Life can be busy and heavily experiential, and so I find it easy to get lost in my own world and my story, and forget that everyone else out there has a story as well. Everyone has lived on earth for X amount of years, and is shaped by their parents, friends and family, choices and life experiences around them. We all have dreams, visions, goals, desires and passions. We all crave Intimacy, Destiny, and Meaning.

Watching the Olympics, it’s easy to forget that every Olympian has a story as well. Below is the story of Olympic snow boarder Kelly Clark, who despite having everything she wanted, craved meaning.

From icravechange.com

Question: Whose story inspires you the most?

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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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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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