Give.

I am getting to a place where I want to give everything I have to the Lord.

This is because I am realizing how little I actually have.

I am tired of living a life that is half given, but half kept.

11I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

Faith.

I have been going through a crisis of faith.

There. I said it.

I am in a period of my life where it is increasingly difficult to live by faith, and not by sight. This is because, I am realizing, that I have very little faith.

To me, there are a lot of things that I wish would just go a certain way. Maybe because I think it'd be better. Maybe because it'd be easier for me. Maybe because I think that that way is a perfectly good solution, and I just don't understand why God doesn't see it that way as well. To put it shortly, I don't get why things have to be God's way, and not mine. Isn't my way good enough? Is God's way really that much better?

These are all the thoughts that have been running through my mind and my heart. And, these things will manifest themselves in all sorts of crazy ways. Last week, I got into an argument with one of my closest brothers and said a few really hurtful things, all because I thought I knew better. But sometimes, it's more subtle. It'll be with how guarded I try to be with my heart in opening up to the person I know that I should. It'll come when I'm trying to pray, and simply can't praying according to His will, instead of my own.

What does faith even mean?

Hebrews 11 tells us, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2For by it the people of old received their commendation."

Ummm...okay. ESV's version sort of sucks. Let's try that again.

"1-2 The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd."

I am told two things: Faith gives us the hope that makes life even worth living, and this faith is what pleases God.

The Message's translation of verse 4 is also pretty handy.

4 By an act of faith, Abel brought a better sacrifice to God than Cain. It was what he believed, not what he brought, that made the difference. That's what God noticed and approved as righteous. After all these centuries, that belief continues to catch our notice.

Faith is apparently what makes all the difference. Faith in what is to come, even if we never receive it. And it's this faith that enables us to please God; faith that He "exists and that he rewards those who seek Him."

But, still, I'm left with the question of how I actually receive faith. And I think I finally received the first step today when I opened up my Bible to do my quiet times.

Psalm 78 is all about remembering God. When the Ephraimites forgot what God had done for their ancestors, they fell into disobedience (i.e. they did not please God.) The psalmist tells us that they established the testimony of God to the next generation, not for the sake of indoctrinating them, but so that the children:

7 should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments;
8and that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God.

I think the first step is remembering. Remembering what God has done. Remembering how far He brought us. Remembering that, without Him, we'd be dead in our transgressions.

I don't know what the next step is for receiving faith. I really wish I did. But, I am grateful God has given me this first step.

Help me remember.

I woke up at 2:30 this morning, after going to bed at 11. I think the jet lag is getting to me much worse than I originally thought.

But since I was up, I started to think about Jesus, and the idea that He understands every suffering we go through.

I think this is the uniqueness of the King we serve. In no other religion do we have one who was tempted with the same temptations, and experienced the same challenges and losses, and still lived a perfect life, in obedience and love. In other religions, we are presented with deities who are either so far above or so far removed from human sufferings that they have no concept of it whatsoever, or we have deities who are entirely imperfect, indulging their every human-like whim to the fullest.

Instead, we have what Hebrews 2 tells us:

17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Isn't that weird?

We have a God who actually knows what the suffering is like for the person who is depressed and on medication. We have a God who knows the suffering of the widow, the orphan, the one who lost their child, the one who's spouse left them, who has been rejected by society, rejected by everyone He could be rejected by, rejected by His own Father, with whom He's had a perfect relationship with since the beginning of eternity.

And He experienced all this for us, so that we would know Him. In fact, we know Him even more so in our suffering because of it.

Isn't that grand? That when we're suffering, God made it so that even that is drawing us closer to Him?

Old.

Good Lord.

Someone I graduated high school with invited me to their wife's baby shower.

What?

Heart.

Konnichiwa from Nihon!

The hospitality of the church here, Toyohashi Hosanna Christ Church, has been amazing. There's no other way to describe it. They're so excited to talk to us, hang out with us, goof off with us...If I had a prayer request for the whole trip though, it would be:

Lord, take us deeper.

Take the relationships You are building way deeper. Take us all closer to the heart of God. Let us, the nine of us on this team, serve You by standing alongside this church, joining in with their struggle to go further to heart of God. Make us, the Japan Team, ready; make Your bride here ready. And let us see Your glory.

As soon as I landed, I had six hours to kill by myself in the Nagoya airport, and all I could think about was one of the last memory verses we learned, Jeremiah 32:17 - "Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for You." And how true that is. All we need to see is the smallest glimpse of His glory here in Toyohashi, and this whole community would be transformed.

Please God. We're desperate for You. Hungry for You. Thirsty for You. And Your promise is that, in You, there is the fountain of living water, that would make it so we would never thirst again. Please, Lord. Let us all drink from it.

Self-Reliance

I think one of the biggest lies that we face as human beings is the lie that we can, somehow, be self-reliant. I, myself, believed this for a very long time. In fact, when I was in the sixth grade, I read Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance and thought to myself, this is brilliant. "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." To my sixth grade mind, this was the apex of human thought. You pare away everything, are left with just yourself, and you realize that's all you need. After reading Henry David Thoreau, Emerson's Disciple, and his experiences at Walden Pond, I thought two things:

1) I should really get a name that requires writing the middle name every time (Steven Danger Choi was a serious contender.)
2) I want to live in the Yukon.

One of those statements I was really serious about. I felt that I could easily live by myself, save a bunch of books. It would certainly be the best existence I could conceive; I would live on exactly what I needed, educate myself further, and never waste a moment of my life except on keeping myself alive.

It's taken me all the way to now to realize: that was dumb.

The idea that a man could exist by himself is plausible. But I would quickly submit that that is not true living at all. To live solely dependent on yourself is to shortchange everything, everyone, most of all, yourself and God. It'd be like going from being a human being backwards into being a dog; you would consider that a downgrade, the same way going from being a dog down to a flower would be a downgrade in terms of experience. You experience less, you know less, I think this leads us to be able to say, in the end, you have less. To think that things come from your own fruition, as the work of solely your own hands, is to defraud yourself from the joy of the dependence on the Lord.

I mean, God even warned the Israelites against such foolish thinking. Deuteronomy 8 reads:

11 Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ... 17 You may say to yourself, "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." 18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.

He warns the Israelites to not begin to think that anything is of their own doing, but urges them to continue to remember that it is all by God's hand. Why is that?

Because it's what's best for them. To know that it's not about you relieves you of the anxiety of performance. It changes the perspective from needing to accomplish to wanting to fulfill. And I think that shift is so powerful. When we're able to let go of that tension of accomplishment, and instead want to do well in the same way a child simply wants to do well in front of a parent:

Well, we're free.

Interim

I have a post that I was working on, but it's not quite coherent, so I'm going to throw this one up here in the meanwhile.

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Gideon is a lot of times viewed as a dope in the Bible. Here he is, being spoken to by the God of the universe, who clearly pulled the Israelites out of the both bondage and wilderness, and Gideon is still unsure, to the point where he decides to ask God to prove exactly who He is. It's a ridiculous concept, and one that I know a lot of pastors cringe at.

However, I think sometimes, we should be so bold as to ask God exactly what the extent of His power, His word, and His promises are. Isn't anyone else curious just how far God's grace and mercy extends? Is it just for us pious people, who make it out to church every Sunday?

Or is this the kind of God who could save this city, who could save this world, if only we'd be so bold to ask?

Could we, just for once, give God a shot at being God?

Let's see if His word in Psalm 34 holds true:

8 Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
9 Oh, fear the LORD, you his saints,
for those who fear him have no lack!
10 The young lions suffer want and hunger;
but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.