Not my own strength

As a human, especially one that grew up in the United States is very easy to try to rely on myself. For many years in my Christian journey I have tried to do the right things by my own strength. Isn't this something that we all have tried and have failed at. I will admit it, I have failed while relying on myself and my strength to become more like Jesus. The other day while spending time with God through prayer and reading of the Bible I came across this passage and it struck me and has stuck with me so I decided that I would share it. It comes from Jude.

24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

Neither you nor I can keep ourselves from doing what is wrong. However it does not end there. Isn't that the joy of Christianity that it doesn't end at what we can not do. We can not save ourselves and right our relationship with God because of our sins. There is nothing we do can. However the story does not end there. Jesus lived a perfect life, died in our places and rose from the dead conquering sin. Our sin no longer has power over us if we believe that Jesus is God and died in our place for our sins.
Now may seem like a huge rabbit trail off from what it started as however I hope you will see the connection soon. In my life I have accepted the fact for a long time that I can not save myself from my sin and can not on my own restore my relationship with God. That being said, on the other hand I have seemed to think that after I was saved and put into the right with God that I could make myself into the person that He wanted me to be. I thought that by trying to live a certain way that I could have life to the fullest and while that is partly true, I failed to realize that I can not do it on my own. I need to rely fully on God. Jesus is the one who can keep me from stumbling and living a life outside of the one that leads to life to the fullest. I was foolish for believing the lie that I could accomplish it on my own. So often I have moved forward under my own power and not my the power of the Holy Spirit and wonder why nothing happens. Before I move I need to first pray and rely on God and the guiding of his Spirit. Only then can I live life to the fullest. So I ask you who are you relying on? Yourself or the power of God and his Spirit. Let me tell you from experience life to the fullest does not happen by relying on yourself but on Jesus. May you experience this freedom from doing life on your own and learning to rely on Jesus for everything and may the Holy Spirit guide our lives and may the world know him through that.

Learning to follow him more each day,
MJV

Yeah

The past couple of months have been a time of great reflection. During this time I have done a lot of reading of Biblical scholars. One of the people I have been reading has been N.T. Wright. He is one of the best Biblical scholars that I have ever read. His views on most topics seem to be in line with what the Bible has to say. His views have explained a lot of New Testament that used to be fuzzy, even for a Bible student. The teachings of his have helped me grow on this journey of Christianity. I have heard some good sermons that have convicted me very greatly. The conviction has not been in a bad way but in a positive way that has allowed me to look at my life and start to change it. During this time I have seen Christianity that was more of a show and then Christianity that is stripped down and raw. These people have gone back to the basic, to the truth of the Bible and are pursuing it has hard as they can. My personal times with God have been to say the least amazing. Some hard, some joyous, others just hard to explain to anybody. However they have been growing times, true blessings in my life. Most of all it is great to have a wife who is growing, maturing, deepening her faith and going on this crazy journey of life with me.

Learning to follow Jesus who is Lord more and more...
Mike

This past year

I am sitting here watching a movie at my parents house in between Thanksgiving parties and I am just thinking about how blessed I am. I have the most amazing wife in the whole world. This year has been hard in many ways however it has been a year where I have been able to search for what I really believe. I have been able to dig into what I believe and why. It is a whole different experience from learning in college. It has been a very freeing experience and one that has blessed me greatly. It has prepared me so imensely for teaching and leading teenagers. It has been a time where I have been able to move away from preconcived overly fundamentalist ideas to what the Bible says about living. Christianity is a lifestyle... it is a way of life that should consume every part of my life.

This past year has been another great year for Natalie and I to grow closer together. This year led us through a lot of trials but we have weathered them together and have become so much stronger together and closer to God through this.

