18 month

So, Monday was Annie's and My year-and-a-half anniversary! Now I know what you're thinking, JD, are you a highschool sophomore or something? Who celebrates anniversaries other than yearly once they're married? Well, I do. Now don't get me wrong, we didn't do presents or go crazy, but it was a great chance to just spend the night together and eat at a nice little trattoria in our town, Zia's. It was awesome, the cafe is all outdoor seating and the night was perfect and the food was delicious. We also started the day by enjoying some pancakes with strawberries and whipped-cream (of course, I got some flowers for the wonderful wife).

All this is because I am absolutely in love with my wife and I love our married life. I also will say that my absolute favorite time of my life has been these last 18 months (and while we were dating, but the marriage has been even better) and I love that I get to spend the rest of my life with my best friend, the love of my life, and the person, who sees the world most similar to me. I love it, and You, Annie

My Salty Weekend

This weekend was a tough one for me. It was one of those where I remember how bitter and angry and chump-like I can be. From our dog being a butt, to our car giving me crap for changing the oil, to me being bitter towards my wife for no good reason, it was a weekend full of bitterness for me (out here in the aloha state, we say someone is salty, not bitter). I think God really wants to show me some junk in my heart and my life and part of it took all that coming to the surface this weekend.

Anyway, needless to say, I tried spending alot of time in the water and trying to get my heart right (it's funny how you can't necessarily will that to happen). But on Sunday it was great because I triumphed over my car and got everything running well, and was met here at the church by one of our Jr high leaders and parents (and just an awesome guy) and we went out to the Sandy beach and met another guy there and did some bodysurfing. The next day I ran into the parent/leader at sandy beach again and we talked about how we both experienced a salty weekend and how we really used Sunday's session to clear our heads, start fresh and feel better. It was encouraging. In fact, as I look at it now, the whole weekend was encouraging because even though I was an absolute butt, God surrounded me with gracious people and opportunities and kept me sane and reminded me who is in control (it's God by the way, not me)

A side note, on Friday, I went out to Sany beach for some late morning Bodysurfing and showed up and it was HUGE, I'm talking the biggest I have ever been in the water for. These big ones that were breaking outside had about 15 foot faces and the ones inside were atleast 12 foot faces (double-overhead) and barelling so big and fast you could fit a car in there. And to top all this awesomeness off, it was sooooooo clean and rideable and fast. I wish there were pictures of it I could direct you to on the web, but I have not yet found any. Anyway, God really blessed me with that experience (yes, I pulled the "G-Card") because I guess only two hours before I got there, my friend said it was so unrideable, he didn't even get in (and this friend is crazy and will try to ride anything), and then the leader/parent went by later that afternoon and said it was still clean, but significantly smaller, so yea, I was blessed to have such awesome conditions and rides. well, that's all for this random post.

Dad

Today is my dad's birthday and I am going to follow Annie's lead by posting about my dad on his birthday. These last seven or so months, I cant help but look back on my own childhood and think about your fathering to us. I realize now how expensive just living can be and I think of how you amazingly took care of all five of us. I also think about how you were present for so much of my life; I remember you enthusiastically attending wrestling meets, choir festivals, and of course football games. I don't think I have told you but it meant alot to me that you would get so excited about the activities we kids would do.

I was also thinking of a memory of how, in middle school, when I was into snowboarding, you would take me up to the mountain a few times a year and you would ski while my friends and I snowboarded. I seem to remember you tearing up the terrain park with us and I think that is pretty awesome.

