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December 15, My Utmost For His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
"Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." — 2 Timothy 2:15
If you cannot express yourself well on each of your beliefs, work and study until you can. If you don’t, other people may miss out on the blessings that come from knowing the truth. Strive to re-express a truth of God to yourself clearly and understandably, and God will use that same explanation when you share it with someone else. But you must be willing to go through God’s winepress where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle, experiment, and rehearse your words to express God’s truth clearly. Then the time will come when that very expression will become God’s wine of strength to someone else. But if you are not diligent and say, "I’m not going to study and struggle to express this truth in my own words; I’ll just borrow my words from someone else," then the words will be of no value to you or to others. Try to state to yourself what you believe to be the absolute truth of God, and you will be allowing God the opportunity to pass it on through you to someone else.
Always make it a practice to stir your own mind thoroughly to think through what you have easily believed. Your position is not really yours until you make it yours through suffering and study. The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn’t know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly.
December 15, 2007
December 12, 2007
The Murray Question
This is the background story on Matthew Murray.
Was this young man ignored? Rejected? Was there something that could've been done differently? What can we learn from his experience to prevent something like this from happening again? Times like these when I question people's belief in Calvinistic sovereignty.
Apparently, Murray wasn't a Christian. Yes, he may have been raised one, but somewhere along the line, something developed in him to make him resent Christianity and, assuming he had "accepted Christ" as a child, made him deny Christ as a young adult.
From the article, he made it clear that he was influenced by the world's culture, especially by the music he listened to. Whatever you program your mind with will change you accordingly. One of the best ways to program your mind is through music because it repeats ideas to a melody, which also affects you emotionally. Or, if you already have a certain emotional bent, music will either assuage it or exaggerate it. I don't need to cite evidence for this through research because this is common knowledge - what you expose your mind to, will affect you. Murray already had a resentment towards Christians and Christianity, so the music he listened to only exaggerated this resentment. But that's only one factor among many that did him in.
I remember one guest to my youth group, we'll call him John, who resented Christian teachers. And he grew up in a Christian home! In his effort to be individualistic in his thinking, John inevitably revealed that he was uninformed and judgemental, the two things he accused Christian teachers of being. (For example, he quickly criticized one teacher's opening message without listening to the following reasons. John practically closed his ears to it.) I don't know exactly what he went through in life, but he is obviously sensitive and hurts easily. I don't deny his intelligence or his temperament; I question his reasoning and how he developed his thinking. It could be several reasons, the reasons that Murray may have experienced: It could have been the Christian teachers in his church or maybe even his parents. They could've been inconsistent in teaching him foundational Biblical principles (they taught it verbally and didn't show it in their lives). Maybe they were consistent but too hard on him, making him follow rules without letting him see the importance of relationships - with God, with them, with others. Or maybe they told him that following specific rules and doing ritualistic religion is what pleases God, which is antithetical to what the Bible teaches. Or it could be that those teachers and his parents did all they could do well and as best they knew how, but he ended up with the wrong crowd. For example, Murray was influenced by the Columbine killers and repeated the phrases they used.
I'm not about to blame the people in Murray's life. If anything, it was his responsibility, he was the one who became the monster. The question remains, though: what can we do to prevent such evil from happening, especially with the people from our own circle of influence? Prayer is top priority, of course, but what else? What can we do with the youth to influence them for God without forcing them or neglecting them?
Was this young man ignored? Rejected? Was there something that could've been done differently? What can we learn from his experience to prevent something like this from happening again? Times like these when I question people's belief in Calvinistic sovereignty.
Apparently, Murray wasn't a Christian. Yes, he may have been raised one, but somewhere along the line, something developed in him to make him resent Christianity and, assuming he had "accepted Christ" as a child, made him deny Christ as a young adult.
From the article, he made it clear that he was influenced by the world's culture, especially by the music he listened to. Whatever you program your mind with will change you accordingly. One of the best ways to program your mind is through music because it repeats ideas to a melody, which also affects you emotionally. Or, if you already have a certain emotional bent, music will either assuage it or exaggerate it. I don't need to cite evidence for this through research because this is common knowledge - what you expose your mind to, will affect you. Murray already had a resentment towards Christians and Christianity, so the music he listened to only exaggerated this resentment. But that's only one factor among many that did him in.
I remember one guest to my youth group, we'll call him John, who resented Christian teachers. And he grew up in a Christian home! In his effort to be individualistic in his thinking, John inevitably revealed that he was uninformed and judgemental, the two things he accused Christian teachers of being. (For example, he quickly criticized one teacher's opening message without listening to the following reasons. John practically closed his ears to it.) I don't know exactly what he went through in life, but he is obviously sensitive and hurts easily. I don't deny his intelligence or his temperament; I question his reasoning and how he developed his thinking. It could be several reasons, the reasons that Murray may have experienced: It could have been the Christian teachers in his church or maybe even his parents. They could've been inconsistent in teaching him foundational Biblical principles (they taught it verbally and didn't show it in their lives). Maybe they were consistent but too hard on him, making him follow rules without letting him see the importance of relationships - with God, with them, with others. Or maybe they told him that following specific rules and doing ritualistic religion is what pleases God, which is antithetical to what the Bible teaches. Or it could be that those teachers and his parents did all they could do well and as best they knew how, but he ended up with the wrong crowd. For example, Murray was influenced by the Columbine killers and repeated the phrases they used.
I'm not about to blame the people in Murray's life. If anything, it was his responsibility, he was the one who became the monster. The question remains, though: what can we do to prevent such evil from happening, especially with the people from our own circle of influence? Prayer is top priority, of course, but what else? What can we do with the youth to influence them for God without forcing them or neglecting them?
December 11, 2007
PMABM Newsletter #3
This month we'll comment on two videos: one from the Guided Chaos youtube channel and the other a surveillance video capturing a real life self-defense altercation.
The Guided Chaos video shows that it is best not to play around with locks or holds especially against an assailant with serious deadly intent.
This second video shows a robbery attempt. The entire event took less than ten minutes, but for the store employees, it must have seemed like an eternity. Fortunately for the employees, the perpetrator was only armed with a knife. Anyone can play the Monday morning quarterback with videos like these, so I'm not going to say too much. I can't criticize the manager for being the hero. As I mentioned in class, what are you willing to do and what are you prepared to deal with before the spit hits the fan? Will you let a perp go and allow law-enforcement to handle everything or will you do what this manager did? Either way would be all right, although the manager risked his own safety by holding on to the perp. Good for him that the perp didn't have a second knife or even a gun. Using the ideas from the first video, you'll see that it was quite a challenge to try and control the perp. (And for you MMA nuts, what technique did the manager use to control the would-be robber? Hint at 3:33)
The Guided Chaos video shows that it is best not to play around with locks or holds especially against an assailant with serious deadly intent.
This second video shows a robbery attempt. The entire event took less than ten minutes, but for the store employees, it must have seemed like an eternity. Fortunately for the employees, the perpetrator was only armed with a knife. Anyone can play the Monday morning quarterback with videos like these, so I'm not going to say too much. I can't criticize the manager for being the hero. As I mentioned in class, what are you willing to do and what are you prepared to deal with before the spit hits the fan? Will you let a perp go and allow law-enforcement to handle everything or will you do what this manager did? Either way would be all right, although the manager risked his own safety by holding on to the perp. Good for him that the perp didn't have a second knife or even a gun. Using the ideas from the first video, you'll see that it was quite a challenge to try and control the perp. (And for you MMA nuts, what technique did the manager use to control the would-be robber? Hint at 3:33)
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