Sorry...

I have a confession to make. I am arrogant. I have another confession. I am terribly hard on myself. Actually, I am both of these things, but right now, I'm going to talk about my tendancy to be arrogant.

Every once in a while God uses me to help someone. I fully know it's Him putting the words in my mouth and all that, and it is just awesome to be used by God. But as soon as that helpful thing has taken place, my old friend, you know, the one who comes to "steal, kill and destroy"? Well, he comes to take a beautiful thing that God has done, and try and pump up my pride. So I struggle with it just about every time, and I have learned a few ways to think about it, which I would like to share here.

Lets look at God as a carpenter first. When a carpenter fixes something, a passerby does not say, wow, that hammer did a good job fixing my house. No. They'll say, that carpenter did a good job fixing the house, right? Another example.

The statue of David. It is not recorded as "done by Hercules Sculpting equipment". No. It's done by Michelangelo. I think this point is fairly simple. The artist should get the credit, not the tool. Now here's an even more humbling point.

First of all, God is like super carpenter or artist, he could just push the nails in with His fingers, or shape the stone with His hands.

Now, when you read the first point, about the carpenter and the hammer, did you think, "now hold on, sometimes people do say, 'that hammer did a good job'". This is my more interesting point. In our culture, products are getting more and more credit for what the worker/artists/athlete accomplishes. Nike shoes make Michael Jordan jump higher. Black and Decker make the job look better and get done easier.

But here's what God loves to do. He goes to the tool box, and doesn't take the nice shiny new hammer. He doesn't take the moderately used, average hammer. No, he ducks down, and finds the old hammer that's been sitting on the floor under the desk for months. You know, the one that you didn't really want to look for, because you wanted an excuse to buy a new one anyway. it's covered in rust, and looks like the handle looks like it's ready to be put into the sarcophagus due to masses of duct tape holding it together, and he heads over to the project, and creates the most beautiful piece of art: Just so no one can say, "Oh, that's because he used a top of the line hammer."

Some thing else has happened to. Some thing a keen observer would notice. As the Lord used the hammer, it was being healed. The rust faded, the tape fell away, and when the project was done, The hammer is more beautiful than any other tool in the shop.

I hope this little analogy helps someone else as well. Take care.

So I admit I have been a bit of a baby lately, just in the way that I refused to write any more blogs unless I was receiving some sort of comment, so if there is actually anybody reading them, I'm sorry. Anyone who knows me knows there is always a ton of stuff going through my head, so I will just pick the first one that pops in... Born Again.

So I do a Bible study for a Christian college group called University Christian Ministries (UCM). It is pretty cool, but can be very frustrating at times. I lead the Bible study with another girl, and we were kind of in a rush one, day but we felt we completed a decent Bible study, so we went in there with it.

When we got there, thing just kind of stopped, but fortunately we just read through the Bible, and it was great, we read John 3:1-21. In it Jesus talks about being "born again." And something I never noticed before, he says that he puts this in "earthly terms"

Now if Jesus put it in earthly terms, then there must be more to it, so the Spirit began to work and some cool stuff came out it went some thing like this...

As I was talking, I realized that when we are born again, we are just like a baby: helpless, crying, needy, eating baby food, etc.

I got a strange image though. What if a baby always wanted to be a baby? What if it said, " I'm just going to stay helpless, why would I grow up? Here I get everything brought to me, I get my diaper changed, I get carried around, why would I want to get up out of this crib, try walking, exploring, etc.??"

I asked the attendees, what would you say to such a strange baby? How would you explain that there are so many amazing things to experience out there through growth?

The baby responds, "But what if I get hurt? Won't it just be safer to stay up in this crib? Can't I experience things from someone holding me and carrying me around?"

It's funny, because I would wager that not one person would deny that a baby experience infinitely more pain but getting up, crawling around, walking, running, and generally experiencing life. But at the same time, not one person would say, "your right, its safer to just stay a helpless baby."

I think we're seeing the point.

We do this in our Christian walks. We want to stay in the stage where God carries us around and shows us stuff. We want to eat baby food, have everything brought to us, and be consoled when we are lonely. But any good father would encourage a baby to get up and explore and experience life. And what kind of relationship does a baby have with his father? Not much. But a toddler has a better one, and a teen (if he's not nuts) will have an even better one.

So what I'm saying is, don't be afraid! Get out of your crib! If you stay their, your missing out in the same way a baby is that never wants to get out of her crib. Hope that all made sense. Peace.

Tawmis.