The Drive
I just keep doing this to myself.
I have so very little time to really come on here and write to the world, but when I finally do have the time well I have a million and one things that I would like to communicate. Of course I’m well aware of the fact that writing a blog that takes 2 hrs to read is not just overkill but a slew of other things (crazy and ridiculous come to mind) yet I feel that I could do just that because I have so much that I could cover.
I’ll try to only hit a few quick points of interest.
Life has been great, God is so good. Judah has been growing more and more with each passing day and actually just a couple Sundays back we had a prophetic word spoken over our little miracle. It was from the book of Psalms and actually was verse 1. Psalm 1 was directed to our little Judah and a few other words were expressed. To me it was mentioned that "Lance you are an individual that has a lot of goals and is driven to complete a lot of these high goals and that you don’t need to worry whether or not you'll get to everything because your son will pick up where you left off and he will see things to completion. How awesome!
For Tina, Pastor Dave mentioned that she needs to be picking up any book she can find whether religious or secular on men through out history who have done extraordinary things with their lives. He then mentioned that Judah is going to be a world changer that will go on to do great things. All of this really impacted Tina and I and afterwards we talked at great lengths. Tina told me “you know Lance, I have for so long been feeling that we really need to prepare ourselves for Judah because I just know that he’s going to be very stubborn to what he wants from life and that he is going to be brilliant” I don’t really know what else to tell you other than this was so refreshing to here, to know that this was from God and that we can have confidence, faith and joy over the arrival of this little bundle of love! We were both in tears over hearing this and boy are we truly waiting with exceeding excitement over what will hopefully go quick (the next 2 months of pregnancy).
School has been real good, the drive is still a drag but I am so blessed to be able to attend school and to be able to learn so many great things. I feel like I’m really starting to strike a balance between what I’m gaining intellectually and experiencing emotionally. It seems that its very easy to become trapped in one or the other. One way is to believe that the bulk of your faith comes from intellectual assent, just moving through the ranks of reason and understanding in order to “getting to know” God better. The other extreme is that of a purely emotional attachment to God, to the church, and to the Christian faith. This most often reflects in individuals who claim a simplistic faith… you know just… live and let God, or God is Good or all I need is God’s love. There is a real danger in becoming to attached to one sphere over the other. In the world of academics it becomes fairly easy to assume that faith comes through our ability to understand and take in the Gospel. I constantly bump up against this, as I jump one intellectual hurdle over intellectual hurdle. Although it does become rather apparent that this is happening when you experience a drying up in your own studies while you thirst in your religious church experience. So with this I have sought to strike a balance, getting alone with God, reading scripture not always for study but for devotion and to truly just seek God’s face in prayer while I drive or while I shower or when I first wake up or before I close my eyes for the night. It’s great to be alive, and honestly I feel like I’m reaching a good medium for both the intellectual and the emotional, realizing that it is not by my understanding of things but by God’s Grace that I can even have a place setting set for me at the feast with Jesus. On the flip-side I do believe that having a purely emotional relationship with God that ultimately reflects your level of faith is a dangerous journey as well. This is because I believe that the Bible is an incredible complex book, that is often treated like it’s an elementary school text whereas it’s the complete opposite. Sure we can observe the beauty and simplicity of a God that so loved the world that he gave His one and only son for our sin but even that belief can not be boxed in to a tight little box that we label “The stuff we have figured out”.
To go one way in your faith is to act with only love, grace, mercy and forgiveness but without an understanding of judgment, law and conviction we'll surely crumble against the wear and tear of the world. The other way is the reverse of this order and is just as detrimental to faith. I have for a little while been wrestling with these measures of faith, and by the Grace of God I’m starting to move along in my own journey and its just been incredible.
Another argument that has come up often has been how do we deal with, live with and work with those who do not believe. I can tell you surely this, that it's not by taking out a hammer and a few nails with scripture attached and pounded verses violently in the heads of the unexpected or (even worse) those that are truly seeking but don’t have there lives figured out (as if we do but yet in a legalistic way we often act as if we do!!) I am a Christian and have no qualms with telling others this, sharing with them my faith and even with those that desire debate… to respectively and humbly debate another individual. We must be careful though as to not assume that we’re right about everything, that we have it all figured out and that “psssh what a bunch of idiots they are! How can they even believe in this or that!” be careful… Jesus had quite a bit to say to those that thought they had it “all” figured out and knew just about everything that God could do or would do or has done.
Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that claim you can see, your guilt remains.” - John 9:41
I won’t break down that verse for you here, I’ll let you just think about that in the full context of John 9 and in the overall book of John. Just remember that the book of John highlights this particular message
We must seek to believe then we’ll understand
Not like what most of us do… which is we seek to understand in order to believe.
Just believe and then you will understand.
