Valentine's Day is not a real holiday

So it's Valentine's Day (or it was when I was typing this, my apologies) again.  Let's get this day over with.  Valentine's Day, for those of you who are new to the internet (welcome) has commonly come to be referred to as "single awareness day", " d day", and "the worst holiday ever."
Personally I don't think it's a holiday at all because I didn't get school off.  In fact, here's what I did today:

Woke up and ran 8 miles.
Stretched my knee because that's been bothering me.
Went to my computing class and took a test.
It snowed.
Watched some Top Gear.
Drove through a snowstorm to buy some chocolate (for myself if you were wondering).
Got dinner at Pizza Hut with friends.
Watched more Top Gear.

Honestly for me this couldn't have been more of a typical Friday.  But leading up to this day was a different story.  About Wednesday-ish I got hit with that familiar pang.  That 'ouch'.  That 'sigh'.  That, well, I don't know that feeling you get when you're not really all that happy.  Let's cut to the point I was bummed because I was still single.

It's now been like what two years?  I mean come on ladies this is prime dating material right here!  I'm in shape too and I have a soft side and I can speak Chinese.   嘿女孩 (I also am getting good at taking pictures, so if we date expect DSLR selfies)

But here's the crazy thing. If you're reading this I'm willing to bet that at one point in your life (probably now if your a 20-something) you have felt/are feeling this too.  This loneliness.

We all want to be in a relationship.

There I said it.  Now to make a few amendments.  No this isn't true all across the board.  Everyone is at a different point in their life.  Everyone has a different life.  But yet one way or another most of us, no matter what mood we're in, no matter what we're doing, have that little hangnail of singleness sitting there in the corner of our eye.  People in long term relationships, you will not understand.  Married people, you will not understand.  Or maybe you will all understand even more.

This is the time of year people realize that they are single and vocalize this fact via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, you name it.  But I would like to propose a solution.

So you're single.  And I'm single.  So we should, ummm date.  We can have all of the single women stand in one line and the men in the other and they can all pick out someone pretty (or of equal size) and get paired up.  Then we'll all be in a relationship and we'll all be happy.

WRONG.

No, I do not want to be in a relationship with a stranger, or someone I don't know very well.  Or even someone I do know very well.  Or even someone I like (for the fact I don't know them very well).

Here is a point I am trying to make:
It's not a relationship we want.  It's love.

"So you're single.  And I'm single.  So we should, ummm date."

When we get that sad feeling in our stomachs, and that little tinge of longing that comes from imagining a relationship, what we really are after is the love.  That girl or guy we have a crush on.  We don't just want to date them.  We want to be loved by them.  We want them to put their head on our shoulder, to stroke our hair, to smile.  But not out of obligation.  Out of love.

But hang on a second Jake, you are probably saying.  We get love from our parents, from our friends, from our brothers and sisters.  How is that not enough?  Why are we not satisfied?  Well answer this,  Will we ever be satisfied?

I'm going to do something crazy.  I'm going to propose a love that can't come from a boyfriend or a girlfriend.  It's a love that can only come from one man.

That man is Jesus.

Jesus, if you didn't know, was a real person (even atheist scholars can not deny his existence) who lived about 2000 years ago and willingly gave up his life to be crucified on a cross.  And he did it, out of love.

Jesus dying on the cross was the single greatest act of love the world has seen, or ever will see.  He endured torture, he went through literal Hell so you could spend the rest of your life, no, forever, with God.

He did it for you.  Not a nameless or a faceless you who passes by and whose memory is gone like the wind, YOU insert name here, he knows YOU and he love YOU.  And oh how he knows you.  He knows your darkest secrets.  He knows your deepest desires.  He sees your dreams, he knows your heart, and all of the evil, dark things about you that you try to hide, even from yourself.  This is far more than a boyfriend or girlfriend could ever know.  But yet God loves you anyways.

That is love.  That is true love.

