A Quote

I know it has been a long time since I have blogged about anything. And a good personal biographical one is coming up, however, I wanted to share this quote by Hudson Taylor with you, it has been something that I have been meditating on a lot lately.


"If God has called you to be really like Jesus in your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put on you such demands of obedience that He will not allow you to follow other Christians; and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things that He will not let you do. Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires and work schemes to carry out their schemes, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent. Other may brag on themselves, on their work, on their success on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing. ; and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.

"Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, but it is likely that God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, and that is a helpless dependence upon Him, that He may have the privilege (the right) of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury. The Lord will let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hidden away in obscurity, because He wants some choice fragrant fruit for His coming glory which can only be produced in the shade. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will let you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes.

"The Holy Spirit will put a watch over you, with a jealous love and will rebuke you for a little words or feelings or for wasting your time, over which other Christians never seem distressed. So make up your minds that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has the right to do as He pleases with His own, and He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in his dealings with you. He will take you at your word and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things which He will not let you say or do.

Settle it forever that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not deal with others. Now when you are so possessed witht he Living God, that you are in your secret heart pleased and delighted over the peculiar, personal, private, jealous, guardianship of the Holy Spirit, over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven.

Hot dogs

So for whatever reason we really sold a lot of hot dogs today. And something that I realized is that when I go to grab the hot dogs for them I say "let me grab your hot dog" or even worse "let me grab your sausage." I have yet to hear a complaint, but just to make things less suggestive, I've been trying to say "let me get THE hot dog." I think it sounds better that way.

The Old Man, and the JW

So this was strange, so strange in fact that I thought that I should write a post about it.

Donna and I went to Starbucks yesterday, it's something we do usually about twice a month to just hang out, talk about what the Lord has been showing us, and even at times go over a Bible passage together.

Anyway at one point in our time together, we started talking about a certain passage in Romans 3, and all of the sudden a man just randomly yells "shalom" at us. He was an old man, probably in his 70s, with one of those Amish beards that was all white. I looked at him, and say "shalom" back and then got back to my discussion with Donna. The man then proceeded to walk up to us and proudly show Donna and I his badge that read "Support for Israel, Sarah Palin."
"OK" I said politely, not entirely sure whether he was Jewish, or what I should say. Before I could say anything, the Old man asked me what version of the bible I was reading, and I said the NKJV. "Oh I don't believe any of that, I only use the King James."
"Oh" I said, "Well the New King James is pretty similar." And it was at that point it began, while I tried to keep things as civil as possible, I was unaware that I was at that point entering into a debate about whether or not the King James was the way to go.
Now to spare you that debate, let's just say things were going alright, I thought, until he said "Well, I don't believe that Jesus was God, or in the Trinity." I at that point realized that that man had bigger problems, so I just tried to drop it.
He then began to accuse Donna and I as "Trinitarians," of being what is wrong with this country. He said that people like us who hold to these narrow views such as the validity of scripture and Jesus being the only way, are keeping this country from uniting, and it is not until people like us cease to exist that we will ever be able to find peace.
He then asked if we had kids, we said no, and he then said "Don't, if you do they will already be doomed." After mumbling to Donna something about staying in her cubby, he and his wife left.

Right as he left, a young man who was "Jehovah's Witness" hearing us say that Jesus was God, came up to us, and then tried to debate or convert us or something, and also another man randomly came up and threw his two cents in, until he realized that he really didn't know what he was talking about, and then soon left. I was able to give out verses, that I hope made sense, but he just ignored my points.

Now I tried not to be argumentative, and I was hoping to at least get the people to think. But I really don't know if any of this did any good. So I will pray for these people.

Anyway, there are two morals to this story, first off, don't make it a point to debate people like that, we can't convince them to come to Christ, all we can do is hopefully make them think. The Holy Spirit will have to do the rest. Debating only leads to arguments, and argument rarely lead to people coming to a knowledge of the truth.
The second point is this though, often Christians are ignorant. They don't know the Bible, and they don't know why they believe what they believe. How then can you come up with things to make them think if you don't even know what you think yourselves.

