the kid

Jesus Blesses the Children

13 One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could lay his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him.
14 But Jesus said, "Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children."15 And he placed his hands on their heads and blessed them before he left.

matthew 19

i know. i haven't blogged in a while. i forget why. was i making it into a routine? maybe. did i find something better to do with my morning time? not really. maybe i was just copping out. maybe i made up the excuse that i needed to stop blogging because i wasn't really spending time with God. instead, what i really should have been doing was blogging and trying to spend time with Him as well, rather than just blogging and leaving it at that. it's 6:53 on a thursday morning and i'm leaving for a san diego in a couple of hours. and i need God more than ever. i need Jesus to come steal my heart. i've been letting so many other things consume me. i want to fall in love with Jesus again. i want to be swept off my feet. oh, phil wickham, you got it right, bro. it really is a divine romance.

"Jesus. i need you. i need you, i need you, i need you. so much. i'm lost without you. my world's topsy turvy without you. i have no sense of direction, to clear vision of where i need to go, no love in my heart for myself or the people around me without you." sounds like an n'sync song. i've been reading my old blog posts for about an hour now and i keep asking myself, "man, where did that kid go? that kid that was full of passion and love. that kid who loved the Lord with his every breath. the kid whose every word was a form of praise to the King. where did he go?" i am sitting on my bed, desperate, and in need of Jesus to take over. i want there to be less of me and more of Him. i know, i know, i know that when i live for myself, i get absolutely nowhere. i dig myself into a hole. there's a hole in me that no one else can fill except Jesus. "God, i need you so much right now," is all that's coming out of my mouth. i want to say, "God, i need you for all of eternity." that's what i really mean. but man, do i need Him to be close right now.

i'll be gone for a month. and i've been thinking so much about what i'm going to be missing out on. i've been thinking about how much i'll miss my family and my friends. i've also been thinking about the adventure that's to come. the new friendships that are going to be made. the amazing things that are going to take place. but it's all been kind of for myself. i haven't thought about the real reason i want to do this. it's because i love Jesus. it's because i love Jesus so much that i'm willing to spend a month away from my loved ones and my comfort and safety and thrust into the fray. i love Jesus so much that i want to share about Him to everyone that i meet. and i love the people in san diego so much that i want to spend a month there with them. letting them know, reminding, encouraging them that Jesus loves them so much. He has a plan. He has big things in store for each and every one of them. He wants to use them in AMAZING, LIFE-CHANGING ways.

back to the verse. =] imagine being a kid who has heard about this man who performs this amazing miracles. you hear about him healing the blind and the lame and even raising people from the dead! your parents say that you're going to see him today. how do you feel? stoked! excited! but for me, i'd be nervous and even scared. you know you're not very important already, being a kid and all. especially in that culture, knowing that kids couldn't contribute much, you're not even sure that the man would even consider glancing your way. you get up to where he is and what happens? his disciples yell at your parents and push you aside! bum to the er. you start leaving discouraged and heartbroken. and then you hear a voice. he says, "let the children come. don't stop them!" you're filled with joy and confusion! he blesses you.

who are we to be blessed by Jesus? who am i to be blessed and considered by Him? sometimes, i feel like those kids. unworthy, a second thought, discouraged, thinking, "why would Jesus, the Son of Nazareth, the Savior of the World, want to spend time with me?" and yet, He yells at His own disciples for not letting me come to Him. He touches me, i mean, really lowers and humbles Himself to my level to bless me!! and i'm filled with awe and tears. why would this amazing man want to spend time with someone as insignificant as me?? He must really love me. despite His status and the respect that people have for Him, He lowers Himself in front of everyone to bless me. despite His holiness, His sinlessness, His righteousness, His greatness, He humbles Himself in front of the world to die on the cross for me. for me. to make me blameless before God. to make me clean. to make me whole. to make me white as snow. and i am just amazed by how much He loves me.

i think we lose that sometimes. i know i lose it. i forget to be like the child who is just filled with awe because of what He's done for me. i forget that i'm the frightened child who is amazed that He would do something like that for me. i get filled with pride and forget that i didn't "earn" this gift. it was freely given to a helpless and broken boy.

