In The Beginning...

This weekend at church we started a new series on the story of God, and how we are people fit into that story.  Chuck talked about the Bible in a way that I have never heard someone talk about it before.  He related the Bible to a book (which it is; the bestselling book of all time!), and with that being a slight bit of realization that we as humans are not the center of the universe. 

I WILL SAY THIS AGAIN; IF YOU LOOK AT THE BIBLE AS A BOOK, WHICH IT IS, WE AS HUMANS ARE NOT THE MAIN CHARACTER OF THAT STORY!!

The first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1 states "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Now knowing what I know about books, my bet and what Chuck talked about, is that if you just read the first sentence of the Bible, it is safe to say that God is the main character of the story, but with that being said, why is it that people live their lives daily centered around themselves and what they want to get out of everything.

I wanted to share this with you all because I find it to be motivating and inspiring to go out and live your life in a way that reflects the BOOK that you are in.  We are all just supporting characters brought along by the main character to help him, GOD, in whatever he might need help with.  The next 7 weeks Crossroads is going to be continuing to talk about this STORY OF GOD, and how each of us tie into that story.  I wanted to get this out now, to challenge all of you to take on this journey with me, and realize where we fit in this amazing story that we are in.

God is Love,
Nate

Why Bad Things Happen To Good People

This morning I sat down and actually watched a two part podcast sermon on why bad things happen to good people by senior pastor Perry Noble from Newspring Church in Anderson, South Carolina.  For the past month Samantha has been urging me to watch these videos, but to be honest I was avoiding them because of the things that have happened in my life.  The bad things that I don't want to let go of, but rather hold onto for situations when I don’t like what God has to say about something.

For anyone who knows me, my road of a very short 20 years has been littered with some very challenging tragedies from being paralyzed twice to losing a grandma to brain cancer right in front of my eyes, to depression, to losing my grandpa last week, and now having to watch my great grandmother fight for her last few breaths to hopefully make it out of this weekend.  And so to me these two sermons where nothing I was looking forward to because I personally have no interest in hearing it.

However, I just finished watching these two podcasts, maybe the best 2 hour investment of my life, and have a little bit of a better realization of what tragedy actually looks like.  The one thing that was said in this sermon that struck me very close was that as humans we want to justify the wrong things that happen to people based on things they must have done, but we want our wrongs to be washed clean so as for us to not have anything bad happen to us.  What I realized to actually be reality was actually something totally different.

I want to share with you all the not so often told tragedy of a man named Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save us from our own sins, whom never once sinned himself, but endured more tragedy than any of us ever will.  Here is the list;

1.      He was born in a barn because there wasn’t even a room for his family (Tragedy if it happens to your friend next week?)

2.      King Herod ordered the killing of all children under a certain age because he feared Jesus (Tragedy if you wake up tomorrow and see that every child in Ghana under the age of 3 was killed yesterday?)

3.      Jesus’ own father Joseph died when Jesus was between the age of 12-30 (Tragedy if your dad dies today?)

4.      After Jesus’ first sermon he was taken to a cliff in the town and was going to be thrown off of the cliff and killed (Tragedy if the head pastor of your church is thrown off the roof?)

5.      For the first 3 years of Jesus’ ministry there was a group of men who went around criticizing him and plotting to kill him (Tragedy if a countries leader is assassinated?) (Republicans don’t answer that question)

6.      Jesus was betrayed by one of his 12 disciples (Tragedy if your best friend backstabs you?)

7.      The night Jesus was captured his friends couldn’t even stay awake to support him (Tragedy if you need someone to be there and they fall asleep on you?)

8.      Jesus was so worried before he was captured that he was sweating blood (Tragedy if that is you?) (If you say no you are lying!)

9.      After Jesus was captured his closes friends betray him (Tragedy if you get taken to jail and use you one call to call a friend and they tell you they are at a Reds game and aren’t coming?)

10.  After Jesus was captured he was spit on, beard pulled out by hand, crown of thorns smashed onto his head by rocks, and whipped by cat of nine tails just while on trial (Tragedy?)

11.  Once sentenced Jesus was forced to carry his cross until he literally could not carry it anymore (Tragedy when an athlete dies from dehydration?)

12.  Jesus had nails pounded through his feet and wrists onto the cross and a pillow placed behind his back so his lungs would fill with blood (Tragedy?)

13.  For six hours Jesus hung on the cross and GAVE HIS LIFE FOR YOU!

Now just so this all comes back around, this is all to a man WHO NEVER SINNED, and we look at our lives and hold things against God.  Really?  But the best part of this story, and the part that has honestly changed the way I look at my life, is that these tragedies (which they are) where turned into triumph when Jesus rose from the dead. 

Isaiah 43: 1-3 reads : But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

The reason I share this with everyone today is because just as I have had tragedies in my life Jesus had tragedies in his, and just as his tragedies turned into triumph so will mine!

Dance to Make the World a Better Place

This weekend I had the great privilege and honor to be a part of the 3rd annual Cincinnati Dance Marathon. For those of you who do not know what the dance marathon is, I wanted to take some time to explain about CDM and the courage that I pull from it every year.

Last year was my first time being involved with the CDM, and to be honest I did it because I have to do 30hrs of community service for my scholarship here at school. However I must say after the first 2 hours there I realized that we as students were there for a bigger reason, and a greater purpose. The Cincinnati Dance Marathon is exactly what the title states; a dance marathon in Cincinnati, but truthfully it is much more than that. CDM is a one day event that happens every year where hundreds of college students from the University of Cincinnati come together and literally dance for 24hrs straight to raise money for Cincinnati's Children’s Hospital. This year the students involved (a little over 600) raised over $23,000. This might not seem like a lot to some people, but to students who live off of Roman Noodles and Pizza, I was really proud to say that I was a part of it. 

The thing that touched me the most were actually the children from the hospital that came to the dance marathon to talk about their health issues.  Some of these kids are undiagnosed, some with some of the world's rarest diseases, and some who are just really sick. Above all of this, these kids took time out of their crazy and volatile lives to come and thank us for spending our time and money to help them. This whole situation really makes me think about the finer things in life that I feel most Americans take for granite every single day, such as life itself. I find that spending an hour with someone who is holding on to life by the tips of their fingers helps keep life in perspective for us that have more than we truly know. 

I am not saying that everyone should feel the need to go out and spend time with sick children in a hospital, however that is something that this has made me want to do more often to give back, but I do think that situations like this should help us balance things in life that we feel to be rights, and not privileges. There is nothing more humbling and gratifying than spending some time with someone, and through that bring happiness to both you and that person. That is the joy that should be passed around to our peers not one of the more possessions I have the happier I will become.

I want to apologize to anyone who first feels that my statements have been all over the place through this post, but also to someone who finds what I say to be demeaning to someone with lots of possessions. I just want to be clear in stating that I am not saying that possessions are bad, but rather a healthy balance of possessions and giving back to those in a lesser situation might be exactly what some people need.