Missing school already.

I have realized something about myself lately. When I am not doing something that really challenges me, or makes me step out, I find that I fall into what I like to call "the funk." It's a time in which I mentally kind of just shut off, and go for a while just existing. I find that this has really happened to me pretty much every summer of my life as far back as I can remember, with the exception of the last couple of years.
With school being over and work being just a pay check, I can feel this mindset creeping up on me. In the past I didn't really mind this time. But now even thinking about it makes me feel discontent. Honestly I wish that God has just given Donna and I that internship so that I could be doing something. But I know that this is God's doing keeping us here. I know that He is showing me patterns in my life that are really quite selfish, or just plain sinful.
I can see Him allowing me to do things that were great in the past (such as playing video games for an entire afternoon) that I now find empty. He's shaking up my status quo, but in a way in which nothing around me seems to be changing and in many ways I am dreading every minute of it. I can feel that this is either going to be a time of great growth in the Lord, or a time of great Spiritual emptiness, and that it is all going to depend on how I am going to respond. I earnestly pray that I don't go the path of least resistance, and find myself like I have many summers before just existing.

"Jesus Shirt"

So at work I am allowed to wear whatever shirt I want as long as it is red, so the other day I decided to wear my red "Jesus saves" shirt. Anyway that day at work I rang this one dude up that works at target with me, and I apparently gave him 5 dollars extra change. Which he later returned.
Yesterday he came up to me and told me that he originally wasn't going to return the money, but because he saw my "Jesus shirt" he said he felt guilty about it and gave the money back. But then said I owed him 5 bucks.
I just smiled and he walked away. (Donna told me I should have told him to take it up with Jesus that would have been funny).

It's interesting how that worked.

I got an A on my Greek Mid-term btw.

It's about time.

So today was a long day at work. Working behind the food counter at Target can be quite stressful. It's funny how rude people can get when it comes to food. They can wait 20 minutes in line to purchase a plunger. But if they have to wait more than 5 minutes for a pizza they freak out... But anyway I digress, I am blessed to be working right now and I am glad that I am.

Funny story, I was sitting on the couch, and I realized that I had not got the mail yet. So, I stood up and opened the door. As the cool breeze passed around my body I realized that I was standing there in my underwear... No one saw as far as I know, but that could have got awkward fast. There wasn't even any mail.

Anyway, I have never considered myself to be an early bird. My idea of getting up early is waking up at 9. I am also not very disciplined. As I look back, there are plenty of things that I began, but of all of those things I'd say I've finished maybe 20 percent of them. I look at my book shelf which is full of books that are half read.
For the school of ministry I have to wake up at 6 on Mon-Fri, so that I can be sure to get to school by 7. Up until now I have made it a point to get up as late as possible and wait to do my devotions until later. Or at least that is what I've told myself. Later, with the busy-ness of the day soon becomes never.
So, in order to discipline myself, as well as spend time with my loving Father who is SOO good to me, I've decided to get up at 5 every morning and do my devos then. It has been really good so far, and I am going to have to discipline myself in order to keep doing it. Because I don't want to listen to "sleep Aaron" who in my groggy state is probably one of the best debaters I have ever heard, and I know that he will use what I like to call "early morning logic" to get me to just sleep.

I don't blog much, I think part of the reason is that most of the blogs that I feel like typing are indictments against things going on in the church, or complaints about various other things, and really I doubt you want to read that, though you did read my complaint about work, but that's beside the point. Donna gets enough of it here at home, she doesn't need to read about it :)

Anyway, I am procrastinating. I have a Greek midterm this Monday, and I am really tired of studying for it. But I probably should. You all have a blessed day. I have more I wanted to say but for now this'll have to do for now.

