Peace

So, my last blog told a story that never happened to me. For balance, here's a story that did:

When I was 16, the first semester of my Junior year of high school, I was hospitalized. For three days and four nights, I got my own room and a bed. It wasn't quite the vacation that that last sentence makes it sound. I was on a liquid diet, which is one of the worst things in the world. My disgusting breakfast consisted of lemon jello and vegetable stock. My tasteless lunch was cherry jello and beef stock. Dinner was the most enjoyable "meal," which consisted of orange jello and chicken stock. To this day, I can't eat jello. 

I was there for an ulcer, which basically means my stomach was bleeding. They use to think that it was only caused by stress, but they found a virus that causes it, which is what I had, and which explains why such a young person had an ulcer (as difficult as Junior year of hih school was, it's not quite ulcer-inducing).

It was a very weird day when I was rushed to the hospital. I was helping my mom's friend move, but I wasn't much help because my stomach was hurting terribly the whole time. When we got home, I remember pouring myself some water one minute and then waking up one the ground the next minute, the back of my head and elbows in pain apparently from hitting the floor. I went downstairs to get ready to go to the hospital. In the parking lot, I threw up. Blood. 

On the way to the hospital, I was praying, as I'm sure most Christians would in my situation. My prayer wasn't really that I would get there safely or for healing. I and my possibly overdramatic 16-year-old mind were pretty sure that I was going to die. And I was alright with that. I was praying more for my mom, who would have been completely dismayed if I did die.

I was completely fine with the thought of dying, even at such a young age. God had given me an amazing peace. I knew that if He wanted to take me out of this life, He would take me to be with Him. I probably had every right to be freaking out at that moment, but God gave me peace. Now, more than 7 years later, I'm filled with worry and anxiety all around me instead of trusting in God's provision and accepting His peace. I pray that I--and you--would find peace in God in the midst of life's trials.

"do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." -Philippians 4:6-7

Lust

So I joined this thing called the "One Word at a Time Blog Carnival." Basically, every other week, they give you a single word to blog about. I figured that this was a good thing for me since I vowed to blog twice a week (which was broken on Monday by work and preparing for school to start; sorry) and sometimes don't know what to write about. So I look on this list and the word for this 2 week period is "lust." I honestly thought about not joining the Blog Carnival for another week. Nobody wants to write about lust. There are more comfortable sins to write about, some where a person can point the finger and say, "Look at those people. Look at how they dishonor God." In some ways, it is easy to do that with this. I can say, "Look at Potiphar's wife, how she couldn't resist Joseph and gave in to her lusts," or "Look at David, and how he saw Bathsheba on the roof and had to have her."

It's easy to see these examples of lust and cross my arms and shake my head in disapproval. These people are long dead, but their deeds are immortalized in the words of Scripture. However, it doesn't take much digging in my life to bring to the surface times in which I've let my eyes wander. I may not have ripped off someone's robe or called a bathing woman to my bedchambers, but according to Jesus, I have committed adultery in my heart with more women that I care to count.

Keep reading in that passage, and it's clear that Jesus takes lust seriously. People don't usually advise that you mutilate your body for your own good, so it seems He's trying to get your attention.

Why is the lust of the eyes such a big deal to God? I have never claimed to know the mind of God, but something tells me that it's because He is a jealous God. He doesn't want us to take our eyes off of the Cross and put it on some man or woman. He doesn't want us to take our eyes off the Creator and put them on the things He's created. He wants all the glory.

We Christians can't ignore lust because we know what God says about it, but I think we have a flawed way of dealing with it. Instead of taking our eyes off of the people that He's created and putting them on Him, we try to put them on other solutions. There are internet filters. There are books. One such book, Every Young Man's Battle, suggests that if a young man catches himself looking at a young woman, he should "bounce," his eyes. Eyes diverted, crisis avoided. What this seems like to me is an attempt to be holy, minus Jesus. We think that by avoiding this sin, we're bringing ourselves closer to God through our actions. Isaiah 64:6 makes it clear that whatever good we try to do is insufficient.

Brothers and sisters, I pray that in whatever temptations that we will inevitably encounter, that we not forget the sacrifice that Christ gave so that we don't have to work to earn His grace, but that we are continually "looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."