tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67696520709717512422024-02-19T10:34:42.394-05:00Stuff I Think AboutJonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-40890392128648371522013-07-09T22:18:00.002-04:002013-07-09T22:18:47.860-04:00New Blog SiteIf anyone reads this blog, please check out my new blog home at www.jonathantony.com where I'll be blogging from here on out. I'll be leaving this site up because I plan on being lazy and pulling from stuff I've already written in the future. Don't judge me. Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-55939222205020108172013-03-30T20:45:00.004-04:002013-03-31T12:02:56.397-04:00The Second DayTomorrow is
Easter Sunday. I love Easter. It’s not just the candy, but yeah that’s a big
part of it. I just love the message. I love the joy and hope it gives me. I
love celebrating that Jesus is alive. I don’t know what it is but it seems most
Easter Sundays I find myself with watery eyes on my drive to church. <br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
resurrection of Christ is wonderful to think about, but today I’ve been thinking
about what it must have been like for the disciples and the other followers on
the night before Jesus rose from the grave. When we tell the story we tend to
fast forward to the third day. You know—the grand finale. God wins. The devil
loses. Everything changes for the good.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I’ve just
been wondering about the second day. What must have been going through their
heads? The man they put all their hope in as the King of Kings turned out to be
just a normal man, susceptible to death. The true Son of God can’t die, right? </div>
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<br /></div>
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They gave up
everything to follow him. </div>
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They bet
everything they had on him. </div>
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<br /></div>
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To say they
were probably feeling hopeless barely hits it. Overwhelmingly devastated I
would imagine. Depressed. Angry. Confused. I’d say you could throw any amount
of words like that into the skillet. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Jesus had
told them before that he would die and would rise but it didn’t make sense at
the time. Looking back they probably felt kind of stupid, but when you watch
your presumed Messiah whipped, beaten, and crucified you probably start to
doubt most of the things you had once believed. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I can’t say
I’ve ever seen anything like what they saw. I’ve never even seen my pastor
punched in the face. I can’t connect to the disciples to that extent, but I do
know what it is like to be in day two out of three. I know what it’s like to
question everything and to be angry and depressed all at the same time. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The second
is not the fun day to be a Christian, especially when you don’t even know about
the third day yet. When you’re in the midst of it, day two isn’t the middle,
it’s the end. Everything you put your hope in seems to not be working out for
you. The faith you <i>did</i> have seems pointless in a lot of ways, and you kind of
feel like you got duped. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Jesus could
have died and come back to life on the second day. I mean, he could have died
and come back to life right on the spot. But he didn’t. He waited. I can’t get
into biblical numbers and the significance of the number “three” because I’m
not smart enough. I just believe that there is a great purpose to the second
day. And to all of our second days.</div>
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<br /></div>
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If I can be
completely honest, there are aspects about God that I don’t like sometimes. I
don’t like the fact he created us and that we still have to struggle with sin.
I don’t like that he lets me embarrass myself (a lot). I don’t like that
patience and trust are abilities you have to learn. And I don’t like that God
tests us. (<a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs%203:11-12&version=NIV">Proverbs
3:11-12</a>)</div>
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<br /></div>
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I don’t like
sitting through the second day. Even when I know there is a third day coming
because I can feel it or the Lord has told me so; it doesn’t always make the
second day any easier. It seems like too much of our lives are in the second
day. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I can’t give
you all the reasons why, and I can’t even give myself them, but I think when we
are in the second day it is because we are being tested. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I know, I
hate it, too, but that’s just the way it is. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I don’t
think God does it to us because he delights in watching us squirm or cry.
Sometimes I think that’s why he does it, but then that’s when what I feel has
to be overcome by what I believe. </div>
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<br /></div>
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When the
disciples were going through the second day, they didn’t have Jesus giving them
the answers anymore. They didn’t have miracles in front of them. They didn’t
have the God of the universe in the flesh putting people in their place.<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> They only had their faith</b>.</div>
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<br /></div>
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We may have
times where everything we put our faith in seems to be dead in the ground. We
may have times where there are absolutely no answers. And we may have times
where what we believed now sounds completely ridiculous. We will all have
second days.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Hebrews 11:1
says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen.” If you asked me to give you my version of that verse, it might sound
something like this: “Faith is like jumping off of a cliff because you thought it
was a good idea at the time, and now you’re just falling and really scared.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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Faith
doesn’t deal a lot in the realm of proof. It’s one of the reasons a lot of
really smart people have a hard time believing in God. There’s not a lot of
proof that comes with it. Sure I can believe it, but the reason I can believe it is
because I believe it. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What?</i> Yeah.
Exactly.) Faith is the substance of something you’re hoping is true, and it is
revealed by something else you can’t see.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Jesus never
said all of this faith stuff was easy, but he did say it was possible. When we
find ourselves in a second day, it could be because God is trying to strip away
all the proof and test what we really claim to believe. To see if maybe we’re
just crazy enough of people stick it out and hold on to what we believe.</div>
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<br /></div>
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2
Corinthians 5:7</div>
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“For we walk
by faith, not by sight.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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We all know
that verse. The second day is what tests us to see if we don’t just know it but
that we that also can live it out. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Like I said,
I don’t enjoy this. Nobody really enjoys practice. (Definitely not Allen
Iverson.) But I think after all the tears and the screaming and the rage, we
have to say to ourselves, “Either I believe all of this or I don’t.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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I don’t
think you can part-believe in this Gospel and make it through. We can’t quote
verses that say, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” and then live like
God is only for us sometimes. He is either for us completely, or he is against
us completely. It simply cannot be a little of both.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Maybe you’re
in your second day right now. Maybe you’re being tested in ways you never have
before. Let me just remind you that you are not alone.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
My mother
told me these words one time when I was going through one of the hardest
situations of my life, “You’re not the first person to go through this, and you
won’t be the last. Others have made it through and so will you.” </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
You’re not
alone. God doesn’t hate you. And God knows more about the third day than you
do. He’s been planning it all along. He’s already at the third day waiting for
you. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When you’re
in your second day, remember the third day. Remember that joy comes in the
morning. Remember the hope you knew when things were easier. Remember the songs
and the verses that came alive in your soul. Remember the times before when you
were in the dark and how they became the times that led you to the light.
Remember that the end of the story will always be that Jesus wins. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Either he
does or he doesn’t. There’s no possibility for both. </div>
Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-28183845183435597612013-03-21T20:40:00.002-04:002013-03-21T20:45:31.026-04:00Dating and the Rule Book of Love<style>
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</style><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Crazy Little Thing Called Love</u></i><br />
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I was a
boy my friend <a href="https://twitter.com/crosseveryline">Brandon</a> and I
got this Motown album from his dad that we loved. It had a bunch of the doo-wop
songs from different artists. I still love those kinds of oldies to this day,
and I think the kids need to hear more good music like that. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of the
songs we liked on there, and actually recently sang together to see if we
remembered it (and we did), was called “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIfuNPbBaaA">The Book of Love</a>.” It
said, “Oh I wonder, wonder who… who wrote the book of love?” Maybe you’ve heard
it. It was just a fun song full of random rhymes and cute little analogies. But
the song begs the question, “Who wrote the book of love?” and it never provides
an answer.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Years later,
here I am asking the same question of those confused doo-woppers. “Who wrote
the book of love?” There have been many books written about love. “Do this, not
that” books. “The problem isn’t you, it’s them” books. We’ve all seen them.
Every week somebody is producing a brand new 300 pages of guesses and
fabricated nonsense and making tons of money off of it. Love columns in
newspapers and magazines don’t even try to hide how stupid they are; they put
it out there clear as day and people still buy into it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Obviously,
America is intrigued by these thoughts on love. We are all searching for a
quick fix or magic trick to show us the one thing we’ve been doing wrong that
will make it all better. The 50 percent divorce rate in our country should tell
us it’s about time to start looking to some other sources because we clearly
don’t know what we are doing. America gets glued to shows like “The Bachelor”
and "Ready for Love" and whatever crap is on VH1. Love and reality do
not seem to coincide in this country.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Who wrote
the book of love? Who wrote out these rules that we’re supposed to play by and even
know about? I’ve had so many conversations with guys that try to give me their
wonderful insight into how to pick up women. I’ve heard it all. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Bro, you gotta neg a girl for a while.”</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Neg?”</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Yeah, it’s where you tell her something
negative about herself so she gets unsettled about herself and frustrated. They
eat it up. Then they are intrigued by you.”</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This was
actual advice from a real, live, breathing human being. And maybe some of you
dudes are nodding your heads agreeing with that advice. If I were there I’d
punch you as hard as I can in the face. Now, women, if “negging” works on you, then
you might as well wear a shirt that says, “Hi, I am super insecure,” because
that’ll save all the bro’s some time. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
This is the
advice that is thrown around like facts, when really it was just made up by
some person who saw it work one time. We like to call things facts that aren’t actually
facts in America. Have you noticed that? It’s a cool game we invented called
“Stupidity.” </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Tainted Love</u></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now, if it
seems like I am cynical and annoyed, that’s only because I am cynical and
annoyed. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Go ahead and
say it, though, “Hey man, what do you even know? You’re single!” Look, I don’t
claim to be someone who is a love doctor; clearly I have my own issues and
vices. I merely come to you as someone who is, as we acknowledged, cynical and
annoyed. And single. I’m annoyed with the system. I’m annoyed with the games
I’m supposed to know how to play. I’m annoyed with the rules that someone made
up. I’m annoyed with people that think they have it figured out and spread lies
to my friends. I’m angered at the TV shows that praise shallow relationships
and screwed up marriages. I’m saddened by the marriages I have seen end so many
times when they shouldn’t have. <span style="color: red;"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’m not
simply a lonely guy making a desperate plea for a date here. I am making a
desperate plea to change the system. To change our way of thinking. And more
importantly, our way of acting. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Love is not
a drug. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Love is not
always a pretty sight. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Love is more
than we’ve been singing along to in pop songs.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So who wrote
these rules? Where did they come from? Who was the first person to say, “Don’t
call them until three days later”? Who came up with stuff like that and who
called it a fact? I have a theory: The rules were written by idiots and
followed out by bigger idiots. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Harsh? Well,
maybe that’s because the truth hurts, baby.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Why does it
need to be so complicated? I talk to guys and they say, “Girls are so
confusing!” Then, I talk to girls and they say, “Guys are so confusing!” Did
you know both sides are saying the same things? We are like a big game of
bumper cars. Everyone is trying to drive but can’t make up their mind which way
to go. We’re knocking into things and other people and inevitably getting
nowhere. We’re trying so hard to follow these dumb rules and analyze frivolous
words to death that we miss the open road.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Look, I’m
not saying this love stuff should be easy. I know there are some complicated
pieces to it all, but can we all at least admit that we tend to extremely
overcomplicate things? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Stop in the Name of Love</u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Here’s a
something I’ve had said to my face a few times, “When you stop looking, that’s
when you’ll find someone.” We’ve all heard that one. Maybe we’ve struggled with
it. Maybe we’ve tried really hard to follow it out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Allow me to
give my two cents on it. I think it’s a hokey line that married people say. I
think they look back on their relationships and somehow remember it as being
something that came as a result of them not caring anymore. Now maybe that
worked for one or two people, but when most people say they didn’t care, they
are lying or remembering it wrong. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I think many
times that phrase comes from a well-meaning heart and really they are just
trying to get you to relax, but if you’re someone who analyzes things (like me)
it can start to mess with your perception and actions. That phrase really is an
oxymoron. It’s like saying, “Hey, never show up to work and you’ll make more
money.” And if you stopped caring in order to get a relationship, wouldn’t that
mean that you cared in the first place and that’s why you stopped caring… yikes,
this is making my head hurt. Moving on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Single folks,
it’s all right to care. You are not wrong for being lonely sometimes or wanting
to be in a relationship. That’s not an evil desire. Now, like anything, if you
let it go too much it can run you, but the desire in itself is not evil. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I look at
the Old Testament and women like <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis%2030&version=NIV">Rachel</a>
and <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Samuel+1&version=NIV">Hannah</a>.
Two women who wanted to have children and couldn’t. They were barren and all
the women around them were having children. They were saying things like, “Give
me children or I’ll die!” (Genesis 30:1) I’m not saying you should start
praying, “Lord, give me a husband or shoot me,” but I’m just saying we are
dealing with God-given desires here. Natural things. It’s natural for a woman
to want to have children. And it’s natural for human beings to want to be in
love. We were designed this way. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Do you think
if Rachel and Hannah stopped trying to have kids that they would have had a
bunch of kids? I don’t think that’s logical at all. In the words of my friend <a href="http://www.kennkington.com/">Kenn Kington</a>, “I made a D in Biology…
but I was there for the lesson that day.” To me, as stupid as it sounds to try
to have children without even trying is as stupid as it would be to try to have
a relationship without actually trying.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Some may
debate me on this, and that’s fine. But let me tell you a little story from my
life that you can believe or not. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I try to
take a break from work once a day and go for a quick walk to catch some fresh
air and so my eyes don’t fall out of my head from staring at the computer
screen all day. I was thinking about this whole “stop caring” method and
praying about it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I said,
“God, I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to not care and to stop looking.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I felt like
I immediately heard back, “Who told you not to stop looking? Did I tell you
to?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I realized
quickly that I had been trying to pull off methods, rules, and advice that I
wasn’t meant to. I was listening to people more than I was listening to God,
hence the frustration. And that kind of methodology will give you frustration
in all areas of life. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Could You Be Loved?</u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It’s
frustrating trying to follow these rules and guidelines that people make up. Sometimes
they can seem really convincing. It’s easy to get insecure when it hasn’t
worked for you and it seems to be working for everyone else. And to make it
worse, you have to process all the dumb advice you hear. Some of the worst
advice can come from the best of intentions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I talk to a
lot of people who are beating themselves up over being single. Just frustrated
with the system of it all. Frustrated that other people are getting it to click.
I guess you could say jealous if we’re being totally honest. It happens. And as
we’ve discussed, it doesn’t make it easier to deal with when you and your
friends and family sit around and analyze your dating life to death. Humans
have a good way of making up problems where there really are no problems
because we always need an answer and some sort of proof. This has been going on
for centuries. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I think
about this stuff there is a story in the Bible that comes to my mind from the
book of John, chapter 9. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As [Jesus] went along, he saw a man blind
from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his
parents, that he was born blind?”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,”
said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in
him.”</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
The
disciples wanted an answer to the problem. They wanted to know what someone did
wrong to end up in a situation they did not enjoy. That’s the way our minds
seem to work: If we’re not happy, then somebody is doing something wrong. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
That’s a
really old school way to look at it. It’s a cause-and-effect view on things.
But cause-and-effect has nothing to do with the grace of God. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sometimes
there may be things we can improve on. Everyone needs to have a good introspection
check up regularly; that’s a good thing. But sometimes the matter we are
dealing with is out of our hands. It could just be a timing thing, and it could
be that God is wanting to teach us or stretch us. In fact, I would go as far as
to say that’s what I think it is 100 percent of the time. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
All you
single people out there, I write this simply to just let you know that you are
not alone in this. Just because you might not be married yet doesn’t mean you
have serious problems. It doesn’t mean that anyone else that is married did
anything better than you did. I’d even bet that some of the people you envy
today will be the people you come to pity tomorrow.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’m
realizing that as I get older, there really seem to be a lot less guarantees in
life, and that kind of sucks. I’m past the age where my hard work in school is
a guarantee that I will move onto the next grade. I’m not guaranteed a job or
wife or much else. Things just take longer as you get older. And that’s all
right. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Keep moving
forward and don’t let other people’s happiness be what brings you down. That’s
called being a punk and you’re not going to be a lot of fun to be around. Life
is too short to spend it wishing you had someone else’s. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
And truth be
told… no one really knows what they are doing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Still today,
I’ve never really gotten a clear answer to who wrote the Book of Love. So why
don’t you write your own story? I bet it will definitely be worth the read. </div>
Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-64684905752737228072013-03-12T21:19:00.001-04:002013-03-14T22:14:32.613-04:00The Best Form of Protest<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Church Kid</u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Hi, I’m
Jonathan and I’m a part of the church.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’m not
going to mince words at the beginning here. I straight grew up in church. In
the Bible belt, the Bible pants, and the Bible shirt. I sometimes think that if
my mom could have given birth to me inside of a sanctuary she would have. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
My dad was a
pastor when I was growing up so some of my earliest memories are crawling under
pews and being in church nurseries. Some kid bit me in a nursery one time and
I’ve never forgiven him for it. I remember eating the extra communion crackers
with my sister Melissa when my parents weren’t looking. I remember Melissa and
I would make games up in the church parking lot to kill the time while my dad
talked to missionaries and members for hours upon hours… upon hours. I think he
still might be out there talking.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
On many
rides home from church, I remember praying to God that my dad would forget that
he told me I was going to get spanking for screwing around during service.
