Gnostics

It seems today that some people in North American churches are running around in ingnorance as their thoughts and actions are tainted by Gnosticism. I say this because I have seen it in myself in the past. Such thinking as, “The World is evil,” “My body is a prison,” and “I am chained to my body.” Anything in life that is not spiritual is wrong. A lot of Christians do a lot of cutting for the wrong reasons. They cut out food, sex, love, humor, at an attempt to become ‘more spiritual.’
There is also the thinking that all that matters is religious stuff and life does not connect with religion. People completely neglect politics, finances and social action. They talk a lot and have many symbols but there is no substance. It seems that they have ‘no hands.’ They know about heart and mind change, but they are not really changed.
As I understood this, I also understood the following:

God used a human body to express his fullness.

The Point

If the focus of my faith ever becomes just to eliminate sin, I've missed the point.

Futility

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of just one candle.--Anderson

THE RUNNING MAN

I’m positive that the “running man” has been out of style for at least 15 years in America. If you don’t know what the “running man” dance move is then you are so out of it, either that or you just were not a ‘hip’ during the time when it was ‘hip.’ (Just google it) Anyhow, I am also positive that the ‘running man’ never ever made it over the Atlantic to the part of the world where I am dwelling (I just thought of one thousand cheesy jokes I could make about the running man right here but I refrained so you would keep reading). This is where my story begins.

As you know I have a friend here whose house and family I like to visit. My friend has a name and that is Elnur. He also has a last name but I don’t know it and if I did there would be now way that I would have the correct characters to spell it and you wouldn’t be able to say it anyways. Tonight I visited his family, and like always, we ate a ton of food. God either gave these people larger stomachs or faster metabolisms because I am always amazed at how they can out eat me without even trying. We did that for a good hour and a half and then the real fun began. You see last time I was there they began teaching me how to dance their traditional dance. I’m a novelty! They love watching me and I love pleasing them. Okay, so I’m not really a pet, I do enjoy learning this type of dance. The first wedding that I go to here I’m gonna break out the moves and everyone will be so astonished that this ‘American’ can dance. That is when it happened. They looked at me and said, “Teach us your dance.” I tried to tell them that we don’t really have ‘a dance.’ But music and dance is such a part of their culture that they didn’t understand and kept asking me to show them something. That’s when I pulled it out, The Running Man, and that was just the beginning of my bag of ‘outdated and uncool dance moves in America yet new and really technically amazing here’ tricks. I did the Running Man in a small house outside the city that I’m pretty sure never had the running man performed in before. I was so on, every beat, I felt it, coursing through my blood, the rhythm, the motion. That must have been what the inventor of the running man felt. The best part came next. They tried the Running Man. I wish you could have seen it. They loved it!! Then they put on some techno and asked me to show them some more, so I followed with “The Worm”, “The Robot”, “The Sprinkler”, and everyone’s favorite “The M.C. Hammer, Can’t Touch this dance”. I was hesitant at first because of my own culture, but then I realized “they’ve never seen these before.” And suddenly I became a dancer. Everyone reading this right now would have laughed at me, but they were trying them and loving them. After a half and hour of that, we put away our dancing shoes and called it a night. I will look forward to the next meeting where I’m thinking about maybe introducing the “Mashed Potato”, “The Matt Deprez”, and “The Monster Mash.”

Moral of the story: Nothing ever loses its coolness…nothing.

2nd Question to myself.

Do I own our stuff or does my stuff own me.

Question to self (but you can all read too)

Am I loving things and using people or using things and loving people?

thatonesheep

The shepherd left the 99 to go seek for that 1. Reckless passion. A love so deep. The 99 were safe with the shepherd, and when he left, they were still safe… but that one sheep. It was alone, it was helpless, it was lost. It was in ultimate danger, danger of never returning, danger of its very life. The shepherd understood. He knew what was at risk. He knew what was important…the one sheep.
There are three billion sheep in the world that don’t even know they have a shepherd looking for them. That has changed my heart, and will forever change my life.

Visioneering

One’s goal should not be to cast a vision everyone buys into, but to create a visional community where everyone who enters in begins to have wild and God sized dreams and visions.

More thoughts from a book I read.

Often times we pray and we ask God for more power or more faith or to bless what we are doing. Are we asking God to empower our flesh? Shouldn’t we be asking God to bless what he is doing. I’ve found that I have way to high of an opionion of myself and I see myself as much more useful that I really am. I am a bondservant, not an employee. I don’t need more power or more faith. I need God to bless the works that he is doing and clearly guide me into those areas that he wants me. I will faithfully serve him with everything he has given me.

Fear

What we fear is what we are subject to. Our fears define our master. Where there is no fear, there is no control. When we fear God we can only then live fearless.

Simple Fact Discovered #1

The importance of relationships is more evident the simpler life becomes.

More adventure than getting the wrong order at Burger King.

I spent a few days after Christmas in a neighboring country for a little vacation. I didn’t understand the language and I couldn’t even read the language because they don’t use the latin script. It was quite and adventure and quite relaxing and fun. However, the adventure part won out when we missed our train, or at least half of us missed the train. There we stood (half of us), at the train station wondering where our train had went that was there about an hour ago. After trying to figure out where it had went the other half of our group had gotten off the train at the next stop and taken a taxi back to the train station. We then decided that we’d try to head the train off at the pass (actually “pass” should read ‘border’ but it sounded way cooler that way). So we jumped into two taxi’s and were off. **Note—when you have to speak a foreign language everything is twice as stressful, twice as hard and twice as long. So everything that sounds easy and quick…..was not.** Little did we know that the one taxi did not run on normal fuel, like the rest of the world, but ran off of propane and it was low. So while the one taxi went to the armed and heavily guarded propane station way out in the middle of nowhere and had to get out of the car while they fueled up because propane is highly explosive and volatile, the other taxi sped to the border. I was in the taxi that got to the border first, and there sat our train. Now all that needed to happen was for the other taxi to arrive. I had in my brain to stop that train at all costs even if it meant throwing myself in front of it (maybe not myself but I could have drawn a stupid mustache on my face and tied one of the girls on the tracks). Well it worked, for at least twenty minutes but our friends had still yet to show up. What we found out later was after they visited the armed propane station they proceeded to go to the wrong border crossing. Back at our border the train left and there five of us were left, two young teenagers, two girls, and myself, standing with our bags looking like helpless orphans. The next scene was something straight from a movie, the border officials, whose average age was probably about thirty, invited us into their ‘offices’ and we talked and drank and listened to music. Actually we only did the first and the last but the nationals filled in the gap. For an hour this carried on and we even got some email addresses out of it and a picture. Finally our other half came and we decided to make our way back to the city for another nights stay. We did make it out of the country on the following day and spent New Years on an old Soviet Train. It will definitely be a memorable New Years. (Almost as memorable as last years New Year celebration Julie!,,,which was spent in Wal-Mart!)