How You Can Support My Year Studying Abroad

In just a couple short weeks from now, I’ll be finally  making the move to Scotland. Less than six months ago, I accepted an offer to study at the famed University of St. Andrews with some of the world’s greatest scholars in my field. I will spend one year there (from September to August), and at the end of my time, I will be awarded a Master’s degree in Analytic and Exegetical Theology. To afford this once in a lifetime opportunity, I have relied on loans, personal savings, and the generosity of many who have chosen to support my studies and my work for the kingdom. If you would like to join those people, I still have money that I need to raise.

I’m praying for God’s faithfulness through people like you. I hope you join me in prayer and can contribute to my future. If you would like updates on my fundraising goals or to know how you can give electronically (Cash App, Venmo, Go Fund Me, etc.), please contact me personally or use the form below.

Thank you so much for your time, your prayers, and your gifts.

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Why I Deactivated My Social Media and Why I’m Doing It Again

Some of my friends have begun to notice that they cannot find me in my usual internet homes of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Almost a month ago, I decided that I spent too much time swiping on my phone. I spent too much time typing clever things or political things or religious things onto my mobile’s keyboard. I realized that I spent too much time holding a phone than holding a friend’s hand or the hand of someone in need. I realized that my life goals and activities had been skewed by 14.5 square inches of real estate. I’m writing this to explain my motives while avoiding social media. I’m writing this to explain the benefits and difficulties with this project.

I should first begin with explaining why the title also says “…and Why I’m Doing It Again.” Today, in order to keep my Twitter account from deleting all my data; I reactivated it before deactivating it once more. Since I had looked at it for a minute, I decided to check out Facebook. Although my account was not view-able by anyone, I still had over forty notifications just from groups that I’m a part of. I instantly saw a post for a friend that is raising money for an overseas trip, and I was excited to see the update. But I almost immediately felt queasy. Social media just has a way to drag us back into junior high and high school where everything is life or death. I kind of felt like I was seeing an elaborate computer program, and not the people from my hometown or my home at OBU. I immediately deactivated my account again, and I feel better now. I guess it was just too much for me.

It was difficult. Just yesterday someone told me an awesome thing they did and told me to check it out on Facebook, and I couldn’t. That has been happening for over four weeks. I have been constantly enamored with, “I guess you heard about…” or “Did you see?”; but my response has been, “No, I didn’t.” I haven’t seen anything. If someone is working somewhere else, I don’t know. If someone got hurt, I don’t know. If someone got engaged, I don’t know. If someone won a million dollars (which has not happened from what I’m aware of), I don’t know. And I’m glad I don’t.
When someone assumes that I know something, for the first time in eight years, I have to be ignorant and let them teach me. For the first time in eight years, I have to have a conversation that starts earlier and ends later than “Oh, I know. Isn’t that terrible.” For the first time in eight years, I don’t have to be envious of anyone’s life because I’m too focused living mine.

Some people may think I’m crazy. I have detached myself from the world. Everyone is doing it, and I am far behind. I still miss it. I’m still in a detox stage. But I’m glad I did it, and I’m doing it again. I might eventually go back. When school starts I might reactivate old accounts. When I have something to share I might. But for now, I’m happy living my life in what feels like limitless real estate in comparison to those 14.5 square inches that once enslaved my life.

Irredeemable

Irredeemable – adj. not able to be saved, improved, or corrected.

Whether people just hearing the story of Jesus for the first time or people that grew-up hearing it without ever following him, many find themselves feeling that they cannot be saved, improved, or corrected. They feel like the redemption promised by Jesus does not apply to them. I know I often have felt irredeemable, and when I feel like that as I still do, I have to remind myself of that belief’s implications in order to persevere through those times.
Often people think they cannot be redeemed because of the weight of their past. The sins of their life are so great and so many. They have hurt so many people. Their heart is broken because of the hearts they have broken. These are just some of the reasons people feel irredeemable. They still feel locked in chains. They still feel dead in their sin.

Love – n. an intense feeling of deep affection.
Mercy – n. compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.
Grace – n. the free and unmerited favor of God, as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings.

