Some other folks blogs I like to read 03/30/2006

Jonathan Wong
a fellow seminarian from Singapore
Dean Paul Zahl
The Dean President of the Seminary I attend
Mike Demmon
My housemate here in Ambridge, PA
David Browder
A fellow seminarian again, good man who tries to keep me reformed

Enjoy!
Go slow,
mathew

Two things today....no make that Three 03/29/2006

Paul Zahl, who is the Dean President of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry where I am in seminary right now preached this morning for chapel. Now I don't agree with everything that Paul says but that is okay because I think that he is a tremendous man of God and has an understanding of God's grace that I am no where near having yet.He also has a lot parish ministry experience that I don't have and is probably one of the most brilliant men that I know personally. He is a self admitted random person, as he described his teaching style to be that of one like the TV show Seinfeld, which was a show about nothing. Think about that.
So anyway Paul was saying something about how we as evangelical christians talk about forgiveness all the time. Every Sunday, every time we get together as a body of people who say they are followers of Jesus, we talk about it and say that it is such a great thing and that it is the free gift of God and only available through faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning death on the Cross for a sinful humanity.
His question, to himself as well as the student body gathered for chapel was, how often do we actually practice it?
Really, how often do you give people a second chance, and a third, and the 70 x 7 that Jesus talked about?
Paul said it, I am just repeating it.
It's in the book, read about it. (that's for you mike d.)
How often do I do this? How often do I hold peoples sins hard against them and my opinion of them and our relationship?
I fail a lot in this, it's true.
He also said something about the law and grace, I can't remember the details. The reading for it was Jeremiah 31:31-41 along with some other texts like Heb 8:10-11, some of Romans 8 and some part of 1 Corinithians. (give me a break I didn't catch it all) But the main point, and I ran this by him to see if I got it right, is that The Love of Christ and forgiveness of the Cross have fulfilled the Law and made holy living happen. Not just possible in the life of a true follower of Jesus, but in they in and of themselves make it happen! You have to let it. Embrace and let the forgiveness and love of Christ flow through you and holy living will happen.
I also had the thought, along the whole line of forgiveness, that if I had truly been shown forgiveness by both Christians and non that it might be a little easier for me to accept the forgiveness that I am given by the Father through Christ.
We need examples in our lives of how we are supposed to live and think. For some it is enough to read examples out of the Scriptures and they then live them out. That happens for me sometimes and Psalm 32 is one example of that. (I actually preached about it in my preaching class the other night, only my third sermon and fourth public Christian talk ever.) But to have a living breathing example who talks to you and walks with you and sins like you and is forgiven like you show and accept forgiveness would be a powerful thing wouldn't it?
(You would think that I am going to insert the be this way clause here, but I'm not going to. I can't force you to accept the Love and Forgiveness of Jesus, but if you do it is a beautiful thing and it will flow from you and you will be this example. And you will be a blessing to someone like me who sometimes needs to see it and experience it; love, grace and forgiveness, from other people that I interact with so that I can believe it. The testimony and living story of a person's life is a great example.)
Holy living happens when a person embraces these things. Is that what we want? It's a question that I am going to leave unanswered by me because I can't answer it for you, only for me.
This is my longest blog ever.
The third thing is, the above paragraphs contain the first two, that I am still tired. Please pray for energy and God's will for this summer to be fulfilled.
I am not going to go into details but this summer is in the stage of being completely up in the air. Two parties both in authority above me have differing opinion about whether I should spend the summer in the Middle East. The country i am going to is safe and the folks where I would be going to be working with are described as being the type that would be thousands of miles away if it were dangerous, so I take comfort in that. But the danger element is a big factor to one of these parties. The other party does not think that I should do this internship, even though they think that it is an absolute tremendous opportunity, unless I have the first's willing and comfortable support.
I am tired of fighting it and I just want God's will to be done. It is a great opportunity. My ordination and ministry are only partially about my seminary education and my understanding of the Greek language. My ministry is going to be the truths that God has revealed to me through His word and my life and how I then communicate them to those who I am going to minister to and with. My time over the last two years is huge in that. I think that this summer could be too.
Please pray for it and I am going to end this longest post ever with that.
peace,
math

