1 Timothy 5: 1-2

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

I feel like I need to edit what I said in the last post. It is not my duty to tell people every little thing they do wrong, because I do countless things wrong, but if ever the Spirit leads me to speak to a brother or sister in Christ, I should talk to them in the way that the preceeding verse says. I am not to be a dictator of legalism, but an encourager and one who speaks love into the lives of other people. I am a part of the body of Christ. I am not God. To say that I have some sort of general authority over others is proposterous. I have been given avenues of leadership not in every area, but those specific ones which Christ has called me to. At the same time, I should speak the truth into other people’s lives, but not forget humilty and my place before Christ. I am to treat my father as my father, my mother as my mother, and my sisters as my sisters. I have not been given the same role in each of their lives.

THE PROCEEDING ENTRY IS EXCEEDINGLY LONG BUT PLEASE BE PATIENT AND READ THE WHOLE THING WHEN YOU GET A CHANCE… I BELIEVE IT WILL BE WELL WORTH YOUR TIME!

 I am really exposing my beliefs in their entirety and I’d like to have some feedback, both positive and negative. This is a pretty heavy entry, but I believe it is important.

       Wow. What a week. I’ve learned a lot this week. It is out of conviction of truth and desire for truth and justice that I write this post. I am not sure that everything I am about to type is correct, but at the very least it is a part of something very real that God is bringing about in my life. It is an element of my life in which the Lord is going about the process of perfecting Himself in me. Please notice I did not say I am perfect. I said I am being molded toward perfection, a perfection brought about by God’s grace. Philippians 1:6 (NASB)  says, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” ( The NIV says completion rather than perfection.) That desire for perfection, for standard, for proactive participation in God’s process of perfecting me is the attitude through which I write to you.

       Through these last two months I’ve learned that I need to value other people, that standing before God I deserve Hell just as everyone else does. I have experienced the “Humility (and nothing else) Gospel”. I have also learned that though elements of this belief are important and good, knowledge of my depravity and gratitude for his grace is not where my relationship with God ends .

       We are all  little specks of dirt and none of us have a “one up” on another. In other words, because of our depravity, none of us are able to say to God, “I deserve You.” But I believe there is a more accurate picture of our relationship to God should be, and that picture is that we are clay. We are beings which have no intrinsic value but in the hands of a Creator are being molded and perfected until the day of the Lord. If my mindset is that I am only a speck of dirt, I believe I will cease to have convictions about what is right and wrong and I will stop standing up for propriety and morality. “I am dirt. I will always be dirt.” The thing that is faulty with this is that a speck of dirt cannot become anything. However, If I am clay, I am three-dimensional, moldable, something God can form.

       Because we are moldable, changeable, God demands excellence from us. Grace is what has made our salvation possible, but works pour out of true faith. As James 2:26 says, “Faith without works is dead.” So, we have established these things thus far: God is interested in and able to bring about his perfection in our lives, and because of the grace so generously lavished upon us by our Maker, we must, as Philippians 2:12 encourages us, “ Continue to work out [our] salvation with fear and trembling.” We must be actively seeking propriety before the Lord.

            Another thing I have learned recently is the essentiality of community. It is through others that I learn the attributes of Christ. The community of believers makes up the body of Christ, so it seems logical that the foot knows things about Christ that the hand has no clue about. It is through communion with believers that I learn new attributes of Christ and it is through this communion that God shapes me into the little Christ that I should be. Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” Admonish, according to dictionary.com, means to reprove gently but earnestly and to remind of something forgotten or disregarded, as an obligation or responsibility. It is your responsibility to remind me of my duties that I forget or disregard, and sometimes it is necessary to rebuke me, and that is also my responsibility to you. It is also necessary to do so in humility, considering others better than yourself. I expect my brothers and sisters, people that I may not have intimate relationships with, to offer me words of reproof whenever I show a sign of disobedience to God. So this is my pledge. If I see something in the life of my brother or sister in Christ that is not in alignment with our call, I will gently immediately call them on it. I will say, “You know you really shouldn’t do that.” And if you blow me off I will not push the issue, but I will come to you later *after practicing patience for as long as it takes to get a chance to talk to you alone* and say, “You know brother or sister, I really meant what I said. I really don’t think it’s healthy for you to be doing this.” And from there the spirit will lead. I ask that you would do the same for me. When I sin and it is obvious that I know I have brazenly broken a rule, please call me on it, and if you notice that I am sinning but not out of outright defiance to what I know to be right, please confront me at any time when we have a chance to be relatively alone. Let us in humility admonish one another.

P.S. I am sorry to any and all of you guys whom I have confronted about things with any other attitude than complete unselfishness. I am deeply sorry for that, but that also does not mean that I will never be vocal. Please leave your thoughts!!!

For everything under the sun there is a time. (Somewhere in Psalms). i am finding every day that life is about seasons. There is a time you’re not a Christian, there is a time for becoming one. There is never an ending of seasons ’til we reach heaven. even in marriage, “The eternal bond” only last for a season. Eventually your spouse dies. So there is a time for love and a time for letting it go. And it is meant to be that way. God is constant. he is the only everlasting foundation.

