Michael's Blog

Ecclesiastes 7:15-18

cruzblog — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:46:12 +0000

“In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these:
a righteous man perishing in his righteousness,
and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.
Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise–
why destroy yourself?
Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool–
why die before your time?
It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
The man who fears God will avoid all extremes.”

Don’t hear this preached on much.

What do you think?

cruzblog — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:49:36 +0000

Inescapable, unending.

God loves us more than we love him. He always has. He always will.

You will never love God as much as he loves you. This truth just seems freeing. I can relieve the self-inflicted pressure to try and measure up to God’s great love with mine.

Stop living with the pressure that you have to love God as much as he loves you. Relax, realize he will always love you more, enjoy his love, and love him with whatever measure of love you can. He kinda likes that.

Impact

cruzblog — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 19:26:00 +0000

Haven’t logged in here in a few days, but when I did today, I found a comment from a man who changed my life when I was 9 years old. This man started and has been running a Bible camp in the Northwest Hills of Connecticut called Mountain Lake Bible Camp. It was here, in 1990, that my relationship with Jesus began.

And its had me thinking.

This man, Al Thyberg (called Uncle Al by the campers), aside from what other aspects of his calling there may be, for years has been introducing kids to Jesus through his camp, changing the course of their lives, and of the countless people who those people will then impact later on.

Thinking about his impact on my life got me thinking about my own impact on others. These thoughts are true of all of us.

First of all, I am important. My calling is instrumental in influencing other people to know the Lord. What you and I have to accomplish is vital, not for us, but for those who will follow later. God could just tear open the sky every few months, remind us all how big He is, that He is there and good, all that kind of important stuff. But for some reason, He leaves this up to us to pass on to one another.

This isn’t arrogance. Arrogance would be to say that God can’t do it without me. Arrogance would also be to say that God will take care of that Himself while I go on about my own business. Humility says that He has chosen me to do this so I will do my best. And I will do it with His help.

Secondly, I thought of all the temptations to quit that we face. What if Uncle Al had gotten discouraged and closed the camp the year before I came? My resolve to not quit, to persevere, IS vital to future generations. And its personal. If I give up, I am committing a personal offense against those I am called to impact. I am saying they are not worth my having to battle discouragement, that they aren’t worth fighting for.

I’m not talking about being a perfectionist. Nothing we do needs to be perfect. Their are no perfect earthly fathers, yet those who had a father present while growing up are statistically much more stable, secure and successful. They didn’t have someone perfect, by any means, but they had SOMEONE. In the same way, we don’t have to wait till we’re perfect to be people of influence. We do our best and trust that God’s grace is bigger than our shortcomings and can make up for our lack.

This also got me thinking about how seldom I think of and appreciate the men and women that have influenced me in my life.

Cliche

cruzblog — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:15:39 +0000

I was reading John 3 yesterday, and it made me mad because I realized that Jesus’ words to Nicodemus about needing to be born again to see the kingdom would never have the shock value to me that they had to Nicodemus or to John’s readers back in the day. The reason for this is that the phrase “Born Again Christian” has been made into this mindless cliche.

I don’t think that Jesus said this to make a doctrine, or to classify people, or for altar calls.

Nicodemus comes to this rabbi that is gaining popularity because of the miracles he performs, no doubt out of a curiosity. He is clearly stumped by Jesus. He tells him that he knows he must be from God, because of the miracles, but Jesus clearly doesn’t fit his image of Messiah.

Jesus responds to this by telling him that no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.

Random.

He wasn’t talking about somebody taking up the label “Born Again”, he was saying, in effect, your current existence cannot be fixed or improved enough to qualify you to see God’s kingdom – you need a completely new life. Your physical existence and lineage aren’t enough, you need to be fathered by God.

Only God’s children can see God’s kingdom.

Jesus also doesn’t include Nicodemus in this crowd, which is evident by the language he uses in the converstation “WE speak of what WE know…still YOU people do not accept our testimony” (vs. 11). This would have been a shock for a Jew, a member of God’s chosen race, to hear that there were people that were considered children of God and he wasn’t one of them.

It was pretty offensive, actually.

And thats what I like about the Bible…the fact that once you stop interpretting it through contemporary cliches, its actually pretty interesting.

Enjoying

cruzblog — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:51:54 +0000

I am making it a point to enjoy life. My tendency has been to take life too seriously, to worry. And really its always the same thing – I worry about whether things in my life are “right.” Its like somebody at some point programmed my mind to think that everything is up to me and my own self-acheived righteousness to make God love me.

And the results aren’t just bad, they’re disappointing. You might think that someone who worries about things being right might just accomplish alot in his life – might be so driven by these worries that he works and strives in order to overcome them. But this is not the case. Most of the best ideas I’ve had have hit the floor before I got around to picking them up and running with them – simply because, in short, this thing in me would basically be caught in a self evaluation to determine whether or not I was worthy to focus on this new idea, or if I had other things in my life that I needed to “deal with” first.

The worst thing is that none of that is the voice of God. It poses as this holy thing – this knowledge of good and evil. As in the beginning, it still promises the same thing it always did: “you will be like God.” But God has already made me in his image (could that mean I’m already like him?), and really what efforts did I ever think I could make that would produce this likeness?

SO, as I said, I’m choosing to simply enjoy things and not worry about it anymore, whatever “it” is.

I want to become a better writer, so I am going to write more, and write about things I enjoy talking about. I’m going to read more, listen to more music, stop and observe beauty more.

I wrote my first sonnet today – its also posted on this blog under poetry.

I’m sure I will write more on this soon