Psalm 119:105.

Out of the billions of facebook and tumblr posts, instagram pics, and tweets, out of all the ideologies and sermons that we hear everyday in our music and movies, out of the billions of ideas and thoughts and images within our grasp every single day … If you don’t read the Bible and don’t know what the book is basically about, you’re inevitably going to take in all that stuff and choose the bits and pieces of ideas you like that can at least (or at best), empathize your hurts and ultimately put you as the only one worthy of all affection. If you don’t ever get to reading the Bible for yourself and understanding the main idea of it, you’re going to watch movies and buy the sermon they’re preaching that leaves you with no answers and only a small glimmer of hope that things will somehow work out. If you don’t get the gospel, you’ll enter friendships with the idea that everyone should value you as awesome first and foremost. You’ll enter relationships that have marriage nowhere in sight. Your favorite music will be songs that understand how hurt you are and that’s all music will be for you … a message that you’re not alone … that we’re all hopelessly broken people … a justification that no one can judge you. You’ll play hours and hours of video games to escape thinking about things or you’ll change your lifestyle so that you live at such a fast pace that you’ll simply have no time to think about the deep realities of life or the direction you’re headed in. You’ll make something the only thing worth living for and stop at nothing and stop for no one to get it. Or maybe you’ll even dig yourself so deep that one day you’ll find yourself asking how you even got this way … so low.

Honestly, I just came off of playing LoL (which apparently is #1 pc game now … great haha) for hours and hours and I just kept feeling this sense of emptiness and I was questioning “What did I do with today?” I can justify it by reading a small passage of the Bible but in the end, it’s no use. And I just can’t help but feel this weight that’s telling me that this is what we do and are. We obsessively attach ourselves to these things, this job, this game, this relationship, this hobby, this whatever, and we just go and go and go because maybe then we’ll never have to confront the truth that we’re not just victims of the “injustice” of others’ neglect of us. We’re actually sinners. We’re actually offenders of God, people who willingly rebel against God in an instant and worship created things over the Creator. We’re actually the people responsible for the cross of Jesus. We crucified Jesus.

If only we would give up. Give up on the theology of “I’ll get it together myself … somehow.” If only our pride would be overthrown and we’d ask the Spirit to help us want to read and understand the Bible. If only we’d then by faith, do the work of reading and studying it instead of thinking we know how life works better than how God already said it does with Him and His glory at the center. If only we’d turn and repent of trying to be our own saviors … Then maybe we’d see that the Bible isn’t just a prognosis of what’s wrong with us or how lovely we are. Maybe then we’d know life isn’t at best just a clawing for survival in a cold, fallen world. Maybe then we’d get it that faith isn’t just some blind one-in-a-million, “spray and pray it hits” type of hope but a backbone of steel in a finished work by a perfect God-man. Maybe then we could live out the identity Christ purchased for us and stop feeling sorry for ourselves for not having what everyone else seems to have. Maybe then we could cry tears of joy rather than tears of despair. Maybe then we’d be marked as redeemed people who rejoice instead of a tired people who are primarily the same as everyone else but with a religion attached to them.

There’s good news in the wreckage that we’ve made. That’s what the Bible is all about: God is the good news, despite the wreckage that we are. Please, let’s read what He gave us. The invitation to the banquet is open as long as it’s called “today.”

Father, help us want to read Your Word. Help us want to study it. Give us a hunger for it. We want meat that will nourish. These other cheap substitutes are starving us. Help us. Thank You Jesus.

Not worthy to preach but ... ya.

Sometimes the scriptures seem too weighty for me to even attempt to expound. But here I am, given an opportunity to say "Thus says the LORD." Galatians 2:20 is the main text. Prayin that I'd be faithful and gripped by it even after tomorrow.

On a side note, what a blessing to preach my first sermon at my college roommate's church here in Brooklyn. God's shown so much grace ... I'm excited.

Pray that the Holy Spirit would awaken dead hearts tomorrow. Pray that He'd preach to me too.
-Jon

He's at work, He's paving the way.

So I'm in Brooklyn, New York as a short-term summer intern at Brooklyn Chinese Baptist Church.
Heh. Opened doors, closed doors. Christ is all.
Father, detach my heart from loving and worshiping the morally neutral things. It's draining me. They make bad gods. You're better.
-Jon

Push me out there Father. Joy's at stake.

I haven't much doubted that God's actively directing the next steps for me. I just have trouble being okay with each step ... haha.

It's been a month since I first left for China to help advance the gospel among the people there. Life has changed a ton since then and I'm still trying to figure out what God taught me there. I'm still trying to apply what I know He's already taught me.

There's much work to be done. Many people whom God's calling me to invest in that I'd prefer not to. There's much more sharing of the gospel to do, much more love to share, much more Christ to be had.

Oh God, we're messy. Thank You for the cross of Jesus. No turning back. Help me with my unbelief. Push me out there for the sake of Your name.

Truth ... (Lauryn Hill - Mystery of Iniquity)

Never heard a more brutal, honest depiction of the state of man, of the fall. It's strangely freeing.