A Question

Posted on October 1st, 2004 by hanfaith.
Categories: Deep Thoughts.

This past Tuesday we talked with our youth group about being a child of God. When asked what it feels like to be known as such, we got a lot of blank looks. Our resident Christians finally spoke up and said, “I don’t know what it feels like, because I’ve never know what it doesn’t feel like.” Interesting theory. I guess I could say that I don’t truly know what it feels like to be a woman, because I’ve never been a man. Or that I don’t know what it feels like to see the world in beautiful color, because I’ve never been blind.

Instead, I postulate that we can truly know what something feels like, even if we’ve never known the opposite. Maybe instead, we could say that we don’t truly appreciate the extent of our feelings, because we’ve never been down in the valley to see how high the mountain top really is. Or at least, so we think. So to a lifelong Christian, is being a child of God like looking out from a hill instead of a majestic crag? If it is, I think it’s time to stop and think why. Are we blase with our faith because we’ve never known different? How sad.

I’ve known people who didn’t want to give their testimonies because they didn’t have an “exciting” conversion story. They didn’t have the moving drug addict story, or the cool partier turned Jesus freak episode.

I think most people need a paradigm shift. They think the only thing that can read as a valley experience is that external easily seen sin. I think it’s dangerous when Christians think they don’t have an exciting testimony. That’s like saying, I was pretty much ok before I became a Christian, and now I’m a little bit better. Talk about boasting in yourself. When I look at the Bible however, I see how much internal sin we all hide from the world. I see how sin had a slave driver’s whip to every single one of us - from the druggy to the school valedictorian. I see how when we take a look at ourself through the eyes of God and the help of the Bible and the revelation of the Holy Spirit, we see pride, greed, anger, lust, and all sorts of nastiness. And the truly miraculous thing is that God pulled us out of that. He gave us an answer. He gave us hope. He gave us a way. He gave us the way. And we should truly rejoice in that. Rejoice in what God has done. Rejoice in His awesome ways.

So to come back to the original question, I think we can know what it feels like to be a child of God, because the Bible clearly shows us what we would be like without God. It also shows us the condition of our hearts. If we are truly honest with ourselves, then we will come to grips with the bottomless pit of our sin and the endless ladder that pulls us up out of the muck.

EDIT: after writing this, I think I can see more clearly how “in everything” we can bring God glory. Thinking through these things has brought my heart to a worshipful place - more so than many other more conventional ways this week of expressing our hearts to God. Viva la blogging!

6 comments.

Love the Lord your God

Posted on September 13th, 2004 by hanfaith.
Categories: Deep Thoughts.

Last night, we had our first Sunday School at night with our teens. Adult Sunday School has stopped as well as kids Sunday School, so we were the only ones left. We were asked to move the time to Sunday night when the adults have a prayer and fasting time.

So we are going to do a small group Bible Study on every 2nd and 4th Sunday now. Last night, we started going through our study book on loving God and loving others. One of the most interesting questions, yet one of the simplest at first glance, was “What does it mean to love God?” This was a huge stumper. Mostly we got blank stares. Some teens said, “It’s totally litereral - we just love God”, without getting at the heart of the issue.

Eventually, they started brainstorming more and we got answers such as: to lay your life down, treasure above all else, and constantly considering God in all that you do. Intersting.

So I wonder, in a nutshell, how would you define what it means to love God? We throw around that verse so much: “Love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your mind” and sometimes don’t stop to think what that truly means.

3 comments.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Posted on September 8th, 2004 by hanfaith.
Categories: Deep Thoughts.

For the month of August, Philip and I took a break from leading youth group. The main reason was obviously the impending birth of our second baby, but we also needed the time to evaluate and plan for the year to come.

One of the materials that we regularly read is Youthworker Journal - a bimonthly publication. But the one that arrived at the end of August was the most frustrating to date. Youthworker is not a fun and games youth group magazine. Instead, it is an academic piece, with in-depth articles and thought provoking pieces. Last month, the focus was on the future of youth ministry. It always seems like someone has come up with something new and better - i.e. just when you feel like your ministry might be heading in a good direction, the “experts” tell you that you’re doing it all wrong.

One of the articles went through the history and trends of youth ministry, highlighting the contributions Young Life made to the world of youth ministry by emphasizing the relational aspect. But now, the experts say that isn’t enough. It isn’t enough to build relationships with your teens. In fact, one-on-one mentorship isn’t even Biblical in their point of view. Instead we need to be building “communities”. We need to be fostering places where young and old come together and there is no transition from youth group to “big church.”

The problem: they stop there. I can understand what they are trying to get at. Yes, we need to be bridging the gap between the young and the old in our churches and not simply segregate. But on the other hand, how do we do this? Youthworker seems to suggest that youth group should be abolished all together - that the church is really where it happens. The issue with this is that in many churches (ours included), the teens don’t really feel a part of the congregation; a part of the body. A lot of the issues they are dealing with or situations they are facing don’t come up in church situations. So what do we do if we can’t change our church? Do we just stop youth group work because it’s not a good enough “community?”

I think not. Youthworker is good at spouting philosophy, but in methodology, they lack presence. So for the meantime, I think we should continue reaching out to our youth the best way we know how. Yes, we will be informed of cultural trends and the “newest, latest” buzzwords in youth ministry. Yet, when it all comes down, I think the key is being a willing servant of God reaching out into the lives of teen, showing them in whatever way possible the height and depth and width of God’s love and the joy to be found in a relationship with Him. This transcends people groups, economic boundaries, and even time-lines.

