v : 3 3 has moved!

I decided to take the plunge and buy my own web domain so I could set up a WordPress blog. Check out the shiny goodness!

http://www.veethirtythree.com/

some things take some time to sink in

I was reading an entry in Perry Noble's blog a couple of days ago. It's a few bits of advice directed toward other pastors. In one of them, he says:

Dream Big…and NEVER apologize for doing so.

Seriously…get alone, ask Jesus to set you on fire, to allow you to see His church as He sees it…to see her beauty and POTENTIAL in your community. And…don’t EVER limit what you believe God can do!!! EVER!!!

See the part where he says to ask Jesus to set you on fire? I took it literally at first.

"I guess being on fire would be pretty cool...but what does that do with seeing the church the way He does?"

Some days, I wonder how I've managed to weasel my way through academia for this long.

haircuts

I have an aunt that prefers to go to Vietnamese hairdressers because they tend to be cheaper than a lot of the white folks. I, on the other hand, am horrified of ever letting Vietnamese people touch my hair. Now, my bad experiences were partly my fault because I didn't understand how to effectively communicate what kind of cut I wanted. Then there's the fact that a lot of these ladies (and sometimes men) don't really care what you want.

I could go out on a limb and use this fear to explain why I duck every time my dad reaches over to ruffle my hair, but I think that'd be too much.

Anyone else have strange phobias that are borderline racist?

And for the record, I've gotten bad haircuts from non-Vietnamese folks, too. Thanks to transitionpete for inspiring this pointless blog post.

time

Last weekend, the some of the ladies of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship got together for an all-girls' fondue night. There was a lot of great discussion about the Scripture and some of our different takes on what the Bible had to say. One topic in particular really stood out to me, though, and it was about how time is perceived. Well, to be more specific, how God perceived time.

One of the girls there believes that everything in time has already happened and is set in stone. God sees the past, present, and future simultaneously (comparable to how Dr. Manhattan sees time). I think the gist of what she said is that God has meticulously planned every event in time and that each one has a purpose and that this belief is very Calvinistic in nature.

However, I don't think it's true. The primary reason for this is the fact that a Hell exists. Now, if God purposely made some people to be nonbelievers, would it not be hypocritical of Him to allow those people to end up there after death? Also, He calls us to spread the word to others so that they may also be redeemed in the eyes of God (and not end up in Hell). Evangelism would be pretty pointless if everything was set in stone already, wouldn't it? I just have a hard time believing that God would plan for us to fall into sin (not to be confused with Him letting us fall into sin. See Luke 15:11-32).

So what do I believe regarding this? Well, have any of you seen the movie Push? If you haven't, then you're better off for it. It was a terrible movie. But anyway, in the movie, there are these people called "watchers" who are able to see into the future. However, the future is constantly subject to change due to...well, stuff happening. So whenever someone makes a decision to do something, the image of their projected future changes a bit.

I'm not saying that God doesn't intervene into our lives at all, but He doesn't necessarily dictate every moment of it. Instead, He manipulates the events happening around and to us based on our decisions. Now, if we were all to obey God's every command like we were supposed to, then I would find the hypothesis that everything that happens in the world was planned by Him to be a bit more believable.

But anyway, that's the end of that spiel. I'm pretty tired, so I'm not sure how much of this is going to sound logical. I'll probably revise it tomorrow.

you've gotta work it

Paster Steven Furtick of Elevation Church is doing a four week series on the book of James, simply titled The Essential James (I wonder if a comic book geek came up with the name for this). This week, it as chapter 1, verses 22 to 25.

One of the points he was driving home was that the Bible isn't what changes your life--it's the application of it. That means if I'm going to bother listening to what the Word of God is telling me to do, I'd better be darn ready to do something about it.

I'll say that right now, I'm still sort of coasting on that high that comes right after giving myself to Christ again. However, like in any relationship, this high is going to drop off sooner or later. It's not because God's suddenly left me or that I will have done something wrong--it just happens. It's going to be during those slumps that I'm going to have to try especially hard to remember to actually live God's word, not just listen.

Do the word, do the word, do the word...because it don't work unless you work it.

building your life for where you're going

I was watching one of Pastor Steven's sermons online last night. It was the third one in his Purple People Leader series. One of the things he said was this:

"You can't build your life for where you are--you have to build it for where you're going."

I've got this burning feeling that for me, building my life for where I'm going means having to choose who my friends are. It pains me to have to think that I'm going to have to burn more bridges with people, but it's true that bad company corrupts good character. That's not to say some of my current friends are bad people...they're just bad for the cause that I'm serving under now. In other words, they're going to keep me from serving Christ to the fullest of my ability.

For those of you that I'm going to be forced to burn the bridge with, I'm sorry. I hope you won't think any less of me.

If anyone's reading this, put in a prayer for me, will ya?

a quiet reentry

On January 31st, 2009, I rededicated my life to Christ after trying to live without Him for the last...five years or so. It was a quiet rededication with only God there to witness it.

Was it a liberating moment?

Yes.

Was the notion of having to come to terms with all of my flaws and problems scary to me?

Hell yes.

I had proclaimed Jesus as my savior once before, but I was younger then (14, I think). I didn't understand the concept of giving giving my entire life God--that is, I still clung to my insecurities and shortcomings because I didn't trust Him to take care of them for me. With hindsight always being 20/20, I know now that it was a stupid thing to do.

So that night, when I finally found myself at the end of my rope, I laid my head on my desk and said, "Well, God, I guess it's about time you and I had a talk."

Yeah, it hurt to have to have to admit that I had done so much wrong. But you know what? The pain is short-lived and it pales in comparison to the overwhelming joy I experienced after. There is nothing quite like knowing that through Jesus Christ, God was and is willing to forgive every single one of my sins because He loves me.

"You serve a God...you were made by a God, that no matter how far you've drifted, no matter how far you've run, no matter how many bad alliances you've made, no matter how hopeless it seems, no matter how hopeless you are, you serve a God, a good God, who can turn your mistakes into a miracle." - Pastor Steven Furtick, Elevation Church

Apologies to the pastor for butchering the grammar in that quote. It's hard to transcribe the way people talk sometimes.