A God We Cannot Exaggerate

"What comes into our minds when we think about God is

the most important thing about us.... Worship is pure or

base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of

God. For this reason the gravest question before the Church

is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about

any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but

what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like."

-A.W. Tozer                                                

      My God is not a simple God. He is not confined to a box, nor can he be held by any human standard. He is holy, he is sovereign, he is perfect. He is an ocean, and I am a raindrop. Nothing you and I can do will ever give him more glory than he deserves. His glory is as inexhaustible as his love, his grace is matchless, and his mercy is endless. He is a righteous judge and a caring father. He is all sufficient, all powerful, and almighty. No praise will ever be enough, for he is worthy of all of our praise and more. He has defeated sin and conquered death. He is my hope, my shield, and my refuge. Nothing you, I, or any one can say can over-exaggerate him. He is matchless, he has no peers. To describe him is to the impossible. No words will ever be enough to describe the depth and power and majesty of my God. To think I can limit him to my understanding, to attempt to fully comprehend him is arrogant. What I can know about him is just a drop in the ocean of his limitlessness. But though I cannot comprehend him, I know him. 

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world."

Psalm 19:1-4                 

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities- all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead that in everything he might be preeminent."                                                                                            Colossians 1:15-19

"When I saw him, I fell at his as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying 'Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades."                                                                                                                 Revelation 1:17-19

A Crippling Case of Misplaced Identity

        Recently, I was talking to a minister about a potential job as a part-time youth minister. During the course of our conversation, he told me that if I was to receive an interview with the church, do not bring up Calvinism in the interview. Don't even mention it. He went on to say that the old Calvinism vs. Armenianism debate is still raging withing the Southern Baptist Convention, and is threatening to tear many churches apart. Ever since then, his words have plagued my mind, and weighed heavy on my heart. Our church body today is wracked with division. The very body of Christ is being torn apart by things that hardly even matter in the greater scheme of things. 

        This isn't limited to the Southern Baptist Convention, but is found, unfortunately, in every facet of our faith. Rather than claiming the name "Christian", literally "little Christ", we hold onto our self-imposed labels with a death grip. We want the world to know that we're Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Calvinist, or Armenian, instead of simply being Christian. We allow our churches to be torn asunder, we allow our witnesses to be ruined, all because we want to put the glory of being right above the glory of God. In 1 Corinthians 1:12-13, Paul writes, "What I mean is that each one of you says, 'I follow Paul', or 'I follow Apollos', or 'I follow Cephas', or 'I follow Christ'.Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" The same problem that was dividing the Corinthian church is the same problem in our church today. Like the Corinthians, we say "I follow Calvin", or "I follow Spurgeon", instead of saying "I follow Christ". 

        This is something I'm guilty of as well. Lately I have been putting my beliefs in the teachings of Calvin above the teachings of Christ. I've been seeking that affirmation of being right, or being intelligent, through my knowledge and practicing of Calvinism, rather than seeking to solely claim having identity in Christ. It hurts. It hurts realizing that you're part of the problem. That you've let your own arrogance get in the way of the glorifying Christ. But what can we do? What can I do? In chapter three of 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses this, saying "Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this is folly with God." We can't afford to be divided. Especially not under the pretense of being wise. Our knowledge doesn't save us. It doesn't guarantee our salvation. We don't get a special seat in heaven. When we get to heaven, and tell God, "God! God! I was right wasn't I!", he will just shake his head. " My son, you studied my word for years. You read it every day. But you missed it. My son, I told you, 'Go and make disciples'. You did the opposite." 

        We can debate. We can study, and learn, and thirst after knowledge, but when it comes at the expense of the glory of God, it becomes sin. It doesn't matter if Calvin was right. It doesn't matter if Wesley was right. It doesn't matter if the carpet is red, or where the piano sits on the stage. All that matters is, are we glorifying God? Are we making disciples? If we can't answer yes either of those, then it's time we evaluate ourselves.

        "And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." 1 Corinthians 2:1-5

New Stuff

I haven't had a chance to do much hiking recently, or at all, due to having a ton to do at school and working a lot. So, I'm probably going to be posting some of the poetry I write on here as well. I'll still be posting my hiking exploits as soon as get a chance to have some. But for now here is a newly written poem entitled, "Siren Song".

