Finals Poetry #1

Instead of working on my ECE 6331 (Power Electronics) take home final exam, this jumped from my pen :)


Searching for God in the depths of the night,
Can He be found when my soul is not right?
When, from His purpose, my sinful heart has fled,
When, His forgiveness unsought, for acknowledgement of wrong I dread?

Can my God love me, when my self is filled with shame?
WIlll my Lord give me grace, bring life to this broken frame?
How can I hope for healing, hiding here with guilt my companion?
What Power can remove my fear, and bring innocence, honor, despite sin?

Christ! You died to pay the price, rose to show Your power,
Came from the Highest Place, and now deserve all honor.
Oh God! My broken flesh: Surgeon, cut me back to life!
I need to feel Your rod and staff, sanctify me with Your cleansing knife!

So much of me I need exchanged, trading rags for Glory,
My life and desires are rearranged, daily, keep making me holy!
God! The stitches! I tear them away... I must return for healing today.
One Surgery: though new, the transplant's not through, my flesh gets in the way.

Daily I need Your medication, that awesome drug, that I might not reject
The new mind and heart You've given, that me You might re-perfect.
Keep me, ever fighting, ever fleeing the disease,
Cleanse me, claim me, use me as You please.

It is my pleasure to be molded by the Holy One,
My purpose to be ever designed by the Creator.
As clay I have known the blessings from Your Son,
And may my eternity always show, that above all, You are Greater.

Temptation

Here is something (some things…) I have learned more about this semester:

First, temptations.
If after overcoming a temptation you are no closer to Christ than before, then you may as well have succumbed. In fact, you may not have defeated the temptation at all, but simply accepted it as a usual thing that will return, something that you can please at a later date. When we attempt to become sinless by our own power alone we completely lose sight of the nature of sin. When we think we have overcome a sin pattern in our lives because (recently) we were not as sorely tempted as we have been before, we forget that there is a spiritual war over our souls each day, and that hell is wily enough to feign retreat.

Neither Satan nor Jesus have forgotten us. While Satan prepares the next assault, let us build a fortress. Let's not rejoice solely in temporal victory but in God's eternal victory. Let us always be brought back to the eternal, heavenly knowledge of what our earthly lives really are.

Sometimes we think of sin as an absence of good instead of an evil that is seeking our destruction. We think of sin as a neutral that is wrong when we seek it. We do not understand that sin lusts for us, longs for us, desires to be one with us, desires to become part of our lives in the most intimate way.
(Side note I may expound on later: Compare Genesis 3:16 with 4:7 and with SoS 7:10 -- those are the three times that word "desire" is used in the Bible)

We need to stop leading sin on. We need our Daddy to come out on the porch with a shotgun and put the fear into our sin. We need our relationship with our Father to be intimate enough that we have opened up and He can teach us, that He can rescue us, because He will when we ask.

"Just" Praying

One thing I have noticed recently is how often Christians pray "just" prayers when they bring needs to God. I don't mean "just" as in "guided by truth, reason, justice, and fairness" I mean "just" as in "only or merely; exactly or precisely; actually." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/just)
I have been experiencing much more prayer in my life recently (Crossroads prayer groups, D-Group, accountability, etc.), and am amazed by what prayer can be and what prayer can do. However, even those who have tasted so much more of the wonder of speaking singly and in community to our Creator, Redeemer, and Guide, even when I am most right with God and am coming before Him with a realization of His Majesty, I fall into the "just" hole.
What do we mean by asking God to "just" do something, to "just" be in our midst, to "just" touch the heart of a brother, a friend, an acquaintance, an enemy?
Well, let's look at the word.

1)
Do we want God to only or merely do something? Do we think it righteous to ask less of God? Are we afraid that pouring out our desires is "testing" God? (Deuteronomy 6:16)

Or… Do we need to trust that God can do not only this thing (whatever it may be), but also do "far more abundantly than all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20)?

2)
Do we think we know exactly or precisely what God should do? Do we believe that in prayer we are informing God and communicating the best solution as if we were spies and God was some isolated monarch? Has our view of God shrunk so much that we have to give Him a game plan and just hope that He listened and understood His small role this time?

Or… Do we really need to hear that "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the LORD;" and be struck by these words "How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?"
(Isaiah 55:8, Romans 11:33-34)

3)
Are we praying, believing in an omnipotent, omniscient, merciful and compassionate God, and at the same time asking Him to "actually" do something? Do we think that we can convince God by putting a little more emphasis, praying a little stronger, that by asking God to "actually" do it instead of … well… just "please do it" we will be any dearer to God's heart?

Or… Do we need at this moment to instead pray "I believe; help my unbelief!"? (Mark 9:24)


I find it interesting that praying "just" feels more spiritual. It feels like I am pleading with God: a real prayer warrior! I feel can put so much more desire into that extra word, so much more "emotional convincing"… when I'm praying to a God who never falls prey to "appeals to emotion." (Appeal to Emotion?)

On the flip side, what do I use that four-letter-word to request? "God, just let me have more quiet times!" "I just need Your touch in my studies." "I just need a word from You."
Apart from "I just need You" ("or they just need You"), which has tons of Biblical backing, I don't know of another request to God where that little word can find a place.

(Side note my next post will probably expound on: We also don't want to "just" do things. When we "just" overcome temptation or "just" do what is right, our desires betray our actions and we really aren't following our created purpose: "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." (Deuteronomy 6:5))

In summary, all I mean to say is that we, as Christians, want our prayers to sound spiritual, we want to pray rightly, powerfully, but sometimes those desires turn from seeking God in doing so into wanting to pray something that sounds good to others (or something that fits some frame we've heard). We need to learn to pray like Jesus taught us: Come before the Father, recognize Him for who He is, remember our Kingdom purpose, present our requests for life, forgiveness, and strength.
We are not convincing God to do what is good for us. We are not bringing God's attention to things that He is unaware of. We are coming before our Father and presenting our desires, our struggles, our praise, and our thanksgiving.

