Be a man...

I apologize in advance for this post; it is likely going to be scattered with no purpose other than to hopefully condense my thoughts in one place.

What does it mean to be a man? What defines what a man is? Merriam-Webster defines man:
(1) : an individual human; especially : an adult male human (2) : a man belonging to a particular category (as by birth, residence, membership, or occupation) —usually used in combination i.e. councilman

An individual human. I agree with that. Society definitely defines a man as individual. We're never supposed to need help. We never ask for directions. We are the problem solvers. We are the go-to when something needs fixed. We are independent. We aren't supposed to need anyone. That would be weak. Only a weak man needs someone else to get by.

That's a tragedy.

By the world's definition, I am not a man. I am weak. Yeah I fix stuff. Yeah I can solve problems. Yeah I don't ask for directions. But, I can't do it on my own. I may put up a front on the outside that says I have it all together and that I am in control, but that is seldom the case.

The Bible defines a man as something completely different. For that, I am incredibly thankful. A man of God doesn't have it all together. A man of God relies on his savior. A man of God admits he can't do it alone. David was a man after God's own heart.

That is the man I want to be.

Personal wrestling match...

The following is an excerpt from my journal.

As a disclaimer, it is pretty raw and likely hard to follow. I wrote this at our YoungLife leader retreat in response to what we had been learning about the concept of lordship. I post this because I hope you can relate to it and maybe gain something from what the Lord is teaching me.

"What am I afraid of? What things keep me up at night, rack my brain, churn my stomach, really worry me? I am afraid of the next step. I like consistency. I like knowing what to expect. I like being comfortable. I like something constant. I like being in control. There are going to be a lot of changes in my life over the next 8 or so months. I'm going to graduate, finish my senior project research, hopefully get a job, and that is all the "knowns". There are a million and one things that are going to happen over this next year. Do I want to give these things up? Would I rather hold on to them or would I rather find freedom from these fears and worries? That is a simple question. I want freedom. I want to be care-free. I want to live life untethered by the fears that try so earnestly to hold me down. Why is it then, that I have such a hard time letting go? What am I holding on to? What am I hoping to gain? How much more free would I be if I let these things go? How much more would I gain by giving up? Just like Ava and the pearls. Why do I cling to my own purchases, my own fake pearls when my Father is pleading with me to give them up? What is it? What is keeping me from jumping in the pool of Your love and grace and seeing how deep I can go? Is it what people think of me? Is it a fear of the unknown? Is it a fear of giving up control in my life? Is it a fear of failing? Is it a fear of losing it all? I think part of it is I am afraid that God won't meet me there. I am afraid I will give it all up and he will leave me hanging with nothing left. Father, show me that isn't true. I know it's not but I don't believe it. Show me that you won't leave me. How deep can I go? How intimate? Lord, I don't want to be just Isaac, I want to be who you want me to be. I want to be like Enoch. I want to live in such close relationship with you, Father. What is holding me back? Lord, I am ready to give it all up. I want to have the faith that you are going to meet me right where I am. I want to believe that you have better for me than I have for myself. How can I possibly think that I have anything close compared to what you offer? You offer life, freedom, mercy, grace, love, hope, laughter, everything. I offer myself nothing. I cannot promise myself one thing. My days are but a breath. A vapor in the wind. Lord, I am ready to give everything else up. I am ready to let go of my fake pearls. I am ready for what you have for me. I am ready to start living. I am ready for freedom. I am ready for life. I am ready. Take away my pearls. Take away the things I cling to. I don't need them. You have far better things for me. Like Noah, I am going to trust your word. You promised to keep him safe and he trusted. Lord, you promised to be there throughout the storm and he trusted. I want to be like Noah. I want to trust you. I want to give it all up and trust you. What if he said no? What if Noah had refused to build the ark? He didn't. He trusted. He had faith. He believed."

Priorities...

I've been thinking a lot about priorities.

I like making lists so priorities are something that I think about a lot. When I have several things I need to get done, I make a list with each item on it and then I can begin to decide which is most important and then attack it.

