What is love, baby don't hurt me...

So I have been doing something new at work recently. I have been working as a carpenter this summer. Typically I will put in ear buds that help cut the noise, turn on some music, and go into my own little base coping world (trim words sorry). Well lately, instead of listening to The Avett Brothers or Trampled By Turtles (both bands you should check out if you like banjos), I have been listening to some books on tape or various sermons by one of my favorite pastors, Mike Smith. Well I finally finished the book, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I've only started the book roughly a dozen times. This is the first time I've actually finished it. I have a theory that the Devil finds a way to make me to busy when I'm reading a really good book that could really change my perspective. Ok so that was way to long to get to where I am going.

Either way, something really struck me last few parts I listened to of Blue Like Jazz. Donald Miller was talking about love. If you've read some of my older blogs, you would realize how important I think love is in our Christian walk. Well two things struck me that Miller said about love. The first was how important it is that we love ourselves. In Mark 12:31, Jesus says that we must love our neighbors as ourselves. In Blue Like Jazz (it takes to much time to type that all our so from here on out BLJ...which I will probably not mention again), Miller talks about our inability to love others if we can't first love ourselves. Our ability to fulfill this commandment from Christ is almost impossible, unless we can stop being so self loathing. This struck me hard as I was nailing some base on a wall (more trim words). Maybe you don't struggle with this. Maybe you love who you are, and if so, I applaud you. I, however, am self loathing, self deprecating, and, for the most part, never pleased with who I am. As Donald talks in his book, it is incredibly important we are able to love ourselves. Our inability to love ourselves is a symptom of our inability to accept Christ's love for us. In looking down our ourselves, we are saying that Christ did not create me right, He messed up, and his grace and love isn't enough... Yowza. If we can just accept Christ's love and realize that we are made EXACTLY the way we are supposed to be. When we can be ok with who God has made us, THEN we can start to love those around us. We can begin to pour out our love on those around us. I think, at that point, we can't help but love others. When we finally fully accept Christ's love, it will infect your entire life. Man is that a hard point to get to though. We will never, I think, fully understand the depth and expanse of Christ's love. When we can understand, however, that it covers any sin. That Christ loves us to no end. I need to accept that more.

The second thing that struck me was how we should love Christ. Donald tells a story of a friend who was visiting different churches and ministries and asking them questions about what they do that works and general questions about faith. As he sat across from the leader of a large organization. A big, fairly burly man sitting behind a large, oak desk. He looked at the man and asked him who Jesus is to him. The man couldn't answer but simply began to weep. Christ affected him so much, and he loved Christ so much that all he could do was weep and the mention of His name. I know Christ, and I understand what He did and I am grateful. Am I, however, in a relationship with Christ to the point that I love Him that much that I weep for Him. Maybe you aren't the weeping type, but the emotions that thinking of Christ elicit. I am 41 days away from being married to an amazing woman. I think about the ways I love her. I love to tell others about how wonderful she is. Ok some of this is engagement/puppy love I know. But I love her. I can't help but talk about her (in good ways). My love for Christ should be even deeper. It should affect me even more. That hit me even harder. That truth slammed me hard. I know Christ. I think He's pretty cool. I even fear God. But do I love Him to that depth? As Donald says, it takes a relationship to reach that point. You need to be seeking to know Christ. You must be longing to know His character. Just like I love my smoking hot future wife (as my friend Brian says. Side note, check out his hilarious podcast Review Everything Podcast. It's worth a listen) because I know her. I love her more because I know her more. I need to get to know Christ to love Him more. The more I seek Him and i understand the depth of who Christ is, the more I will love Him. I think the biggest question that remains is if I am willing to put in the work to get to know Christ and do I have the longing to know Christ to the point I love Him that deeply. 

Well that was intended to be a short blog, that seemed to have more elicit more than I thought from my heart and mind. I hope you received some truth from this as well. If you have any questions or anything to say, please comment or e-mail me at optimisticprime115@gmail.com.  I love you all already and there is nothing you can do about it. 

With Love,

Optimistic Prime

P.S. As always, if you enjoy this or something hits you, share it with others. My hope is just to get the words God put on my heart out there. I figured He put me there for a reason.

