Relationship, baby

PREFACE: This is a response to a conversation I was having with a good friend, so just retain that frame of mind while you are reading. This was made some time around the end of April I believe, but I found it in my archive of files on my computer. Maybe someone will get something out of it.


WARNING: This is a long note to read

Last night I was praying on my way to Minneapolis in my vehicle about a lot of different things. One of the things that came up when I was talking to God was the whole idea or school of thought of Jesus being our best buddy/lover.

I clicked on my SME Devotional on my macsword for April 1 - there is a devotional for morning and for night, so I was going to read the one for the morning. It took a verse from Song of Solomon and proceeded to talk about Jesus from the lover standpoint. However, this was just the interpretation or feelings of the particular individual who wrote up the devotional. It went as follows:

Morning:
"Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth." --Song of Solomon 1:2 For several days we have been dwelling upon the Saviour's passion, and for some little time to come we shall linger there...

It continues on, but I just wanted to give you that to show you the idea. Anyway, my thirst for wisdom in this area was not satiated, as this is not really irrefutable truth on the subject matter I was in a quest of understanding for, as this was just one person's inference. So I noticed something else - for like two or three weeks I have had John 14 open, and I have not had the heart to close out of it. Just so you know, I have many, many windows open in my mac sword at a given time because I usually get distracted, bored, or confused by something and figure I'll come back to it later.

I believe you made a reference to something out of John 14 a while back, so I went and looked up the verse and never exited out of the window. Tonight, I felt strongly that I should check this out. I believe God has given me the answer which I was searching for, albeit not necessarily what I want to hear. I'm going to copy/paste some of it and give you the run through on what went through my mind. Oh, and I've noticed that John 14 is chalk-full of all kinds of good stuff with so much I could make points about, but I'll try my best to stick to just this particular subject :p


JOHN 14
2 In my Father's house are many dwelling places: if it were not so, I would have told you. I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I WILL COME AGAIN, and RECEIVE you to MYSELF that where I am, there you may be also. 4 AND YOU KNOW THE WAY TO THE PLACE WHERE I GO.

I put some of the important stuff to me in caps. Basically, ya know, Jesus is telling these dudes that everyone's got a place in heaven and He's going to go prepare a place for these guys when they die, and that they already know the way to heaven.

5 Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going; so how can we know the way?


In my head I'm picturing Thomas going "Wtf are you talking about Jesus?"

6.1 Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life:

And so Jesus annihilates Thomas's question with the most ridiculously awesome statement ever "I AM THE WAY" - The way to what though, I ask?

6.2 no man comes to the Father, but by me.

I've heard about this Jesus, but please elaborate.

7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also: and from henceforth you know him, and have seen him. 8 Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father, and it will satisfy us.

I love Philip, because this is basically exactly what I'm thinking. We are alike in the sense that we just want to see God and be with him. That's all Philly is wanting, just like me, so how's that gonna go down?

9.1 Jesus said to him, Have I been so long with you, and yet you do not know me, Philip? he who has seen me has seen the Father;

That's pretty effin' bold.

9.2 and how then do you say, Show us the Father? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?
the words that I speak to you I do not speak of my own accord: but the Father who dwells in me, he does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me because of the works themselves.

So what I get out of this is that Jesus is blatantly saying, "Look, I am the answer. If you want to get to know God, get to know me. I'm not talking out of my butt here, fellas. I'm doing His will here as flesh and blood. You've been in the presence of God this whole time, and you're just now realizing this."

This is way more important than I initially realized. The biggest factor in the importance of having an intimate relationship with Jesus is the benefit of being able to understand the character of Jesus based upon his works and actions. See, we can read about the things Jesus did in the Bible and get an idea of his heart and character, you know? Like we have a record of what He did that we can go reflect on. Well we have that in the Old Testament with God himself, but it was more of commands God ordered or other prophecies and not really so much the character.

12 Truly, truly, I say to you, He who believes in me, the works that I do he shall do also; and he shall do greater works than these; because I go to my Father.

In this verse, I am interpreting "works" as not only the miracles Jesus performed, but just His actions in general. His general attitude, heart, character, and personality, the spirit of giving, things like that. The concept of the Lord is so...abstract and just crazy to grasp. But Jesus was a man. Its a lot easier to get to know a person rather than a God, because we have some experience dealing with people. That is really why I believe that Jesus said He was the way to get to the Father. If we know Jesus, we know God, there's no change - nothing's different. And I think that if we really read about the things Jesus did we can judge his character or "works" pretty well and see the goodness he had.


Just food for thought I guess...

13 And whatever you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. 15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will pray to the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever;




To wrap up this novel, I don't think "best buddies" or "homeboys" is the proper relationship to have with Jesus. I really feel like its one of reverence, compassion, and a desire to get to know Him more. Its really hard to describe what I'm thinking, but to try my hardest here, I'd say that its a different kind of love and appreciation you don't feel for any other person. What gets me is not the dying on the cross, but His "no sweat" attitude and character, the loving of the people that hated him and his unfailing respect for those who disrespected him. How he would take in the unwanted, the broken, the unappreciated, and the sick. Just one dude that completely introduced a whole new concept to the whole world, I think that's phenomenal. Basically, it goes above and beyond the BFF stage, but I would not consider Jesus my "lover," because I envision a lover as...well, not that. I don't know, but I still don't see Jesus as the kind of lover from Song of Songs. I really don't feel like Jesus thinks my legs are like fine gems and my breasts like twin fawns, or vice versa, know what I'm saying?


