"They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer."
-Acts 2:42
Recently in my church's college group, YDJ, we have been talking about fellowship. Our key verse is Acts 2:42, which I posted above. It mentions a very strong word, devoting. What does devoting yourself to something mean? What does it require? Devotion is more than a half-hearted effort or even a good effort. Today I want to show what devotion really entails.
Our YDJ leader gave us a definition of devotion that I really think captures the meaning of devotion. Devotion is doing something with intense effort, despite difficulties. When someone is devoted to something, they will be completely focused and dedicated to what they are doing. People give their all to what they are devoted to. If a person is devoted to music, they will constantly practice and play with intense effort. I think the words intense effort are quite fitting for devotion, because it makes me think of someone who does something until the point that they can't. People will not give up on what they are devoted to.
This brings me to my next point; despite difficulties. This part of the definition is just as important as the first part in my opinion. When a person does something with true devotion, nothing will stop them from doing that thing. Even if it gets hard to devote themselves, they will continue to place an all consuming effort. A truly devoted person continues through any obstacle, just to continue to do what they are devoted to. How does one devote themselves when things get tough?
I think that for a person to become completely devoted to something, they have to believe in what they are doing. For a person to be devoted to sports, they have to believe they can get better and that time they devote to practicing will be worthwhile. A person won't give intense effort to something they don'y believe is worthwhile. In Acts, the disciples were able to devote themselves to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer because believed that these things were worthwhile. Their belief was even stronger because they knew these things would affect them for eternity. The more you believe in what you do, the more you will be devoted to what you do. What are you devoted to? What is worth devoting yourself to? What do you believe in?
-Smart
Turning Aside
"When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called him to the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
-Exodus 3:4
I have been reading the book of Exodus and I came across the story of the burning bush. While the story of the burning bush is quite incredible, I remember reading about something interesting in a devotional. It didn't focus on the burning bush, but it was about turning aside. In the passage, Moses sees the bush and doesn't ignore it; he stops what he is doing and he turns aside. This is a good metaphor which I will hopefully be able to explain somewhat.
At first glance it may seem like a burning bush is some crazy thing, but it really wasn't. It's a hot desert, and many things could have caused the fire. However, Moses noticed someone was different about this bush. The bush was burning but was not consumed by the flames. Now that is a crazy incident. In my entire life I have never seen something be burning but not consumed. The key thing to note is that Moses would not have seen this if he did not take the time to turn aside and look at it.
The burning bush event was very significant for both Moses and Israel. God told Moses that He heard the cry of Israel and was going to deliver them. This incident was a turning point for Moses. He heard God and God gave him a mission and a promise. Again I have to stress; if Moses did not turn aside, he would have missed this profound moment for the nation of Israel.
How does this apply to us? We have become a very fast paced and always busy generation. We are constantly doing things for work, pleasure, school or otherwise. It seems like everywhere I look people are constantly doing things. While this isn't always a bad thing, it can cause us miss things in life. I believe it is extremely important that we take time to just "turn aside". We can miss important things if we allow ourselves to be consumed by the busyness of the world.
What does this look like practically? I'm not totally sure. I think something we can do however is to take breaks from our "busyness". Take a 5 minute break every now and then. Don't get on the computer, don't get on the phone, don't watch tv, and don't make excuses for not taking a break. Just sit or lie down (I personally like to lie down) and take a look around. I like to think about different things during this time. It doesn't really matter what you do, but the point is to get away from the busyness of the world. One thing I would highly recommend is to pray and ask God to reveal something He wants to show to you. Let God show you something, it just might be something incredible.
-Smart
-Exodus 3:4
I have been reading the book of Exodus and I came across the story of the burning bush. While the story of the burning bush is quite incredible, I remember reading about something interesting in a devotional. It didn't focus on the burning bush, but it was about turning aside. In the passage, Moses sees the bush and doesn't ignore it; he stops what he is doing and he turns aside. This is a good metaphor which I will hopefully be able to explain somewhat.
At first glance it may seem like a burning bush is some crazy thing, but it really wasn't. It's a hot desert, and many things could have caused the fire. However, Moses noticed someone was different about this bush. The bush was burning but was not consumed by the flames. Now that is a crazy incident. In my entire life I have never seen something be burning but not consumed. The key thing to note is that Moses would not have seen this if he did not take the time to turn aside and look at it.
