Finally....

After 6 months of unemployment and over three months of failed job hunts, I now have a job. I'll be selling cars at Honda of Concord so if anyone needs a vehicle, please come see me! :-)

On a side note, this means that I won't be moving out of Charlotte. Yay!

The success Pyramid

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 1:5-8

The saddest thing I can think of is a Christian that stuffs themselves with theology and fails to live up the great commission. A life in Christ is bleak if you just coast through. This verse really sticks out for me. I picture that stupid nutrition pyramid from grade school, with faith at the bottom and love at the top (except the pyramid is upside down because we are increasing as we move up). I think many of us get caught up in the faith or knowledge part and never struggle to move on to the higher forms. But we need all of these 8 traits to reach our Christ potential.

So where are you at right now? Do you struggle with each of these 8 areas? Are you working on increasing each trait from faith to love? Let's all work on being effective and productive in Christ.

Jesus will sneak up on you!

So, my best friend Kelly and I were talking about how we met the other day. We've been friends for maybe 7 months now, and I was trying to remember exactly how we got to this place. It went something like this...

Kelly and I met at out High School event called Pulse. I remember meeting her and a visiting student pastor named JD at the same time. We talked for maybe an hour and that was it. The next week, our mutual friend Jeremy and I were sitting in service and he pointed her out. Honestly, I forgot who he was even talking about until I saw her face. "Ohhh! That Kelly" Yeah, I'm awesome like that.

So after service we caught her walking out and talked a bit. Elevation was hosting a prayer experience for the volunteers that night so we all decided to go out to lunch and then head back to the church.

Keep in mind, this is only the second time I ever met this girl...

So yeah, I can't tell you what we talked about, nor can I tell you what was going through my mind. I know that I looked back on this picture and couldn't believe it was the second time I had met this girl. "No way, that had to happen after we had known each other a while...."

Apparently not.

It suddenly became clear to me that something pretty significant was happening between us that we were totally unaware of. Now, for us to look back at how we became friends seems impossibly too quick.

All too often we pray, beg, and even demand that God works in our lives in a mighty way. I know that I am going through a time in my life where I am expecting God to fulfill the calling he has placed on me and I have been specifically looking at what he is doing in my life, and yet I totally missed all this when it was occurring. The whole point is that just because we don't see God doing anything doesn't mean the pieces of the puzzle aren't coming together beyond what we can perceive. It also doesn't mean that God isn't working on another puzzle all together.

Job pt. 3

If you read chapters 1 & 2, you should get into chapter 3 and do a spiritual "what the heck?". That's right, Job becomes a poem. What, you didn't notice? Maybe you were too focused on the first verse of chapter 3...

After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Job 3:1

Yeah, that's right. After seven days of silence and support from his friends, he opened his dumb mouth and cursed his birth. Now, this is more than just Job saying he wished he didn't have to go through this pain. Job is connected to God in an intimate way. I can't say if the book of Psalms predates Job but....

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalms 139:13-14

God created Job and did so on purpose. For Job to curse the day of his birth is tantamount to Job telling God that He didn't know what He was doing. In other words, Job starts to show his arrogance and the attitude that he knows more than God.

I'll save you the long bits but most of the rest of Job goes like this...

Job's Friends: You must be a sinner. Look at your suffering. God would only do this to a horrible person. (translation, we are judging you although we have no idea what you may have done nor do we have any evidence to support these claims)

Job: I am perfect and undeserving of any punishment. I would tell God how wrong He is but God would just abuse his power and not listen to me any way. I didn't sin, I'm a perfect human being. (translation, I am the greatest thing since sliced bread and God's a mean kid)

Hmm, totally not the Job I remember hearing about. I would suggest you go through and read it if you haven't recently. The end of the story resolved with Job repenting of his sins and realizing that God is truly wonderful and his strength. What I find most interesting about the 40 some chapters in long..... LONG verbose prose that just never seems to go anywhere or stop talking and seems to make me painfully aware of my ADD is that it is how everyone talks. You just don't find this kind of stuff elsewhere in the Bible.

What I mean by this is Job and his friends are all apparently talkative people. Chapter 40 is the appearance of the Lord who speaks out of the storm and guess what.... talks in the same manner as Job and his friends. I find it interesting that God meets them on their terms and in a way that speaks to their hearts. Yup, God may not talk like this anywhere else in the Bible, but he talks like this to the people who need to hear like this. In short, God will speak to you in a unique way tailored to the person he has created you to be. Amen for that!!!

