The difference between knowing and living

“The longer I live, the more I find I don't know”
“We’re paddling on the edges of the possibilities of grace”…Leonard Ravenhill

The last few weeks have been an interesting and intriguing time in my life. Changes in lifestyle and mindset seem to come at the most obvious times yet come completely unexpected. Needless to say I have learned a lot in the last month. The question I wrestle with though is does it matter?
I have been leading a devotional group of counselors throughout the weeks and am very pleased with how these young men of God are doing. There is so much talent and so much potential in them. That coming from me and 10 years of leading various groups is a pretty big statement. A couple weeks ago though one amazing female counselor said that it seemed kind of intimidating with me as a devo leader to the guys because I graduated from Bible College. The observation kind of stuck with me as it’s something I have heard before with people in Bible studies under my Father or Grandfather. I pondered that statement a lot wondering what does this knowledge mean to me and what does it do for me? The more I thought about it though the more I realized it’s not about how much I know about God, it’s about what I do with it. The knowledge is a means to an end, the end being a closer relationship with God and bringing others to that point. People spend their entire lives trying to find out the mysteries of life only to waste it all with no understanding of the love of an almighty God. We are trying to understand the divine only to find out how small we really are and how great God is for having mercy on us. The point is not how much I know, I’ll never even come close to knowing it all. The point is why and how this knowledge is changing me.

“The question is not were you challenged…the question is were you changed?”…Leonard Ravenhill

Signed
The Unsilent Pastor’s Kid

PS. If you can’t tell I have been listening to Leonard Ravenhill lately, look his sermons up on YouTube he has some great stuff

The irony of pride

Pride seems like a cruel irony to me. Having self-pride can lead to arrogance and will devastate you. Not having self-pride can lead to extremely low self-esteem and will devastate you. Where is the middle ground or is there no middle ground? This is perhaps one of the biggest struggles I am pondering right now. I am only 23 yet I have accomplished a lot more than most my age. All of my personal goals are coming to fruition by the day. It doesn’t seem like there is really anything I can’t eventually accomplish, yet there in lies the trap I fear. In this line of thinking I grow more arrogant, in my arrogance I become complacent, in my complacence I am corrupted, and in my corruption I weaken. Why? Because the key word in that sentence is “I”. What I really should be thinking is: are my goals God’s goals? Is what I’m doing because of me or because of Him? We grow arrogant when we take God out of the picture.

Yet the flip side of the coin is the philosophy that having any kind of pride is wrong. Last time I checked God did choose humanity as His shining achievement of creation. Is that not something to be proud of? Last time I checked God lovingly made us all how He wanted us made. Is that not something to be proud of? Last time I checked God gave us the right to be called His children. Is that not something to be proud of? We get to work and achieve for the furthering of His kingdom…The Kingdom. How can we not be proud of our accomplishments done with His help in His Name? Not having any pride in yourself, as a child of God, is a tragic thing. We have every reason to feel confident and proud when we realize who is backing us.

Perhaps the problem isn’t having or lacking any pride. Perhaps it is what we put our pride in that is the problem.

Inspired Ambition

Long silences are good for building tension. Unfortunately for me the tension has been building for a while without me realizing it. I had been getting questions in the last few months over what I am doing with my blog and the Lake-Facebook group “FORUM.” I apologize to those people who have been waiting for months now for either a new blog post, video, or any news over FORUM but it’s been busy. Mostly because of school (25 credits this term until two weeks ago) and jobs (currency is a contradictory concept) but also something else.

For the past few months I have begun a new project that I have made known to a few people but not made public. It’s not like it’s a secret but I just didn’t really want to put it out there. I was inspired after reading an article about children who have grown up with a parent in ministry. Since I am a bonified “PK’ it caught my attention. The emotional struggle a pastor’s kid goes through can be pretty messy, read some of my past blogs you’ll get the picture. A lot of these kids grow up and leave the church because of some of the scars, and they don’t come back. It brought me to ask the question why am I still in church? What was so appealing to me that I broke through my struggles and stayed with the faith? The answers came with an inspiring idea over what to do with them. After talking with my Father and Grandfather, they have encouraged me to move forward with this. I am currently in the process of writing a book on the experiences of a PK. As of this writing I am done with the rough draft of the prologue/first chapter and most of the outlining. I will be talking about some past experiences but I’m trying to be as general as possible, a book that contains ranting won’t help anyone. My hope is that people will read this book and not give up hope on church or even faith for that matter but see hope in it. My hope is also that it gets published to begin with but that's up to God I believe.

Because of this a lot of my creativity has been going into the book so I haven’t really had time to blog or cut any new vids for the group. This process might take a while but I will try to get some new things done on both the blog and the group. Don’t worry I’m not dead… :P

Signed,
The Unsilent Pastor’s Kid

PS. I'm always looking for proofreaders if anyone is interested and no I did not correct grammar in this post ha, ha, ha.,}),.