When we’re dealing with the things of God (which what isn’t His?) we must tread carefully, being humble and careful with every hard stance that we decide to take. Before we run around bashing our fellow brothers and sisters about what they may believe from a variety of topics such as spiritual gifts, women teachers, etc… we should actually go before God and seek his council through both the word and through his presence.
Oh and even if you come out of your appointment with God with a particular understanding of a scripture topic… I would still suggest that the bashing doesn’t have a place in the Body of Christ. There isn’t a whole lot of room left for bashing one another, especially when the body is not meant to be separated in the first place. To think we allow ourselves to be separated from own flesh and bone and blood because we can’t agree on how to take the Eucharist, or whether we’re allowed to dance in worship or how critical we should be about prayer… like does God really desire our eyes to be closed? These are the things that are holding up the Body of Believers?! Come on people!
You ever stop to think about just how much God truly loves you? I mean that the God of the universe, the creator of all things... would even stop for a second to look down into your life and to see how your doing. That he cares, that he has created you intricately and wonderfully with precision and purpose. Sometimes it just totally exhausts my thoughts that He could love us so very much. Just stop and think about it for a second...
To think that God actually cares about you and me, and that He loves us so much. That changes everything about how we move, how we think, how we view life and the possibility of a better tomorrow. For me... someone who wants to go into Pastoring and writing words of exhortation and enlightment for a living.. well I view my career as the most important job a person could have least of all me. I mean I'm being charged with sharing Gods story, sharing who God is and what He thinks about the lost and those that he calls his children... I'm being given that opportunity and for me... if I truly do believe what I believe... well I A) can not contain myself and B) It's do or die because there is no other option available to me. I have the most important task ahead, and I embrace it with everything that I am.
I could just go on and on but I think it’s important that I stop here for right now… I only have a little bit left of my day and I should be spending it with my wife and my baby boy.
It will be a little while before you hear from me again, its just been a busy, busy time. Youth group has been great, I just love hanging out with these kids and I do believe that we’re moving forward with being more open with one another. Also I will write a book soon, no more talking about it… I’m realizing that the only one stopping me… is me. If I want it bad enough I will force myself to wake up a couple hours earlier in the morning… I will accomplish everything that God has set me here for, and for what I don’t finish on my laundry list of things well I always have my son for that.
No need to worry though… I’ll be around to see beyond 100.
- Peace be to you
Lance
p.s: I will be posting a link to this entry that highlights a new daily blog that I’m putting together currently.
I have so very little time to really come on here and write to the world, but when I finally do have the time well I have a million and one things that I would like to communicate. Of course I’m well aware of the fact that writing a blog that takes 2 hrs to read is not just overkill but a slew of other things (crazy and ridiculous come to mind) yet I feel that I could do just that because I have so much that I could cover.
I’ll try to only hit a few quick points of interest.
Life has been great, God is so good. Judah has been growing more and more with each passing day and actually just a couple Sundays back we had a prophetic word spoken over our little miracle. It was from the book of Psalms and actually was verse 1. Psalm 1 was directed to our little Judah and a few other words were expressed. To me it was mentioned that "Lance you are an individual that has a lot of goals and is driven to complete a lot of these high goals and that you don’t need to worry whether or not you'll get to everything because your son will pick up where you left off and he will see things to completion. How awesome!
For Tina, Pastor Dave mentioned that she needs to be picking up any book she can find whether religious or secular on men through out history who have done extraordinary things with their lives. He then mentioned that Judah is going to be a world changer that will go on to do great things. All of this really impacted Tina and I and afterwards we talked at great lengths. Tina told me “you know Lance, I have for so long been feeling that we really need to prepare ourselves for Judah because I just know that he’s going to be very stubborn to what he wants from life and that he is going to be brilliant” I don’t really know what else to tell you other than this was so refreshing to here, to know that this was from God and that we can have confidence, faith and joy over the arrival of this little bundle of love! We were both in tears over hearing this and boy are we truly waiting with exceeding excitement over what will hopefully go quick (the next 2 months of pregnancy).