Sooo 03/22/2006

I just want to ramble right now. If this bores you too bad, if you want to read it great. I just feel like typing what is running through my mind.
I have decided to go on a "no whites" diet. No white sugar, no white potatoes, no white flour, etc etc etc. The 20lbs that I have gained since I started seminary are really starting to bug me. I want to lose this weight.
I am really tired right now too. I think that it is lack of sleep, stress, not eating that great, and lack of exercise that are causing this as well.
My face feels all swelled up and my eyes feel that way too.
But all of this to say that inside I feel pretty good. True I am tired but I am blessed and thankful as well. I have a roof over my head, although when the light bulb in the kitchen fixture burned out this morning it burned out, i am gald that i stuck around and figured out what that weird smell was before I left for school. I have plenty to eat. I have a family that loves me and supports me. I have a great girlfriend. I have friends, brothers and sisters, that are closer to me than my blood relatives and I would do anything for these folks. I hope that they know how much I love them despite the fact that I don't have any time to communicate with them they are on my heart all the time. I am going to seminary to be trained to be a pastor and preacher. I will someday be in the amazingly wonderful position, and scary position, of ministering to the most important part of peoples lives. Their relationship with God almighty and His son Jesus Christ. Wow, I am so completely unable to do this properly. But God is able and He just wants me to be willing. I am blessed, but I am tired too.
The great thing is that there is peace and there is the knowledge that I will get engough rest someday.
If you could pray for me though I would appreciate it. I have to turn in three papers by midnight tonight and I only have one of them completed. My whole grade for a class rides on these three things.
I appreciate your prayers and know that God is going to work this out.
Please also pray for my bishop, who is my boss too, as he makes a decision about my summer that is very big.
Much love to you all.
mathew

Summer 03/01/2006

This summer I have been approached with an opportunity to serve in the Middle East as a summer intern for a church there. It's not Iraq, in fact it is actually a relatively friendly country to visit and serve in but I am not going to put the name of it down here because that would just be silly.

In conversations with the rector (head pastor) of the church as well as his wife over email it has been interesting to see some of the opportunities of things I might get to be involved in while there. If I go...(I think I am going to, but not 100% yet)

These opportunities include ministering to a leper colony (maybe starting a garden there), distributing aid to the poor, helping teach at summer camps for underprivileged children, occasionally serving at a Sudanese refugee church, possibly starting a college ministry (to both ex-pats and nationals), serving weekly at services at this church and possibly preaching as many as two times, the possibility of leading a bible study, and who else knows what...

So they are saying that about six weeks over there would make this a valuable experience. Ah support raising, my old friend, I think we may be meeting again soon. $2500 or so will do it.

Just thought I would let you know what was going on. I haven't written in a while and this has been one reason why. It's a big decision to go but if I do I think it is something I will gain priceless experience from. The middle east along with South and Central America are some of the few places that I have no experience with culturally and I think that an understanding of the Middle East and Islamic culture will be a tremendous plus for my future.

Thanks for reading.

Go slow.

mathew

Enter the Worship Circle Event 02/20/2006

These are my notes from this weekend's Enter the Worship Circle event that a couple friends and I attended. I have not processed most of this yet but I am working on it and will post those thoughts as soon as I can. But I wanted to put these up here so that you could have some food for thought.
Peace,
mathew

NOTES:

Jesus was not a polygamist

- He only has one bride, one Church.

Most of what is happening to this young believing culture is related to…

?’s Moses à Are you more jealous …? Would you like to have his place when he delivers the Israelites through the

Red Sea

or when he talks to God face to face?

Peterà Preaching after the Resurrection or face to face with Jesus when he tells you that you are going to betray Him.

Was there peace in Jesus’ heart when He healed the one man at the pool of

Bethesda

and left all the others behind?

Did He walk in peace? What was His purpose that Day?

à Jesus was fully man. But He was not from the seed of Adam.

Joyner’s book: There were two trees in the Garden.

The trade at every moment is complete trust and relationship with God for any other thing!

Adam took for himself what was supposed to be given to him freely.

(Why coldplay? They are at the present crux of pop approval.)

Did Adam and Eve wonder about basic needs before the fall? What surrounded them all the time? God’s presence. Assurance of His goodness all the time? Yes! Because of complete trust in the Lord. “Am I good all the time? At every waking and sleeping moment?” Jer 17:5.

à Even when Christ was making choices of who to heal and who not to heal He was at peace because He knew who His father was and who he wasn’t. Even the disciples wanted to know but He called them to listen to the Father. 2 Cor 3:18, v. 13 Moses covered his face b/c the glow faded

We’re not like Moses because we have unveiled faces with the Lord when we turn to Him.

True worship is separating yourself from the world and entering the presence of God.

The seed of Adam is PRIDE.

Pride is all of Hell. Humility is all of Heaven. i.e. pride is completely from Hell and Humility is completely from Heaven.

Any spiritual discipline should only be an excuse to have a moment in the presence of Jesus.

It wasn’t until Jesus killed what the disciples were trying to copy and sent them something that couldn’t be copied, The Holy Spirit, but only be submitted to then there wasn’t anything for them or us.

