A Week of Devotion to God!

To those who read my blog,

This past week has been a week devoted to getting to know God. I would say this started with the Spiritual Retreat on Saturday and carried on through the Spiritual Emphasis Days (or if you're a woman, then it ended with Female Frenzy which I hear was a blast). I'd like to take you through this week as well as I can so you can get a picture of how Ambrose University College is reaching out to our Father.

Spiritual Retreat:

As V.P. of Spiritual Life at Ambrose, it is my job to put on Spiritual Retreat. The theme I picked out for student council spiritual stuff is "Struggling with God". This came out in a few ways throughout the retreat. First we did a prayer walk. On this walk we stopped off at a stair case that was sandwiched in between two areas with amazing houses. I told the people to look out over the houses and see the beauty of them. I wanted them to see how big theses houses are because there are a lot of people who don't get to live in houses as nice as the ones we saw. Basically I wanted the people to struggle with the fact that we have so much, and others have so little.

After the prayer walk, we went back to my house and shared fellowship over food. We got to know one another a little better and then we got to know most of the members of Team Peniel (the spiritual formation team at Ambrose) a little better through testimony. The only one who did not share their testimony was me. But everyone else on the team did! Their lives showed a lot of struggle and trust for God. It was such a blessing to see.

Beggar's Feast:

I was happy to see Corey Garnett (our Beggar's Feast co-ordinator) lead Beggar's this time round. He did a great job. He chose a very specific theme (as all leaders of Beggar's Feast will have to do) and that theme was 'Jesus is Lord of all'. I was blessed to be allowed to read scripture at this event. I chose Joshua 24:22 which reads, "Then Joshua said to the people, "You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD, to serve Him." And they said, "We are witnesses". I did this very intentionally so that I (a different Joshua) could charge the people in the same manner. I wanted them to say (at least to themselves, if not out loud) that they would be witnesses to the Almighty and therefore make Him to be the Lord of their lives!

I had two favourite parts to Beggar's, though. The first was being able to pray with and for a good friend of mine, and the second was how Corey ended the feast. A lot of worship leaders leave people on a happy note with an upbeat song, but Corey did not. He left the people with a song that was much more introspective. He left the people thinking about their relationship with God (or at least that's how I felt). It is so easy to do what everyone else does, but Corey went against the grain and did what he needed to do to get Jesus' love across!

Spiritual Emphasis Days:

You know those Billy Graham type guys who get up on stage and just preach it? Well we had the privilege, nay, the amazing honour, to be in the presence of a guy like that. Dr. Barry Moore (Dr. Tim Moore's father) came all the way from the beautiful lad of Ontario to bring the heat like nothing else! Now don't get me wrong, there were some things that I did not like in what Dr. Moore had to say. I did not like how Dr. Moore separated the social work of the Church completely from evangelism. Actually, it was kind of funny. There were break-out sessions. I was able to go to 3/5 of them. The first one I went to was about a Church on the Fringe. This Church meets in a bar to reach out to the broken. One of the things they mentioned was how they just lived their lives in a way that was separated from what the world does and they don't even mention Jesus all the time.

Dr. Moore talked about only mentioning Jesus and these people talked about avoiding talking about Jesus. I fall in the middle. I personally think we need to earn the right to tell people about our Saviour and God. I don't believe that with every person we come across, we have to share the entirety of the Gospel (although God does open the doors for that sometimes) but we do have to share the gospel with people who we have earned the right to speak to. A lot of people have been hurt by well-meaning Christians and so Church becomes a tough conversation. If we don't know where they are coming from, then we won't know how to tell them about Jesus.

I think this idea is backed by scripture as well seeing as Jesus did a lot of healing and feeding, and loving. I can think of one exception off the top of my head where Jesus pressed for salvation first and that was when a paralytic was lowered into a house where Jesus was because the crowd was too thick for his friends to get him in. Jesus took away the man's sins first AND THEN he took away his illness. I think this story demonstrates where God places the topic of salvation. Jesus considers salvation of more value than health and well being. So even though I say, "we need to earn the right" I still believe that we also need to give people the message of salvation as it is the most important message someone can hear! I may one day take a bullet for someone and therefore save their life, but I did nothing for that person if they don't know Jesus. Maybe it would make it easier for them to know Jesus, but it is still nothing if they do not form a relationship with Jesus.

All in all, I was impressed with the Spiritual Emphasis Days. Dor. Moore brought what we needed to the campus: an urgency for the gospel. Dr. Moore's heart was and is to see as many people come to know Jesus as possible. For him, there is not greater calling! Jesus is who he wants you to know and that is why he pushed so hard for us to evangelize.

Summary:

Between struggling, Lordship, and evangelism, this week has been phenomenal! I learned so much about what it means to have a deep relationship with Christ and I am happier for it. I want to encourage you all, oh readers of my blog, that if you don't know Jesus, get to know Him as Lord, struggle with Him on issues you don't quite understand, and then share Him with the people around you because at the end of the day, He is what truly matters!

Sincerely,

Joshua

Struggling With God

To those who read my blog,

Here is what I preached at Chapel when it was the Student Council Chapel. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed preaching it!


Genesis 32:22-32 [NASB]

The theme for Chapel this year has already been repeated many times, but I will say it one more time: The light is everywhere. Jesus is the light. Jesus is everywhere. Light is a funny thing, though. It can be great for growth, but only because when we enter the light, we end up seeing the things that don’t sit quite right. We may see things that are holding us back from other people, or from doing our best, or most importantly from Jesus who we need to have remain at our center. And so we come to this passage in Genesis about a man who seems to actually wrestle with the One true God.
As people of the word, we probably all know the story of Jacob and Esau, but to give this verse a bit of context, let me remind you what is happening. Jacob is about to meet with his older brother Esau and he’s not feeling too sure of himself, and with good reason too!
Jacob was a jerk. His older brother, Esau, wanted some food, and Jacob made Esau give him his birthright for it. A birthright is the right of the older son. Instead of being a gracious brother, Jacob takes this right away from Esau. This means that Jacob, the younger son, will receive double the inheritance that his brother deserved to have.
Jacob also did another devious thing to his older brother and also to his father. Jacob stole the blessing from his father which was meant for his brother. He did this by disguising himself as his brother.
He is so scared of coming in contact with his brother that he prepares a huge gift that included 220 goats and a bunch of other animals. Jacob is seriously hoping to hopefully buy his brother out of seeking revenge.
So you’re in the wilderness and are about to face someone you have wronged so badly, what do you do? Well why not fight some random person? That seems pretty logical, right? It’s what Jacob does. When the man can’t prevail over Jacob, he strikes Jacob on the hip but Jacob would not let him go until the man blessed him. Perhaps Jacob thought, “If I can just get this one blessing, everything will be alright”.
The man responds and asks for Jacob’s name, but then renames him Israel which means, struggles with God.
If what this man was saying was true, it means that Jacob actually fought with God. Not only did Jacob fight with God, but Jacob walked out of his fight with God seeing His face. And so Jacob called the place Peniel because Peniel means face of God and that was what Jacob saw, and he lived.
Student Council this year has one central theme. Every time we make a decision in student council, we ask, “is this enriching the lives of students?” and if the answer is no, we decide to scrap it. So when it came to spirituality, the question Ryan had to ask when I brought this secondary theme to him was, “will struggling with God enrich the lives of students” and him and I agree that yes, struggling with God is good, but it is hard.
There are two ways I want you to struggle with God this year. The first is theologically. Here is what I mean. When I came to Ambrose five years ago, I was a seven day creationist. I was so much a seven day creationist that I even considered people who did not believe in a seven day creation were not real Christians. I pretty much had God figured out and I just needed to go to Bible college to polish things off. When I got to Ambrose, I encountered a certain teacher. A professor who is so amazing that he even got a floor named after him not just while he was still alive, but also while he was still a teacher. This man’s name is Gerry Hall (pause) and even people who once lived on that long abandoned floor are willing to yell out his name as you can tell.
The course that Gerry taught was called Bible and the Reader and it was eventually split up into two courses: Old Testament and New Testament. It is no exaggeration that I loved this class. It was an amazing experience. Well one day Gerry brought up the seven day creation account, and when he talked about it actually sounded as if he did not believe that the seven day account was accurate! But that makes no sense. Gerry Hall is an amazing person! He was passionate about the Bible and it showed in his teaching. How could he NOT believe in something so obviously true?
I did not know what to do, so I bugged him about this. Not just in class, either. I visited him at his office and even snagged him when he was walking back from Chapel one day. This man was more than willing to talk to me and he even was willing to listen to my views even though my views were that of a freshman who only knew what his home church taught him.
So I did my research paper on Genesis 1:1-2:4a and I got an A-. I put in a few solid nights into that paper and was close to not finishing it on time. I have never worked so hard on a paper as I did that one. I needed to know what I believed and I walked away from that paper with a good grade, but more importantly, I came away with an understanding of what it means to be willing to change your views when you are confronted with something different than you expected. I wrestled with God, and I came away seeing His face. And because I saw His face I understood that I knew very little about God and I also understood I would not just need a little polishing off, but I would need to be broken down over and over, and then built back up over and over.