When it comes to life, this approach is not so simple.

I have 24 hours in a day... 23 hours and 56 minutes if we're talking Sideral days (look it up). Some of those hours are taken up by mandatory things: sleeping, eating, Starcraft 2 (kidding), etc... So, if we subtract 8 hours of sleep and 2 hours for eating, we're left with 14 hours for me to spend as I please.

On an average day, I have 3 hours of class, so that brings me down to 11 hours. Subtract my travel time (to and from class) and that brings me down to about 10 hours.

What I do with those 10 hours is what I've been thinking a lot about lately. I've heard a quote that goes something like this... "I am afraid that at the end of my life, God will hold all the things I've done in his hand and blow away all the things that were not for him and nothing will be left." Maybe you are more familiar with the wheat and the chaff illustration. When wheat is threshed, the heavier kernels of wheat stay while the lighter chaff is blown away by the wind leaving behind what is desired... the wheat.

I've been thinking about what would be left behind if you blew all the "chaff" out of my life. Somedays it really scares me. I think about how I did so little or how I did nothing at all. I think about how I spent 3 hours playing Starcraft 2, an hour looking at a friend's pictures on Facebook, 2 hours watching SportsCenter (twice), an hour in the gym working out. See how quickly that time adds up?

I recently heard a quote from a guy named Jim Elliot. He said, "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." It is one of my hopes and dreams that at the end of every day I can say, I gave up everything for the sake of Christ. I want to give up the chaff. I want to keep the wheat.

I think these lyrics sum it up well:
So put your faith,
In more than steel,
Don't store your treasures up,
With moth and rust,
Where thieves break in and steal.
Pull the fangs,
From out your heel.
We live in but a shadow of the real.
Of Dust And Nations by Thrice

Mind: blown.

I was just reading through my study bible this morning about the book of James. My sort of "goal" this summer/fall is to read through all the epistles. As I was reading through this little commentary about who James was and the context in which this letter was written, I was blown away by a simple date:

James became a believer in 33 AD.

If you know much about James, I sure didn't before I started reading this letter, but James was the brother of Jesus. Yeah, that's right Jesus the Messiah. So if we piece this all together, Jesus was crucified in 33 AD. His brother became a believer in 33 AD. Therefore, James lived his entire life with Jesus not believing in who he was until he was crucified!

If I could yell over the internet, I would yell that last sentence again! My mind has been blown! How easy is it to give up on someone because they just don't seem to get it? You know they've heard the gospel a hundred times and they still live in sin. They still live in rebellion. James was the brother of Christ yet he still lived in sin and death until the year his brother was killed.

How can I give up hope on a person? There are so many examples of people who came to faith after the craziest of circumstances.

The bright side is, even if I do give up on someone (which I hope I never do again)... God never gives up on them.

Unexpected...

I've been thinking a lot about unexpected things lately. I think that unexpected events are what really shape us... what really make us into the people we are. Unexpected things are hard for me to deal with. I love science. The major basis science works on is taking something that you know is going to happen and defining how it happens or what makes it happen. Life doesn't work that way. Life is filled with unexpected things. People who randomly show up in your life, people who randomly leave your life, things that happen to you, things that don't happen to you, the list goes on and on.

I think it's since we don't know what may or may not happen, that these events can shape us, mold us, bend us, and sometimes break us. I think that's the beauty of faith. We trust that God is going to use anything and everything he does for his glory. That is the difference between religion and faith. Religion, to me, is a practice. It is something you do. Faith on the other hand, is not a practice. It is a lifestyle. It is even more than that, though. Faith is stepping out into the unknown, the unexpected, and trusting. Trusting that God is there. Trusting that He loves you. Trusting that in all things He works for the good of those who love him.

I think that God uses unexpected events to help us grow in faith. If, for example, I knew everything that was going to happen to me over the course of my lifetime, it wouldn't take much faith. In fact, I don't think it would take any faith. I would know, start to finish, what was going to happen, when it was going to happen, and obviously what would happen after. It's when we are in a situation that we cannot see what is next, when we can't see what the outcome might be, that we grow. That our faith becomes stronger because we trust that God is at work and we trust that He is true to His word.

