Dressing Down

Normally when I come home I go to a traditional church setting. You got the works; singing three verses in a hymn skipping the third verse, the praise leader is not someone in a band, and suits and ties, dresses and pantyhose are ever present.

Not saying that anything is wrong with this style of setting but I do have something to offer for some feedback.

Yes, it would be nice if you the reader would scroll down after reading this and leave a comment with what you think about this subject I am about to explain.

When I am home, I usually go to my home church, and when I go to my home church I do not dress up. It is really for no particular reason, just that I am not a dressy person. However, in a traditional church setting it is most appropriate to come with your coats and ties, high heels and modest dresses, hair done ( for you fellas "coiffed" might be the right term). I will come in a T-shirt and jeans and be just as happy as a clam, but there are three things I would like to point out, it is something of a quarrel in my brain:

1. Some would suggest that putting your best before God on Sunday means mind, body, soul, and perhaps your outer image. Cleaning up well for the Lord I suppose you would say. In this regard, I almost disagree, if we are to put our best before God on Sundays then doesn't that suggest that we do not have to put our best before God every day? 

Furthermore, the outer image is nothing, to me it is rubbish, we judge to much for what is on the outside of a person. I respect what is on my body because God has blessed me with the means to cover my nakedness, and I thank God when I can look more respectable as is our culture in some occasions. In this manner I respect the outer image, nothing more, I hold my inner self more responsible than the outer.

2. In regards to culture however, (this is where I am battling myself I suppose) we are sometimes expected to look our best in these churches. Am I simply rebelling a cultural norm that does not defy God? Am I losing the chance to be more respected and accepted in my own culture because I am not being "all things to ALL people", including those from my hometown? Do I say I am so sensitive to culture but when I am in my own I completely disregard its norms because I am aware of other cultures? 

Should the observation of other cultures in the church setting be forgotten simply because we have our own culture? Absolutely not. Should our own culture be stamped out because of the intense concentration of other cultures? Absolutely not. Honestly if it were up to me, we would all be in house churches, dressing however we wanted, praising God however we see fit, but it is not up to me, I did not establish this culture.

3. This is where I am in my stance. God has called us to come, simply come and worship with other believers for a time. He did not say "Thou shalt come into the house of the Lord wearing collared shirts, neckties, and polished shoes. Thou shalt come with dangly earrings, knee-length dresses, and high-heeled shoes for this is the attire I have chosen for my people." In fact one of the most unappealing stipulations for church-going for some people is the fact that they have to get up and put on their "Sunday best" just to sit in a pue for an hour.

I don't go into church with my t-shirt and jeans to make a statement, I go because I'm comfortable, I go in them because at my own home church I feel that they will accept me for who I am in Christ no matter what I look like. Many are contemporary churches where this issue is resolved with people proclaiming to "come as you are" call me contemporary, but that is where I am right now.

Please give me feedback, it is most appreciated on this simple issue.

All to God

Joy is like butter, it should spread.

Tonight I have a pretty overflowing heart. I have a heavy heart but it is much like a sponge drenched with water to the point where it cannot take anymore in. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's a whirlwind of different things pouring into my heart.

I suppose it happened after two strange things happened today. I went for a run, and sometimes when I run I like to listen to worship music. I have had some of my best worship experiences while I run. So right from the start it began with a very good mood. At the start of my run all of a sudden a big whitetail doe started to sprint across the road not fifteen feet in front of me.

It scared me at first, a big beast of an animal that close to you, but afterward when it ran off I couldn't help but smile. I don't know, sometimes I'm gushy like that. Then on my return run there were dark clouds out but the sun was still hanging around, and it started to rain these huge drops of rain. I started running faster to reach the end and then the rain stopped. But then it started again, and harder so I decided to cut through the field.

I don't know what came over me, I started to laugh.

It was a joy that sometimes I get to busy to feel anymore. It was like I was God's little girl and I was in the yard playing with Dad. Then I took a shower and sat down and started thinking.

It was one of those joyous times in my spiritual life that will probably be forever imprinted in my mind, and there are those who don't get to feel that joy. There are Christian people stifling the joy of the Church because of denominational traditions or other ways. There are people who don't know Christ and are not able to feel the Spirit's joy.

So my heart is filled with this desire to see the joy on people's faces when they see Christ for the first time. When Christian people see that denomination is not what gives us joy, but the big picture; that Christ loved us enough to die in our place. This joy drives our passion to do God's work with an unconditional heart.

I'm here to spread the joy
I'm here to help people laugh with God
I'm here to see that God-given smile on someone's face


Find the joy, give the joy, and see it spread.

All to God

On the heart

Well under the name of this blog on my page it states "some of what's on the heart of a missionary in training." Here I am about to tell you what is on my heart this time. Obviously a lot is mulling around this simple mind of mine because I just returned home from the formerly known National Missionary Convention now known as the International Conference on Missions.

