"If I ever lose sight, come and get me."

"And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, but the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful."  —Mark 4:18-19.

I haven't touched this blog in a while.  I didn't check the stats for a while, just figured they were declining since I haven't posted anything since late April.  I wondered why I should write if no one's reading it.  The business that I'm starting has really been picking up as I prepare to start looking for clients.  And sometimes the desire to write anything is just not there.

"Find it,somewhere in your soul,
the last bit of strength that will take you on home.
Just find it,
somewhere in your heart,
to put the past in the past and go back to the start...
...
She’s a jewel in your crown.
Don't trade a million-dollar future for a nickel right now!
Mama said leave a place better than you found it
and looking in your eyes, I realize how profound that is.
Dig,
Like there's no tomorrow.
Dig like your living on time that's borrowed.Dig.
Homie, it's in there somewhere.
Dig like your life depends on it, ’cause it does.
Dig."

One of the more significant things during this season was going to "the very last Next".  Going there was a great, refreshing time.  I praise God for how He has used that conference to speak into my life and encourage me.  It's sad that Next is now done for good, but hopefully Sovereign Grace will find other people who can organize a conference like it in the future.  This year, I got to stay up after one of the night sessions and fellowship with a brother who had flown in from Australia to attend the conference.  I also got to spend several sessions and eat with a wonderful group from some Filipino churches around South Florida.  Getting to ride through Orlando while they played Shai Linne's The Attributes of God and while we talked about how the same preachers were being used to convict us of sin and draw us closer to Christ was such a blessing.  I selfishly wish that I could just move so that I could be with them—or so that they could be with me, except for the minor fact that I don't really want to live here because I wouldn't wish something like winter upon anyone resembling a nice person.  My habitat should be the tropics.

Am I Jonah?  Are they my gourd?  Coming up on a year now as a deacon in my local church, I was impacted the most at the conference and especially after it by C.J. Mahaney's message "The Church and Disappointment".  Church life is definitely not like conference life.  At a conference, you can have all kinds of fellowship with people who act like they have all sorts of time to get into the Word and read good books—who, if they were cut, would bleed a mix of Scripture and Spurgeon.  My tone is slightly sarcastic there, but my thankfulness to God for such people is significant.  There's a level of community around them that is common in many churches that have been around for a while, and wonderful to see.

"You can find it!
The wind sings the songs of the dedicated few that wouldn't fall headlong.
Just find it.
Watch me tighten my belt
When the prayers of this rapper is a desperate cry for help.
I desire a higher outcome than weed gets you.
Can't you forgive me?  If I dismiss you, it ain't to diss you
I am not a Rasta; don't let the dreads fool you.
Though I take Jah seriously,
if it's cool let me school you.
Dig!
I can't say I'm not tired.
Felt a little envious of names on flyers.
Empty handed and homesick, though I know my flow’s sick.
If y'all only knew how cold this road gets!
You gotta dig
and if I ever lose sight, come and get me.
you gotta dig."

But can I just be honest?  Aside from Next, I haven't had a day off from both work and ministry since April, haven't gone to the trail since about May, and I'm just tired.  You can't serve anyone if you don't take care of your own spiritual life first.  I feel like most of the time I've been a deacon, I've just been content to "serve God" instead of spending time with God.  Why read and pray when you can count money and put away chairs instead?  But before I was a church member, I was constantly reminding people, "You don't have to be saved to do that."

I'm also concerned for one of the ministries that I'm supposed to be serving.  When our church started, it was the biggest ministry in our church.  Attendance at our Saturday night services was almost as high as the Sunday service's.  But we've been emphasizing serving our own church a lot more this year and stopped doing the Bible study groups that were bringing new people in.  At the same time, several people from our own church who were part of it have had to move.  And we'll lose several more before the end of the year.

I'm concerned for it because the people who are still part of it are excluding people who want to come to our church and be part of our ministry.  The reasons why they're not being welcomed into our church aren't Biblical at all, as far as I can tell.  Although all of our teachers have been doing a great job expounding the Word to the people that still come, our attitude, our laziness, and our approach will probably bring that ministry to its end over time if we don't repent.  But I personally have been too dull to pray for much of anyone or to fast recently.