Why do we fight so hard to try and be right all the time? We sometimes enter into debates and instead of trying to understand the other person, we end up just trying to be right. I am sometimes very guilty of this myself. I know the temptation to be right all the time. But it is not me I should be promoting, but Jesus and there are other people who know Jesus and a lot of them know Jesus a lot better than I do. When we wrestle with others over points of theology to be right, we are not wrestling with the right person, and we end up only seeing our own face. Our face is not who we are supposed to see.
This school is composed primarily on two denominations: The Christian and Missionary Alliance and the Church of the Nazarene. Right now I am in a class called Alliance History and Thought which I believe everyone at this school should take because it’s hard to leave that class without feeling inspired towards the things of God. Something interesting I found out about the Alliance was that it was formed around people who would have disagreed with each other in major ways. To give you an example: there was an Anglican who would have been quite familiar with the worshipful experience known as communion and also someone from the Salvation Army Church which does not celebrate communion. These people may have disagreed with each other, but they gathered around the most important person: Jesus Christ. It was out of love for Jesus that they formed that organization that would become a denomination.
So sometimes we struggle with God theologically, but there are times when we struggle with God in a much harder way. Instead of asking God, “do you do things this way?” we ask God, “why is this happening to me?” and it’s when we are asking God this, that our faith becomes so much more real and we find out what it means to follow God. Let me tell you about the end of my summer and the beginning of my school year.
I have a team to help me out with Ambrose spirituality. In a month I went from having four willing people on this team to two: myself and the Beggar’s Feast co-ordinator, Corey Garnett. At the end of the summer, I found out I would not really have enough money to take more than a couple courses, but I was also too poor to pay back student loans so I had to take at least 3 courses. Then there was an issue with how one ministry was going to be run, and then there was this huge problem between me and my best friends, and then in the first week of school I realized that my program was extremely messed up, and then my land-lord sent me an email saying that the rent cheques I sent were not signed and then I found out that the rent cheques I sent to my land lord which were signed were returned to me for no apparent reason, and then I found out that I was the victim of bank fraud, and finally, I stuck my foot in my mouth and offended one of my sisters in a huge way! During the leadership retreat a seminary student told our team that if our theme for the school year was struggling with God then we better be ready for struggle. I did not realize how right this guy would be.
I don’t know what God was trying to teach me through those struggles. Maybe patience, maybe more of a reliance in Him... I am not sure. But whatever it was, it needed to be taught and I needed to be ready and willing to struggle through this. I will walked out seeing the face of God and because I saw His face, and He was there. I just had to go along with God on this one and rely on His Spirit!
I recently fell in love with the band known as Metric. They have a song called Twilight Galaxy and in this the singer says, “go higher than high, go lower than deep, keep doing it wrong, keep singing along”. I like to insert some words there. I like to pretend she means, “If you go higher than high or if you go lower than deep, even if you keep doing it wrong, keep singing along.” Sometimes we just need to keep singing along even when the world is just beating the crap out of us!
Jacob wrestled with God, and then he had the guts to even ask for a blessing. When life is kicking you when you’re down, do you have what it takes to ask God for a blessing? I’ll be honest, sometimes I do have the guts but this past time I did not! Here’s the thing, though, Jesus always blesses. His blessing may not be something we understand, but it is always there for you. It does not matter how much life is giving you, Jesus will always be willing to bless if you are willing to go through the struggle with Him and even if you’re not! I used to think that God helps those who help themselves, but I heard Ray Aldred say something a bit different once: God helps us because we can’t help ourselves! He may not deliver us completely out of the time of trial, but He will always be there with us so that He can pick us back up once we have fallen down. He is always there when we are struggling!
Jacob wrestled with God and saw God’s face; are you willing to do the same? And so we come to the table, because that is where the brokenness of fallen humanity meets with the glory of the divine. We come to the table where Jesus is already sitting. He’s there and He’s willing to talk to you. He’s willing to go through this struggle with you because He loves you and wants you to know Him and understand Him better! At this table, God is waiting to wrestle with you. He’s waiting and He’s saying, “This is My body, it is broken for you. This is My blood, poured out for you. Come. Eat. Drink. Be with Me!” So if you’re ready, please come forward and receive communion. If you need it, there are two people here who would live to pray with you and I am here as well for the duration of communion. Come and partake! Jesus is waiting for you!