Sometimes it actually worked. (That’s how I learned about the power of prayer.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
It always
baffles me when I have friends, even in my twenties, that have never been to a
funeral. I’ve been to so many I can’t even begin to count. I’ve been to a whole
lot of weddings, too. Just part of growing up in church with a family that is
super involved. The church is a place of weddings and new lives starting, and
it’s also a place of funerals and where death is put on display. It seems that life
and death both can be found in the church on given days.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I remember
the VBS’s, the revivals, the choirs, the fall festivals, the Christmas
musicals, and the cake. The people of God love cake if you didn’t know that. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I remember
other heavier things as well. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I remember visiting
people in trailer parks and how scared I was of the random dogs running around.
I remember the crazy people arguing with my dad outside of our small church
because he wouldn’t give them everything they wanted financially. I remember
visiting sick and dying people in hospitals and nursing homes. I remember
handing out food to hungry people. And I particularly remember standing outside
all throughout my hometown with hundreds of other people from churches holding
signs on one Sunday every year. Signs that said, “Abortion kills children” and
“Adoption: The Loving Option.” Everyone loves a good rhyme, right?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Interestingly
enough, I don’t remember ever having a choice to go to any of these heavier
things. My parents never asked me, “Do you want to go do this?” I just went.
And other than the fact that it was hot and boring, I didn’t think we were
doing anything wrong or ridiculous. It’s just what we did as a church. As the
church. As the people of God. I figured this was how we made God happy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The point of
my essay is not to talk about any of these things specifically. I simply want
to just give you some insight into my upbringing. When I say I was born in the
church, I mean it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Once I hit
my twenties, I started to rethink some things. We could talk for a long time
about opinions of mine that have changed over the recent years and some opinions
that are in the midst of transitioning right now. But for the sake of having an
actual point to all of this, I will just say that I’ve realized that I don’t
think the church is what I grew up believing it was. The church’s four walls
are not the holiest place in the city, the people within them are not always nice,
and the sermons aren’t always 100 percent accurate. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don’t
think that Jesus was a Republican, and I don’t think that God is happy when we
just go down a ballot and check off the box for all the Republicans with no
thought whatsoever as to what the candidates' actual stances are. Maybe it’s
just moving to DC, but daily I become more annoyed with what I hear people
saying the church should be and what people say a Christian should look like.
Just because someone has a national show doesn’t mean that his or her voice is
anything worth respecting. In fact, they constantly show me exactly what I
don’t want to look like as a Christian, or even as an American. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Welcome to the Age of Extreme<b>s</b> </u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I recently
read that President Obama is leading a war on coal. Really? Is he sending
soldiers into the mines? I also heard that there is a war on Christmas. And I
think I heard that there is a war on marriage, too? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Everything
is a war these days. If I was “War” I’d be pretty offended that you were
throwing my name around like that. “Hey, I’m War. Don’t you lump my WWII in
with this stuff, that’s disrespectful to my past! I leave people dead and
homeless, not just opinionated and annoyed!” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Thanks to
24-hour news networks, everything has to be a big deal. Never forget that CNN, Fox
News, and MSNBC are competing with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American
Idol</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monday Night Football.</i>
They want ratings just as bad as NBC, but they just happen to have to be
reporting news all the time. Everything has to be a “war” or no one will watch
it. And when everyone is at war, no one is at peace. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Disaster and
fear boost ratings. It’s proven. I grew up in Florida, and the only time we
watched the weather channel was if there was a hurricane coming. We were glued to the
coverage. The same concept is what these news networks use. Disaster and fear.
You had better hear what they have to say or you may lose your job or your
civil liberties. Nothing usually plays out to the extreme they say it will; yet
we keep watching and listening to the rhetoric they have to tell us. And they
know it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Can we admit
that we are in an age of extremes? Why does everything have to be so far one
way or the other? Go read through your Facebook news feed or a YouTube comment
section, I guarantee you you’ll find 99 extremists to every one peacemaker. I
believe this is why Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” because he knew
they are as rare as an actual good deal at Banana Republic. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We might
like singing, “Give peace a chance” but few really want to do what it takes to
bring peace. Peace means compromising. We like the thought of “peace on our
terms.” Agree with my views and we can get along. That’s not real peace, but
it’s really what we want, isn’t it? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>What Did You Expect?</u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
As a
Christian, I am often annoyed with what I hear coming out of my brothers and
sisters’ mouths. Every time there is an election it’s like we finally open up
the book of <u>Revelation</u> and start pulling random verses out and make them
apply to various different aspects of candidates. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Of course it
goes beyond just election season. I can think back in my life at the various
things I’ve seen church people boycott. Then we get really mad when other
people want to boycott the things that we like and act like they are ridiculous
for thinking a boycott could possibly work. If that sounds like a double
standard… it’s because it is. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
When I hear
people say things like, “We need to get America back to where it was,” it makes
me wonder what point in time they are talking about. Back to what? Back to
segregation? Back to slavery? Back to Civil War? Back to the raping and
murdering of the natives? What time could we possibly want to get back to? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Or do they
mean, “Back to when it was easier to be a Christian, white man. Back when we
weren’t challenged by anything. Back when Presidents and Generals praised our
religious beliefs. Back when we could say one thing and do another and there
was no one to hold us accountable for our hypocrisy.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Just what do
you want to go back to? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Now,
obviously I don’t believe we are living in the sweetest time of the earth’s
existence. There are tragedies and heartbreak every single day. There are
things worth getting upset about. There are things worth taking a stand over.
There is still endless room for improvement. And in defense of the church,
I will say I am sad to see God being pushed out of agendas. I am sad to hear
that people don’t want to be a nation under God. I am sad to hear that people
don’t want to pray. But most of my sadness comes not from God being moved out
of the government and society, but out of our hearts. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’d love it
if Jesus was sitting on earth as the President of the United States, but he’s
not. And since he is not, we are left with human beings running the show. The
world would be at peace if we didn’t have any humans, so if you really want
world peace then maybe you should start praying for a plague. Until everyone on
earth dies out, though, you can bet Christians will continue to see things play
out in ways they do not want them to. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I don’t say
that to be a downer, I say it because I am referencing Jesus. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
John 15:18-19</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="woj">“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If
you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not
belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the
world hates you.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="woj">So should we be surprised by disagreements with our faith? Should we
be surprised that not everyone wants to celebrate Christmas with us? I mean
Jesus kind of spelled it out for us didn’t he?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
So, what if
there actually is a “war on Christmas”? What should our response be? Does God
want us to flip out and spread more fear and outrage? Is that what brings
change? Do we want to be the annoying “woe-is-me” people who try to get
everyone to feel sorry for us? Or do we want to be stand-up people aren’t
afraid to be disagreed with? People who can say “I know whom I have believed
and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him
against that day”? (2 Timothy 1:2)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
We cannot
claim to be given a Kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:28) and then say
that if one man is elected then everything we know will be destroyed. If one
man can destroy what we say we believe with all of our hearts, then we have no
hope at all. We are selling empty promises. If we think a government can keep
the Kingdom of God from coming then we must not really believe what we say we
do about the power of God. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>The Best Form of Protest</u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sometimes I
get so annoyed with the church. Then, I have to remember two things: I am the
church, and she is the bride of Christ. So I better not abandon her, and I
better defend her. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I am proud
to call myself a Christian. I am proud to be a part of a religion that accepts
me for who I am. I am glad that I serve a God who loves me just as I am, but
who is still working on me. I like being in the church. And I love that we have
a God who is bigger than our mistakes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The point of
all of this hasn’t been that Christians need to shut up and just grin and bear
it all. It hasn’t been that we are in a losing battle. If anything, I want to
echo Proverbs 31:9, “<span class="textprov-31-9"><u>Open your mouth</u>, judge
righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’ve just been
wondering for some time now what the best form of protest is. Is it holding
signs on the side of a street? Is it writing our congressman or marching on
Washington? Maybe there’s some good in those things, and maybe God has called
some of us to do them, but maybe the steps towards the change we want to see in
this world don’t come with national headlines. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’ve been
thinking about when Jesus was talking to Pilate before he was crucified (John
18:37-38). He told Pilate, “Everyone who is for me is on the side of truth.”
Pilate responds, “What is truth?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I feel like
Pilate in a lot of ways. I know I am on the side of Jesus so I must be on the
side of truth, but if I can be honest, sometimes the lines seem to blur due to
all the noise, charts, and graphics on TV and computer screens. I’m left
asking, “What is truth?” But I think that is a question that God doesn’t mind
us asking him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The truth
about truth is that whether it makes us happy or not, whether we can agree with
it or not, or whether we want to accept it or not does not change the fact that
it is truth. Maybe in our pursuit of the truth God will reveal some things to
us that we really don’t like, or answers that might mean we have to eat some of
our words. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
What if the
best form of protest is different than the ways we’ve advocated for change in
the past? What if we were not just hearers and repeaters of the word, but doers
of the word? What if we were people who kept our cool in the thick of the
changes we didn’t like? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
The Apostle
Peter gave some governmental advice in 1 Peter 2:17, “Fear God, honor the
king.” He didn’t say to fear the king; he said to fear God. Perhaps we are
wasting our time getting up in arms about things that wouldn’t be such a big
deal if we learned what it truly meant to fear God. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
To me, the
best form of protest is to live a holy life. To learn how to disagree in love
and respect. To learn how to stand for truth first and foremost in our own
lives. To hold ourselves accountable before we hold anyone else accountable. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I’ve always
been impressed by the way Jesus handled his crucifixion. It was the most
incorrect and unjust governmental and societal action in the history of time. A
perfect man forced to carry his cross and die. But he took it with dignity and
in holiness. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Isaiah 53:7</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span class="textisa-53-7">He was oppressed<sup> </sup>and afflicted,</span> <span class="textisa-53-7">yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb<sup> </sup>to
the slaughter,</span><span class="indent-1-breaks"> </span><span class="textisa-53-7">and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,</span> <span class="textisa-53-7">so he did not open his mouth.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span class="textisa-53-7">Surely there are times for us to speak up and let our voices
be heard, and we’ve heard that the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but I ask that we
at least consider the way Jesus actually handled his opposition. He shut his
mouth. He stood for something greater than what any man could take away. The
person the church strives to be like knew when to speak and knew when to stand
silent. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I believe in
the church, and I believe in the church in this country. I really could talk
for hours about all the good I’ve seen come out of the people in the church.
But the reason I love the church is because I’m allowed to be a screw up. I’m
allowed to be someone who constantly makes mistakes and gets it wrong. I’m
allowed to still be a part of the Body of Christ and I am encouraged to even
boast in my weaknesses. It’s an amazing thing. Simply put—the people of God are
the people of God because we know we are so messed up that we need God. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
If we serve
a God who is willing to find the best in us and to continue to work in us
despite our shortcomings, we had better be people who are willing to change. People
who can ask hard questions. People who can undergo surgery on our hearts, our
motives, and our character. People who can admit when we are wrong. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Our God is
humble. Are we?</div>
Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-20776772717274176162013-02-28T19:33:00.002-05:002013-05-26T13:29:32.027-04:00The GreyDo you remember that show “The Facts of Life”? I had an older sister
so I had to watch it growing up. I can’t remember too much of the plot
or characters (thankfully) but I do remember the theme song.<br />
<br />
Sing it with me folks!<br />
<i>“You take the good. You take the bad. You take them both and there you have the facts of life. The facts of life!” </i><br />
<br />
Nothing like an 80s sitcom to speak truth into your life. There you
go; it’s plain and simple. There’s good and there’s bad and that’s about
it. Well, maybe not quite.<br />
<br />
Any of you that really know me probably know that I grew up in
church. Under the pews, finding frogs in the bushes, hitting people’s
cars with footballs; just all of that good, old church living. From the
time I was born I did most of my thinking about life from the view
inside of the walls of a church. Wasn’t really told to do much thinking
anywhere else.<br />
<br />
Now just to be clear, I could talk for hours and hours about all the
good I have seen in the church and in the people involved with it. This
is in no way a letter bashing what I was born into; I love the church
and I will defend it as long as I have to. But that being said, I think I
would be doing a disservice to myself if I didn’t at least bring to
light some of the things I am learning and that might not coincide with
what I grew up being told was true. I'm finding in my own life that one
of the best methods of teaching is not necessarily saying, "This is what
I've learned," but rather, "This is how I am learning." Not that I in
any way claim to be a teacher, but I do think we can learn from each
other.<br />
<br />
One of the things that I feel I grew up hearing a lot was basically
that there were always only two sides to everything. Just like a coin.
The good and the bad. The right and the wrong. The truth and the lie.
Life is made up of clear sides and dividing lines. There is no room
between the black and the white areas.<br />
<br />
For a very long time I was fine with that. I did what I was supposed
to do and things pretty much worked out. I had a great faith in a great
God and what I knew him to be. My best friends were people who believed
basically what I believed, and we all encouraged each other in our own
views. We were pretty happy. People are usually happy when things go
according to plan.<br />
<br />
Then, I went away to college.<br />
<br />
College was a bit different. As you probably know, you get people
from every walk of life at a university, especially one as diverse as
the University of Florida. Even in the Christian circles I was in I
realized that not everyone believed the same things about the Bible that
I did. Now, I’ve never been one for confrontations or disagreements
because I never really had to be in them; I was surrounded by people who
agreed with me. But as I interacted with people I grew to love, I found
that we could disagree on issues and beliefs but still work together in
accomplishing the same common goals. Diversity at its finest.<br />
<br />
How can that be possible, though, if there are only two sides? How
could there be more than two ways to look at something? May I submit to
you an area beyond just black and white? An area I have taken to calling
“The Grey.”<br />
<br />
<i>All right, get all your 50 Shades of Grey jokes and Liam Neeson references out of your system right now. </i><br />
<br />
You may have heard of “the grey” before, and perhaps you have heard
it called by some other name. I heard about it once or twice growing up,
but I concluded that if I had any doubts about anything then it
belonged on the “wrong” side of the line, because the Bible had clear
answers for everything.<br />
<br />
Fundamentalists, go ahead and pick up your stones because here goes…
the Bible does not answer all of the questions most of us have. It just
doesn’t. And I don’t believe it was intended to.<br />
<br />
The Bible in itself is made up of ancient texts. Things that people
wrote thousands of years ago. Can we really expect those same words to
give us answers about practices and decisions that would have never come
into play back then? If you read the Bible’s words as only black and
white, you can’t. But as you look into the grey, you may come to see
that the words are indeed “living and active” and they can remain
relevant in an ever-changing world. God could have outlined every single
command and every single answer to life in the clearest way possible,
but he didn’t. He gave us brains. And more importantly, he gave us his
Spirit.<br />
<br />
I get frustrated sometimes because I want things to be laid out a
little more clearly. I want answers explained better. I want to know if
I’m doing things right or wrong. Most of my troubles can be attributed
to the fact that I am terrible at waiting and I also have a brain that
doesn’t shut off. The combination of these two disorders can make it
very difficult to live life when you’re only seeing things in black and
white.<br />
<br />
I think thoughts like, “Well, a little bit of faith can move
mountains, and I have a little bit of faith. So… why is this mountain
not moving? I must not have faith. Or maybe I’m screwing something else
up and God is upset with me and unwilling to back me up?” When you think
black and white you may tend to think thoughts like that.<br />
<br />
So, faith can move mountains, but what about when it doesn’t? What
about when the sick are not healed and the poor stay poor? Does it mean
that there was not enough faith in the prayer? I mean, the Bible clearly
says that faith moves mountains. If the mountains aren’t moving then
something must be off with us, right?<br />
<br />
I think many of us struggle with the idea of prayer being something
like water being put into a water balloon. The more we pray, the more
water is deposited into our balloon. We keep filling it up and
eventually, after we’ve prayed and fasted enough, the balloon will pop
and what God really wanted to happen will finally be done. But I am
learning that what I want to happen and what God wants to happen can
seem to differ quite a bit. Can prayer force God to do something he
doesn’t want to do?<br />
Well, yes it can, right? Prayer changes things. That verse 2
Chronicles 7:14 says, “If my people pray…” Look, I believe prayer can
change things, but what if the greatest power of prayer is not the power
to change our circumstances but the power to change our hearts, our
minds, and our motives.<br />
<br />
Black and white can only see a mathematical system: Prayer + Faith = God’s will. But the grey throws out the formulas.<br />
<br />
So maybe some of you are thinking, “Listen, hippie. I get what you’re
trying to sell us. ‘Question everything. The truth is out there,
maaaan.’ But what am I supposed to do with that?” That’s not what I’m
saying. I’m not saying we cannot ever be certain about anything. I am
just trying to say that maybe it’s all right to have a few questions
every once in a while. I question things all the time, and it doesn’t
mean that God is upset with me. God is bigger than our questions.<br />
<br />
I understand about two percent of all of this, but I believe it.
