw me wearing the hijab for the first time, they wondered whether I was beginning to lean toward fundamentalism. Far from it. I wanted to start wearing the hijab to make a statement. I wanted to communicate that I am a spiritual woman and that I do not want my femininity to be a stumbling block to my male students and colleagues at the university. Nobody in my family asked me to wear the hijab. I do not feel oppressed as I wear it. On the contrary, I feel empowered. I communicate the message that I am not cheap or sexually available. I take pride in our Muslim heritage and culture. I do not want to get associated with western secularism. I do not to be treated as a sexual object. At the same time, I do not want to wear the niqab, which is used by Muslim fundamentalist women and shows only their eyes. I do not want to be associated with them either. I want to convey that I am intelligent and can cope well with the challenges that our world offers. I am living in the world, but I do not want to become worldly.” 

Please do not put all Muslims or Arabs into a category of “fundamentalist”. In many Muslim countries, women are not forced to cover their hair and they are not oppressed. Many Muslim women choose to be so modest and they do it with great intention and reason. When you see them, don’t give them weird looks or throw them into your stereotypical category. If you went to a lot of their home countries they would welcome you with open arms and give you everything they had. Let’s try to be a bit more hospitable because Muslims who come to the US would do anything to have an American befriend them. What do we really stand for as Americans? Not everyone is out to get us.

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God… behold, now is the day of salvation. 

2 Corinthians 5:20-21; 6:2

I have revelations sometimes…not often so when it happens I feel like I have to share. 

I was just sitting in my room thinking, praying. I was thinking about my life and what it has been like the past couple of months since I have been home from Lebanon. When I returned I was so eager to find a job and start working. I was ok without a job for a while because I had all the time to catch up with family and friends. But after a few weeks I started to become dissatisfied and bored. I was getting a bit stressed out due to not finding the “right” job. So I decided to work at Chili’s again in the mean time. About 2 weeks ago I finally got a job offer I actually wanted. I am now working as an assistant for 3 roofing contractors about 30 hours a week. I am also staying at Chili’s just to work on the weekends. This makes my work week unending. Add on a few more ministry opportunities and my time is pretty much gone. I went from bored bob to absolutely no more free time frank. 

So as I was thinking about all this and how I really felt about my life, I realized I felt dissatisfied with the way it is. Then a voice told me “But you’re a Christian…you have Jesus you are supposed to be content and satisfied all the time! Whats wrong with you?” Of course I started to feel bad…am I doing something wrong? Isn’t there more to life than working 60 hours a week? wah wah wah I want to go back to Lebanon. Then God spoke, “You are dissatisfied with your life because you are human. Your flesh and sinful nature won’t leave you until you are in heaven. You are dissatisfied because you weren’t created to live in this sinful world. You were created for a perfect place, for the Garden.” This is when the revelation hit. We as Believers are dissatisfied with life at times because we long for something more…for heaven. And that is a good thing. We are aliens, outsiders to this world. We belong with God in perfection.  

I want to make it clear that when you become a Believer in Jesus you do become satisfied. The longing that you feel in your heart will be fulfilled. Your Spirit becomes united with God and His peace overwhelms you. My Spirit is satisfied. I am content with God and where He has me in this season. But I do know that I battle against my flesh on a daily basis. My Spirit and my flesh clash more than any opposites clash. My flesh is constantly getting me to think that I need something more that something more will make me happy. While my Spirit hungers for more of God and the satisfaction that comes with knowing Him. 

If you are a Believer who feels dissatisfied with your life or the circumstances you are in, ask God to show Himself to you. Ask Him to show you what to change and ask Him what will bring Him most glory in your life. 

I know this applies to a lot of people. I am not aiming this at anyone specific because I know a lot of you who need to hear this. You are not alone. I also need to hear this. 

First of all, if you don’t know Jesus, let me tell you that He loves you and you need Him. (Romans 5:8; Psalm 139:13-16) You and I, we are sinful people. (Romans 10:23; Psalm 53:3).When you look around and see that something is wrong in the world you are seeing correctly, something went wrong- it is because of the sin that entered the perfect world God created. (Genesis 3:6) Making it no longer perfect. Someone has to pay for this. Our sin deserves punishment. It deserves death, we deserve to be in hell (Romans 6:23). But God looked at our condition and had compassion on us. He called us worthy of His love, worthy of His only Son’s life.(John 3:16-17; Romans 5:8 again) Jesus is God (John 1:1; John 10:30-33; John 14:6-7). He came to this earth in the form of a man. He lived the perfect life that you and I could not live. He was blameless, without fault, without sin. Perfect. (Hebrews 4:15; 1 Peter 2:22)  Because of God’s immense love for you He brought Jesus, His only Son into this world to be our perfect sacrifice. To die the death that our sinful lives deserved. (Mark 10:45) A replacement- Jesus on the cross with yours and mine, our sin upon Himself. (John 19-20) Only to conquer death, and rise from the dead so that we may be restored unto the perfect life with God that was originally intended. He wants us so badly to know Him, be forgiven for our sins, have abundant life on earth, to spend eternity in heaven with the Father.(John 17:1-4; John 10:10) He is calling you to accept His free sacrifice. All you have to do is accept. It’s that simple. (Romans 10:13; Romans 10:4; Romans 5:8 again;1 Timothy 2:4-6) 

I want you to know that until you accept this truth, until you accept Jesus as your Savior, you will never be fulfilled. The emptiness you feel inside won’t go away. The peace, rest, love, and contentment you have been looking for can only be found in Jesus. This is truth.  I have been where you are, with doubts and uncertainty. Jesus is the only way. 

