A People Pleaser; the biggest slave of all

There is a big difference between being and appearing to be.  These may overlap sometimes, but they are not the same.  I had a situation that reminded me of that this weekend.  I won't go into detail, but I told myself that I am done trying to appear as anything.  I'm going to be.  Now that is a heck of a lot easier said than done, but that is my new resolution.  So many times I have let what I appear to be dictate instead of acting the way I ought before God.  I'm now wondering if the whole thought process of wanting to appear christian is good at all.  Now hopefully if I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart and love those around me then someone will ask about the hope that is in me, like it says in Peter.  But going around tip-toeing is not loving.  It is self/image protecting.  I'm not here promoting the idea of using liberty as a cover to sin either.  I pray that if that is in any of my motive that God will break me of it.  It didn't seem to bother Jesus that some called Him a wine-bibber and a glutton.  As a matter of fact as I was typing a verse popped in my head that He said.  Beware when all men speak well of you.  So I should not hold the opinion of all as my measuring stick.  Jesus must have drank and ate with sinners.  I think the Bible says that.  I know He turned water into wine.  He put Himself in places that at first glance could have looked like He was doing something wrong, and some folks accused Him of sin.  Yet we know He was absolutely perfect.  He did not concern Himself with appearing in any way.  He just was.  He always pleased the Father.  

My point is this.  There will always be folks around questioning my motives and even actions if I really go out and love people.  If I love people and tell them about the holy God of Scripture, not the American replica, that we including myself at the forefront have presented, then I will not be accepted by everyone.  But what am I losing.  I have lived the other side too, and found that no matter how hard I try please everyone and avoid every single possible appearance of evil, someone will be offended.  And all to often my motive becomes hoping that I appear Christian in the way the audience I'm around at the time defines it.  I'm sick of it.  God help me just love Him and everyone I can around me.  I would love any insight or comments anyone would like to offer on the subject.

Ryan

A Who From Whoville

So we teachers at MGM high are giving graduation exams this week, well some of us.  I don't guess they trust the P.E. guy to give tests, so I am holding some who are not taking it.  Anyway, what this means is we try to find something interesting to do for four hours.  Today we watched two movies.  One was "Horton hears a Who."  I actually really enjoyed it.  Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I couldn't help noticing the constant parallels between the movie and God and us.  I am not referring to God as an Elephant that talks.  Thankfully He is not that.  But we certainly are a lot like little whos from whoville or however you spell it.  I can't see it in my head right now.  Anywho....its not that we look like that much like them, most of us, but that our situation is very similar.  We think we are so much bigger and that our affairs are so much grander than they actually are.  We are just a speck in a humongous jungle on a humongous earth in an even more humongous universe.  But we don't know it, or at least we don't act like it; that is usually until something tragic happens and we realize afresh just how small and fragile we really are.  For those of you who have not seen the movie you are missing out.  From another slant in the movie, the mother kangaroo keeps bashing Horton for believing in something he can't see. (another christian parallel)  I was just reminded today again that I am small and insignificant in this whole big thing we call life.  I have some anthill size accomplishment that I love to turn into mountains, or at least hope they will one day.  How really silly we all are with our big chest poked out and our nose poked up.  We are really just tiny little puffs of smoke.  

Now that news can be either freeing or depressing.  Either way I think it is a fact, so ignoring won't help.  It is depressing if we have no one who really is significant that knows us and cares about our little speck of existence, but it is freeing if we allow it to break us away from the slavery of trying to make it, trying to prove that I am important in the big picture, that I matter.  Because the truth is that one day the most well known well respected of us all will die and those that think we are like that will too.  However, we can not only be freed from the slavery of trying to make it, but be freed to know the One who is high above the stars and stretches to the furthest galaxy.  We can stop trying to matter, because we do matter to One that truly is significant.  We can then laugh and really not mind to much being a who from whoville.  Man, I'm telling you.  The times when I am most freed to live and love and be joyful is when I am so secure in Him that the stings of fallen reputation to those around or whatever may come just doesn't matter that much.  We have a perfect example in Jesus.  In phillipians chapter 2 it tells us that the reason Jesus was able to get His hands dirty serving was because He did not have to continually worry about His identity. He knew that He was the Son of 

God, therefore He could bend down and wash His own peoples' feet.  We can be ok with being whos if we find our meaning in something greater.

