Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Sometimes I literally pause what I'm doing, put my hands in front of me, stare at them, and conclude ... "nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh."

18: "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."
-Romans 7:18-25

Temptations are strong. The flesh is so weak. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

More than mere confession.

We can say "We have sinned" (Numbers 14:40, Deuteronomy 1:41), and yet still turn back from following the LORD (Numb. 14:43).

In my journey through Numbers and Deuteronomy, as well as life in general, I've been learning that repentance involves more than mere confession of sin. Scripture seems to be pressing more tightly on me that repentance demands direct action and obedience in faith. This is where it gets hard for me. I know that continual repentance is essential ("When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said "Repent", He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance" ... Thanks Luther), and the thing is I'm a good confessor ... I really am haha. But this is where it gets really difficult for me. This is where I usually file a sin deep into the back, hoping to forget it's there and that it will somehow die on its own. This is my sin. Towards the second half of the semester on, God's been resurfacing some brokenness and sin that I didn't know was there ... Sins and situations that I didn't know I was still hurting from ... People I need to reconcile with. The other night I got out of bed and finally wrote down people's names that I needed to ask forgiveness from and people I needed to forgive. That list still remains with little progress.

I know, in the end, this is for my joy and liberation yet my heart doesn't believe it. I can blame it on my mind going "but these people will totally go haywire and think I'm some sort of freak if I do this ... I mean it was 'no big deal' Jon. Let it go. You'll forget about it soon enough," but in the end, I just have a hard time believing God knows what's best for me. I think I know better. Father, help my unbelief. I want to walk in obedience. I really do and I can't seem to do what I want to do and the sin I don't want to do, I keep doing. So help this sinner. Help Your untrusting Son's unrepentant heart. Grant me repentance that leads to LIFE.
-Jon

Dreams, My Ancestry and Acts 17.

So I'm basically done with finals at the moment and was faced with making a decision today after dinner ... a) play basketball, b) read, c) study for a test that has no bearing on my GPA, d) sleep.

I chose choice d for a variety of reasons ... Mainly that option b made me tired. I just don't know how to explain dreams but somehow I woke up and was like "God does still speak in dreams." I'm not sure how church people view dreams and how or if God uses em today but ya. I've had moments like these before in High School but I haven't been this sure about God speaking through them. It's just that I woke up and my heart and mind were in a different place than when I woke. And after that followed a good brotherly chat with my apartment-mate. I do treasure our talks at night. I know I'm a bitter, unapproachable person and it can be that way for weeks or months but this guy doesn't care. He is one of the most excited people I know when it comes to God showing him something ... He always shares it and I love that about him (though when I'm bitter and unapproachable, I don't sometimes haha ... What? Just being honest ...). Today the convo just happened and it started as it normally does with one of us in need of reminder of God's faithfulness, despite all that's going on ... and the conclusion had us both going "man ... God is good. How does He orchestrate things the way He does?" It's just so beautiful ... How God aligns things so perfectly where I can echo Joseph when he says to his brothers: "It was not you who sent me here, but God" (Genesis 45:8). And I'm not sure why this connects with my ancestry but God has so perfectly done something awesome through generations ... This passage just resounds with me right now ...

Acts 17:22-34 ...

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;

as even some of your own poets have said,

“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” So Paul went out from their midst. But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

I immediately thought about verse 26 upon my reflections but after looking at verse 22-34, I really believe God's showing me something through this. The main reflection and awe came from verse 26-27. Something about that really stirs my heart up and ya, verse 32-33 has held true too throughout. It's just that I'm beginning to see this Christianity thing beyond my own minimized world and time period y'know? I've started to reflect on my ancestry, particularly "Lau" males ... and something about Acts 17 stirs in my heart a great deal of hope and a greater assurance of how divine this book is. It's so true and so beautiful. A generation goes, and a generation comes, but God is still God through it all. There really is nothing new under the sun. Despite each generation's vain ambitions and rebellion against God, I'm seeing just how He lavishes grace upon grace. It really is that ... All of this ... From that awesome 4 hour nap, my Chinese Lau heritage that now has me in Waco, Texas, etc., ... All of this ... It's favor and blessing given to a sinner who deserved none of it. Grace.