The Typical

So I have been doing some work with a friend doing construction while I have my summer off. The other day at the job site I slightly overheard the conversation when my friend asked who I was. My friend is a Christian guy, as is the rest of his crew. Long story short, this man jokingly referred to us as "typicals". At one point he said that he was surrounded by a punch of typicals. So I did some quick research.

In the United States, about 73%-77% of the population identify themselves as Christians. I'd cite my sources...but if you want to find out, google it. That means that in a group of 10 people, almost 8 would consider themselves Christian. If you walked into your local breakfast diner at 10:30 in the morning on Saturday, of those 20 - 30 people in there, about 16-24 of them consider themselves Christian. 

As I sit back and think about those numbers, I wonder if I really want to be a typical American. When you sit back and think about what that means in terms of being a Christian... well I understand why some people have a very hard time identifying Christians with the Christ of the Bible that we are to emulate. This isn't me coming down on people either. This is me being as guilty as any of, to a point, defiling the term "Christian". It also makes me realize how loosely we throw that term around. How easily people say, "Oh yeah, I'm a Christian." Like I talked about last week, getting married and budgeting and trying to stay Christ-like has been a very humbling event for me. It made me realize how poor of an example I have been of being Christ-like to those I come in contact with daily. 

I know I have talked about it before, but I'm talking about it again. If as many people who claimed they were Christians, lived a true Christian walk, can you imagine what this world would be like? If it was just those who went to church on a regular basis lived a true Christ-like faith can you imagine? If simply the number of people who read this silly blog could live a completely Christ-like faith... I'm not saying none of you do, it's more of a challenge to me. If I could only live a Christ-like existence. If I could love the people I came in contact with as much as Christ loved. If I could give as freely and without worry, with both time and money, as Christ asked us to. 

The best part of this is, God still wants to use untrusting, unloving at time, broken me. One of my wonderful, gorgeous, fiancé's favorite characters in the Bible is Peter. Not because of what Peter did, but because of how big of a screw up he was, and how great God was glorified threw him. We discussed this recently at a friends wedding as the read about the washing of the feet. Peter ask Jesus not to wash his feet. Jesus tells him that unless he allows him to that Peter cannot be clean. Peter immediately jumps to the other ends and ask's Christ to wash all of him then. Countless times throughout the New Testament you just shake your head at Peter. Yet God used him. Maybe there is hope for me after all. The major thing with Peter is that no matter what, he was passionate about God and was striving to seek Him and desired to serve Him. Peter may have been a screw up, but his heart was in the right place.

So I covered a lot there and my brain wasn't exactly flowing neatly so let explain...there is no time, let me sum up. If you consider yourself a Christian, think about your actions and what they say about Christians. Do you want others to see Christianity through your actions. But, have faith that if you truly try to follow Christ, HE will be glorified. We need to make sure we are seeking God with the right heart, and with the right motives. With or without us, however, He will be glorified. We just have to choose whether or not we are willing to die to self and be a part of it.

Ok I'm done, but as always I love you all and thanks for reading this. Tweet it, Facebook it, Myspace it (yeah right), share it. I hope you got something from this. Send me feedback or questions or comments. Either leave them here or e-mail me at optimisticprime15@gmail.com.

Finally, if you guys could pray for me and my future wife. We have to rely on God a lot as we move forward with our lives. It has been hard for me to trust in God to provide for us so just pray for faith for me and a willingness to allow God to move in His timing. Thankfully he has provided me with a wonderful woman to keep me focused on him. If you guys have an prayer requests, PLEASE e-mail me. I can share them confidentially on here and with friends, or I can simply pray for you myself. Either way, please don't hesitate. 

With love always,

Optimistic Prime

I'm back...I think

You know, it's amazing how sure we can be that God wants us to do something. Yet, how quickly give up when it seems uneventful, unexciting, or not what WE hoped for. It is so hard for me to completely trust God, and not think that I know better because I am living it. I look at this blog and have no idea what God may be doing or who He may be affecting, but I gave it up simply because I didnt see anything, and I "didn't have time".  But that's not what I wanted to talk about this time.

