My Testimony

Below is the testimony I gave a few weeks ago as part of the membership process at my church.

..~<@>~..

One day a couple decided to get their daughter a puppy. They took her to the pound, pointed to an adorable mutt lying in a cage and asked her if she liked that puppy. The girl answered positively and her eyes shined with delight as she gazed upon her soon-to-be pet, now standing and wagging its tail, staring back at her with equal excitement. With that, the parents took the girl back home, leaving the puppy behind. They dug out an old doghouse from the back of the garage and scrubbed it of the dust that accumulated over the years. They bought new food and water dishes and chewtoys for the puppy. Sometimes they would buy treats for the puppy as well. When asked if she had a pet, the girl would tell people about her puppy at home. She loved to spend time shaking a chewtoy or grabbing the leash for a walk. There was just one problem; through all this, the puppy was still at the pound. The dogfood spilled over the wet ground around as it was filled more and more but with no dog to eat it or drink the water. The girl must've been quite a sight, waving a squeaky rubber newspaper in the air, and dragging an empty leash around the neighborhood. When people came to visit, they wondered where the famous puppy was, but didn't inquire about it. If the family said it was there, it must be around somewhere out of site, perhaps sleeping peacefully in a bright corner of the yard. They would know if they had a puppy, and who was anyone to question that? Of course, this poses a major problem. The little girl liked owning a dog, but -in reality not owning one- never experienced the pleasure that comes from from actually owning a dog. And as time went on, she has a false sense of security, relying on her non-existent guard dog to protect her as she took the leash on a walk or left the house empty. Her family and friends truly believed she had a dog, so the girl never for one minute doubted her ownership of that puppy at the pound.

This was me for most of my life, if you can compare faith to an animal. At four I said the prayer and at five I was dunked in the Pacific by a Calvary Chapel South Bay pastor. I thought I was set. One time at AWANA, which I was a part of from 2nd grade through junior high, we had to give our testimonies. My mom told me that I had what was called a boring testimony: I was a good Christian all of my life. I never understood what so many people had against God and Christianity, or why there was so much controversy surrounding religion. I didn't get why they wouldn't just say the prayer. It only took a minute! They could carry on with their strange customs if they just accept Jesus into their heart, and it would all be good. My family stopped going to church when I was 12, just when I was old enough to go to the secondary school class. We continued with AWANA, but I stopped going when I got to high school, because no churches in the area offered a varsity program. I didn't want to join a youth group because I was basically just in AWANA for the verse memorization and games (ie, competition). Fellowshiping and spiritual growth was not my goal. Eventually, I started going to church again at 19. I had been feeling guilty that I didn't go. I couldn't state a reason to do so, but I just felt like I should.

I didn't get the gospel. I didn't even know what it meant. Even though the church I attended when I said the sinner's prayer seems to believe that you can be saved without hearing the gospel, that's not the case. I understood the term as a music genre and what the first four books of the new testament are called, but that was about it. You can forget about atonement. I thought that Jesus offered himself up as a hostage exchange for a group of Jews that had been captured by the Romans. I figured they considered that an even trade because, well, he's JESUS. I believed in free will and thought God created the world because He was bored and needed company. I had never heard words such as Fall, Atonement, Sanctification, etc. I thought Grace was just a characteristic or nice girl's name. I was familiar with Christian songs (contemporary and traditional), but didn't pay much mind to them or saw beyond a superficial meaning or nice beat. Church meant pasting cotton balls to sheep shapes. I didn't get why religion was so controversial or why people didn't want to rather be safe than sorry and take a couple minutes to accept Jesus in their heart so they can go to Heaven and watch the angels play harps all day long too.

I can't give a specific date when I became saved. I can pinpoint it sometime while I was reading Desiring God by John Piper, which did take me a while because there's a lot in there and I didn't always find time to sit down and read. I just know that who I was before and after reading it was entirely two different people. I don't attribute it to the book, of course. It was purely the work of the Holy Spirit. As far as the means used, attending Monday night apologetics tore down my worldview and wrong conceptions about religion and life, while Desiring God built it up to the right focus (that's not to say Faith Defenders wasn't edifying). I, like many people, had wrestled with the meaning of life. I didn't believe true happiness existed, that we were only sometimes blissful for a while. The only thing I knew my whole life was that God must've had to put us here for a reason, and we'd have to deal with it. I found out that life is so much more than just dealing. We have meaning and purpose, the basic core of which is to glorify God. I was a new person, and found myself "happy" even when I had every reason to be sad. There was now a firm foundation where there was just sand or pixie dust or something before. I saw a deeper beauty to everything. Most importantly, I had a strong confidence and hope that Jesus paid for my sins, and I was determined to show my respect and appreciation, what little I could give.

