let Christ shine through

So I am writing cold, mostly for the sake of updating since I have an hour before I really need to sleep. For all five of my faithful readers I will give a rough outline of my schedule for starters, so you have an idea of why it seems like I've fallen from the face of the earth.

Sunday: Spanish church service from 10-1:30. Every other week I have a team meeting at around 7, and about 8:30 we like to play football or ultimate if we can, but that happens rarely.

Monday: free. Laundry usually takes a good chunk of the day, sports, we've had a couple intern cookouts as well.

Tuesday-Fri (getting lazy): Normal days. From 9am-4pm at least, 6:50am-9:00pm. Each of these mornings I've been getting up before 6:15 to have time to read and do homework and pray. 9-10:30 is corporate prayer, 10:30-1 are school clubs, from 1-3, 1-4, or 1-530 classes. Evening/night services on Wed and Thurs. Ghetto on Tues evenings and meeting w/ intern leader on tues night. Friday night usually free.

Saturdays are supposed to be free as well. Once monthly is an optional class taught by Pr. Joel, and often stuff needs to be done at the church or whatever.

Last week I got four hours of sleep per night four nights in a row. Last night was about 5. Tonight I'm hoping to be asleep by 11:30, an hour and 15 mins from now. My leader is gonna have me write my weekly schedule out in fifteen minute increments for time management.


So that's just a rough outline of what my schedule looks like weekly. If you want to get a hold of me, call Mondays, Sunday afternoons/nights, Tuesday nights, Thursday between 3:30ish and 6, Friday afternoons/nights, Saturdays.

So yeah, a lot going on. Today alone we heard 4 sermons/messages plus two hours of corporate prayer plus an hour of clubs. When I leave home around 6 am Wed and Thurs to class at the South campus roughly 25 mi away, I pretty much don't get home until 8:30pm, which means either pack a lunch and dinner or eat some chick fil-a.

I know since I knew no one from 220 before coming down here, I'll try to give as much information as possible. Club220 is basically bringing some pizza weekly to a school you've been assigned along with an overseer and other interns/220 people where each of you go and get kids to be in your club and you preach to them/connect w/ them and bring them to events or go hang out with them outside school. I have 5 clubs throughout the week: two morning clubs and three lunch clubs, four of them high schools with 1 middle school. I've been working around 30 weekly, which I plan on growing to at bare minimum 50 by Christmas and 100 (or more) by the end. I also go to this ghetto area on Thurs afternoons called Gardere. A week or so ago someone was shot twice, once in the head fatally, down there. Just on Monday night in another area, Zion City (about 4 mi from my house) another 23 year old man was shot 10 times and killed. I go there Tuesday evenings with my intern leader. I don't say that to show off how brave or hardcore I am, if that's the vibe you're getting...just so you know that I'm not being dramatic when i say "ghetto". Like, I used to think Hendersonville was ghetto. ha. These people are suffering, they're often brutal, many are sick, they're poor, violent, visionless, in bondage.

And it's been so hard for me to care. It's been so hard for me to just care about them. To, beyond such a paltry and shallow level as mere ideology, recognize and be "moved with compassion" for those people. And I'm so tired of it. I'm so sick of seeing and even standing in the presence of and praying for the people for whom Jesus gave his life, for whom he set His precious face as flint, for whose sickness He gave His back to be whipped, for whose iniquity He was bruised, for whose just punishment He bore out of nothing more than love and I can't even want to go to them.

I'm not excited to go out to the ghetto. I'm not passionate enough for people or for God to even walk up to a 6'4" black man with gold teeth and dreads w/ a straight bill hat and tell him the good news. I'm more intimidated by his mere physical appearance than I am filled with trust and hope in the Word of God. Is it not a grave insult to the sacrifice of Jesus when we refuse to lift a finger when it comes to getting people saved? Not only is it disgusting and fruitless, it is direct rebellion against the sole charge of Jesus to those who claimed Him as Lord: Go and preach. What is sin? Rebellion against God. Disobedience to His commands. Failing to love and honor Him to the extent which He deserves. To whom have you preached? With whom have I shared the Hope of nations? Who can I present before the Lamb? We make things so darn complicated. We wouldn't have to sit around studying how to evangelize if we'd just believe God.

