Living In Light of Our LIVING HOPE

Living In Light of Our LIVING HOPE




I read in 1 Peter this evening and I want to share a verse from chapter one: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a LIVING HOPE through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). After I read that verse, my heart just wants to explode with joy! I am so amazed by God’s amazing, endless and incomprehensible GRACE!

Every day of my life is transformed by God’s grace, which He has given me because of Jesus Christ. I do not deserve it at all, but He gives it to me anyway. He bestows mercy when all I deserve is wrath; He lavishes His love on me, when all I deserve is His hatred; He blesses me beyond my imagination, when I was His enemy. Jesus Christ has ransomed my soul, and so I sing and rejoice in the Almighty God who is the Living God. He is mighty to save!!! He is my Lord and Savior!!!!

I pray that each day of your life is transformed by God’s grace. Sometimes it is easy to live discouraged, defeated Christian lives because we do not fix our eyes on Jesus and instead focus on our sin or on our problems. If we would but focus our hearts upon Jesus we would be amazed by the joy that will overflow from our lives. He is the spring that alone can satisfy our hearts…so let us come to Him and be satisfied. Let us come to our LIVING HOPE.

THE MISSION

Written for my family as they move to Cameroon, Africa to share Jesus love with the people there.

Rejoicing in all God has done.
In your lives, I see Him displayed
As your greatest treasure of all;
Your mission: to proclaim His name.

Fix Your eyes on Christ…Run hard to the goal.
Consider the work He has done, He has saved your souls!

Press on, HOPE IN GOD…IN HIS HANDS you are safe. UNDER HIS WINGS…you are held---
you are HELD BY GRACE.
Take up your cross, follow Christ, let His praises resound.
Be BROKEN AND SPILLED OUT
as you journey HOMEWARD BOUND.

Cheering you on as you go
As you make much of Jesus today,
Considering all else as loss
Compared to the Savior’s name.

Fight the battle of faith…stand firm in Christ.
Trust Him with all of your heart, give Him your life.




Praying for you in my heart.
May God’s sustaining grace push you on
To follow Christ outside of the camp,
Calling the nations to join the song!

Jesus is mighty to save
For while yet sinners He died in our place.
Shout---shout His praise For He has given us grace!

AMAZED BY GOD

February 20, 2011

 Life has a way of speeding up, things get busy at work, and I often forget and lose sight of what truly matters. I seem to suddenly find myself overwhelmed and discouraged in my spiritual life and I do not understand why. But God is ever gracious and merciful to me, and does not fail to teach and correct me. He is a patient God and it is not His method to teach us quick and rushed lessons. I have found this to be so the past three months that I have been out to sea. Each patrol I find that God teaches me wonderful lessons about Himself, though they are not easy lessons to learn, they are beautiful and fill me with great joy. It is not an easy thing to sum up the lessons learned over the past three months, but as I stand looking back, I know and am convinced that God has been teaching me a crucial heart lesson: LIVE EACH DAY AMAZED BY GOD.

Where delight and duty meet is hard to differentiate, and it is extremely easy to begin serving God with joy and gladness and then all too soon to turn that service into a mere duty that must be accomplished. My joy in knowing God and spending time with God and being amazed by Him is easily turned into a longing and striving to honor Him as a way to win His favor. What meaninglessness this is because I cannot merit anything from my Lord! I am a worthless sinner SAVED BY GRACE! But I forget, and as life rushes on I busily try to serve God and work up emotions and longings that look Christ-exalting all the while I fail to do what is most important…I fail to be amazed by the God who has saved me.

I see that this has happened the past three months. Perhaps God had to break me and show me my utter helplessness in order to teach me this lesson anew. For at the beginning of this patrol, I met with so many opportunities to serve Christ, to reach out to others…and now as I look back I feel like an utter failure. I do not think I used the opportunities He gave me to the best of my ability. What happened, I wonder? I wanted to glorify God, I wanted to make much of Christ, and now I am left with so many wishes and longings of what should have been in my mind. Fear seemed to come in as a flood, as a paralyzing force, and I was rendered unable to do anything. I cried out to God in my inability, waiting and longing for Him to work to help me; so troubled that I could not even find words to even pray. I felt like a joke…here I am professing a faith in a God who fills me with joy and delight, all the while my soul was in turmoil and despair. How could I be a witness of the Gospel when my own soul was in such a state. And like the waves of the sea, I was tossed and thrown about…one moment happy and joyful in the Lord and the next moment I was taken down to the depths. But I know Christ never once left me, even as I felt completely alone.

