Understanding

So I realized that I probably should write more about what I'm doing besides what I'm learning and thinking about. So to update you all, currently I'm home in Hawaii getting ready to go on my missions trip. In the meantime I've been trying to review my Japanese, read books I haven't had the chance to read during the years, and pray and meditate on the word. I'm hoping that these things will help prepare me to learn, grow, and serve as much as I can while in Japan.

I've also been meeting up with old friends here and there. I'm hoping that I can witness to them by demonstrating and sharing with them the transformative work God has started doing in me since He saved me in college. Paul instructs us to put on our new selves that we are given once we have been adopted into God's family through the death of His son on the cross, and while I still have a long way left to go, I'm personally already amazed at how much He has transformed me. I hope that the transformation He's done in me might testify to His glory and the greatness of the gospel and that I can share this with old friends who knew my old self.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

(Colossians 3:5-10 ESV)

I'm also trying to meet up with someone who I've ministered to at Stanford and hope that He might also see and be transformed by how much love and grace God has poured out for Him in sacrificing His own son for us. Not being at Stanford next year, I imagine this might be one of the last times I have the opportunity to reach out to him. I pray that he might realize that he is therefore no longer His own but rather has been purchased by God through the blood of His son and that while there is nothing God therefore cannot ask of him, this is a good and awesome relationship to have with such an amazing father.

But for the most part, I'm cooped up at home studying and learning and watching the food network and woman's world cup. I'm reading through Spiritual Depression by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones which I'm finding particularly helpful in understanding how to minister to those who lack Christian joy in their walk with Him. While I don't mean to over-emphasize learning and intellectual ascent in my spiritual growth, I do not wish to under-emphasize it either. Stephen Um of City Life Presbyterian Church in Boston says it like this, the Christian faith is much more than intellectual ascent, but it's at least intellectual ascent.

For example, in Hebrews 11:3 (ESV) we see that "By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible." The act of understanding is integral to having faith.

The greatest commandment says that we must “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment." (Matthew 22:37b-38 ESV). Here we see that the mind is integral to our relationship with God.

Of course the heart and soul are equally important as the mind, but we must never reduce our faith to something as simple as "loving others" or "loving God" without fully applying mind, heart and will to the act of loving.

I believe Paul puts it well in Romans 6:17 where he mentions all 3 together, where we see the necessity of obedience (or the will), teaching (or the mind), and the heart in our walks with Him and our on going sanctification.

Anyhow, I hope this is clarifying in explaining why the focus of this blog may have been oriented a lot around my thoughts and feelings and I hope to seek a better balance of including more of what I'm doing as well =)

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

(Romans 6:17-18 ESV)