The best part about all of this is that even when we are not faithful, when we have doubt, when we have hesitations, when we falter, when we are reluctant--God is faithful. He is true to His word.

I might keep writing later, but that's all I have for now.

Floored...

I'm not a very emotional person by the worlds standards. I've never cried watching a movie. I don't cry at weddings. I didn't even tear up when I read Where the Red Fern Grows. The way I experience emotions is more like getting kicked in the stomach--having the wind knocked out of me.

You may be asking, why is Isaac writing about this? And that is a good question. Because I will tell you. Now.

As many of you know, I lead Wyldlife. For those of you who don't, it is a Christian ministry that seeks to introduce middle schoolers to Jesus Christ and help them grow in their faith. By "leading" Wyldlife, I am in essence a leader at a middle school. I help organize events, hang with kids, but most importantly, share Christ with them.

Anyway, this week is our summer camp trip. I sadly couldn't go this year because of numbers, but, I went down yesterday to catch up with some of the guys who went with our other guy leader, Micah. Yesterday, the camp speaker presents the kids with a problem. A big problem. He lays out the problem of sin. He explains to them what sin is and how it differs from sins. He explains how there is absolutely nothing we can do to fix this problem. We've made our own choice to go astray and do the things we want to do.

It hurts to hear this message, but seeing kids begin to open up... to think about their own lives... to think about how there is something greater than girls, clothes, sports, school... is simply amazing.

After the talk last night, I headed back to the cabin that the guys from my school are staying in for "cabin time". It is essentially a leader-led time where we all sit on the floor and process what was just talked about. If you know anything about middle school kids, boys in particular, they have an attention span of 2 seconds, so cabin time can often be an adventure. However, last night was different. The guys were thinking, sharing about their lives, asking questions.

The thing that really got me was what one kid said. He hadn't spoken the whole 30 minutes we'd been talking, but he raised his hand and said, "We are like a work of art... like the Statue of Libery... when it was first made it was bright and shiny copper, but it quickly became tarnished and turned green. It was still the original creation, but something had changed... it wasn't perfect anymore."

I was floored. The wind was knocked right out of me. If I cried normally, queue up the tear factory. This kid, probably 12 years old, just made a brilliant comparison. I don't know if he's following Christ, I just met him yesterday, but that analogy struck me.

We are still the beautiful creation that God made us to be; however, something has happened. Something that can't be reversed. We've all become tarnished. Imperfect. Sin. The Statue of Liberty itself cannot clean off the tarnish, the imperfection. We are the same way. We cannot clean off our sin. Only our creator can.

Today the kids hear about the cross, about Jesus, that he did what we cannot do. It's the best day of the week. It's the best day of their lives.

One to the next one...

Well I have almost finished reading Jesus For President. Yes, I realize I've been reading it for about 4 months now. That is how I read books. I am a bit of a binge reader. I will go weeks without reading a page, then I will sit down and read 100 pages and not touch the book again for a couple weeks.

Enough about my reading habits... I think my next read is going to be The Diaries of Jim Rayburn. For those of you out there in the blogosphere, I am involved in an organization called YoungLife. The mission of YoungLife is to bring the gospel of Christ to adolescents and help them grown in their faith. Jim Rayburn is the founder of YoungLife. It was his idea, to step outside of the church, and take the gospel where kids are--schools, football games, parks, etc--that began the movement that is now known as YoungLife.

I am really pretty excited about reading his diaries. I feel like getting to peek inside the mind of one of the most godly and awesome men I've learned about is going to be a very encouraging and convicting experience. Sometimes I feel like I get disillusioned with my work as a leader when I lose focus on the goal. It will be interesting to see what ways Jim combated this feeling (if he even felt it at all).

I don't really have any major point in writing this other than cluing you all in on my next reading experience. I have approximately 27 days 'till school starts, so who knows, maybe I will get this book finished by then.