And as a traveler so set on a journey that his eyes remain fixed on the ground in front of him…so I was set on serving Christ, but my eyes were not fixed on Christ. I was trying and striving to live for Him, to honor Him, to use my life to glorify Him, and so I find that I failed to be amazed by Him. Only as we are fixed upon the Son, will we e able to reflect His light; only as we are astounded by His mercy and grace, will we be able to live lives that are overflowing with compassion towards others; and only as we are completely enthralled by His beauty, will we be able to shine that beauty to this world. It is not in striving that we will glorify God, but in knowing and resting in the truth that He is God that we will magnify His name.

Yes we should serve Him, yes all our longings should be consumed in glorifying His name, and yes we should live every moment for our Savior; but we cannot do any of this unless we are first living each day amazed by His amazing and life transforming grace. We must live AMAZED BY GOD! He is our greatest good, our deepest joy, our most priceless treasure, our highest pleasure, and our abiding peace. In Christ alone our hope is found and we must fix our eyes on Him alone in order to live each day for His glory. Our strength is guaranteed to fail, our motivation will disappear, our faith will weaken, our love will grow cold, but Christ remains the same: He’s love is constant and never fails…upon Him we must fix our sight lest we be tossed about by the troubles of this life.

And so I sit here thinking about the past three month…quite humbled and quiet in my heart, but the sparks of amazement are kindled by God’s love. So as I face this new day, I smile in amazement at my gracious, kind God who holds me by His grace. Perhaps I have found once again that God is not so much concerned about the work I do for Him but the work He does in me.

O great God, I stand amazed by the power of Your love! I am a sinner, only saved by Your great grace, and I am Your servant to do as You will. So use me to shine for Your glory, to reflect Your beauty, and to be a light in this dark world. I struggle, I am so weak, but You enable me to do the impossible. You supply me with grace so that I can serve You. You fill me with joy in Your presence. I love You , O Lord, my precious Savior and my God!

MY ROCK AND REFUGE

November 29, 2010


The Lord comforted my heart this morning with verses from the Psalms. I was reminded once again that He is my rock and my refuge, He is my God in whom I trust and the sustainer of my soul, and He is my fortress and my Deliverer. Storms arise in my heart, and the waves and breakers of this life crash over my soul like the angry waves crash over my boat, but Jesus stands as my Savior, walking on the water that threatens my faith. He reaches out and pulls me up from angry torrents that swirl around me, and I am saved. He is God, His is the Almighty One who by the word of His mouth spoke the universe into being. So I trust in Him, I will fix my eyes upon Him, I will be satisfied with His love and rejoice in His salvation. My God is mighty to save, and He is mighty to sustain! Blessed be my God; blessed be the Lord Jesus Christ!

The List

Once upon a time, lived a man who struggled with the weight of guilt. He did everything he could to keep from feeling so guilty, but nothing seemed to work. So in desperation, he went to the house of a wise old man who lived at the edge of town.



The man explained his problem to the wise man and waited for a reply. The wise man gazed at him intently and stroked his pointy beard. “So why do you feel so guilty,” he asked. “What have you done?”


“Sir, I am weighed down by all my sin.”


“Have you turned to Christ to forgive you of your sin?” The wise man asked.


“Oh, certainly I have, Sir, but I still feel guilty. I try to live a life that pleases Christ, but even when I am doing good things my motives are so wicked and sinful.”


“I see. Do you believe that you are saved by grace and not by works?”


“Oh yes, of course I am saved by grace, but I cannot seem to live up to the grace God has given me.”


The wise man smiled at the troubled man. “Oh, I see, there is only one thing that can be done.”


The troubled man listened attentively as the wise man explained his solution. “For the next thirty days you must write down everything you do and say and think. You must keep a detailed record of it all whether it is good or bad. And then at the end of the thirty days I want you to bring the list to me.”


The man felt puzzled and confused. “Why must I keep a list? It grieves my heart already without keeping track of everything I do.”


“Just do as I say.”