Grace (in Hosea?)

I have a lot of weight on my heart and it feels as though it's being pressed and stomped on. Does that sound like a high school bitter breakup song lyric? Heh, it doesn't intend to. At the moment I have to just make a decision to let things be or to get my hands dirty, actively war against my sin of omission, and obey. I'm seeing just the reality of life all around me and the implications and the urgency of the time right now as it is and I feel the Holy Spirit going "Come on, get in on this. Obey, not to quench guilt, but lead you to life."

I constantly go back and forth in my walk with being the licentious guy or the legalist. One minute I have a hard time believing God would love this sinner and the next second I think "Why wouldn't God love me?" One second I'm the tax collector and sinner, the outcast, and the next I'm the pharisee manipulating the Bible to exalt myself. It's a funny thing where God's placed me right now ... Baylor University that is. In the end, my prayer would be what God the Holy Spirit revealed to me yesterday.

I've been reading Hosea lately ... Ya the book in the Bible where God starts off chapter one by calling everyone "whores" and continues the theme throughout, firstly by telling Hosea to "take a wife of whoredom" who would later be found to be Gomer haha. Oh, and then when they had children, God told them to name the children: Jezreel, No Mercy, and Not my People ... This is the book I just finished looking at the other day and somehow I saw the grace of Christ upon reading this:

11 Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning,
they have become to him altars for sinning.
12 Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands,
they would be regarded as a strange thing.
13 As for my sacrificial offerings,
they sacrifice meat and eat it,
but the Lord does not accept them.
Now he will remember their iniquity
and punish their sins;
they shall return to Egypt.
14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker
and built palaces,
and Judah has multiplied fortified cities;
so I will send a fire upon his cities,
and it shall devour her strongholds.
-Hosea 8:11-14

At this point, I'm thinking ... what the freak man? What kinda grace is that? I'm at a point where my sin is literally ever before me. I'm beginning to see sin in such a way that transcends me. Like, I'm seeing the same sin dwelling within me that I've seen for years in my dad and in some ways in my brother too. I'm beginning to feel the effects of this disease in me and the more I look at myself and reflect on what thoughts I actually think during the day, it's not really a stretch for me to be able to relate to verse 11. I testify to my struggle with believing and trust in grace as the tax collector at the moment, as the sinner at the moment; the guy who sins and sins and sins and feels like an altar for sinning. So what is my hope? And the grace I saw in that text is the last part where it goes "Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it should devour her strongholds." Right now I have a hard time believing my peers will get me when I say this, but I built a crapload of fortified cities. When God the Holy Spirit is convicting me of sin and pleading me to turn from it and instead turn to Christ, my response is to do the easy thing: read my Bible more, spark emotions of guilt, listen to another sermon, blog about justification by grace alone (...heh...sorta kidding), etc. The reason this text gives me hope and gratitude is because I know that Jesus will not let me off easy like that.

So my prayer right now is to walk in the reality of what God showed me yesterday afternoon ... that if you take away and burn down all the little fortresses of theology and Bible knowledge and "service" I try to hide behind, that if you destroy all the puny thrones I try to take my seat upon, all I'm left with is me ... sinner Jonathan Lau, naked and exposed in the wilderness and wasteland of my own sin; starved, thirsty, broken, scarred, enslaved and unable to free himself; hopelessly in need of saving. And it's here that I see so clearly why my only hope is that cross upon which my Savior died ... Because in that moment Christ cried out "It is finished" I hear the Holy Spirit bidding me to believe that my iniquity was crushed with him and a life of righteousness has been made alive in Him. This is how God the Holy Spirit showed me grace. Thanks Hosea.