“You will eat but never have enough. Your hunger pangs and emptiness will remain. And though you try to save your money, it will come to nothing in the end. You will save a little, but I will give it to those who conquer you.” Micah 6:14 

Ecclesiastes 1-5. 

Ecclesiastes 2:10-11 “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” 

To those of you who are Believers and follow Jesus Christ please read on. If you are not a Believer this may help you, I don’t know, but I don’t expect you to understand. So I am sorry if this hurts you. But if it causes you to think more about your need for Christ, then I am willing to not be liked by whomever. I say this because I believe with everything I am that the best way I can love someone is by telling them about Jesus. If I do not tell you then I am doing you an injustice and am actually hating you. 

ok so yella! (come on, let’s go). (as the Lebanese would say ;) )

If you are a Believer in Christ and you are dating someone who isn’t a Believer, I know that life is hard. I know that you are feeling the conviction. You know the truth, all you have to do is open the Word. Therefore you do not need me to tell you what you should do, you don’t need another Believer telling you to trust God and do what you know is right. You’ve heard it, its a broken record. You have probably told others the same thing, but you can’t accept it for yourself. So that is not what I am going to give you. I want you to think about your life before you knew Christ. Think about how unsatisfied you were and how you kept searching for something to satisfy you. Maybe you had everything you ever wanted, but you still wanted something more. Nothing was ever good enough to fill the craving you had. You don’t even know what the craving was for until you met Jesus. Maybe you were going through a really hard time in your life, maybe everything came crashing down. You had nowhere to go and no one to turn to but God and He saved you. You were worshiping other gods. Maybe you have always known God was real but you have lived your life as a lukewarm, talk the talk but don’t walk the walk Christian and you finally got tired of the B.S., of the lie (2 Peter 2:21; Revelation 3:16). When one thing didn’t work, you were on to the next thing until you found Christ. The point is, nothing filled the void in your life until you became a follower of Christ-that we all have in common. 

Now back to the relationship with a non-believer. Imagine this. You can agree with me or not, I guess only time will tell. But I am willing to bet on everything that this will happen to you. Your boyfriend or your girlfriend-who doesn’t have Jesus… when they realize that you too, you also, cannot fill the emptiness they are feeling inside- the emptiness they have been trying to fill just like everything in their life which can only be filled by JESUS… they will leave you. They will move on to the next thing. Not because you aren’t great and wonderful, but because they have looked to you to be their god in one way or another and you will let them down because you aren’t Jesus. And if you too are looking to them to be your god, they will let you down because they are not Jesus. And if they don’t leave you and you don’t leave them you will spend the rest of your life trying to be someone’s god and you will never live up to that standard because you are not Jesus. And you will be held accountable for allowing someone to put you as an idol before God Himself. Are you willing to take that responsibility? 

“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation- if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the Gospel.” 

Colossians 1:21-23 

Imagine me in the gym biking…listening to my ipod. 

Some random Lebanese chick is on the bike next to me. I burst out laughing [seemingly] out of nowhere. How embarrassing. I was listening to Mark Driscoll’s sermon about Jesus healing on the Sabbath. He was talking about the Pharisees and how they interacted with Jesus. They tested Him and tried to make Him look bad. Driscoll goes, “How come they didn’t ask Jesus questions like, “Hey Jesus, what was it like to water ski without a boat?” or “So…Jesus, you fed 5,000 with some kid’s lunchable. What was that like?!” lol so funny! 

Then I was doing abs or something and there were like 3 chicks next to me when I burst out laughing again. Ah! I can’t help it he’s so funny! What the heck I am laughing about it now! ok so this time Driscoll was talking about how the Pharisees invited Jesus over for a meal on the Sabbath. But they were only doing it to test Him. They brought in a man with Dropsy to see if Jesus would heal him so that they could rebuke Him after doing a miracle on the Sabbath. Driscoll then explains what he imagines the Pharisees’ conversation with the man with Dropsy might have been like before Jesus got there. Oh and Driscoll names the man “Dropsy-Dan” lol. “So Dropsy-Dan if you could just sit there and look like you’re in a lot of pain, like you are miserable etc. Maybe moan or something. like DURRRR” hahaha Driscoll actually was like “DUURR” Working out has never been more enjoyable. I thought it was hilarious, but don’t take it from me you should listen to Driscoll’s sermon on Jesus healing on the Sabbath.