Back in the USSA.....or USA

Yes I got back last Saturday and am now in Texas. It is nice to be in my own country, with my own family, with my wallet in my back pocket, and putting toilet paper in the toilet where it belongs.

Some thoughts that I have been chewing on:

You reading this may be a fan of the super "popular" and "relevant" preacher Rob Bell. It was brought to my attention that Rob has a lot of criticism, and since I liked Rob I decided to investigate.

I came across sites like: ROB BELL SAYS GOD HAS ALREADY MADE PEACE WITH ALL MEN, a video by my boys at Way of the Master (who are all about the Bible) made Bull Horn Rebuttal, Rob "Oprah" Bell, just to name a few.

(The "Oprah" link says this is Rob Bell's theology:
"God is love. He is not angry. Don’t feel guilty. Don’t feel shame. Just love {OPRAH}. God loves you just the way you are {MR. ROGERS}. Feel good about yourself. Love wins. All we need is love {JOHN LENNON}. Celebrate God’s love. Don’t turn from your sin. Everybody is already reconciled to God. Just breathe it in.”)

I side with those articles that Bell is wrong but I am not going to talk about that. I am going to talk about how the salvation message is not a salvation message without "Fire and Brimstone" or as some people say "Condemnation" because they say that it is not loving.

Let me not only disagree but also prove it is the only way of true love.

The law (10 Commandments) are essential for the salvation message. Telling people that "God has a great plan for you and wants to transform your life" is 100% true, but an offer people can pass up without any consequences. People can already feel like their life is going good the way it is.

It is essential to let people know they are dead in their sins and that we are all liars and sinners at heart that will have to face a wrath filled God on judgment day. Some people say that God isn't like that because God is love. But a wrath filled God can be loving too. You can love your friend and hate it when someone slits the tires on your car. That doesn't make you not exist or not be loving.

People need to know that without repenting and trusting in Jesus (not saying one prayer and doing nothing) is the only way to enter heaven. Telling them that "God is love" without the Law and eternal damnation doesn't make sense, and the law not only shows us our sins (Romans 7:7) but shows us how truly loving God is by saving us!

The free gift of salvation is the biggest way God shows His love! Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." If someone said "Billy died for you" you would be like "You are crazy that doesn't make sense." If someone said that Billy died for you by taking a bullet for you while you were napping, that would make a lot more sense and show love.

Its like a doctor telling you he has found the cure for you and not what needs to be cured. You don't know that you have a terrible disease that will kill you in a week if you don't take the remedy.

That may be "loving", but here's a better way, the REAL WAY.

You first need to know you have a horrible disease (sin Romans 6:23 and are bound for hell without forgiveness) and then you will hear about a cure and joyfully accept it because you know the TRUTH about the horrible future you will face.


I take a lot of my analogies from Ray Comfort and he pipes in about not using the law in evangelism,

"He [the doctor] didn’t like the feeling he got when the needle brought them pain, so his discarded it in the name of love. When his patients began to die of an agonizing disease, his professed love was seen for what it was---a terrible betrayal.

Millions of unconverted church-goers sit in pews with a Bible on their lap, asleep in their sins within earshot of the pulpit.

Listen to these sobering words of warning from J. C. Ryle: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, but never so fearful as when men fall from under the Gospel. The saddest road to Hell is that which runs under the pulpit, past the Bible, and through the midst of warnings and invitations.” How much more sad is it when there is no warning given . . ."


Read your Bibles and don't mess with false prophets.


I hope someone caught that Beatles reference in the title. I don't know how lucky I am.

Atheist Christian Debate/Fake Christians

Go to http://www.wayofthemasterradio.com/podcast/2006/04/04/friel-barker-debate/ and you can download a Christian Atheist Debate. It’s pretty cool. Both sides have good points (only one side has truth and the other has faulty arguments) but I hope you guys listen to it, I enjoyed it.

Here are my thoughts:

The atheist said that he was a “born-again Christian” and “filled with the Holy Spirit” but then realized it was all fake.

1^st of all, he obviously admitted to God existing when he said I was really “filled with the Holy Spirit”. How can you be filled with something that doesn’t exist??? Too bad the Christian guy didn't point out his mistake.