Life is so weird… well first things first… Coldplay was awesome… thank you so much Chelsea!!! it wasa really fun show and they we’re really good! I have a ton of homework still to do, but retreat is in a few days so I won’t worry too much about it. In other news, I’m learning to trust in God. I think trust is abandonement… not worried about what will happen next.

There is so much i don’t know about myself… It’s really interesting. i just finished reading a book, Blue like Jazz. It was good, but i read it noisily… This is something i’ve been noticing about myself. I am a man – Sam might say that the man part is debatable – but anyway, I am a man who lives life noisily. i decide that I’ll do something, then decide that the thing I was thinking of doing was really nonsense. I read something that i know should convict me to live life differently, so i agree with it and move on before it can affect my spirit. it would be dangerous to believe what I know, because then i might actually follow it. For me, as of late, meditation, quietness of the spirit, etc. is out of the question. I don’t know if anyone connects with that, but as of late (realisticly most of my life) I’ve just been so noisy… so preoccupied with knowing spiritual secrets that I don’t take time to let the Spirit actually speak to me. I don’t know if anyone connects with what I’m feeling. If i sound like I have any spiritual knowlege, its ussually because I’m regurgitating the party line. You know what I mean? I say Christian things because i’m a Christian, not because i actually have seen the character of God, his love, move me. I should remember that Christian rhetoric is not what makes Christianity. God is. me and Colin had a real good conversation tonight… he knows stuff that I have no clue about. Which is comforting… it’s like having a tutor in my worst subject… i think he’s gonna help me pass the test. One more random thought. Misery loves company, but that’s just b/c everyone loves company. Hope loves company too, and i’d be willing to bet that hope loves company more than misery does.

I just posted… but I made it  private because I think I was just being pointlessly philosophic. Art for the sake of art is a demon. Have a good night!

I wonder if the reason we all wish we didn’t have the need for sleep isn’t because we just really want to be awake, but because we’ve wasted so much of the rest of our day. I think maybe that’s the way it works with me. I’ll have a real update tomorrow!

I keep forgetting what my age is! But now i know I’m 17… anyway, The new song is coming along well! I’ve gotta put some bass (not the fish) on it, and then we should be ready to rock!!! be checkin’ my myspace! By the way read the book I’m currently reading. I love it!

Hello friends! Today was a crazily eventful day! Oh, where to start. Well I went to school today. That was neat. school was okay, but yearbook was rediculously fun because The computers are completely ready to go. I worked on Photoshop and printed pictures on the new printer for 2 hours after classes were over. After that, I started to go home and my bloosugar level got low, so I had to stop and get some lemonade. This was pretty scary because I knew I was low at school, but i didn’t have any one dollar bills with me to buy some sugary food so I had to drive to starbucks with my bloodsugar all freaked out. But with serious thanks to God, i’m okay… I’m so thankfull. After all that craziness, i went home and ate (my mom made her world famous steak which was beautiful as ussual) and changed and went to the Dave Mathhews show!!! I had to wait outside for like an hour before it started so i got to read the first few chapters of Blue Like Jazz. So far it’s one of my favorite books i’ve ever read. Although, the list of books I have read is pretty short. It’s also really really funny. I highly recommend it. The Dave show was fun, then i got to hang out with Filipe whom i haven’t seen for two years! It was really funny to get to hang out. he came with David Dedeyan and Filipe’s cousin. It was really cool to meet her. Well I would continue, but I am serioously falling asleep at the keyboard! have a good night!

Hey guys!!!!! I’m home in the great state of TEXAS!!! Well I didn’t get to play guitar in the park with Jimtoday. We were too busy. I got to meet Jim’s roomate and he seems really cool. I’ve got four songs written so over the next few weeks I will be recording the unrecorded three and should have them on my myspace in a few weeks! I bought one of the lil’ photography textbooks that’s required for the photography program an NYU and I was really excited until I realize that it was a complete waste of paper and the most humanistic, female shovenist piece of poop ever! The first essay had some cool stuff in it. It said, and I believe it, that art in paintings has lost a lot of its power because it has become so easy to reproduce it through photographs. But instead of suggesting that people learn to appreciate it for what it is, it said to… well I don’t remember what it said to do, but it wasn’t the best option. The second third and fourth essays were pictures of naked women for no apparent reason and the fifth was about the fact that women have to think about who they are to themselves as well as other people and that they’re better than men because men can just do whatever and people don’t care. This all was very frustrating and I decided not to read most of it because the bulk of it was either completely useless or completely useless and naked! Don’t get me wrong, I still want to study photography up there but I’m going to haved to deal with a lot of mess and weed out the stupid stuff from the good stuff. I’m also going to have to pray that God keeps me focused on Him and doesn’t allow me to start analizing all the naked stuff thinking, in my selfishness, that there is some value to the devalueing of the virginity of the heart and that I can really be great or intellectual. He is the one that is to be great and thoughtful. Well I’m home! I love you guys! Have fun Jim! I’m off to bed!