School has been real good, the drive is still a drag but I am so blessed to be able to attend school and to be able to learn so many great things. I feel like I’m really starting to strike a balance between what I’m gaining intellectually and experiencing emotionally. It seems that its very easy to become trapped in one or the other. One way is to believe that the bulk of your faith comes from intellectual assent, just moving through the ranks of reason and understanding in order to “getting to know” God better. The other extreme is that of a purely emotional attachment to God, to the church, and to the Christian faith. This most often reflects in individuals who claim a simplistic faith… you know just… live and let God, or God is Good or all I need is God’s love. There is a real danger in becoming to attached to one sphere over the other. In the world of academics it becomes fairly easy to assume that faith comes through our ability to understand and take in the Gospel. I constantly bump up against this, as I jump one intellectual hurdle over intellectual hurdle. Although it does become rather apparent that this is happening when you experience a drying up in your own studies while you thirst in your religious church experience. So with this I have sought to strike a balance, getting alone with God, reading scripture not always for study but for devotion and to truly just seek God’s face in prayer while I drive or while I shower or when I first wake up or before I close my eyes for the night. It’s great to be alive, and honestly I feel like I’m reaching a good medium for both the intellectual and the emotional, realizing that it is not by my understanding of things but by God’s Grace that I can even have a place setting set for me at the feast with Jesus. On the flip-side I do believe that having a purely emotional relationship with God that ultimately reflects your level of faith is a dangerous journey as well. This is because I believe that the Bible is an incredible complex book, that is often treated like it’s an elementary school text whereas it’s the complete opposite. Sure we can observe the beauty and simplicity of a God that so loved the world that he gave His one and only son for our sin but even that belief can not be boxed in to a tight little box that we label “The stuff we have figured out”.
To go one way in your faith is to act with only love, grace, mercy and forgiveness but without an understanding of judgment, law and conviction we'll surely crumble against the wear and tear of the world. The other way is the reverse of this order and is just as detrimental to faith. I have for a little while been wrestling with these measures of faith, and by the Grace of God I’m starting to move along in my own journey and its just been incredible.
Another argument that has come up often has been how do we deal with, live with and work with those who do not believe. I can tell you surely this, that it's not by taking out a hammer and a few nails with scripture attached and pounded verses violently in the heads of the unexpected or (even worse) those that are truly seeking but don’t have there lives figured out (as if we do but yet in a legalistic way we often act as if we do!!) I am a Christian and have no qualms with telling others this, sharing with them my faith and even with those that desire debate… to respectively and humbly debate another individual. We must be careful though as to not assume that we’re right about everything, that we have it all figured out and that “psssh what a bunch of idiots they are! How can they even believe in this or that!” be careful… Jesus had quite a bit to say to those that thought they had it “all” figured out and knew just about everything that God could do or would do or has done.
Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that claim you can see, your guilt remains.” - John 9:41
I won’t break down that verse for you here, I’ll let you just think about that in the full context of John 9 and in the overall book of John. Just remember that the book of John highlights this particular message
We must seek to believe then we’ll understand
Not like what most of us do… which is we seek to understand in order to believe.
Just believe and then you will understand.
When we’re dealing with the things of God (which what isn’t His?) we must tread carefully, being humble and careful with every hard stance that we decide to take. Before we run around bashing our fellow brothers and sisters about what they may believe from a variety of topics such as spiritual gifts, women teachers, etc… we should actually go before God and seek his council through both the word and through his presence.
Oh and even if you come out of your appointment with God with a particular understanding of a scripture topic… I would still suggest that the bashing doesn’t have a place in the Body of Christ. There isn’t a whole lot of room left for bashing one another, especially when the body is not meant to be separated in the first place. To think we allow ourselves to be separated from own flesh and bone and blood because we can’t agree on how to take the Eucharist, or whether we’re allowed to dance in worship or how critical we should be about prayer… like does God really desire our eyes to be closed? These are the things that are holding up the Body of Believers?! Come on people!
You ever stop to think about just how much God truly loves you? I mean that the God of the universe, the creator of all things... would even stop for a second to look down into your life and to see how your doing. That he cares, that he has created you intricately and wonderfully with precision and purpose. Sometimes it just totally exhausts my thoughts that He could love us so very much. Just stop and think about it for a second...
To think that God actually cares about you and me, and that He loves us so much. That changes everything about how we move, how we think, how we view life and the possibility of a better tomorrow. For me... someone who wants to go into Pastoring and writing words of exhortation and enlightment for a living.. well I view my career as the most important job a person could have least of all me. I mean I'm being charged with sharing Gods story, sharing who God is and what He thinks about the lost and those that he calls his children... I'm being given that opportunity and for me... if I truly do believe what I believe... well I A) can not contain myself and B) It's do or die because there is no other option available to me. I have the most important task ahead, and I embrace it with everything that I am.
I could just go on and on but I think it’s important that I stop here for right now… I only have a little bit left of my day and I should be spending it with my wife and my baby boy.
It will be a little while before you hear from me again, its just been a busy, busy time. Youth group has been great, I just love hanging out with these kids and I do believe that we’re moving forward with being more open with one another. Also I will write a book soon, no more talking about it… I’m realizing that the only one stopping me… is me. If I want it bad enough I will force myself to wake up a couple hours earlier in the morning… I will accomplish everything that God has set me here for, and for what I don’t finish on my laundry list of things well I always have my son for that.
No need to worry though… I’ll be around to see beyond 100.
- Peace be to you
Lance
p.s: I will be posting a link to this entry that highlights a new daily blog that I’m putting together currently.
posted by Lance Pearce | 3:08 PM
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