Humbled again

I have learned over the years of my music playing that my willingness to worship on my own is a good indication of how close I am with God. If I have have an urge to just play some music, secular music usually does the job. In order for me to pick up my guitar and go into worship mode automatically, there are a few possibilities: 1. I feel the need to worship God to thank him for everything that is going on in my life, 2. I feel good with where I am with God and feel compelled to worship or 3. I am completely broken before God and need his forgiveness and help.

The third scenario happened tonight. I was sitting there at my desk bored out of my mind and was overthinking everything that had been happening (like I always do), and I picked up my guitar randomly. I tuned it, and the lyrics to few worship songs just came to me and I played and sang and prayed until my fingers hurt and it was time for bed. It was refreshing and it reminded me a lot of things, and it made me sad.

I was sad because I realized I only came to him and asked for help when I was in a dark place. I was sad also because I realized I have been pretending to be close to him, but I really wasn't.

Ever since I left the Navy in late July, I've had a lot of free time. I would wake up early in the morning to have my devotion time and pray with my mom twice a day. I never missed church and I went to Bible study every Wednesday. All of these things would have been good if I had been doing it with my heart eager for God, but I hadn't. I went through the motion and did all the right things, but I was impatient, and I only did it because it was the right thing to do (spend more time with God brings you closer to him blah blah blah). Of course I didn't know that at the time otherwise I wouldn't be writing this blog to share with you my experience haha.

But then an opportunity presented itself to me, something I've wanted for a long time and man did I want it. I thought it was so perfect that I prayed to God "I'm getting way too excited over this and God if this is not what you have prepared for me, please just take it away so that I don't have to waste time on it and think about it all the time." I honestly can't tell you if I'm glad or mad that I said that prayer to God because He did take it away from me forcibly in the end, and it really hurt. Maybe if I had actually been close to God I wouldn't even need him to take it away from me to know that it was a temptation in disguise. It took me several days to come to the conclusion that while I did make the mistake of falling into the temptation and treated the situation with terrible handling, God pulled me out of it and snatched it right out of my hands because he knew I would hold onto it with all my might and never admit I was wrong.

As I was thinking about all this again tonight, the first song that came to me when I picked up my guitar:

Your love never fails -Jesus Culture

You stay the same through the ages

your love never changes

there may be pain in the night

but joy comes in the morning 

(which comes from Psalm 30:4-5)

and then the bridge that repeats:

You make, all things work together for my good 

(Romans 8:28)

as I was singing another song came to me, and funny thing is, it's one of the songs I sing that most when I worship, but never did it have the effect it had on me tonight.

Blessed be your name-Matt Redman

You give and take away

You give and take away

My heart will choose to say

Lord, blessed be your name 

(Job 1:21)

Anyone who knows me enough knows that I am TERRIBLE at remembering scriptures and where they are from. But when it comes to worship song lyrics, I somehow remember it haha (given that it is from the Bible in some way of course). After those songs, many others came to mind but I feel like this is a good representation of what I was really communicating with God about. Through this, I
was able to calm down and stopped thinking; Instead I began to thank Jesus for the experience.

I would be lying if I told you tomorrow I'm just gonna wake up and I'm gonna be 100% okay and I'm gonna find meaning in all the things I do to get closer to God, but I'm going to try. I'm not going to do things just because I'm Christian and it's right for me to do it, I'm gonna do it because I love God and he knows what's best for me. I also would appreciate it if y'all give me any feedback on this and support me through prayers as I walk on through this journey. And most importantly thanks for reading till the end haha I did not know I was gonna write this much. Welp it's definitely time for bed since I still have to wake up early tomorrow. Thanks again and God bless!

Re-telling the Christmas Story

With Christmas finally here once more, what has gotten you busy running around this year? Buying presents? Attending parties? Going places to reunite with family? Or even going to church for Christmas service? In the middle of all this, do you really understand why we're celebrating this holiday? 

For those of you who grew up in the western hemisphere, I have no doubt you are familiar with the story of  Jesus' birth and understand that Christmas is a time of giving (And the whole deal about Christmas is celebrating Christ's birth and not about santa Claus because he's not real blah blah blah). Therefore I am going to skip the usual discussion about that and bring to you a different topic: Common misconceptions about the nativity story.

