Day 4
Missed yesterday. In my defense though, I left my house at 8AM and got home at 10PM.
75 "perfect" push ups and planks
2 Samuel 15 and 16.
David's son started a rebellion against him and drove David out of the kingdom. People who are loyal to Saul's family have taken the chance to mock David for being an illegitimate king.
I wonder how I would feel if my son had betrayed me and I was driven away? How would the voices of my legitimacy land in my heart? Would I believe that God had grown tired of me?
Out.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Day 2
Read: 2 Samuel 10-14
Work our: push ups and sit ups
So today's scripture was ripe with sexual sin. David's affair with Bathsheba was the most famous passage that I read today. David got caught being a peeping tom while another man's wife was sun bathing. Being king, he was able to ask her over and sleep with her. She became pregnant and David arranged for the murder of her husband. It is a pretty ugly episode for the "man after God's heart" who has been given the Holy Spirit.
The second story of sexual sin is much less famous, but in my opinion is far more interesting. David's son Amnon falls in love (or is it obsession) with his sister Tamar. He fakes sick in order to rape her. After he rapes her he instantly begins to hate her.
I found this shift from infatuation to hatred fascinating. This seems to be so true when it comes to sexual sin. You want something, you are fixated on something, you long for something, all you can think about is those things and then you have it...and hate replaces the fixation. Self-hate, hate for God, hate for the person and hate for the situation all fill the place where fixation was before.
I think that it is like that with every lust. You want that car. You read all the reviews. You dream about that car. Then you get it and it is awesome. Until it starts to pull to the right while you drive. Then the car is crap and you begin to hate it. I do this with cell phones. I have seen people do this with living rooms. And this passage reminds us that people do this people.
Out.
Read: 2 Samuel 10-14
Work our: push ups and sit ups
So today's scripture was ripe with sexual sin. David's affair with Bathsheba was the most famous passage that I read today. David got caught being a peeping tom while another man's wife was sun bathing. Being king, he was able to ask her over and sleep with her. She became pregnant and David arranged for the murder of her husband. It is a pretty ugly episode for the "man after God's heart" who has been given the Holy Spirit.
The second story of sexual sin is much less famous, but in my opinion is far more interesting. David's son Amnon falls in love (or is it obsession) with his sister Tamar. He fakes sick in order to rape her. After he rapes her he instantly begins to hate her.
I found this shift from infatuation to hatred fascinating. This seems to be so true when it comes to sexual sin. You want something, you are fixated on something, you long for something, all you can think about is those things and then you have it...and hate replaces the fixation. Self-hate, hate for God, hate for the person and hate for the situation all fill the place where fixation was before.
I think that it is like that with every lust. You want that car. You read all the reviews. You dream about that car. Then you get it and it is awesome. Until it starts to pull to the right while you drive. Then the car is crap and you begin to hate it. I do this with cell phones. I have seen people do this with living rooms. And this passage reminds us that people do this people.
Out.
Monday, July 12, 2010
discipline day 1
So today is technically day one of my discipline time (since I am off of vacation).
Read: 2 Samuel 7-10
Ran: 2.25 mile run
Today's reading was pretty interesting. David took Saul's grandson in and God made a covenant with David to "build him a house".
Run was tiring. I don't run with the sun up too often. I am not sure if I am out of shape or just not a morning runner.
One thought: discipline is not magic. I had hoped that reading and running would make transitioning into a day of fundraising easier. Not so much. I still stalled after breakfast and avoided the stress of the day by overclocking to the processor on my cell phone. I am hoping that discipline will seep into the rest of my life. It is my prayer that God would help me be more prov-active and less reactive during this season. I hoping that discipline will make space for this transformation.
Out.
So today is technically day one of my discipline time (since I am off of vacation).
Read: 2 Samuel 7-10
Ran: 2.25 mile run
Today's reading was pretty interesting. David took Saul's grandson in and God made a covenant with David to "build him a house".
Run was tiring. I don't run with the sun up too often. I am not sure if I am out of shape or just not a morning runner.
One thought: discipline is not magic. I had hoped that reading and running would make transitioning into a day of fundraising easier. Not so much. I still stalled after breakfast and avoided the stress of the day by overclocking to the processor on my cell phone. I am hoping that discipline will seep into the rest of my life. It is my prayer that God would help me be more prov-active and less reactive during this season. I hoping that discipline will make space for this transformation.
Out.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
discipline
This will be a quick post, due to the fact that I am on vacation in Canada (supposedly camping, but Sean and I ended up in the Canadian version of Bend).
I need discipline to survive. I felt remarkably un-stressed at Summit, but as soon as returning to Moscow to "rest" my stress returned. I think that stress pushes me away from discipline and discipline. As Fat Bastard would say, "it's a vicious cycle".