It's funny

Donna always complains that all my blogs seem to be sad. For being quite the happy guy it sure seems like while I live in a comedy that I post as if I am in a drama. Personally, I am not generally a big fan of that genre because while some of them are really good, they are for the most part just depressing and who wants to be depressed right? But the reality is life is not all flowers and unicorns, which I am glad about because those things are lame.
That brings me really to what I wanted to talk about, not how lame unicorns are, (one horn? Pathetic.) but about life. Specifically mine, since I have a captive audience, or at least one who will read this until they get bored.

It's been almost six months since I moved here to Buena Park, and things have been crazy.

I've gone to an amazing school that has challenged me in the word in ways that I at times don't want to be challenged. I've got a hired and fired from a comic book store. I've been able to be married to an amazing woman who to be quite honest is probably too good for me (luckily she just doesn't know it). I've known what it feels like to stress about how I am going to afford to survive. I've even at one point had an allergic reaction to what Donna and I think was IB profin, which then caused me to break out into hives all over my body the same week as finals. I've known what it's like to be in ministry feeling completely incapable.

Yet, through all of this I've learned one simple truth. God is faithful. He has been so good to Donna and I, and as we've trusted Him, we've seen Him come through.

Some may be worried, some may freak out about the situations that inevitably occur, I know that I have had my moments, of depression, like you get when you watch a drama (wow I connected it to the beginning topic go me!). But all I know is that I feel closer to God than I've ever been, and He continues to show Himself faithful in my life.

Lost Dads

Hey all,
With Lost back this season, I thought it would be a good time to look at this article from pluggedinonline.com. I liked it and it gave something to think about so if you watch Lost, you'll think it's probably pretty cool, if not well you'll like it anyway.


Lost Dads

Your plane crashes on an island. You're chased by a polar bear, haunted by a smoke monster and at war with an indigenous population. You're hurt. Scared. Lost.

Times like these might make many of us wish to be children again and long for our fathers—for someone to teach us how to survive, to frighten away all the bogeymen, to tell us why we must push the button every 108 minutes. To assure us everything's going to be OK.

Unless, of course, your father beat you. Or betrayed you. Or ran a crime syndicate. Or stole one of your kidneys.

Suddenly, those polar bears don't look so bad.

Who's Your Daddy?
Feb. 2 marks the beginning of the sixth and final season for ABC's landmark sci-fi drama Lost—much to the delight ("It's here!") and chagrin ("It's almost over!") of TV geeks everywhere. The labyrinthine program has become a byword for obsessive television viewing. Its creators have manufactured a bewildering mythology—so bewildering that after five seasons viewers aren't completely sure what the island even is. (Theories range from Eden to Limbo to a rejiggered Island of Misfit Toys.) Lost is a potpourri of engrossing characters, literary references, time-travel tropes and thought-provoking musings about the interplay of religion and science, of fate and free will, of good and evil and the gray in between.

But at its core, Lost is really about a subject near and dear to Plugged In's core: family. Strip away all the white rabbits and mysterious hatches, and you're left with an island full of sons and daughters, lost and hurting because their relationships with their parents—particularly their fathers—aren't all they should be.

"I think father issues are very much a part of the show," Lost producer Carlton Cuse said at Comic-Con 2006, according to Lostpedia. "Dramatically, that is something that we deal with extensively. And if you look at the characters on the show, a lot of the characters have 'daddy issues.'"

Where's Your Daddy?
Take Jack, the island's mostly heroic doctor. He spent much of his life trying to please his demanding surgeon dad, but he only succeeded in making Pops proud when Jack got him fired for being drunk on the job. Jack's father was so proud, in fact, that he flew to Australia, went on a massive bender and died—and now haunts both Jack and the island with frightening regularity.

Then there's Kate, Lost's pretty escaped felon. What did she do, you ask? Well, she killed her abusive, alcoholic father shortly after he made sexual advances on her.

Sawyer, the island's long-haired, nickname-spewing con man, watched his father kill himself after shooting Sawyer's mom. The trauma was so great that, instead of emulating his father, he followed the footsteps of the confidence man who slept with his mom, stole the family money and instigated his father's suicide.

