I have some serious angst toward and hesitation to ever mention my Baptist upbringing, but this quote may be slowly changing my thoughts.
“We believe that the Baptists are the original Christians. We did not commence our existence at the reformation, we were reformers before Luther and Calvin were born; we never came from the Church of Rome, for we were never in it, but we have an unbroken line up to the apostles themselves. We have always existed from the days of Christ, and our principles, sometimes veiled and forgotten, like a river which may travel under ground for a little season, have always had honest and holy adherents. Persecuted alike by Romanists and Protestants of almost every sect, yet there has never existed a Government holding Baptist principles which persecuted others; nor, I believe, any body of Baptists ever held it to be right to put the consciences of others under the control of man.”
—Charles H. Spurgeon
I recently hung out with my pastor and his family and we went to the Manhattan Children’s Museum to hang and let his kids play. We took the subway to get there and when we were about halfway there his 2 year old said “Hey Daddy, here’s our stop”. He was so confident and happy that he knew what stop we were getting off at- but he was wrong. We still had quite a few more to go, but it was so funny because he said it as if his father didn’t notice and he was reminding him and showing off his sense of direction. But there weren’t any clues that should have made him think we were getting off yet, it was just so out of the blue.
Recently I have decided to start using my hour long commute on the Subway as a time to spend with God and so i now bring my bible on the train and listen to a Podcast or worship music simultaneously. Today i began using pen and paper because i realized that i needed to start write what God was revealing. Today I read a story out of Matthew about Jesus Casting out the demons into the pigs. It’s Matthew 8:28-34. In this story Jesus comes to a city and and two demon possessed men come out from the tombs and approach Him. They instantly know who He is and ask if He had come to torment them. First i find it ironic and comforting that the demons know their fate, know Jesus is the one who controls the fate of not only man but the demons and they are terrified of Him. I almost feel like these demons jumped out from behind the bushes hoping to scare and torment the next person to walk in their path and to their unfortunate surprise is was the Son of God. Sort of comical in a way. So Jesus then proceeds to cast out the demons and He does so and moves them into some pigs that are in a herd nearby. I love that at the sound of His voice when He says “Go” they instantly do what He commands. This is another reassuring truth about Christ’s almighty power. Now the whole crew of people standing by have seen this and are most likely amazed. But then the Pigs all run off a steep bank into the sea. The herdsmen and bystanders are so astounded they run into the city and tell everyone they can find that this man Jesus just casted out demons and they possessed the pigs which in turn made them run into the sea and drown, loosing all their pigs.
Moving to NYC was a big step for me in many ways. I tend to be someone who jumps into the fire a bit too quickly and I think this tends to make my life a whirlwind experience. Most times thats good but sometimes its too overwhelming. Yesterday I was so pumped when I arrived in the city and couldn’t wait to tackle the day but by the evening i was incredible lonely and depressed. The guy I am living with had to work all day so I roamed the city for hour on end taking the subway uptown and downtown staying on the same basic streets. But I’m really getting tired of this alone thing. Mainly since I am in a new city, don’t know anyone, anything or feel comfortable I think made me quite depressed last night. Usually we as humans have something comfortable to cling to or fall back on or go see, but i didn’t have a comfortable bed- I didn’t have a bed at all. And this apartment is the size of a small shoe box covered in dirt and mold, but that’s NYC if you aren’t rich. In these moments are when God truly draws us near and forces us to rely on HIM for comfort and not the things manufactured in this world. All i could do last night was pray fervently and cry out to my God. I’m sure it broke His heart to see me so afraid but in the end we are closer. He kept telling me “c’mon, talk to Me, read My Word, cry out to Me. I Love you, feel my comfort and Glory. I love you buddy.”
Lately i have been studying and meditating on what i means to be a good worshiper of Christ. (I mean worship in the broad sense and not the singing that takes place in church settings. But later i will mention the narrower definition.) I’ve found that when we are good worshippers we are more obedient out of desire and obedience feels more natural and that is what God desires. So in this study i have come across repentance and it being one of the ways we are good worshippers. I wanted to know what other scholars had to say about it and what the Bible had to say about it. In the Book “Systematic Theology” by Wayne Grudem, he states that Repentance is two part. 1)It is realizing that our sin is wrong and feeling sorrow and hatred for the Sin because is displeases God. 2) We make conscious efforts to turn from our sin and make life changes in order to leave certain sin behind. Before i continue i want to be sure to clarify WHY repentance is necessary or desired.
It is a curious thing the way people react during movies whether in a theater or in their home. Some people are talkers, some are very audibly emotional, some are stone faced and some viewers show their emotion through body language. One thing I also love about movies is how people can take away different meanings from the same movie. Last night I went to see the under marketed movie “The Stoning of Soraya M.” and I was amongst the most peculiar crowd. It was me, a middle-aged mother and her 20 something daughter, a college couple, a middle-eastern man and a crazy mentally insane lady and what appeared to be her son who also seemed insane. The insane mom and son were also speaking in some european language that i couldn’t make out. During the movie this mentally insane lady, we’ll call her Dorothy, kept talking throughout the movie at spontaneous moments. Normally this would be a minor distraction yet Dorothy had an extremely low voice due to smoking and her body language was a huge distraction too. She would turn to her son in spontaneous fits of emotion and say something with her low raspy voice and you could not look at anything else but her. This was becoming extremely annoying especially since the tone of this movie made the viewers feel uncomfortable to begin with. I kept praying that God would shut her up. Finally the middle-eastern man adjacent to me turns and asked her to “shut the Hell up”. I was satisfied that somebody had the courage to turn her off for a short while. But the outbursts continued and sometimes lasted for minutes on end. This was really getting to me and i was close to walking out. Then there came the point in the movie where Soraya was being stoned and Dorothy’s reaction was probably the worst reaction a viewer could have had. She not only had her loudest most vivid outburst but she spoke in english for the first time. In this she yelled the phrase “F@$# Iran, F@$# Iran!!” Beside the fact that that was the most rude and annoying thing i’ve ever experienced in a movie, this lady missed the mark. The story was about the injustice done to women in Iran and all parts of the world. It had nothing to do with the country of Iran- it had everything to do with awareness of injustice and ridiculous and evil practices.