First an update. I am back in NE Ohio after living in Columbus for about a year and a half. I really felt that God wanted me back near my family right now. Maybe it's due to parents getting older or who knows, I jut felt it's where I needed to be. I also just completed my first year of teaching. The first 6 months were at a charter school in Columbus. (Side note, if you are a teacher... REALLY REALLY research a charter school before you take a job at one.) The last three months were at an off site classroom. The schools caters to school districts who send children who have behavior issues, most resulting from emotional issues. It is definitely a challenging job, but has also been really good.

I also got engaged over the past year and I am currently, with my future bride, in the crux of wedding planning. It's not always what I would consider fun, but has been good. During this process, we have been doing premarital counseling. That has been super awesome. Ben and Dara is the couple who has been talking with us and they are phenomenal people who I have quickly grown to love. Talking with them, however, is what may have made me the most discouraged. Not at anything they did or said. Simply what was revealed through our talks.

A few weeks ago we were talking about finances and both Ben and Dara suggested we should live off of one of our salaries so that if we decided to have children it wouldn't be a nearly impossible adjustment to make. I thought this was an excellent idea, so Sarah and I sat down to make a budget. We decided to use my salary because, at the moment, I have a full time job with benefits and Sarah is still working part time doing design work. We used a work book and some online sources to create a spreadsheet that uses percents. For a nerdy guy like me, it was fun creating, until I entered in my salary and looked at the money we had for all of our stuff for the year... It was at this point I became super discouraged. I know I don't make a lot of money, but looking at what we had to spend on housing and groceries and, worst of all, "fun" stuff seemed like nothing. My excitement for marriage went from way high to ... really?!?... I was still super stoked to marry Sarah, it just seemed impossible with that much money. Seriously, how can Sarah and I be comfortable with a budget like that...

Talking with Ben and Dara helped me to realize the good God can do if we trust Him with this, but it wasn't until I was talking with my cousin Brian that I truly go a glimpse of God at work. We were talking about a book he has been listening to called More or Less. The basic premise is that as Americans, we typically have enough and how we need to be more willing to give of what we have. But as I talked about this book with Brian, I realized how much I have lived in excess over the past several years. I was by no means wealthy, but I had enough and would quickly spend on things I didn't need. I enjoy Starbucks coffee, but being a Gold Member there is not something I'm proud of. I am typing this on my iPad as I check e-mails on my iPhone. I wake up each morning with a choice of what to eat for breakfast and pack for my lunch. I have freedom to choose so much. As I sat and thought about all of my excess, I just felt God saying "Trust Me and watch what I can do with you". I thought about what Ben and Dara told be, about how God had done some incredible things in their lives because they were able to trust Him, giving freely, KNOWING God would provide for their needs.

So are you living in excess? My challenge is to sit down and think about all the things we live with that we don't need. What is are you spending money on in excess that you could be using to bless others and glorify God? I'm not calling anyone out or trying to belittle anyone. I just want you to think about how much you have and how much you give. Maybe God just wanted to convict me. Maybe this blog is for me to read through time and time again and be reminded that I must be willing to give. I don't need that perfect apartment, I just need one that Sarah and I can fit in. I don't need my weekly dose of Starbucks, that freshly ground cup of 8 o'clock was pretty tasty today. I should be searching for ways to bless others with my excess, not searching for was to spend the excess I have. I truly believe God has put me in this position because HE wants to bless others through me and HE will be glorified through it. I only hope I can trust Him enough to allow Him to work. I hope you will all keep me accountable to living faithfully to Christ and trusting Him, especially with my finances.

For those who want to, you can actually download the book More or Less on Noisetrade.com. It is a wonderful site you should check out anyhow. You can download music, and even books sometime, by donation. Yes that means you can download stuff for free if you wish.

Well until next time, I love you guys and I hope God has given you something. As always, comment or email me at optimisticprime15@gmail.com with anything. E-mail me if I haven't blogged in a while... sometimes I need some help with that :).

Optimistic Prime

PS. Please tweet, facebook, other social media this. I want to get this out there and see what God can do. PEACE.