Driving by braille

So, I have been trying to read three books at once here recently - it certainly keeps me on my toes. I am reading a commentary on Philippians for my seminary course, a book called Heaven (amazingly about what it is entitled), by Randy Alcorn, and Live Life on Purpose by Claude Hickman, the founder of . Reading through Live Life on Purpose has been challenging already and I have only read through the first two chapters. I am worried I might be more convicted as I read through the rest of the book! Yikes!

One of the ideas which was very challenging was the “compass” which God has given us for our lives. Hickman speaks of the compass being God’s ultimately fulfilled purpose, which we see in Revelation 7:9 - “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” God ultimately desires that this throng of worshipers will be with Him forever in heaven. This is our compass. I really enjoyed the distinction which he gave between a compass and a map. A map is what we often wish that we had for our lives - a very specific and detailed plan which lays out how we will get to the end goal. The compass, on the other hand, will help us to see if what we are doing lines up with the “North Star” that is God’s ultimate plan.

Another point that Hickman brought up in his writing was that we are often approvers of others. We do not want to rock the boat by telling someone that they are not living up to their God-given potential and are not living in light of the compass which we have been given. Instead, we allow these people to try and line God up with their decisions rather than lining their decisions up with God’s desire. Approvers are compared to Saul when he held the coats of the people who stoned Stephen. We are not the ones making the decision, but we stand passively by and let it happen.

A final point which really struck me also was his point that this generation’s worst fear is choosing the wrong path and missing their destiny. How true that can be. There are so many roads open to us that we think that taking one will ruin the rest of our life. Instead of doing something, we end up doing nothing, which is clearly not going to bring God glory! A quote which I think is challenging along with this idea is this, “Don’t be afraid of the unknown on the journey; be afraid of missing the life God has appointed you to live.” So many times I want to have everything mapped out so that I know exactly what I need to do. This is certainly not how I should be living.

One final quote (this one from Oswald Chambers - but in this book):

God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love for Him … When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.

It is pretty incredible how God uses His word to encourage us. As I have been processing through a lot of things here recently: job choices, evaluating my relationship with Kelsey (which gets better and better all the time), figuring out how to get to know the team I am going overseas with this summer, figuring out how to write a support letter for my trip, really glorifying God where I am right now, figuring out where my ministry should be at the moment and other smaller things, I have felt a bit like the seed sown among the thorns in Matthew 13:7 - overwhelmed with “the worries of this life.” This morning before I left to go to work, I spent a bit of time reading through some Psalms and was so encouraged by the words of Psalm 130. I’ll let it speak for itself:

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
² O Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

³ If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins,
O Lord, who could stand?
⁴ But with you there is forgiveness;
therefore you are feared.

⁵ I wait for the LORD , my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
⁶ My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

⁷ O Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.
⁸ He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

So, I am planning on getting this Lasik surgery on my eyes on Thursday, April 7 (but seriously, where else would they be able to do Lasik surgery), which means that I have to go through this veritable barrage of tests in order to see if I am a worthy candidate for the procedure and to get a current prescription which I will then have etched into my corneas and will get to live with for a few years. I had already found out that I am a worthy candidate - just a fairly mild case of myopia (nearsightedness, for people like me who had no clue what that meant) which should easily be corrected by Lasik surgery. So, yesterday I got to go get my eyes dilated (yesterday was the first time I had ever experienced this joy).

You have been warned, don’t blame me and say that I am sick and gross (that may be true, but it isn’t because I didn’t warn you). Before I had my eyes dilated, I got them numbed so that they could use this cool tool to gently poke my cornea to see what sort of “eye-pressure” I have. I suppose that it could be considered like an air-pressure gauge for a tire. I was glad my eyes were numb, I guess, even though I had this weird “I-can’t-feel-my-eyes” experience where my eyes felt weird because I couldn’t actually feel when I was blinking. You wouldn’t think this would anything you would even notice until you have it happen.

Then, I got the awesome drops which dilated my eyes until I looked like my eyes were entirely black - I was definitely hoping that they would go back to normal eventually. I got my eyes checked out (they were in good shape), I got my new prescription, and I got these AWESOME sunglasses. Don’t be at all surprised when you see many people walking down the streets looking exactly like this:

Those will be the days! It took a while before my eyes were not incredibly sensitive to light, but now things are back to normal (at least my vision is back to normal).

For those of you who may have worried that I may have dropped off the planet, eaten the wrong type of mushroom, said something bad about the wrong Italian’s mom, slipped on a banana peel, sailed somewhere far far away, lost my ability to type, or been hauled off by aliens, thankfully none of those things have actually happened. What HAS happened is that I have been fairly busy. Not that it hasn’t been good, but my time to blog has been relatively short to say the least. So, what has been going on in these parts? Well, I am glad you asked. I have been spending a little bit of time with this really awesome girl who lives up in Edmond - if you have kept up with my blog at all, you might know who I am talking about - if you haven’t, her name is Kelsey Scoggins and she is pretty much the coolest (she’s taken guys, sorry!). I have been working on trying to recruit more National Merit students to come to OU, calling them, emailing them and generally trying to get them to come to campus. I have been taming wild honeymoon stallions, leaping tall buildings in single bounds, devising a plan to save the world, finding the cure for cancer (I am still working on that one), sticking things to Teflon (where is that copyright symbol, I am sure I will get sued), looking myself up on Google, practicing deep breathing exercises, living dangerously, spending wisely, eating well (lots of onions ), and brushing my teeth. I have been trying to keep track of where the time went, but it would take so long to figure it out that I would have spent a whole lot more time figuring out where the time went. So, rather than doing that, I will continue on with this insane blog entry.

I suppose that I do have some profound insight for this blog entry, I am not writing just to hear myself type. The profound insight is this - it is an amazing to see the faith which is exemplified in Matthew 8:1-17. The first example is demonstrated by the man with leprosy. When he sees Jesus coming he goes down and kneels before him saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” What a simple, yet profound statement. This man knew that it was well within the power of Jesus to heal him of the disease which he had been experiencing for a while, but he also knew that Jesus was not obligated to heal him. What a wonderful attitude is reflected by saying, “God, I know that you can do this, but I only ask you to do it if you are willing.” This totally moves the emphasis from us to looking entirely at the power and wisdom of God!

The second example of faith is from the centurion. When he told Jesus that he had a servant who was sick at home and was near death, Jesus got ready to follow him to his house. However, this man replied that there was no need for Jesus to go and besides, the centurion said that he was not even worthy to have Jesus in his house. This centurion knew that Jesus didn’t need to be there physically to heal the servant and so he said that Jesus could merely say the word and the servant would be completely healed. Jesus was totally amazed at this demonstration of faith. As I look at this centurion, there are a couple of things that I see. He realized that Jesus had incredible power and he approached Jesus with humility. This is another great thing which goes along with faith. We certainly do approach the throne boldly, but we don’t do it in such a way that we forget our place. Humility is key in presenting our requests to God, because we are obviously not the ones who are making the final decision. Some interesting reflections to think about - faith with humility is certainly what both of these people reflect!

I hope this entry didn’t put you to sleep. It almost put me to sleep as I heard the gentle susurration (spelling corrected per Marilyn Scoggins - thanks for the heads up! ) of the keyboard. Okay, I need to get some things figured out for this evening!