2ndly I believe he was a “false convert”, someone who thinks they are a Christian, but in the end God will say “'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Matthew 7:23) because they never REPENTED and put their trust in Jesus Christ, two biblical ways to be saved. Then the Holy Spirit will come and be a seal of salvation (Ephesians 1:13).

“Asking Jesus into your heart” will never save anybody without repentance and trusting Jesus. It will just deceive people to think they are Christians. I honestly think that was me up until age 18. I liked worldly stuff a heck of a lot more than God, baseball, movies, TV, and stuff that doesn’t last. Those in and of themselves are not necessarily bad, but when they are in the place of God they are. I also was positive that I would go to heaven. So sad that Matthew 7:22-23 is true, “Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'

Now the Holy Spirit has made me run from sin and pursue God with a willing heart, not a heart that just read the bible to “be a good Christian”.

This is soooo important! And there is joy in it too!

LIKES DISLIKES and Christmas Plans

Likes (stuff that I will miss):

-Other cultures

-Speaking Spanish

-People here (Specifically my family and other random people)

-Ecuadorian food (I like rice)

-Having a maid to make my bed (but not unplugging my lamp and phone charger every time she does it. At least I wont need my phone charger any more)

Dislikes (stuff I won’t miss):

-Rude people (people cutting in lines, people letting their babies scream their heads off IN CHURCH, people who let their phones ring in church…etc)

-No place ever having change for a bill bigger than a 10 (and many times a 5). STUPID

-Car noise/pollution

-Greeting guestures like the kiss on the cheek

-People who recognize that I am a foreigner and try to speak English to me but I have no idea what they are saying and the transaction takes 20 times longer

-You have to pay for water at restaurants and I have seen zero drinking fountains in this entire country.

Looking forward to:

-Free nights and weekends

-Friends and fam

-having a car

-College life

Christmas break Plans

First I get home next Saturday night the 22nd, then Halloran family Christmas on Sunday, leave Christmas day to spend time with the fam in Texas, then fly back New Years Day then go to TU that Wednesday for J-term.

Firsts in Ecuador

Firsts from Ecuador (ironically they came in the last week and a half)

1. 1^st time Taylor students took public buses out of Cuenca. (We went to Yungilla and Montanita)

Funny story: I had to go to the bathroom on the bus but the bathroom in the back was locked, so I kindly asked the bus dude to open it for me, but he mumbled “come this way…it will be easier” and the bus stopped just for me to pee. And the whole bus watched. Later Jordan told me that the whole bus was whispering “Why did we stop” and “oh he’s going to the bathroom”.

2. First time a Taylor student this semester went to the hospital. She’s fine, I think it was just food poisoning and she’s out.

3. First time I got stung by a jellyfish. Actually, a long tentacle from a dead jelly fish wrapped around both of my ankles.

4. First time I spent “finals week” on the beach. In South America. Surfing.

5. First time I got an allergic reaction. It still comes and goes and I don’t know what its from. Pictured is my foot with the “leprosy”

.

6. First time I showed up to church more than an hour late (other than a daylight savings time day).

7. First time my family has brought “Lucas” over, another wiener dog with the sole purpose of making babies with one of the other dogs.

8. First time I lost my cell phone. Luckilly it was only the cheap one Taylor gave me.

9. Been in a car accident. Actually within 7 days I had ironically been in THREE!!!!!! Van or bus accidents. Nobody was ever hurt. Pictured is the bus accident.

Dogs and Goodbyes

2 Weekends ago the TU students and I went to Yungilla for a weekend full of hiking, reading, relaxing, and puzzles. It was pretty chill.

Some funny stories from this weekend (all involving Godark the huge dog who is pictured)

1. When we went hiking, Godark started fighting with a large bull, and could have easily gotten gored. It was awesome

2. My Ecuadorian cousin told me that Godark eats a lot of chickens (ours and neighbors) and people want him to be put down. So he was fed poison to kill him, but the poison didn’t do anything. To him. The little white dog with 3 puppies named Muñeca (or Dolly in English, who’s dirty brother always tries to make puppies with my two dogs) ate some of the poisoned food and died.

3. Jordan pushed Godark in the duck pond and Godark ran away skiddishly after.

Tomorrow we leave for the beach for 3 days before our last week.