Maybe that's all that faith is. Maybe honest faith that God approves of
can only at times say, “I don’t understand this, but I trust you.” What
if we only have two percent faith, but it’s enough to get us to act as
if we had 100 percent faith? Does God accept our decisions even though
we don’t have everything figured out and have some doubts? And do we
trust God enough to be wrong?<br />
<br />
If we believe in Jesus then we believe that God loved us enough to
come to us as Emmanuel, “God with us.” We serve a God that wants to be
known way more than we even want to know him. If you seek him, he will
find you because he's looking for you, too.<br />
<br />
If we are called to come to him as children then that is about as
ignorant as you can get. A child doesn’t have it all figured out and a
child doesn’t know how things work; they just do stuff. They don’t
question the laws of gravity; they just go down the slide. They don’t
know how mom and dad are going to get them dinner, but they know they
are going to get it. Is that really how God wants us to come to him?
Isn’t that blind faith?<br />
<br />
Yes. It is.<br />
<br />
We are so afraid to have blind faith because our society demands
proof on all accounts, which is what makes the grey so hard. But blind
faith in God is exactly what he calls us to have. To be able to say
things like, “I really don’t know the answer to that, but I trust that
God is good.” And say things like, “I don’t like going through this, but
God knows what he is doing.” I know those are hard words to say in the
thick of it, but in essence that is what we must live out. To say, “I
don’t really understand this, but I believe it and I trust you.”<br />
<br />
The Word of God pulls no punches. It clearly says, “The wisdom of the
world is foolishness to God,” (1 Corinthians 3:19) which can only mean
the other side of that is true as well—“The wisdom of God is foolishness
to the world.” No wonder we feel so dumb sometimes. We have human
brains trying to figure out the far superior mind of the Creator.<br />
Read the Bible and you will find many stories of men and women who experienced the grey.<br />
<br />
They wandered in it.<br />
<br />
They wrestled with it.<br />
<br />
They walked on it.<br />
<br />
They endured it.<br />
<br />
It seems to me that the grey is an essential part of our faith, and
possibly a requirement or right of passage for all true believers. To
know God is to know his mystery. To understand that you will never fully
understand him and be okay with that. He is a God who is bigger than
our doubts and fears. He can handle a humble heart that is searching for
truth, because he is the Truth.<br />
<br />
I don’t think God is as afraid of the grey as many might think he is.
The grey is where we search for him because we don't know the answers
to life’s questions. The grey is why we seek him. The grey is why we
need him. And the grey is where we discover beauty we never could have
seen in the black and white.<br />
<br />
Don’t run from the grey, run towards it.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-43101309159707464342013-01-26T13:56:00.002-05:002013-01-26T23:06:25.482-05:00Different Minds, Different Kinds<style>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
One of my
favorite lyrics from Billy Joel’s music comes from “It’s Still Rock and Roll To
Me.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Should I try to be a straight A student? If
you are then you think too much.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I picked up
this mantra when I hit college and realized I was all right with making B’s,
and depending on the course, a couple of C’s. I liked to refer to them as “A
Gentleman’s C.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I grew up as
a straight-A student. The work just came easy to me from elementary through
middle school. Math made sense. Science made sense. English didn’t make sense
but I could at least figure out what the teacher wanted. When I got to high
school things got a little more challenging and I had to try a little harder in
some classes, but I still graduated with a GPA over 4.0. (Alright ladies, who’s
impressed yet?)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
Then, I went
to the University of Florida. I was in classes with some of the brightest minds
in Florida and even the nation. It didn’t take long until I felt like the
dumbest person there. I was in a marketing class barely getting by with a C and
people were telling me, “Oh this class is so easy.” I would laugh along with
them and agree, completely lying through my teeth. I would think things like,
“I do not belong at this university. I am just not smart enough to hang with
these students.” For a long time I felt that way, but I loved being a student
there so I kept working hard at it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
I majored in
advertising because I was told it had less math than marketing, so I thought I
was done with math forever once I hit the classes for my major. I was wrong.
There was a course we had to take called Media Planning that was all numbers
and statistics and budgeting. I was in advertising hell. We took an exam and
the next day our professor wrote the highest and lowest test scores on the board.
I think the highest was about a 92 percent and the lowest was a 43 percent. My
friends and I laughed and said, “Oh wow, I wonder who got the 43! That’s
awful.” Again, I laughed along with them. Then I went home and checked my grade
online and guess who had gotten the 43 percent. (Any ladies still impressed?)</div>
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I’ll never
forget that. </div>
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For a while
I had been telling some people, “I feel like I might be the dumbest person
here.” That day I got to confirm that I was in fact the dumbest person there.
My confidence was not soaring, so I went and ate my comfort food… Sonny’s.
(Worries and fears seem to melt away at the smell of corn nuggets.) This sort of
struggle went on for a while. I’d try to find the other students who were
struggling like I was in whatever major they were in and have mini-group
therapy sessions where we could feel like we were not alone. But those were
rare. There are a lot of smarty-pants Gators. </div>
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I soldiered
through the course because I had discovered long ago the art of “sitting next
to the smart kid and making them your friend.” That’s a skill I hope to pass
onto my children. By using that technique, as well as writing a good amount of
“please pass me” letters to my professors (true story), I was making it through
college one plea for mercy at a time. But I still did not feel like I belonged
in that academic region. </div>
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Then
something happened. I got to take some creative classes. Classes that graded
you on how creative your ideas were, not just how well you could regurgitate
and reinterpret a book. Classes that required us to come up with slogans, ad
campaigns, and use a variety of media vehicles. I started to feel better about
things because I started to feel like this was where I belonged.</div>
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I would talk
with students who I know had gotten way higher grades than me in our other
courses and who were now struggling to come up with creative ideas, while I was
coming up with plenty of ideas with very little effort. I was now the one
getting the highest grades. Professors told me they used my projects as examples
in their other classes. Me. Literally the dumbest kid in the Media Planning
class. </div>
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My
confidence found me and for the first time at UF I felt like I belonged, and it
was there that I started learning about my strengths and weaknesses. Like I
said at the beginning, I stopped worrying about making As in classes I knew
were really hard for me, and I focused on being the best in the courses where a
mind like mine felt more at home. I figured out how to use my creative
strengths in group projects where we all could benefit from each other’s
different skills. I had one friend who was very book smart and thorough, two
things I really wasn’t, but she liked working with me because I would come up
with the creative ideas and ads. We took about every advertising class together
and we aced quite a bit of assignments and projects. </div>
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I grew up my
whole life thinking that being smart meant you had straight A’s, and no doubt
you’re obviously not an idiot if you can pull off grades like that. What I have
come to realize, though, is that there are many different forms of smart, but
in America, we tend to do a good job of defining intelligence with only one
explanation. “Kids, [this] is what a smart person looks like. Be like them.” So
when students, and adults, struggle in areas that others don’t, they feel like
they aren’t smart people. They lose confidence. They settle. </div>
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<br />
I’m willing to bet if you’re not a straight-A type of person, you have
strengths that you don’t even realize are strengths. It’s just a matter of
finding them or seeing them as strengths. Start to look at what you’re good at
doing and see if everyone around you can do it like you can. There are so many
things I see my friends and colleagues doing that I just cannot do or even
begin to understand the process of doing, but I had a friend ask me how I write
songs and I walked him through my process and he said, “I don’t know how you are
able to do that. I never could.” But for me, it’s sometimes as simple as just
sitting down with my guitar and a song will pour out in about 30 minutes. Not
every time, of course, but it’s just something that comes easier for me. It
clicks with me. And it’s something I constantly am trying to improve in, but
the initial connection and reaction are there to begin with. That connection is
not there with pleeeeeenty of other areas. For example, I can’t learn a foreign
language to save my life. </div>
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Maybe I’m
old school but I don’t really like the idea of every player getting a trophy
after baseball. I think a 3<sup>rd</sup> place trophy is about as low as it
should go. When everyone is a winner then no one really is. (Again, maybe
that’s the old man in me. As you have may have seen, I do love my cardigans,
plaid shirts, and my pipe.) We tell our kids they can be anything they want to
be when they grow up, but it simply isn’t true. I’m not saying to squash your
children’s dreams, but I do think you are lying to them in a sense. The truth
is we have the freedom to be anything we want to be, but we don’t have the
abilities. </div>
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One of the
best things I think my mother did for me as I was growing up was let me try out
anything I wanted to try out. If I wanted to play baseball, she was going to
get me to the baseball games. When I got really into basketball, we had Michael
Jordan games on all the time. When I was 13 and wanted to play guitar because I
thought it was cool how Steven Curtis Chapman could play and write his own
songs, she sat in my room with me every night and taught me whatever she knew.
She was at all my band gigs and comedy nights. If she saw me excelling in
something, she got behind whatever it was. She didn’t try to make me do
Model U.N. when I had no interest in it. (Which was a good call because I
pretty much hate politics now even though I live in DC.) There were countless
other endeavors I had from time to time, and she was always supportive of them,
but she never tried to make me be someone I wasn’t. I really appreciate that, and
to this day she still is the exact same way. </div>
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In no way do
I think I am someone who needs to be telling you how to raise your kids; obviously
I have none of my own, but this is more than just a letter about child rearing.
I see the same school day struggles in my adult life. So many people are
unsatisfied with who they are or what they are doing because they don’t look
like someone else. America has one definition of success, and if we don’t
meet that definition then it’s because we haven’t worked hard enough. But that
is a lie. </div>
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If we spend
our lives trying to conform to what works for other people but isn’t supposed
to work for us, we will always be conflicted and discouraged. God made you the
way you are for a reason. Just because you don’t look like someone else, it
doesn’t mean you are not successful or gifted. It just means you are not
identical to someone else, but who wants to be in a world full of robots? I
know Will Smith doesn’t. </div>
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This
straight-A mindset might work for some people, but really it could just be that
they are gifted in the academic realm. Walt Disney didn’t make straight As.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t either. I know Tim Tebow sure as heck
didn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But all of those people
found out ways to strengthen their strengths and move past their weaknesses. There
is power in being able to say, “I can’t do that,” “I am not good at this,” and especially
“I was wrong.” I know it goes against every self-help book out there, but I
think humility, rationality, and acceptance need to find their rightful places in
our minds and character.</div>
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You might
not be able to ever be the CEO of a company; you might not have it in you, but
what if you were never meant to be a CEO? What if the world doesn’t need you to
be a CEO, but rather, to be the coach of a little league team that a CEO would
never have time to coach? (Make sure you don’t give all of them trophies if
they lose, though.) Does that mean you are unsuccessful in life? Does it? </div>
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What if you were actually able to be content with your job and what you do? </div>
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What if you
don’t need to “be more like your older brother” like you’ve always heard? </div>
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What if you
are exactly where you need to be?</div>
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My advice is
to find out what your strengths are and invest your energy in them. If you have
weaknesses that you want to work on then, by all means, practice and pursue those
changes. All I am submitting to you is that maybe we have wasted a lot of time
feeling bad about ourselves for reasons beyond our control. Your family needs
you to be you. Your friends need you to be you. And most of all, you need you
to be you.</div>
Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-40657835217259975022012-12-16T20:24:00.001-05:002012-12-16T22:15:29.510-05:00A Stupid Way to Live: Expectations <style>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">By no means do I feel like I am someone who should
be giving advice on how to live your life, but I’ve seen enough people on TV
and Twitter that give advice that shouldn’t be either so I figure I can’t be
much worse than them. I can’t really offer any deep wisdom or profound
thoughts, but I can just tell you some of the ways of how I am learning.</span>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sometimes I simply find myself just plain sad. Do
you ever have those days where you feel like you did when you just watched
Mufasa die for the first time? It comes out of nowhere and hits you in the
heart and head. Sometimes you can shake it off relatively quickly, but other
times it seems to stick around for a little longer. Maybe for some it is a
daily occurrence right now. I know there have been times in my life where every
morning I had to look myself in the mirror, turn on the Rocky soundtrack, and
give myself a pep talk. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Recently, I was bummed out. Not watch-Mufasa-die
bummed out, but just kind of low. If you have a non-stop brain like mine then
you know that it can be pretty annoying. I’m not good at pushing out the
negative thoughts and thinking about good things or random things, or even just
zoning out. I analyze the heck out of it and try to solve the mystery and piece
together the puzzles. It kind of sucks being that way. I wish I could just go
turn on the TV and turn my mind off, but I can’t. I was in full detective mode.
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was trying to figure out what the issue was, and
I concluded it was because I was disappointed with some of the current areas in
my life. Things weren’t going the way I had planned for them to go. And to be
frank, I didn’t think God was holding up his end of the deal. You know that
deal that really isn’t a deal but we think it is a deal? The one that goes a
little something like, “Hey, I’m a good person… so things should be working out
a little better.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So I was bummed. I was bumming myself out that I
was bummed. I was talking to my friends and bumming them out. It’s not a
fun state of mind. Nobody enjoys being around that, except maybe Goth kids. Are
Goth kids still in existence? Are they all still congregating outside of my high
school geometry classroom?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">But the next morning I had some wisdom knocked into
my head in the form of one of my favorite songs by John Reuben called “Hindsight”:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Patience tends to not agree with my psyche. That's
more than likely just some pride in me fighting expectations of where I think
my life should be. Selfishly I forget so quickly.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">That line hit me pretty hard. As hard as when Simba
hit that hyena in the face. (I need to get another DVD besides <i>The Lion King</i>.)
It started to become clear to me that the frustrations I was wrestling with
were my own, dumb fault. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I think a lot of the unrest in my life comes from
expectations. It comes from the fact that I put expectations on myself, on
others, and on God. When what I’ve expected to happen doesn't turn out like I
think it should, I get upset. And that's really a stupid way to live. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It's not that we shouldn’t have goals or plans for our lives, but it's different when you have expectations on your life that you
just make up in your mind. If I place expectations on other people and on God
to do things I think they should do, that is unreasonable and unfair. What does
anyone else owe me? What does God owe me? Nothing. Of course there are a few
things that maybe certain people are required by law to give me, but most of
the things that we have as expectations come from selfishness. Pride. A false
sense of entitlement. (The spoiled little brat inside of us. My inner spoiled
brat’s name is Nelson. He is horrible to have at dinner parties) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I believe we are all selfish people by nature. Perhaps
you don’t agree with me, and that’s fine, but go try to take away a
random 2-year-old’s toy and tell me what he does. We don’t ever get rid of that
nature, it is just the things we desire grow with age. Our toys get more
expensive, and our expectations get more unrealistic. It’s no wonder they are
unrealistic, though, when in 21<sup>st</sup> Century America we call “reality”
what Jersey Shore is getting paid millions to live in. Reality has become a bad TV show
on the E! Channel. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">(Here is the one rule
I adamantly live by: Know as little as possible about whatever is on the E!
Channel.)</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">We want control. We want control of our realities.
We want control of our false realities. We are selfish. It’s just a matter of
how selfish we let ourselves be. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Being a valet for a few years gave me some insight
into life. One of the lessons I learned was this, “Not everyone should drive a
car.” Good grief, if you only knew about some of the people that we let get back
on the road. It’s the same with our metaphorical roads of life. We’re trying to
drive cars we were never meant to. We are steering wherever we want to go and
not where the road takes us. God is the only one who should drive. And maybe
some of us backseat drivers need a good old-fashioned reach into the backseat
smack in the face. Oh you never got one of those?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I don’t have all of this figured out perfectly yet,
and maybe a dude in his twenties doesn’t really have a place to be giving his
opinions on life like this, but like I said, all I am offering is how I am
learning. I’m making a point in my life to focus on shutting up and killing my
stupid expectations. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Chase your dreams. Challenge yourself. Set goals.
But know there is a difference between those good things and our selfish
expectations. I’m willing to bet that the distinction of the two will give you
a little more peace in your life and make you more enjoyable to be around. It
could also be the difference in you getting an ulcer in your thirties or not. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hey, I’m right in this with you. I’m finding the
more words I say, the more words I have to eat. And I’m already totally stuffed.
</span></div>
Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-65370195491067842232012-11-23T17:37:00.002-05:002012-11-23T17:38:07.845-05:00How I Went to Prison<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I wrote this for my good friend Robert Valdez's newsletter about his ministry to the prisons of Central Florida, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Casting-The-Net-Ministries/293869040721238?" target="_blank">Casting the Net Ministries</a>. </span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Greetings! My name is
Jonathan Tony. Not Tony Jonathan, that’s ridiculous. I’ve been working with
Casting the Net Ministries and Robert Valdez for a few years now, so let me give
you a little bit of my story of how I came to be involved with it all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In 2009 I was working for a
local Christian radio station in Ocala, FL, but living in Gainesville, FL. I
would drive down on Monday nights and host a 3-4 hour show consisting of a lot
of talking and music. I started getting calls from a man in a South Florida prison
every week. He said that he and some of the men there would listen to our show,
and we’d end up talking a little bit each week. I thought it was really cool,
and then the Lord started working in my heart about it all. In that same time
frame, I had started meeting with Robert every week or two for dinner. We had
become friends at church during a prayer service, and I just liked hanging out
with him. I didn’t know at first that he went into prisons and ministered. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So Robert started talking to
me about the ministry he was doing, and I got really excited. Robert has a way
of getting you excited about whatever he’s talking about. I’m not entirely sure
how he does it, but I think much of it can be attributed to volume of his
voice. If you’ve never seen Robert get excited, it doesn’t mean that you
haven’t heard him get excited. If you’ve ever heard a random voice and been
like, “What was that? Who’s talking?” That was probably Robert excitedly
talking to someone a few miles away. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So after the phone calls from
the man and talking with Robert, the Lord spoke to me the simple verse, “I was
in prison and you visited me…” (Matthew 25:36) I don’t know if I totally
understand what God’s will is for many different areas of life, but I figured
visiting someone in prison was a pretty straight-forward, easy to understand
place to start. So I told Robert I’d like to get involved and we decided I’d
start going on Monday nights to the work camp services. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">After a few weeks of having
a surprisingly difficult time of just being able to get approval to go into the
Gainesville prisons (including me falling asleep during the orientation with
the Chaplin, Robert, and I) I was finally ready to go in. My only experience
with anything like this was when I went to a youth corrections facility when I
was 14, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had questions like, “How do I
possibly relate to men in this situation?” I’d never had a run in with the law.
I’d never sold drugs and didn’t even know what most of them look like; for the
first 20 years of my life I thought marijuana was a city in Brazil. What would
the men think of me? I don’t have anything in common with them. Why would they
want to hear anything from me? </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I started going in and for
the most part remained quiet during the services. I was leading the worship and
pounding out old-school hymns I hadn’t sung in decades on the raggedy,
out-of-tune piano that was in the chapel. I thought it was going to be a little
easier to lead worship and that most of these guys would be able to sing like
in the Jailhouse Rock video. Turns out I was way off. If that praise and
worship was beautiful incense to the Lord then we have entirely different
noses. But I’m sure God loved it, and in all seriousness, there is nothing like
hearing a room full of prisoners sing Amazing Grace and sing of what it truly
means to be free in spite of the walls of razor wire and bricks around them.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Anyways, it didn’t take long for me to realize that just
because we didn’t share the same backgrounds, it didn’t mean we didn’t share
the same struggles. You see, at the heart of every human being, we are made up
of the same stuff. We are all insecure. We are all afraid. We are all helpless.
It is our undeniable need for a great God that makes us all the same. Once you
realize that everyone has a breaking point, you may find it’s not so hard to
connect. I couldn’t stand up there and preach to them about how hard it is to
be in prison, I didn’t know anything about that. I don’t know what it’s like to
miss my wife and kids. But I do know what it feels like to think God has
forsaken you. I do know what it feels like to know you need something but
you’re not even sure what it is. I do know what it means to cry in desperation
as you beg for the God you’ve put your faith in to forgive you of sins you
wouldn’t forgive yourself of. I do know about those times.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We’ve all been given a voice
that needs to speak. We’ve all been given a testimony that needs to be told. If
you think your life only comes down to you, you’re quite mistaken. I personally
think that so many people are just waiting to know that they’re not the only
ones who are like them. It’s amazing what showing your own heart can do. It’s
amazing how showing your own wounds can be the very thing that starts to heal
someone else’s. And when you think about it, it’s actually how Jesus works. “By
his wounds, we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5) </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We’ve all been given grace,
and true grace can only continue to spread. Whether you find yourself in a
prison with 30 men, or in a Starbucks with a new friend, allow yourself to
share the stories of the life God has given you. You may find the Kingdom is
closer than you think.</span></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWCwCtgl8e2ZM5cG9-DanS2S5if1gG2kkGa4qy4_7XMCFfHMzhWKaf7XLVS0rv0j5FTzbK9IwET7I8YYLnly1G5zZRBwz3k8f8DvGQeDvIY9YHBPTS3ZapjBoK56_iww4xMkjQLFOmrPF/s1600/photo%25284%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioWCwCtgl8e2ZM5cG9-DanS2S5if1gG2kkGa4qy4_7XMCFfHMzhWKaf7XLVS0rv0j5FTzbK9IwET7I8YYLnly1G5zZRBwz3k8f8DvGQeDvIY9YHBPTS3ZapjBoK56_iww4xMkjQLFOmrPF/s320/photo%25284%2529.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Robert and I outside of a Gainesville, FL prison after our weekly Monday night service. Gotta love that guy.</i></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>If you would like to partner with Robert and Casting the Net, please contact them on their Facebook page <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Casting-The-Net-Ministries/293869040721238?" target="_blank">here</a>.</i></span> </span></span></div>
Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-11597648168938858962012-09-04T22:36:00.003-04:002012-09-05T15:46:01.468-04:00The Sun Wouldn't Rise (Story and the song)<div class="mbl notesBlogText clearfix">
<br />
<div>
<i>This is the story behind my song “<a href="http://youtu.be/tj03AOF2ATQ" target="_blank">The Sun Wouldn’t Rise</a>”. </i><br />
<br />
<i> </i><br />
I
wrote this song a few months ago while I was still job hunting. If
you’ve never had the fun of job-hunting, I assure you it is one of the
most annoying things you could possibly go through. Worse than a
marathon of Olsen Twins movies.<br />
<br />
Each day I would wake up
and apply for jobs, go to interviews, networking events, etc. and each
day I would get notified about some new rejection. Every “Thanks for
applying, but…” email would continually remind me how bad I was at
everything and how everyone was moving way faster in life than I was.<br />
<br />
Now,
for the first few weeks or so, it’s doable. You just turn on a Rocky
movie, get pumped up, and remind yourself that good things take time and
hard work. But going into your third year post-college and still being
in the same spot you were when you started can really wear on your
emotions and self esteem. Needless to say, every word that came out of
my mouth was not an “Amen.” In fact, many of the words would probably
upset a lot of you parents. I'm sorry, but it’s just the truth.<br />
<br />
I
could talk for a long time about those years and all the struggle I
went through because there are so many stories from that time. And I
know a lot of you probably have shared a conversation or two with me
during that time and you know what I mean. But for the sake of this
message, let’s just say that I was pretty low and every day was a day I
had to fight through, with more than just the lack of a job coming
against me.<br />
<br />
So let’s flash back a little while before that now.<br />
<br />
While
I was in college I was heavily involved in FCA at the University of
Florida. One of the best decisions of my life was getting into that
community of amazing people. Even after I graduated, I stayed in
Gainesville for two years, and FCA is the type of community that you
will just always be a part of.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately for FCA, a
casual, fun trip that some of the students had gone on in Georgia ended
up being the exact opposite. While doing a little cave diving, my friend
(and the current president of FCA) Grant Lockenbach was tragically
killed along with another member of the group whom I never had the
privilege of meeting.<br />
<br />
That’s the kind of thing that no one
plans for or could ever be ready for. How could you be ready for
something like that? It’s so sudden and so painful that it just cuts
through you like a knife. One of those things where you just look up to
God and stare clueless and helpless.<br />
<br />
I went to the
memorial service they had for the two boys the following evening or so.
It was one of those times where everyone is hurting and angry even, but
yet you feel some strange sort of peace just by being around people you
love and knowing you had loved the same person. That’s the redeeming
part of funerals.<br />
<br />
We sang some worship songs led by the FCA band
and spent some time in prayer. Then to my surprise, my friend Keri got
up to speak. The reason this was a surprise to me is because she was
Grant’s girlfriend at the time of the accident. She had literally just
been with him the day before. I thought, “How the heck can she get up
and share anything and it make sense right now? What could she possibly
say? I would be way too angry at God to encourage the people of God.”
But there she was, standing before the crowd and holding the microphone.<br />
<br />
Keri
shared a story and even all this time later I haven’t forgotten it. She
said that on the Georgia trip her and Grant had gotten up early to try
and go watch the sunrise. There’s nothing like seeing the sun come up
while you’re in the mountains, and being from Florida, it’s not
something we have the chance to see often.<br />
<br />
She said that
they had gotten up quite early and headed off to find a good spot. They
headed out and found a good spot that the view would be amazing from and
they waited for that breathtaking sunrise. And they waited. And they
waited a little longer. After waiting for so long, they decided that
they should just head back to the campsite, and that apparently the sun
wasn’t going to show up that day.<br />
<br />
As they were heading
back, they slowly began to see some light shining behind them. Turning
around, they realized that it was of course the sun. She said they felt
pretty ridiculous. “How could we have thought that the actual sun was
not going to rise that morning?!”<br />
<br />
Sure enough the sun
rose. And she went on to say that even though this time that they were
all in was dark, and it seems like it’s been darker longer than it
should be, the sun would indeed rise on it all. The glory of God would
show up. The comfort and restoration promised to us by God would come
around. The sun would rise.<br />
<br />
I couldn’t get these thoughts
out of my head one November evening as I knelt by my bed. I wish I could
say I was kneeling out of faith, but I was on my knees in desperation. I
had just gotten done yelling at God in my closet so the neighbors
wouldn’t hear me screaming and think someone was being murdered. I’m not
sure that’s what Jesus meant by “prayer closet” but it works for me. It
was hard to worship God. It was hard to believe for something good to
happen because for so long just absolutely nothing had worked. I
remember literally praying for the "crumbs of the bread off the table,"
I’d receive even just any little thing from God. I didn’t care. (Matthew
15:17)<br />
<br />
But I felt the Lord keep reminding me of Keri’s
testimony, and telling me that sun would rise on me. I couldn’t shake it
and I felt a peace come over me that I can’t explain. You know how the
Bible says that God will turn our mourning into dancing? Well, it’s
true. I sat down on my bed and began to write this song.<br />
<br />
This
kind of Hope is what separates us from the rest of the world. The hope
we have in darkness. We'd be delusional to try and act like things are
always good when honestly they just suck. And I don't think God expects
us to wake up some mornings and just say, "I'm happy!" when we're not.
But what I'm finding more than ever is that the Word of God really is
what it says it is. And in my weakness, he really is strong. I don't get
it, and I don't like it, but there is a purpose for it. We may never
find out until eternity, but there is a purpose. I don't think God
wastes any of our tears. And we have to believe that the sun will rise.
That God's promises are not just neat thoughts, but they are actually
his unshakable, reliable word.<br />
<br />
And so I started believing
that. That God is going to come through, not because of any amount of
works I could do, but simply because he loves me. And good things are in
store, because he said they were.<br />
<br />
And here I am ten
months later and I can’t tell you how much has changed just in that
amount of time. I don’t tell you this because I think it's because I’m
so smart and persistent; I tell you this because I’ve simply seen the
grace and goodness of God in ways I can’t deny. You can call it what you
want if you don’t believe and it doesn’t bother me, but with everything
in me I believe that God does it all. I’m not talented enough to pull
any of this stuff off.<br />
<br />
I don’t know where you’re at or how
dark things might seem for you right now. And I guess I don’t even want
to phrase it “might seem,” things could be just straight dark. But just
as sure as day comes, I am confident that things will not always be
dark. And in your heart you have to ask yourself, “Who is more faithful?
The sun, or the Creator of the sun?”<br />
<br />
You can make it. You
don’t have to give up. You don’t have to believe the thoughts in your
head or what others may be telling you. Believe that he “is able to do
immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power
that is at work within us.” (Ephesians 3:20)<br />
<br />
I know I'm
only in my 20s and I can only tell you what I know and what I believe,
but I still believe that the sun is going to rise. Keep the faith.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj03AOF2ATQ&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Link to the song</a><br />
<br />
<i>Never seen a night like this one, and maybe I’m not right where I should be.</i><br />
<i>I’ve been looking under tables for the crumbs, that are falling from the bread of kings and queens.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Maybe you’ve grown tired of my prayers, or maybe you’re expecting more of me,</i><br />
<i>They told me that you’d always be there, but I never thought it’d be so hard to believe.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Don’t let me go, don’t close your eyes, don’t go away even when I say you should.</i><br />
<i>I know you know, I’ve told you lies, but my lies are facing up to The Truth.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Staring into the darkest of nights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?</i><br />
<i>And what I can’t see is still in your sights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?</i><br />
<br />
<i>Tight fist, and no one knows the pain, of what it means to lose what you’ve believed.</i><br />
<i>And I think you’ve got a lot to explain, but right now you’ve chosen not to speak.</i><br />
<br />
<i>But I know your voice is more than words, it’s more than just what I could hear or read,</i><br />
<i>And I’ve made the choice to put you first; so this must mean I’m right where I should be</i><br />
<i>And I know you’re here taking this with me.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Staring into the darkest of nights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?</i><br />
<i>And what I can’t see is still in your sights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?</i><br />
<br />
<i>And we will see, the dawn will rise in majesty,</i><br />
<i>And we will know, what all the pain and loss was for,</i><br />
<i>And when he comes, our tears will blow away like dust,</i><br />
<i>And I believe, that this Kingdom never lost its King,</i><br />
<i>I still believe.</i><br />
<br />
<i>And though right now I can’t see your ways,</i><br />
<i>Soon we will see face to face.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Staring into the darkest of nights, how could we believe that the sun wouldn’t rise?</i><br />
<i>And what I can’t see is still in your sights, I still believe that this sun will rise.</i></div>
</div>
Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-14440256979632500022012-08-16T13:55:00.001-04:002012-08-16T13:55:48.802-04:00Office TalkToday's lesson:<br /><br />Do your best to avoid office gossip. Even the
people you like in the office are normally negative about things going
on there. It's kind of how people like to unite I'm seeing. But keep a
positive attitude about everyone. Don't get sucked in. Avoid it because
you also don't want to know too much of what is going on, especially
coming from one person. You never know what the truth is and you can
form opinions around what they say. <br />
<br />Today's wrap up: --Stay chill, don't speak ill.--Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-6199669010570115582012-07-17T16:19:00.000-04:002013-03-29T13:22:21.924-04:00Fake It Til You Break It<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b></b>Even with all the reality shows, the constant catch phrases, and advice to be
real and 2-legit-2-quit, do you ever get the feeling that people are faking it?