We can do this a few different ways:

1. I have here a link that takes you over to a website I found which explains everything I am trying to get across pretty well for those of you who wants to read about it. I will talk briefly over everything on the bottom but this is a Q&A format: http://christiananswers.net/christmas/mythsaboutchristmas.html

2. Here is a video that my church showed today which pretty much motivated me to write this blog: 

3. Keep scrolling and you can read what i have to say about them.

Common misconceptions of the nativity story:

-Mary rode a Donkey into Bethlehem: In the new testament of the Bible, there was no real evidence that Mary actually rode a Donkey, it was only assumed. In fact, it was probably unlikely that she did because of the long trip and Mary was also pregnant (That's right, you try telling a pregnant lady to sit in the back of your truck while going 60 off road for an hour. You get the idea). The distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem is approximately 96.3 miles! 

just a btw in case you want to be checking the Bible for all this in the process of reading, flip open to Luke ch. 2 because out of the four Gospels only Luke and Matthew talks about Jesus' birth and Matthew very brief.

-Jesus was born on the night Joseph and Mary got to Bethlehem: The Bible simply said "While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born," (Luke 2:6) (NIV). for all we know, they could've been there for a couple of nights already.

-Joseph and Mary has talked to Innkeepers: In the church play put on by the children, there's usually innkeepers that Joseph and Mary talk to that turn them down because of not having rooms in their inn/hotel, but the Bible did not have a mention of these characters, and there is a chance there wasn't even an inn in the first place

-Jesus was born in a stable: Scholars have argued over and over for this part of the scripture and the Bible only said it was a Manger, because of no room in the inn, which the word in Greek actually is Kataluma Which means more of a guest room in a house rather than an inn or hotel. Another interesting thing, the manger back in the days were actually caves rather than stables that we imagine it to be, sooo.... Jesus was probably born in a cave. 

-Jesus was a peaceful and quiet baby: false, the Biblical reference offers no such claim and it only exist in modern Christmas music

-Three kings brought three expensive gifts for Jesus at his birth: there are a few things wrong with this common belief. One being there were three Magi (wisemen) not kings (The three kings idea is from another Christmas carol). Number two there might've been more than three magi since the Bible only mentioned three kind of gifts and no certain amount of magi. Three nobody said anything about the magi being there at Jesus' birth. Scholars actually suggest that they met Jesus when he was a child and not a baby. (only in the Gospel of Matthew does the Bible even mentioned about the three Magi that came from the East)

-Jesus was born on December 25th: Historical evidence suggests that Jesus was actually probably born around March or April and not December . To read more about it here's another link since it'll take a long time going that whole other argument: http://www.ucg.org/doctrinal-beliefs/biblical-evidence-shows-jesus-christ-wasnt-born-dec-25/

Now I would like to clarify that I'm not writing this to confuse you and to suggest that the Bible is a confusing piece of literature, but to merely inform you of this trend of commercialization and the twisting of our Christmas traditions. If the most basic and important story of Christ's birth is mostly wrong, what can we expect to be right about what we do this time of the year? In this sick society we live in, people buy ravishing gifts to each other even when they're out of money and kids write a list of unnecessary things that they want. But that's not Christmas. I thought Christmas was suppose to be a time of giving, not "hmm, I want this and that and in exchange I'll give you this and that" time. I love getting presents because it shows how much people know about me and I get things I usually would feel wasteful buying. But why not use this money for something more meaningful? Use it on something that'll actually change a person's life? Christmas just so happen to fall on the season of winter, the coldest time of the year, the most dangerous time for weaker and poorer people in the society. While we are at white elephant gift exchange and laughing over gag gifts bought with pocket change, some people are out in the cold figuring out how to stay warm of even alive for another night. Has materialism and commercialism really defeated us? 

My hope is that next time when you pick up a Christmas card that has the manger scene on the cover, you point it out to the person next to you and explain to them on how important this holiday really is and ask them if there's anything you and help them with instead of "What do you want for Christmas?" 

On that note, I end my Christmas rant/blog and hope everybody to have a safe and wonderful Christmas season! 

 (Leave a comment if you have any questions or interesting criticism that will help me in my writing. Also if I got anything wrong please let me know and point me in the right direction)