My last week will include

-2 “finals” that will be super easy (one of which we already have a question bank for)

-Goodbye dinner with our families

-Many sad goodbyes (already had one at my work that was sad)

^{Proverbs 18:10}

The name of the LORD is a strong tower;

the righteous run to it and are safe.

In response to Josiah’s post

This whole blog is a response to a rebuttal that was a comment for my last blog.
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I think I have a bad habit of writing stuff that isn’t exactly what I want to say…and that last post was sort of that way.

First of all, I enjoyed your rebuttal Josiah and took some interesting things from it. I know my views are sort of radical but I think I have a basis for that.

I wasn’t out to say that all art forms like movies, TV and such are bad and from the devil.

A good sum up of what I meant and wanted to say is as follows:

As a Christian, our focus should be on Christ (Colossians 3:2 “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things), and I think that at least for myself (and its gotta be sort of true for everybody because we are human and all created similarly and struggle with the same things) a lot of times media can “choke” out my potential in Christ and relationship with Christ, as it (desires and pleasures of the world) says it can do in Luke 8.

If things of the world like media can hinder us in our call to 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' by fixing our eyes on earthly things, then I don’t think its good.

Our excitement and treasure should be in Christ.

I say a lot of this because I think at one time in my life I idolized movies and TV and such and it choked out my desire for God. Something that bothered me while being a PA and Small Group leader last year was seeing people spend literally all day in front of movie after movie, but “would not have enough time” for small group or chapel…cool priorities.

Another place I get some beliefs is from Ray Comforts book “Hollywood be Thy Name”, which talks about the twisted minds and anti-Christian/God agendas of many in Hollywood, which bring up to mind Psalm 1 again (Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners …).

Some good points Josiah made:
-the Holy Spirit can speak through some things other than the Bible (very true, but it can be harder to tell when it’s the Holy Spirit or just great cinematography, but still very true)
-Jesus talked in parables and they teach us (and they are awesome. My fave author uses a lot of ‘parable’ type stories to make points. Great point JoHat.)
-The fact that Paul used culture (he quoted some dude), he did it as a chance to share the gospel. That should be our motivation.

My response for “If we confine God to simply the Bible, we partly reject the Holy Spirit's ability to speak to us in other various forms”…

It is true that God can speak to us through anything. God can teach you through media (#1 because He is God and can do whatever He wants; memorable God-teaching me experiences come from Narnia, Evan Almighty, and Facing the Giants, all of which are sort of Christian…but whatever), he can teach you through whatever he wants and doesn’t necessarily mean that we should be seeking it out (ejemplo: God can teach us through our sin, but we definitely shouldn’t be seeking out sin). And since he can do anything, he can teach us what he would teach us through media by other means.

The Bible is a 100% chance to hear God and His Word. Its can be hard to “feel” God or “feel” Him speaking through His Word, but according to Isaiah 55 the Word is not gonna come back void, because it is like precipitation watering our souls (such good imagery, the Bible truly is also a great literary work along with the Truth).

I think that as long as we are learning from the Bible and “letting the Word of Christ dwell in us richly” (Colossians 3:16) we can let God guide us how to go.

Another Take on Worldliness

I started thinking about a Christian’s role in the world and how much of the “world” (in a Christian worldliness sense) each of us should intake (spurred on by a conversation with another Taylor student). It was said that we need to “be a part of culture to relate better to non-Christians”. He argued that we need to keep up to date with culture to be relevant (this blog is not pointing fingers or saying any one person is wrong it’s just what’s up).

I disagree. Romans 12:2 says that we are “not to conform the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds”, and goes later to say that it is God’s will for us. A definition of culture from the American Heritage Dictionary says, “The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.” I have heard it said that Christians are “counter-culture” because we “are not of this world” and do not live by the same rules that non-Christians do (see Colossians 2:20*).

I have tried in the past year and a half or so to not be a part of this world by limiting my intake of movies, music that doesn’t have good lyrics, and anything of the like to “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Colossians 3:2), and if anything, I feel better able to witness to people because I better understand God, His love, and how this world is dying and in need of Him.

Luke 8 has the parable of the seeds, and it says that “The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life's worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.” Obviously between that verse James 4:4**, and James 1:27***, God does not want us to be polluted by worldly things.

