Summer's End

I started work this week. It is now October. Costco already has Christmas trees. All signs point to summer being increasingly a memory. But, I find it appropriate to sit down and take some time to think through what this summer did for me. So, here are my summer thoughts.
Feeling Unlike a Failure:
I set out this summer with the intention of raising support to intern with Cru at UCSB. It did not happen: my support did not fully come in and my God led me in a different direction. It's weird to think back on it as support raising now seems like such a distant memory, but believe it or not, despite not even getting halfway to my goal, I do not feel like a failure. I know that God brought me through the season through a very particular set of reasons, and I am so thankful that I did. I feel unlike a failure.
Why?:
That is a question that I was essentially forced to ponder this summer-why? Why would God take me through a season of support raising, only to inform me that interning was not what He had for me. Why did He not keep me in Santa Barabara so that I could get a job and make money? The answer is multi-fold. I did not realize that there were blatant parts of my heart that I was withholding from my Lord. Staying in SB, I never would have come to this realization, but it was in going to a city that I was not particularly fond of, forced to be always around people who did not think of me in the way people in SB do, without anyone daily keeping me accountable, going to a city where sin, not serving God was the norm, and the latter almost seemed foreign. It was in all of that that I realized I was not on fire for my King. No, my heart was actually rather far from Him, and it took a summer of confusion, difficult choices, perpetual sin, at times loneliness, and not really doing what I was supposed to to help me see it. Two months later I felt as though the sheath had been lifted from my eyes and I could really finally see what giving God all of me regardless of circumstance or situation looks like a lot better. I am still learning but I know much more what it looks like now. That is why.
New Friends:
It's odd, but one of the brightest spots about my summer was the acquisition of new friends. People that I did not expect but whom God nonetheless used to impact my life in such a huge way this summer. One in particular I call bloodbath (it's from a movie, not as creepy as it sounds). He became like a brother to me this summer, and I did not expect to find someone with whom I had so many of the same interests at with whom I thought so similarly. He reminded me of what mutually, intentionally pursuing someone looks like. I am honestly not sure if I will ever live with him again, but I nonetheless consider him a brother because of the intentionality with which he was my friend, even when our worldviews are so different. I miss him.
Oldies:
Another bright spot was a weekly prayer meeting that I went to at my church with about 7ish other elderly people to pray and intercede for people in the church together. I saw what it was to unquestionably believe on God and love Him and trust Him. To just take for granted, in the best way, His presence, faithfulness, and existence. Surrounded by young people who often have trouble believing it was very refreshing to pray with these pillars who prayed to a God they believed on like their own lives. I will miss that prayer meeting.
Straining Towards what is Ahead:
After a long, difficult, joyful summer my opinion of the definitions of 'good' and 'bad' have changed. It was only a bad summer in the sense that it was hard, but it was great in the sense that God taught me very important lessons. I have grown more over the past four months than over the previous 12, and it was through difficulty. Now, I am more joyful than I have been in a very long time, straining toward what God has in store for me in the coming months, ripe with anticipation and excitement. Traditional struggles are not for sure gone, but my mindset and attitude has completely changed in the best way. More updates to come soon.
Summer Thank-Yous:
Thank you to Sandra Parker for opening up your home to me and allowing me to stay there and feel very much part of the family. I appreciate it more than I could ever say.
Thank you to Mike Medieros for believing in me to the point of going out of your way to support me.
Thank you to Tyler French and Greg Leech for being one of the few peers I feel like I had this summer who pursued me and with whom I felt exceptionally comfortable.
Thank you Sarah Fullham for showing me through your blog what a ripe love for Jesus looks like.
Thank you to my sister Courtney for more than I could ever say. I love you.
Thank you to the many who enjoyed a meal or sat down and talked with me this summer-Eric S., J-Flo, Andy Martin, Mr. and Mrs. Leech, Rob Lee, and a few others.
Thank you to Lex Darko for always being generous and showing that you still care about me and my family.
And thank you to the readers of my blog through the summer, I hope that this post was a good wrap-up for you, and I ensure you that there is more to come.
~Good Luck and Good Eats

What do you Love?

Muslims love obedience,
Buddhists love devotion,
Catholics love tradition,
New Age-rs love the ocean,
Hindus love sacrifice,
Jews love the scriptures,
Christians 'love' Jesus,
but what do you love?
yourself? Jesus? comfort? conformity? ease? wealth? fame? pleasure?

What do you love? And is it worth it?