How about this: if I don't see miracles in my ministry and call myself a Christian, then I make God out to be a liar, because Jesus said "these signs shall follow they that believe." They follow as we go; it's that simple. One of the preachers today quoted Romans 8:19 where it talks about creation waiting to see the sons of God walking this earth. If in a Christian dwells the fullness of Christ, or in our weak terms, if Jesus really 'lives in my heart', then we should do what Jesus did. If we don't then we're not legitimately Christian -- not Christ like, not moving in the power He paid for us to move for, not even witnessing with any bit of the authority and conviction of the holy spirit that He allotted to us having overcome the world and released the HS to us!

Why call yourself a Christian if you aren't at all moving and living as Christ did? You think this is about keeping your eyes off Sally short skirt on the street corner? Death to sin is only the first half of salvation! Look at water baptism, the symbol of salvation itself. We're baptized into His death, putting off the sinful nature, then raised again as a totally new spirit being that has the fullness of the nature and character of God that marked Jesus. I can't be any more spiritual than I am. So Jesus' payment for the forgiveness of sins was only a means to the true purpose of His sacrifice, which was to restore man completely to Himself, as He created us in His own image and likeness. And Christ Jesus is our example of that. He lived and moved as a man with the fullness of God. Doing and saying only what He heard the Father say and saw Him do. Raising dead. And we're to do greater things.

So there's a disparity between Christians today and Christians as human beings reformed into the mold that is Christ. So what is the great diagnosis? Why do we not walk in the fullness that He paid for? Why do we insult His sacrifice by failing to take hold of every last bit of the rewards of it and in so doing give him the glory and satisfaction He deserves?

What we lack is the love of God inside us. We have lust after the self-interested rewards of our perversion of Christianity: eternal security and an enjoyable life. Now eternal life is obviously the greatest reward God can offer us, and enjoying life is the only way to truly glorify God. But heaven is a reward based upon our genuine acceptance of Jesus as savior and Lord, which obviously implies a forsaking of sins and submisison to His Lordship as well as a committal to His will and purposes. And an enjoyable life has not even an iota of import to God or to man in the scope of eternity unless any and all enjoyment comes from enjoying Him. Any other means of satisfaction through money, stuff, a name, a woman, anything is a perversion of the true satisfaction that only He can supply.

So our Christianity stops at its name when it comes to comparing it to the Word of God's description of Christianity. Our Christianity is an insult to the grace and mercy of God and a trampling of the very blood of Jesus. Do we really assume we can fool God into thinking what we really wanted was Him and not license to live to satisfy ourselves in what worldliness has to offer without percieving the sure condemnation that awaits such betrayal? It is the perfect deception of the enemy for us to spend our lives entirely for our selfish interests all the while thinking we are serving God.

So how does the love of God trump such thick darkness over our eyes, such vain and foolish thinking? His love changes you. When you see "this love that surpasses understanding", displayed in all the magnificence of the cross, the true motivation for all our faith is birthed in your heart in the form of love. "Faith worketh by love". You can't be saved by grace thru faith if you first don't have the love of God birthed in your heart by the dark-piercing light of the gospel revealing it to you. How wonderfully beautiful! What a brilliant and infinitely gracious plan! What love! That's the only way to be truly saved! That's what has driven me to the end of myself, to the place where all I am, all Taylor has to look to for satisfaction and drive and give myself wholly to His service because I LOVE HIM! Oh, to know that I love him! To know that it's because by His grace and the power of His gospel His love gripped my heart to the place where I could do nothing less than follow Him back through the layers of the deception of religion and find myself finally touching the surface of the vast potential that is true Christianity. Let all creation see that this human will rise up and step into the shoes of a son of God! Let every devil in hell and those roaming through the earth hear and tremble as ALL the power of Christ breaks through this once darkened mind into living in the fullness of what He paid for!

