Question and Answer Time.

I received the following message in my Facebook inbox on Tuesday and just read it a couple hours ago. The author will remain anonymous but my response must be public because the questions addressed may be shared by others who know me as well.

“i was just reading your blog, and i wondered:
when you received financial support to take your trip to south america, you used it as proof that god wanted you to go and that your faith in christianity was rightly placed. but now that you aren't receiving financial support anymore, does that mean that god doesn't exist? i mean, that's your logic, right?

josh, you are giving "good" christians a bad name by following this bullshit so blindly. it's like you really want to believe in something just for the sake of it. you were complaining about "dumb" christians that don't know anything about their religion or about science, but you are totally turning out to be a dumb christian too! even when faced with a solid, bullet-proof logical argument, all you do is say, "oh, good point." and continue to pursue the opposite. it's retarded. why are you so into this? it's like, god is the only thing you think about, to the point where its become a lucrative obsession like baseball or recording equipment. if there is one thing that has convinced me that god does not exist, it has been knowing you.”

Whew… alright let me start by addressing the questions presented in the first paragraph. First off, I need to apologize to my reading audience (however small they may be) because I have not kept you adequately updated; it’s be 39 days since my last entry and that something that I never wanted to happen, especially with the financial cliffhanger I last left you with. Even with the full schedule of this school and multiple projects I needed to finish I should have had the time to share the testimonies AS THEY HAPPENED, instead of over 3 weeks later. Well better late than never, I received 440 dollars from my second round of support letters (Parents excluded) that allowed me to finish paying for this school, change my plane ticket to start the Protégé internship, and even have a little left over for contact solution and healthy food! So yeah, God is using finances to “prove” to me that He exists, but here’s the thing even if I didn’t receive a dime I’d still have faith in God. When God tells us to do something we can trust that He’ll bring is to pass (no matter how insurmountable the obstacles may be, financial or otherwise).

So, I think can guess your next question, what if I didn’t get the money? Well I did get the money, and I believe that I did because I really was hearing God correctly. BUT if I didn’t, then that wouldn’t mean that God didn’t exist, it would only mean that I heard Him wrong and that He had a different plan for me; a plan better than the one I thought, because it would be in His will. Jesus says in Luke 22:42, “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done.” Here’s the deal, through prayer and reading the Bible we can develop an intimate relationship with God and receive direction for what He wants us to do with our lives but we’re still only human and we may not always hear it correctly but that doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist it only means that we’re still trying to figure out what HIS WILL is. It’s all about His will NOT mine; He owns me, He bought me with the blood of His perfect son Jesus when I was a slave to Satan: the ruler of this fallen world. So I do HIS will now, not mine. I choose to have faith in Him when he blesses me financially through the bank accounts of others and I’ll choose to have faith in him if everyone in my family dies is a tragic car accident, I’m not saying it’ll be easy or that it wouldn’t radically change my life but I’ve witnessed to many miracles and received to much truth to turn back now.

Incidentally, a quick side note since we’re on the subject of miracles, God does TWO different kinds of miracles. The first kind we could call “Supernatural”, like when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead in John 11. I can’t say I’ve seen much of this, though I would place the boy in Quito that came out of his comma when our team of missionaries prayed for him in this category. Much more often God will work in miracles of “Providence”, where God blesses us through the lives of other people or circumstances. For example, my closest friend here on the base named Nathan has a wife named Cole who was recently certified to be a hair stylist and was on the market for a pair of professional scissors. Since Nathan’s parents are doing some missionary work in California at the moment, Cole asked me if I could ask my professional stylist friend Tori (who’s blog she reads: http://www.myowleyes.net ) if she could recommend a good pair of scissors that Nathan’s parents could bring her back from the states. I wrote Tori with the request for the recommendation and sent her Nathan’s folks cell number so she could get in touch with them. The next time I saw Cole she was ecstatic, “for some reason” after talking with Nathan’s parents Tori decided to bless Cole with over 250 dollars worth of professional styling gear even though she’d never met her . Atheists write this off as weird coincidence but Christian’s know that this is God miraculously moving in the hearts of His children, and it totally made Cole season. If you want Biblical examples of these kinds of miracles read the four chapter book of Ruth, it’s full of “crazy” coincidences, and God isn’t even mentioned specifically to show how often He works like this. *ahem* but I digress… on to the questions second paragraph.

Let me quickly address this statement: “even when faced with a solid, bullet-proof logical argument” I’m not sure what you meant by this… if you’re referring to evolution then I’d have to say it’s NEVER been proven, far from it. In fact nothing in the Bible has ever been disproven, because it’s a perfect book! Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls that scientifically proves that the Old Testament was written before the New Testament the odds are astronomical check out this website: http://www.reasons.org/fulfilled-prophecy-evidence-reliability-bible Also you have to watch the movie Expelled with Ben Stein, it’s the same high production values as “Religiousity” but it makes the case FOR GOD. Also I couldn’t recommend more the book “Mere Christianity” by former atheistic turn Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis!

Why am I so “into this”? Let me start by responding to why I’m NOT so “into this”. I’m not into this because it’s some sort of cult where if I don’t have a “ludicrous obsession” with it then the cult refuses to love and since I’ve had to cut all former ties with everyone in my life to be accepted by the cult in the first place I do whatever they say. If that were the case I don’t think I’d be allowed to use the internet, take pictures and keep a blog, Skype with my friends/parents whenever I want, leave the base whenever I want or be free to return home whenever I want. It’s also been all in Spanish (except for the translation of the classes) so I haven’t even gotten that close with the leadership at all. I’m also not so “into this” because I was (BY THE WORLD’S STANDARD, or as Bill Maher would say) some sort of person who stereotypically “needed” God. I had money, a college education, a good job, a good house, good friends and a good family, but I also had something else: conviction of my sin against my creator and a desire to repent. To repent of my life full of idolatry, putting numerous thing before Him in priority; for lust after the things of this world instead of putting Him in the first place of my life, the place He’s belonged all along.

I’m SO INTO THIS because I’ve had a revelation of just how off the mark I was, of how bad a hypocrite I was being before I came here, of how I’m so impotent to change without the power of the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit really has caught fire inside of me and given me a regenerative spirit, complete with new desires and a new attitude! Let’s start with the “easy” stuff: I haven’t masturbated, and have live completely strait-edge over 8 months! I’ve read the Bible and had a quiet time with the Lord every single day since January 5th! I read a book on courtship and God totally spoke to me through it and I’m committed to only kissing one more person for the rest of my life and that’s my future wife starting on our wedding day! I’m excited about working a church job, something I’d never wanted to do before! It’s because God’s really real, He’s forgiven me and has changed me and He’ll continue to do wondrous things through me when I come back in 5 days! I can’t blame you for thinking that my life was a great proof of God’s non-existence because I was a professing Christian living a hypocritical un-regenerated lifestyle. But that was before He really got a hold of me again!

The fact that I seem ludicrously obsessed with God is because that’s the way HE designed it to be like, we’re supposed to be on fire for Him! There shouldn’t be anything like a luke-warm Christian, Psalms 104:4 say, “He (The Lord) makes winds His messengers, flames of fire His servants.” I’ve been made a new in Christ! Let me end with a passage from Ephesians 4:21-24 and encourage that it’s a choice that EVERYONE can make!

“If indeed you have heard Him (The Lord) and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness and truth.” –Ephesians 4:23 –

Woo Hoo! Alright here are a couple of pics from a wedding on the base during my last days in Chile: