I Craved Change.

Many of you know I am a Christian, but don’t know why or what it means to me.

This is my story.

Question: Does this resonate? Do you/did you crave change? What’s your story?

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“We will send them a message” – Jake Sully, Avatar

I just watched Avatar, and couldn’t wait to blog about a few thoughts that stood out in my head. This series is digested best after watching the movie – the movie is definitely worth watching. First the trailer to set the stage:

“I’m probably speaking to a tree”, but…

The Na’vi believe in an earth spirit, similar to our concept of God, that guides all life on their planet, Pandora. There comes a point when Jake, the hero of our story, needs a little bit of divine intervention. And so taking a leap of faith, he asks for it.

Many of us have doubts about the spiritual, about religion, about God. I challenge you to do the same thing Jake Sully did – to take a leap of faith, and to ask God. “God, you might not be real”, but – are you real? what’s the truth? If God is real, he can meet you where you are.

And Jesus says, he will. From Matt 7: 7-8:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Question: Do you believe in God? If so, why? If not, what would make you believe?

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“We will send them a message” – Jake Sully, Avatar

I just watched Avatar, and couldn’t wait to blog about a few thoughts that stood out in my head. This series is digested best after watching the movie – the movie is definitely worth watching. First the trailer to set the stage:

“It is said that the Na’vi are born twice.”

Fascinating concept, isn’t it, being born twice. The Na’vi are born once physically, and again spiritually, becoming part of the people. Just thinking about the concept alone fascinates me. What fascinates me even more, is that Jesus said the exact same thing:

From John 3:1-8:

Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

In Cameron’s fictional world, you had to be spiritually reborn to be truly part of the Na’vi. In God’s real world, you need to be spiritually born again to enter eternal life and be part of God’s kingdom.

In Rom 7:7-8, Paul writes:

For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Without being born again, we cannot know or please God. More about that here.

But what if God’s not real? In Part 3, we’ll be taking a brief look at that.

Question: What are your thoughts/beliefs on needing to be born again?

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“We will send them a message” – Jake Sully, Avatar

I just watched Avatar, and couldn’t wait to blog about a few thoughts that stood out in my head. This series is digested best after watching the movie – the movie is definitely worth watching. First the trailer to set the stage:

“I cannot tell which world is real.”

In the movie, Jake Sully steps into an “Avatar”, a Na’vi body made for him, so he can work a deal for the humans with the Na’vi. He ends up being immersed in the Na’vi world for so long, that he has an identity crisis – is he human, or actually Na’vi?

In Jake’s case, this is fine, as both his conflicting worlds are real. However, in our case, it’s not.

Many of us abandon our real physical worlds for virtual online worlds. Instead of seeking God when we hit bottom, we dive into worldly pleasures to fill us, which for some of us is getting immersed into a video game online, or building a fake personality for ourselves on facebook, among others. This can ruin our lives.

Andrew recalls his experiences quitting World of Warcraft 4 times on his blog:

“My relationship with my wife was threatened by a fight over a petty game item. I was appalled that such a meaningless entity could intrude upon my relationship”

It is not just our physicial relationships that can suffer because of our indulgence, but more importantly, our relationship with God can be threatened. Things that practically consume our lives are our practical Gods, and God does not like his spot being replaced in our lives. From Rom 1:24-25:

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity… because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator”

We all begin there – we’ve all replaced the real God with fake fantasy and worldly pleasures.

Question: What are some of your struggles in the pursuit of happiness or satisfaction?

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I’m definitely inspired in this category by my Muslim friends who make it a practice to pray 5 times a day. Being a Christian, we’re not forced to pray, and so we can definitely slack in this area of our lives.

However, I’ve been greatly challenged, moved and inspired to pray continually by the continual application of prayer at Winter Conference – I was pleasantly surprised that we’ve had moments of prayer at every one of our main session meetings so far. Back on campus, there’s prayer meetings every weekday. Today I helped organize a live online question and answer event, and the staff present prayed before and after the event, something I would have easily ignored to do.

So thank you WinterCon for the great example.

Question: What do you value and prioritize that is hard to apply in your life?