The man shook his head and walked away, but because he was so troubled by the feelings of guilt and sorrow he decided to try it just in case it helped relieve his pain. The days passed ever so slowly. He kept a detailed record of it all just as the wise man had said. Some days He felt almost elated because he felt that surely he was improving, but then just as soon as his elation reached it’s peak he would sink again realizing his heart was gloating in pride. His list seemed to go on forever.


Finally thirty days passed, and one thing the man knew for sure: keeping a list had not made him feel any better or less guilty. If anything it had made things worse. So he returned to the wise man more sorrowful than before.


“Here is my list,” he said as he handed the wise man a thick stack of papers. “But I don’t think it has cured my feelings of guilt.


“Well, is this everything?” the wise man asked.


“Yes it is everything,” the man answered. “My guilt feels heavier than ever now."


The wise man walked over to his fireplace and knelt by the hearth. The man almost gasped in shock as the wise, old man held the list into the fire. The man looked on in horror as the old man’s hand blistered from the angry flames.


“What, what are you doing? Your hand! And my list--- it took me hours to work on the list. Why would you do this?”


The wise man did not answer, but instead took the ash shovel on the hearth and scooped up the ashes from the papers into a bowl. He motioned for the man to follow him as he walked out of his house and over to a river not far away. He took the ashes and threw them into the rushing water which quickly swept the ashes away. The man was dumbfounded as he watched on in disbelief.


The wise man turned back to the troubled man and smiled. “Where has your guilt gone now?”


The man shook his head, “It’s been swept away, my list has been swept away,” he paused. “Your hand is burned.”


“Your list could not have been taken away without a price, and you could not pay it, so I did.”


“My dear friend, what I have done is only a picture of what Christ has already done. He has taken your sin upon Himself and paid its penalty, and now your guilt is swept away. Christ paid the price. So now go your way and stop thinking about your guilt for it is no more---just like your list is gone forever. Instead think about Jesus and how much he loves you and how gracious He is in saving you.”

Pressing on in Christ

The Lord has blessed me with a wonderful Saturday. I enjoyed breakfast at IHOP with some friends from my boat, and then I headed to one of my favorite places in the world (not really!) Barnes & Noble. But on a rainy Seattle day, a book store is a perfect way to spend the day(-:

As I sit here right now looking back over the past couple weeks, I am just completely blown away by God's amazing grace! The work I have seen Him doing in the lives of the people on my boat, overwhelms my heart. And I know that God has always been at work on my boat even when I cannot see...but how amazing it has been to see the work of the Lord. O He is mighty to save!

My prayer to the Lord has been that He will give me a heart of compassion for the people on my boat. I have never been through what most of these people have gone through, and when they tell me their struggles and the suffering they are experiencing...most of the times I do not know what to say. I beg God in my heart for words, but often times I am at a loss. And perhaps that is best and what God wants. Maybe the very thing He wants me to say is nothing, but to pray for them and tell them verses from the Bible. I am His servant here, and I want to glorify His name in everything.

God is so good to me and sustains me every new moment. I remember when I first arrived on the Midgett, people were so amazed that I was always smiling...when I was painting, when I was mess cooking, when I was vacuuming up water in the rain! I remember they would tell me that, once I had been on the boat for a couple months I would be just like them and hate life. Well, a couple months passed by and I was still smiling (not because of me but because Jesus gave me such an amazing joy in Him), so they told me that it was because I had never been out to sea before, and once I was underway I would be just like them and hate life and the boat. Well, I went out to sea on my first patrol in the Puget Sound (and lived to tell about it!!!!), and was smiling more than ever. They told me it was because I had never gone down south on a patrol. They said those patrols would be the ones to break me. Well, we went down south and I was still smiling and still filled with joy in Jesus. And now I have been here on the Midgett over a year! And I think everyone has finally given up. God has been at my side, faithfully sustaining me every moment. He is the one who supplies me with joy here on my boat. Apart from Him I would be like everyone else...the only difference between me and them is that I have Jesus in my heart, filling me with inexpressible joy. I have hope in Jesus and this hope is anchored in Christ. I am held by grace and sustained by grace. I would walk away from Christ, I would give up, I would go down the same path of self-destruction that the other people on my boat are on if it were not for God's amazing grace. Thank You Jesus, for I do not deserve Your grace, but You have lavished it upon me anyway. I am in awe of how mighty and gracious You are! Praise be unto Your name!

