Apples and Oranges

I have built this blog with the idea that God could use absolutely anything to reveal something to somebody.
I have compared worship to making macaroni art.
I have compared salvation to accepting free donuts on the side of the road.
Bad theology to hotdogs.
Faith in God to the angry British lady who lives inside your GPS.
Careers and life goals to a big bowl of grits.

Grits

I do not claim any Southern heritage.
I spent a large majority of my childhood in Central Florida, which is geographically in the South but far from being a Southern place. Everybody there is from somewhere else.
When I was eight, we moved just south of Atlanta and I discovered for the first time that it is possible to go North to go South.
I was then bombarded with a plethora of foreign foods that I had never even heard of. The school lunch trays now had these fried balls of green grossness they called okra and hot sauce was served with every meal. I found onions and peppers in my corn bread and the only thing people drank was liquid diabetes in the form of sweet tea.
Over the years I have grown accustomed to everything I am served being deep fried and covered in salt but there is one southern food that I have never really been able to come to terms with: grits.

Jedi Knights of the Public Restroom

It is no secret that I like Star Wars. A lot.
I do not remember a time in my life where being a Jedi Knight was not a secret ambition of mine, and  sadly my childhood dreams have not in the least bit faded over time.
Unfortunately my blood donor card makes no mention of a high Midi-Chlorian count which would signify that have the genetic possibility of becoming a Jedi so I just have to pretend. If you aren’t nerdy enough to know what I am talking about, just look it all up on Wookieepedia.com, the Wikipedia of the Star Wars Universe (I’m not joking, it is real…and rather informative).
Fortunately for me, advancements in bathroom sanitation technology have made my Jedi Knight role playing all the more fulfilling.
Everything is automatic.

Following the @SavioroftheWorld

Sometimes I wish following Jesus was like following somebody on Twitter. With just one click of the button you could subscribe to everything He had to say about anything.
It is obvious, however, that Jesus had a completely different idea in mind when he asked people to follow Him.
To see what He did mean, I got nerdy and went to the Greek.
Of the 23 times that Jesus mentioned the word “follow” in the New Testament, 22 of those times He used the Greek word akoloutheo. Strong’s translates this word as “to be in accompany with…follow, reach.”₁

Was Jesus a Republican?

Just when you think all the drama of middle school is over, we have another election year.
First we have mudslinging, name calling and rumor spreading by the men and woman we want to lead us into the future.
And then we have a guy named Jesus, a gentle Jewish carpenter- rabbi who lived two thousand years ago thousands of miles away from us.
And then again we have His people; church-goers from all walks of life who have had the responsibility of choosing sides and trying to figure out how exactly the teachings of this Jesus apply to the decisions demanded of them by the hundreds of campaign commercials they are bombarded with on a daily basis.

Faith Like Nike

A long time ago there was a race of people who were super athletes. They called themselves the Greeks.
They started this thing called the Olympics and it got pretty popular; you might have heard about it.
This race of super athletes was also a race of super warriors and one day as the Greeks were fighting against the Persians, they won. Communication did not come easily back in the day and word of the victory from the battlefield was sent by the fastest means of transportation available- human. I would think that a horse would be faster than a person, but then again I am not a super human Greek warrior.
So a guy named Pheidippedes was somehow elected to run about 26 miles to Athens from what was called  “The Battle of Marathon,” of which we derive the name of the race of roughly the same distance.