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WinterCon (short for Winter Conference) is a conference designed specially for us – the “us” being University students from across Canada with a desire of drawing closer to God.

I’ll be aloof @ WinterCon for the next few days, and so will be using the #ewc09 twitter hashtag – it’s usually annoying when I don’t know what a hashtag is about, so hopefully this post serves as a good intro.

I’ll leave you with the promo video for WinterCon.

Question: If you’ve attended conferences before, what’s your favorite and why? If you haven’t attended a conference before, which one would you like to attend, and why?

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In Seven Pounds, Smith’s character, Tim Thomas, makes a very big mistake. He then decides to give sacrificially to seven people with the hope of changing their lives forever.

This being Christmas, I could not help but think of the parallels between Tim’s story, and the Good News of the bible – as Tim gave sacrificially to 7 others, God gave his son, Jesus, for all of us (John 3:16). One of the parallels especially stood out, and so I’m sharing it below.

Good People Only? In the movie, when deciding whom to give to, one of Tim’s criterion’s was that they were good people. Especially when “no one was watching”. In God’s eyes, none of us add up – none of us deserve to spend eternity with God. None of us are good people – we’re all messed up (Rom 3:23). However, He still chose to give sacrificially to us by sending Jesus to die for our sins, so we could live (Rom 5:6-8).

This is one of the biggest things that sticks out to me when comparing Christianity to other religions – despite us messing up, God came for us, and died for our sins so we can know him. WOW!

That said, Merry Christmas! It’s so nice to get time off to celebrate God’s gift to us.

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At one point in the movie, the father tells his son that they were the good guys because they had “the fire burning” in their hearts. They would not do the bad stuff everyone else seemed to be doing. And they were definitely not going to eat other people to survive.

To me this question asks, “Do you believe in objective morality?“, that is, morality that doesn’t depend on your society or culture? A morality that says it’s wrong to steal, wrong to murder, no matter what? And the second question that tests if the fire will burn in your heart is  “Are you going to follow these morals come the end of the world or something close?”

So where do you stand? If the time comes, what will keep you from putting your comfort above my survival?

The only thing that would keep the fire burning in my heart is Jesus.

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It’s usually more fun to get in the game, than simply being a spectator. It’s way more fun to play the game in the video above than to watch it being played. I like playing soccer way more than watching soccer being played. It’s more fun to kick the ball myself, work through the chaos with a team and feel the air rush past you than to sit on a couch and watch someone else having fun.

This might seem like a simple concept. But I think this applies to many spheres of our lives, not just sports or video games.

It applies to leadership. It’s a lot easier to be lead than to lead. When possible, take the initiative to get in the game and lead – you’ll be challenged and there’s usually guaranteed hard times, but it will be worth it in the end.

It applies to ending poverty. If your heart is burdened for poverty in the world, you don’t need to spectate and watch others fix it. You can get in the game and be a part of the solution.

It applies to serving Jesus. It’s quite easy to go to church, get served, go home. It’s a lot more awkward to get in the game and serve, give back, but it’s soooo worth it! I’ll tell you how the video below applies next week – until then, may it serve as an inspiration.

Get In The Game!

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I wanted to write about Compassion Bloggers – bloggers playing a part in in “transform[ing] the lives of children in poverty worldwide“. I’ve been to Anne Jackson’s blog lately, and she just returned from a week long trip to India with several other bloggers. The trip was  sponsored by Compassion with hopes that they would witness the situation surrounding children first hand and blog about their experiences, which they have been doing quite well.

Through Anne’s posts, some of the things that touched me was that some of the children don’t have any ambitions, because they are stuck in a cycle of poverty. They can’t dream of becoming someone, because all they know and see is what surrounds them. They’re stuck. But Compassion and sponsorships from across the globe are set to change that.

Back to the title. Everything Compassion does for the children, they are able to do through sponsorships from everyday folks like you and me. Children enrolled in the Compassion program get education, a daily meal, and get to learn about Jesus. So by sponsoring a child, you’re not only practically investing in their lives and future, but also providing a tangible way for them to learn about Jesus, and possibly spend eternity in Heaven. It costs $32 a month (about a donut a day) to sponsor a child – you can find out more here and sponsor children here.

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