The past several years at the beginning of each year I have vowed to myself that I was going to read through the entire Bible for the first time in my life. Each year, with good intentions, I faithfully start out on the daily plans and every morning or night I'd settle down and read the words that God had for me that day. This may have lasted a month, maybe half a month, and I'd always get at the same place--the beginning of Exodus--before I'd accidentally miss a day. Once I missed that day, it was all downhill from there and soon I'd be missing two days. Then three. Four. Five. And before I know it, a whole week has gone by without me opening my Bible. Then two. Three. And soon enough, I'm back to my old routine without doing my devotions and allowing my apathy to create a chasm in between God and I that I would not breach.
This year has been different, though, in several aspects. I honestly don't know how to explain the changes that have been happening in my life except that it has to be God's hand moving and working in my life. Last summer my time at Camp Hebron was, without a doubt, life changing, and it has pushed my life off of the top of the hill and set it in a full, down-hill sprint. That's definitely not to say that there haven't been some rocks on the path and a few bumps in the road, but my life is screaming forward now at a breakneck speed that I never thought would happen. God used my time at Camp last summer as a catalyst (You see what I did there?) in my life to set in motion future events and to bring me out of the life that I was living and into a new, better life. It was January 2nd at the first night of Passion and I remember in the middle of the first worship set that evening getting this overwhelming longing for change. I remember looking at my self (not literally, but figuratively) and saying these exact words, "Alright, Ben. It's time to grow up. It's time to become a man." Coincidentally, I was reading Wild At Heart by John Eldredge at the same time. Or not coincidentally, because I don't believe in coincidence. From that moment on, my life has been put on a rollercoaster. My college plans completely changed as I got accepted to Eternity Bible College. My future plans drastically changed as I am now planning on moving permanently (Lord willing) out to Simi Valley, California. My current life has completely changed because tomorrow is April 1st, and I am still keeping up with the One Year Bible, and there is absolutely, positively no end in sight. When I got home from Passion I was really feeling convicted of all the time that I had wasted in front of the computer playing games the previous year and felt like God was telling me that I needed a cleansing from that. So like any other crazy, abnormal person who is solely led by God I got rid of all my video games that I was so ensnared in and have been game-free for three months now (and loving it). I've been listening more to myself and my thoughts and feelings, passions and hobbies. One thing that I like doing is taking pictures, and someday I want to become really good at it, so I made the commitment (the previous Ben was awful at keeping them) to complete Project 366 this year and take a picture every day of this entire year. I also began learning more and more guitar because it's something that God gave me to enjoy. My parents left and are on an assignment for a year, so I'm living by myself which has helped me grow up and fend for myself in this world without holding on to the coattails of my parents. Like I said, my life is on a fast track right now. To where? I have no idea, only He knows.
That was a very lengthy introduction, and if you're still tracking with me, I'd like to get into the heart of what I felt prompted to blog about this morning. Like I said before, I've been going through the One Year Bible this year, and I'm currently in the middle of Deuteronomy. In my previous attempts to begin devotions or complete the One Year assignment, I came to Exodus-Deuteronomy and completely lost all hope of ever reading the entire Bible. How could anyone in their right mind slog through the seemingly endless laws, ritual requirements, commandments, and festival instructions in the Pentateuch? To tell you the truth, it's probably one of the most boring written accounts of history that have ever been conceived, and there have been a few days where I've woken up early in the morning to get ready for school and in my groggy, half-awake state the last thing that I want to do is dive back in to reading about what would happen if your neighbor kills your uncle's dog and where he should run to, blah, blah, blah...(Note: Not literally in the Bible). Part of me feels guilty for saying such things about the Holy Word of God and what a gift it is to even be able to read these accounts that have been passed down over thousands and thousands of years, but the other part of me is screaming, "Give me a break!" However, in the midst of all this I am reminded of two things that I want to hopefully pass on to you:
1. The penalty of sin is death, and Christ's death on the cross was the ultimate sacrifice for us, so that we don't have to face that penalty
I was reading this morning about how if something happened it was punishable by death and all this stuff about do's and do not's. I couldn't help but to be reminded (how "coincidental" that it is the Easter season) of the ultimate sacrifice that was paid for all of our sins. When Christ came to earth and died on the cross, he completely rewrote the laws of redemption. In Old Testament times, if someone wanted to be forgiven of their sins, they had to go through all these rituals that involved sacrifices at the temple and do all this stuff to make themselves clean and holy again. When Christ came he said, "No, guys, I'm throwing out the entire playbook and we're changing the game. The Levite priests are no longer your mediation between God and man, and you will no longer have to go through them to seek forgiveness and redemption. I came down to earth, I humbled myself, I died for you so that you can come straight to me." This is the whole reason why the curtain in the temple that protected the Holy of Holies (where God's spirit previously dwelt)was ripped in two during the crucifixion. God's spirit--read: The Holy Spirit--was released on the world, and we now have mediation to Christ through the Holy Spirit, or Jesus Himself. In the Old Testament the penalty for anything wrong that you may have done was death, and when Christ came down, he canceled that out and said, "It's okay guys, I conquered the grave, and I conquered death. Every bad thing that you have done, are doing, and will do was laid on my shoulders, I took that upon myself and I took the death penalty for you. Crazy, right? I know. All you have to do to accept forgiveness of sin is believe in me and accept the forgiveness that I'm giving you and lay down your life--your human desires and your earthly plans--and sacrifice what you want for what I want for you." He rewrote the game and he changed the rules. We no longer have to fear death if we are in Christ, because He already beat death back to the very pit of hell whence it came.
2. God wants us to be sanctified through Him and be different from the world, even if that means looking a little different.
If you read the Old Testament laws, some of them are pretty outlandish and crazy. My favorite is where if two men are fighting and the wife of one of them tries to intervene and grabs the other one's genitals by accident her hand has to be cut off (Not exactly sure where it's at at this very moment). If you were an Israelite you could only eat certain animals at certain times of the year, you had to pay all these crazy sacrifices with all these crazy animals and follow all these crazy rules for all these crazy festivals. You had to follow all these rituals for cleansing if you had mildew in your tent or if you were having your menstrual cycle or having sex or if you had a nocturnal emission. There was all this crazy stuff that they filled four books of the Bible with it. It reminds me of just how badly Christ wants us to be different from the world. Some of the stuff in and by itself is not inherently bad, such as eating certain animals. There's absolutely nothing wrong with eating these animals, but if you were an Israelite, they were forbidden by God and you couldn't eat them. In my series that I started a while ago about hypocrisy within the church, the next topics that I want to do are swearing, drinking, and sexual activity. Swearing is one thing that I've struggled with in the past. I'll go more into this later, but part of me thinks that swearing is okay because it's a word just like any other word, it's the feelings behind the word that matter. The other, greater part of me believes that swearing may not be inherently evil (like eating certain animals), but it's something that blurs the lines between us and the world. In a world that is supposed to be black and white, Christian and Nonchristian, by swearing we're creating this fuzzy gray line right down the center. We're supposed to be separate from the world, yet when we swear we look exactly like the world. That's why swearing is wrong.
So with that said, God wants us to be sanctified from the world to Him. We're not supposed to look like the rest of the world, we're supposed to look different, and if we're doing something that may make people wonder, then we shouldn't do it. Period.
Wow. Well, if you're still reading this then you're a trooper, and I thank you. It's just one more step on the journey that God has been teaching me in my life. With all that said, I hope to catch up on my Hiding Behind The Mask series this next week, possibly even on my day off tomorrow, but we'll see. Thank you so much for reading, and take the words that God is speaking through me to heart.
--DyingAnOriginal
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