Why is God holy?

The question tonight at youth group was simple, or maybe not. Why is God holy? or How is God's holiness defined? With a little help from a John Piper video, we came to a few conclusions.

-God is holy because He is different. To define something, you compare it with something else. There is nothing to compare God to. He is so unique that He can't be defined.

-God is holy because He is morally perfect, absolutely just in everything, and all-powerful.

-Having some small understanding of God's holiness (that's all we can have) and appreciating His holiness can influence our lives and the lives of those around us in a tremendous and incredible way.

Along the same lines, we also talked about the Gospel. Often in modern times, the Gospel is presented to us as being about us. This is simply not the case.
God is far superior to us in every way. The Gospel is this:

God always was, always is, and always will be.
The Word of God (Jesus) was always with God because He is God (John 1).
We were created for God's pleasure.
Mankind fell into sin, and we became unworthy to praise and glorify God. (Romans 3:23)
To rectify this and to BRING GLORY TO HIMSELF, God sacrificed His son Jesus Christ to forgive us our sins so that we can GLORIFY HIM.
We are saved by faith, not works, and even the faith to believe is given to us by God. (Romans 3:24-27, Ephesians 2:8-9)

The Gospel begins with, ends with, and is for God. We are nothing. God chooses to use us because He wants to, not because He needs to.

Getting Organized

As I said yesterday, there are two more weeks in our school quarter. The problem with this is that I probably have a million different assignments. Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little. The point is, when you have so much homework that you have to make a schedule to organize your time, it tends to get a little bit discouraging. I have to say, however, that I've experienced worse. The good news is that my research paper is over and done with. To any running start students: Hang on. We're almost there.

That last line was completely unoriginal, but you get the point.

Something encouraging

I've been reading from First Peter recently, and there is a certain verse that I keep coming back to.

1 Pet 1:12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven-- things into which angels long to look.(NAS, emphasis added)

In the section of scripture where this verse is found, Peter is talking about our salvation in Jesus Christ. The "them" mentioned at the beginning of the verse is referring to the prophets who foretold the coming of the Messiah. What I find so incredible about this verse is the part that I italicised. The gospel extended to us is so great a gift that the angels long to understand, to be a part of it. We as Believers are extended a privilege that angels can only wish they had. That's encouraging.

Almost done

I can't believe there are only two more weeks left in the school quarter. These last two weeks are not going to be easy with all the projects I have to do, but it will be so good to have such a long winter break. Ah, the advantages of being in college. With the first sign of snow yesterday and the radio stations playing Christmas music, the holidays are almost here. It seems my parents are continuing a trend that started with giving me my birthday present two weeks early, as my mom gave me two shirts today that she told me were part of my Christmas presents. Fortunately, this time there will be more to come on Christmas.

Two forward, one back

It seems like every time I take a step in the right direction, I get sidetracked. I get excited about reading my Bible and convince myself to read it every night, and then I always seem to find something "better" to do. Other times, God shows me some sin in my life that I hadn't seen before, and as I try to improve in that area, another old struggle comes back and hits me from behind. I guess what I'm saying is that doing the right thing and living for God is hard. That's why the Bible tells us that we should serve God with all our heart, mind, and strength. We aren't expected to be perfect. That's what Jesus' blood is for. But we are expected to give it our best shot and become more and more like Christ every day.

As Christians, God wants us to strive to be like Him. This should be a reflection of God's work in our hearts, not an act to work our way into heaven. While we are still on this earth, we can't reach perfection, but we can do our best and keep going in the right direction through God's grace.

By the way, I didn't say why we should do this before. Obeying God through our lives is an act of worship. When we try to live like Jesus, we are giving God glory.

Sunday Again

It happened again this week. Sunday came and went. That means that tomorrow is Monday. With the help of couple friends, I have finished my second draft of a research paper about the electric guitar. Today, I heard about a guy's all-nighter with my church youth group, so a trip to wal-mart was in order to buy a nerf gun to defend myself against a friend who has a fully automatic nerf gun, which he plans to modify so that it runs on CO2. We had to go to Wal-Mart anyway to get a new ink cartrige for our printer, so it worked out rather nicely.
In Sunday school, we finally got back into Matthew after having been out of it for the last two weeks. It was a good message about keeping priorities straight. We also had an amazing conversation about Matt 6:21-23:

21 for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.22 "The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.23 "But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!(NAS)

At first, these verses seem a little bit confusing, but when you look at the context, it's all made clear. In the previous and following verses, Jesus is talking about laying up our treasures in heaven, not on earth. What is being said here, then, is that what we look to and focus on will lead our whole body. If we look to finite or even sinful things, our lives will not be spiritually productive. But if we keep our eyes on Jesus, then our lives will show it.