Several more of my close friends are moving out of the area.  One who had already "left but not really" (I still see him from time to time) invited me to his birthday party with a bunch of people from his new church.  Their church gives free Joel Osteen books to all of their visitors.  Seeing that yesterday felt like a punch in the gut.  One, who's been talking about moving out for as long as I've known him, got a new job over an hour away and is planning to move closer to it because his long commute is making him tired.  Another is a missionary leaving for the field tomorrow.  I probably won't see him again for at least 4 years.  But seeing my friends do full-time missions makes me wonder: why am I not doing it?  Am I really this wrapped up in trying to please my family?  There is so much joy to be had on the front lines of what God is doing.  It's a big reason why I decided to escape the corporate world.

There's been a lot of "I" in this post, not enough of Him.  But hopefully, writing again will serve its purpose to bless others and give me some sort of rest.  The vacation I'm taking in a few days seems like it will really help, as long as I don't take a vacation from God too.  There is a time to work, a time to play, a time to rest.  God gives us enough time to do everything He wants us to do.  But how many other things do we try to cram into our lives to distract us from knowing and doing His will?

"I'm not the artist. I'm the canvas.
Remind me of my own words, though I can't stand it.
Hold me accountable.
Call me on my laziness.
Call by my birth name,
Look me in the face, and dig.
You gotta dig.
and if I ever lose sight, come and get me!
You gotta dig."
— Propaganda and Odd Thomas, "Dig".

Praise God for the Humble Beast guys and everything they're doing to spread His fame.

Lessons I Learned from Next 2011

Here are some lessons for my spiritual life that I took away from this year's Next Conference. The sessions did not cover these points, but I thought of them as a result of worshiping God and having fellowship with other believers there.

1. Do not think of corporate worship as a performance where you must be seen by God or others. After a couple sessions, the passion of the worship sets started to get to my head. Before one session, I went down the stairs of the hotel like an arena announcer was about to call my name to get on the court in the NBA Finals. And I had my hands in the air like a lot of other people, but no tears in that worship set. I could not really think about God. I wondered why I could not behold the beauty of Christ or really think about what I was singing. I was doing what I was doing not in order to be close to God and worship Him as I ought, but to get the emotional high and the general sense of euphoria first. Crying in a song is stupid unless the subject of the song means more to you than life.

2. If you see someone who you will probably never see again and you know that they also know the Lord, maximize that short time with them by pouring into their life and being a blessing. Similarly, lean upon and learn from the words of Scripture to a point where, as C.H. Spurgeon said, if people cut you, you bleed Scripture. This can be a great encouragement to others.

3. My "bachelor pack", as Brother Washer calls it, is a great help to me spiritually, but is not forever. Four of us made the trip to Next and stayed in two hotel rooms. My roommate, who has been a great friend to me during the several years that I have known him, will be married by the end of this year. One of the other men has been pursuing a young lady for a year. And the other one seems to meet a new young lady every other week! (Only an inside joke. :-) ) As a career-age single, I know that people get married and move on. Several men from my previous church with whom I used to spend a lot of time are now married and have been mostly or completely out of touch with me since their weddings. (It's almost comedic, the responses I may get from saying this. Even recently, someone told me, "You're 25? You're so young. You shouldn't be married yet!" And I'm sure many people from my old homeschool group would think I belong in a monastery because I am not married at my age. Silly culture! ;-) )

4. Thy bachelor pack is not sufficient for thee. There are times when I cannot continue hanging out in my bachelor pack; I must be alone with God. Spending time with them is very edifying but does not, in the end, leave me satisfied. Regularly, I just need to cordon off certain times in my life and say that only God can go there with me. And this does not come, necessarily, at a set time. I can't just schedule certain times in my life for God to reveal more of Himself to me and leave me undone. My schedule is subject to Christ's Lordship. Sometimes He just calls me to come away with Him, and I must do it, or else miss a time of deep and abiding fellowship with my Lord.