Job pt. 2

(On a total side note, when you start a multi-part blog, finish them all at once so you don't feel like you can't blog until you finish the thing you don't want to get around to....)

Part 1

So, we get to chapter 2.

For starters, Satan is up to his old tricks again, asking God to remove the blessing of good health from Job. I do want to point out that Satan needs God's permission before he can harm Job. Many people seem to think that there is this crazy battle and that on a bad day, Satan gets the upper hand. That just isn't true. God is in total control of everything, even Job's adversary.

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. Job 2:7-8 NIV

Umm, oww! I don't think I can actually imagine the pain involved in that statement. But what does our boy Job do?

His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!" He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. Job 2:9-10

That's our boy! Even in the face of terrible pain and his wife telling him to give up and die, he stuck to the promise of his Lord. Notice the last sentence. This is the second and last time this phrase appears in Job.

Chapter 2 wraps up with a final story of Job's friends coming to encourage him. What they find is so horrible they can do nothing but show their distress for their friend and sit with him for 7 days and nights in silence. Here's a good lesson about keeping our mouths shut some times. Unfortunately, like myself, they don't....

The blogging funk...

I'm going to warn you all now this will probably turn into a huge cry fest. Umm.... deal with it?

So I've been in a huge funk recently. I have no idea where to go with any of this but the last 5 months have clearly been taking a huge toll on me. Long story short, God placed in my heart a vision to dedicate my life to ministry. Now, I realize I'm too young and too inexperienced to carry it out, but has that ever stopped God before? So armed with a vision and God's promise, I left my job and began to pursue the calling he has placed on my life.

Now it's 5 months later and I still don't have a job, and I'm still struggling to even gain any traction in my quest. Every step forward that I have taken has dissolved around me and I'm faced with the very real possibility of total, humiliating failure. Today has been especially rough. I have no idea how I'm going to come up with bills for next month, and every job that I've tried to get in the last 5 months has been met with one roadblock after another. For a while it was easy to just tell myself that God clearly wanted me to stay focused on the vision for my life, but that is getting harder and harder to tell myself.

And yet, I'm not the least bit upset with any of my circumstances. God is wonderful and has always provided. I have met some amazing people and been mentored by some amazing Christians. I have learned more about my own ability to put faith in Jesus and trust in Him than I thought was possible. I am learning to not trust in myself but that everything I do must find strength in Jesus. I wouldn't trade the last 5 months for anything in the world. If my Lord could hang on a cross for me than I can deal with what ever comes my way in the next month or two.

So if you are reading this feel free to pray for me. I need my next steps.

Job pt. 1

I now realize that so much of my “knowledge” stems from the things I learned before I was a Christian. I remember the first time I learned that Christmas, Easter, even Sunday were all pagan holidays that Christians adopted. I always thought we knew when Jesus was born, when he triumphed over the grave. Then I found out that those are they days we “celebrate” the things we know happened. The story I always heard about Jonah was the first 3 chapters. I didn’t know there was a 4^th chapter until a few months ago. Turns out Jonah was a bitter jerk. He wasn’t the guy I was told about.

Now, I’m reading Job. Wow! Is this every not the story I thought it was. Job is a phenomenal book and there are literally dozens of things that come out of it, and none of them were what I thought they’d be. The story I always heard of Job is all in the first chapter. Why no one every brought up chapter 2-42 I can’t say. I want to spend a while bringing up some things I noticed while reading Job over the next few days. Today’s installment,

Chapter 1:

I read this chapter and I know there are a million things going on here that I am not smart enough to put into context. When I read a sentence that stands out and think to myself “that’s weird, why is it worded like that?” is usually means there’s a significance, I’m just not equipped to understand it. What I do know is Job is a wonderful man who has been very clearly blessed with God’s favor. God is proud of his servant to the point where he presents Job to Satan.

“Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” Job 1:8

We all know what happens next. Satan suggests that Job is only such a great guy because of all the wonderful things God has blessed him with. So God allows Satan to get into Job’s life. And boy does he ever. Job is literally faced with a maelstrom of events. Four messengers come and tell him that all his wealth and all his family are gone, and what does Job do? He worships God. His love wasn’t based on God’s blessings but on God being God. This is the Job we all learned about in Sunday school isn’t it? Then it all kinda falls apart...