Confession of absolute supernaturalism.

Ok, I believe everything is completely supernatural. I believe that God's hand supports the universe completely by the power of His word. I believe nothing is outside His grasp. I believe that salvation is entirely supernatural as well. That is to say our salvation has no causes but God.

One might object saying that our will is a cause to. I ask whether our will is a natural function of creation or not? It arises from our minds, so I see it as entirely natural. It remains under the curse of original sin. It has been corrupted by the fall. How can something that we are supposed to be saved from keep us from being saved. We need to be saved from outside ourselves.

Baseing our wills on some power in a past supernatural act like creation does not remove supernaturalism or prove naturalism. The only way our minds could be something other than natural is if God gave them power to be independant of just creation. Free will? Perhaps but God would have to give us our own cause and own power. We would have to be supernatural beings ourselves not dependant on him for our being, or the thoughts of self that also compose our consciousness as a being. It smacks with too much pride. God is not sitting on his hands. He is not silent on this issue. It would be different if God exhalted our ability to be free and out of that freedom choose what is right in the Gospel. He rather exhalts Himself, what he has done, and rejoices over us despite our chains. It is clear that I believe it is all of God. I believe entirely in supernaturalism. A supernaturalism also known as Calvinism.

Spiritual rollarcoaster

Ok I have been on a spiritual rollarcoaster since around October 1. Give or take a week.

In September, I was convicted in not fearing God enough. Yet, I feel that and the follow up was me getting aboard a train that wasn't stopping. I saw that it did not matter how many church events I went to. Grace did not come by that way. It rather came from God. Despite sin unloading on me, I focused my efforts on communion with him.

October 1-12 (before anthem) I was not letting my communion with God get rocked by anything. I almost had a panic attack prior to a test. It was kind of bad walking up at 5:30 feeling like crap in the morning. I sent the anxiety away with ruthless efficiency after about an hour. It would not keep me from God. There was no reason for me to fell that bad in light of what God has done. I was on a high when I went into Anthem.

Anthem- I didn't really benefit in anyway way that I can discern. Seriously! I just let sin pile up. So much so that I couldn't deny it. I was bewildered by my own immaturity. I wasn't trying to hide it. I really don't know what it was on that day. I REALLY DON'T KNOW!!! God's restraining grace had ceased for a time. I think Nathan was a bad influence on me. Rather God intended for inward sins to come out and for me be open about it towards my friends. It may have helped spark the conversation I was too chicken to start later. It also showed me the need for accountability again.

October 12-30
My faith felt like John Paul Jones in saying "I have not yet begun to fight", while looking around only to see that my ship is sinking and on fire. Only to know: silly christian, you aught to be able to walk on water. There was also grace for further openess/transparency in this time. Some was from meeting someone new who I thought was like me but much more open. (Turned out not to be all that true.) Another part was that I felt like I needed to get things off my shoulders.

November 1-20
My blog turned prophetic when it was discussing my character posts. (I think but I'll check for certain that it wasn't self-fulfilling.) The spiritual growth picks up as I start talking on AIM with a good friend about grad school and my anxiety revolving around my career and indecisiveness. It was an answer to prayer regarding direction in my life also. This is the way walk in it. The details of the conversation are fading now but it was a reminder of God's plan in my life for my good. It was also a reminder of my station and responsibilities at this point in life. It also provided a means of grace through doing accountability with this person. I entered a season that I'm still in. Grace from God is from my interactions with others. Not specifically the conversations but the interactions themselves. This still has continued to this day. There was a week or two better than a VQ in here also.

November 20-December 10
Accountability started give some depth to a friendship of mine and I slowly started to fear it. I don't know why but I did. I had an issue with wanting deeper friendships but not wanting to invest anymore. I felt too vulnerable and too exposed. I had a 'Oh crap there is a brick wall ahead.' I didn't know what that wall was till a bit later.

December 10-December 30.
Well I still had that feeling of a brick wall ahead but I felt that I knew what it was. It was not long before feeling that I had to confess some things that I never wished to. I was throwing darts around it. I was depressed and getting more depressed. Still growing but wasn't satisfied with the status quo. It was at this point the Lord started to push me in letting God. I prepared to talk about a certain sin in accountability. I didn't want in that much detail but I felt I had to. I burned the first notes. I was physically stressed by it. I felt that I didn't have to talk about it. The stress went away but when that happened. I took another stab at it with all my anxieties and insecurities. Then prepared a third set of notes. I began to feel like a different person. Maybe it was more confidence.