5. I was bolder in evangelism on this trip than I am at home. In my own town, I almost never witness, since my work is very busy and tiring and most of my free time goes to either the church or solitude with God. At Next, around many other Christians, I had a few minutes to explain to a Catholic man at the resort why so many people were there for the conference, and hopefully left him with a better understanding of who the God of Scripture is and why we should worship Him. The conference itself could be used as a means to witness to others in the host city.

6. Sometimes the best worship is just to sing the words of God back to Him. The song I will remember the most from this conference is Shane & Shane's "Worthy of Affection", based on Hebrews 1:

"We are the broken down, and we are the beaten up.

But what could stop us from a song of unending love?

Holy is the Lord!

You are a treasure, the hope, the bright and Morning Star.

You are the Lover of our Souls, and You've won our hearts.

We sing of Your great love.

So we sing. We lift our hands and sing:

"You are worthy of affection!

You're the radiance of all of His glory.

Let adoration fill this place.

You hold everything together

By the word of Your immovable power.

We sing a song of praise!"

-----

"1:1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

5 For to which of the angels did God ever say,

“You are my Son,
today I have begotten you”?

Or again,

“I will be to him a father,
and he shall be to me a son”?

6 And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,

“Let all God's angels worship him.”

7 Of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels winds,
and his ministers a flame of fire.”

8 But of the Son he says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
9 You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

- Hebrews 1:1-9 (ESV, emphasis mine).

My Trip Report from Next: Part 2, and Pray for Sovereign Grace.

On Day 3 of the Next Conference, I attended a breakout session with Dr. Vern Poythress (Science and Faith) and a vocational breakout with Tom Fluharty (Arts). One of Dr. Poythress's first statements struck me: God has not revealed Himself in spite of scientific discovery, but through it. In college I took 6 classes in astronomy, almost a full minor. Even though I had not yet started listening to sermon podcasts at the time, I saw my study of that subject as something of an act of worship because it allowed me to use my mind to understand more of God's creation and the vastness of its scale. Astronomy allows a better appreciation for some of the attributes of God. When a biologist or chemist studies a cell or a molecule under a microscope, he feels "big" and possibly somehow deserving of favor from God. Astronomy turns my mind in the opposite direction. When I watch Powers of Ten, I feel incredibly small, as I stare at something far more vast than the Grand Canyon. And God created the sun, moon, and stars with His voice in one day's work! Even if that were the absolute limit of God's power, the most powerful person on Earth could never do that. And that is why the rich businessmen and kings of the earth who do not know Christ will melt before the Lord on judgment day - because they do not really have any power, and they will stand before the sovereign Lord of all.

I also delighted in God, to hear Dr. Poythress explain about the "sameness of law" and how the laws God set to govern nature give us one coherent universe and show that it all has one Creator. The universe was not fashioned by God and His friends, or by rival gods who fought to establish each of their own interests in the created order. Overall, Dr. Poythress's session was fascinating. Rather than restating the rest of his points, I encourage you to download it from the Next conference's website! After that session, I did a short workout to more gospel rap: Dillon Chase's Pause mixtape, including his "Here in Your Presence Remix" and "How He Loves Remix".

I decided on a whim to attend the vocational breakout concerning the arts. Although I am not an artist, I have a casual interest in digital photography and frequently take my camera on hikes. Several young ladies who attended the young adults' camp with my church the previous weekend are artists, so I attended this session partially to understand more of where they are coming from and what challenges they face as Christian artists.

Tom Fluharty is a very talented caricature artist who has done a great deal of hilarious work for a wide range of publications. I was surprised to find how much he and I have in common spiritually in spite of our widely different vocations. He got the job that he wanted but was not ultimately happy with it. After college, I spent nine months applying for positions before I got my foot in the door with a company. Several years later, I have realized that work is a good thing because it keeps me busy, but it is not my ultimate source of satisfaction. I must look only to Christ for that. In this world, the metaphorical "ground" that I work on is cursed and often frustrates me, leading me into grumbling, sometimes profanity, and being difficult with people. That doesn't make work a bad thing. But since my work causes me to sin, does that mean I should find a new line of work? I am still wrestling with that. The work itself doesn't make me sin; my own heart does. Artists often have to choose between often more lucrative opportunities to make art that glorifies sin and chances to make art that is not morally objectionable. But Christians in all professions need to choose their jobs based on whether they are convinced that the work will allow them to make much of God in both their vocations and the rest of their lives. By God's providence, enough jobs exist that most Christian workers can make a choice between jobs that will give them enough time for family and ministry and jobs that will not.