Love is Lordship

Continuing on in my series on what Love is, I have realized that Love is lordship. Humans are naturally self-consumed and self-obsessed, which you may push back against, but I would tell you to look inwardly and outwardly and try and fight back against me. An implication of this is that we are biased and have a very narrow view of things, and we need people to tell us what the best way to do things is. We need to submit to those that we love.
Looking at what Love really is exemplifies this further; Love is fighting for the best for the beloved, even when they do not know what that is or are fighting against their own best (another ill humans often are guilty of). Something we must do then, is contend lordship for those that we love and those that Love us. If lordship is too harsh or difficult of a word in this, then replace it with the word authority. Once again, I am not quite getting out what I am thinking exactly as I should, but my point is that I believe that if we love someone, that admits us a certain amount of lordship over their lives. The reality is people just do not tend to know what is best for their own lives, so we need others to speak into our lives. Often, the most qualified people to do so are those who love us and those whom we love.
Examples: Parents love their kids, kids know this and therefore permit the parents a certain level of authority and lordship over their lives. Spouses permit their significant others to have authority over their lives. Now, you could claim that these examples signify the most intense types of love between people. But even a friend will take another friend's advice over a stranger, even when it is difficult advice. Furthermore, I would claim that if you love someone, you are obligated to take some level of authority over their lives, even if they may not want it, you are obligated to pursue their best. That is hard, on all levels, and it is not what love is portrayed as or shown to be in our culture, but I believe that that is what true love for someone is.
All things considered, I believe that love has as an essential component lordship. This goes many ways and is different in many situations. Again, I apologize for the lack of well-written prose in this post, but I was trying to form my thoughts as I wrote them. I permit you lordship enough to forgive me.

Love is Sacrifice

I already know this, but God taught it to me again, because as often with lessons, He needed to impress it on my heart. Love is sacrifice. Sacrifice, I would claim, is a necessary component of Love. If you love something then you will give up, surrender, go so far as to die, whether physical or a smaller death, for that thing or that one. But I am a philosopher, and I will not give you an idea, without at least trying to back it up with evidence.
Take the story of Jacob-he worked for 7 years in order to marry the woman that he loved. Then, when he was duped, he worked another seven-14 years. This man sacrificed 14 years of his life in for love.
God Himself, to show us His love, sacrificed His only son, obviously that is the best, clearest, most palpable example of this.
Look at the story of any romantic comedy and many other movies-there is almost always an element of sacrifice implicit or explicit within the love story, and if there is not, then it is fake.
This notion has come to my attention for much of this summer specifically when thinking through, processing, praying, and dealing with my apathy. If I do not really care about things, then I notice a much greater reluctance and often even an unwillingness to sacrifice for it. But care, love, friendship, all of these require love. Otherwise, we are all just playing pretend. Think of how much parents give up for their kids. Parents lives change dramatically for their kids, and they do it, hopefully, cheerfully and not tearfully. Whenever I have, at least this summer, been tempted to tell anyone that I love him, I have been forced to stop and think-about sacrifice and my willingness to do it if I do indeed really love these people. It is hard, but nobody ever said love was easy, at least they should not have. Maybe this is me holding myself to a higher standard, as some have accused me of doing, but I think that our cultural representation of Love is piss-poor at best. It does not show sacrifice.
Maybe you have not seen this on a large scale so allow me to illuminate this on a smaller-scale. Are you accommodating? Recently a friend and I got the gift of being able to spend some time together, and we were trying to think through what to do. He suggested a movie that he has been talking about, but I suggested something else because I really did not want to watch the movie. But I needed to sacrifice that in order to show him love, but I was unwilling. We are like little children that are not satisfied unless we get our own way.
We can debate endlessly but at the end of the day nothing that we think of as belonging to 'us'. I can try to convince you religiously or philosophically, but that's not the point. The point is that even if you contend that you worked hard for everything you own and that all of your desires and everything contained therein is completely and fully yours-it is not worth keeping. You are better off giving it up for the sake of the welfare of others or The Other, because that is what Love is.
The Good Samaritan was highly put out tending to his Jewish neighbor, but he did it anyways, cheerfully, gladly, because he loved him. I encourage you to think twice about love; contemplate, meditate, consider, change if need be. God, and I would claim people as well, just are not interested in broken, selfish love, and although I have not done the best job at expressing what is currently on my heart, I hope that you get the gist of it; Love requires sacrifice and if you are not willing to be put out, either via financial, physical, internal, or otherwise, for someone or something, you simply do not love him/her/it.