Maybe it's a little silly to compare one's faith to an animal, but it's even sillier to think that a little prayer could save someone. Thankfully, by God's grace and providence, I was saved from a meaningless life of guilt and humanism, and brought to a new life of continuous joy and gratitude towards our gracious Creator, ever-loving Savior, and vitalizing Comforter. I am glad to have found a church that follows the Bible and look forward to being a part of Faith Community Church, to edify and be edified.

Praise God!

My car was broken into Sunday night. It's rather ironic because i have gone whole summers in a variety of neighborhoods will all four of my windows cracked an inch. My fiance advised me not to do that on my street anymore. When i got some things out of my car Sunday afternoon, i rolled down my passenger window just a centimeter to let some air in. Thinking back, i'm not sure why, as it would be cooled down by the next time i would be using it - the next day, for work. So Monday morning i get in my car and saw a napkin on the floor on my side. Something felt off, but i figured i must have just dropped it last time i got out of my car. I do that a lot. Then i looked over and saw my glove compartment open. I figured it must not have been closed well because i have so much stuff in there and it dropped open when i shut that door the day before. Then i noticed the door was unlocked. I remember checking it as i always do. Oh no, i thought...i looked at the spot behind the cupholders where i keep my cd player under the radio - yep, my car was broken into. I automatically thought of what Nathaniel would say. Of course this had to happen the week after he warned me not to leave my windows open. Not even when all four were open more, but just one open a sliver. Skills man, i don't know how they do it! My locks are in the handles even, not on top next to the windows. I looked in my back seat to see if anything else was missing. That's when i noticed my center console was open. That explains the napkins, which, when i bent down to pick it up, realized was several napkins and my lint roller. I noticed some other stuff was thrown around and the contents dumped from my messanger bag. Nothing else seemed to be missing, so i started my car and left for work.

My car was making funny noises and i realized i should've checked my car before driving it. I was running late though, so i just got to work, parked, and hurried up. I told my coworker what happened and realized that i had some CDs in my car. They were hiding so well i forget they are there. So on my lunch, i checked my tires and the body of my car...everything is normal. I open my trunk and saw the source of the noise: my bowling ball was rolling around. I look around and see my shoes and rosin bag are still there, along with my spare tire and gas can. So they just took my bowling bag. I understand why they would want that and nothing else in my car (i have quite a bit of stuff in my back seat). There was a skull and cross pins on it...the coolest bag ever to carry your booty. I checked my car and saw my CDs were still there. Along with a DVD i forgot about. They were hiding behind a McDonald's bag. I brought those inside my room, where my second CD player and bowling bag was. Yep, all the thief got was stuff i had doubles of. I'll take that as a warning and try harder to heed Nathaniel's advice from now on.

Wait, no...i forgot they also got Dr. Bob's sermon that was in the CD player and the book of Romans on CD from the glove compartment. I'm a bit sad about this, as it was a Christmas present from '05 and i hadn't listened to it yet, but there's always a chance they listen to both and get saved. ^__^

Hey Kids

Yeah I haven't posted in a while. I have quite a few unfinished posts, but i have lots of other projects that i'm working on. Including trying to plan a wedding. I just wanted to post this site i found. I have a Napster subscription, but there are a few albums that are buy-only. A dollar a track was still a little high, so i did some shopping around and found this site that costs ten cents a track! So turn from your iTunes ways and convert today! You have to deposit a minimum of $19.99 into your account to download (if you buy more, there are bonuses) but when you do, i'll get money in mine, so it's a win-win situation really.

Don't delay, sign up today! (please)

I do still regularly add posts of note from my blogroll. See the sidebar at left.

