this is hilarious... what if Starbucks marketed like a church...

to funny.

-J

wow.

this is a horrible way to go about changing things...

im appalled.

act well your part

philosophical statment of the day:

"Act well your part. there all honor lies." -Alexander Pope

i was hit with an interesting predicament today... and i began to think. sometimes i feel like a puppet. no, wrong word. sometimes i feel like im an actor in a play, playing a part for some big-screen producer, eternally confined within the limits of my charachter.

forever unable to be me.

and i began to think... act well your part, there all honor lies? really?

part of me thinks that this idea was made to keep the lower-class people feeling in their place, that all honor lied in them knowing and keeping their station. thus creating apathy in the lower positions, and keeping the aristocracy above everything.

what is out part? is it honorable? is it something interesting? do i get to rule over anyone else?

i believe that the part of every human being lies in this phrase:

love all, worship One.

love all: we are people who crave relationships. all people crave things in their life, and to be loved and to love is both a craving to recieve and a craving to give. we were designed by God to love and care for all of those around us. not to judge eachother, not to crush eachother, but to love one another. and part of love is by hsaring with them the joy and hope we have, as christians, in Jesus... my best friend and the one who saves me from myself. loving all, indescriminantly, is a scary and dangerous love that requires EVERYTHING of us. don't belive me? hold hands with someone who has A.I.D.S., publically hang around with a homosexual and stand up for them as a person, bring a cross-dresser to your church. your world will explode, but it will explode in the most infinite and crazy love of all: the love of Yahwey, God.

Worship one: at hume lake, on the side of the lake, there is a sign that says simply "God Is...". i think that people get confused at first when they see this, but the truth of it is unbelievable! no matter what goes on in your life, God is...

...love.
...savior.
...warior.
...crazy in love with you.
...still on his throne.

you could put an infinite amount of things in this list. no matter what, God Is...

we worship God for who he is. be cause He is truly the center of the story, not you. because he is worthy of praise. because he is god. we worship the one god, and Him alone. meaning not money, or social status, or talent, or possesions.

there is an ancient line that is the heartbeat of ancient isreal:
"hear, oh isreal: the lord, your God, the Lord is one".

meaning there is one god, and he ALONE is worthy of all praise. because he is God, and he is One.

this is our part. this is what we are to act well. love all, wirship one.

so, act well your part. there all honor lies.

honor, and truth, and love, and fulfilment.

everything you desire in your heart, in the deep recesses of your soul that only you know about, keeping hidden from the world around you.

Love all, Worship One
-Josh

love on her arms.

i remember when i was in 7th grade,a friend came up to me and gave me a hug.

we walked, arm in arm, for a while. i always liked to play with her wrist-bands. it was one of my annoying habits, i guess, but this girl had a LOT of wrist bands, and so i made fun of her in my own little way.

i played with them.

constantly.

only this time, as soon as i touched her wrist, she jerked her arm away from me.

i looked down, and there, half hidden beneath her bright pink and neon green cover-up, were three slash-marks going sideways across her arm.

that day i learned that my friend was a cutter. but more than that, i learned that my friend was hiding a part of herself from the world because she didn't feel the love of a world that didn't seem to care about her anyway.

today is National "To Write Love On Her Arms" Day.

a day set aside to bring awareness and hope to people who suffer from depression and hopelessness.

through this organization, many people, boys and girls, have found hope and love in places they never thought were possible.

so today, i encourage you to write LOVE on your arms. and to show people all around you that, regardless of what they think, someone out there loves them and hope is possible.

love is the movement.

move.

for more information about this organization and what you can do to help, please visit www.twloha.com

to make myself clear

i hold God's truth to be self-evident... and i do not go against it.

however, i do have a HUGE problem with christ-followers presenting a one-sided view of truth.

