A brief reflection of 2013.

It’s always fun to sit down and take some time and reflect on the past year of your life, seeing where God has brought you has an awesome way of getting you excited about where He’s going to take you next. It doesn’t matter if 2013 was the hardest and most difficult year of your life or the easiest and most exciting, because if you love God, it was for your good, according to His purpose, for your sanctification, and He is going to finish what He started (Romans 8:28, Ephesians 1:11, 1st Thessalonians 4:3, Philippians 1:6).

A very easy way for me to reflect on 2013 is to take the goals I (more expansively) set out for the year in a blog back in January and see how they played out. This past year I only laid out five, and I’ll be tackling them in reverse order. 

5. Make some sort of consistent habit of exercising and eating just a little bit healthier.

This one was a roller coaster ride of a goal. Some months I was working out 5 times a week, eating extremely healthy and had reached a fairly healthy weight, others I was drinking 3 sodas a day, didn’t even know what a vegetable was, and got a little chunky. The funny thing is I was pretty content in both directions of life. Overall I would say I probably failed at this one. 

4. To read 25 books. 

This one I am so excited to be able to say I nailed! I actually was able to finish 32 books this year, 11 of which were rereads. 

1-4 The entire Lord of the Rings Series including The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien (The Hobbit was a reread)

5-9 The first five books of The Lost Years of Merlin series - T.A. Barron (The first 2 were rereads)
10-16 All seven Harry Potter Books - J.K. Rowling (All rereads)
17. A Severe Mercy - Sheldon Vanueken
18. The Mortification of Sin – John Owen
19. Holiness – J.C Ryle (Reread)
20. Doing Things Right in the Matters of the Heart – John Ensor
21. Passion and Purity – Elizabeth Elliot
22. Sex, Dating, and Relationships – Gerald Heistand and Jay Thomas
23. What He Must Be (if he wants to marry my daughter) - Voddie Baucham
24. Leading With Love – Alexander Strauch
25. In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day – Mark Batterson
26. Every Good Endeavour: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work – Timothy Keller
27. So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
28. Christians Get Depressed Too – David Murray
29. Finally Free: Fighting For Purity with the Power of Grace – Health Lambert
30. Crazy Busy – Kevin Deyoung
31. The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
32. Walking with God through Pain and Suffering – Timothy Keller

3. Lord willing, by years end to find a job, ANY job. I don’t care if it’s at a fast food place while I look elsewhere, just something to start working and paying off loans.

Looking back I can’t help but laugh and smile at this goal I set up for myself. If you had told me I’d be where I am now back in January I would have said you were crazy. God is just so good. Not only did God provide a job, He provided two! The first one (though the second one I got) is being an office lackey for a construction company here in Manassas. I do data entry, filing and the like. While not the most exciting position, I do actually enjoy it for 2 reasons. The first is I got it through a guy at my church and by working for him it has provided for multiple conversations with him and thus the ability to get to know a man I normally wouldn’t have even bothered talking to. Secondly, most of the time, I get to listen to my iPod for hours on end each day, and being the music fan that I am, it’s a perfect situation.

The second position I have is being a Child Care Specialist at Jill’s House, a respite center for children with special needs. And this is literally the best job ever. It only took 2 summers for me to completely fall in love with the idea of working with children with special needs and now I’m (for at least a time) doing it for a living! In college people would ask me what I wanted to do and I would always respond ‘I have no idea but all I know is I’d like to be able to love God and love people.’ What’s really awesome is that loving God and loving people is the very reason of Jill’s House existence. We get to love God by loving on a demographic that is very often neglected and viewed by much of the world as less than human. 

Not only do I love what I do, but I love the people I work with too. Seriously the staff at Jill’s House is just incredible. There are so many great examples (young and old!) of Godly living that it’s almost impossible not to grow if you’re even paying the slightest bit of attention. So while this job is certainly the most spiritually, mentally, and physically exhausting job I have ever worked, there’s not one thing I’d rather exhaust myself for. 

2. To graduate from The Master’s college, and make the most of my final semester.

So much has happened in the 2nd half of 2013 I almost forgot that this was the year I graduated from college! I cannot believe it has been over 6 months since that part of my life came to a close. While I’m not sure I can say I made the most of my final semester, I do know it was one the most complete semesters I ever had, at least relationally. It was one of the only semesters that my heart came out in one peace, and I did not waste time irrationally chasing girls for the sake of a relationship. And while one of the most important DTR’s I have ever had did occur during that semester, it was the first time I went about it the right way, stating intentions and not being completely devastated when it didn’t turn out the way I had hoped. I also was able to further develop the friendships I wanted and really invest in the guys God placed around me, which turned out to be such a blessing. God really did use those 3 years at Master’s to grow and develop me as a man, and some of that developing came out in my final semester. 

1. To fall more and more in love with my savior Jesus Christ and as J.C Ryle puts it, to grow in grace.

From my final semester of college, an awesome summer at Soaring Over Seven, my wonderful church home, the reaction I had when my dad had a brief scare and was taken the hospital, to the two jobs and amazing friends He has provided, 2013 was one of the first years where it was really evident for me to see the hand of God in my life. How can I look back on all that has come to pass this year and not be even more convinced of these two facts of life: The God of the Bible is real and His Word is true. 