The good news for all people is that there is a God of love and mercy and grace. I could list any one of many Bible verses to demonstrate this point, but I would rather talk about the implication of feeling irredeemable. When we feel irredeemable, we usually think about ourselves. We think about our failures and faults, and we may even fain humility in this. However, we should be thinking about the implications this has on God.
Believing that we are irredeemable actually distorts our view of God. When we declare that we cannot be saved, we are saying our sin is too great for God to forgive. When we declare that we cannot be improved (or sanctified), we are saying our propensity—or desire—to sin is too great for God to reshape. When we declare that we cannot be corrected, we are saying that our wills—those that seek evil instead of good—are greater than God’s perfect will. Ultimately, as we declare that we are irredeemable, we blaspheme the abilities and attributes of God. In this, we are not picturing the omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and sovereign Creator and Ruler of the universe, but we picture a feckless snob that wants nothing to do with people that are too broken.
But God doesn’t judge us or love us differently based on how much brokenness we have. His standard of judgment is not trivial. God’s only standard is perfection. His standard can only be met by Jesus Christ, and when we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, God no longer sees our failures in judgement, but instead sees Jesus’s perfection.
It is easy to begin thinking that our sin is too great for God or our hearts are too broken for him, but we must remember that if God is all-powerful and all-loving, then he can forgiven our sins without a problem no matter their weight or number. Call out to the God of love that has the power to forgive the evils we have wrought.

Fasting: A Short Testimony

The following thoughts come from a short testimony I gave about fasting in an OBU Chapel service on March 16, 2018.

I’m not going to lie. I might be the worst person to talk about fasting because I am terrible at it. Fasting takes self-control, self-denial, and strength. I don’t have any of these qualities. In fact, Amazon has this thing called a wish list, and it is amazing. Say I put a $20 item in my wish list. Later when I check it when I should be studying, it will remind me that the item has dropped 25% since I added it to my list, and it’s now $15! Obviously I now have one option: purchase it immediately. I do things like this all the time. I can be quite impulsive.

When I started fasting, I really struggled. I did it with a friend of mine from OBU, and we constantly complained to each other throughout the day-some times rather obnoxiously in front of others. (But it was okay because we never said explicitly that we were fasting, right?) And I would constantly try to convince him that we should eat. I usually knew we wouldn’t, but I felt like I should try.

Now I might still be pretty bad at fasting, but I have learned that it has trained me like many other spiritual disciplines. It is a habitual practice that reorients our thought and rearranges our loves. It gets us into the habit of saying “no.” It gets us into the practice of denying our desires. It teaches us to rely on Jesus not ourselves.

Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). If we want to follow Jesus, we must first deny ourselves. Fasting is one way that we can develop a practice of self-denial. It is a spiritual discipline and a deeply biblical practice. It should always be done intentionally, and it should always be done with the single mission of spiritual growth.

In my personal life, I have begun to be able to say no to temptations that I have had for years. I have been able to deny myself of worldly desires. I have done it because I have been trained to pray to Jesus and receive the strength to say no. I’ve learned recently what it means to pray in Jesus’ name. When we pray in his name, it doesn’t just mean we say our prayers and then say “…in Jesus’ name. Amen.” Praying in his name may include that, but it’s not exclusively that. We pray in Jesus’ name because it has real power. We pray for specific things in his name because it can bring change. When we fast, we train ourselves to say “No. In the name of Jesus give me the strength to keep going and take my hunger from me.” This is training for the great spiritual battles we will fight in our lives. We must fast, so we can fight.

Why the Christmas Story Should Stay in the 1st Century

Around this time of the year, I often see pieces of prose written by various Christians claiming to explain what it would be like if Jesus was born today. They tell stories of fully booked hotels, a pregnant teenager, and the like. While I understand the reason for writing such adaptations, I believe that we should avoid them and try to understand the significance of Christ’s coming in its historical setting (somewhere between 6 B.C. and A.D. 2).

As I have been reading Alister McGrath’s biography on C. S. Lewis, this has become firmly planted in my mind. Lewis, a scholar of English literature especially that of the Medieval period, believed that we must read writings in their original setting. McGrath says that “Rather than trying to get rid of the medieval knight’s suit of armour so that he becomes just like us, we should try to find out what it is like to wear that armour.” I take the position that when we “update” the Christmas story, we strip it of its medieval suit of armour—we strip it of its cultural and historical significance. When we do this, we do not allow the story to interrogate us and expand our own experiences.

I do not believe any person has sinister intentions when painting the Christmas story in a new light—a modern one, but it seems that Paul saw the timing of Christ’s coming as having great significance. He wrote: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5, ESV).  The timing of Jesus’s coming—at the fullness of time! —was not trivial, and quite frankly, it could not happen today. Jesus’s advent is as tied to the 1st century as the advent of the internet is to the 20th century.

My goal is not to take the greatness of the Christmas story and shape it to fit my life and circumstances, but to take my life and circumstances and let them be shaped by the Christmas story. Instead of sharing on social media modernizations written by human beings, I would encourage us all to take the time to read the telling of Jesus’s birth that is inspired by God allowing it to inform and form us.