When we get in a relationship, it's awesome for a while.  Maybe a few months.  Maybe a few years.  Maybe 20.  Maybe 40.  But then that fire sizzles out, the love for the partner may not be gone, but there comes a time when we realize we never found the thing we sought out to look for in the first place.

I believe that the love we are looking for in relationships can only be satisfied by love from God.  God showed this love by coming down to earth, living a perfect life, and dying on the cross.  And all He asks us to do is to love him back.

He's not forcing us too.  He's not tying us down like a crazed ex-girlfriend and screaming "love me!"  If anything we're the ones screaming, but we're not tied down.  And He is reaching out his hand to pick us up.  We don't deserve His love and there's nothing we can do to earn it just like there's nothing we can do to earn the wind or the trees or the stars.

You can hate God.  He still loves you.  You can deny Him.  He still loves you.  You can ignore him for years.  He still loves you.  You can not believe.  He still loves you.  You can curse, you can scream, "Why God, Why are you doing this! I hate you!" I tired that one recently (in a slightly different context than dating).  God still loves me no less.  He didn't even bat an eye.  Go ahead and try that in a normal relationship and see how long it lasts.

If you haven't yet made the decision to complete the relationship, and love God back... do it.  What is stopping you.  If you doubt God is real, I understand.  I've struggled with that myself.

"We don't deserve His love and there's nothing we can do to earn it, just like there's nothing we can do to earn the wind or the trees or the stars."

But for me it's this feeling.  I get it when I'm walking around at night, and there is no one else around, just the wind and the trees and the stars, that somehow, in someway, I am not alone.  The air against my back, and the gentle push of reality is shouting that this world, this beautiful world, wasn't just randomly assembled, but painstakingly created.  Is it a mind trick?  Is it just me wanting to believe that there is a God so badly that I trick myself into believing there is one?

When I accepted Christ a couple years ago, I couldn't stop crying.  There were tons of people around me but I just cried my eyes out, and I wanted to stop but I couldn't.  I'm crying right now when I type this just thinking about it.  Some people say what is real is only what can be measured and perceived.  I'll tell you what I felt.  I felt God.  I felt loved.  Maybe those people are right.  Maybe seeing really is believing.

I'll leave you with this excerpt from Psalm 139.  More and more God has been speaking truth to me through this verse and I hope He will do the same for you.

1 You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

13 For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
    all the days ordained for me were written in your book
    before one of them came to be.
17 

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!

    How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
    they would outnumber the grains of sand—
    when I awake, I am still with you.

All the time is spiritual time

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." - Mark 8:34

I'm already excited for next semester of college, and for me (and literally everyone) the only thing that stands in the way is time.  So I suppose the important question is what am I going to do with my time.  I don't mean like literal time, that is going to be taken up with work and vacations and stuff.  I'm talking about the only time that really matters, spiritual time.  

Spiritual time should mean more than just time allotted for reflection and prayer.  It should mean more than just time spent with God.  Spiritual time doesn't exist separate than normal time, it can and should exist at the same time as normal time.   Spiritual is time spent living the way Jesus calls us to live.

But what does it mean to live the way Jesus called us to?  How did Jesus call us to live?

Very good questions.  You get a gold star for today.  Mark 8:34-37 (also see Luke 14:27, Matthew 16:24) says:

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? (ESV)
Jesus is basically saying that following him, takes effort.  It takes commitment, it takes the denial of what ever you want to do with your day doing what God wants you to do.  This is not easy, nor should it be.  

Every part of our culture is about comfort and self indulgence.  'You!, You! You!'  This has been said before so I wont focus on it.  But what Jesus is saying is completely counter cultural.  He wants us to DENY that part of our self, that part of our self that seeks being comfortable, and puts itself first.  

I keep a copy of Mark 8:34 in my wallet

Deep down, all I want to do this summer is work, hang out with friends and stay in my room playing xbox.  But God is calling out me in this verse.  This summer God wants me to break back out of my comfort zone, something that was easy to do starting college, but now back home it will significant effort.  God wants me to talk to people, deepen the spiritual relationships I have with current friends, and most importantly, spread his Gospel.  That thought just makes me uncomfortable.  

