Connections!

Many of us Elevators have become supremely familiar with Isiah 54:2-4:

Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtain wide, Do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will stretch out to the right and to the left; your descendants will disposes nations and settle in their desolate cities. Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated.

But while doing some reading today I noticed that another one of my favorite verses is in the same chapter! This happens all too often to me. I know the gestalt of a lot of verses, but I need to make a big push to remember where to find them other than using bible gateway all the time. What we think we remember God saying doesn't hold a candle to what God says. And until I can afford a PDA to search phrases I kinda remember, I need to make more of an effort to store in my brain where I'm reading when I find something that piques my interest.

The other verse that I love in Isiah 54 is verse 17.

"No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me," declares the LORD.

Now I'm not gonna go and interpret what this means to me right now. Among the reasons why include that I just finished Revelation yesterday and went into Isiah today and I may very well go end times on you because I think it would just be so freaking awesome to see Jesus riding a white stallion.

Also some other Isiah goodies. (there are a ton and this is a weird one to pick I know) Isiah 13:6-13

Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. Because of this, all hands will go limp, every man's heart will melt. Terror will seize them, pain and anguish will grip them; they will writhe like a woman in labor. They will look aghast at each other, their faces aflame. See, the day of the LORD is coming —a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger— to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it. The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless. I will make man scarcer than pure gold, more rare than the gold of Ophir. Therefore I will make the heavens tremble; and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the LORD Almighty, in the day of his burning anger.

This makes me a little excited; a little VERY excited! Because my God can do this, it's easy to trust that He can do all less than this. That is pretty powerful stuff.

Hallelujah!

I'm sitting here giggling to myself because I just found out how much the Elevation leadership has pledged to Dominate. If you want to know the total, show up Sunday!

The Marathon Weekend

I stayed up all Saturday night after going to a haunted corn maze and getting back late and being scheduled for the 3-4am block for the 24 hours of prayer at the Elevation office. (run on sentences are fun!) So after the prayer was over some guys went to waffle house and I ordered way too much food. I then went on over to church with my maiden voyage in the yellow truck. (I normally drive the white one, and I've found it's way cooler.) Setup went super fast because we had most of the guys from the prayer experience come on over to help. While barely being able to hold my eyes open, I had to sit through all 3 services and go up on stage with some other people for a sermon illustration where pastor basically sealed the fate of a ton of "my" money. After 3rd service, we had a Dominate lunch where pastor basically explains some concerns people may have about Dominate. After this, I pretty much died as I drove the truck back to the storage unit to get my car because I realized I had the leadership commitment thing to go to at 6. YAY! I get to stay up for a few more hours! So I did what any self respecting person in my situation would do.... I went to Barns & Noble and read Shel Silversteen books in the children's section with some friends in a state of twilight consciousness. Around 5:45 I left to go to the leadership thing and they fed us Qdoba. (This was supposed to be the end of a 24 hour fast, but I shifted my fast 24 hours ahead to Monday.) The commitment event was amazing. I felt I could stay up another 3 days after being there. We went to get some ice cream and then I went home to sleep for 6 hours before work.

I'm still tired on Tuesday evening!

P.S. - I have kinda slacked off on blogging my opinions about what I consider "profound" things after reading this recently.

James 3:1 - Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

I still plan to do it from time to time, but I'm gonna view it a little differently.

Mute Math

Ok, So the Mute Math concert last night was amazing. It was my debut seeing them live. Eisley opened and were great as always. There was some sound equipment issue during Eisley's first couple songs, and every few seconds it sounded as if the siren horn from Hades was heralding the demons for an attack. Luckily all the tall people stood in front of our group, and you couldn't see much. Well, I could see fine, but most of the other people in my group were not over 6 feet, and they couldn't see. Afterward we took a chill break at Jillian's. I got to bed at what I would consider a fantastically late hour, but I did get to wake up after the sun rose for the first time in a long while this morning.