"God, remind me of who i am. Your son. Your kid. i want to make You proud. fill me with that awe again. with that joy. the joy of my salvation. fill me wonder and amazement. don't let me just be filled with those emotions. let me live in response to it. let my life look different because of how much you love me. so the world may know how much you love them, too."

the Holy Spirit

Living by the Spirit's Power

16 So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves.17 The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions.18 But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.
19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures,20 idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division,21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.25 Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives.26 Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another.

galatians 5

we just learned about the Holy Spirit on sunday at rockharbor. i feel like i've been ignoring the Holy Spirit a lot over these last few months. johnny said something that really hit me sunday night. he said that the more we ignore the Holy Spirit, the more we become dull to Him. that struck a chord in me. when you stop listening to the Holy Spirit, you stop letting Him direct your decisions, you refuse letting Him guide you, you become more and more dull to what He has to say. in other words, you get exactly what you wanted. you don't acknowledge the Holy Spirit, the Spirit starts becoming quieter and quieter to your ears. what He says starts having little effect on you. that's what happened to me. that night, we prayed to be refilled with the Holy Spirit, that we would break out of our dullness, that we would be sensitive again to the Holy Spirit's direction in our lives. i need Him. by running my life all by myself, i've only dug myself deeper into a hole that i was trying to get out of in the first place.

i saw this chapter this morning and it really hit me as well. i really like how paul says that when we let the Holy Spirit run things, we won't be doing what our sinful nature craves. i mean, when we're following the Spirit, we steer clear from temptation. i know that the Spirit is telling me to go a different route and to avoid that temptation altogether. when the Holy Spirit is guiding our lives, when we're in submission to Him, when we're choosing to follow the Spirit, what's most important to us? God! our own selfish wants go out the window and we want what God wants!

earlier in this chapter, paul talks about how we shouldn't return to slavery to the law. we shouldn't return to living by rules and regulations. if we do that, we have to follow every rule and regulation all throughout the old testament and the freedom that Jesus gives us is pointless! if we start living in a way where we think we can earn salvation and work for God's favor again, Jesus's death on the cross becomes useless to us! rather, paul encourages us to live by the Spirit. because when we live by the Spirit, we don't put our faith and trust in our own ability to follow the law and gain favor with God. when we live by the Spirit, we put our faith and trust in the Holy Spirit to guide and we follow. we simply follow. we don't try so hard to obey all these rules and commands, we simply listen to what He says we should do in every step of our lives. it's like instead of finding our way by consulting a map and following every single thing it says for getting to a certain destination we simply let the gps guide the way and let us know when to turn and where to go. by following a long list of twists and turns that a map gives us, we sometimes mess up and get lost. we lose our way. we end up having to make u-turns and we lose out on time! and also, when we use the map, we completely neglect the gps that we just bought!!! but when we follow the gps, we trust the gps knows where it's going, it calculates everything for us, it gets us there without hassle and we focus more on the journey than just getting to the destination. when we go back to just obeying the law, we neglect the Holy Spirit who's trying to guide us now!! He helps us get to where God wants us to be without hassle so we can focus on the journey and not just on the end point.

i really like how paul says this next part, too. he says that when we follow our sinful desires, the RESULTS are very clear. and he goes on to list all these sins. haha the sins are the punishments themselves!! that's deep! what he's saying is that when we follow our sinful desires, that's what we get, the sins themselves! that's it! i like how the message puts it. all we get is cheap, repetitive, loveless sex. fighting amongst ourselves. never satisfying pursuits. the list goes on. we realize that sin in itself, is its own punishment! it leads us nowhere! it leaves us with a bitter taste in our mouths. it leaves us searching for more. it hollows us out. but here's the good news. now that we've received the Holy Spirit, we bear different fruits. if we yield to the Holy Spirit, we bear love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. we bear real, deep, emotional relationships. we bear joy in life, through times of blessings and through times of hardships. we bear things that help us live life to its fullest, rather than things that snuff the life out of us!

in summary, follow the Spirit, not the law. sin in itself is its own punishment. but when we follow the Spirit, we live the life worth living, rather than the life that can hardly be called life.

being a fool

i'd rather be a fool for Jesus than the world's fool any day.