7 comments.

Goodbye, Charlottesville

Posted on July 24th, 2004 by hanfaith.
Categories: Deep Thoughts, General.

This weekend, my parents left Charlottesville. As they left, a part of us left Charlottesville too. We may live in Maine, but they were our last ties to that town. As long as they were there, we still had an excuse to go back and visit - to go see all our old friends and old haunts. But now… it’s not likely that we’ll cross paths with anyone in C’ville for quite a while, if ever.

My family has wandered quite a bit - especially when I was in upper elementary and middle school. When I turned 14, we finally settled down for a few years and I went to school in C’ville. I actually attended one school for two years - amazing, when you consider that I’ve been to 10 different schools since 6th grade including college. I met my best friend in high school at a picnic in C’ville. I attended and grew with a church through its early stages in C’ville. After leaving C’ville for a year to go to college in Missouri, I brought my future husband back to meet the family and the town. Our first year of marriage was in a tiny apartment in C’ville. Our apartment was up above a garage in a little back alley in the town. I never quite felt safe there - but hey, it was a great year. My first teaching jobs were in Charlottesville - first as a substitue and then as an aid. And of course, the infamous Bodo’s where poor Philip suffered for two and a half years as a baker at the early hour of 4:00 am.

Charlottesville has changed since we’ve left. I’ve heard through the grapevine that the traffic is steadily getting worse. I’ve heard they might get a Target. Hopefully some of our favorite places won’t change too much. We used to walk down to the downtown mall on hot summer nights from our apartment (it was about two blocks away) and get icecream at Chaps - their mint chocolate chip was the absolute best I’ve ever had.

Perhaps what we miss about Charlottesville is the relationships and the relationships that could have been. While we were there as a married couple, we were pretty shy and stayed in our little “group” of people that we knew. We wish now that we had moved about a bit more and hung out with more people our age. Right before we left C’ville a number of twenty-something couples started coming to our church - wish we could’ve spent more time with them. Especially now when there are no other couples in our area who are our age.

Things we don’t miss: the traffic, 29 on a busy day when all you wanted was to get to Walmart without it taking half an hour, and the weather. The weather up here is so much more pleasant (ok, 40 below in the winter isn’t that pleasant - but I’d rather have that than 100+ with humidity in the summer) - and it’s a great place for Éva’s skin with all of her allergies.

So now the ties have been cut. It feels like, if we ever had to leave Maine now, we would have nowhere to go. There’s not a “hometown” place anymore. And it’s partly sad. But we’re also very excited for my parents and their new opportunities at Westminster.

9 comments.

A Response to Recent AYOR Postings

Posted on July 8th, 2004 by hanfaith.
Categories: Deep Thoughts.

This summer, I have taken a backseat to the active lifestyle I previously pursued this spring on the board. Mostly, it has been the result of sheer lack of time, the amusements of having out-of-state family around, and a growing lack of interest in some aspects of the board. It appears, though I am fairly new to the board, that the summer is not what the school year is in terms of participation, wit, and community. It’s still somewhat there, but you can tell that people have more to do with their time than sit and stare at a computer screen all day.

Anyway, my board activity has definitely been reduced to one of lurking. I still go on and read most of the posts, but I find little to say in response.

But recent arguments in the AYOR have sparked a flare within me. While I don’t want to get truly involved in the debates due to time restraints and just the headache of trying to keep up with it all, I think my blog may be the appropriate place to voice my thoughts.

It has been recently debated on the AYOR such things as the innerancy of scripture and the truth of the trinity. Such things disturb me. If we do not believe the scriptures to be the true word of God, then what basis do we have for our faith? If we believe that some things can be taken as true, and others can be left for false - who gets to do the picking and choosing, and with what authority? If we give authority to logic, it is bound to fail. I am wary of those who claim, as it appears on the AYOR that some lean this way, of an experiential gospel: i.e. I believe that which I know to be true only through my own experiences and not necessarily that which the Bible has revealed. While Christ has and does reveal himself to us in this way (through experiences), it is not the only way - and not the central way. The whole Bible testifies to His glory - and to disbelieve in the total truth of the Bible is (in my mind)to somewhat try to diminish that glory. This seems to me to be a slipperly slope to start walking down. Once you believe that the Bible isn’t “completely” true, you open up a world of heresies and false doctrines to infultrate your beliefs.

As to the trinitarian discussion, I also am slightly unnerved at the readiness with which some will openly confess being a Christian and yet denying “Three in One”. It was for times such as this that the Apostles Creed is, to me, a refreshing confession to fall back on. I have to agree with some on the board that to deny the trinity, is in many ways, a heresy. It scares me somewhat to declare this, because I myself am not intellectual enough to confront all of the debate. And yet, it is a belief that the Church over time has held to strongly, consitently, and has not been afraid to defend. It is not a debate within the church such as between Free Will and Calvinism, but instead, seems to me to be a debate of radicals on the outskirts of the church - and we should be wary, lest they influence weak Christians.

Generally, I like the discussions in the AYOR - they spur me on to study further, but recently, it seems like so much potential heresy and wishy/washy doctrine is mixed in there, that I am concerned that maybe it is not a healthy place for me to be right now. In the mean time, I think it is possibly best for me to continue to lurk, but not post there.

4 comments.

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