Truth: Homosexuality and homosexual marriage is a sin, meaning it is missing the mark God set up in the beginning. like ALL other sin, it brings sadness and dis-pleasure to the heart of God.

also,

Truth: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. no man can say to another man "i am better than you are" because, truth be told, he is not. the call of Christ is a call to follow, to lift up your head toward the truth and love of a savior, a God-man that came "not for the healthy, but the sick; not for the righteous, but sinners".

do I believe that homosexual marriage is recognized by God as a "holy union between humanity and Diety"? no... and i doubt many homosexuals would see it that way either.

but i do, however, find it to be a horrible defiance of the character of Jesus to use a law as a weapon of defense; thus encouraging the church to label itself with what we are against, not what we are for.

are we against homosexuality? sure, just as we are against every other sin: lust or envy or murder.

but we cannot and should not mark ourselves with that.

we are for the winning of people over to Jesus, showing those around us that there is hope still coming: that the kingdom to come is more powerful than the kingdoms of this world.

you don't help a child excell at something by pointing out all of the things that are wrong with what they are doing and showing them how you excel so much more in those areas then they do. you help a child excel by encouraging them in their strengths, using your own experiences to benefit them in any way you can.

and sometimes, the only strength you can encourage is the desire of every person to be truly, unconditionally loved by someone and to share with them the hope of a savior who does.
-J

wicked webs weaved...

im really sad prop 8 passed.

i know, i know, but im a christian, right? im supposed to be for prop 8.

but im not... i feel that, as-so-far as the church is concerned, it makes a "us vs. them" stance on our society.

we are right

you are wrong.

you deal with it, because we are the ones that are right.

and i think that thats a terrible way to go about humanity and living. It is really hard to tell people about jesus when they first hear you defending yourself against them at every turn. people make connections due to vulnerability, not distance. i feel like we just made the wide, barren gap between "evangelicals" and homosexuals even wider, seemingly impossible to cross.

the fundamental question, then, is this:

is it right to ignore biblical right and wrong when a persons or people-groups salvation is on the line? because, if you remember, you don't go to hell for being Gay, you go to hell for not having a relationship with Jesus Christ. and i fear that we just made any efforts to reach the gay community with the love and care of Jesus that much more difficult. we are refusing to go to their level and share jesus, and forcing them to come to ours.

as if ours is somehow any better than there's.


I've heard people say that our country, in electing Obama, has taken a giant step toward equality.

i, personally, think we have simply turned our focus from one minority to another.

what heights of love, what depths of peace

i remember when i was a kid, i used ot read the ender series.

HAve you read those? its really a great series, starting with Enders Game allthe way through countless novels by orson scott card.

Ender, the main charachter and heroin of Enders Game, is a small boy who, a "third", a special case "third child" pregnancy authorized by the government in the hopes that he will be be the next GREAT COMMANDER of the Worlds forces against the dreaded bugger army.

Ender becomes all they ever wanted and more... and he goes through this period in his training where he suddenly has surpassing respect, even command, over every other student in the Battle School he attends. They Salute him in the hall. they get up when he comes in the room, they stop their conversations and jokes when he enters. they all address him as sir.

all before he's 11 years old.

this amazes me.

and ender gets so fed up with all this "DAMN RESPECT" that he literally snaps.

i feel like this sometimes. it seems like ever since i started in as the "Youth Pastor" at hbbc, and started the "least of these" group at VU... im not Josh anymore. now, im this guy who is supposed to be the very nature of Jesus in every effect. a guy who never spits, never cusses, never thinks or says things immoral.

people looka t me differently. im no longer "one of the guys" now im the "YOUTH PASTOR" or "THE GOD-GUY". you cant talk about that stuff around HIM.

im only 19. im not perfect. AT ALL. far from it, id say. but for some reason, because i love students and seeing poeple challenged to follow christ at a deeper, more intimate level, i get moved to this standard of almost being "unhuman". i know what he means when Mark Moore says "when you're a pastor, you never get to take off the mask".


the way i see it, human beings aren't meant to have to deal with all of the stress of overwhelming obsticles and hardships like this before their time. i echo the words of Meredith Grey when she said "you don't know this yet, but life isn't supposed to be like this. it isn't supposed to be this hard".

life is a roller coaster of experience. hard core roller coaster, too.

now i echo the words of Keith Getty & Stuart Townend, from that great song, when it says

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

-j