It feels (is) better to be near God than to do stuff.

It feels (is) better to be near God than to be right.

Calling Questions???

1^st Question …

Doing big things. Taking the Gospel to those who haven’t ever heard it. Always loving. Crazy adventures. Truly worshiping. Knowing God.

What are you good at?

Leading. Being passionate. Being lazy. Encouraging. Cooking. Teaching. Traveling.

Key relationships:

Curt – Spiritual mentor. peer

John – Jealous of. Inspiration

Who are you especially good at loving?

Friends and people who are thirsty for the Gospel.

What has been woven into you from the time of your creation? Dreams and capacities woven together to be rammed into the fabric of eternity and leave an impression. Pray over this list for a month.

I dream about working with my friends to take the Gospel to people who have never heard it.

I will use my gifitngs in encouraging and leadership to inspire other and preach the Gospel. To implement other peoples visions.

To accomplish my dream and love my people I will…

I will work with my present team to dream big about the future and unleash what we have to offer when the time is right.

What Christ dreams about is His Church.

What is our one desire? Nearness to Jesus!!!

Phil 3:8

Metaphor is used b/c it’s too big. Needs poetry and art to help describe it.

Chruch is: Family, God = Father. We = Children. Body – how we work together.

Temple

: How Christ inhabits our presence. Living Stones.

Bride: The way Christ loves us.

If you define Church as a worship service on Sunday then all you have is a peck on the cheek and a shared room.

Church in Action:

People in love with Jesus, completely dependent on Jesus.

People in love with Jesus, completely dependent on each other.

Become FIT in the Lord: Eph 4.

I must come into Christ and become dependent on Him. I must commit to relationships first. Reconcile to become committed to all people. I must know my capacity to love others. Matt 18. I must work in harmony with all connected to me. Community is not an option. Individuals will fail.

Enlightenment Rationalism 02/07/2006

Enlightenment Rationalism
Now how is that for a title.
I want to write about this but I am in the middle of listening to a lecture about this.
Remind me to finish this if I don't!
Main idea: any attack on the Christian faith, of which Enlight. Ration. is just one, is widly and readily accepted because of the difficulty in accpeting the truth of the human condition, without relationship to Christ. We are sinful, sin is bad and therefore we are bad not good.
More to come

They will never listen to us 01/30/2006

So at lunch today, at the seminary, there was a discussion taking place at my table about the nature of the use of scripture in preaching and what constitutes preaching moralism which people, i.e. nobody, Christian or non can ever have any hope of living up to or what preaching God’s grace and the Cross is. I am not going to go into details here because it is not relative to what happened.

What has been on my mind all day since then is what happened in the course of the discussion is this. I had sat silently throughout most of the discussion because I was listening and I wanted to hear what everybody else was saying. When I finally did speak up and try to make a point I made it about half-way through my first sentence before I was interrupted and the person arguing the other side ridiculed my statement and reasserted his point without even taking the time to listen, not consider, but even listen to my statement. I attempted to continue what I was saying but I did not want to raise my voice and given the fact that I had also become very angry at this point I got up and left.

I am not claiming that I was completely correct here or correct at all. It is the arrogance that was displayed in this action that upset me so much. Yes I might have been wrong and yes they might have been wrong that is not the point. If we are unwilling to listen to other people when talking about the most important thing in our lives, our relationship with the Almighty living God, then we are never going to get anywhere in talking to people about Him.

The main point of the other side of the discussion, and I was not advocating moralism in any way here,(because I know it doesn’t work and is not the message of Christ!) was that sermons as a whole must be constantly grace filled and centered on the cross. I agree with this but there are ways of living that are pleasing to God and things that He expects for us to do through the power of the Holy Spirit. But what upset me so much was that this person’s actions, whom I have talked with since and we are cool with each other, was that they were completely without this grace that had been talking about for the whole time. There is no grace in not allowing a person to speak and if they are ‘wrong’ allowing God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to bring them about to the amendment of their thinking.

Let’s stop the arrogance in our standing for the truth. We must let God fight the fights that He wants to and stand on the authority of Scripture. We must also listen to other people because if we don’t listen to them consider their positions and then respond in God’s love, how can we ever expect them to listen to us?

Because if we don’t do this then it is almost like subjectivism and liberal post-modernism, their position being … there are no absolute truths or standards other than the “absolute” truth that if I disagree with the fact that there is only subjective truth I am wrong because I have embraced the only “truth” that they can objectively disagree with. Did that make sense? No, it’s logically flawed. But if the first thing that we do in a debate is point out the other person’s fallacies without first listening to them they will never listen to us either! Preach Grace. Live Grace. And when you screw up, which we all will…Fall on Grace. It is there for you, much like it was for the two of us that had to go before God and ask His forgiveness for wronging our brother.