On Facebook, Twitter, and especially TV. So many seem to have these happy
little lives, and they claim to be proud of so much. But I can't help but
wonder—I think they might be faking it.<br />
<br />
We live in a world of great actors. Illusionists even. People that might have
even become so good at selling lies that they start to believe the false
reality themselves. There are some people I know that I straight just do not
trust. And for good reason. (No one reading this right now I'm sure.) And maybe
you don't trust me. That's fine. Don't tell me though.<br />
<br />
I know some people that I could be standing in the middle of a thunderstorm
with, and they could tell me it is raining, and I trust them so little that my
present logic would have to conclude that it was in fact not raining as my
clothes get soaked wet.<br />
<br />
On Facebook, we only post our best pictures and the coolest events we go to. It's basically a big pile of half truth. It is anything but reality. <br />
<br />
Maybe you can call me cynical, and I wouldn’t be able to argue much. I could
say, “Well, mama didn’t raise no fool.” And you could say, “That’s improper
grammar.” You could also label me as someone who doesn’t have a lot of hope in
people. I wish I could say that I’m willing to be in everyone’s corner and that
universal supportiveness is something that I have down, but if I’m being honest
with you, I don’t think I’m always the best cheerleader. Have you seen me in a
skirt? Gross.<br />
<br />
But if I could ask you to disregard your opinion of what some of my self-issues
are for a bit, you’ve got to admit that most of us are pretty good at
disguising things. It’s like we’re all in a game of hide-and-go-seek, and we’ve
found the perfect spot to hide. (Which if you don’t know, that spot is under
the sink in the cupboards.) Even though some of us can’t say two words of
Shakespeare on a stage, it doesn’t mean we’re not good actors.<br />
<br />
Why do we feel the need to wear masks and promote false reality? Why the
constant pressure to add up to society’s standards? We all face it, and we all
feel it. In an America that constantly preaches to “Be yourself,” we figure our
best self is the self that looks like all the other selves.<br />
<br />
The people that say “I don’t care what people think of me” most likely care
what you think of them enough to tell you that they don’t care what you think.
(You may have to read that last sentence twice, but trust me it makes sense.)
We care. And we want to keep up.<br />
<br />
But why do we want to?<br />
<br />
Perhaps it is the thrill of a Facebook status change. The excitement of being
included. The same way it felt in elementary school when you weren't picked
last for dodgeball. There is a rush. There is a high. There is joy in
similarity. There is comfort in commonality. It’s the feeling you get when
you’re in a movie theater laughing at the same joke with 150 other people that
you don’t know, but it feels good that you all have the same sense of humor,
even if it’s just for a moment.<br />
<br />
I'm not going to act like I haven't done it. Not too long ago when I was
unemployed, I had people asking me all the time the dreaded question of “How
are things going?” In many, many moments my honest answer would have been “Bad.
Horrible. I hate life right now. I’m very jealous of other people. I think God
is laughing at me.” But who wants to hear that? I didn’t want to hear myself
say the truth. So I would pick at any inkling of hope I could pull out of the
weeds and act like it was something better than it was. <br />
<br />
I wasn’t lying, but I was trying my hardest to keep up with who I thought
people wanted me to be, and worse, who I thought I should be. I was
embarrassed. Ashamed that I couldn’t pull off the American Dream. I didn’t want
people to know that you could suck at life so badly while trying so hard. Yeah,
embarrassing.<br />
<br />
I’m not the only one to do that, though. We present the world a false reality,
and unfortunately many times we think it looks like a good place to be, and we
subconsciously start living in that new world. (It’s taking everything in me
right now to not allude to “Inception.”)<br />
<br />
We wear the masks. We shine our shoes. We look the part. We practice our
speeches about how everything is just as it should be. And by doing so, the
places we should be most real become the places where we hide the most. The
ones we need to be the most real with become the ones that we skew the truth to
the most. But make no mistake, fake personalities and fake realities will
produce fake relationships.<br />
<br />
I’m not against positive thinking and relentless optimism; I’m actually 100%
for it. What I am against is lying to ourselves. I am against being ashamed of
the very trials that are defining moments in our lives. I am against the
thought that if you face any sort of conflict or struggle then you are doing
something wrong in life. I am against hiding the wounds we were never meant to
hide. I am against keeping in the pain that someone else going through the same
situation needs to see so they know they are not alone.<br />
<br />
If you’ve read this far, I thank you. If you haven’t then you are not reading
this. But for those that are not Christians, I am telling you now I am about to
start talking about Jesus. Deal with it. I have to read all of your statuses
about politics and equality. If you shut out my views right now you are doing
exactly what you say you are against. (Ahhhh yeaaahhhh. That’s a mother-in-law
quality guilt trip right there.)<br />
<br />
When did having it all together become the goal of life? When did weakness
become embarrassing? In fact, the Apostle Paul even went so far as to boast in
his weakness. (2 Corinthians 11:30) I used to hear that God doesn’t want you to
be embarrassed, but I’ve since concluded that that is bad doctrine. In fact, if
my life is any form of proof, I feel I can say that God will allow you to be
embarrassed quite a bit, because nothing will kill your pride faster than a
nice fall on your face.<br />
<br />
If you think humility is for chumps then you are dead wrong. Constant success
never changes a man for the good. How many arrogant people do we have to see
fall and fail before we realize that chasing after the same image will bring
about the same results?<br />
<br />
Broken people need broken people. <br />
How do I know?<br />
<br />
Isaiah 53:2-3<br />
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance
that we should desire him.<br />
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with
suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we
esteemed him not.” <br />
<br />
It’s amazing that we have a God who exchanged majesty for suffering, a King who
was rejected by the ones he loved, and a Savior who knows the deepest of
sorrows. He not only rescues us, he relates with us.<br />
<br />
It actually takes a lot of strength to show your weakness.<br />
<br />
2 Corinthians 12:9<br />
<sup>“</sup>But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is
made perfect in weakness.’”</div>
Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-25941545104431377832011-10-20T15:33:00.001-04:002011-10-20T15:51:01.887-04:00EndureOctober 20, 2011<br /><br />Today I woke up quite annoyed. Was it because of the sound of a wood chipper outside my window shredding through what sounded like an entire tree? Not so much. Was it because I had a bad dream? I don’t think so because I can’t really remember my dreams from last night. I do, however, remember waking up in the middle of the night and wondering if I was actually awake or dreaming, and if I was dreaming I was probably going to be really upset that I was using the bathroom. <br /><br />No, I woke up today annoyed that I wasn’t going to work. What an American thing to think, huh? But yeah, I was upset. I was told I would be working at this job full time for weeks, and I was really enjoying it at first, but it has not turned out to be what I was told it would be, and today was further proof as I found myself done with my work for the week, and also done making money for the week. <br /><br />It’s been a frustrating few years for me to say the least. Nothing has quite gone according to plan, or anywhere near the plan.<br /><br />So like a great man of faith, I reluctantly and without even the weakest desire opened up my Bible, only because I just knew I should. I’ve been reading through the Psalms and today I read Psalm 74. It seems to me that I’m not the first person in the world to have felt like I am feeling. <br /><br />Psalm 74:1,9<br />“Why have you rejected us forever, O God? Why does your anger smolder against the sheep of your pasture? – We are given no miraculous signs; no prophets are left, and none of us knows how long this will be.”<br /><br />That stuff is IN the Bible. That’s real life. And here’s something straight out of my journal this morning:<br />Maybe this is just my own Psalm that is similar to that one as I write out my frustrations. It honestly sucks right now and I have no hope. And if I feel like I’m getting hope it just scares me because I know it’s not going to work out. I feel like I should now never tell anyone about anything going on until it actually happens because I’m so sick of having to follow up with “It didn’t work out.” And right now, nothing has worked out. If this is a fistfight, I feel like I haven’t given a solid punch in forever. I just keep taking the blows.<br /><br />At the risk of being a huge nerd, I am going to reference The Dark Knight right now, because this is what has been going through my mind for the past few days, and it fits so just go with.<br /><br />In the film, Bruce Wayne is about to reveal that he is Batman because he feels responsible for the deaths of the people the Joker is killing, because he said he would kill someone every day until Batman came forward. Bruce asks Alfred, “What would you have me do?” Alfred replies, “Endure, Master Wayne. Take it.”<br /><br />And this thought has been going through my mind constantly. Endure. <br /><br />Maybe it will get better, so endure. <br />Maybe it will never get better, so endure. <br /><br />I really don’t know too much of what is an absolute guarantee when it comes to life and faith in God. Some may tell you that you will be delivered from any conflict or trial, but I don’t know if that’s a guarantee. What about the martyrs who die for their faith in Jesus? They were not delivered. The men and women locked in prison walls that God never breaks down. They are not delivered, but they endure. There are men and women of faith fighting through cancer and another life-taking diseases, crying out to a God who has healed countless people but is not healing them. They endure. <br /><br />If you’ve never prayed a Psalm 74, I don’t know if this can make much sense to you right now. I’ve never had cancer or been in prison, but face down in tears I’ve prayed, “Why have you rejected me forever, O God? I am given no miraculous signs and I don’t know how long this will be.” I’ve thought so many times that things were about to change, and then they did not. But somehow I endure, and it simply cannot be by my own strength. <br /><br />Matthew 24:12-13<br />“Lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved.”<br /><br />James 1:12<br />“Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him.”<br /><br />Interesting. These verses give us <span style="font-style:italic;">some</span> guarantees, but there aren’t any guarantees for freedom in this life. Jesus did not say, “He who endures until the end… of the year.”<br /><br />The end? Death? Maybe some fights do not end until we end. <br /><br />God may never deliver you in front of your family and friends. I don’t know if it is a guarantee that if you struggle for a while in life, eventually something will click and you will be rewarded and redeemed in life for what you went through.<br /><br />You may never feel justified in this world, but maybe this is not the world that God is preparing you for. <br /><br />Romans 8:18<br />“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” <br /><br />What is coming in the next world cannot even be compared to this present one. I don’t think it should be called an “afterlife” because for those who believe, heaven is where life truly begins.<br /><br />Endure, saints. Endure! God would not let you bear it if he did not think you could take it. Our Father, who is in heaven, looks upon us from eternity’s view. Eternity will reveal more to us than we can imagine, and it will reveal more <span style="font-style:italic;">in us</span> than we ever knew was there. <br /><br />I’ve seen God move mountains, and I’ve seen mountains crumble onto men. I have only come to realize that it is not my place to understand it all; it is my job to follow. You can stand there with your fist to the sky and demand God give you justice, which I’ve done, but I’ve found that it only produces more unrest and pain. If I have to be at odds with the world, then I want to be at peace with God.<br /><br />Endure. Take it. I can guarantee you eternity will prove worth it.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-87095644885305786552011-08-23T11:50:00.000-04:002011-08-23T11:51:03.988-04:002 Psalms, 1 GodI love David. No not like that. King David, by the way. Although I do have a friend named David that I love… anyways… I love his writings and his life. I relate so much to him.
<br />
<br />I’ve been reading through the Psalms and today this struck me about Psalm 21 and 22. I’ve said in my journal entries before that it seems like every other page is a different emotional trip for me. Some days I’m super excited, happy, and at peace. Some days I sound so depressed. Well, David makes me feel a little bit better about myself, and a little more normal.
<br />
<br />Let’s just look at the beginnings of Psalm 21 and 22 to show what I mean.
<br />
<br />Psalm 21:1-2
<br />O Lord, the king rejoices in your strength. How great is his joy in the victories you give! You have granted him the desire of his heart and have not withheld the request of his lips.
<br />
<br />Psalm 22:1-2
<br />My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.
<br />
<br />It almost sounds like David is praying to two different Gods. One that is super attentive to him and gives him whatever he asks for, and another that doesn’t seem to care much about his needs and has perhaps even walked away from him.
<br />
<br />So what does this tell us? Does David have multiple personality disorder? Is God playing some kind of good cop/bad cop thing?
<br />
<br />What it tells me is that this is just real life. Sometimes your emotions will shift greatly from one page to another, because our days shift in their troubles from one day to another. Jesus even said it himself, “Each day has enough troubles of its own.” (Matthew 6:34)
<br />
<br />We must also remember that just because the days are changing and the seasons are shifting, it does not mean that God is doing the same. God is just as much loving David in Psalm 22 and he is in Psalm 21. He is just as faithful in Psalm 22 as he is in Psalm 21.
<br />
<br />You can say, “Well, I don’t feel like God is being loving towards me, he won’t even answer me when I call out,” but just because you don’t feel like he’s loving you, it doesn’t mean that he isn’t. We humans can’t even begin to know what the full extent of love looks like.
<br />
<br />Some days are easier than others, that’s just the way it is. But God is worthy of praise and thanksgiving in all moments and days. And maybe that’s what David knew better than most.
<br />
<br />Psalm 22:26
<br />“They who seek the Lord will praise him.”
<br />
<br />Not praising the Lord much? You’re probably not seeking him. This was a very big shot in the chest for me. True worshipers worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:23), not in feelings. If you seek the Lord you will praise him. So seek the Lord.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-41690129420060732452011-08-17T12:32:00.001-04:002011-08-17T12:33:55.769-04:00Weak Strength2 Corinthians 12:7-9
<br />“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
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<br />I think my anxiousness, frustration, and fear are pretty clear signs that I am not on the same tracks as God.
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<br />After spending some time repenting this morning, I realized just how weak I am. But God, being the wise and merciful teacher he is, showed me that I am just like he wants me to be: weak, and conscious of my weakness.
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<br />I know many people are the first part (weak), but finishing up the second part is where we can so easily miss it, as I have so many times.
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<br />A person who is not conscious of their weakness believes that the outcomes of life are based on their abilities and actions, not on God. They might be aware of God, and even give thanks to God for their blessings, but in their mind they think it was because of their hard work and determination, will power, etc… It always comes back to how hard they worked. I believe a person that is not conscious of their weakness asks many questions about how hard one is really trying with things in life, and makes more suggestions for them to do than they make offers to pray for them.
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<br />So many times I get so frustrated and discouraged, and the reason is that I have lost sight of the importance of my weakness and total dependence on God. And perhaps that’s why I have been going through it so much. God wants me to get this down, and this is what it takes to get it.
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<br />A real Christian should be weak and conscious of their weakness. I’m beginning to understand why Paul says, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
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<br />The weaker we are, the more glory the Lord receives. It doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? But it’s true. The Lord even says that weakness is what gives God the chance to show us not just power, but perfect power.
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<br />2 Corinthians 12:9
<br />“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
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<br />A person who understands their weakness will walk in more freedom than the wisest and strongest people in the world, because they won’t feel the weight of believing that everything in their life depends on their actions. They realize it is up to the work and grace of God to bring about anything good in their lives.
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<br />James 1:17
<br />“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”
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<br />Now I’m not saying this is a call to sit around the rest of your life and do nothing; you don’t know you are weak until you actually try to lift something or do something else. Make efforts. Do stuff. But remember your weakness as a human, and remember your strength as a child of God. We’ve got to learn to see both at the same time. Maybe that’s why God gave us two eyes.
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<br />God is some kind of chemist, isn’t he? Always mixing things, like weakness and strength, but somehow it just works.