I argue that to relate to people, we need to speak the truth, because God’s law is written on our hearts****, and the biggest reason of all: we already live in the world along with them. Just because I choose not to fill my mind with a lot of things that will do nothing for me eternally or spiritually does not mean that I cannot have meaningful relationships and conversations with people. Being salt and light and making a difference in the world comes through our relationship with God***** and nothing else. I can honestly say that back in the day I used to idolize TV and movies, and they choked out my desire to know God more and grow up in Christ because I was too focused on stuff that doesn’t last.

The first Psalm says that whoever walks in the counsel of the wicked, sits in the seat of sinners, and stands in the way of mockers will be like chaff that the wind blows away.

Think about it, say when you get married you only spend 10 minutes a day with your spouse and hours on end in front of the TV…your partner would not be too happy, and she is not even the one who gave us salvation and forgiveness, the greatest gift anybody could imagine.

I think our desires and delights should come first and foremost in God (Psalms 1:1-3, and Psalms 37:4)****** and that we shouldn’t care a whole lot about other stuff, because nothing else brings life or salvation.

Hope you enjoyed my ramblings and take to heart what God has for you guys.

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Footnotes:
* Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules?

**You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

***Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

****Romans 2:15

***** John 15:5

****** Psalms 1
(1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.)

And Psalms 37:4 (Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.)

Home Stretch

I only have 2 more days of my practicum, only a few more classes, only a few easy (hopefully) tests, and plenty of time to enjoy my last weeks here in Ecuador.

This weekend doesn’t have too much in store: a trip to a jewelry town and the church garage sale, and then Sunday an extra credit seminar given by some Nobel Peace prize dude (for 25% of our final test).

The week after we may go to an orphanage to help out or we may go to Yungilla. Then during that week Tues-Fri we’re going to Montanita and possibly Salinas beaches to chill.


A few funny things happened yesterday. As I was leaving my house, I was reaching in my backpack to get my MP3 player and my digital camera fell out of its case and bounced 3 times on the concrete. How sad, at least my camera still works.

Then less than 10 minutes later, I wanted to get my camera to take a pic of something, and I juggled my camera case for a few seconds until it fell into a puddle. But hey at least my camera still works.

Then after I took a picture of the best graffiti ever (of a chicken smoking a cigarette), I saw from the bus a boy in a Chicago Bears Jersey. This was not just any Bears jersey; it said Kevin on the back. Pretty awesome. I think it was Kevin Butler from the ’85 Bears.

Earthquake! 6.8 on the Richter!

Matthew 24:6-8 (Jesus talking about the end times)
“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.”

Yesterday night at about 11pm there was an earthquake in from what I hear all of Ecuador. No one died and in Cuenca only one house collapsed, and a mirror fell off the wall at my grandma’s house (from what my dad tells me).

I think I had just fallen asleep when it started, and at first I thought it was heavy machinery close to my house (there are a lot of busses and trucks in Ecuador, and also there is a house going up right behind my room) but quickly realized that it was an earthquake.

I really wasn’t thinking logically at all. Instead of running outside to a safer place, I stayed in my bed thinking “This is so cool!” Bad idea. I finally thought about running to safety when it ended. It was about a minute long, and reached 6.8 on the Richter scale. It was a biggy.

Nobody was hurt to my knowledge and everything is back to normal. My boss told me that around 3 earthquakes have happened in the past 6 months.

I learned a few things from that:
1. I need to think about safety in times like that
2. Anybody could go at anytime and we need to be ready
3. Anything that could have caused death is a good opportunity to talk about death and life after death and a good chance to share the gospel

Thoughts with 40 days left

A lot can happen in 40 days (just ask Noah).

Here are some things on tap for our last 40 days:
-Visit to Incan ruins
-Another beach trip: this time possibly visiting 2 world-class beaches. Between taking public transportation and staying in hostels, not only will it not cost a ton, but we will hopefully have the freedom we expect.
-Enjoy more free time: Practicums end December 7.
-Spend some time with the fam: I still have to finish the video I started with my sibs, and hopefully some more trips to Yungilla.

Reasons I’m looking forward to home:
-see family and friends again obviously
-my j-term and second semester schedules rock
-having a car
-having a climate that does not rain every day

Reasons I want to stay here:
-my Ecuadorian family
-I enjoy living in a big city (no offense Upland)
-I want to continue improving in my Spanish
-I will miss some people I met