Living as We Intend

As a college student, you don't have much money to manage. Most of us don't have family to take care of, or a house to maintenance. What you do have is time.

How well do you steward it?

The wise and Godly use of a schedule will look very different from person to person. Yet, the symptoms of misuse are similar: never being rested, rarely experiencing joy, hurting others with unreliability, consistent feelings of guilt, and constantly feeling either harried or bored. In other words, not exhibiting the fruit of the spirit.

If you have room to grow in this area, check out this "how-to" paper on Living as you Intend.

Everything in Moderation

Aristotle said, "Everything in moderation."

Sometimes I think of the way of Jesus in those terms:
Justice moderated by mercy or
Valuing myself as God creation moderated by a willingness to lay down my life.

Practically, as a student I thought of following God (doing spiritual things) moderated by a need to graduate (doing homework).

But isn't 'moderation' sometimes a false wisdom?
Just as 'extremism' is sometimes a false Godliness?

Jesus wasn't "God, moderated by his humanity". He was ALL God and ALL human.

His command was, "Love the Lord your God with ALL of your EVERYTHING." And yet, the second command doesn't 'moderate', it extends.

The language of Jesus and his disciples is marked by the words 'full' and 'fullness'. Jesus said in John 15, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." Paul prays in Ephesians 3 that the disciples would, "know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

I don't see a lot of words in scripture like 'moderation' and 'balance'.

The "moderated life", the one lived at the tension point of contrasting values, is both lazy and exhausting. It's lazy, because every action can be justified by the creative mind. Holding values in tension can be just another way of holding no values at all. Since you arbitrate the tension, you can always choose what feels right in the moment without accountability.

Yet, it can be exhausting because hesitancy, the wisdom of this age, means you're always on edge. Every choice has 1,000 options and no single metric can help you decide.

Jesus was not a simple zealot. The Bible contrasts him with the simple, closed-mindedness of the "religious". Jesus was both zealous for God and full of compassion for people, and yet he was never divided or partial. How could he be all of both? He was full of God.

The life of extremism (with its lack of compassion) and the life of moderation (with its lack of conviction) are both examples of a life that's not FULL. My friends, don't settle for 'moderation' or 'extremism'. Live a life full of the FULLNESS of God.

Bonus: A disarticulation of the wisdom of this age:
"Like Totally Whatever" by Talor Mali

Unexpected Questions and Answers

Last night, on the way to small group, Margaret and I stopped by a room in Jester East to invite a guy we met last week. Truthfully, I was just doing it because I knew I should. I didn't expect anything great to come of it.

You see, I was expecting no one to be home. We knocked and nothing happened for a few minutes. But then, unexpectedly, the door opened.

I was expecting that if this guy's roommate opened the door, it'd be awkward when we explained what brought us. Quite the contrary. Unexpectedly, his roommate invited us in and immediately struck up a conversation.

I was expecting that an invitation to Bible study would only have appeal to someone who was 'churched'. It turns out both the guys were really interested in what we were doing, even though neither had much background with Scripture. They weren't able to come last night, but it was clear they were genuinely intrigued by the prospect of talking about the Bible.

As we were getting ready to leave, one of the guy's asked, "So, you know a lot about the Bible? Do you mind if I ask you a question?" Then he looked around, mostly at his roommate, "You're not going to make fun of me, right?" Satisfied that he could without fear of ridicule, he asked, "Given a transcendent model of God, where He's beyond time and space, does his foreknowledge preclude our free will?"

What followed, despite it's esoteric start, was a great conversation. We talked about whether prayer affects God and God's grief at our sin. It was real. It was unexpected.
I guess I didn't expect someone to think, "Sweet, a Christian, I have some questions for you." I felt like Philip with the Ethiopian in Acts 8.

Last week, I had been praying that God would help us to connect with more students in Jester who hadn't much experience with God and weren't yet following Jesus. I guess I should have expected God to answer my prayer, even unexpectedly.

"Authentic" Worship

Have you ever been at a Christian service when it's time to worship and, much to your dismay, found yourself feeling not especially worshipful? (don't lie ;)

You're singing and stuff, but your heart's just not in it. If you're like many people, it makes you feel fake. What should we do? We know we're "supposed" to enjoy worship (or reading scripture or praying), but we lack whatever we need to be real about it. Aren't we just lying if we "fake it"? Maybe, we think, it's better to not do it at all than to be unauthentic.

I think this instinct is challenged by the writing of John Stott in his preface to "Baptism and Fullness"

We live in very subjective days in which existentialism distinguishes sharply between “authentic” and “unauthentic” living, and uses purely subjective criteria by which to assess what is “authentic,” namely whether it seems authentic to me at the moment. But Christians, especially evangelical Christians, are convinced that God has spoken historically and objectively, that his Word culminated in Christ and in the apostolic witness to Christ, and that Scripture is precisely God’s Word written for our learning. All our traditions, all our opinions and all our experiences must therefore be submitted to the independent and objective test of biblical truth.

In other words, how can we be objective about what's "authentic"? Worship ultimately isn't about the presence of something inside of us like our feelings or even our faith. Worship is about God and what His Word reveals about Him. We worship because God created us for worship. Nothing could be more genuinely authentic than for God's people to worship Him.

I encourage you to consider Psalm 95 and worship--regardless of how you're feeling in the moment. You're not "living a lie", you're just acting on what you know. May God give us true hearts for worship, even when we're not feeling it.