But John Locke, perhaps, takes the cake in terms of father issues. Though he now strides around the island like a long-prophesied savior, Locke grew up never knowing his father. When Locke reached middle age, a man claiming to be his father steps into his life and tells him he's dying—unless he gets a kidney from someone. When Locke volunteers to donate his, "Pops" takes the kidney and runs, so to speak. Locke is abandoned yet again.

"You needed a father figure and I needed a kidney, and that's what happened," the man tells Locke. "Get over it. And John, don't come back. You're not wanted."

Locke comes back anyway—and for his trouble gets pushed out a seventh story window.

The list goes on, too. Ben and his abusive father. Sun and her domineering father. Claire doesn't even know her father (but we do). It's enough to make you wonder … are Lost's creators in need of some serious counseling?

Does Your Daddy Matter?
"Ironically, I had a fairly awesome (if not slightly complicated) relationship with my father," writer and producer Damon Lindelof tells Entertainment Weekly. "I suppose the fact that he died shortly before we began writing Lost had a great impact on where my head was at the time, but he was an amazing guy who is pretty much responsible for my love of all things storytelling-related. He never even tried to steal my kidney.

"That being said," Lindelof goes on, "I think, mythically speaking, all great heroes have massive daddy issues. Hercules. Oedipus, Luke Skywalker. Indiana Jones. Spider-Man. It all comes with the territory. We dig flawed characters on Lost, and a large part of being flawed is the emotional damage inflicted on you by your folks."

He's right, you know. Biblical characters have had some rocky times with their dads, too. Isaac was nearly sacrificed by his. Jacob and Esau had a pretty complex relation with theirs. Joseph's pop doted—perhaps too much—creating its own set of problems. And that's just Genesis.

Its flawed characters make Lost quite uncomfortable to watch at times. In addition to the typical problematic content we'd point out reviewing Lost—the violence, the swearing, the sexuality—viewers are confronted by lots of murky morality and very, very bad role models. Everyone on the island does things they regret (or should).

But the script, more often than not, suggests that their strengths and weaknesses are the product of how they were raised. And, so, all that negativity evokes a very positive—biblical—theme: That what you do as a parent matters. In a time when more and more children are raised in single-parent households, and in an environment where the role of a father in his children's lives is often minimized, Lost tells us something very true and very important: If fathers aren't around, or they're not paying attention, their children pay the price.

That echoes Scripture. Regarding idols, God told the Israelites in Exodus 20:5, "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me." The fathers of Jack, John, Sawyer and Kate didn't bow down to graven images, as the Bible puts it, but they sure erected their own personal idols to worship. And we sure see how their sin is passed down. It's a vicious cycle—one that God understands and takes care to warn us about.

Why? Because fathers are central to His plans. The most critical moment in Christianity, after all, involves the Father, the Son and the most revolutionary sacrifice ever. And fractious fatherly relationships can pull lots of threads out of the spiritual tapestry we're all part of.

"In my opinion there are only two important themes [in Lost]," writes Entertainment Weekly blogger Jeff Jensen: "1. Science vs. Religion (or Reason vs. Faith); and 2. The Failure of the Father Figure." Jensen argues that many characters—Jack, Locke and others—are themselves surrogate father figures for the island's frequently disoriented inhabitants, and I buy it. Jack and Locke, in the midst of their own quests for purpose and redemption, must also help lead and guide the islanders who follow them. (It's no accident, I think, that Jack's last name is "Shephard.") And there's a sense that, if they somehow succeed—if they do what they're "meant" to do—the sins and scars their fathers etched on their souls, along with those of their own making, will be somehow wiped clean.

These sins are not necessarily forgiven, mind you, in the Christian sense. Rather, the show simply acknowledges that families—as messy as they can be—are critical components of who and what we are. And it also suggests that, even if our childhoods weren't perfect, we have it within our power to do better, to be better.

"Lost … isn't about burying the past," writes Jensen, "but finding the grace to live with it."

Looking Back

Things in life are crazy right now, and I know that I need to give an update.

