"...you're lagging..." [Noah Hamilton]

Sunday (likely since I didn't finish this then, it'll post with today's date) I woke up with a lot less energy than normal and a distracting headache and apparently my mother is experiencing the same symptoms so I would say it is very likely to be viral.

Anyhow, I don't want to assert God is perhaps punishing, or maybe disciplining [Hebrews 12] me is a better word, neither may or may not be true. However, a part of me does wonder if maybe because I didn't make use of my day of 'untimely rest' getting more ill/sick than I expected on Sunday that I find myself injuring myself in an unexpected way by slipping and landing on my shoulder pretty badly the night after that perhaps God decided to 'take it up a notch' as I had intended to finish this blog and some other more 'below the surface' entries to reflect more upon life.

The intention of this blog was again to change my prayer request(s) from the last entry slightly in terms of I realize that maybe God's plans for me haven't changed, but how often do we like to think of things on our schedule? And how often does sin prevent us from having the correct schedule that is in line with God's? Even though it may not be as explicit in Exodus (this I would have to research), I recently been trying to reread/study the book of Acts and I found an interesting parallel in Acts 7:30 where it indicates that Moses himself also had also spent 40 years from that time he defended an Egyptian slave till Yahweh sent the burning bush...

I look at this blog in itself, there was this one Friday I was kind of on cloud nine (this was NOT that day, but I wrote about that reflection day here: [http://life-of-agent-k.blogspot.ca/2017/12/ijohn-1922-ohtheres-that-number-again.html] ) and was thinking that I have now laboured 14 years on this blog but I am forgetting about my 3 years of almost complete silence from 2013-2016 so I'm kind of "lagging" in that sense too...Not so much the '400 years of Silence' between the Old Testament and the New Testament, in terms of length and for the most part I was too lazy to write and keep up with my writing skills. Something I am regretting as it may have helped with getting more interviews sooner perhaps or potentially I could have gotten more education within some of those years had I kept up the relevant skills more fervently.

So there's definitely some areas where I feel like I am behind in my life, according to my schedule, but not necessarily God's schedule, as God's perception of time, or 'urgency' may be different from our own [Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8]. I know I definitely envisioned being married as my biological father used to put it "many moons ago" and often we wonder why God is being 'slow', but in the second reference I quoted, the very next verse says that is not the case [2 Peter 3:9].  It is not my intention to take the verse 'out of context' as some have cautioned as even some people know how 'long' it can seem to be sometimes to lead/assist someone to have a relationship with Christ, likewise other relationships can also be more time consuming to develop than we anticipate.

I find it ironic that some time ago when I was discussing the following series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Once_Upon_a_Time_episodes with a friend about how I kind of relate to Regina, because a 'certain someone' was kind of like my 'stable boy' and also that I really liked season 1 cause when I started following the series after it already aired a few seasons, in season one I told her I liked it cause everything and every theme such as the irony of Regina telling Henry she doesn't like him reading the book cause "you think I'm some evil queen" was more funny to me when I already knew the answer to that question but it was still a concept that was 'fresh' for that season. As recently I've had more time to finally spend re-watching season 3, which she told me was her favourite when I asked and it got around to Season 3, Episode 3 as of this week.  Weeks ago I had only finished Ep 1 and most of Ep 2 when I briefly started it while reorganizing my room after the family SUV broke down...

2018 Prayer Requests 2.0

God has likewise shown me, that while there are some things people generally might have to 'wait on', on the other hand, there are other things, such as studying the bible again, that do not require any waiting process of any kind. Recently God has been showing me also through various circumstances, that my extended period of rest/sabbatical has some aspects that are likely his plan and others that likely are not within His plan/will.



When I was thinking of writing this post to include the prayer request of returning to seminary, my YouTube jumped on it's own to this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coHKdhAZ9hU after I looked up the 'Ticket To Ride' lyric that is apparently part of the J Train song and it reminded me of the time I was giving my testimony at summer retreat at the other church I previously attended for a long time and I was giving a testimony about dedicating my life into ministry and I quoted Matthew 16:26.  Interestingly enough, I just discovered this verse is also in context of the verses about Jesus renaming Cephas to Peter.  Peter (the biblical Peter) is a name I've been reminded of a lot recently, particularly this one time prior to church group, I was unable to load the digital copy of Sunday's message in the same day the Pastor/speaker picked (the Rooster crows three times passage, Mark 14 I believe, will verify later if I have the opportunity) as the main passage for discussion that week.



My attention was also drawn to this verse:

²³ Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” [Matthew 16:23]


One of the things I am starting to feel/sense is not within God's will is my stubbornness about wanting to be married prior to returning/graduating from seminary because I personally am holding onto a belief or perhaps a better word is "fear" if somehow I am not married yet, my life will be a lot more complicated going back to seminary studies as a unmarried person.