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<br />2 Corinthians 12:10
<br />“For when I am weak, then I am strong.”Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-13752611187518264622011-06-28T13:11:00.001-04:002011-06-28T13:51:20.169-04:00Guilt and LoveRead Luke 22:47-62 before you read this post. <br /><br />This morning I was reading in Luke 22 about Jesus’ arrest and Peter denying him. Such a heartbreaking story. We all like to think that if we were Peter we wouldn’t have denied Christ, but I am not so sure I wouldn’t have. <br /><br />I’ve denied him so many times in my life. Denied his way by not waiting and listening to him. Denied his convictions and willfully sinned. He commanded us to “deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him,” (Matthew 16:24) but I have done just the opposite. I’ve denied him, taken up my desires, and followed them to where they would lead. <br /><br />Luke 22:61 is so sad. I can see it in my mind’s eye. Peter had just lived up to Jesus’ prophecy about how he would deny Jesus three times, and then the rooster crowed. <br /><br />“The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him… And he went outside and wept bitterly.”<br /><br />Could you imagine the Savior of the world, on his way to the greatest human suffering of all time to save you from your sins, starring you in the eye right after you disowned him? Man, this story has so much weight to it. No wonder Peter went outside and wept.<br /><br />The Gospel of Luke doesn’t talk about it, but the 21st chapter of Gospel of John tells us how Jesus reinstates Peter on a beach one morning after his resurrection. Jesus asks him three times if he loves him. Peter wasn’t an idiot; he knew what the three times meant. Jesus asks him if he loves him, then gives him instructions to feed and take care of his “sheep.” <br /><br />Jesus chose the man who had just rejected him when the pressure was on to be the man he builds his church on. Jesus had told him earlier, too, that the devil had desired to sift Peter like wheat, but Jesus had prayed for him that he wouldn’t fail (Luke 22:31-32).<br /><br />It is my personal thinking that Peter never forgot the face of Jesus on the night he looked at him right after he denied him. I don’t know how you could forget something like that. But if that was all Peter remembered then he would have just moved forward in guilt. All his works for the church would have been fueled by his guilt and inner regret. <br /><br />When we are motivated by regret, I don’t believe we are moving in the power of God, because “there is now NO CONDEMNATION for those that are in Christ Jesus!” (Romans 8:1) None! Only the Son of God can set you free like that. <br /><br />Peter didn’t go forth in ministry by being pushed on by his own regret and guilt; the Savior’s love, forgiveness, and call is what motivated him onward. And Peter moved forward under the power of Christ, and under his encouragement.<br /><br />I don’t think Peter ever forgot the face of Jesus on the night he denied him, but more importantly, I don’t think he ever forgot the words of Jesus that morning on the beach. <br /><br />We cannot serve the Lord out of guilt, regret, or sense of what we owe him. It makes it a game of works to be accepted by God. We serve the Lord because he loves us, and he has called us.<br /><br />There is no scale with God where we have to fill up our side with works to balance out all that he’s done for us or given us, his side of the scale will always incomprehensibly outweigh ours.<br /><br />He loves you. He desires you. You can’t earn love like that. You just can’t. Jesus desires those that deny him; he calls those that curse him. You can’t earn relentless love like that. His love is a fire that consumes our past mistakes, sins, and regrets until there is nothing left but his grace, truth, and love. <br /><br />Jesus loves me, this I know.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-64908751906093469182011-06-11T02:34:00.000-04:002011-06-11T02:35:05.454-04:00Faith, Failure, and Hope.Do you ever get scared to pray prayers because you’re afraid God is going to answer them immediately? I’ll give you an example I’m kind of embarrassed of. I don’t pray for patience anymore. I honestly don’t because I’m scared God is going to cause my car to break down, or somebody will rob me, or someone will ask me if I can watch their brat 8-year-old who has found the only remaining bottles of Surge left on the planet and drank them right before I came over. I’m only 25, but quite frankly I don’t feel like I have the nerves left to learn patience anymore. Obviously, I am way wrong and have much more to learn in patience, and plenty more nerves left to burn out. I’d just rather pray for “supernatural patience.” You know, the kind God just downloads into your soul and you get it. Like Keanu Reeves learned kung fu in the Matrix. <br /><br />But as you’ve probably learned, as have I, it doesn’t usually work like that. Life is full of lessons that can only be learned on the streets pain and in the schools of hard knocks. Mr. Rogers did his best while I was growing up, but there are some things that expressionless puppets can’t teach you. Who knew? <br /><br />Yeah, I am afraid to pray, sometimes. Am I the only one who ever treats God like he’s this fortune teller/genie thing that is just waiting for me to screw up the magic words only for it to only result in the exact opposite of what I want to happen? I have somehow done it. I’ve minimized my Almighty God down to a bad made for TV movie. <br /><br />I know the verses like Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God,” and Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” But it is a whole other challenge to actually believe them and implement them into your mind. Isn’t it funny how we can know things are true and still not believe them? We’ve been conditioned to be doubters. <br /><br />Every time I go visit my mom in Ft. Pierce, FL thereI usually try to go to the jetty at the beach and pray at night. It’s pretty much pitch black there so many of my prayers are to not get shanked and robbed. After that fear subsides I just look at the ocean and talk to God. That’s right Sunday School teachers, I am praying with my eyes open. I’ll return all my Bible bucks if you want. But not the candy, I earned it. <br /><br />One night I was out there and I was praying and just thinking about the future and my life. Places I felt like I’ve failed. Areas I wish I could change but can’t. Overall frustrations with being a young man in pursuit of God. Now you can say that God no longer speaks, or that we can’t really ever know that it is God, but I would like to clearly state that I believe God still does speak to his children. I felt like the Lord told me that night that I have become a doubter. He told me that I was always looking over my shoulder waiting for something to break or to lose something I loved. I’ve become good at praising God through the hard times, and maybe so much so that I forget the blessings the Lord has promised his people. I’ve had some things in my life happen to make me kind of not the wide-eyed, optimistic believer that I once was. Some of it is part of the maturity process of getting out of new born faith in God, and some of it is just not of God. <br /><br />I guess I’ve just become someone who is tired of getting his hopes up and being let down. So better to just be surprised than disappointed, right? While that might make sense in some worldly wisdom form, I don’t think it is how a God follower’s mentality should be. And the Lord cut me to the core that night. <br /><br />People love a good underdog story, but no one wants to be in the beginning of one. We love the story of Joseph in Genesis, look at how glorious it ended! Second in command of all of Egypt!? Come on somebody praise the Lord! Can I get an “amen?” And yes, that is one of my favorite stories. The guy went through hell and God exalted him. We all want to be Joseph from Genesis 41, but no one wants to be Joseph from chapters 37-40. Having your own brothers throw you in a pit, getting taken out of the pit and sold as a slave, turning down sex and getting accused of rape, put in prison, and helping people in prison who get out and forget about you for years. No one wants to be that guy. <br /><br />The world is quick to look at a chapter 37 Joseph and call him a failure. Give up man. It’s over. Quit trusting in your God that doesn’t bless you. Give up on your “dreams,” they were just dreams. <br /><br />But if they would only wait until chapter 41. If they would only consider the end of the road. If we would only consider that maybe it is all a part of a process bigger than ourselves and bigger than our weak minds. That maybe God HAS indeed heard every single prayer we’ve prayed and seen every single tear we’ve cried. And maybe, just maybe, he knows and loves his precious children like he says he does.<br /><br />One of my favorite verses is 1 Corinthians 13:12.<br />“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”<br /><br />This verse clearly states that we just won’t understand some things. Many times we can see that God is up to something, but we just don’t know what it is fully. We get so frustrated that we don’t know the whole story or every detail of the work being done, but honestly, we’re just not going to know some things. At least not right now. But soon, we will see it face to face. We will see the completeness of the love of God and we will understand it. We will know fully. We really will get it.<br /><br />The frustration of not knowing can lead to doubt. One time I felt so confused about things going on in my life and I was becoming convinced that I must have totally been missing God because I was confused, and God is “not the author of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33).” Then I heard the Lord say, “You’re not confused; you’re just discouraged.”<br /><br />If I feel like God is not being faithful, it’s because I don’t know what faith really is.<br />If I feel like God is not being good, it’s because I don’t know what good really is. <br />If I feel like God is not being loving its because I don’t know what love really is. <br /><br />God is not a magician; he is the Creator. God is not a genie; he is the Good Shepherd. As my friend Mike once put it, “A really Good Shepherd.” It is all part of the journey in faith. Learning to bet it all on God. Accepting the hard times but trusting that the Way actually knows the way.<br /><br />Pray on, prayer.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-71931495309127118812011-06-01T00:17:00.001-04:002011-06-01T00:17:57.056-04:00Viva La Resistance!On this Friday afternoon in Arlington, Virginia, I find myself sitting in a park I didn’t know existed. I’ve been up here a few weeks visiting my sister and brother-in-law. I don’t have a car so I’ve been walking around today. I saw this park so I decided I would stop here for a bit.<br /><br />To get to this picnic table I am currently sitting at, and to hang out with these wonderful ants wandering around it, I had to walk down a somewhat steep little hill with no walkway or stairs. I’ve been walking around in the sandals I have been wearing for about the past four years, and being a Florida boy, I’ve worn them a lot. Upon my descent down the hill I quickly realized just how much I have worn them. I might as well have been wearing skis. There is little to no traction left on my sandals and I found myself going down the hill much faster than originally expected and intended. I even did one of those little hops near the end so I wouldn’t fall. I didn’t fall but I sure looked like a girl pirouetting around as I landed. Nancy Kerrigan style. Win-lose.<br /><br />You never realize the importance of good traction until you are without it. There is just something about friction and resistance that makes things work. In no way do I understand physics or have even attempted to take a physics class in college, but I do know that life is built around it. Physically and spiritually. God has a way of taking things that seemingly work against each other and using them to produce growth and good things. Sometimes the friction hurts. Sometimes we don’t understand it or why it is happening, but either we believe Romans 8:28 or we do not. <br /><br />“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”<br /><br />One of my favorite stories as a kid was the story of the prophet Balaam and his donkey that talks to him in Numbers 22. I thought talking animals were so cool. I guess I watched “Homeward Bound” one too many times. <br /><br />The story goes like this: This guy Balaam would go around and speak what the Lord told him to, and inevitably upset a lot of people. (Another example of the friction a life for God can create.) One day Balaam saddled up his trusty donkey and hit the road. Problem was, he was headed down a road the Lord did not want him on. So God sent an angel to stand in the middle of the road. And it wasn’t one that was bringing “glad tidings of comfort and joy,” this one had a big sword ready to swing. The donkey was able to see the angel, so she stopped heading towards it. Three times the angel appeared on the road in their way, and each time the donkey would either try to walk away or sit down, to which Balaam would get angry and beat her for. <br /><br />After the third time of this, God went Disney on them and opened the mouth of the donkey so she could speak. And she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?” And what is funny to me is that Balaam talks back to the donkey like it’s no big deal that she is speaking. “You made me look like a fool! If I had a sword I’d kill you!” The donkey said in reply, “Haven’t I been your donkey for a while now? Do I ever do stuff like this?”<br /><br />Then God allowed Balaam to see the angel, and then he hit the ground. The angel said, “I am here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me. If your donkey had not turned away I would have killed you.”<br /><br />God spared Balaam that day, more than just by not taking his life-breath. I wonder what would have happened if Balaam would have made it all the way to the destination God did not want him to go to.<br /><br />When I think back on my own life I can think of multiple different times I was heading in the wrong direction without even knowing it. And that’s just in the metaphorical sense, let’s not even talk about how many times I’ve actually been lost in a car (especially in D.C. this week!) God has been so merciful to me and closed doors and gotten me off of paths that lead to destruction. <br /><br />I wonder how many times God has put an angel in the road and we didn’t even know it.<br /><br />We try so hard to make things work. The way of America is that if you have anytime to actually breathe then you’re not running hard enough. When we face hard times and opposition, we beat the donkeys we’re riding on to make them do what we want. Because if something is not going as we planned or as we’ve desired, the problem must be that we’re doing something wrong or not working hard enough. And we try our best to force the outcomes that we feel are best, or worse, that we feel we deserve. <br /><br />I wonder how many times God has put an angel in the road and we didn’t even know it.<br /><br />Psalm 37:23<br />“The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord upholds him with his hand.”<br /><br />If we are seeking the Lord, and seeking his will, then he is going to be leading us, even when things are hard or confusing. It is the traction we need to actually get anywhere on our journeys. Psalm 23 makes it clear that the Lord is our Shepherd that leads us, but we still go through valleys of the shadow of death. Does that mean that God has led us to the valley?<br /><br />I’m not saying that this is an easy thing. When things don’t work it is frustrating. I’ve literally laid my hands on people, prayed, and seen them healed right on the spot. I’ve prayed the same prayers with the same faith and seen them die. There really are no formulas to faith in God. Sometimes I don’t get it.<br /><br />I have spent many times kneeling by my bed in tears, begging God to hear my requests. Wondering that if God is truly for me then why are there so many things against me? Why does it seem to work for others but not for me? “Why haven’t you come in power, Lord? Why haven’t you stepped in? How many mustard seeds of faith does it take to see a mountain move?”<br /><br />Real life is full of questions like these. We may never get answers to many of our questions, but we don’t serve God because he is the question answerer, we serve him because he is the King.<br /><br />Paul says in Philippians 3:10-11 we go through the journey with him “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed by his death, if by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”<br /><br />Perhaps the greatest example of friction is the friction between death and life. You can’t get much more opposite than that. In the Kingdom of God it takes death to get life. Death of our will. Death of our desires. That we may know him. We share in his suffering, but even greater, we share in his resurrection and life!<br /><br />Things are difficult? You’ve tried all you know to do? I wonder if there is an angel in the road. You can’t get them to love you? Your boss won’t notice you? I wonder if there is an angel in the road.<br /><br />We need the resistance of the world. Our spirit needs the friction with the world. We need the traction, the uncomfortable ridges and breaks in our would-be smooth surfaces. You know what something with no traction is? It’s a slide. And there’s only one direction a slide will take you. Psalm 24 says, “Who will ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place?” Go try to climb a hill in bowling shoes.<br /><br />We need the trials and pain sometimes. Don’t be afraid to wait upon the Lord. I know waiting goes against everything most people tell you to do, but hey, maybe it’s time for a mutiny on what is ruling this world. VIVA LA RESISTANCE!Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-76457514459033422602011-04-26T18:08:00.004-04:002011-05-31T23:46:51.219-04:00This is a Little MuchThis is one of my more transparent journal entries. I wrote it at 2am on Sunday night, and I almost didn't post it. But I hope that someone can relate to my struggles and screw ups and see that the grace of God is a powerful thing. Some people might not agree with this, but nobody agrees with everybody. Remember these are my thoughts, they don't have to be yours. anyways here goes...<br />---------------------------------------<br /><br />In Luke 16:10 Jesus says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much…” Christian “entrepreneurs” use this a lot – “If you are faithful with a little, God will make you faithful with a lot.” And I am just now realizing there is a small, but major difference from the verse to the saying. And the difference is the words “God will.”<br /><br />It is not sinful to desire growth and increase. God speaks many times to Israel about increase. It is not sin to want to become better at your craft and more skilled each new day. Ambition is not evil, and many possess what I believe is a spiritual gift to make things grow. If a small group grows because more people are being discipled by disciples, great! If a ministry grows because people have dedicated themselves to prayer, faith, and good works, then praise God! There is healthy growth that I believe God is all about.<br /><br />The danger I am coming to see, at least in my own life, is that growth has become expected. It should be deserved like hourly wages for labor. You work hard, then you deserve a better life. You give, then you should be given to. It’s only fair. What goes around comes around and you reap what you sow. If you’ve been faithful with the little, then the clock is ticking down for when God makes you faithful with a lot.