Wake up call

"His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins."

2 Peter 1: 3-9

This passage hit me really hard in my quiet time tonight. It was the first one I happened to flip open to, and I'm sure that God wanted to hit me over the head with this. Because I feel like so often, I live forgetful of the price that has been paid for my sins. And therefore, I live "ineffective and unproductive" for God. In the Greek, some synonyms for "ineffective" are unemployed, idle, lazy, careless, or useless. Other words for "unproductive" are unfruitful, fruitless, or useless. Those are harsh words. And harsher still is how accurately they often describe my spiritual life. The passage says that these things will keep me from being ineffective and unproductive in my "knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." I know that in Christ God came to earth for the sake of my salvation and suffered a painful torture and death, only to be resurrected and conquer death--all to bring me new life and reconcile me to God. I know this. But what has this changed in me? This--the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of the world, and in my personal history--should change everything!! Nothing about the way I live, work, socialize, eat, sleep, breathe should NOT reflect the incredible magnitude of this reality!!

I have faith. That's not usually an issue for me. But goodness? Knowledge? Self-control? Perseverance? Godliness? Brotherly kindness? Love? I think I'm doing okay on a few of these qualities, but I'm nowhere near close to possessing all of them.

May I "make every effort" in pursuit of these things. May I make every effort to apply the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to my everyday life, and to practice being productive and efficient in working for God's Kingdom.

Advent

"A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes ... and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor and philosopher (1906-1945) imprisoned and executed for his attempt to overthrow Adolf Hitler.

We are lost. We are without hope. Our death is inevitable and impending. We are overwhelmed by our powerlessness.

Advent is the season of waiting. It is the season of reflection. We reflect on the fact of our hopelessness apart from God. Without this, the Joy of Christmas is shallow and fleeting. It's not a celebration if we don't understand what we're celebrating.

Go read this. I can't put it any better.

Pressing On

So this semester did not go as well as I had hoped for spiritually. With all the personal spiritual growth I'd experienced over the summer, it was exciting to apply that to the spiritual community at HU, and at first I thrived. But life--academics, busyness, laziness, etc--caught up with me, and my spiritual life suffered. At times I feel like I failed this semester. I did fine in my classes (I think--grades aren't in yet), but so often I failed as a Christian, as a leader, and as a friend. It's not like I had a crisis of faith or did really terrible things, but I failed to grow, I failed to love, I failed to live out my faith. Even though I'm not one to sugarcoat my life and make everything seem wonderful when it really wasn't (one of my pet peeves), I doubt anyone even noticed. Not that I have unobservant or uncaring friends, but that on the outside, it didn't have much impact. I still lived normally and knew the right things to say. That's almost what bothers me most: the lack of impact. Why doesn't my faith impact the way I live my life? If I'm living for something larger than life, shouldn't that manifest itself in how I live?

Through all of this I'm amazed at God's faithfulness. It's only been in the last few days that I've had the chance to look back and realize that I took several backwards steps on my journey of forward progress in my spiritual life. But even so, God is still faithful. I feel him now urging me onward, despite the lost ground. He is truly unconditional. Unchanging. I've messed up His will for me, and He loves me no less. He helps me no less. That's really amazing.

I feel that right now I can accurately echo the words of Paul in Philippians:

...but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

So I will press on. I want to praise God for His faithfulness, and to work more for His will and His Kingdom. I don't want my faith to be circumstantial. I don't want my faith to not have an impact, on my life or the lives of others.

Yay! Blogger works again!

For the past week or so, Blogger hasn't been working for me for some reason, which has been frustrating. Not too much has been going on. I'm in the middle of finals week at HU, which is going decently well. Last week my big accomplishment was finishing up my research paper for systematic theology, which I did on infant baptism. Doing this paper changed the way I think about baptism and its meaning and consequence. So here's the paper if you're interested in reading it:

A Theology of Infant Baptism

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