The burning bush event was very significant for both Moses and Israel. God told Moses that He heard the cry of Israel and was going to deliver them. This incident was a turning point for Moses. He heard God and God gave him a mission and a promise. Again I have to stress; if Moses did not turn aside, he would have missed this profound moment for the nation of Israel.
How does this apply to us? We have become a very fast paced and always busy generation. We are constantly doing things for work, pleasure, school or otherwise. It seems like everywhere I look people are constantly doing things. While this isn't always a bad thing, it can cause us miss things in life. I believe it is extremely important that we take time to just "turn aside". We can miss important things if we allow ourselves to be consumed by the busyness of the world.
What does this look like practically? I'm not totally sure. I think something we can do however is to take breaks from our "busyness". Take a 5 minute break every now and then. Don't get on the computer, don't get on the phone, don't watch tv, and don't make excuses for not taking a break. Just sit or lie down (I personally like to lie down) and take a look around. I like to think about different things during this time. It doesn't really matter what you do, but the point is to get away from the busyness of the world. One thing I would highly recommend is to pray and ask God to reveal something He wants to show to you. Let God show you something, it just might be something incredible.
-Smart
Patriotism
This year 2012 we had the worldwide Olympics. Also, today is September the Eleventh, also known as Patriot day, or more famously 9/11. This made me think about something we don't often question; patriotism. What is patriotism anyway? The dictionary definition says that patriotism is a loyalty to one's country. I think it also has to do with pride in one's country as well. I don't often think about patriotism, until days like the Olympics, Fourth of July, 9/11, Memorial Day or other holidays based on countries (namely USA).
Why does the USA always promote patriotism? The United States promotes patriotism because it wants citizens to follow laws and more importantly to join the armed forces. This is not really a hard question to answer however. A more difficult question to answer is what makes us feel patriotism. We feel a sense of pride when we see war movies, see our flag raised, we win Olympic medals or we hear stories about our country's past. Sometimes we even feel an obligation to serve our country because we feel this patriotism.
I find patriotism to be a very interesting "feeling" if it can even be called that. I think it is just a form of pride placed on our country rather than ourselves. We often have "feelings" when things happen directly to us or things directly affect us. For example, if I get an "A" on an exam, I feel happy and proud of myself. If I lose a game of basketball, I feel sad or angry. While things in our country do affect us, they don't really affect us directly. The thing that most directly affects us in terms of government is laws, but we never feel patriotism when it comes to laws. If the US were to win a war, we would feel pride and patriotism, even if we weren't directly involved in the war. We have a day to remember fallen soldiers, Memorial Day, but we don't have a day where we remember people all over the world dying of hunger and disease. So I'll ask once again, why do we feel patriotism?
I believe that the reason we feel patriotism is because every human being has a need to belong. I mentioned a similar idea in my post on repetition. We were made to need each other and to need to belong. One group where we can feel like we belong is our country. When our country celebrates, we feel like part of that celebration. We like to be associated with our country because we feel that need to belong. We were created to be together and united. That is why I love the name of my country, "The United States". I also really like one of our sayings, "United we stand, divided we fall." How true is that statement.
Why does this matter? Does patriotism matter at all? I think patriotism is good to a certain extent, because it produces people that want to serve their country. More importantly, it is a good indication of our human nature. It reveals our need to be part of something, something more than just ourselves. We need to belong somewhere. Where do you belong?
-Smart (in America)
Choice
"Jesus replied: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'"
-Matthew 22:37
Today I want to discuss something I heard about a long time ago and just recently started thinking about again. The topic is choice. Choice is a very interesting concept, and there are many things that can be talked about when it comes to choice, but I just want to talk about two things. The first of these two things is why are we allowed to choose things? Why does God allow us to choose things?
This is a very weird idea for sure, but God does have the power to take away our power to choose. He never had to give us the ability to choose what we want to do. If He wanted to, He could take away any opportunity for us to sin or to stray away from Himself but He didn't. In the garden of Eden, God allowed Adam and Eve to choose what to eat and what to do. However, God placed the tree of knowledge in the garden, which He forbade Adam and Eve to eat from. Why? Why would God plant the tree if they weren't even allowed to eat from it? Why give them a chance to disobey Him?
