so, there are a couple of things i have realized. you know how in at summer camps we usually feel pretty good about ourselves. we're ministering! woot! that's great and all, but it struck me, romans 12:1 calls us to be a living sacrifice. that means, our lives are sacrifices. everything. It isn't that we're doing some great deed at summer camp, that is the norm. I do realize that ministry takes on many forms and pursuing things that i honestly believe are glorifying to god, like education, work, ect, make ministry take on many many different forms and all, but i realized something. the early church was considered so radical and different because of the massive community it made. seriously, when you start to read the reasons for the explosion of chrisianity the main reasons are the radical community it bred that was so, well, confusing. Realizing that there are ways i could raise money, i had a grant offered to me if i would take the initiative to start a house that would do what i am planning to do.

my brother and i since we were kids have been frustrated with the lack of hospitality in the church. i mean, in the past week i have had several friends from highschool, who are in the visible and invisible church, that need a few months help to get their life in order and get established in a new city. the church hasn't done anything. i want that to change, so, i have to change it in myself first before i can say anything. So, my brother and i are buying a house soon with the specific intentions of making it a place where guys who need a few months help, getting a job, rent, place to live, a community can come. Do realize, we're choosing not to label this as a " ministry" or as a " community service" even though we could get money and financial help for doing that. The reason why is this: we're not doing anything out of the ordinary. that type of hospitality is expected that type of hospitality is supposed to be normal. we see it as praise worthy and exceptional. that is what is sad. This is supposed to be the norm in a church.

Also, we wonder why people don't see jesus in our lives sometimes. i know i do. In the song of solmons, the last chapter, he talks about how if you want to find him, he'll be in his fields reaping his fruit. Why do you think spiritually you feel so close to jesus when you're serving at a summer camp? it isn't just the community, it is because you are serving. This changes neighborhoods, this changes people and communities. It is the clearest representation of jesus and Jesus is present in the midst of it all. This semester i am attending all the same services, worships, and volunteering the same as i did before. That didn't change my relationship with jesus. daily service for the sake of jesus changed me.

Please don't confuse what i am saying by making you go take on something that burdens you for the sake of service. God doesn't require anything at all from you. nothing, nada, crap. His grace and relationship was and is a free gift with nothing expected, at all, in return. that is what motivates me to serve him though, the nothing i am required to do. since i mean, christ didn't just put me at neutral, he put me at perfect and gave me a spot on his throne as the brother of jesus and the son of God. For me, service is just showing people that gift. before you serve, don't do what i did for so long. Serving doesn't help your righteousness. with or without your works, you're just as screwed or blessed either way. Your works don't define you or give you any source of identity, your faith in jesus gives you an identity and hopefully works flow from that. if you're just serving trying to fix things, you'll break. i broke. don't do it.

so, as i am reading my history book on the enlightened thought, how science and the concept that everything is made of the same material so everyone is equal abolished slavery and continues to drive our society to equality, it struck me, no. I know i live there is a massive divide between the middle class and the lower class. it is still apparent by dress and by your attitude where you come from socioeconomically. There is a massive divide. Churches in general have started to do inner city missions fairly consistently, but if feels more like poking the inner city with a stick and not really embracing them. there is an issue, since god created all of us in love before the foundations of the world were even starting to be put in motion, we should have nothing but heart wrenching love for these people struggling and suffering. Something a guy i was talking to as i said i was getting frustrated with a few things, he quietly replied, " so, i think before i should say anything, i should examine my own heart and actions. once my life is patterned against the issues i see, then i will talk more about it."

realizing that we're supposed to change our own heart and actions before we criticize anything like this, i realize i have the ability to go and be very bold in the welfare neighborhoods. so, my brother and i are applying for welfare housing and are praying to move into the getto in the next year or so. I love that the church is starting to move towards the getto and innercity, but there is so much more. the gospel needs to be lived and breathed among the neighborhoods, not just preached. I have nothing to loose and everything to give. i want people to find the absolute joy i have in life now. I want more ministry and love given to people who are lower in the socioeconomic ladder of life, i want us to be a body of believers that displays deep sacrificial love to people who don't know jesus like you and i do. if i want the church to move more towards a servants heart, then i must first change my life to be one of showing the love of christ.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming the curse for us...
gal 3:13

if there ever was a passage in the bible that should make you cry, this is it.