If God's promise is only for those who obey the law, then faith is not necessary and the promise is pointless.

romans 4

a life that's worth living

sometimes spiritual truths come in devotions. sometimes it comes through the wonderful people that you have in your life. sometimes it comes through strangers that you run into on the street. sometimes it comes through nature. sometimes it comes through tall, manmade structures. sometimes it comes through an accident, a spill, an unintentional blunder. and sometimes it comes as you're gasping for air, dropping boulders of sweat from your forehead, feet and legs numb from exhaustion.

today, i was reminded. why do i live? why do i exist? what is my purpose? what is my calling? i was reminded of a sermon that mike erie gave months ago. it changed up the way that i looked at life. the way i looked at sin. when we're sinning. when we're letting the wrong people influence us. when we're using drugs and shooting up. when we're drinking like there's no tomorrow. when we're looking at pornography. when we're sleeping around. when we're slandering, gossiping, deliberately holding onto bitterness and resentment. when we're willingly not forgiving people out of spite. let's NOT call that living for Christ. let's say it like it is. let's not sugarcoat it. let's not decorate with flowery terms and nice words. let's be real. that's just living for ourselves.

when people look at my life, what would they say? "wow, thien has a passion that i explain!" "he has a love that unlike anything that i've ever seen before!" "he has grace that is so undeserved!" "he's living a life that's worth living!" or would they simply say, "he's just like me." "he's playing it safe." "he says he's living for Christ but in reality, he's just living for himself."

sin. falling short of the mark. maybe sometimes, we're just too lax about it. thinking that we can conquer it on our own. maybe not even giving it much thought anymore. what does God's love letter to us say? repent. turn. around. and bolt. run as if your life depended on it. run towards Jesus. some of us haven't been running. if anything, we've been walking casually and occasionally taking a glance back at it.

no more. i'm asking God to fill me up again. Holy Spirit fall into my life. come crashing into me. fill my heart and my mind. let my actions be rooted in who You are and who You want me to be. let me be a beacon of light. change my heart, not my situation. push me out of my comfort zone. push me to depend more on You. i'm tired of feeling scared and running away from challenges. i'm tired of playing it safe. i'm tired of living "comfortably."

i step aside. i give you my life. for You to move. do what You want to do.

dijon

Parable of the Mustard Seed

31 Here is another illustration Jesus used: "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed planted in a field.32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants; it grows into a tree, and birds come and make nests in its branches."

matthew 13

i think this is so cool. it's such a short passage but means so much. the jews always expected that the day the messiah would come would be great, big, and victorious. they were expecting fanfare, loud marching, battle cries. but the messiah did come. there was no fanfare, no loud marching, no battle cries. there were miracles, there were teachings, there were rebukes, there was betrayal, there was suffering. this isn't what it was supposed to be like. it wasn't supposed to be Jesus that rescued the israelites. it was supposed to be a military leader, a king. not a humble carpenter from a small town. but look at what happened. that mustard seed grew and grew and grew. the disciples prayed. the Holy Spirit came down. peter preached. people were saved. the church started growing. and here we are today. from that small ministry in a small region to the entire world. isn't it amazing?? it just blows my mind.

and i love this, too. that birds come and make nests in its branches. i guess birds were sometimes meant to symbolize unbelievers and sinners and here we see these "birds" coming to make their homes in this kingdom. people who were hopeless now find hope in the kingdom. they find hope in Jesus. they want to come and build their home in God. it's a beautiful picture.