Another thing I am processing is that my lack of employment is possibly also another circumstance that is more 'my doing' rather than God's. As I have been trying to keep this area of my life likewise too much within 'my control' rather than leave it in 'God's control'. As I have been sharing with some friends, in recent years I've been applying to majority of jobs mainly in the Engineering and IT sectors and while this is not necessarily a sin in of itself.  None of my interviews thus far in those fields have landed me a job, other than a short term part time job almost 2 years ago now and recently I am finding I am also able to get interviews in other fields. My parting line as I have been telling my friends is this: "It is one thing if God closes a door on us, it is another thing if we close a door on God..."



Haven't had a (noticeable) dream for over a week now, but (this entry is a few days late in being posted, so 'a few days ago...') I had a dream involving a 'phone metaphor'. I believe I do have a fairly good grasp of interpreting this dream as well as others I have had recently, however of course, I'm still likely not yet at the level of dream interpretation I would one day need if God calls me to finally become a licensed Spiritual Director just yet. Similar to the "call" imagery in the dream, which is set in the future tense, "call" is likely the key word. I should likely jot down this dream in more detail in one of my private blog spaces as it could like other dreams I've done in the past, speak more than just towards the present circumstances.


My 'concluding prayer request' has somewhat of a Luke 22:42 theme to it cause I'm going through a lot of life shattering struggles at home still and while it's possible these conflicts can potentially bring about positive change, it likewise could be God may also answer the prayer by showing me His will is to deliver me from them...

TLS....

I use this abbreviation as the title of my blog, because it was the same as the original proposed name of my current church. On the topic of this unusual name for a church which does not include cliche words such as 'Christ' or the name of a denomination or location. It actually does contain a very important word that is critical to understanding the message of Jesus is primarily a message of "Love".

I personally feel too often, how often do people, in general, not only 'Christ-followers', 'disciples', 'Christians' or whatever 'label' people may want to call them, often see Christ as just the 'legend', 'the man', a historical figure, great teacher, but not the lover?

Recently, I have been putting my own parents' relationship (or lack thereof) under the metaphorical microscope a lot in efforts to understand how my upbringing has affected me as a person, including the most important aspect of my life which is my relationship with Jesus Christ.  My conclusion is while both parents may have loved me individually as their child in their own way, they had very little love for each other and this can be a point of concern if I/we (we as in you the readers) only think of 'God the father' but forget about 'Christ the spouse'.

SO.... Seems like I discovered the KEY in what gives us the "Identity of being IN CHRIST" huh...I was struggling to find the keywords of "Christ" with "bridegroom" and "bride" together with Biblegateway's search engine and decided on a different approach and interesting that the suggested result is also from one of the gospels: https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=one+flesh&qs_version=NIV

When you look at the entire chapter of Mark 10 in Context as I was reading Mark 10 on the bus before church on Sunday (long story but didn't end up making it cause I was on the wrong bus for short), Mark 10 also makes reference to divorce because of 'hard hearts'.

I have been trying to do a mini-word study given my limited online resources as I don't currently have access to the same resources I was taught to use for original biblical language word studies. Anyhow, to the point, I looked up the word "practice" and discovered 2 things. One, when Paul uses this word in his epistles, it seems he uses it as an 'action word', as in to put God's word/law/will into 'practice'. And two, I did not try to look this up in all English translations yet, but the NIV translation of 1 Corinthians 13, which I typically use, Paul does NOT use the word "practice".

I am trying to assert that although Christians do recognize that salvation is by "grace". A lot of people seem to miss out on the fact that the gospel message is actually one of love [1 John 4:19-21, John 3:15-17, John 15:9-17, 1 John 3:16-18]. And while I do recognize love is an action/active term, there is also an inherit risk/danger of only associating God's love with what he's done for us, such as in the examples in the book of Job. Regardless of whether the Job story is a real historical account or not, although Christians do say 'our faith shouldn't be based on feelings', I also have learned the opposite is also true, in that our faith should likewise not only be based on actions.  Meaning faith solely based on either actions, or feeling is as James put it "dead" [James 2].

Christ came into the word as a person to show us a taste/sample of what it means to have 'a personal relationship' with Jesus Christ [John 1, and the rest of the gospels]. Apparently, I had discovered earlier this week, through a breadcrumb God gave me that I had already previously posted on this topic in this blog: http://life-of-agent-k.blogspot.ca/2009/04/stand-watch-men.html

Not to sound conceded, but I will now add a comment on that post to fill in the missing words and 'proclaim the mystery of our faith' [https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=proclaim+the+mystery&qs_version=NIV]