I appreciate you reading,

Ryan 

Here I Kneel

I will never experience what my wife has.  I will never be able to say with completeness, I understand.  I have never carried a child for 9 months inside me, or one day for that matter.  I have never felt the little wonder moving around inside me late at night so I can't sleep or had heartburn so bad I can't lay down.  I have never loved and cared for a beautiful, but into everything 16 month old while I had another 6lb one inside me taking my energy too.  I have never had to feel the burden of knowing that I work hard every single day for my beautiful little boy that can't say thankyou yet, and for a husband that is to selfish too many times.  I have never had to feel the burden of friends making jokes that 'I must sit around and eat snacks and watch T.V while Garrison plays.'  I have never had the burden of justifying what should come natural to women with little children.  I have never had to have my body scared because I love my babies so much.  There are so many things that you Emily have had to experience that I must just step back and kneel.  You are my princess and I love you,

Ryan 

The Great God of Logic and Feelings

I can't wrap my mind around the concept of a Being that can be personal and loving to one million different people at the same time.  My head and heart stop right here.  I can't possibly understand how this is possible, and I can't possibly feel how real this truly is.  Yet Paul prayed in the New Testament that we would know the width and breadth and depth of the love of Christ which passes all understanding.  Think about that.  He prayed that we would know something that is beyond our ability to understand.  I can remember when Jesus started becoming personal to me that I wrote in a journal that God must dissect seconds to be with His children.  I wasn't at the time writing to explain the concept of the omnipresence of God.  I was just so overwhelmed that the God of the universe cared enough to be personal with everyone of us.  He doesn't just tell us if you do this and this my angels will write it down and you will go to heaven one day.  No!  He comes to us personally and turns our hearts eyes to His.  This is to awesome to fully understand, but man I'm so thankful its true.  As A.W. Tozer says.  We can always be confident that when we look to God we have kind eyes looking back at us.  If we really let this sink in more we our lives would change dramatically.  He is just as present with me while I am calling role at school as He is when I am singing a song in church, though I may not realize it.  

This is such a freeing concept that ties with another one.  God is.  I may find out different things or see more light to show me Him more clearly but He is and always was the same.  This may be the most stabilizing fact I know.  God is.  Now I can search things without fear that my foundation will prove false.  I now have a sure place to see life from.  His name is 'I am'  

Continuing down the trail

So it has been a good while since I posted something.  I want to continue what I was talking about on my last post.  I was typing about thinking about things in relation to the beginning of creation.  It has been pretty freeing to me.  I say that not like I have found 'new light' but instead rediscovered what has always been here.  Now this may seem silly or over-simplistic, but its valuable to me and maybe it will be to somebody else.  

One thing I was thinking about today was the fact that there was no written language in the beginning.  Now this has a lot of implications.  I'll list a few I can think of.  God must be much more aware to everyone than we tend to think of Him.  Now of course God was more aware to Adam and Eve before they fell into sin, but I am talking about after that.  God was just as present during the unwritten years as He is now in the written years.  Now hold on a minute.  I know that the Word of God is the brightest light to show us Him, and the message of the gospel of Jesus must be believed for us to be born-again and made right with God.  What I am saying weakens none of that truth, instead I thing it strengthens it.  God is so much more aware to those He hasn't saved yet than we think.  I think Romans establishes this fact as well as many other texts.  The whole Bible establishes this fact really.  They know at the deepest root of who they are that God made them and is near.  The gospel breaths on this fact.  It does not come upon us like magic.  The good news about Jesus (the gospel), comes to all people that hear it not as another language, but as more of the same truth leading us to the God who has always been so near.  Once again the Word of God is essential as well as the Holy Spirit of God to convict us and draw us to God, but it all builds off of the light we already know from the beginning of creation.  

