The past year and a half of work have been fairly stressful as I’ve had two back-to-back projects that have had some pretty tight deadlines with many moving parts.  What I’m beginning to realize is that perhaps God actually wants me to have a lot on my plate.  I’d rather not, but maybe this is a way that God is testing me, to see whose strength I will lean on.  As I prepare to go to bed, I don’t know how I will get the things done that I need to get done.  But I still have a job.  And thus far God has enabled me to get the key things done.  Yet it’s still difficult for me to trust that he will do it again.  Because this time it really is too much for me to handle.  And maybe that’s the point.  It is too much for me to handle.  That’s why I need to lean on God.  And so, I will aim to go to bed at a normal time, wake up early, and maximize the time I have tomorrow morning to finish what I need to finish for work, as the bulk of the afternoon will need to be used to address some family issues.

I’m recuperating now.  I’ve just come off a week of work where there were nights that I just slept 3 hrs.  The question that rang in my head was “Why in the hell am I doing this?”.  Maybe I’m still asking this question.  I’m a single guy with no family to take care of, busting my butt, losing sleep, in order to review 100+ page documents so that I can sleep 3hrs to wake up again to review some more 100+ page documents in addition to the 100+ emails that I will receive for the day.  Why?  For what purpose?  Honestly, I’m not fully sure.  I can’t help but think this is a test, like some type of training for bigger things to come.  As if God is saying, “Learn to handle this, and you’ll be able to handle what’s coming”. 

Some would think I’m crazy to be complaining.  I get paid well.  In this economy it’s a blessing just to have work.  I’m very thankful for that.  I could be struggling in many other ways.  And yet, I don’t think my circumstance is any less of a trial.  It is a trial to me precisely because it is trying.  Times like these try my patience and my faith.  Certainly God would want me to have enough time to read his word and do his works, so why would he slam me with so much work?  Maybe I should stop working?

I don’t think that’s the answer.  I think there is a temptation in me to quit when going gets tough.  But that is not what Christ did.  If anyone had the right to complain about circumstances not being fair, it was Jesus.  He really got a raw deal.  He had every right not to be treated the way he was by those who beat and crucified him.  He very well could have quit and decided to make a run for it to Asia.  But he didn’t.  He chose to stay in there even when things were excruciatingly tough.  And he did this by the power of God.  There was a vision that he held to which kept him going.  There was a joy that was set before him, which gave him the strength to persevere in the midst of dire circumstances.  This week was a bad week.  But I’m alive and healthy and my faith is in tact and my optimism is strong.  There will be worse weeks, and I will make it through those as well with my faith and trust in the Lord’s goodness in tact by the same love and grace of God that carried Jesus to and through the cross and ultimately in victory over all that hinders man’s ability to worship God in all his magnificent splendor.

For me, my biggest problem is probably the internet. Not so much blogging or actually doing productive activities, but just doing what I call “rabbit trailing” on the web. What happens is that I’m usually in the midst of working on something that I should be doing and then I decide that I need to be distracted for a bit and so my mind will conjure up something that I absolutely need to check on, like the weather or the stock market, or the headline news. And so I check one of those “critical” items, and then I inevitably happen upon a link to another critical item that I had not thought about previously, and so I click on that link, while I simultaneously open another tab on the browser to search for an idea or person that popped into my head from one of the articles that I just read. Before long I’ve got 17 tabs open, all of course full of mission-critical information that I had to know right now. Once 2-3 hours have gone by, I begin to realize that maybe I haven’t just been engaged in the most productive of activities.

And so this has been a common pattern in how I approach spending my time. I am continually lured into internet rabbit trailing by my evil and wicked heart that does not want to focus on that which is truly meaningful and important. I’d rather tickle my ears and thoughts with entertaining morsels of gossip and quench my thirst for fantasizing about Seattle actually having a good sports team or about me being a presidential debater or someone else that I will never be. Maybe I should just focus on being me and doing what God has given me to do? But that would be too easy then, now would it?

Do Hard Things is a book geared towards teenagers written by a set of teenage twins, Alex and Brett Harris, who believe that our culture has low expectations for the youth of today. They are on a mission to motivate teens across the nation and even the world to step up an do hard things for Christ.

