| monday 2002-07-29 0223 | last modified 2002-12-13 0617 |
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I should make some categorization available for journals. I should also make it a calendar view since I tend to make multiple entries in a day and whatever faithful readers I have out there (I bet I can name all of you...) probably miss some here and there, especially since the 'more' interface isn't exactly nice - 250K of my rambling for the past three years, all in one page. I'll get to it. After thesis. Anyways, the categorization thought comes from the not-so-novel idea of putting my sermon notes into my journal. Of course, I didn't take any today, but if I did, I would upload them. Because I'm nerdy and I take my laptop to sermons. Usually. Today I went to High Rock Church, which it turns out about six people I actually know attend. That was nice. I've been anonymous at all the services I've been to this summer; somebody knew me this time. For those who haven't talked to me, I've been looking for a change, just for the summer, from CBCGB, aka Lexington. I just read in some psychology thing that people actually have a four year interest-cycle, which is maybe the real reason I'm looking at other churches, to keep things different. I'm no psychologist though. I liked High Rock. For any number of reasons, like being multicultural, having a well designed program and website, serving dinner every Sunday, keeping worship simple, and trying to find any way possible to get people in the church to love one another. I think I'll be going back for the rest of the summer. Which raises some questions, since I do intend to return to CBCGB. Anyways. Sermon notes from memory. The sermon came from 1 John 1:5-2:2 in a series "Disappointment with God" by Dave. I've missed the other ones, but he mentioned something about God's protection. They sound like they were pretty interesting, and High Rock offers their sermons on CD. This week's was about "Disappointment with God's Work in Me," although the title was "Pansies and Poison Ivy." The gist was mature Christians trying to deal with the fact that they still sin, thus being disappointed that God has not perfected us even though we've been saved. He turned to 1 John, a letter written to Christians who had grown up in the church, which sets it apart from most of the rest of the epistles in the New Testament. In it John, reminds them of the basics. God is light, he writes, and there is no darkness in Him at all. So if we're walking in darkness, then we can't say we know Him. The point is that light and dark are not things internal to us - if we've come to know God, any 'darkness' or sin is atoned for by His blood. They are external things, and walking in darkness means dwelling in, thinking about, spending time doing sinful things. Light and dark are our environment and they will influence what kind of life we lead (much like flowers, thus the title of the sermon). We need the light, and we need the atonement of Jesus to be free from sin. To claim we have no sin is to claim we don't need the light or atonment. Much like flowers don't wean themselves of sun after they've had enough, we won't be free from our need of His light, His presence. And what about our sin, as Christians? We need to remember that we are in a relationship with God, by His grace and through His Son. As we continue in that relationship, we will undoubtedly see the truth about our own lives, the sin in them, by growing closer to Him, metaphorically having the light of His presence shine into those places we don't want to look at. That's a sign of our growing. Remember what He's already done in our lives, and remember that we need that light daily. I probably didn't get all of that down correctly because it's almost 24 hours after I heard it. The same psychology thing said that frowning helps you remember things (so if you don't want to be depressed by current events, say, don't frown while you watch it on TV). Maybe I should have frowned at Dave. By the way, if you actually made it this far, leave a comment responding to this question, which Dave asked before he started speaking. What would you ask God for, if you could ask Him for anything? |
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Comments
Hmm...
That's a tough question - just one thing to ask for? Or is the question intended to be more general than that?
M. Boyden on July 30, 2002 01:54 AM
His question w...
His question was for just one thing in the interest of keeping the response time short. People there mentioned 'world peace' and 'self-love'. He also showed some select examples from young kids who wrote to God ("Dear God - is it true daddy will go to hell if he uses his Bowling Words in the house?").
You can put whatever you want though, because you're Margaret, and you read almost every day... :) If Xanga was a little more reliable at wee hours in the morning, I'd be reading yours more often too... Bad Xanga, bad.
Ryan Lee on July 30, 2002 05:31 AM
Yeah, Xanga is a...