Like me, Tom got to a point where he saw that God is truly his satisfaction and spending time with Him stopped being a legalistic exercise. Children are often raised in some measure of church ritual. And it is good to have that, but all that it can do is show them where the right path is. God must change their desires to see devotions as anything other than 15 minutes or half an hour in the morning that gets in the way of games, friends, or sports. I have had several seasons in life where I have had just an intense desire to be with Jesus. Even now, I like to fast and hit the trail for a full day with nothing but a Bible, a camera, and of course Gatorade (it gets pretty hot here in America in the summer :-) ), just so that I can be alone with Him.

Tom also suggested that young artists contact and follow their heroes in art. In my profession, I have taken that idea away in the form of reading books and blogs by many people who I deeply respect in my field. For most of the year, one-on-one mentorship had been my only source of professional development. Since the conference, I have tried to spend more time taking in the view from the giants' shoulders. As a Christian, I should not give my whole life to my craft. There needs to be time for family, ministry, exercise, godly fellowship, and time alone with God. But many of those who have given their lives to their craft have shared their wisdom because they have earned the platform for influencing their entire field. Taking their advice allows me to work more productively with an eye toward pleasing God, whether my manager is watching or not.

Dr. R.C. Sproul spoke in the fourth general session about the sanctity of God's truth in a world that, by nature, despises it. I found his statement that there are no moral relativists very interesting. I have not heard many people praise moral relativism since I graduated from college, although that philosophy probably still dominates many college campuses. But, as Dr. Sproul said, if there is a Mack truck in an intersection, you believe there isn't one, and you attempt to cross the street, "It will be the end of your relativism at the same time as the end of your life." Brilliant!

Shane & Shane led worship in that night's general session and gave a concert after the session. I was very blessed by their music, which focuses very much on putting Scripture to song. In general, the bands at this concert (the others were Reilly and Generation Letter) gave me some hope for Christian rock. Most of the Christian rock I had heard before was silly or doctrinally bankrupt. So for years, I only listened to secular music, and several years ago, some friends introduced me to gospel rap. But don't write off Christian rock; just know where to look for musicians that who focus on the glory of God, not on having a good time.

The conference ended on its strongest note with Pastor Kevin DeYoung's general session, "Who Am I? Humanity in the Eyes of the World and the Christian". After many American churches tackled man's purpose throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, influenced heavily by The Purpose-Driven Life, I have seen some shift their focus toward the believer's identity. My church's youth ministry has been covering it this year, and Eric Mason has been preaching a sermon series at Epiphany Fellowship about it. I've also spent more than a year writing about it, in my most ambitious project for this blog so far. And I love the doctrine of imago Dei, which Tedashii covered so well in Identity Crisis. So I was thrilled to find out Pastor DeYoung would give his treatment of the topic at Next this year.

Among other points, Pastor DeYoung focused on Biblical manhood and womanhood and God's design for gender. God does not free us to create or express ourselves, but to bear His image in the world. The distinct gender roles God gave Adam and Eve predate the Fall, so complementarianism actually gives Christians a means of restoring the beauty of God's original creation. What struck me the most from this discussion was that twisting gender roles actually hurts women more than it hurts men. His example was abortion, which turns women into both the victim and the bad guy. Another example that I recall from one of Pastor Voddie Baucham's messages is that expecting women to have careers outside the home forces them to bear the curse of Adam (the curse on work) when they already bear the curse of Eve (pain in childbirth); giving the curse of Eve to a man is a biological impossibility.