20 X 100

I am close, close to the finish line, so close in fact that my brain constantly wanders into what it would be like to be done. Of course, I am not there yet. God has been incredibly faithful to me, and I am so very thankful for that, because I in no way deserve it. This summer has been hard but incredibly enjoyable and has had some real bright spots despite all of the teaching moments that God has given me. As it stands right now, I am about half way to my monthly support goal, and very close to being done with my one-time goal, needing less than 1000 dollars left. However, it is my monthly goal that looms large. As it stands as I write this I need slightly more than 2000 monthly committed to me in the span of a week. I believe that God will bring it in like I believe the sun will rise-He is so much more faithful than the sun. However, He might be using you to do it. I want to challenge you, reader to be a part of this ministry or to help introduce me to someone or multiple someones who might be. It's easy to give and I cannot describe the blessing that will result from your giving, not just in my life but in the lives of many students currently and incoming to UCSB and people around the world. That's right, your donation to my ministry can help further the spread of God's Kingdom throughout the world. Please consider partnering with me and joining my team. If you want to know more, please ask me and I will be diligent and would love the opportunity to tell you more about what God has done and why I am so excited to get the opportunity to partake in this ministry. UCSB is a place that needs Jesus, needs to know who He is. Will you help make that possible?
"We are either called to go or we are called to give."

Faith, Despite...

I will have faith in the Faithful one,
despite what the numbers say, I will have faith,
I will have faith, despite my own deceitful heart,
despite a summer that has renovated my heart, I will have faith,
I will have faith, despite an apathy that I have discovered this summer,
despite poor work ethic, I will have faith,
I will have faith, despite the need for a miracle,
despite my thoughts that betray me, I will have faith,
I will have faith, despite the people who have not believed in me,
despite my own faithlessness, I will have faith,
I will have faith, despite the waves,
despite a lack of contacts, I will have faith,
I will have faith, in the midst of finding a new faith,
despite the emptiness of sin and everything not of God, I will have faith,
I will have faith, despite the programs that with which I try to manufacture it,
despite this world telling me to give up and give in, I will have faith,
I will have faith, despite the faithlessness of others,
despite what my heart has told me this summer, I will have faith;
I will have faith in The Faithful one to raise my support because He has proved Himself more faithful than the morning, proved Himself more faithful than the rising sun, more faithful than the chairs I sit in, more faithful than every other thing that I have faith in, I will have faith in the Faithful One because He has asked me to do so, and ultimately because it is all I can do, is trust the One who has never failed and who is not about to start.
Thank you, oh my father.
"The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?"

Reconstruction

There are several things that I have wanted to write on over the past couple of weeks, but focus and time have unfortunately not permitted it. I'm trying to fix both of those. I titled this post, 'Reconstruction' because I feel like there is a reconstruction project happening in my life right now. Understand two things about all of the which I am about to say: it is all related to my last post on apathy, so I suggest reading that one first in order for this one to make more sense. And two, this has been a difficult but incredibly blessed summer for me, and there is still a month to go yet, so understand that this is all in light of this.
I feel like my faith has been deconstructed this summer. I honestly feel like I realized all of the erroneous things about my faith this past month of July and just how pathetic my faith was. Understand the sense that I am using pathetic in; I mean pathetic as in, not what it should be, to such a laughable degree. I realized far more about my faith this summer than I ever expected to. I was away from my home, away from the familiar, away from so much that I have come to rely on, but maybe that reliance had bred comfort. My faith was heavily deconstructed last month, and I am so very thankful that it was. It was needed. I could go into how exactly it was and all of what I realized about my own faith and my own character this summer in this post, but that would take up a lot of room, and I plan that for a post later this month. This deconstruction was hard, but the reason that it was hard has been changing. By that, I mean that while it was happening it was difficult in that time. In retrospect it is difficult for how it is calling into question things about my life and bringing me face to face with conviction and really challenging me. This deconstruction has begged the question, "Are you really willing to change, or are you going to be ok with the way that things have been, even though you know that that is not how things are supposed to be?"
Now is reconstruction month. This month, at least so far, I am re-learning to say to God the words 'I love you,' and try to mean them. And I am having to answer the aforementioned question that has been banging around in my head throughout much of July. Ultimately, I do not want to be ok with the way that things are now, and there are parts of me that I do not want to exist, but the reality is that they are still part of me, they still have some level of control, still coercing me on some level into efficacious action. Maybe this post has become too literary and metaphysical to really make sense, but my point is that right now I feel like I am at a point of decision, and this decision is a pruning. I am being pruned. Cutting off branches, offshoots within me that are taking vital nutrients away from the shoot that I want to grow. I praise God for this season, because it will make the parts that remain that much brighter and fuller.
Ultimately, although life is hard right now, I am so thankful for it, clinging to the truth that I am more blessed than I ever imagined or hoped to deserve. I can see my own sin and errors so clearly right now, but that also means that I can see God's grace so much more brightly.

And I love it.