God said to Gideon, "Rise up, mighty warrior, with the strength you have!" Gideon was the least man of Israel and yet God bore with his foolishness and weakness and faithlessness until Gideon reached the point where he was finally convinced that God really would do what He said he'd do, until he legitimately reached the end of his own will and strength and stepped into the shoes that God put before him. This is me, now. God has endured my own foolishness and doubt and failures all through my life and brought me here to this place where His Word is absolutely and completely undeniable, to where there's no reason for me to go back to my old way of thinking because I know and believe that His way is so much better!

Oh how I love Him! How richly does my precious Lord lavish upon me His tender mercies and grace! How deep is His love! How far it reaches! How longsuffering, how merciful, how completely overwhelming He is!

Man I'd shout right now by my roomie is sleeping. I WILL take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me. I will. I cannot allow myself to fail to honor His sacrifice to the fullest extent of the capability His grace gives me to do so. I'll never step back from this. His love has captured me. I will be a real Christian. I will go, preach, and heal the sick, cast out demons, set captives of darkness free, and make whole the brokenhearted. I will reveal Jesus to this world by losing my identity and in so doing take up His.

Amen.

The Motivator

I've got a couple hours to myself for once, so I figure I should give an update for the ten people who will end up reading this.

The fact that I've been here over a month is neither shocking to me yet nor is it by any means a small thing. Already I feel I've been so far transformed, but at this time I believe it's more in my thinking than anything else. I came here knowing that there was something deeper and more true to the intent of the Father from the foundation of the earth for how His people are to live in their time here. That's my deepest longing -- to please and glorify Him to the uttermost by being pleased in Him to the uttermost. Not simply pleased in feeling secure of my eternity, but pleased to walk in all His divine power gifted to me according to His grace as paid for by Christ. God's not pleased to have me infatuated with Him as a young lover, but rather He longs that I get the love he has for me inside me so fully that it flows out. He's not satisfied to have me simply dote upon him endlessly (although in the right attitude this should be fully possible) but to have me DOING His will, because when His will is done, He wins more of those for whom He suffered.

You know, the good news isn't "man can go to heaven" but "the Lamb that was slain has given infinitely to enjoy you eternally." Most people do not understand this. They hear "it's not about you" and maybe they can end up accepting that. But from there they simply graduate to a more subtle brand of selfishness. Their thinking says "It's not about me. Ok. It's about all men." So from there they go out and learn how to convince as many people as they can (if they have any zeal) to be Christians. It sounds noble. But dare we relegate the gospel to a self-help method -- not the one universally scorned by Christianity but one that applies to mankind's eternity? In other words, dare we be driven merely to improve the eternity of men? "But Jesus died for them!" You need to understand what the angel asks the Lord, "what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you give him breath?"

Man is just an object that God created to love. Man is not the end, it is a means of God getting what he wants: those who freely choose to receive His love and become vessels of it. You're his prized possession. The intern director was preaching a while back and said it like this: "he'd rather have hell than heaven without you." The word calls Jesus "the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world". God knew before creation that man would fall and he'd have to send His son, Jesus knew he'd have to die before "through Him all things were made". Yet God did it. That's how bad he wants us.

Thereby is our understanding of purpose truly birthed and established. For me to be what He wants me to be, for me to do His will in all its fullness for me, then I must take hold of all He paid for me to take hold of that He might receive the reward of His suffering. I heard of two young men who left their home in England having sold themselves as literal slaves just to reach a community of slaves on an isolated island whose master vehemently hated Christianity. They gave up their lives to bring the gospel to an island of slaves and they knew it. On their boatride out from the harbor, as they disappeared over the horizon, a huge yell was heard: "May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering!" This is the motivation for ministry. This is the motivation for Christianity. This is the gospel. Not that he saved us so we loved him, but that He first loved us.

It's bigger than me, bigger than mankind. God MUST be glorified. He gives so much, he has suffered so much, he has taken so much grief from us. Oh that men would praise Him!


I don't know how I got off into all that but this is one of the things that's been churning inside me, becoming ever more a part of who I am. God is working in me to will and to do his good pleasure. Stay tuned!