Fun Realization

To those who read my blog,

A funny thing happened yesterday and I thought it would be a good thing to share.

I got on the bus to head out to meet a dear friend for coffee. I was not in the best state of mind.

I get to the bus stop which is right outside my house and I find one of the freshmen standing there. We strike up a conversation and talk about a lot of different things. I suppose because I was in a weird place at the time I was more prone to whining and when she asked about a few past ministries I have been involved with which ended up being places where more people were hurt than cared for, I speaking negatively about them. I was putting these places down because they were not the greatest examples of Christian love that I have seen. Places that turn away people because of religious belief and cared more about the numbers they could get rather than the love they could share with the people coming in.

The girl I was talking with stopped me and said something along the lines of, "Wow Joshua, you seem to have had a lot of negative experience with Christian organizations and yet you're still a Christian yourself".

I then had one of those very rare moments where I displayed utter brilliance. I said to her something like, "I love the people, it was just the way they were going about things that I hated. Also they helped inspire me to do good. Also we are all fallen people. Even now someone could have heard something I said in Chapel and said to themselves 'that Joshua guy seems a bit off-base in what he's saying, I don't know if I agree with that at all'". I think essentially I was saying two things:

1) I was saying that it doesn't matter what people do or how they treat you in a given circumstance, they are still lovable (something I am grateful for because it means I am still lovable).

2) Just because I have Christ in my life it does not mean I will be perfect in conduct or in speech. I will mess up, my theology at times will be a bit wonky, and I will need to be forgiven. However, even though all those things are true, my fallen nature can still serve in inspiring others to do good. I guess that's a complicated way of saying that the Father can work all things to His good... even the terrible ones.

When this girl mentioned that I had bad experiences with Christian organizations I realized I have not fully forgiven these places for what I went through because I was speaking bitterly about them. Forgiveness is essential for anyone to live a free life. Bitterness is a poison that you yourself drink, but you expect the other person to get sick.

So here is where this kind of comes to a head and become really cool. After my coffee date I went off to Swing as it was a Friday and I was itching to do some dancing. At the dance I re-met a girl who I accidentally hurt a couple months back. Her feelings were damaged even though it was not my intent to hurt her whatsoever. However we are fallen people and fallen people are hurt people and hurt people will hurt people. She was not over this hurt and I could very much tell in the way she was talking with me. She kept bringing up the hurt and would not let me forget. It was within a Christian context that I had hurt her. She may go away from that and never forget it, but thankfully we both serve a God who works all things to His good. The Spirit can guide her within her hurt and might use that experience to help others not get hurt in that way. At least that's what my prayer for her is. I would rather her not forget this hurt but use it to spread love.

It was kind of cool to see this come full circle. Anyways... that was my fun realization. I hope you enjoyed.

-Joshua