Homeschooling

The current appeals ruling that deems homeschooling illegal in the state of California is ridiculous. However, I am impressed that people such as the govenator and the superintendent of public education are opposed to this. Maybe "the right to homeschool" isn't in the constitution in those words exactly, but I think it falls unders the categories of our freedoms. Such as freedom of religion. The government only has a right to intervene when a religion directly breaks another law (the woman who tried to be a legal prostitute by claiming the title of pastor in a new, but wildly popular, church). We have already seen that the government doesn't care about the human rights of unborn children, so it's not surprising it didn't end there.

To add insult to injury, columnists at the LA Times stated

There has always been something decidedly elitist and anti-democratic in home schooling. It smacks of a belief that privileged children should not have to associate with the other kids in the neighborhood and that by staying home, they would not be subjected to the leavening effect of democracy.

Now, this is absurd because what is more democratic than having parents have the say in what their own children learn? Things like this should be in the people's hands, not the governement! It also is not elitist because people who homeschool their children work hard to be able to do so. My mom had to work sometimes, and we were in and out of public school, but when i was old enough to watch my siblings, she gave us lessons before going to work. That probably isn't the best way, but she did teach us after. It's just kind of flipped: do the homework in the morning instead of in the afternoon. Homeschooling is so much more efficient because when the teacher to student ratio is lower, more work can get done. Both my brother and I skipped a grade. However, I digress. Parents who have worked hard so that one can stay home and teach the kids should not be punished for rare cases of using homeschooling to hide abuse. They might as well make abortion mandatory past a certain quota for the year and have all the children born become wards of the state, because no parents are fit to raise their own childern, right? Abuse of something should not lead to its rejection, even though that seems to be a popular theme with our government. There are parents out there who don't work and just live off the government's (OUR) dollar. They could teach their kids. I'm not endorsing welfare. I'm just saying, the way things are, it's possible. For the same reason they don't want to work, it's the same reason they wouldn't homeschool their kids. Parents who aren't lazy shouldn't have their rights taken away.

I was planning on homeschooling the children I have someday. I really hope things change, because I don't want to be run out of California. I wouldn't mind leaving somewhere else, as much as I love it here, but I despise the idea of being forced to go. Al Mohler said to watch out for witch hunts, and it does seem like that could be the case. The liberals are just afraid of more people with views that oppose theirs. They want to suppress our freedom so that the future generation will be compiled only of people whose idealogy matches their own. They aren't for liberty and justice for all. They want a socialist country. I don't see evangelicals trying to push a theocracy on the country. That would make me want to leave state as well: it would be Rome all over again! I guess at this point we just have to wait and see, but you know that if something regarding this shows up on the ballots, I'll be first in line, protecting my future children's education.

Up on the Hilltop

(Sung to the tune of Up on the Housetop)

Up on the hilltop, people pause
Telling Congress "change our laws!"
Christians refuse, making lots of noise
You can't take away our Christmas joys.
No, no, no! We will not go.
No, no, no! We will not go.
Up on the hilltops, sound the drum:
Down in the streets proclaim Christ is come.

First comes the Scripture, the Word of God
Oh dear it's our firing squad
Man's natural law can't survive the shot
With the Truth we'll conquer the whole lot
No, no, no! We will not go.
No, no, no! We will not go.
Up the mountaintop, raise your sword.
Down in the valley scream "praise the Lord!"

Next they're telling us to keep quiet
Oh they can't kill this glorious riot
With heart and mind we preach Jesus Christ
Their reality resembles Kleist.
No, no, no! We will not go.
No, no, no! We will not go.
Your celebration will end soon, but
We praise Messiah the whole year long!

What is Worship? Part 1a

For a leadership group I am in, I am going to be studying hymnology, but as a precursor it has been requested that I start with what worship is. So, what is worship? That is a broad question not answered easily. However, I have compiled five basic answers from the texts I have been reading to answer this question.

• Gill: "Godliness is the ground work of internal worship, and without which there can be no worshipping(sic) God aright." (A Body of Practical Divinity: Book I, Chapter 2)
• Piper: "Worship is a way of gladly reflecting back to God the radiance of His worth." (p.84)
• Morey: "True worship is ministering to the Lord." (p.105) and "Worship is all of life." (p.14)
• Frame: "Worship is the work of acknowledging the greatness of our covenant Lord." (p.1)

You may ask which one is correct, but the point of this is to gain an understanding of what worship is, so I would argue that they all are correct. My study will incorporate all definitions, as they are not contrasting, but simply different perspectives from pastors with different personalities.