Siren Song

From the valley to these halls

We have all heard the siren call

And in absence of all thoughts we left our homes

Hastening down the icy shore

Who's roaring waters we dare not ford

Praying that we would find our way

With steel in mind and axe in hand

We scoured far across our land

Searching for the sacred tree

The blows rang out across the vale

The tree trunk buckled and it fell

A sign of majesty now at our feet

So with our saws and tools alike

We made a great ship for our plight

And once more sought the haunting song

Through winds and gales that howl

We sought out that wondrous sound

With the fire of our hearts keeping us warm

Soon we approached an isle of snow

A place where golden rivers flow

And we knew this was our prize

As our boat sank into the sea

We sought the siren out with glee

But all we found were graves

It was then the song had stopped

And we awoke to what we'd wrought

For despair replaced the fire in our hearts

The siren song became our own

A lamentation for our homes,

One we will sing till we are naught but bones

Post #2

          This weekend I traveled with my university's BCM on their fall retreat to Coker Springs Retreat, which is about an hour past Sweetwater. The retreat center was pretty quaint and rustic. There was no cell service, plenty of land, and to my excitement, plenty of hiking trails. On the second day of the retreat I decided to hit the trails with a group. For about half of the hike, I was thoroughly unimpressed by the trail. It was a bland double wide trail, nothing impressive. I felt like there were more impressive trails at the family center in my hometown. Then things got awesome. The trail suddenly cut to a single wide trail, and it became covered by fallen trees. What had started out as a boring hike had turned into a trek through a forest of overturned trees. Eventually we came to a point where we could no longer press forward and had to turn back. On the trip back down, we went a little ways off the trail and found a small cave. To get in the cave we had to slide down through the mouth into the bottom. Once at the bottom we could see that the cave tunnel continued as far as the eye could see. We went as far as we could down the cave, until we came upon a plethora of bats. Turning around to avoid disturbing the bats, we decided to come back later in the night when the bats were gone to explore the rest of the cave. When night fell our return group had dwindled down to me and one other person. We decided to continue with our adventure and embarked upon the trail. As we reached the bend in the trail where we had to venture into the forest, we heard something around us. The howls of coyotes. Ignoring the howls, we pressed on towards where we thought the cave was. After about five minutes of walking, we realized we were too far into the forest and decided to turn back. We became utterly lost and wandered the darkness for what seemed like an eternity, with the coyotes prowling around us, just waiting for our flashlights to die. We eventually stumbled out onto part of trail and made our way back to civilization unscathed.

Post #1

                This is pretty much going to be a blog of the backpacking trips I take. It'll probably have a bunch of random posts thrown in as well, but I'll try to keep it mostly about backpacking/hiking. I don't really have a ton of experience backpacking, but I'll probably be spending a lot of time doing it in the future. Anyways, the rest of this post is going to be about my last backpacking adventure.

                 I went on this trip over Labor Day weekend with a few of my friends. Our target location was along the ridge line of Bird Mountain, which was about an hour east of Cookeville.  The hike to our campsite was 7 miles, so it shouldn't have been to bad. Unfortunately, the first four miles of the hike was straight up the mountain, which had a murderous incline and endless cutbacks. We eventually made it to the top and continued on the rest of the three miles across the ridge line to our campsite. As we started the last leg of our journey, the sky opened up and just drenched us with a downpour. The storms from Hurricane Isaac had finally made their way over the mountains just as we decided that we would backpack through them. So we pressed on, battling the elements, until we arrived at our campsite. What we found was not what we expected. The space was barren, except for a few trees, and contained a tall wooden table and a crumbling brick fire pit. It's pretty much how I expect a apocalyptic wasteland to look like. The torrential downpour decided to relent so we could set up our tents and explore the area. We traveled to the highest point around, about a half mile away, which was supposed to have a lookout tower on top of it. It would have been awesome and the view would have been stunning, had we been able to see five feet in front of us. The entire area had been blanketed with fog. You could hardly even make out the tower through it. I mean it was pretty cool, and kind of Lost-esque, but we felt like we were cheated out of the view. After we returned to camp and decided to settle in for the night, Mother Nature decided she was curse us again with a thunderstorm. So there we were, on top of mountain, in the rain, wind, and lightning, completely soaked in our tents. I don't think I'd ever felt so miserably wet, nor so manly. The hike down and the subsequent lunch at Sonic were made so much sweeter due to the misery we endured on top of that mountain. It was both the greatest, and worst, backpacking trip I've ever been on.