i think we have to realize that the kingdom of God came in a really insignificant way, through the mustard seed, through Jesus. and our insignificant actions do make a difference. it may be simply hanging out with someone and living love out with them or it may be simply inviting someone to church. it might be just sharing a real conversation with someone or going the extra mile to help someone out. you never know that that little something that you did just planted a mustard seed and set that person on a head on collision with God. =] i never knew that 2 years ago, my whole life would change because someone close to me brought me along to a conference which would eventually lead me to turn around my walk with God. and here i am today, wanting to finish up my bachelor's in psychology so i can head to seminary and try to obtain my masters in divinity to become a youth pastor. what mustard seeds, little or seemingly insignificant things that happened in your life, that got you to where you are today? live out love now. sow those seeds! you never know where it'll take someone. =]

living out mercy

Jesus Heals on the Sabbath

9 Then Jesus went over to their synagogue,10 where he noticed a man with a deformed hand. The Pharisees asked Jesus, "Does the law permit a person to work by healing on the Sabbath?" (They were hoping he would say yes, so they could bring charges against him.)
11 And he answered, "If you had a sheep that fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn't you work to pull it out? Of course you would.12 And how much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Yes, the law permits a person to do good on the Sabbath."
13 Then he said to the man, "Hold out your hand." So the man held out his hand, and it was restored, just like the other one!14 Then the Pharisees called a meeting to plot how to kill Jesus.

matthew 12

alright, i'm going to start skipping around in the gospel of matthew because i realized that i've gone over a lot of these same passages already haha.

here we have Jesus being tested by the pharisees. they want to catch Him messing up by getting Him to answer that it's ok to heal people on the sabbath. this shows how far off track that these men, these "followers of God," had gotten. they had made up so many rules so that they wouldn't break the old testament laws that they would let people go on hurting than dare to break the law. Jesus comes in to correct this misinterpretation of the law. if we look in the passage before this one and a couple passages before that, we hear Jesus saying that He desires mercy, not sacrifices. more than our religious traditions and rituals, He desires mercy. He desires true love and compassion for other people. yes, we have these certain traditions for a reason, to honor, to remember, to reflect, etc. but! it should never take the place of true LIVING for God.

the pharisees made it into religion. a system of rules and regulations that was devoid of love or fault. but today, we see a lot of us doing the same thing. we see a lot of christians caring more about being on time to church than helping someone who is in need on their way to church. what's more important? mercy? or sacrifice? don't we realize that we're honoring God even more by sacrificing our time to have mercy on other people? whereas, when we're just upholding these laws that we are having anything but mercy on others. there are some people on the other side of the fence too, though. there are people who throw the holiness, the beauty, of the sabbath to the side and don't honor it at all. i'm guilty of it myself. almost every sunday, for a while, i didn't think about God at all. i was just worrying about the next week or what i was supposed to get done that day. even when i set time aside to have a sabbath on another day of the week, i ended up spending zero time with God. sure, i got rest for myself, but i didn't get any rest in Him. i defeated the whole purpose of sabbath. i didn't remember Him, i didn't honor Him, i didn't let Him into that day to fill me up. like everything, there has to be a balance. there has to be a balance of not making following God into just a bunch of rules and regulations that are lacking in love. and there has to be a balance of not making following God a game, something that can be put on and off and taken not seriously at all.

i think it means really considering what you're doing. what having mercy on people really requires. what having true compassion and empath for people asks us to do to get out of our comfort zones. maybe it means just getting a drink with someone who is hurting, to be with them, to share and comfort them. i'm sure that having compassion on that person is so much bigger and more important than not drinking. i honestly hate parties. as in the loud music, lots of drinking, people running around making weirdos out of themselves. but if it means that i can somehow grow closer to someone and eventually have them feel comfortable enough with me to ask me about Jesus, i'm all for it. and i don't mean go off and do something completely off the charts like crash your car into a house so you can relate with someone who did the same thing, use discernment and wisdom. but i do mean to really look at the situation and ask, "how do i live out mercy in this?" instead of just passing up the opportunity. we saw Jesus do the same things, eating with the outcasts of society, having a party with the hated and despised, healing the gentiles, for us, non-christians. and honestly, i'd rather be like Jesus than the pharisees.