Following up on a point from his breakout session, Pastor DeYoung mentioned the shift of words in describing sin, from spiritual and volitional words to medical and unavoidable ones. A common example of this in the world is any sort of addiction. In my previous church, many of the men mentioned their various addictions in small groups, and the answers that they were given did not always involve replacing their desires for sin with a genuine desire for God. I called it "sin management" and told my professing "brothers" that idolatry was really at the root of their problem. I don't believe in "addictions", only sins. Reducing sin to a "disorder", as Pastor DeYoung said, makes the world a more dangerous place, because taking away the words that describe evil as evil does not take away their realities.

In closing, Next was an amazing conference this year. Much thanks to everyone who worked to put this on. Each session taught me a great deal, and it was a great blessing to worship the Lord around many other people who love Him with a great deal of passion and have a great appetite for more of His truth. Please, please, please pray for Sovereign Grace Ministries, who organize Next, Together for the Gospel, WorshipGod, and other conferences. I am not a member of a Sovereign Grace church, but they have been a great blessing to me and many others. For reasons that many articles and blogs have described, CJ Mahaney has gone on indefinite leave as their president and Joshua Harris has stepped down from their board of directors. Their church network appears to be in a state of disorder right now, and whether you consider denominations or church networks a good thing or not, please put that aside and consider that these men are much more faithful to Scripture than many other influential pastors and teachers and that they collaborate not to give a new definition of Christianity, but a new demonstration of it.

For every Next there are thousands of rallies, conferences, convergences, and Joel Osteen speeches to sold-out stadiums that glorify false teaching and give millions of people a false view of who God is and what His Word teaches. Few groups that seek to practice true Biblical Christianity have the size or resources to gather thousands of people together to celebrate and learn about the true gospel. May this trial bring my brothers and sisters in Sovereign Grace Ministries, including the many who have left SGM and are coming out of the woodwork now to scream against it, to a higher degree of unity in Christ while not causing them to compromise to the world in what they teach. And may the men involved be restored in their fellowship with one another as well.

Retreat Reflections: 1.

I have not written much recently due to several weekend events out of town. In the last two weekends of May, I attended a young adults' camp for my church, followed by the Next Conference on Memorial Day weekend. I spent four days in the mountains with my church at the end of June for our first ever, whole-church Family Camp. My church's men's ministry also met on a Sunday morning in June, and Sunday morning is my usual writing time because our Sunday service takes place in the afternoon; we share a building with our host church.

Work has been more hectic with several deadlines and several new people starting on my team, so I haven't had much time to really reflect on Next or the church camps. So, rather than finishing up the posts on courtship now, I am starting this series of posts at the start of a quite welcome three-day weekend at home, while I edit some of my long queue of photos from hiking trips, hopefully start plowing through the roughly 850 photos I took at Next, and (of course) work out. (Suffice to say, I have an interest in photography - but no DSLR yet.)

Our young adults' camp focused on opposition, as a more intense continuation of our series on Saturday nights. Because I worked on the first day of the camp, I arrived partway through the sermon in the first session. One of our pastor's classmates from Bible college was our guest speaker for all four sessions. He now serves as a Presbyterian pastor and will move out of the area later this summer for more training in the ministry. My pastor told our group about him before the camp started, saying, "He is really ghetto but uses more SAT words than I do." And he was right! He had grown up in the inner city with a hard upbringing; he was quite open to discuss that and his struggles with us during the sessions, even though he had not seen many of us before.

The first sermon discussed idolatry with Luke 19 as its text. (Our church only uses expositional preaching, even when we try to go topical. I love that! :-) ) Some of the points were as follows, along with my reflections:

1. Everyone looks for something outside themselves to justify their existence. For many people in my church, this usually means friends and can mean basketball. We are looking for approval from others any way that we can get it. For Zacchaeus, that meant taking a job that allowed him to get rich: a tax collector. Everyone in that society hated tax collectors, but everyone wanted to be one because they had money. It could also mean a girlfriend or courtship; when mine ended a few months ago, I had to struggle to put who I was back together because I had reached a point where she, not God, was justifying my existence. And... God calls this idolatry.

