Blog of Teh Voges

This week at Pipeline, the stage was full of Dr Seuss props. At CBU i guess they are having a seussical and it made me want to run around talking in rymns. Unfortunately im not that good with them or words so i decided just to Wikipedia some stuff about Dr. Seuss. So i was reading about him and realized that we pronounce “Seuss” wrong! Its pronounced “zoice” (i guess its German!). Anywayz, i began thinking…does that mean its the zoiceical, instead of the Seussical? lol it sounds like a ice cream bar! I apologize…i was in a random mood. lol.

Hey guys sorry I haven’t gotten to do this sooner…but I’ve been super busy with midterms. The good news is…I only have 2 more! Yay! Almost 3 weeks ago (Feb 11th) we started a new series at Sandals, and it’s a series called remix. The idea of this series is to “remix” our way of prayer. So to do this, Sandals invited a DJ to do some tunes before and after the service (pretty sweet). We had DJ Red Beef (interesting name) do the services that Sunday.

Now what’s this on changing the way we pray? How can we accomplish this? Why is it so hard for us to pray? Questions, Questions, Questions. For must of us (especially me), have struggled with prayer all their lives. What way is more effective? How can I understand prayer fully to make it work? Pastor Matt’s goal is to show us the way Jesus taught us to pray, and to do that we need to understand what prayer really is. Real God centered prayer is the most powerful force known to mankind (Matt 21:22). Jesus tells us that prayer is one of our most powerful weapons, yet why is it that us as Christians don’t use it? We don’t believe. Us as Christians struggle with prayer, and don’t have the faith that it will actually happen. Prayer remains a mystery to us. We struggle with when, how, and what we should pray for. Unfortunately we have new Christians come into the church or even old Christians who don’t know how to pray and have them pray making them feel uncomfortable. Not saying its bad, but what needs to be done is that every Christian must be taught how to pray. What eventually happens is Christians begin to copy religious leaders in their prayer life. We start using all these different names for God, and all these ideas of prayer we get from other people are suppose to be a reflection of their relationship with God not our relationship. We need to find out how God wants us to pray and not the people around us. That is the whole idea behind this series. It doesn’t matter how long we have been prayer – we are going to let Jesus teach us how to pray (Matt 6:9-13).

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Dang. Well this week’s message was a big slap in the face to me. A relationship with God is not easy. There’s a lot of times were I’m pumped and on fire for God, and also times that I’m like God why don’t I feel you like I used to? Why is that? How can you totally feel on fire and then go almost the opposite? God is a humble God. I’ve really been thinking and wrestling with God on this, why is it that I all of a sudden get lame? This week, Pastor Matt brings up the analogy that I just think is amazing. God likes to play hide and seek. Really….its true. God hides Himself (Isaiah 45:15). What I (and we) have to realize is that the relationship with God takes work. Just like I continually seek to go deeper and grow with my girlfriend, I need to do that with God. We need to look at our relationship, like one we hold onto in our own lives (i.e. family, friend, and girlfriend). God likes to sometimes be chased, just like we do. What’s amazing about God, is the times He’s with you and we’re pumped are the times that God pursues us. The times that we don’t feel or see God in what we are doing, God wants us to seek after Him, to grow and go deeper in your relationship with Him. Is this possible? How can we build a relationship with someone we can’t see or talk directly to? It takes work, on both sides. It takes us the effort to try to “know” God (for what He knows Himself to be), and God seeking us. What’s retarded is sometimes we seek so much in our lives to have someone to just love us the way we are, when God has a passion for having a relationship with us (Ex 34:14 NLT). It’s amazing how we can just pass up on God for just the smallest things, sometimes I think so much of myself than what God really wants in my life. Pastor Matt gave us four ways that we need to at least have, to get a real authentic relationship with God.

1. A determination to seek God above all else.
So I’m going over the list of what we need to have at least to accomplish this, and I fail miserably on the very first one. Come-on, “Above all else?” Myself is at the top of what I seek, I can be so self-centered I’m horrible at this one. Definitely this is going to be at the top of my list for 2007 to work on, a lot with a lot of other things.

2. A willingness to hear from God through each other.
This I think I do decent on, with small groups I have really heard things that God was trying to tell me. Sometimes though I can be very selective in what I hear from other people. God could very well be yelling at me to be doing something and it literally takes like 2 or more people before I really hear.

3. A desire to connect with him through His word (the Bible).
This has not been as good as it has in the past. I need to really start immersing myself again in the Bible so I can see again Jesus’ passion for us and non-Christians.

4 A passion to live a life of holiness.
I have this passion, but I’m far from holiness. Unfortunately what we do as Christians is base ourselves on other people, when what we need to be doing is basing ourselves up to Christ. How good do I look compared to Him? Like Scubala (Crap, for those Sandalites who like funny Greek words like me).

Basically, I’m glad my Christianity isn’t based on myself, it’s based on Christ. My Christian life is definitely a work in progress, and thank God it is because then I would never grow as a Christian. He will continually work in our lives (Philippians 1:6).