January 5
D-day/Week. Yeah. It was complete emotional destruction in confessing. Not just a little it was complete. Basket case bad. I entered a beyond super vulnerable stage. Luckily, I had a friend that remained such. I only did it cause my arm was being twisted by the holy spirit. I was confronted with take up your cross, rich man parable, suffering for doing good, hating the world, and giving up all things for Christ to make the confession. I was not emotionally ready for the best outcome, which happened.

January 6,7,8
Emotional confusion followed by mistrusting my friend. I let that mistrust go because I realized that it was God's will. He was the one cracking my shell once and for all. God's care was felt continually from this day at least until February.

January 15
Things started to return to normal in fact better than normal. It has remained like that since. I was more joyous but I was still emotionally unstable. I felt inadequate overall and hurting. I felt God's care so much more in it though. It was better and worse than a VQ. I still think it was probably better despite suffering. Suffering that helped me understand the cross better.

January 19
"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." I made a second confession of that sin with relative ease. Anxiety was fought before and but it still hurt emotionally. Other strange emotions began showing up around here too. Like feeling affectionate. Never really was like that, and honestly didn't know why people were until then. Had dependancy issues in seeking my happiness in friends. (The other extreme of shutting them out.) I didn't like it so I took a break from hanging out with my best friend for no/selfish reasons.

February 3
Third confession. 2for1 deal on vanity. God's care and strength were still very clear in it all. The Holy Spirit had been pre-empting every VFC or Church message since early January. (like 8 in a row! Strange!) There was no condemnation where there aught to have been. I was boasting in my weaknesses as well as resting in quietness and confidence for strength. The next confession hurt emotionally again. Curled up in fetal position afterward. This was the last confession that would carry any weight. I saw growth in it for it was necessary pain. The fourth one was a joke. hahaha.

February 24
Wanted off the spiritual rollercoaster. Things slowly have returned to normal after additional drama. I'm having to deal with a friends drama. We switched roles now lol. He has the drama. I have a bunch of school work that I've been distracted from. Had to deal with normal social expectations that most people deal with in High school. Never had a best friend before. I think I am off this coaster. Its been good. I really want to focus somewhere else now. Not on myself. (Maybe that the real continuation of it. Too early to tell.) I know that to pick it up again where I left it though. I would need to start doing the evangelism go-team stuff.

Suffering of a friend

I think I have a friend who is about to go through some suffering. I don't think it is just related to the fact he can't go to VQ cause of dentist issues. It is something greater. (Just a prophetic thought.) I don't think he reads my blog enough. Maybe he does. Hahaha. I can think of possiblities but I don't think that they do this justice. I think pre-concieved notions are bad for this kind of thing. I'll help in any way I can.

Confession of Oversensivity 2

It seems that the last confession was a bit premature. That emotion has slowly subsided into a heightened sense of belonging among friends. The feeling was triggered by acceptance. I guess there was too much self-hatred. Too much insecurity. I don't think it was feeling inadequate for I didn't value enough people in that way. There were too many walls up that I didn't know existed. I think that it is some repressed part that has come out while opening up. I think I still am oversensitive to that but the issue is different now. It was from being a loner in Middle School and High school and at least part of college. I was emotionally superficial and intellectually profound running in circles and didn't know it.

I feel like I am being shown 1 Corinthians 12:30-13:2 as far as things go though. It is related to opening up. Love does far exceed the gifts as a constant force (and as an emotion to a lesser degree) but I still find myself lacking it at times. At first it was because I was always too serious. I was too self-absorbed caring about myself and my sin. I feared opening up to anyone. I feared being hurt as I had been before. Things are slowly unraveling in a good way.

C. S. Lewis biography

I had to write this for a short video but I thought I'd put it up here prior to some edits.