Dreaded Office

Recently, I have become more and more angered by a certain company who shall remain nameless. They are a computer software company. I have the latest operating system from this company on my newer laptop, and it has caused me nothing but heartache. Today, I learned some even worse news. The newest office software from this company is no longer compatible with any older versions, which means we will now have to buy their latest version of office, which also seems to be almost universally hated. Perhaps there is no moral here, but if there was, it would have to be that as helpful as technology is, it can be a major pain. However, in defence of this company, they did have good reason for drawing this line of technological incompatibility in the sand. As little condolence as that gives, it is something.

After Thanksgiving

For most people, the day after Thanksgiving involves either shopping or eating leftover turkey. For me, neither was the case today. Since we spent Thanksgiving at my sister's house, this was the first year that we will not have delicious turkey sandwitches. This is terribly disappointing, as it is one of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving. One could say that eating leftovers is kind of like the Thanksgiving after party. In any case, spending Thanksgiving with family was still worth missing out on the leftovers, and we still had pie, so everything was ok.

Thanksgiving

Today was an unusual thanksgiving for me and my family. Today was the second time I ever remember not spending Thanksgiving at home, and the first time I ever remember my dad not making the dinner. Instead, we spent Thanksgiving with my sister, her son and their roommate. We ate plenty of food with an emphasis on extra pie, and then we played Apples to Apples and Mexican Train. For those that don't know, Apples to Apples is a game where people take turns being the "judge." The judge then chooses a green card that has an adjective on it. Everyone else must then take a red card from their hand that is an object best described by that adjective. We had some pretty interesting conversations around the two games of Apples to Apples that we played. Overall, I'd say it was a pretty good Thanksgiving. The cooking wasn't my dad's, but it was still pretty good. To anyone that's reading this, how did your Thanksgiving go?

Decisions

Lately, I have been plagued with indecision. This indecision primarily relates to what I will do with my free time. This normally isn't an issue for me, but homework tends to limit one's free time, which has made me do a little more thinking about how to spend my time. As a side note, I am feeling a little bit guilty because a lot of my free time is spent playing the piano, while my old friend the guitar hangs on the wall and watches in disgust. If the last two sentences didn't make any sense to you, what I'm trying to say is that I think the guitar is getting jealous of the piano. This could cause some strife in the house. However, considering that I'm talking about a civil war between instruments, I think that I'm getting kind of tired. Anyway, that's all I have to say tonight.

Today

Today was a fairly uneventlful day. I went to math class and later to the library to study math. Tonight instead of going to a Bible study that I normally go to on Tuesday nights, I had to stay home to finish a drawing assignment. The assignment was to draw a portrait of someone from a picture and enlarge the image by using a graph system. I drew a portrait of my nephew Caleb from a picture of him "thinking."

Above is the original picture.

Being Thankful

On Sunday, the theme of everything we discussed/learned about had something to do with being thankful. During the church service, the pastor preached out of I John 1. To me the theme of I John always seemed to be a measuring stick to see how well I am doing spiritually, but Pastor Dan showed that perhaps more important is the theme of Christian fellowship. The message he preached was about Christian Fellowship and the fact that we should be thankful to God that we are a body of believers who can support each other. Very fittingly, we also had a man come back into fellowship with the church after being gone for four years.
In Sunday school, we had a lesson out of I Chronicles 16. In this chapter, we see David and all of Israel singing praises to God not just for bringing them back the ark, but just for being God. The point of this message was that we have no reason to be bored in church, because we have the opportunity to praise our Creator and fellowship with others who share the same desire to serve God.
I think I needed to hear every bit of both of those messages, and summarizing them has further driven the point into my head. As Christians, we have every reason to be thankful.

A Musical Experience

At South Puget Sound Community College, a production has been going of The Fiddler on the Roof. Hearing about this, my mom suggested that I go and invite a couple of friends. So today, I went to a three hour musical with my mom and one other friend (the other person I invited wasn't interrested). Afterwards, we went and had dinner at Applebees. I was expecting it to be a somewhat fun if not unusual evening, but I ended up finding that I like musicals even more than I thought I did (at least this one). To anyone reading this with prejudices against musicals, don't let your negative ideas get in the way of an enjoyable experience.

So it begins

I have finally gone and started a blog. The question now is: who is going to read it? and what am I going to write about? Since I don't really know the answers to these questions yet, I'm probably just going to make things up as I go. Sorry if you wanted the answers to these questions now. I guess that just means you'll have to come back later.