Thursday last week my school had our end of semester dinner. I was of course sitting next to my best friend, DH. I’ve known DH since 2002 and we are really close friends with similar recreational interests as well as professional development interests and teaching styles. DH is the kind of guy who goes above and beyond for his friends and people in general. He’s just an all around good guy and everyone likes him.
The trouble is that he isn’t saved and is in fact somewhat anti-christian religion. He doesn’t actually go around mocking or taking down Christians or other believers. He is good enough to say that it isn’t for him and leave it at that. Basically he won’t attack Christians believers of other faiths - he just is not interested in it.
Enough background. At dinner he was talking to some of the other teachers and I was engaged in a coversation with another colleague when I heard him say I am more athiest every day. I didn’t say anything for two reasons. #1 it wasn’t the right place or time to get into this without being confrontational and ruining the atomosphere of the dinner. #2 I don’t feel ready or equipped to debate a person who is clearly not ready to believe and come away with any sense of accomplishment.
Over the last few days what he said has been replaying in mind over and over. I feel that the spirit has convicted me to pray for DH. I’ve never felt this way before nor have I prayed for a non-believer in all the time that I have been a Christian. I hope that readers will pray for DH and also pray for me so that I will be able to witness to him in a way that will move him to accept Jesus.
Posted by The Hollow Man on Tuesday Jun 19, 2007 at 08:41 PM in Prayer | Unsaved friends |
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One area that I struggle with as a Christian is prayer and communing with God. My prayers tend to be short and succinct. I hear other Christians whose prayers are incredibly long and eloquent and almost poetic. Yet I rarely say more than thanks and a request for what I would like. I have no passion in prayer.
However if I get together with friends I can talk about teaching (that’s my job) for hours on end. What I like, what I want to try, up and coming trends in language education, the qualities of a good, poor, or excellent student. Before I know it, 3 or 4 hours have passed, but it feels like only 10 minutes.
I am aware that the spirit will intercede on our behalf when we do not know what to say:
Romans 8 26-27
26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. 27And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.
However I still feel inadequate when praying so quickly and often silently with my mind a blank as well since I cannot find the words to say. Clearly when I can talk to my friends or colleagues about teaching or computers for hours at end without pause and fail to notice the passage of time I am able to communicate on areas of passion. Why is it that I cannot commune with Jesus in the same way?
I think that it may be that I am not getting immediate feedback in the way that you do when engaging in conversation with people around you. I miss the interplay, the body language, the word play and teasing that goes on in interpersonal communication. The thing is that I do not know how to get that through prayer or if it really isn’t possible how I would go about finding a replacement for that interaction.
While reading Bible Forums this morning I came across the ACTS formula for prayer. I had seen this before but forgotten it.
A - adoration (praise God for being GOD!)
C - confession (maybe not something to in front of the family before a meal though)
T - thanksgiving (thank God for what He has provided)
S - supplication (say your needs). Ask God for help, healing, comfort, etc. whatever the need is - a need for you or another.
Starting from today I’m going to try to follow this prayer formula. I hope that I will be better able to articulate my prayers and have a deeper communion with God.
thoughts or suggestions anyone?
Read Less...
Posted by The Hollow Man on Saturday Jun 16, 2007 at 10:00 AM in Prayer |
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I’ve been feeling rather blase the last couple of days. I’ve got tons of work to do, but have been putting it off and just sitting around doing nothing. All of my regular favorite activities are just not drawing me. I feel a complete lack of motivation and am not sure why.
Maybe I need to pray more, maybe I need to read the bible more, maybe I just need to drink more coffee, or maybe I need to get more sleep. What I do know is that I have got to get out of this slump quickly.
Posted by The Hollow Man on Friday Jun 15, 2007 at 08:31 PM in Prayer | The Hollow Man |
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I’ve got the backend of my blog (and templates) set up so that I can add a 100x100px picture to each entry if I choose to by selecting from a drop down bar. The idea is that each icon will represent something about the post or how I am feeling at the time I composed the entry. Currently I have seven icons ready, but am planning on having somewhere between 15 and 20 eventually.
The icons will be a mix of stuff grabbed from the net, my clip art collection, created from photoshop or a mixture of all of the above. The picture helping hand is actually a sky I found on google and my arm. You can see all icons here. This link will be automatically updated as I add more icons.
Posted by Sean. on Friday Jun 15, 2007 at 11:44 AM in This Blog |
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This is just wrong in so many ways I do not know what to say.
A female dancer dances in a skin coloured stocking in the middle of the church in front of the altar. She crawls about on the floor and wraps herself in a hanging down white cloth. Is this a blasphemous provocation, a scoffing at the Christian religion?
‘No it is only one of the items on the agenda of the Protestant Church Assembly. The six-hundred-year-old church, the Church of the Carthusians in the south of Cologne has become the stage for an erotic church service. Nearly one thousand interested people waited outside the door of the former monastery, despite a thunderstorm- but in the end there was only room for four hundred people.
Read the whole thing
here.
found at
A Little Leaven via
Christian Research Net.
Posted by The Hollow Man on Wednesday Jun 13, 2007 at 07:49 PM in Secular | The Church | What? |
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How I wish I had faith like this. Sometimes it is too hard to trust in Jesus and prayer that things will be done as they should. However, when I do trust in Jesus everything works out. It would be so much better if I had faith of this depth along with consistency.
5When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6"Lord," he said, “my servant lies at home paralyzed and in terrible suffering.”
7Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.”
8The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
10When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
13Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! It will be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that very hour.
Posted by The Hollow Man on Wednesday Jun 13, 2007 at 11:40 AM in Verses |
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I was planning on writing something else today, but will not have time to properly compose my thoughts due to my son having come down with a contagious disease. Basically he has bumps and pimply looking things all over. It’s not chicken pox, but in Korean it’s called 수족구 where as chicken pox is 수두. Using the online dictionaries has only come up with the English being hand, foot & mouth disease but I’ve never heard of that so am not sure if the English is correct or not. It pretty much bites when you can’t speak the local language perfectly.
Anyhow it’s not overly serious, some meds for one week and he’ll be fine. The problem is that we cannot send him to daycare and this is a very inconvenient time. Normally I would be able to cancel some of my classes, but this week is final exams and it’s not really possible to cancel exams. Plus I need all my spare time to get grading done. Additionally my wife is really busy at work. This means a very expensive option of a baby sitter whom we don’t know as we’ll have to go through a paid service.
Currently The Hollow Son (THS) cries around strangers and runs away so whoever we get is in for a tough day. We also don’t like having someone in our house that we don’t know while we are not there all day.
Please pray for THS and that we can get this resolved ASAP.
Posted by The Hollow Man on Monday Jun 11, 2007 at 10:24 AM in The Hollow Son |
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