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, on November 29, 1898. He was schooled by private tutors until his mother died of cancer in 1908. Shortly after, he then attended Wynyard school in Watford. It was a traumatizing experience. The school was shut down and the headmaster admitted shortly after into an insane asylum. He continued his studies and at the age of 15 entered Malvern College. Malvern college was filled with people’s who soul purpose was to improve their social status run amuck with homosexuality, It is there that he renounced his Christian faith and became an atheist. He was very angry at God for seemingly not existing. His darkened mind shifted towards mythology, the occult and Celtic mysticism.

He then pursued his studies away from Malvern College with a family friend.
His life was put on hold as WWI rocked the world. C.S Lewis answered the call. He enlisted in the Brittish Army as an officer. He arrived at French trenches, the front line, on his 19th birthday. He served for a five months until he was wounded during the battle of Arras. He suffered serious depression as he recovered from the wound. He was reassigned and discharged a year later. He resumed his studies at Oxford earning many awards. He felt out of place in it all for he was far from home.

He fulfilled a promise to look after a dead comrade’s mother, Jane Moore. They became very close friends. She, in a sense, became his adopted mother as he continued at Oxford. His studies had led C. S. Lewis became permanent author and an academic. He ran into J. R. R. Tolkien and they became friends. His studies of literature soon took him towards Christianity. Christian literature confronted him with something he had never seen before. It was holiness. He began to be drawn towards Christianity in 1929 by believing that there was a God. It would be two years later before he became a Christian, kicking and screaming. He started to see that Christianity was not about chores or duties. It was about heart and holiness. His main argument against Christianity had always been “Had God designed the world, it would not be a world so frail and faulty as we see.” He failed to realize that Christ was the solution to it all. Christ took on this very same frailty, by bearing our sins upon the cross, so that the world may live. His life was not necessarily easier afterward for he suffered through marrying his wife, Joy Davidman Gresham, who was dieing of cancer. His health gradually declined as Lewis continued to write at Oxford. Yet, C.S Lewis was surprised by Joy in it all. He finally died of renal failure on the same day as JFK’s assassination. November 22, 1963.

Bumbling a confession

Just think about how embarrased you would be saying something and the other person hears: the end, the middle, and then the beginning of a confession. I didn't realize till afterward thats what probably happened. It was probably what should have happened.

Now I am very luckily. My vanity was soon changed to humility. I bumbled my confession up because it got cut up by an answering machine.

You know that you can confess a sin out of vanity rather than humility. Such an action with a wrong motive is sin. I was almost guilty of that but God has a way of using our screw ups.

Fighting Anxiety

Fighting anxiety is not any fun. I'm busy doing it. I am just reminding my self of the gospel for the umteenth time. Well now the umteenth plus one times. The very broken frame that is hurting, man, is that which our God incarnated to dwell in. He was like us in every way, every pain and every temptation. He had to bear so much more sin than I. He had to bear it all. He had to bear all that wraith. I don't know how one man could. The very broken man that I am is the very same type of man that got utterly destroyed in Christ. I cannot rightly feel that pain. The pain due to my own sin. This world is not right or fair. I sit here feeling sorry for myself for something I've stumbled into and something I need to do. But I shouldn't. Luckily, Christ can bear my burdens. I can cast on him my cares.

I am busy just chilling, listening to music. I am busy praying that it would all go away. I have been reminded of Phillipians 4 that I should be rejoicing. That I should make my prayers known with thanksgiving. God's peace should surpass all my comprehension. I have felt that peace before. I want to get back to that place of mercy and grace.

Euphoric Hypomania

Ok, I think that is somewhat related to my oversensitivity. Lust has moved into my emotions to. This emotional state of Euphoric Hypomania isn't a constant thing. They are emotions and feelings to be repent of.

I just had a case of something that I thought was good but turned out not to be. It's nice to feel great but not when its your focus and your trying to go to sleep. This positive state is turned slowly into being negative/mixed state of being irritated and not being able to do anything about it. The cause was focusing on the euphoric feeling triggered from other people. This focus on the feeling was itself a trigger that also produced the feeling. Is that good? No, it ended up being to captiaving . My mind raced to relive it rather than to quiet itself. Emotional intraspection caused the problem here. It hasn't been an issue elsewhere. It gave me a low grade mania for me last night. I don't understand it all. I've been emotionally confused as of late. Sorry...

Mania, the opposite of depression. Sound good? No, it is also the opposite of tranquility and calmness. I don't consider myself bipolar but I've never had that kind of emotional state before. I just really wanted to sleep.