First, let's take some time to examine the word "worship" as used in the Bible, in the original languages. (For a more extensive study, see my friend Glenn's blog for starters.) There are two main groups of words that are most commonly translated "worship." The first is "Abodah" in Hebrew, and "latreia" in Greek, which means "service." From this, we can see that worship is an action. A person must actually participate in worship; it is not sufficient to be a mere spectator at some entertainment event. Also, it is a conscious act, not consequential. It is not something you end up doing while singing or clapping your hands. A person must set out with the intent to worship, and then anything else is consequence. This is because worship starts in the heart, which we will get to in a minute. The second set of words is "shachah" in Hebrew, and "proskuneo" in Greek, which means "to bow down." The first thing that this implies is that we are honoring someone superior to ourselves. This is the right mindset to get into, to remember that God is above you, and not your buddy or boyfriend. A person must have the highest reverence for God and understand WHY he is worshiping Him. He is superior in all things, bow to Him! To do otherwise is contradictory in the root of the very word worship itself. The second thing this means is that the purpose is to please Him first, and any benefits we receive are secondary. A person should not worship with the intent of cheering themselves up or reaching some sort of spiritual high. It is to please the Almighty, and then it just so happens that we obtain feelings of joy or bliss from that. Those secondary benefits don't even always come, even when a person is truly worshiping in his heart. It is in those times he presses on, because he has the hope that even if the LORD doesn't lighten his heart in this life, He will in the life to come. That joy is ever flowing. If a person worships to obtain spiritual highs, he will never be satisfied. His worship would be self-centered and one would doubt his salvation. There is no rock to stand on when the tide rises if worship is only a means to happiness. So from the origins of the word, we see that worship is a conscience act of service to a being greater than yourself for their benefit.

Having an understanding of the word worship is not sufficient to say we have an understanding of what it is. We know it is an act towards a being, but what is the act and who is the being? Stay tuned for the answers to these questions and more. Part 1 will continue in two more sections, with a Part 2 to follow, length undetermined as of yet.

The sources I am referencing for this study are as follows:

1. Frame, John - Worship in Spirit and Truth
2. Morey, Robert - Worship: It's Not Just Sunday Morning
3. Gill's Archive (http://www.pbministries.org/books/gill/gills_archive.htm)
4. Piper, John - Desiring God
5. Nave's Topical Dictionary

Sharing Time ^__^

I would just like to take a moment to direct your attention to the left column of my blog, to a content section entitled "Shared Items from Blogroll." These are my favorite posts from the blogs that i regularly read (list of these at left as well). There is, imho, some interesting things worth reading there. I share stuff ranging from new books, current events, hot moral topics, and more. Most recently, I added a post from Josh Harris' blog linking to an article by Al Mohler about the new movie The Golden Compass. I do think that this (and anything i share) is worth a read.

If you want to subscribe to my share feed (think of it as a reader's digest of the blogs i read) or see the posts in full, here is the link for that.

Al Mohler calls the attack via The Golden Compass new, but it seems to me that movies have slowly been desensitizing society's moral standards. Josh Harris made a good point about this in his blog. Attacks on our theology is not new, when you consider gnostic media such as The Da Vinci Code and V for Vendetta. I suppose the difference here is that is so much less subtle. The author of the book is not shy in stating his agenda, in the books and in interviews. I agree with him on one point, though, and that is wondering why Harry got so much more attention than his books. His Dark Materials (The Golden Compass is book 1 of a trilogy) is an obvious attack on Christianity as a way, while JK Rowling's Harry Potter series just uses fantasy witchcraft as a means to show the power of love. What's more, she set the epilogue the number of years after that she did to make sure that none of it suggested teen pregnancies.Note-If you haven't read The Deathly Hallows yet, don't worry, i haven't given anything away besides the fact that two people out of the entire world survived to the end. I don't think this is a movie to be ignored, but i hope people don't fight to the wrong proportions as they too often do when it comes to culture. Press on and Godspeed.

I just finished The Vile Village from A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. I am only progressing at such an excrutiatingly slow pace because i don't own the books. I borrow them from my brother and get a new one when i see him, and i am reading other things. Don't let that fool you! These books are some of the most entertaining things i have ever read. Such sadistic humor though, so while it's written at a kid's level, i'd suggest reading 'em first before giving them to your child. There really are no happy endings, as the back cover promises there won't be.