But what I have been most thinking about lately is how it's going to be tough to be a dad. I think of the sacrifices you made for your kids and am impressed and challenged by the example you set. I think about late nights with us and early mornings to be at work and am blown away. But I think, what I am most proud of you about and blown away about is that you quietly raised a family after God. I think of the three of us older kids, and the fact that studies (and my experience) show that 80% of Christians leave their faith after high school and it seems like the three of us have had our faith deepened by college and its challenges. Even as I write this I am blown away that you have kept this family so directed towards God, so thank you. Dad, you are a great dad and I certainly don't tell you enough. Thanks for all you are and for al you have done

HIM Conference, Part 4; Compassion Intl, Bart Campolo

So in this post I hope to hit two topics that happened during the same session, specifically one of the youth general sessions that I attended (with our teens, but funny, it didn't seem like there were many youth leaders with their students, I wonder why). During this session, we heard from Bart Campolo, Tony's son, who does much in the world of Christianity, but gave us a great sermon on friendship. The other part was before all that, a girl spoke for Compassion International; I will start with the Compassion story.

We totally didn't know this speaker was coming and I must admit up front that what I can write will not even come near capturing the gravity of the event. I continually go over the situation in my head and heart but I cannot put it into words. There comes a point when language fails and you cannot describe heart movements and aching. Anyway, that is my confession/preface.

So this young girl (actually about our age) comes up to the stage in the midst of a worship set and begins speaking about compassion intl. She begins to tell the story of poverty and brokenness her family experienced. She talks about the irresistible gravity of drugs and alcohol in the impoverished portion of the Philippines where she grew up. She talks about how great unemployment was and how she lived in a house with 17 of her relatives. She told of her father falling into world of drugs and how it tore the house she lived in apart. She talked about her father leaving due to the drugs and the pain that that caused. She then gave a glimpse into the extent of their poverty when she recalled a time when her, her mother and two brothers shared a cup of noodles as their only food for that day.

Then She talked about Compassion. She talked about being physically supported with food and health care. She talked about being educationally supported through the school that compassion worked with and sent her to. She talked about the knowledge of Christ that she received and how she was spiritually supported throughout. She also talked about her emotional support through correspondence with her sponsors. She talked about going to college because of compassion and graduating and earning a job in marketing with a Christian organization. And she spoke of the opposing cycle compassion creates; instead of a doomed cycle of poverty, she now supports and sponsors child herself, takes care of her family and has seen the reconciliation and healing of her father. And she told all this with a face so joyful and heartfelt you could not help but be floored by her heavenly peace, joy and hope.

My writing cannot convey the incredible mixture of heaviness and hope that was in that conference room that morning. I felt a divinely real mixture of a picture of real poverty, of real redemption and hope. It was as if the whole room's hearts were broken for this picture of poverty, but also rejoiced in the redeemed story we faced. It was flesh and bones, hair and a reality we had never experienced. It was a picture of God and how God reaches into the broken depths of our world to lift us out and bring us into the universe changing Kingdom of redemption. I felt like I had been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. I felt like I understood a little better what I just finished reading in Rick McKinley's book, This Beautiful Mess; that God's redemptive Kingdom somehow doesn't fit the neat little flannel-board picture we create for it.

I cannot say anymore about this other than, if you have the opportunity to sponsor a compassion child, absolutely do; and if you have an opportunity to hear a compassion child share their story in person, also do that.

Now onto Bart Campolo. I have heard him speak before and am impressed by his honesty, transparency and the way he challenges those who hear him. This session did not disapoint. the title was "the art of friendship", but he began by sharing that he felt like his original talk was dumbed down for the HS-ers, so he said, as he was preparing that morning, he decided to take it another way and spent the next half hour admonishing these safe, sheltered teens to step out and be real friends to gay people. He clearly shared many times that his goal was not to change the listener's thoughts on whether it was right or wrong, but simply that Jesus calls us to love those in need, and he argued, there are few more in need of friendship than homosexuals in high school. I wont go into any specifics but will say that it challenged our kids and me personally. I want to do a good job of loving gay people as Jesus would, but after this talked I realized I'm not doing well at all. It was sobering and challenging, so all in all, a real kick-you-in-the-face session, and I am working to do a better job at both these subjects.
Only In Love