I have learned about grace 12/06/2005

I have learned about grace.
I have learned about grace because I have failed many many times. I have hurt people, I have not accomplished assigned tasks. I have realized that I am a sinful person and there is nothing I can do about it. No matter how hard I try to make myself better or how good I might look to those around me I am still a being that strongly desires to follow my own will and have my own way and because of that I spit in the face of God.
He continues to offer His hand to me and smile at me and make the way clear for me so that I can know He is good and that He loves me.
When I have finally despaired in my inability to do things right on my own and feel like there is no hope at all this is where Jesus meets me. He sustains me in the wilderness and shows me that the mountaintops are only possible with Him.
Right now I am struggling to finish all my papers that are due for the 35 page Biblical Interpretation project due next Friday.
I covet your prayers and thank you for your friendship.
Will things get done? Yes. How can I be sure?
Because it's not about me.
I love that.

mathew

Final Stretch 12/05/2005

Well, my first semester of seminary is winding down. It is going to either finish me off or I will finish it off.

This has been harder than I ever imagined it could be but I really am learning a lot. Over the last two years I was a missionary that worked for an organization that sent me to nine different countries. Those two years were ones that enlarged my vision for how much God wants everybody possible to know about being in a personal relationship with him. He really does desire that none should perish but that all come to repentance.

Now over the last five months I have really been learning about how deep God's grace runs for his children. I have seen how far I am from perfect over and over and over. I have hurt people I have not accomplished class work on time or produced acceptable assignments, but He has carried me through it. I am realizing more and more that without him, although I might have said it a lot in the past it is really becoming real to me now, that I can't do anything good without Him.

That is something else that I am realizing even as I am typing this. We talk about God and what we think He is like and we talk about things that are good and what they look like. And then we act like what we have said about these things really is what they are like and if there are any ideas that go against what we think then they can't be right. But that isn't true. I don't determine what is good. For something to be good it really needs to entail goodness and I don't make that what it is. And I cannot say what or who God is either, it would be really presumptive on my part to think that I can really say who or what God is or isn't. He is so far above and beyond me that it is amazing and I was made by Him in the first place. Whose place is it to tell the one who created them what they are really like and what other people should think about them.

Now that I have really rambled and since nobody is going to read this anyway. I have papers to write and by Grace I will get them done!

Peace and Love and may the Love and Grace of God be with you this day and always.

mathew

Not to be a downer but... 11/08/2005

I don't want this whole blog to be about the horrible things that are going on in the world but with the limited amount of time that I have available I can only write about those things that really impact me and that I think need to be said.
There are over 87,000 dead as a result of the earthquake in South Asia last month.
The estimates of those that live in these isolated areas that have been left homeless by this disaster are between 3 and 4 million! These are people that are living in areas that are inaccessible at this point due to the fact that the roadways that led to them have been destroyed by the landslides generated as a result of the earthquake.
They are also living in an area of the world that is very harsh during the winter, the Himalayan mountain region.
This means that between 1.98 million and 2.64 million will die this winter unless a miracle happens. Either God will have to directly intervene which is not out of the question by any means or we are going to have to use every military helicopter available in the area and bring in hundreds of others and distribute tents to these people in an effort that has never been seen before.
Please join me in praying for this to happen and if you have any connections that might be able to make it happen then do it!!!
Yours In the Fight

First Ever 10/28/2005

My first ever attempt at writing a Blog.

Last week I was in Ocean Springs, Miss as a part of a team doing some relief work down there to help with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

It is now seven weeks since the hurricane hit and the destruction is amazing. How very little people have been able to do to effect recovery down there is amazing as well. If you have any money that you are not in great need of for your own personal well being then send it to a reputable relief agency and help those people out.

7 weeks later people are still tearing dry wall and cabinets out of their homes which were flooded and then having them treated so that the mold growing there won’t make them sick. They are still finding bodies and there are still sections of neighborhoods that are guarded by the National Guard and surrounded by barbed wire because they have not gotten all the people out yet.

There is a great need that cannot be described by a few words and even cannot be described by pictures.

But just imagine losing absolutely every thing you own, having four of your neighbors drown, not receiving any money from the insurance agencies because your house was covered for wind damage from a hurricane but not flood damage, and then having to pay your morgate on a concert slab and the steps that used to lead to your front door. You still owe money for the house that is now scattered rubble over a hundred yard area.

This is what people are facing and they need help.

If you can please give back as you have been given to!

Peace