Talking with Children: on the love of God

This is a discussion I had last week with 2 of the kids from my church's Summer Saturdays children's program:

4th-grader-boy: *expressing doubt and defiance against the idea of God*

4th-grader-girl: What? You're going to die in hell!

me: No, 4th-grader-girl, that's not what we should say. Because God still loves, 4th-grader-boy.

4th-grader-girl: EWWW! How can God love him?!

me: It's true! God loves you and him!

4th-grader-girl: 

In the aftermath of Sandy

A quick overview of the situation at our home in Whitestone:

• No power (probably for another week or so).
• We have water but we can't use sinks, toilets, showers, or other appliances that drain water because the pumping station that serves our block lost power. So we have to minimize toilet-use or risk sewage getting backed up into our basement and bathrooms.
• Gas shortages all over the city, Queens, and Long Island. My car might have enough for Jovi to drive to work until gas stations open up again (hopefully by sometime next week).
• A bunch of ocean debris washed up onto the backyard.
• Nights and mornings are getting a lot colder.

Anyways, what I really appreciated was last night's joint CG praise and prayer night. Some words of prayer that stuck with me,

"Father God, I know wickedness and evil love the darkness and hate the light. We need the glory of your grace to shine in a world bent on abusing and taking advantage of each other. We pray for those left in the darkness, the men, women, and children living in fear, the elderly and sick who are unable to leave even if they wanted to, and for the vulnerable and suffering that are living and sleeping out in the cold. We pray for your Spirit to work in us and in the relief efforts, so that this time and place can become a better place, a more kingdom-like place, a shalom place."

Stuff.

He Loved Us Then: He'll Love Us Now - This blog post got me thinking back to a couple weeks ago in CG when we did a little exercise and asked ourselves, "As God thinks of you right now, what is the look on his face?" More times than I should, I imagine God as disappointed (#smh kind of look). And this reveals in me a performance-based mindset. So this blog post I found was a good follow-up to that. Of course as one of the commenters pointed out, which I struggle with as well, there is the temptation to "take the grace of God for granted and abuse it by ignoring it and not repenting of our sin." So how do we move away from performing and pretending? Also sort of discussed in CG, a consistent pattern of repenting of sin and believing anew in the promises of the gospel.

Dear Moms, Jesus Wants You To Chill Out - I don't want to start any rumours. Jovi is not pregnant. At least not very soon (@Peter C.). But I thought this bit of advice was nice, so I shared it with my wife.

(about) 7 years ago

While I wasn't doing anything in particular at work yesterday, I realized that it has been 7 years since I had been found and chose to follow Jesus Christ, my Shepherd. Looking back, it has really been quite a journey since that night during my sophomore year.. with many joys and pains, and so much grace from my God. Who else would I follow?  "Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.'" (John 6:68-69 ESV)

Stuff.

How to Share a Believable Gospel - I really appreciated this blog post from Desiring God. Makes me wish that I could just sit down with some people one-on-one, listen to their stories of joys, pains, and brokenness, and then talk about how Jesus Christ is such Good News for all of us. Maybe I should read his short book, Unbelievable Gospel. "When the gospel is communicated in preachy, impersonal, intolerant, know-it-all ways, people find it hard to believe. Typically, this style of evangelism is reduced to information. We content ourselves with "name-dropping” Jesus or telling people doctrine, but rarely do we draw near enough to people to know how the gospel applies to their actual lives. People want to know why the gospel is worth believing. In the information age, people are used to seeing through words. Most evangelism offers a sound bite gospel, which is easily screened, distrusted, and dismissed. In order for people to see something of substance in our words, our gospel communication needs depth."

King's Cross Church - We're launching at PS 20 in Flushing and having our first service this coming Sunday, October 14th at 11am. Pray for us, the visitors, and the surrounding community. My faith is being stretched. Pray for God to do something awesome in and through this church plant.

Stuff.

Working to Behold - Not just our initial conversion but also our sanctification is in God alone. To me this is related to the discussions and prayers we had last night at CG about pretending and performing, shrinking the gospel in our lives, and increasing ourselves with false righteousness. “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Stuff.

Birthdays! - Maybe the older we get and the "more married" we become, the less SHABANG! we expect on our birthdays. Unfortunately for Jovi, she was feeling a bit under the weather, but at least she didn't have work, spent time with a couple close friends doing errands during the day, and had a family dinner celebration (yo, this family I married into loves their all-you-can-eat-sushi. We checked out a new one called Era.) And the rest of the night, she and I spent together just chilling in our PJs. I hope she can say she had at least a good birthday. I enjoyed it..haha. I love this girl- my wife. =)

Kindle Paperwhite - My first kindle is expected to arrive this Thursday! I'm really excited to have a lot of the books that I've been meaning to read so conveniently with me on my daily commutes. However, I am sad that I can't trade or lend good books to friends (Kindle does allow lending of your ebooks but to a very limited extent). I might have to buy both physical and ebook versions of really good books.. Also, I don't understand this trend of ebooks being more expensive than their paperback counterparts. It doesn't make any sense!! Ugh...

Fostering Friendships (from Boundless) - Starting new friendships really is more difficult post-college. Well, college was 4 years of intensely packed shared experiences of joys and trials with a whole lot of people around your age and just as clueless (more or less) as you are in life. But some say it isn't impossible post-college. "It takes time... It takes effort... and it takes prayer."