Looking back and seeing what Christ has done in my life and the lives of those around me this year makes me so excited about all that is going to happen in 2014. Maybe this will be the year I meet my wife, maybe it will the year I move out of my parent’s house and get an apartment, maybe I can get on full time at Jill’s House, or maybe this will be the hardest year I will ever go through and my faith will be shaken. Who knows what is going to happen, but to repeat myself from the start of this blog and add a present tense to it: It doesn’t matter if 2014 will be the hardest and most difficult year of your life or the easiest and most exciting, because if you love God, it will be for your good, according to His purpose, for your sanctification, and He is going to finish what He started (Romans 8:28, Ephesians 1:11, 1st Thessalonians 4:3, Philippians 1:6). 

Happy New Years and once again thanks for taking the time to read!

Today was a very long day indeed.

It was just about a week and a half ago that I finished reading Tim Keller’s Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering. Today God put my new found understanding of suffering to the test and brought on somewhat of a scare.

It started out as a normal Sunday morning, I woke later than planned but was able to make my way to church just fine. In the middle of service, just after receiving communion, I received a text message. Normally I wouldn’t check my phone but it caught me off guard buzzing on the open seat next to me because there’s typically no service in the school building we hold our service at and normally I wouldn’t even receive said text in the first place until I was heading out to my car. I notice it’s from my mom, go ahead and open it and it reads, “Looks like I’m taking Dad to the hospital. Will call you later.” Now I think the average person’s response (and probably the right one) if they were in the same situation, would be to quietly get up out of their seat and make their way outside to try and find out more. I mean the service was almost over anyways, there was only a short time of prayer and a few more hymns left. But something told me to stay, and I immediately thought to myself, you know, there is no better time to receive news like this than when you’re in the midst of worshiping the one true God. So I stayed seated, tried my best to orient my heart and mind towards heaven and finished out the service. I even stayed after the service to help pack up the church (like I said we meet in the basement of a school and were packing up earlier than normal as due to inclement weather we weren’t going to have Sunday school). While interacting with those around me I answered the typical question of how are you with ‘doing well’, even when my mind was scattered and elsewhere. 

When I finally made my way out of the building, I contacted my mom to try and find out what was going on. I learned that earlier in the morning, my father had began complaining of a tightness of chest, a sudden sore throat and others around him had noticed his skin was becoming very pale. With all of that, the decision was made to dial 911 and get him to a hospital as soon as possible. At that point I asked if she wanted me to come to be with them, but because they had not received any results from the tests that had been done and the inclement weather, my mom commanded that I go home instead. In immediate outburst, I cried out “My dad’s in the hospital and you’re telling me to go home?” After I hung up the phone, I sat in the car unsure of what to do. I then asked myself, I wonder what’s more honoring to my parents, to listen and obey my mother’s request and go home, or act in defiance and come to the aid of my father going through this trial. 

By God’s grace, in attempt to respect my mother’s wishes, I chose the former and made my way home. As I pulled up to the house, I sat there debating my decision for a good five minutes. It was then that this song came up on my Ipod. The tears came streaming down. Regardless of what was happening, if my Dad were going to enter into glory or recover just fine, God was right there with both of us, and His love would not fail either way. I finally had the strength to get out of the car and begin the waiting game. 

I spent the next two hours anxiously sitting on the couch letting my mind wander to extremes calling my mom every half an hour looking for any information I could. And when that amounted to nothing, I finally accepted my fate and began to calm myself down. I then used the time to do my daily devotions, seeking the Lord through His word and bringing my heart before Him in prayer, and now I find myself writing this blog. 

During my devotion time I was reminded of who God is, His purposes, the brevity of life, the fact that He is our refuge and strength, and that He will be with us through it all. We never know when God is going to call us home, but we do know that in the little time He has given us we are called to spend it for His glory. We also know that suffering is a normal part of this life because of the sinful state of this world, but the fact of the matter is that God uses it according to His purposes and for the good of those who love Him. In the ultimate act of suffering, Jesus Christ came down from heaven and died on the cross, taking the punishment for our sin and experiencing separation from the Father. All of this was done so that through His resurrection we can now die to ourselves and find new life in Him. 

Currently my Dad is spending the night at a Kaiser Permanente getting some blood tests done and will have more done later tonight so the doctors will be able to compare the results. Tomorrow he will see a cardiologist and also undergo a stress test, which will most likely lead to some lifestyle changes. But as of right now, no one is under the impression it is immediately life threatening, so praise God for that. 

Thankfully this time around it was just a scare. Although with that being said, just hours after all of this has occurred, I can already see how God is using this in my own personal walk with Him and I hope that it can be an encouragement to yours as well. Also, I am thankful for and encouraged by all of you who have been praying for my family on this hectic day, it is truly a wonderful blessing to see and know that so many people are supporting us. And as always, thanks for reading!