Upon his arrival, he shouted one single word to announce his message, a word that has been a part of our vocabulary for decades. It was a word that loosely translated meant “victory” and over years of translation and some spelling adaptations has come down to us simply as “Nike.” Then he fell over dead, which was kind of disappointing.
And so birthed the legend of Nike. Starting as just a shoe company, Nike has gone on to revolutionize American athleticism.
Beyond selling shoes, they have made a name for themselves by showing off to the world the athletes of every sport who took the company’s motto to heart and won victory. They just did it.
Pheidippedes didn’t question the distance he was expected to run to deliver such a simple message. He just did it.
Michael Jordan didn’t let the fact that he failed to make his high school basketball team stop him from lacing up and becoming the greatest basketball player of all time. He just did it.
There are heroes, and then there are the rest of us.
The rest of us let excuses plague us our whole lives.
We dream about who we want to be but wait for the stars to line up in just the way before we even make a step toward our dream.  We say things like “someday I will have the faith to _________” or “Someday I will be so strong in my relationship to God that ___________.”
If you have a goal, just do it.
There will never be a time in your life when everything makes sense and every circumstance lines up so perfectly as to just launch you into your dream life.
Just do it.
Many times God gives us what we understand to be an “end- goal” and we struggle to find how where we are currently could ever turn into what God is showing us. We know where we are right now and where we want to end up but usually have no idea how to get there.
Just do it. Don’t know how? Do it anyway. Sometimes failure with the right motive takes us further than success with the wrong motive.
What about those things that God has been dealing with us for years about that we haven’t really gotten around to fixing? What about that person that we have always wanted to be but haven’t gotten around to being yet?
Just do it.
I want God to have to keep giving me brand new dreams on a routine basis because I keep reaching all the other dreams He had for me. That can’t happen when I spend every moment reminding myself of why all the things I want to happen logically can’t happen. I will never run out of excuses but I will someday run out of time.
I just want to do it.
It is scary to think about the incredible amount of people who will live their whole lives without ever achieving a single goal but will collect a million regrets. Jesus didn’t die on a cross for me to experience a mediocre existence.
You don’t have to wait until January to make some resolutions. Rearrange your schedule, rearrange your budget and rearrange your life if you have to to take a step toward the destination you know God is taking you to.
Just do it.

Chasing Windmills

Ever had the sudden urge to start reading a 900 page novel?
The urge doesn’t happen to me very often either but it did happen over a year ago which compelled me to start reading El Igenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha  by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. I know I could have just called it Don Quixote  like everybody else but I like the way the original title sounds when it rolls off my tongue.
It isn’t like I was looking at my calendar and thought “man, I have absolutely nothing to do for the next six months, I think I will just sit down and delve into the fascinating world of 17th century Spanish literature.” In fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth because my calendar seems to have gotten busier since starting this book than it has ever been in my life. I started reading this book because I wanted to chase a windmill.
I knew almost nothing about this book when I started reading except for one thing: it is about some crazy guy who attacked a windmill.

Mannequins, Batman, and Fear Itself

Who knew that Batman was afraid of bats?
It sounds ironic but it makes sense when you find out Bruce Wayne once fell into a well as a child full of the mysterious flying rodents and was trapped there until his father could rescue him. Things like that stay with you for awhile and despite watching his parents murder, escaping to go travel the world and ending up in a third world prison, our hero could never get away from his childhood phobia.
When he returned home with a passion for justice and all the training he would ever need to kick criminal butt as a vigilante, he turned his fear on itself and masked himself in the persona of what terrified him. Bruce Wayne understood the power of standing in the middle of his greatest fear and be able to look it into the face, breathe deeply, and use his fear as his greatest weapon against whoever came against him. What used to cripple him became his greatest ally.
I am not really afraid of bats. I mean I don’t think they are the cutest of God’s creatures but they don’t terrify me like they did the billionaire Dark Knight of Gotham.
I am, however, afraid of mannequins.

Weenie Gospel (Analyzing the Credibility of our Own Theology)

I get a lot of different responses from people when I tell them I am a missionary student.
The most common response is to ask if I am a Mormon.
The next most common is usually an attempt to subtly let me know that they are a Christian as well. A lot of people feel it is important to get that message across because they enjoy the company of fellow believers but I have a suspicion some want me to know they are a real Christian so that I don’t try and witness to them. They ask me questions  that only a true Christian would know to ask like “So have you heard the new Chris Tomlin CD?”  or “What is your favorite Kirk Cameron movie?” so that I can know without a doubt that they are like me.
Another extremely common response is to share with me what I have come to know as their own weenie gospel.

Smelling Like the Living Dead

I have no idea why or how it happened but my generation has developed an obsession with zombies.
I have never been cool enough to know what was “in” until it was almost out but I can’t help but noticing that a whole lot of people have become infatuated with the living dead. T-shirts with brain eating zombies are everywhere and I even saw a book called Pride and Prejudice, and Zombies that just threw a bunch of random brain eaters into Jane Austen’s classic chick novel. The weirdest thing to me though, is that so many people have mentally prepared themselves for a Zombie Apocalypse, including the University of Florida which has issued a legitimate safety protocol should a Zombie outbreak actually happen. Go Google it, I’m serious.
All this talk of zombies and no one seems to remember the original walking dead man. I am talking, of course, about good ole Zombie Lazarus.