That is just one implication.  It also affects the way I think about education as well, which is becoming more and more important the older Garrison and soon to be Allie Parker get.  

Anyways, thanks again for reading

Ryan

New train of thought...

Lately I have been thinking about things with Genesis in mind.  I mean by that, that I have been wondering how did men and women do certain things from the beginning of time.  This has been freeing to me, because I have found in thinking that way that many of the things we take as just matters of the way things should be done may actually just have come around the last century or so.  This is of course very important I think in the way we raise our children.  Unfortunately I will have to continue this later, because my wife needs to use the computer.  I will definitely continue this later.  

Ryan

Best option available

When something is not directly spoken of in the Bible, we as christians have the responsibility to use the principles we know along with the best knowledge we have at the time to make the best decision on the issue at hand.  In all of this we should always ask God to help us think through the decision or set of decisions.  Yet, does God promise to tell us the answer to every question?  I don't think so.  We can however, trust that God is working through us as we trust Him.  "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure" (Phillippians 2:12-13).  From this verse and many more I think we find that God is much more concerned with us being concerned with our attitude than the actual decision at hand.  If we seek with honest sincerity to please Jesus then we will please Him in the decision.  This does not mean that we do not need to really think through some decisions.  We do. This means that we can have the assurance of knowing that our Father is in control, that He works through us in our limited frames.  He has never promised that we will have perfect knowledge here on earth.  Instead the new testament says that we see through a glass dimly lit.  However we can have the assurance of knowing that we are never on plan B with God if our heart is turned to Him.  He works even through our mistakes for our good and His glory.  (Romans 8:28)  Now should this lead us to presuming on His grace.  Absolutely Not.  I should never go jump off of a mountain and then pray for God to catch me. 

 I say all of that because, I have found in raising children there are a lot of things that the Bible does not speak specifically to.  It gives us a great set of principles and then says raise them.  There is no labor manual in the Bible.  I'm pretty sure C-sections were not performed during the years when the Bible was written, so many of the babies that are able to survive because of them today would have probably died back then.  So does this mean that needed C-sections that save babies lives are outside of God's will?  Well, if you make that argument you need to go protest the hospitals that are allowing doctors to treat cancer patients too.  I don't think that Luke was condemned for having lack of faith in God for being a physician.  You know he wrote one of the gospels under the Holy Spirit's inspiration.  There is no babywise section there either.  It never shows Sarah laying little Isaac down to cry himself to sleep.  To my knowledge it never tells us about a rocking chair either.  What do you do?  I'll tell you one thing that I don't think is smart:  raising any book to the equivalent of the Bible in instruction.  It seems many of us christian parents have done this with Babywise.  Christian author does not equal inspired author.  I'm not saying the book is wrong.  I don't know.  I will say that some of the instruction tends to make parents go against nurturing instinct, but what do I know.  My B.S. degree is in physical education not child raising.  But that in it self is a good point.  Must we really be educated to know how to care for our newborn baby.  Sometimes I think all the new found insights just make us question our God-given instincts.  I can't imagine

God handing Adam and Eve a manual and saying "now Eve make sure you read this thoroughly prior to Cain's birth.  Man what the heck would she do when she got to the section about feeding every three hours?  She better learn quick on how to read the Sun.  Or maybe clocks came about quicker than what history says.  Now I seem to have contradicted myself, because just a few types ago I was saying how medical knowledge is a good thing, and that God doesn't condemn physicians and stuff like that.  But I think there is a difference between medical science and child raising.  Who knows?   Anyway I kinda went off on a side road for a little bit.  All of the stuff about the question I have with Babywise are mine alone.  In fact we still use some of the methods.  I just have some questions that I'm not afraid to ask anymore.  Pray that the babywise god will not get me.  If you see it differently, and I'm sure many of you good parents do, I will not ask you to meet me somewhere to fight over it.  The second paragraph was just illustrating my point about unspecified issues that we face as christians.