The answer is that God loves us, and because of that He wants us to love Him back. God's love for us is perfect and unconditional, and He wants us to love Him in the same way. So how does choice factor in? God allowed Adam and Eve to choose sin, because He also wanted them to be able to choose Him. True love is a choice. Without the ability to choose something else, love is meaningless. If Adam and Eve only had one choice, God, then their love for Him wouldn't be pleasing to God. It would be forced love. Because God allowed them to choose something besides Himself, had they obeyed Him, their love for Him would be true. However, they chose sin over God, and suffered the consequences of it.
This brings me to the second thing I wanted to discuss about choice; choice carries responsibility. I wrote about responsibility before, and choice ties into it. We are responsible for sin because we chose to sin rather than love God. Adam and Eve choose to disobey God and sin against Him. They are responsible, and suffered the just consequence. Although the freedom to choose is nice, it burdens us because we are forced to carry the responsibility for our choices. We carry the responsibility for our sins, not anything else.
It sounds like I am just saying choice is bad, but it's not. Choice does make us responsible for sin, but it also allows us to love God in a way that is pleasing to Him. True love is a choice. We can never truly love, because we have sinned, but God can. We continually choose to sin, but God chooses to love. When Jesus came to earth to save us, He had to choose to do so. He could have decided to save Himself many times, but He always chose to love us rather than abandon us. God knew that by choosing to love us He would have to carry the responsibility and consequence of our sin. Even love has consequences. Every choice we make does. The person responsible for making a choice gets the consequences of that choice. God made a choice to love us, so He carried the responsibility of that choice. Now He wants us to respond to the choice He made for us with a choice of our own. What do you choose?
-Smart
-Matthew 22:37
Today I want to discuss something I heard about a long time ago and just recently started thinking about again. The topic is choice. Choice is a very interesting concept, and there are many things that can be talked about when it comes to choice, but I just want to talk about two things. The first of these two things is why are we allowed to choose things? Why does God allow us to choose things?
This is a very weird idea for sure, but God does have the power to take away our power to choose. He never had to give us the ability to choose what we want to do. If He wanted to, He could take away any opportunity for us to sin or to stray away from Himself but He didn't. In the garden of Eden, God allowed Adam and Eve to choose what to eat and what to do. However, God placed the tree of knowledge in the garden, which He forbade Adam and Eve to eat from. Why? Why would God plant the tree if they weren't even allowed to eat from it? Why give them a chance to disobey Him?
The answer is that God loves us, and because of that He wants us to love Him back. God's love for us is perfect and unconditional, and He wants us to love Him in the same way. So how does choice factor in? God allowed Adam and Eve to choose sin, because He also wanted them to be able to choose Him. True love is a choice. Without the ability to choose something else, love is meaningless. If Adam and Eve only had one choice, God, then their love for Him wouldn't be pleasing to God. It would be forced love. Because God allowed them to choose something besides Himself, had they obeyed Him, their love for Him would be true. However, they chose sin over God, and suffered the consequences of it.
This brings me to the second thing I wanted to discuss about choice; choice carries responsibility. I wrote about responsibility before, and choice ties into it. We are responsible for sin because we chose to sin rather than love God. Adam and Eve choose to disobey God and sin against Him. They are responsible, and suffered the just consequence. Although the freedom to choose is nice, it burdens us because we are forced to carry the responsibility for our choices. We carry the responsibility for our sins, not anything else.
It sounds like I am just saying choice is bad, but it's not. Choice does make us responsible for sin, but it also allows us to love God in a way that is pleasing to Him. True love is a choice. We can never truly love, because we have sinned, but God can. We continually choose to sin, but God chooses to love. When Jesus came to earth to save us, He had to choose to do so. He could have decided to save Himself many times, but He always chose to love us rather than abandon us. God knew that by choosing to love us He would have to carry the responsibility and consequence of our sin. Even love has consequences. Every choice we make does. The person responsible for making a choice gets the consequences of that choice. God made a choice to love us, so He carried the responsibility of that choice. Now He wants us to respond to the choice He made for us with a choice of our own. What do you choose?
-Smart
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