And that is a good thing! Because by keeping to myself, by pursuing what I want, and doing what I feel comfortable doing, I gain a lot on this earth.  But when I die, I can count that all as lost, because all that will be left is my soul.  And what profit do I get for gaining the world but then forfeiting my soul.  

If someone is reading this and says "Well Christianity sucks, I could never be good enough to be a part of that."  Stop thinking that.  Because no matter what I do, no matter what any of you do, we will never be good enough for God.  The only way that can happen is if we accept Jesus into our lives.  It's Jesus that saves us, not being a good person, not being 'good enough'.  These works are a result of us being saved, not a cause.  Even if I were to absolutely fall flat on my face in failure this summer, I can take hope in the fact I'm not saved through my works, only through the blood of the lamb.  I think that's one of the most misunderstood facts about Christianity.  

So I know what I'm doing with my time this summer.  I going to spend all my time in constant spiritual time.  I'm going to let God take control, and I am going to pick up cross, and make an effort to follow God.  Even if fail, Jesus is there to pick me up.  Always.  Stay thirsty my friends.  Or not.  John 4:14

God has a plan, it just dont make sense

I don't want to be cliche and say this freshman year of college has been like an emotional and spiritual roller coaster, but there have certainly been ups and downs along the way.  While I've let my emotions take control at times, thanks to the accountability of friends and my bible study, I've seen a steady uphill growth in my walk with Christ.  Praise be to God for that.

My word of advice for any high school senior about to open a new chapter in their life is to GET CONNECTED.  I think this looks a little different for everyone, but for me, it involved finding an on-campus ministry like Cru.  Being connected through friends who genuinely care about you and a ministry that wants to deepen your relationship with Jesus help, like a lot.  It's just something you dont even realize how beneficial it is until you dont have it anymore.  I'm not trying to advertise Cru or anything, that's just the one I'm involved with.

A reoccurring theme this semester for me has been trying to figure out Gods plan. Actually, this has been an something I've been trying to figure out my whole life. We all know the verse in Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." (ESV) If this verse is new to you, the gist of it is God is in control. The God of the universe, the God of heaven and earth, of good and evil, the God that breathed out stars, that same God has a plan and purpose for your life. And it's a good plan. Wow, that takes my breath away a little bit.

"The Pillars of Creation" (left pillar is 7 light years long)

But still I'm left asking the question "What is my plan?" I want to know the details, I want to figure everything out. I've come to learn the problem with this way of thinking is that we cant just 'reason out' Gods plan for us. Around the beginning of this semester I was starting to think it all made sense. I had Gods plan figured out, I knew exactly who I would be with, and what kind of person I would end up as. I would look back on things that had happened to me in the past and say "well that made perfect sense because I now I'm here doing this. I now know why God did X and Y." Just recently, God turned that way of thinking on its head.

God's plan does not really make sense.  It's unexpected, rude, hilarious, frustrating and at times strange.  To really make any sense of it, we have to look at the big picture.  Like the picture above.  (Get it, big picture, because the picture is of something really big but its also a saying).  The omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God, made every single star, and planned out when each would die and be born.  He did the same  for every single human that has been born, or ever will be born on this planet.  God isn't just shaping us into who we are going to be next week or next month.  He is also not just shaping us into who we will be in 20, 30 years.  He is shaping all mankind for what it will be in a thousand years, a million years.  When you look at the big picture, it makes perfect sense.

I look back on my freshman year on all that has happened, I can hardly make any sense out of half of it.  But I do know that I came through it all closer and more knowledgeable of God.  Stay thirsty my friends.  Or not. John 4:14.