HIM Conference, Part 3; Tony Campolo

Another portion of the conference we went to was a lecture by Tony Campolo on the challenges of Marxism, Fruedianism, and Darwinism. We were pretty excited to hear this because we have seen him other places and read some of his stuff, but had never heard him in person. Well, Tony's lecture was great, he speaks without notes (he knows his stuff front and back) and is super personable and funny. While he was talking, he talked about Darwin and how terrible Darwin's second book is (it talks about eliminating humans based on disabilities), he also talked about Nietzsche and his form on atheism. Tony's basic premise about guys like Nietzsche is that atheists of our time want to take Christianity out of the equation, but still expect a basic Christian morality. They think everything is ok as long as everyone treats each other humanely. Tony posits that this is like weak atheism, he contended that guys like darwin and nietzsche were real atheists. These two guys took social darwinism to its extreme and were all for literally wiping out 'inferior' people. He contends that they didn't want God, so they threw out everything God stood for and encouraged taking darwinism to the extreme in the social and human aspect.

Well, to hear this is absolutely terrifying. I can't help but thank God for giving we humans innate general senses of right and wrong. Now I know post-modernism throws out all absolutes, but even modern atheists speak to what CS Lewis (in Mere Christianity) calls the Law of Nature. Even in our world of vagueness and fluidity, there still seems to be something deep in humanity's senses that speak to some moral standard, and that we often fail to live up to that.

So Tony went on and also talked about Marxism and Capitalism and Free-Market economy and all this stuff. I think the best thing I took away from this portion was the idea that "the Christian" should be a free-market economist rather than a socialist or communist or capitalist. His reasoning behind this was that "the Christian" in business should be out to make a profit, but the ends of that profit is to pour our blessings on others. His phrase was, "The Christian should be interested in Free-Market economy, because they should be making money to bless others. The difference comes in the motivation, The Christian is never motivated by profit, The Christian is motivated by love. Now you need to make a profit, or you wont be in business long and then you wont be blessing anyone. But the key is motivation, The Christian is motivated by love."

What I love so much about this is that last sentence, The Christian is motivated by love, not should be or will be or any other wishy-washy phrase. He says real Christians, those who follow Christ's teachings and life, are absolutely and solely motivated by love. I definitely get excited and fired up to here someone challenge those of us who call ourselves Christians in that way.

Well, Tony got sidetracked and didn't finish talking about the subject he was supposed to, because he went down an awesome path of liberation theology and how different people read the bible differently, and I will talk more about that in my next post, but the absolute best line of the night, that had the whole auditorium roaring in laugher was when he talked about his age. He said, "Now, I'm getting old. I'm 73 and I'm getting old. You know how to tell if you are old, when your wife tells you, 'let's go upstairs and have sex,' and you say great, but I can't do both. Well, we moved to a one-story house." and then he chuckled while the entire crowd (of mostly married and married aged people) laughed themselves silly. Indeed Tony, indeed.

HIM Conference, Part 2; Brewer

So, another bonus of the Conference was that Annie and I got to attend a lecture taught by our former pastor, Bel Air's Mark Brewer. His topic was one we weren't interested by simply reading the title, but it turns out that we loved the topic and discussion. The title was "the third intelligence" and referred to the idea of spiritual intelligence. His whole premise was that our society champions IQ, EQ (emotional intelligence), but we miss the part about being spiritually wise. He also made the point of differentiating between knowledge and wisdom; knowledge is knowing what something is, while wisdom is knowing how to apply that knowledge. He was basically trying to show how to make wise and Godly choices in our post-modern and uber-technological world. We deal with issues that people in the bible never dealt with and vice-versa.

How then, do we as Christians make God-honoring choices about things that the bible doesn't specifically mention. Things like who should we date/marry and what does that look like, should we pull the plug of a loved one on life support, what job to do, dealing with divorce, and the list goes on. It seems like many of these things aren't clear from simply scripture so what then. He mentioned that there are 4 sentinels (a sentinel was a guide who could show you the way, but couldn't make you do them) to spiritual intelligence. He lists these as 1. Scripture: The Living Word through the Written Word. 2. Reason: the difference between our intention and our motives. 3. Wise Counsel: from the Present and Past. 4. Inner Leading: spiritual "caller ID" whose voice is bringing this?

He brought up some great points on each of these, but some specific ones were: reason; God holds us accountable for our intentions more than our motives and can God possible give us freedom (free will) without freedom's consequences? Wise counsel: wise friends, they care about you more than the relationship; love is wishing someone's highest welfare; relationships themselves are spirit-filled, not merely the individuals; you need both truth and safety for relationships to go deeper. From the past: when we look to the wise thinkers who have gone before, we must really study them hard to understand there opinion and thoughts, we learn more this way. Spiritual caller id; 3 ways to recognize the voice you hear; 1. you spend time with them: you know God's voice better the more time you spend with God. 2 check the voice against the other 3 sentinels. 3. when it is from God, God blesses you with the fruit of the spirit; love, peace/tranquility, joy...

Anyway, those were some notes from his talk about the 4 sentinels that guide us to make spiritually wise choices in our lives. I must also say that the second topic he was going to talk about was, how to flesh out God's will in the really tough choices in life. And he had 10 specific instances like the ones mentioned above. I didn't get to attend this one because it ran concurrently with the Chris Tomlin Worship session that we went to with our teens.

However, I will say that this topic challenged me way more than I was expecting, not because I think I am super wise or anything, but because it really hit home hard. I will say, I am still fleshing this out in my life and hope to make it a lifelong and continual process. I will also leave you with what I thought was the quote of the day from Brewer;

"This Christian journey is not a march of legalism, it's a dance of grace." wow, how deeply profound and true.

HIM Conference, Part 1

Well, as promised, here are some of my thoughts and ponderings from the conference I recently attended. The first speaker I heard in a seminar was Phillip Yancey, and he was talking about Prayer (the topic of his most recent book). He talked about how he interviewed many people, and read many other people's books on prayer and came to the conclusion that people almost always are dissatisfied with their prayer life. He then talked about the bible's examples of prayers. He mentioned that there are about 650 prayers recorded in the bible and that about 1/3 of them are prayers of lamentation. He talked about lamentation and described as basically people complaining. His deal about this was that maybe God wants us to ritually lament (he said, " we say it's something that rhymes with the word 'itching'"). God cares about when we are distressed, sad, doubtful, or even angry. He also talked about how the process is healing for us as people to verbalize these things.

I am one of those dissatisfied with my prayer life. I wish I spent more time, as Yancey describes, communing with God, but I don't, and I get upset that I don't, but never upset enough to change it. I am however, encouraged by what Yancey taught; prayer is simple, spending time focused on God, inviting God to be a part of my day, and inviting (accepting God's invitation) myself into God 's workings for the day. I know I don't need to be a cloistered, saintly monk to spend my day communing with the Creator and King of everything, and sharing my life, joys, triumphs, fear and pain with the Saviour who redeems it all back.

Thoughts on Prayer? Are you satisfied? Why are most people dissatisfied? Any beneficial tips to make communing with God more of a reality?

Update: Our student intern Kenji Fukunaga posted his thoughts on this seminar on his blog

Conference Time

So we were at the Hawaiian Island Ministries Honolulu conference with some of our kids and we got an opportunity to hear from some awesome Christians share thoughts on all areas of faith. A cool thing is that we also get the opportunity to hear our former pastor, Mark Brewer from Bel Air Presbyterian. So we spent the early weekend hanging with teens, staying up late and wakin up early, rockin great worship and hearing some powerful words. The conference itself s a great idea, but its funny how easily these things get commercialized and Chritstianized. It was like they were patting themselves on the back a lot. We made it 25 years and look what we’ve done… Well, my cynicism aside, we had such a great time and were really challenged in our faith. My blogging goal is too provide some snapshots of my personal experiences with speakers, seminars, worship and even the stuff they peddle in the bookstore. Holla Atcha soon