So plan of action; between now and the beginning of the school year I will:
Sean and I went on a six-mile hike.
And I blogged!
Jeremiah Out.
This will be a quick post, due to the fact that I am on vacation in Canada (supposedly camping, but Sean and I ended up in the Canadian version of Bend).
I need discipline to survive. I felt remarkably un-stressed at Summit, but as soon as returning to Moscow to "rest" my stress returned. I think that stress pushes me away from discipline and discipline. As Fat Bastard would say, "it's a vicious cycle".
So plan of action; between now and the beginning of the school year I will:
- Read two chapters of scripture per day
- Work out 6 days a week
- Blog that I did it and a quick thought
Sean and I went on a six-mile hike.
And I blogged!
Jeremiah Out.
Friday, July 02, 2010
the correction of missions
Hello. Long time, no blog.
It is amazing to me how much of your view of the world can be based on who you choose to compare yourself to. One of the core values of Summit (recent two week urban plunge) was simplicity. The question is; simplicity in comparison to whom? It is easy to find people that I live more simply than and it is easy to ignore people who have really chosen to live a simple life. I can spend most of my year reveling in my own relative simplicity. I can scoff at others who are more wasteful and materialistic than myself.
This is of course why I need mission trips.
I need to see that others do not get to choose their level of simplicity, it is a choice that has been made for them. I need to spend some time really living by needs and become struck by how little I miss my toys. I need to what drives people to work long hours for $60 a month (and room and board). I need to see that is actually possible to live differently.
Consumerism is something that we breathe in all the time. We are advertised to constantly. The video we see, the print we read and the sounds we hear all tell us what we need and currently don't have. I am aware of the ads that I reject, but what about the other hundred ads that I barely notice until they have found a home in my desire? Is it possible to long for God and toys at the same time?
At Summit, we eat on $6 per day, per person. You can barely go to McDonald's on that. But we do it. We labor together on dinner. Eat together and clean up together. We work for our housing. We live in a space that is enough. We eat food that is enough. We cut our extraneous noise so that we can hear God. We serve others after getting enough sleep.
For four weeks this summer I was able to experience what it is like to live by enough. Now I am back in the world that tries to convince me that I need excess and that right now I do not really have enough.
Without the call of mission I am not sure that I would have the discipline to reorient. And how long can one last between reorientation? Weeks? Months? Years? What does 20 years of no reorientation look like? Where do you end up at the end of that journey? I suspect that you end up consumed by what you don't have. I suspect that you end worried about having enough all the time.
Mother Teresa said that we invented poverty because we don't share. I don't think that we fail to share because we are greedy, but because we are scared. I think that fear blinds us to what we have and what we need.
Mission creates freedom because mission creates in us the difference between God and world's definition of enough.
Hello. Long time, no blog.
It is amazing to me how much of your view of the world can be based on who you choose to compare yourself to. One of the core values of Summit (recent two week urban plunge) was simplicity. The question is; simplicity in comparison to whom? It is easy to find people that I live more simply than and it is easy to ignore people who have really chosen to live a simple life. I can spend most of my year reveling in my own relative simplicity. I can scoff at others who are more wasteful and materialistic than myself.
This is of course why I need mission trips.
I need to see that others do not get to choose their level of simplicity, it is a choice that has been made for them. I need to spend some time really living by needs and become struck by how little I miss my toys. I need to what drives people to work long hours for $60 a month (and room and board). I need to see that is actually possible to live differently.
Consumerism is something that we breathe in all the time. We are advertised to constantly. The video we see, the print we read and the sounds we hear all tell us what we need and currently don't have. I am aware of the ads that I reject, but what about the other hundred ads that I barely notice until they have found a home in my desire? Is it possible to long for God and toys at the same time?
At Summit, we eat on $6 per day, per person. You can barely go to McDonald's on that. But we do it. We labor together on dinner. Eat together and clean up together. We work for our housing. We live in a space that is enough. We eat food that is enough. We cut our extraneous noise so that we can hear God. We serve others after getting enough sleep.
For four weeks this summer I was able to experience what it is like to live by enough. Now I am back in the world that tries to convince me that I need excess and that right now I do not really have enough.
Without the call of mission I am not sure that I would have the discipline to reorient. And how long can one last between reorientation? Weeks? Months? Years? What does 20 years of no reorientation look like? Where do you end up at the end of that journey? I suspect that you end up consumed by what you don't have. I suspect that you end worried about having enough all the time.
Mother Teresa said that we invented poverty because we don't share. I don't think that we fail to share because we are greedy, but because we are scared. I think that fear blinds us to what we have and what we need.
Mission creates freedom because mission creates in us the difference between God and world's definition of enough.
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