Swallowing Spiders

So I got up one morning and made way over to the bathroom to take a pee then brush my teeth.  It's my normal routine, I do it every morning.  Everything was going just fine and dandy, I felt nothing out of the ordinary, and saw anything to boot.  I began to brush my teeth as usual, but when I spat out my toothpaste, I was horrified to discover I actually spat out quite a large spider with it!  That freaked me out!  I quickly drowned the spider in the sink, then checked the rest of my mouth to make sure he didn't have friends.  Where had it come from?  I was quite positive I spat it out of my mouth at the same time as my toothpaste.  Had it perhaps crawled onto my toothbrush?  Impossible, I washed that off before applying toothpaste.  And I would have seen it if it had come from the toothpaste bottle!  That only leaves one place!  It was in my mouth to begin with.  Every part of this story true, and to be honest, I am still a little freaked out by this.  My guess is that the poor guy must have crawled into my mouth while I was asleep and nestled himself in there.  What's up with that?

We've all heard this 'fact': Humans on average swallow approximately 8 spiders per year, mostly in our sleep.  Ok, maybe not everyone has heard it, and if you haven't, it's ok to be a little freaked out, I was too.  I mean 8 spiders, holy cow!  Peter Parker got bit by only one, and that resulted in giving him superpowers and the sole responsibility of protecting an entire city!  No one wants that!  I cant even begin to imagine what swallowing 8 would do!  But wait a minute, wait just one minute, how do we know that we swallow 8 per year? I had had my doubts about this so called 'fact', considering I've only heard it from a few friends and a Silly Facts iPhone app.  So I began to do some research.  I did not take long for me to discover that the answer is not what it would seem.

In article published by the University of Idaho, they dissmissed this as a total bogus joke.  The chances of a spider crawling into your mouth without waking you up are slim at best. The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture said that it's a widespread urban legend, with absolutely no basis in fact.  And that there seems to be the issue.  You see, in the science community in order to prove something, you need to run a test or an experiment and then replicate that test in different ways until you get consistent enough results.  That has not been done with the spiders, and really there's just no way to do it.  So the fact that we eat 8 spiders per year is looking more and more like a myth. But as we all very well know, just because something cant be proven, that doesn't mean it's not true!  I hit the research again to see if there was any evidence at all for this spider myth.  I mean, I spat one right out of my mouth after waking up!

I found that Wikianswers.com claims we eat an average of 6-8 per year.  (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_spiders_do_you_eat_a_year). Ok, laugh it up, I know that wikianswers isn't exactly a reliable source.  A good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn't cite it for a research paper, it probably isn't reliable.  So I kept digging, and soon discovered a story from Medical Doctor Jonathon West in Denver.  After performing thousands of autopsies, he consistently found insect DNA less than 90 days old in the stomachs and large intestines of over 90% of the bodies.  The quantities of DNA were large enough to lead him to believe that Americans (or at least his Colorado peeps) consume 8-12 insects varying in size over 90 days!  That blows 8 per year out of the water!  He then went on to claim that he made the entire story up.  He had you going there for a while didn't he!

So what does this tell us?  Based on the evidence, it looks as though it is truly a myth that we eat 8 spiders per year.  What happened to me was convincing, but as far as the research shows, it was a total abnormality.    It may be fun to believe that we really do swallow 8 spiders per year, but that is probably why the fact was made up, because it's so fun to believe. No one get's an adrenaline rush from reading "On average humans inadvertently swallow zero spiders per year."  I think we can all take comfort in the fact that no spiders will be crawling into our mouths anytime soon... unless you're me of course.
Jake Carson, out

Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-23997,00.html
http://insects.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=insects&cdn=education&tm=179&f=11&tt=13&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/whileyousleep.html
http://insects.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=insects&cdn=education&tm=9&f=11&tt=13&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.cals.uidaho.edu/edComm/pdf/BUL/BUL0871.pdf

Twitter.... we meet again!