Yeah, Xanga is a little difficult at times. =P I guess my current version is free though so I can't complain about it, at least. =P
Hmm. I suppose world peace might be a good answer just because it covers a multitude of other things (comprehensive generalities = good, in this case, I'd imagine) - e.g. ending racism and hate, resolution to the various forms of strife that are going on in the middle east/India, no more war, etc. I don't recall thinking of widespread generalities initially though - a number of relatively specific things came to mind when I first read the question (under the impression that it was asking for one - my question later came up because I kept thinking, "no wait, this might be better...no wait this..etc"). An end to hate was one of my first thoughts, I think, though - seems like so many devastating things go on out there just because of hate, spite, petty maliciousness, etc. An end of sin in general would be nice, actually, although that makes me wonder what would happen to the relationship between God and man in such a situation...
M. Boyden on August 01, 2002 02:07 AM
Your spacing sys...
Your spacing system here is weird...?...or is that something I did when submitting the msg?
M. Boyden on August 01, 2002 02:05 AM
That brings up...
That brings up an entirely new question - are there things we shouldn't bother praying for because we know they won't be answered? Like world peace - God's plan for defeating sin has already been laid out, and world peace couldn't be achieved until everybody figured out the Truth (even then it might be kind of an iffy prospect). Should we bother asking? Or maybe we should just ask for the root solution? :)
I have stylesheets controlling the appearances of things here (they can be really fun, like this), basically anything that's surrounded by the paragraph HTML tag is put into 1.5 line spacing and justified alignment. I'm really picky about the way text appears (ask Christine Lieu). I suppose if I were truly picky I'd just surround everybody's posts with a set of paragraph tags...hm, there's an idea...
Ryan Lee on August 01, 2002 05:28 PM
Oh - I just th...
Oh - I just thought it was weird how the first "paragraph" of what I type comes out in single space and the rest doesn't. Maybe hitting return at the beginning might fix that? I have no idea...guess I'll see after this thing posts.
Hmm. Someone once mentioned/suggested to me that it'd be better if we were more specific in what we prayed for - instead of praying, for example, for world peace, to pray specifically for a certain situation to be resolved, that the will of God be done, etc. (although praying for the will of God (along with things like God's calling and such) seems kind of vague to me at times - it'd be safe to say those aren't exactly my favorite prayer topics at any given point in time, considering I've got some "concerns" in that are sitting around without much direction presently, but that's another topic for another day and time). And I think (if I recall correctly from some conferences/sermons that I've heard in various places before) that there are also those who would indeed say that, yes, we should simply pray for the "root solution" as you call it. ;)
Then again, I suppose there are also people who might still pray every night that God will help them win the lottery, and I'm not so sure He's going to help them too much with that, as nice as that might be - ie. each person has their own opinion of what the "best" way to pray might be. I have heard some pretty crazy stories about people who have prayed for highly-specific-albeit-unlikely things to happen and gotten precisely what they asked for, though, so I think I'd probably go with that personally, in the hopes that what I would like and will be praying for might be in tune with what God's plan might be...although since I guess I occasionally pray for generalities as well, I suppose I like variety?
Hmm - I think I've managed to mangle both sides of that question...oh well. I hate answering "it depends" but sometimes it looks like different situations might require different responses? Seems like that's the cheap answer out in any situation though...
M. Boyden on August 02, 2002 03:38 AM
I guess I fixe...
I guess I fixed that little bug. It had to do with the way the system made plain text into HTML, so there was nothing wrong with your input. Just type away. Although I think I want to make these comment boxes bigger. They're kind of puny.
I'd agree about praying specifically. We can always look and see how people pray when they pray for something in the Bible. There's a definite mix, but I don't think anybody ever gets so generic that they ask for the world to be saved. Take out your Bibles and correct me if I'm wrong on that one.
I understand your point about the lottery (cf., "the best way to pray"), but that's kind of a poor example. God loves diligence and good stewardship; gambling is neither, and He doesn't like it very much. Asking Him to answer in that way is a sure way to not get answered, or maybe get some divine smack about praying for something so greedy. But when He leads us to pray for really, really specific things that aren't so contrary to His desires for us, it's a confluence of what He's placed in our hearts as being worthy of asking for, how we're walking with Him, even how we're wired to see situations around ourselves.
I don't see anything wrong with praying in generalities, but I guess I wouldn't think that they're all that answerable. We can 'pray big' and expect big things without resorting to ill-defined concepts. What does world peace look like to each of us anyways? Of course, if we're all getting confused, we could pray about this... :)
Ryan Lee on August 03, 2002 01:13 AM
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