<br /><br />Jonathan, you’ve been faithful to serve God in the prison by preaching and leading the music and doing other gigs for free, you deserve your reward of an increased career in ministry and entertainment. The crowds will only get bigger and your songs and sermons will only get better. Because God said, “If you’re faithful with the little, I will make you faithful with much.”<br /><br />Wait. No. That’s not what he said. What he said was, “Whoever can be trusted with very little CAN also be trusted with much.”<br /><br />And that is true. It has to be, I mean it’s in the Bible. And I think many, many times that if you are faithful with little that God will make you faithful with much. Sure. But our expectations and our sense of what is owed to us is what is killing us. <br /><br />I find myself active in ministry and in pursuit of my dreams to do full time and funded what I love doing even now for free. But this American “I deserve” mentality has crept its way into my head and drilled a pipeline that has been feeding into my heart. I go and do what I do because I think it is going to lead to something bigger. All I am doing is paying my dues, getting my street cred, and building bridges that will inevitably take me to my dream life. I’m constantly looking over my shoulder for the right connection that is going to finally see me, love me, and take me to the top. And while, yes, I am doing good works that really do come from good motives, they are not solely fed by Godly desires. And this is the path that leads you out of the anointing of the Lord. <br /><br />Want to see an effective man go to work and become ineffective? Get him out of the anointing of the Lord. Want to see someone full of potential go chase their tail? Get them out of the anointing of the Lord. That God-given, supernatural ability to be used. Just ask King Saul what it’s like when you lose the Lord’s anointing. <br /><br />What if God’s whole plan all along was for you and I to serve where he places us, and to be content with what he has called us to do. God may have given you big dreams and desires to see a great accomplishment for the Kingdom that is off the scales, and he does give us dreams and visions like that. But I think that true faithfulness is about being committed and passionate for the work God has given you to do where you are. Only God can open doors anyhow. You can run yourself to death but if God doesn’t want to open a new door, he’s not going to do it. Oh sure you can go kick some doors open yourself, but don’t be surprised when it turns out to be one that leads to emptiness. And isn’t it so much better to knock on doors that God is waiting on the other side of? All this sounds like something Jesus talked about once… (Matthew 7:7)<br /><br />God’s goal isn’t to screw with your head and heart. He’s not out to make you doubt your calling or your faith in him. But we must daily check our motives for our work in the Kingdom. God will reward us, that is a promise, but it might not be what we think that the reward should be.<br /><br />There’s a line of a Lifehouse song that has been banging around in my head lately and I feel it lines up well with this—“I didn’t get what I want I got what I need…”<br /><br />If you’re being faithful with the little, you can probably be faithful with much. But I wonder if there are some things that we are calling little that God is calling much. Perhaps some of the greatest accomplishments for the Kingdom of God show the least amount of results for the kingdom of this earth.<br /><br />—Father, give us eyes to see things as you see them, and willing hearts to serve as you’ve called us to.—Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-63951909185227832892011-03-24T10:04:00.003-04:002011-03-24T10:07:10.891-04:00Justification and SanctificationI thought this was a really good look at what the difference between Justification and Sanctification are. You hear these words a lot in church, but I honestly get confused on them. They are separate workings but should never be separated from each other. Meaning, they are 2 different acts, but they go together. I spent some time studying this morning about it and found this website that has a pretty good explanation. <br /><br />http://www.ffruits.org/firstfruits02/justificationvssanctification.html<br /><br />check out that page, it give some good bullet points that helped me a lot.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-88884713610725691412011-02-11T17:26:00.002-05:002012-01-25T14:06:09.683-05:00All the Single Babies, All the Single BabiesAh, wedding season is here again. But does it ever really end? If you’re like me then you have more wedding invitations on your refrigerator right now than you do pudding snacks on inside of it. I currently am living with two roommates who are engaged and getting married this semester, and last year I attended three weddings of my roommates from that year (not to mention all the wedding showers and engagement parties, etc…) And I went to a few more weddings of friends who I didn’t live with. I’ve been a groomsman, given speeches, DJ’d, MC’d, and sang in weddings for the past few years and there are five weddings on the radar for the next three months. So I have been around a lot of this stuff. And if anyone needs any kind of bridal magazine or pre-marriage books let me know, I’ve got a billion of them lying around the apartment and shoved under couches. <br /><br />This is not to provoke sympathy, although it is welcomed, but this is to let you know that I have seen my share of nuptials. And I’ve gone solo to all of these weddings as well, which as you may know, is one of the things that can make you feel less confident in yourself than any other type of event. It can even be worse than going to the gym and seeing a girl bench press more than you. Not that that’s ever happened to me before. <br /><br />Before I go any further let me just say that all of this is not directed to anyone who’s married. If I thought you were stupid for getting married I wouldn’t have attended your weddings. Even if I do think you are stupid for getting married, do you really care what I think? Why don’t you just go run to the arms of your spouse for consoling? Go on! Get out of here! We don’t need you! Right, guys? No but seriously, this is not directed at the married folks. <br /><br />So here many of us sit. Single. Ready to mingle. No one to mingle with. It can get pretty depressing and discouraging sometimes. I mean let’s just be honest, watching everyone else seem to find their soul mates while you sit on the couch watching documentaries about nature on Friday night can be a bummer. And then they show all the animals finding their mates and you’re like “Ah come on, Discovery Channel!!” And then to top it all off, even Michael Scott is finally finding love.<br /><br />You start to wonder why the heck God even has verses in the Bible like Genesis 2:18.<br />“The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable helper for him.’” Or Proverbs 18:22, “He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord.”<br /><br />So apparently this whole marriage thing is a good thing because they keep using the word good, and doesn’t the Bible also say that God will withhold no good thing from us? (Psalm 84:11) So what game is God trying to play here? Is it that old gag from the cartoons where they dangle the carrot in front of the horse to get it to move but the horse doesn’t realize he can’t actually get the carrot? Is God dangling this idea of love and marriage in front of us even though it’s not something we will ever get to? <br /><br />If there’s something good then why don’t I have it? Why am I getting older and older and having less and less single friends while I stick it out by myself? Have I not sought the Lord as much as everyone else? Am I caught up in some kind of sin I don’t know about? Am I way behind everyone else in maturity and I’m really not ready for a relationship still?<br /><br />Are any of these questions you have asked? I have asked all of them, and some I still ask. <br /><br />You start to re-analyze your life and situations and thought patterns. You move from feeling you deserve love straight to thoughts that you’re in the wrong because you want the love of a spouse when really you should just desire God only. There’s got to be some middle ground there doesn’t there, though? <br /><br />No, we don’t deserve love. We don’t deserve any good thing that the Lord has already blessed us with or will bless us with. But that being said, he still wants to bless us. And the Lord has given us an innate desire to be with someone. I don’t think it is evil at all. <br /><br />I believe that the Lord should be the one who satisfies us, but what does the Bible say? “He satisfies your desires with good THINGS,” (Psalm 103:5). So God establishes relationships in our lives (with spouses and friends alike) that allow us to be satisfied, and though it is through a person, it is part of God satisfying us. <br /><br />You’re not evil for wanting to belong to a loving relationship. It’s as natural as desiring food to eat. It’s a God given instinct. But just like with food, too much desire for it is where the problem comes in.<br /><br />The danger I see in the American church today, though, is that in our efforts to uphold the sanctity of marriage and push for husbands and wives to live holy and fully in love with each other and in service to each other (which is a great thing to be preached and it very much should be) is that we’ve turned marriage into a destination and an idol. Now grant it, I am on the other side of this thing, but so many times it seems to me that we treat marriage like the starting point of actual, real life. “Alright, you’re married, now you’re officially a man.”<br /><br />We think that people are just magically shot with a new dose of wisdom because they now wear a ring, or now they are way more advanced in their maturity than the single folks. And so, warped by this view, we turn marriage into a necessary achievement to obtain peace and to have purpose in life. It can so easily become an idol to people who are single. We desire it so deeply and passionately that it transforms into lust. Like some kind of Transformer from the movies… Optimus Bride? (ok yeah that was stupid.)<br /> <br />Church people do a great job of putting it on a pedestal, too. I truly believe that people may be in good intentions with me, but it’s crazy how many times someone has asked me how I’m doing, only to follow it up with, “Are you dating anyone?” I know they are just curious and want what’s best for me, but Church, how are we supposed to expect people not to view marriage as an idol when it comes up every conversation, and like it is something we are supposed to have by now that we don’t have. <br /><br />>>Side note: Now for Jonathan Tony, I admit I bring a lot of it on myself with my stupid songs and “clubs” I’ve started. (But doing comedy you gotta use what’s in front of you, and then you blow it up.) And you won’t and don’t usually upset me if we talk about relationships and my views on them. And if you really know me I hope you can tell that I joke around about it a lot. That’s kind of how I view the power of humor- it can keep things in perspective. And I enjoy talking about it. If you’re ever unclear on what I’m really thinking just ask me. Ok side note over.<<<br /><br />I know that God never intended marriage to be this. This destination. This goal. This idol that it can so easily turn into. Anything that takes the place of God is sin, and isn’t it just like sin to take a blessing of the Lord and pervert it so it becomes what takes us away from the Father?<br /><br />When marriage changes from a blessing to a beginning point we miss out on so much of what God has done and is doing. The blessings and purpose of our past seem meaningless, just time we had to spend in time out until teacher let us back onto the playground. The work that we were able to accomplish because we were single seems pointless because we didn’t have anyone to share it with or take dorky pictures with and put them on Facebook. To put it bluntly- this is so stupid. <br /><br />YOUR LIFE DOES NOT BEGIN AT MARRIAGE! See what large letters I use as I type to you with my own hand. People, we have got to get past the glory of a wedding and the thrill of changing a status to “In a Relationship.” We must grow up! I am speaking all of this to myself by the way. Jonathan, quit being silly. See? I really believe that the church cannot rise up until it grows up. And this is part of the growth process. <br /><br />Let’s look at what are the facts for the singles out there. You are single. God is not rejecting you. You are single. If you seek the Lord and fear him, I truly believe that there is not much room to screw up something as lifelong and important as marriage. So apparently God has a plan for you right now that does not involve a partner yet. So what are you doing now? What are your advantages? I’ve heard it said of aspiring missionaries that if they are not serving like missionaries right now, then what makes them think they will do it when they get overseas? I believe the same goes for us. What makes us think marriage will kick life into high gear if we’re not already at work in what God is calling us to do?<br /><br />Our lives must have completeness and meaning based on something that no man or woman can give. The source of our strength and realization of purpose must come from the Lord. <br /><br />And now let me just be clear, I am pro-marriage. Yes, it’s a good thing. You don’t want to be standing at the altar on your wedding day and saying something like, “Hey, my life is perfectly fine and I’m wholly content without you, you know? But… I guess this is ok, too.” Of course a spouse will add joy and blessing to your life, but it cannot be what defines our lives. The truth is, we may never be married, and if we die unwed I don’t want to be going out feeling like I did not accomplish something. Marriage is not an accomplishment. It is a calling, and in itself a ministry of service to God. <br /><br />So as we watch our friends ride off into the sunset with their husbands and wives, we must not sit back and wish the whole time that it was us... and like cut out their faces from the wedding pictures and put ours in them. Or randomly walk around throwing bouquets of flowers into random crowds of people. That kind of stuff can get you arrested. So let us remember the command from Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice!” Let’s be happy for people when good things are happening! And pray to God they remember we did and then will get us huge gifts when it’s our weddings! <br /><br />You know who the happiest person I saw lately was? It was a little baby in church. Laughing and smiling at everyone. And I’m pretty sure that baby was single. So hey, if a baby can be single and happy with life, why shouldn’t we be, too? This is a call to be big babies.<br /><br />Matthew 6:8 <br />“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-69895822392108620162010-08-23T22:19:00.000-04:002010-08-23T22:28:28.706-04:00Do the Body GoodSo I’ve been doing some recording of my songs with my friend Jordan in his room, I call it the J-Dub Music Factory. It’s been a lot of fun, hearing something I wrote on a piano or guitar and adding more instruments to it is so cool to hear when it’s all put together.<br /><br />The hardest part of it is when you hear what you just recorded played back, raw, unedited and with no accompaniments. You feel so exposed and nervous. Like a kid in middle school that just sent a note to a girl that says he likes her only to see her laugh at it with her friends while they point fingers towards me… I mean him. But anyways, you’re like, “Dang, that’s me? That sounds awful!” You hear yourself differently than you hear yourself singing in the shower. It’s pretty tough to hear, especially for a singer like me.<br /><br />But what’s crazy is that after Jordan played the other instruments we’d recorded with me singing, it didn’t sound so bad. I was like, “Hey, I can actually listen to this. Not completely terrible.”<br /><br />I think it’s the same thing with our daily lives in the Body of Christ. <br /><br />Romans 12:4-5<br />“Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”<br /><br />It is my belief that there are no soloists in the Body of Christ. Sunday morning church may have told you differently. And trust me, I love Sister Maggie’s Sunday offering solo special as much as the next guy, but we’re not meant to sing our lives out alone. “Each member belongs to all the others,” we are each an instrument that was made to play in a glorious orchestra.<br /><br />Just like the other instruments that were added helped to cover up the cracks, shallowness, and altogether weakness of my 12-year-old boy-like singing voice, as members in the Body we are meant to balance, protect, and uplift the other members.<br /><br />Romans 12:15-16<br />“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another.”<br /><br />The Body is meant to care for the Body. Yet for so long we’ve been a masochistic body. Sometimes more than the world could ever hurt us, we’ve been hurting ourselves. Instead of rejoicing with those who rejoice, we get jealous. Instead of weeping with those who weep we say that they should get over it, or counsel them with all of our great wisdom and analyze their problems to death, when really they just need someone to listen to them.<br /><br />A hand never goes to the places a foot has been. The foot was not really made to be a hand but got demoted; it was perfectly designed and placed by God to be a foot. A hand should not try to make a foot another hand. Nobody wants to try and eat a sandwich with a foot-hand. Gross. You’ve been perfectly designed and placed in the Body by God. Be who you are supposed to be in it! But the Body must work together. <br /><br />I remember a Savior who was on his hands and knees as a servant, placing hands where feet step. I remember a Savior who was pierced in his hands and feet because he loved every part of the Body. <br /><br />His body is our example, and we are his body. Really weep with those who weep. Really rejoice with those who rejoice. Be who you are in this great Body of Christ. Jesus told us to remember his body that was broken. So be pierced. Be humbled. <br /><br />We are broken, and we belong to each other, and we all belong to Jesus. We are the body of a Savior who was “pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities,” but we are beautiful.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-30417395714475590882010-04-12T20:43:00.000-04:002010-04-12T20:44:02.841-04:00Layers Upon Layers Upon LayersMatthew 7:24-27<br /><br />The Wise and Foolish Builders<br /> 24"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."<br /><br />I had just graduated high school. My greatest dreams lay ahead of me. I could go anywhere I wanted to go, be anything I wanted to be. The possibilities were endless that summer.<br /><br />So where else was there to go but to a tree farm to work out in the hot sun all the live-long summer. Every young, ambitious man’s dream. Obviously.<br /><br />If you’ve never had to do manual labor for an extended period of time I suggest you try it. Apparently it builds character? Thanks for those words of wisdom, mom. <br /><br />I learned many things at the blessed tree farm. Like what a man smells like who refuses to bathe. And that you can get a massive sunburn even if it’s cloudy outside. And also that if you drive a lawn mower over a PVC water pipe, that you will have created an erupting geyser in a split second.<br /><br />Of all the wonderful things I learned there, I suppose the thing that most impressed me was that it’s much harder to plant a tree than you’d think. You don’t just drop the tree (with a 2-foot diameter root ball) in hole, kick some dirt in, spray it with some water and leave. The tree will die if you do that. I know. I saw them die. Not my fault of course.