Prayer is communing with the King of the Universe! There's no "just" about that! (well… except Him… He's Just…)

The Love of a Judging God

So, a Thursday a while back I went and heard the street preachers who came to the Free Speech area at Georgia Tech. People had been telling me about them since freshman year, and how they usually come out with a banner that says "Homo-sex is Sin" (which a friend of mine misquoted as "Homo-sex is gay"… so now I know them as the "Homo-sex is Gay" people…). This group did not have the big banner but the preaching was all about judgement, and not about love. His view of sin was all about action, and not about the heart and its desires and motives. His view of grace was all about how he was now good (better than the heathens at Tech), and not about how awesome God was for giving him grace and offering it to the world.


Here's my thoughts from that day:

I talked to one of the guys at Tech for about half an hour today, Showing him verses like 1 Corinth. 5:12-13 where, after talking about church discipline Paul says "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. 'Expel the wicked man from among you.'"

We also looked at John 8:1-11, where the Pharisees brought an adulterous woman to Jesus and wanted him to tell them to stone her. Specifically, I love the order of renewal in verse 11: "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more." A sinner is at Jesus feet. He does not minimize the sin, he just knows that through his sacrifice he will take its condemnation. The forgiveness is not conditional, but the expected response is natural and obvious.

I hate messages, I hate forms of preaching, that seem to say the opposite: "sin no more and I will not condemn you." Instead of "my grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinth. 12:9) this message states "my grace is sufficient… for a better you."
He (the guy I talked to) kept saying "there are many ways to fish" to explain the method of preaching, but I kept feeling that they were throwing in the dynamite and watching the fish float to the surface...


On the other hand, it is an awesome opportunity: Where else can you walk up to someone and be in a conversation about eternal perspective in one single question: "What do you think of this?"

Anyone listening: Atheist, Agnostic, Jew, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, …anyone… has thoughts and feelings about the message, and is ready to share them with others and to hear other people express their anger, malcontent, and ideas about the street preachers, even if that dissatisfaction is because of the true nature of the Gospel that is being misrepresented :)

I can't help but feel that this can fit in Joseph's response to his brothers: "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." (Gen. 50:19-20)
That is... except that the people doing it misguidedly intend good, Satan intends evil, and God still shows that he can work good :-)

Sovereignty in Media

"I don't think she's alive because God changed his mind." -- Fringe, Peter Bishop

"I, like God, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidences." --V for Vendetta, V

"God didn't have anything to do with this" -- Flash Forward

"You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good" -- Gen. 5:20, Joseph

I am a firm believer that there are some hard-hitting philosophical and theological ideas and truths / lies that come up in many movies and TV shows: especially those shows that show humans as the frail, but uniquely special, beings we are.

Now, I'll start with an example I didn't like: In the show Flash Forward, which is about an event where the entire world went unconscious and saw the future, one of the main characters states that "God didn't have anything to do with this." Their reaction to death, destruction, pain, was that God must have looked the other way. They could see no further than human plans. They could see no further than chance and human failures. But that's not the message we get from all entertainment:

For one, "V for Vendetta" went up a few notches in my liking the very second V said "I, like God, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidences." Though I must mention that the similarities between V and God end right about there, that is a hard-hitting statement.

Do you agree? Does God "play with dice?" Is there anything to which God says "Hmmm, interesting coincidence?" He wouldn't be much of a God if He did, would He? No, No He wouldn't. God is someone who, like the inspector guy in the same movie, "Can see it all together"… However, unlike the inspector, it's not "just a feeling," and He knows right from the beginning not just 2/3 of the way through the movie (if I remember correctly on that fraction).

Another of these juicy tidbits I found in the TV show "Fringe." It's kind of a freaky show, weird things always happening and the cast trying to figure out what in the world caused yet another pseudo-scientific event. But one episode, one of the main characters, Peter Bishop, says about a girl who died and came back "I don't think she's alive because God changed his mind." Now, in the show it's easily forgotten, because they very quickly brush it off and move on to something else, but really, what does this mean?

What does it mean for God to change His mind? Is that what some people think miracles are? When someone says "I don't know why I'm still alive" do they assume God doesn't either? Too often we think that if there is a plan to life we should be able to see it. Does this even make sense? I mean, in any construction site I've seen it takes a while before anyone but the designer himself has any idea or image of the final splendor of the design. If God, who is infinitely greater than us, is working things out in His way, then isn't it logical that this should be beyond our capabilities to perceive? If a human inventor's invention is unsearchable to many, I find it sensible that that God's plan is unsearchable by all.

In Biblical history the account that comes to mind is that of Joseph. Now, Joseph, as almost everyone knows, was sold into slavery by his brothers, but then from the position of an Egyptian slave eventually made it to second-in-command in Egypt (with a detour through prison). Now, there is a wonderful point in the account where Joseph's brothers, who just realized who the Egyptian guy they were talking to was, beg for him to have mercy on them. His reply? "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (Gen.50:20)"

This is the kind of thing that God does. He lets many people do evil things, but it is not because He enjoys or even can stand evil; on the contrary, it is because He knows the outcome. He knows the end of all things.

I really should pay more attention and find some more examples of these… Tell me, do any come to your mind? Any places where some media brings some heavy-hitting Christian doctrine without even meaning to?