Being not numb is a fantastic thing. nights like tonight, i can enjoy people, a steak, a hooka, and good ol' company. i used to never understand emotional attachments, loving people, or just how to just plain out love people and enjoy company. Being able to feel and express love to company, wow, the simplest things are so fulfilling now. It is strange too, since i mean, i never knew what it was like to know it would hurt to loose a person. i never allowed myself to feel that. there is a lot of risk that goes into knowing people and being attached to them, but the friendship is so much deeper and there is so much to give and grow in.

this sounds all stupid and simple, but to me, this is fascinating, since i have never felt this before.

so, realizing that an act of service is not love, but an expression of it makes the gospel so much brighter. realizing that christ didn't just do enough to meet the demands of the law, but gives us everything possible, he gives us kingship. that is beauty. it changes how i see people and how i should treat them. it makes me love for the first time in my life. Love doesn't just do, it is the absolute and complete exhaustion of everything towards a person. it also means being vulnerable to them. I realized something, jesus was vulnurable every time he spoke. how? realize he was and is something that seems pretty impossible. God in man. Everytime someone asked who he was and he answered them, he risked complete and utter rejection, since it does take faith to believe something as absolutely insane as a statement like, " i am the son of god."

I don't know who all reads this, but i do know that for the first time i know people. weather i have known you for months or years, in honesty i don't think you all have known me until recently. the reason isn't because of you, but because i have never allowed people to know me. i have learned to never be vulnerable, to never feel, to never be in a position to get hurt. i think this goes back to me not fully trusting and feeling jesus's love and payment. i mean, if you don't have absolute and complete trust in Jesus's blood covering your sin, you are going to try to pay for it yourself in someway or another. that describes my life pretty well up to now. Now is the time where you can get to know me, since jesus has softened me enough to where you can know me.

you have never met me before. you knew a facade i put up. you never knew who god made me. you can know me now though. i am actually real now. as stupid as that sounds, it is very true.

so, i have an idea. i hate ice cream now.

you know how people say, " you have to find yourself before you can be in a relationship!" i think there is truth in that, but it is slightly misplaced. ask yourself though, if you are unsure of who you are, how do you fight? what is a violation of who you are and what you hold to?

the answer is you cannot fight.

realizing that you are pretty much completely unable to be in a relationship until you find out who christ is in a fullness i have never had until last few weeks. how can you fight and stand up for something until you are so deeply committed to jesus that any consequence is not big enough for you to violate your consequence and not consequence is strong enough to make you not pursue Him in everything? until you become grounded in something i don't think that you can actually stand up for anything, especially in relationships. without being so firmly grounded everything is subject to rationalization and everything is subject to erosion.

pretty much for me, i have never been a person who confronted people, stood up for anything i believed, and never brought up touchy subjects. in essence, i have always been a coward who put on the facade of strength by being numb and also just being a clever asshole who was manipulative and avoided everything at all cost. This goes deeper than just being a coward though. i was incapable of love, since i haven't been grounded thoroughly before. If you can't fight, you can't love. since love is not being nice, love is messy. Love is loving in everything. everything my friends. it isn't being nice, it is loving someone when you hate them and dealing with them and your hate. It is an eternal perspective in who christ is and his power. I honestly don't think i would have ever understood love without christ in any manner. Since, unless you have an eternal perspective of things, the little things really do matter, since they are our everything without christ and focusing on him.

yeah. so, service doesn't mean you love someone. if you do love someone, you will serve them, but serving doesn't equal love. this may sound normal and easy for you as you read this, but remember, this is coming from a guy who felt his first emotion that wasn't pain or fear a few weeks back. read a few posts back for an explanation.

i saw people who did love people and i did see them serve people. so, i copied them. i never felt, but i knew serving people got a reaction i liked and i wanted the attention. realizing that every good action i ever did was to serve myself, that it was either because i wanted something or i weighed myself down with requirements that i thought god has on me, that i had to earn his smile. i have never had my father smile at me, i have never have him be proud of me. i haven't had a father. realizing that God loves me is one thing, but realizing that love means he wants to serve me, but not just do things to provide for my needs, but EVERYTHING. He wants to know me and be intimate with me. He wants to save me...and has. He wants me to have emotions, he wants me to be able to love, he wants me to be able to live and thrive. He wants me to have joy and happiness.

Loving someone means being vulnerable, but also it means that the simply things, the building relationship through talking, sharing, enduring, laughing, all those things, they're in there, too. I am still confused by all this emotion stuff, but i do know i had my first good day a few weeks ago and it is beginning to show. i saw an old friend today and her response was, without hearing any of what has been going on, " for the first time, you don't look sad." i am learning how to express emotions on top of that. it took me feeling the joy of jesus in me and his healing to do that, but man, it's scary.

another thing, today for the first time ( i am having a lot of firsts in this part of my life) a person i look up to told me that were proud of me. it's strange. it almost doesn't register. something to pray about. what is it that God is proud of us? i have been focusing on how God pays for our guilt and shame, but more than just taking care of our shame, he is proud of us. He smiles on us. so, with that said, how do you and i live lives that demonstrate that God, the creator, our father, is proud of us?

gal 3:13 ( a possible future tattoo) jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse.

everything we are, he took care of and gave us everything he was and is. that is a radical idea.