This here is a flashback, to the summer before I met Donna. I had a write a testimony for my Spiritual Formation class, so here is the rough draft. I so much enjoyed writing it that I decided before I went back and focused so much on the grammar, which would get annoying, to just post this right now. Let it encourage you, like recounting it encouraged me.

An Example Of God’s Provision

It was In England that I met my wife and God really began to give me direction to where He wanted me to go with my life. However, I almost wasn’t able to go there, and had it not been for the grace of God I would not have been able to meet my wonderful wife Donna.
See, I was living in Germany at the time, with my family near a military base, it was the summer before my last semester of bible college, and I was really counting down the days until I could go back to England to graduate. That summer was hard on me, being in a military community, all my Christian friends that I had the summer before had moved away, and the church that my family was going to lacked any kind of depth in it’s sermon content. So needless to say, I was very excited to back to good old York England for my last semester.
About a month before I was to head over there, I received an e-mail that essentially said that due to various new visa restrictions, I had to go to an English Embassy and get a student visa, or I would not be able to go to the school that semester. So with my plane ticket already paid for, and my heart longing to be back in the UK, my Dad and I started the process of making an appointment to going to the nearest English Embassy, which was about 200 miles away from where I was living.
Now the appointments booked fast, but I was blessed enough to find one that was a week and a half before I had to leave, so we got all my information together, and we headed to Muchengladbach, to get a visa stamped into my passport. After driving about 3.5 hours we finally arrived at the embassy, so my Dad and I got in line and waited. Right before it was my turn I was told to get my passport ready, so I look in the folder, and to my horror, it wasn’t in there. I quickly ran back to the van, and it was not to be found. Without my passport, there was nothing that I could do so I sadly, and fearfully, (knowing that my Mom was going to have a cow) went back to the house, and found the passport on the ground there, it had apparently fallen out of the folder when we were walking to the van.
At this point, I was crushed, I could have sworn that the Lord wanted me in England, I felt the call, and I knew. Yet at this point, I had no idea how I was going to get in. My Mom came up with a bunch of plans, saying how I could go to the Bible college in Germany for the last semester and things like that, but my heart longed for England.
So at this point my Mom said, “Aaron look at it this way, you already bought your plane ticket, just get on the plane and if God wants you to go to York, you’ll get in no problem, and if He does not want you in York, well you shouldn’t be there anyway.”
She had a good point, I mean what could I lose, except possibly an opportunity to see God completely circumvent a legal system in order to get His will done in my life. So, that week my parents drove me to the airport, and after praying for the Lord’s will to be done, I departed from them and got on the plane.
On the way there I was nervous, what if I had to get sent back, would I have to pay for that myself? Would they interrogate me? Strip search me? The possibilities were endless, and so was my imagination. But about half way there, I started to feel peace with my decision. Somehow I knew that I was doing what He wanted of me, and so that caused me to relax, because I knew that if I was in His will, He was the one who would take care of it.
So I sat back, and talked to the man next to me, who was apparently a language expert, and after telling him I was going to the Bible College in York, he started grilling me on my knowledge of the beauty of the Hebrew language, (a topic I still honestly know little or nothing about sadly) but needless to say, that conversation was probably a bit one-sided.
Now upon arriving in England my heart started beating fast, my brow became sweaty, this was the moment of truth. A part of my half expected a security team to meet me at the door of the plane, and by force lead me away. But there was no security, only a surprisingly genuinely nice flight attendant who had displayed much patience during the flight.
After getting off the plane, I went to customs, and upon looking at my passport, the man asked me with furrowed eyebrows “Why are you here in England?” I briefly explained to him how I was going to be going to the Bible College in York, and with that he stamped my passport and let me through. At that point overwhelming joy overtook my heart, while I was not technically allowed to set foot in the UK, God had somehow allowed me in.
I was light as a feather, as I sang praises to God all the way to baggage claim! It is that semester that the Lord taught me much about leadership, and also allowed me to meet the woman that I had been waiting for all my life. But it all came back to God through His divine power, providing for me a way to get into England.