2. "Broken people do broken things." Desire for validation is God-given, but He presents Himself as the only solution. This is why people can get all they ever asked for materially and still feel poor.

3. In order to lose idols, Jesus must become a superior satisfaction.

4. A Christian needs to be worried about succeeding in things that do not eternally matter. "Only the cross of Christ can bestow true glory on your life."

5. "Idols always tell you to come back for more, but they never give you what you were asking for."

Session 2 dealt with costly grace, with Luke 15 as the text.

1. "If I had 100 cars and one broke down, who cares?" But the shepherd cared for the one lost sheep so much that he left the 99 other sheep to go find it, and he rejoiced when he found it. He wasn't treating that sheep as replaceable the way we do with most of our possessions, but as an irreplaceable treasure. This is how God looks upon those He has redeemed!

2. The lost son told his father to drop dead. He made it rain for days and days. When he had squandered everything and come back, the father replaced everything he had lost. It took years to fatten the calf that was killed for the younger son. Tony Campolo: "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for whores at 3:30 in the morning."

3. God is seeking the lost: "Adam, where are you?" "God does not love cars or big houses. He loves people, unlike Americans."

4. The older brother is more dead in God's eyes. The reason why is damnable good works. Good works are your own righteousness. People who define themselves by their sin, such as drug dealers and pimps, know that they are sinners. "A pastor or worship leader needs the same amount of grace as the most hardened sinner. You nailed Jesus to the cross." Christians must repent of all the good things they have done for the wrong reasons. In the gospel economy, if you bring something to the table, you may not be saved.

5. The Father (God) is the true prodigal. The older brother should have been a search party for the younger brother because the Father was grieving. In my family, this was inverted. My older brother had a prodigal stage in his early twenties. I was still in high school at the time and was trying to approach the situation moralistically, as if to say, "I can be moral. Why can't he?" So I could condemn his sins without a tear in my eyes. I was not going out to the places where he was to try to find him and bring him back. I was not even really praying for him much except for brief mentions in my prayers at night. Mostly, during the several years where I watched him fall, nothing surprised me. I just determined that I would look at him and do the opposite, only rebelling in ways that were socially acceptable within my church at the time. There were still idols and sins in my heart. They were just more culturally acceptable ones. And that is what is dangerous.

Session 3 covered John 6:

1. Tim Keller: If you ask a longtime churchgoer, "Are you a Christian?", the fake Christian will try to validate himself. The true Christian will chuckle that God would choose him - a sober, somber reply understanding that Jesus, the Justifier, went to the cross.

2. How often do you barter with God? These people wanted bread, a kingdom, health, and prosperity, not a cross, holiness, or purity. Earlier in my Christian life, my prayers tended to take the format, "God, if you do this, I'll do that for You." It was conditional surrender, not unconditional surrender based on His Lordship over my life. I was not really looking at Him as my Lord. I thought His government over me was a democracy where I got most of the votes and therefore always won. I had no clue how to submit to Him as my King. Kingship means you submit to Him even if He gives you nothing. But the fact that He gave you Christ should give you unspeakable joy, if you realize even in small part how great Christ is.

3. The crowd did not want the bread of life or its Giver. "Can I go to heaven without truly and affectionately loving my Jesus?"

4. Theology, your decision, and contrition do not and cannot save you. Jesus saves you. "If you are not saved, you do have a relationship with God. You are his enemy."

5. A spiritual high cannot replace a steady relationship with God. "The presence of Christ becomes real, not in miracles, but in mayhem. He becomes closer than your own skin."

6. "The greatest enemy of the best is not the worst, but the very good." Satan did not challenge God's existence, but His goodness.

7. Jesus saved you that you may enjoy Him and glorify Him to all the nations.

8. When you fall, do not trust in doctrine, but in "Christ in you, the hope of glory". The gospel does not tell you to focus on the law but to gaze on Christ. "Take your eyes off the mirror. Gaze upon your Savior and let His beauty transform you."

This post is already long, so in the next post, I will discuss the last session and general reflections.