The Harris twins begin the book by arguing that the term teenager is a relatively new concept where a teenager is physically grown but is not expected to have the responsibilities of an adult. However they argue that this was not the case 100 and more years ago. In most societies during most times, boys became men at an early age generally at some point shortly after puberty when they begin to gain adult strength. If they could do the work of an adult, then they were considered an adult. However, once a law was made that mandated that children be educated through high school, the expectations for teens to contribute to society diminished and thus we have the consumeristic teen culture of today.

But if Alex and Brett Harris have their way, teens all across the globe will no longer see themselves as adolescents that have no responsibility or expectations to benefit their society. Teens will become “rebolutionaries” or those who rebel against a culture of low expectations and begin to revolutionize what the world believes teens can accomplish.

The Harris twins break the book up into three parts, the first dealing with misconceptions of what the teen years are supposed to be about, the second listing the types of hard things that teens should do and strive for, and third the vision and stories of what it looks like to live a life doing hard things.

Overall, I found this to be an easy read with a convicting and hard message. I’m only 26 years old, but I already feel the gravity of the sense of urgency of the call to so something meaningful and impactful with my life. Reading this book has made me feel that I’ve already wasted 10+ years of usefulness to my community for the sake of the gospel. I was encouraged by the many examples of teens sometimes 11 or 12 years younger than myself accomplishing things that many 40 and 50 year olds are too afraid to do. The twins inspire hope. Hope that I, despite my failings and apathy, can awake from my slumber and serve God and my community with a new and infectious zeal that would carry forth with accomplishments and fruit that I would never have thought possible.

My only critique of the book would be that it is very heavily dominated by examples of hard things and words that would encourage the possibility of doing hard things. While these are necessary and good, I would have like to have seen a bit more substance behind why we choose to do the hard things. We obviously shouldn’t choose to do hard things just because they are difficult. But rather, there is something intrinsic about certain “hard things” that is rewarding, valuable, and worth doing. The Harris twins did a little bit of this, but could have added more depth by going into additional detail behind the nature of the intrinsic value of certain hard things.

That critique aside, I still believe that this is a very good book, not only for teens, but also for those post-teenagers that want more from there life than the current rut they feel their in. I know that I was definitely encouraged by the Harris twins and motivated to step out of my comfort zone in order to participate in the gospel more boldly.

No more than 10 minutes later did I start to feel bad about what I did. I realized that what I did was very flawed. The whole reason why lust is so insidious is that it completely objectifies women and doesn’t treat them as a real person. What I had just done was really not any better. I had ignored her, and in so doing, failed to recognize the real person that I was transacting with. This gives me deep sadness even as I write this, because here was an opportunity to not just refrain from lusting, but to positively engage someone as a person and perhaps by God’s grace bless her in some way. Satan would probably love that I stop lusting, if he knew that I would never engage another woman as a person again.

And as I continue to think about this, I don’t just do this to hot women who I might lust over. I do this to the grocery store clerk, the bank teller, the fast food worker…and on. We live in such a consumerist society that I believe we begin to see the men and women who work in the service sector as no more than ATMs. We go up and make our transaction and split. Is this the standard of holiness that God calls us to? As long as I don’t do anything bad, I’m okay? I’m afraid that this is just another example of how we’ve created our own standard of holiness and have completely missed the foundation of all of God’s commands, namely to love; both God and fellow man. The foundation of the law is not don’t but do. Abstaining from something is one thing, and is often of value. However, to always love God and others, with a deep sacrificial love is a much more radical call and one that we cannot ignore or water down if we desire to be called followers of Christ.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 – “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”

As I was reading Mortification of Sin by John Owen last night, I ran into the above referenced verse.  Right now in my life, I believe that this is the biggest thing that God is working on.   As I look towards becoming an elder, the qualifcation of being self-controlled is the one which I least fulfill, especially in regards to lust and slothfulness, and even also evidenced sometimes in my eating habits.  Thankfully, God has given me a hope and an optimism that he will continue to work in me a change of heart that will lead to a life that is much more in line which what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 9.  On the one hand, that verse exposes my deficient character, while yet on the other hand, it gives me great hope, that if God can turn a regular sinner like Paul into one who is on the balance self-controlled and disciplined with the laser-focused purpose of living for Christ, then he can also do the same with me.  I pray that God would enable me to submit more and more of myself consistently to the will of God, so that I might glorify God in all that I do and that I might have as Owen writes “The vigor, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life” as I lean on God to put to death the works of the flesh.