Tonight: Haunted Corn Maze! Get home ~11pm go to bed, get up 2am, go to office for prayer experience with small group. 4am waffle house! 5am church setup. 1:30pm church tear down + go to butler campus to setup for the third Dominate lunch. 6pm Leadership Commitment Night begins. 9pm tear down butler. get home ~11, bed by 12 hopefully. up for work at 6 the next morn.

I'm excited about how much sleep I'm going to get.

It's OK to be Bossy Sometimes

There are some who are bossy all the time, and then there are some who are worried to impose the slightest thing at times. I've witnessed a striking dichotomy in the behavior of volunteers at Elevation between Church related things and everything else. It's not uncommon for someone on Sunday to ask a huge favor from a stranger, and then during the week to feel uncomfortable asking a small favor from a friend. This is very interesting to me.

After thinking about it for a while, a thought popped into my mind about something Pastor said a few sermons back. He said that when we're volunteering for Elevation, we are to act with the authority and commission of Jesus Christ. This makes so much sense!! Of course we're a bit more bossy when the Name of Jesus is at stake! Jesus was insistent! Jesus was bossy!

When you ask someone to help you out with something late on a Monday night, sure you might feel like you're being a little imposing. But when you're doing work that is unquestionably commissioned by God such as advancing His Kingdom, you have a duty get it done the best way possible. You wouldn't be avoiding imposing on someone by not asking them to help you, you'd be denying them an opportunity to get in on an obviously super move of God. (There are a TON of times that it's REALLY hard to see what I do as an opportunity to serve God, but it boils down to just that. Every once in a while I can feel Him giving me an "Atta boy!" and a pat on the back and that realigns me for a while longer.)

I'm not asking someone to do something because I'm lazy, or because I like to be in control. I do it because Jesus Christ has commissioned me and given me His authority to do a job and getting help is the best way to get it done.

Reminder:

A new episode of House M.D. airs tonight on Fox! It's like ambrosia for the witty insult part of your brain.

Also I got my old car running for the first time in about 5 years today. It's a 1982 Datsun 280ZX. What this means for you: Next time you see a Mexican in a beat up car that is 14 different colors (10 shades of rust) trying to show off how awesome his car is when it's actually pretty crappy, realize that it may not be a Mexican, but me. I've all but decided that although it is in perfect working order mechanically, its disastrous cosmetic status is not worth mending. I honestly need a new dash, interior panels, floor upholstery, complete body work and new paint to feel respectable driving it. In conclusion, I'm eating chocolate ice cream for dinner.

Fin

Perspective

Everyone has heard that Christians aren't supposed to judge others. But in pop culture, the stereotypical Christian is the person at the parties that looks down on all the people doing naughty things or the office coworker that gossips about all the bad things going on at the office. The world seems to link being a Christian and judging people. It must have something to do with the fact that often we Christians do look down on others' faults from our high horse and while doing so commit one such fault!

But why is it that we shouldn't judge others? Oh yea God said so. That should be good enough for us, but there are tons of other reasons. One reason I believe we judge others sometimes is because we think we know their whole story. We don't. We have an extremely limited perspective into their situation. We may judge someone and say they're being really stuck up and bratty because you said hi to them and they just walked off. And then we talk to another guy that's really friendly at a party and assume he's a great guy. This is an extremely limited perspective! If we had a God-sized perspective, we would have known that the bratty stuck up kid had been struggling with social issues all his life and even showing up in public was a huge step in the right direction. He trusted God to take away his fear of social situations and left his basement. We also would have known that the "great guy" that we talked to at the party had left his wedding ring in the car and was here to meet girls.

Always give people the benefit of the doubt! C. S. Lewis puts it:

"When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend."

It's not about the good stuff you do, it's about what you do with what God gave you. We lack the perspective to see what God gave the people we are judging. They may be farther along than we are when you consider their handicapped start.