So my youth pastor challenged the entire youth group to give up a piece of technology for a week.  The idea behind this is that we tend to let technology and the interactions that take place through that to dominate our social life, and we often times let that get in the way of our relationship with God, and most certainly genuine relationships with our friends.  But does that make things like twitter, texting, and Facebook evil?  When you think of all of the cyber bulling, boasting, false identities and un-genuine relationships being formed, the obvious answer would be yes...right?  Well this week seemed like a good one to find out.  I gave up twitter as my technology (also Minecraft and Xbox for good measure) and sat back, relaxed, and observed it's effects.

You wouldn't think a social networking site would define a big portion of your life, but it's when you take it away, you realize how much of your life it really is.  I was part of that postmodern crew or some fancy name like that, who thought twitter was dumb, and so did my friends, my friend Ty especially.  Then he got one, so I thought, well, what the heck, I'll give it a shot.  And that's when it all started.  Interestingly, I've given up Twitter twice before, both times out of my own motivation.  1st because I realized the things I was tweeting were un-Christlike, and quite honestly twitter was taking up too much of my time.  I'm talking 20 plus tweets a day.  Ty changed my password, and I went twitter AND facebookless for a couple weeks.  I came back a changed man.  My tweets were better, more encouraging, less self centered.  And I tweeted less, like once or twice every two days.  Overall, giving up twitter was a huge success.

My second quit was more of a rage quit if you will.  I was just scrolling though my timeline one day when I just had enough of seeing peoples dumb tweets.  I flipped the table over, kicked the first baby I saw and stormed out of the room, yelling curse words in German.  Haha no that didn't happen, at least not the German part.  At the time I still didnt really see twitter as bad, just dumb.  I had effectively quit twitter cold turkey!  And that worked.... for about a month, 30 days actually, because they delete your account after that.  I got back on, (my tweets even better than before), and kick started my social networking life off once again.  So after all of that quitting and resuming, I was left with the burning question, is twitter bad?

Looking back on how this week has been without it, I can answer that question with a firm no.  This week has been frustrating at best, because of course lots of interesting and exciting things happened at work and I didn't get to tweet them.  Also, I missed out on the nostalgic tweets of @the90slife.  I'll admit I'm a little young for some of them, but seeing pictures of dancing lobsters and zoobooks really brings me back.  The point I'm trying to make is that technology in itself is not inherently evil.  It's how you use it.  Before I quit twitter for the first time, I was tweeting for the wrong reasons, cursing, and making a darn fool of myself.  Twitter itself wasnt bad, but the way I was using it was.  Quitting social networking completely redefined how I used, with an extremely positive outcome.  However, one must take caution, because so much  harm can be done over twitter. I've witnessed countless twitter fights, and I've seriously seen best friends torn apart because of something someone has tweeted.  Not to mention some kids at my school have gotten expelled for creating parody accounts of a couple of our administrators.  So much hurt can from technology, and that sirs is a fact.  Not to say that good cant come from it.  Maybe Facebook more, because it is a great way to stay in contact with long distance friends, and share pictures and memories.  Also souls have been literally saved over Facebook.

This is a very true story.  There was a kid in Seattle I think who felt extremely unloved, and wanted to kill himself.  He logged on to Facebook one last time to see if anyone payed him any attention at all.  One of his friends had recently posted a link to a Christian music video on Youtube.  The kid watched the video and his life was literally saved on the spot.  He realized that Christ could end his pain, and he decided to give his life to Jesus.  The video was Pieces by Red.  This is not made up, I saw it on a blog who knows where, and it is confirmed by a comment somewhere on the video, you can check for yourself here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3U6BCUQqG8.  Amazing song by the way.  Ok fine, so I cant know if it's actually true, but it is not at all beyond reasonable doubt that this has actually happened.

So what can be concluded from this?  That technology causes more harm than good?  Absolutely not, and not the other way around either.  There's just no way to objectively compare the two.  It's all about how you use it.  So if you're one of them out there posting bible verses, encouraging and complimenting others, keep at it!  As the apostle Paul said in his letter to Timothy, keep fighting the good fight!  And also, I'd encourage you if you haven't yet, to try a hiatus of your own from a piece of technology.  You could be surprised by the effect it will have.
Jake Carson out.