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.