So I am just so thankful for this past year. (cue the cheesy music)

Love of Christ

This is a topic that I have been thinking about for a while now and have trying to put into a coherent thought. How does a follower of Christ love like him? What would it look like in our lives? I know that in this life time we will never be able to love as Christ did, surely that shouldn't stop us. So how do we as Christians go about this? I was reminded of the story of Zacchaeus by a pastor that I listened to. Imagine being there and Christ who is God and a holy person said to this filthy scum "Hey get down from that tree, I want to hang out with you" (my paraphrase). The reaction of the religious leaders of the time was probably how most of us would react at first. What the leaders expect and how we as Christians would like to react is to gather our power and strike Zacchaeus down from that tree with lightning and go "that's what happens to sinners." However that wouldn't be against what Jesus was about. So we are called to love those who we are sinners. When I start to get self righteous in this situation or ones like that I try to remind myself that I am just as if not more sinful than them and that Christ loves me. He is so passionately in love with me that he pursues me. So as a follower of Christ and trying to be like him I am to love everybody no matter how "untouchable they are." Now that is hard, Christ says "Follow me." Simple yet so hard. I hope we strive to be like him.

Holy

The church does not need a bunch of people who are trying to act more holy than each other. Think about it, why do we as a church tend to hide our scars and cover up what is wrong in our lives. I question this practice a lot. We serve a God who even after he rose up still had scars on his body. So why do hide ourselves? Are we afraid of letting go and truly serving and depending on God. I am reminded of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. He talks about authentic and living our lives for the right reason. This brings up the question, why are we doing what we are? Is it for the glory of God or for our glory? Do we hide our scars so we seem holy? I hope that we can learn in our walks to be authentic. I know that this word has been thrown around a lot in Christian circles but I want to challenge people to try to live authentically for Christ. We need to check our motives. Why are we doing what we are?

Trust

Trust is so hard sometimes. That is what makes it trust. Think about it if we knew what would happen it would not be trust. So in this time I am continuing to learn how to trust in God even more. I have trust that God is looking out for the best for me.

Learning to follow Christ more each day,
Mike

Growing

Life of late has been a growing time. This is a period in my life where God is building me into what he wants me to be. It is hard to go through these times, especially when I don't know where God is going with this. I think without these times there would not be faith. Think about it, if we did not struggle, if God didn't have us go through things to change us, we would not need faith. Faith is believing that God has my best interest in mind going through this time. If I was were I wanted in life I would not need that same trust.

Following Jesus the best I can,
Mike

Church

Why can't churches act like people who are following Christ? I know that church is full of sinners who have been saved by grace. However it seems like people who say they follow Christ and even are in leadership don't seem to care about how Jesus taught us to live. All they want to do is bicker and pick fights with each other. No wonder the world doesn't take the church seriously. I feel like the church needs to change drastically to become the place that Jesus would want it to be.

Following Jesus the best I can,
Mike

Religion

"Religion can be the enemy of God."
Bono Quote

Isn't it strange that the thing that we do to worship God and understand Him can be the thing that can also lead us away from God. It can lead us to making false gods. Sometimes when we put God into boxes to understand him we make this "box god" and start to worship it. How do we move away from this, to woshiping the Holy Triune God.

Learning to follow Jesus more everyday,

Mike

Honesty

Today I was talking to my beautiful wife and we were talking about what we would like to see church be. It seems in our experiences and the experiences of our friends that the church is a place where people can't fully be trusted. What if the church became a place where instead of putting on a false facade, we actually became a place where we were honest. A place where we could admit that we were fallen people who all needed help. When are we going to stop playing church and actually start following Jesus. When will we stand up and say to fellow believers "My name is _______ and I am a sinner who falls short everday, however I continually strive to be more like Jesus everyday and follow in the path he set before me."
Another thing we would love to see and will strive to have happen is to teach the fellow believers that we minister to is that our lives are the most important witness that we have. So often its seems in the religion of Christianity we have this idea that what we say we believe is the most important thing. However the truth is that is only a little piece of it. I would say that the most important thing is how we live our lives. To me that shows what we really believe, to me the actions of a person show their true heart more than the words that they utter. The question then comes how do we as disciples of Christ learn to live our faith and share it with our living rather than trying to talk to the world about what we believe.

So what is our dream to have a church that loves God, loves eachother and loves the world. I think all of the other things I talked about and will talk about deal with this. Love God, Love Eachother and Love the World.

Following Jesus the best I can,

Mike

Nothing Much

Just getting a first post down here. Not much new going in my life right now. I hope to put down my thoughts here sometime.