Anywho, these are the conclusions I've come to. Feel free to call me out on something or share your opinions/thoughts/feelings/et cetera.




-Bert-

Taking Action

Originally posted Saturday, June 6, 2009 at 2:05pm


Lately I've been thinking about how many people go through life with no real sense of purpose or any types of goals in mind intended to bring about positive change for the greater good. This has really disturbed me.

What is the purpose of life with no action? I mean, we all have things that we say we would like to do. Some people have said, "I would really like to go bungee jumping before I die," or "I really want to travel the world before I die," or even "I want to start being more happy and carefree." Very simple things and very elaborate things, it doesn't really matter. Why put off these things for a later date? I'm guilty of it myself, and I fully acknowledge this. But why should we go bungee jumping when we're 45? Why should we travel the world when we're retired? And why don't we put more effort into living a more happy and carefree life right now? The fact is you're not guaranteed to live til you're 70 or 40 or even an hour from now.

Whoever reads this note, I'm giving you a challenge. Start taking action for something. Preferably, take action for something that can help impact the world in a bold and positive way. I am going to start advocating more for drug free lifestyles and to help addicts of meth and cocaine get back on their feet and get a second chance. I have no idea how I'm going to go about doing this, but that's my goal, and I can figure out the details along the way.

So start doing something - you don't have that much time left. And at the end of your life, whenever it may be, you'll be proud that you helped to positively affect the way that you and your neighbors live, instead of wishing you would've done something.

God bless you all


-Bert-

Smoking is truly a huge waste of time...

Originally posted on Friday, June 12, 2009 at 9:42pm

So I'd like to put in perspective how truly time consuming and worthless smoking is.

Lets just take someone who smokes 5 cigarettes a day as an example - that is only 1/4 pack. The average cigarette burns for about 7 minutes, so we'll use 7 minutes in our math problem.

After smoking 1 carton of cigarettes (200 smokes, which would take 40 days):

60 minutes = 1 hour (given)

200 cigarettes x 7 minutes = 1,400 minutes

1400 minutes / 60 minutes = 23.333 hours

It would've taken you 23.333 hours to smoke the cigarettes, on top of all the time you would knock off your life. So that'd be 23 hours of lost productivity - nearly 1 whole real day, or 3 8 hour days of work - just in the act of smoking.

For someone smoking a pack a day, they'd reach that same 23 hours and 20 minutes of time wasted in 10 days versus 40. I dunno, just something I thought I'd share for anyone who cares.


-Bert-

Living Life, Not Letting Life Live You

For some (including myself), this is a hard concept to grasp, but a very important one.

I'm going to dive right into this - emotional pain really sucks. It can easily be the most damaging and most devastating issue for people to deal with. I think I can safely say that every one of us carries around some sort of emotional scars of some sort.

Unfortunately, many of us take the emotional scars that we incur and turn them into something much, much more.

I recall a time when I was younger when I was playing football on the playground at the elementary school. Anyone that knew the Pocahontas Area Elementary School playground knows it was asphalt covered with those little pea rocks everywhere, and that tended to make some fun times of sliding all over the place. Anyway, during one particular game of football I slipped on the rocks and gashed my knee open pretty hard core. Little pea rocks were lodged inside of my knee, and it eventually created a huge scar on my knee cap.

I still have that scar today on my knee, but can I still move my knee, and does it still function? Yes.

Emotional pain is a bit different, because it doesn't directly affect some physical part of our bodies like an arm, a leg, chest, back, or anything else for that matter. Regardless, many people tend to take that emotional scar that they incur and greatly exaggerate it, often times using it as a crutch or an excuse.

-Someone had a broken heart, and now they can't open up to the opposite sex because they're afraid of getting hurt.

-Someone's family was involved in drugs or alcohol, so now they're standoffish and on guard constantly.

-Someone was cheated on, now they have trust issues regarding the opposite sex.

Those are just a couple examples I could think up off the top of my head.

Would you let one small scar on your arm render you immobile? Would you let one giant scar on your chest render you immobile? Why would you let an emotional scar render you immobile?

People have way too much good to give to the world. People have too much awesome stuff to share with people - their personalities, their stories, their gifts, talents, wisdom, advice, and I could go on all day about everything else. So live your life! Make it the most incredible experience you can make it - you only have one shot at it. Don't let it live you - don't let the negativity encompass you or let fear control your life. Don't let a past experience that was scary or traumatic keep you from living the rest of your life in a fun, positive, uplifting way.

Good always triumphs evil, and love never fails, so quit letting prior bad experiences hold you back from having new, amazing ones!


Maybe that was redundant, but I don't really care, because this is really important to me, and hopefully it is to you too


-Bert-

F1rst!

So this is my first post on my new blog site. I've had some requests to make a blog, and I figured it'd be a schweet idea. I'm going to try to make this a semi-regular thing- every couple days, weekly at the longest. I don't know, we'll see whatever happens.