While I was there I heard a lot of messages from some very good Christian leaders and missionaries. A lot of heart warming stories and a lot of heart wrenching stories. I walked around and talked with some good friends and some really awesome new friends. It's always a time for people in ministry to be encouraged and feel loved by thebrothers and sisters in attendence.

I also took care of some very exciting business. This business I will share at a later date with all of my lovely readers. Let's just say at least for now I have a plan, something I've never sincerely had. This growing up thing is hard but if I can do it with what little success I have so can any average joe, for I am the female version of this average joe.

The love and encouragement I have encountered just in a few days has been overwhelmingly amazing. The convention stuck with its "commissioned" so well that I see where I have faltered in the ways that I have been commissioned as a follower of Jesus. In seeing the areas where I can improve I become excited that I can make a difference in myself and in the world through the help of God. It also makes me sad that these areas in which I falter...I haven't done anything in them until now. I see where I have lacked confidence and faith, where being the leader I should be was not enough even among human standards.

Comparatively...human standards are pretty low.

So I continue to improve to become a better witness for Christ, I would hope that you also might take a look at the commission of Matthew 28:18-20 and see what you could improve on for Christ's sake. We must love deeper, care more compassionately, be evermore brokenhearted for the lost and hurting, and live less safely. We need to do this because the world is waiting to hear about this Savior, either for the first time, or portrayed correctly. The world needs real commissioned-minded Christians.

All to God 

Answers to the Questions

In one of my classes we have been given the task of writing a letter to the famed atheist Richard Dawkins. We were subject to read his book The God Delusion and respond in a letter form to Mr. Dawkins himself. Many before me have had to write this exact same letter and it was none the easier for them. We are becoming apologists in this letter in a sense and that is something of a daunting task.

I have a firm belief that God is real, that he sustains us, he is Creator, and he is not three gods but three Persons in one God. He is all encompassing, the Father who created and sustains everything, the Son (a physical person of God in flesh) who came to dwell among us and to suffer what we suffer so that no one can say that God doesn't understand, moreover he died and rose again so that we would not have to endure Hell. Also, the Holy Spirit (a non-physical person of God dwelling withing us) that makes his temple in us to guide and direct us in this crazy mixed up world. These all coincide as the One True God.

To relate that to a person who has dug so deeply into atheism it seems too hard to dig them out through reason and proof other than testimony; hard proof, seems like an unachievable task. Dawkins puts on this stone-faced assurance that there is really no god. He almost does it to the point where he makes the reader think that he has already proven that natural selection is extremely more plausible than any belief that there is a Foundational God from whence all things came into existence.

It is like writing a letter to a brick wall

His book jumps from one subject to the next so quickly it is hard to get an apologetic thought in your head before you are having to defend another matter of theology. 

How then will we defend the faith when we are really in a situation where defending it is all you can do? When a person shoots question after question at you without giving you a moment to answer (this usually means they don't really want to hear your answer). When someone seems to have so many facts that right then and there you cannot explain yourself even though given time you could have. 

What happens when all you have is a moment, a pivotal point in time where someone could really see a side of God they had never thought about but instead we weren't ready with the answer?

Obviously we don't have all the answers. Nobody does, no witnesses to the creation story or how the earth came to be. No person has come back from the dead (other than Jesus) to tell the world that God is alive and he is the Alpha and Omega. 

How much more essential is it that we find our answers to the hard questions that we can answer as logically as we can when talking to a logically based person. Scripture even calls us to be ready and subject to questioning.

Are we ready?

All to God

Fizzler

I do a lot of dreaming. I create vivid pictures in my mind about the future, or a certain idea. It's hard to not make images in my mind about the things I really chase after, and almost always it isn't "things". But I dream in real color, real images, and real aspirations.

When I was a kid I dreamed I would do many things. Professional singer, actress, skateboarder, author, surgeon, archaeologist, anthropologist, and probably other things that wouldn't have happened. Like telling my high school math teacher I was going to try to get into calculus because I was shooting for the stars. Well unfortunately that never came to fruition, my lack of mathematical intricacy kept me from that one.

Nevertheless I always have had dreams of bettering myself, working really hard at learning a new skill, and also just all around being a better person. Often times I let myself down on these dreams because either I'm not motivated enough or it just fizzles out.

It's a terrible thing to be a fizzler

So a lot of the time I know when a dream is real, I know if it should come to reality and be sustained. I know because my heart still longs to achieve it and like anything you have to chose to stick with it or you are just basing sustenance with sheer emotions (hence the fizzling). There are those things I have imagined in my brain that goes along with my long-term dreams and aspirations that have stuck with me.

Fizzling is like a sugar high. You eat so much sugar you begin to feel great and motivated and hyper, then about an hour or maybe two later.......you are drooling asleep. Suddenly you wake up and you don't feel so great because you are still groggy but you can't complete anything. Luckily I have come out of the fizzly mindset that I was once in, especially since I was a kid. 

Do you fizzle out your dreams/goals/aspirations?

Were you a fizzler at some point?

Dreams worth bringing into action are not worthy to be eliminated by a fizzle.

All to God