And now here in a few short weeks, I will be getting back underway and heading back out to sea for another three months. I am going to miss land and my coffee shops and my church family, but I am convinced that this is God's will and that He has me on  the Midgett for such a time as this. Soon my time on the Midgett will come to an end...but until then I am here to declare the gospel of God's grace. And my goal is to share it with eveyone on this boat---that everyone would know the reason I smile and the reason I am joyful. This will probably be my last patrol and then I will be going to advanced training school and after that go to a new duty station and finish up my remaining time in the Coast Guard. So just like a runner in a race sprints his very hardest as he sees the finish line come into sight...so I also sprint with all my might to the finish line. O God may I glorify you on the Midgett and declare your name and praise that all may know that You are God and You are mighty to save. I pray that when others look at me they would see You...I want to point to You in everything.

So as I prepare for this upcoming patrol, I face it with a renewed joy and a resolved determination to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am so excited! And yes I am afraid and scared to death at the same time! But I know the One true God and He is so wonderful and so good...and He supplies all my needs. He gives me strength, He gives me joy, HE HAS GIVEN ME SALVATION! I know that in Jesus Christ I am more than a conqueor because He has loved me and made me His own.

So I press on hard after Jesus. He holds me by His grace, He sustains me with His love, He teaches me in His faithfulness, and HE IS ALWAYS WITH ME. He will never leave me...in Him I press on...in Him I am strong, though I am weak...courageous, though I am afraid...righteous, though my works are as filthy rags. I am hidden in Christ!

#3 Music~Midgett Adventure #3

July 15, 2010

Well my turn to mess cook has come around. Today was a busy one with lots of cleaning and dishes, but God’s grace sustained me and gave my heart courage to press on through it all. O He is with me pushing me on to the finish line---His joy is my strength! The day finally did come to an end but tomorrow my day will start again bright and early. I pray that God would use me to point people to Christ and to glorify His name.

While I was washing dishes in the scullery, I plugged my mp3 player into the speakers under the sink and was listening to my music. I have never had such a hard time listening to my music and wanting to turn it off. I was struggling with acknowledging Christ before my fellow Coasties by my music. Oh Lord Jesus help me not be ashamed of You. You are my life; my greatest joy, and I hate it that I want to keep my music which praises Your name to myself. Help me Lord Jesus, I cannot continue shining Your light here on the Midgett without Your help and strength.

Midgett Adventures~ #18 Qualified!

February 8, 2009

Today has been a momentous day. This afternoon after we got underway again from a weekend at anchor, I took my helm and lookout practical and board. I was so nervous as I took my practical, and I made so many mistakes. I had to keep telling myself not to give up, but to keep going even though I felt like I had completely blown it---but I passed! Basically the practical comprised of me taking and executing helm commands, going through steering and gyro compass causality drills, and answering certain questions. My oral board went much smoother. A Boatswains mate third class (E-4) and two senior seaman gave me my board and basically just went through my packet and asked me questions about flags, light configurations, how to repot a contact during lookout, what I’d do in certain situations, what I’d do if there was a man overboard, etc. I am qualified now! I am so excited. No more double watches anymore for right now at least! All praise goes to the Lord!

I remember back three months ago when I was completely overwhelmed when I found out what I would have to get qualified in. I did not think I would get it all done, but God has sustained me every step of the way and now I am qualified and can put my name on the advanced training school list. What a God I serve who does not leave me alone but helps me through all of life no matter what I am going through. He brings the joy, trials, troubles, stress, fun times, and everything for His own good purpose to bring Him glory and us joy. He draws us closer to Himself by showing us that we are not enough---only He is enough. These past three months have been crazy! Through it all the Lord has held me by His grace and sustained me with His love. The peace He has filled my heart with can not be explained and it is beyond comprehension. All I know is that a quiet, joyful peace abides in my heart because I serve the Almighty God who is over all. I see everything about my life differently than everybody else---I see the hand of God in everything, and it fills me with joy.

God’s lessons are hard and they hurt, but the joy He gives is deep and it does not run out. I am not living for this life, which is a vapor that will not last---I am living for eternity; I am living for the Almighty God who has saved me.