Confession of Oversensitivity

Ok, it should be clear by now that I am probably oversensitive emotionally. Not to criticism though only in a few emotions. They have been dulled before in the past but it seems i've let them go free.

They have been put off and neglected, as much as I could, for I was an insecure person. I was the kid who would get angry on a whim. I was the kid who would cry for an hour without knowing, or forgetting why. These things have gone away with age. Yet, there is still one or two things I'm overly sensitive about. First, it is vainity and my reputation. I'm trying to kill that.

The second thing is to love and to friendship. It is a recent change. This is kind of strange cause I was a loner. Yet now, I have a best friend who can send me into a state of estatic joy pretty quickly. I just kind of shut down in bliss. I'm kind of embarassed about it. Maybe its some kind of mania. I have stayed up because of it tonight. It has also begun happening toward God recently. It is an interesting new emotion. Maybe its temporary. It isn't all bad though. I never valued friends before. I now understand that I don't have the social skills to make use of this powerful emotion on a wider scale. Maybe its suppose to make me develope them.

Bearing Each Others Burdens

I've watched Band of Brothers today. It was a large downer at points. It did not glorify war or the army. It showed me how everyone gets wounded by sin, pain, and death. These wounds are not just physical. They are also emotional. These wounds are from the staples of living in a fallen world. We are shielded from it cause we are far too comfortable in our homes. We are too caught up in civilian pursuits. Yet, life is war. We are at war with the Devil and the sons of disobedience. No one will come away from the battles unscathed. No one is left unhurt by the world.

I understand what being emotionally wounded means by things of this world. I've been emotionally wounded by sin, over and over. I was wounded by being teased and made insecure in grade school. It turned me inward and into a stoic. I am now finding that a few of my emotions had died. These emotions are returning. In fact, some of these emotions for me are new. They help me color the world instead of seeing just black and white. I understand it all so much better. I've let my wound fester for too long out of pride. I'm not going to follow some self-help crap about it though. Whatever care I receive is going to be God's care and the care of my brothers in Christ. Let us learn to bear each other's burdens. Let us learn to pick each other up and carry men back across the line to Christ who is the great physician of us all. He is the only one who can heal. Luckily, I have true friends who would not shoot the wounded like some are accustom to doing for people who are in my position. For that, I am eternally greatful. Those who would shoot the wounded walk as enemies of the cross.

Following God's Cure and Following Conviction

I'm busy following God's cure. It is following conviction. I will be lead through difficult circumstances but I know that God is right beside me. He is gentle and he is kind. Right now I feel like he is allowing me to put off something I need to do because he knows I'm not in the right mind or the right heart to do it yet. It is kind of him. I know it isn't an indefinate thing but it is the right thing for now. I'll grow strong in the mean time.

There are still a bunch of steps that I need to take before I reach the end of the road I'm following. I thought this step was one I wanted to take tonight but it isn't. At least I know what these steps are. I did not really see it clearly. Or rather feel the direction for things to go. This is all being done on faith. It will end the day that it isn't.

Hating all Patriots

I'm glad that the Giants won the Superbowl. Some might ask why? I hate the patriots... A better question is what have the Patriots done to me? Nothing. Its just the perception of things shady going in their direction. It is things like underhanded filming. It is bad calls by refs and wins by special teams. Nothing else makes them win games. They are an average team. (Last season more so than this season). It is perhaps their arrogance the greatest reason I hate them.

Now, this hatred has been ingrained into me by my friends. I don't know why I hate the patriots so. They are so inconsequential to everything that is important. A friend told me that crabs in a bucket don't need a lid cause they are always clawing down the ones at the top. Yet, outside observers like the underdogs just because they wish the man on top to fall. It is perhaps people's willingness to shoot the wounded if there is but an ounce of pride in their heart. Oh, how I hate pride but I feel more and more that I need to kill it in myself first. I need to glorify God more and shift all honor to Him.

Confession of Dumping

I appologize if I've bored any readers. My articles have become an emotional dumping ground. I've kind of emotionally dumped on my blog recently. I'm sorry. I hope that it should change soon. Its been part of God's work in my life though. I am a much better and adjusted person because of it. I don't plan on following this trend forever.