<br /><br />To properly plant a tree you must put it in the ground and as you fill in the hole with soil, you must use a hose and continually wash in the dirt. It takes much longer than you’d think, and it is so vital that there are no air pockets around the roots. Fill in dirt. Wash it in. Repeat. Repeat. Get a blister. Repeat.<br /><br />When you’re walking by a palm tree you really have no clue what the roots look like underneath and how important it is for its life that it was properly planted. You only see the surface, but the most important part of the tree is beneath the ground.<br /><br />Have you ever had big, amazing, life changing moments in the presence of God? Maybe times where you’ve cried harder than you ever thought you could. Maybe the power of God was so strong you couldn’t even stand. Maybe you heard his voice so direct and so clear. Maybe you felt his love deeper than anything ever before. Maybe you saw a miracle. These are some of the moments we never forget. The ones we give testimonies about in church or on mission trips. The ones you know you would never even need a picture to remember it by because it will always be clear in your mind’s eye.<br /><br />Those moments are great and important to our spiritual lives, but if we live waiting for the next big God explosion to blow our minds, I believe we will be people who are spiritually dying.<br /><br />I think that like the roots of the trees, perhaps it is the things we will never remember that are the most important for our growth. Just because you can’t see them or remember them does not mean they were not impactful in a most important way. They are the daily times of communion with God that we must wash in over and over, a foundation of layers of continual faithfulness and seeking after God. And just because maybe you can only see or remember the top layer (perhaps what you read in your Bible yesterday) does not mean the other layers of time with God in the past have no relevance or significance.<br /><br />We are building our foundations on the Rock of Jesus with every daily reading of scripture, prayer service, time of worship, and good deed. So when the rains come down, the streams rise, and the winds blow and beat against us we will not fall, because our layers are firm and our roots run deep. If our foundation is not solid, there’s no way anything on top of it will remain.<br /><br />Jesus teaches us in Matthew 6 to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” The bread we buy from Publix was not the bread he was referring to. Real bread only stays fresh for about a day then it gets hard and stale. When I was in Paris I saw people go to the bakery every morning for fresh bread → une baguette. I think with God and man, it must be a daily walk, daily trust, daily praise, and a daily dose of grace and guidance. Our daily bread. <br /><br />Just like the soil around the roots, the word of God must be continually washed into our lives. “Pray continually.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17)<br /><br />You’re not going to remember every moment you ever spend with the Lord, just like Michael Jordan doesn’t remember every basket he’s ever made, but each moment with God is necessary to our growth. You can’t build on top of something that is not there.<br /><br />Seek the Lord. Build layers on top of layers of intimate and precious moments with your God. Because I believe with all my heart that even if you don’t remember them all, your Father does.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-23705318744015303582010-03-08T20:55:00.001-05:002010-03-08T21:02:08.459-05:00Wave Pool LifeWhen I was a kid I spent a lot of time at Ocala’s premier water park Wild Waters. Oh yeah, Ocala has it all. We even have TWO Wal-Marts!<br /><br />Anyways, like most of the other kids in the park, I’d drop whatever I was doing or leave whatever line I was in and run as fast as I could (or walk safely if a lifeguard was around) to get to the wave pool whenever I heard that it was time for the “Wild Waters Waves!” A big, booming voice would come on every hour and announce that the once still waters of the giant wave pool were about to… well… wave. And I’m talking massive waves! The kind that could sink ships! It was always exciting.<br /><br />On one particular wave experience, I turned out to not be as excited as I usually was. I don’t know if it was a bad corndog, too much energy spent from running all over the park, or if I was just too overcome with excitement, but for some reason these waves seemed a bit bigger than they were any other time before. And somehow I had gotten out into the middle of the wave pool and didn’t even have a raft. <br /><br />The waves kept coming. Each one fiercer than the last. I found myself losing all of the energy I had once before had. With every second that passed it became harder and harder to stay afloat. My head kept going underwater and by the time I had kicked myself up enough to catch my breath I would start sinking again. There I was, an eight-year-old kid coming closer than ever before to what I knew of death.<br /><br />At one point, I looked to the right and saw a girl around my same age floating on a tube with her dad swimming right next to her. In an act of desperation I reached out and grabbed onto her tube so that I could keep above water. And then, suddenly, the girl looked back at me and into my eyes… and she gave me the weirdest look I’d ever seen someone give me. Perhaps that was the first weird look from a girl I had ever gotten; I should have known right then that I would live a life constantly filled with many more.<br /><br />After that girl stared into my soul and annihilated my self-esteem, I decided to let go of her floatation device. Apparently I would have rather died than take a look like that from a woman. (Nowadays I kind of embrace them; perhaps I am numb to them?)<br /><br />As I tried my best to survive in those wild waters, completely exhausted and with shattered confidence, I prayed to God every second for the waves to stop. Finally they did. And thankfully, I did not die.<br /><br />Years later, I still feel like I am in the same place as that awkward boy in the wave pool. Not really getting anywhere. Not really swimming. Just treading water. Trying not to die. So much effort spent on kicking and paddling as hard as my feet and arms can, but going nowhere. Just treading water.<br /><br />The Psalmist, that boy, and now this man all pray the same thing:<br />“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths where there is no foothold. I have come into deep waters; the floods engulf me.” (Psalm 69:1-2)<br /><br />It’s a frustrating place to be, especially when one of my greatest fears is wasting time I will never get back. But here I am, treading water. For all my dreams, attempts, and pursuits, I am swimming nowhere it seems. I tread water. I swim to keep myself from drowning.<br /><br />I’m not dying, but am I really living? And is this life abundantly?<br /><br />I am finding life is not a straight shot to the finish line. It is a road with intersections, turns, and traffic lights. Sometimes when we feel like we are stuck, just treading water and going nowhere, maybe we are really just transitioning.<br /><br />2 Corinthians 4:16<br />“Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”<br /><br />Maybe we are in another transition point in life. Some transitions are smooth and painless, but some are complicated and take more time than we expected them to. But this is real life. And I think that’s why they are called transitions and not dead ends, because we are going somewhere still, it’s just that things are changing. Time is not our enemy; it is a part of our process.<br /><br />Being people that want to be continually moving forward is not a bad thing, but we must realize that occasionally the only action needing to be taken is the act of patience. If we are putting our trust in the Lord, we must put our timing in Him as well. <br /><br />Sometimes saying, “I’ll stay where you have me,” is just as important as saying, “I’ll go where you send me.”<br /><br />It’s amazing what a little shift in your perspective can do for your faith. Try looking at your situation a little differently, and know above all else that God is looking at your situation, too.<br /><br />If it feels like you’re treading, maybe you’re really just transitioning.<br /><br />Psalm 116:5-7<br />“The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion.<br />The Lord protects the simple-hearted; when I was in great need, He saved me.<br />Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.”Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-470723936314854742009-12-29T23:37:00.002-05:002009-12-29T23:39:39.129-05:00Casting and BakingSo I’ve been in Ft. Pierce the past few days; naturally I had to go fishing today. Despite what you may have heard, I am the worst fisherman you know. I mean, if I believed in luck, I’d say all the Irish in my blood floats away from me the moment I get a rod and reel in my hands. I think I’m averaging about one fish a year. And that’s not an exaggeration. (And one of those fish I didn’t even hook; I just reeled it in and took the credit.)<br /><br />I wish I were one of those people that could say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter if I catch anything. It’s just about being out there and being with nature.” But I’m not. I get annoyed. I get mad at the fish. “You stupid fish! Bite the lure! You’re not better than me, fish!” And of course there’s always some 10-year-old who’s catching sharks and whales like twenty yards down from me. And while I’m not catching fish, I just get to thinking about things and analyzing my situations. And thus, here I am with another journal entry.<br /><br />I think life is a lot like fishing. It seems like we cast a lot. Always casting. Throwing it out there. Trying. Sometimes it works. The fish bite. People like you. You reel in a big one. Things work out pretty well, and it’s enjoyable. But a lot of the times you just cast. No one bites. You try a different spot; try something new. No bites. Apparently, even the fish don’t want to be around you, and they’re fish. And then you start to rethink mama’s words of wisdom, “Oh, there’s plenty of fish in the sea, Sweetie.”<br /><br />But we cast on. Waiting. Praying. Just thinking maybe this will be the cast that works. Praying that if God really loves you, you’ll get something on this cast.<br /><br />And then… suddenly. What’s that?! A tug. A nibble. You feel the rod shake a little. Finally! You start to reel in quickly. This must be a big one! Look at the rod bending! Alright… wait. It’s stuck on a stupid rock.<br /><br />Once again, it’s disappointment, a moment of hope and excitement, only to be let down again. And it kind of feels worse because you got your hopes up. But maybe that’s life—a lot of casting, and a lot of reeling in seaweed.<br /><br />When the fish aren’t biting, there’s nothing you can do about it. There is nothing in your tackle box that can make a fish want to bite. And if you’re like me, that is the most frustrating thing in the world. Being helpless to change a situation. And no amount of casts, tries, or even prayers can change it.<br /><br />Sometimes we just cast. <br /><br />If we’re real with ourselves, I’m sure we can look back on many times in our lives where the fish weren’t biting, and there was nothing you could do about it. Prayers didn’t change it. Your tears didn’t change it. And of course, your heartfelt words might as well have not even been spoken. <br /><br />Sometimes the fish aren’t biting.<br />Sometimes we just cast. <br /><br />But you know what I started realizing on each cast? I was getting better. Each cast was going farther. In fact, I almost caught a bird. And I would have, too, but I didn’t want to deal with a bird on a hook. <br /><br />And maybe the Master of the waters knows something we don’t about these fish. It’s hard to see when you’re just standing there feeling like an idiot with a stick and a hook, but maybe there is something going on below the water that we can’t see. <br /><br />Sometimes there’s nothing you can do, and that is alright.<br /><br />I’m not much of a baker either, but I do know a few things about cakes. When you’re making a cake from scratch you have to crack the eggs, put in the flour, pour in the oil and the water, add something else I probably don’t know about, and then mix it. Mix it all in. Keep mixing. Then pour it in the pan. But then, you put it in the oven and leave it.<br /><br />There is nothing more you can do now. It’s the oven’s turn to do something you cannot. You must let it bake.<br /><br />You must let it go, and let it bake.<br /><br />In some situations, I believe there comes a time in our process when we must give it over to God, stop working and wrestling with it, and let it bake. It’s a time that the Lord will release you to let it go, and there’s nothing more you need to do but wait. Wait while He does something you cannot do. Let it bake.<br /><br />Psalm 27:13-14<br />I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.<br /><br />Never stop praying. Never stop casting. But we must remember that God is continually teaching us, and that He loves us very much. If you are doing what you can do, He will do what you are not able to do. And if the fish aren’t biting, maybe He knows something you don’t. I think Jesus knows a thing or two about fishing (check out John 21.)<br /><br />Sometimes we can’t make the fish bite or the cake bake, but at some point the fish have got to eat, and at some point you’ll be eating some pretty good cake.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6769652070971751242.post-83281984378737727652009-11-30T22:19:00.001-05:002009-11-30T22:19:28.301-05:00Christmas Is ComingI think when I have kids I’m going to make them wait until they are at least 9 or 10-years-old until we celebrate Christmas with gifts and food. I’ll make them watch the neighbors put up lights, and go to school and hear about their friends’ gifts and what they got to play with. I’ll make them sing “Silent Night” when other kids are singing “Here Comes Santa Claus.” And on Christmas morning we will wake up early, run down the stairs, I’ll read them the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke, then go outside and paint the house, mow the lawn, and do some cleaning. But all through the day and the holiday season I’ll simply say to my kids, “Your Christmas is coming!”<br /><br />Some people will call me the meanest dad in the world (probably my kids will say that), others will call me Ebenezer Scrooge, some will try desperately to bring me Christmas cheer and sneak my kids candy and gifts, but with a big smile on my face I’ll say “Thank-you” and give it all back to the kind people while I tell them, “Their Christmas is coming!” Then, they will look at me like I’ve lost my mind, my children will cry, and Santa will send out assassin elves with my name and address. But if they would just stick around until my children’s 9th or 10th Christmas they would be amazed.<br /><br />They will stand and watch in jealousy as a semi-truck filled with all sorts of presents and candy pulls up in my driveway and dumps it all on my front yard. And then some will cry in awe and amazement as Mickey and Minnie Mouse themselves land on our yard in a private helicopter and take my children, my wife, and I to Disney World for the rest of December, with special tokens to ride first on every ride. And as I walk onto the helicopter, Mickey will hand me a microphone turned up loud enough for all who listen to hear me say, “I told you their Christmas was coming.” And off we will fly, and my children won’t be thinking about the past decade of present-less Christmas mornings or how they didn’t believe Daddy’s promise. They will only be thinking about how great things are and laugh in excitement about what else is in store for them and their long awaited celebration of our Savior’s birth.<br /><br />So you’re asking yourself now, “Why are you going to do that?!” And my answer is basically, “I want my children to learn how to wait when they are young.”<br /><br />Think about it. In the future, when they are grown, while others are freaking out over a couple of months or days and how they haven’t heard back from a job or college or some other situation, my kids will stand like statues in patience and say, “What? This? This is nothing! I once had to wait 10 years for Christmas! I can handle this short amount of time.” Then they will call me and say, “Ah Dad, you’re the smartest man alive! I’m so glad we learned how to wait.”<br /><br />Man, think about if it actually happened like that. I’m kind of mad that my folks didn’t do that with me. Because here I am, 24-years-old and it’s the same thing over and over again with me. Ol’ Jonnyboy has to learn to wait. And he has to learn how to over and over again, possibly because it never can sink in or stick with him in his head, heart, and soul.<br /><br />Maybe God is not so far off from this “No Christmas” method as we think. So many times I’m watching people achieve what I’m trying to achieve, get in a short amount of time what I’ve been waiting or saving for, or find so easily what I have been searching so desperately for. And when I look at Father, completely in shock or heartache as to why I don’t have it yet, He just smiles back at me and says, “Your Christmas is coming.”<br /><br />Why aren’t the promises of God good enough for me? Why do I have to question every word or prompting of the Holy Spirit with responses like, “But how long…” or “I know, but…” or “Well how do I know that’s really even you saying these things?”<br /><br />Why aren’t the promises of God good enough for us?<br /><br />God does not speak random words or waste His breath. In Genesis 1, every word He spoke created something. And I think it’s still that same way with the words of the Lord today. Every word of God is a promise.<br /><br />1 Thessalonians 2:13<br />“And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, THE WORD OF GOD, WHICH IS AT WORK IN YOU WHO BELIEVE.”<br /><br />See, that’s the thing I’m coming to see about the word of God. It’s not always God tells you something or promises you something and then BANG! it happens. The word of God is something that “is at work in you who believe.”<br /><br />Maybe one of the reasons we have so much trouble with waiting on the promises of God is because we don’t realize it is a process. It is “at work” in us, and we are not complete.<br /><br />God speaks. He speaks life and good things. God desires to bless us. It’s not wishful thinking to believe in something better coming, it is faithful thinking. Yes, sometimes we suffer, sometimes God takes away, and sometimes we lose. But that is also because the word of God is at work in us.<br /><br />We all know the expression “time flies…” And soon enough we’re looking back on our lives and wanting to go back to certain points, all the while wishing this future with a better life would hurry up and get here. We are never satisfied with now. I want to live a life where I am thankful for my past, excited about my future, and content with my present. That doesn’t mean that I don’t make strides towards bettering myself or wait for more to happen, but it’s very important to not get caught up in the “then” when God is using you in the “now.”<br /><br />I don’t want to live a life where I’m always saying, “When ‘this’ happens, then I’ll…” or “When I get ‘that’, then I’ll…”<br /><br />God is continually at work, even if we don’t see it. It may just be a feeling or unction, but He is at work.<br /><br />2 Peter 3:9<br />“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”<br /><br />The word of God says it—the Lord is not slow in keeping His promise! I believe that He doesn’t want our souls to perish as well as our hope. God is not out to destroy our faith and our hopes, even though sometimes I’ve felt like He was. He’s a good Father, and a Good Shepherd. He knows what we need, as well as what we don’t need.<br /><br />Let the word of God be at work in you. Your Christmas is coming.Jonathan Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10940293335153775817noreply@blogger.com0