The Gap

Emotions vs Logic

Perhaps the greatest conflict any of us will ever encounter will be between these two forces. The desire to make a decision from an emotional foundation verses following the common sense that God has given us.

It seems to me that the gap spanned betwixt these oft opposing forces is not merely a difference of right or wrong, easy or hard, fun or boring, selfish or selfless, but more a tangible representation of each individual's need for God and the Holy Spirit.

So many of us struggle in our lives between these two factors and often we fail to be completely satisfied with either choice. If we decide from an emotional standpoint we are often rewarded with immediate happiness, but eventually the emotions fade away and we are left with the frustration that we could have chosen differently. If we decide from a logical standpoint we understand the our happiness will come eventually, but the immediate results are frustrating and result in constant questioning of what we might have missed out on.

How can we ever get to the point were we consistently make balanced decisions that we are completely happy with?

Well, I believe that is what the Holy Spirit is for. That is where the peace that surpasses understanding comes in. That is where the proverbial "God shaped hole in your heart" can be seen.

This is the way God made us. He intended for us to be incomplete. The human machine was designed to be fueled by God and God only. Of course this requires a relationship with the Holy Spirit if it's going to happen. That's the actual battle that more of us need to recognize that we're fighting.

Good and Evil

Being a youth pastor, I'm often faced with questions about the reality of faith and religion. Questions about the inconsistencies of Christians, questions about heaven and hell, and the occasional conversation about faith in action. Oh, that we had more conversations about that!

Through these conversations I've found that it can be quite difficult to explain the realities wrapped up in these issues without first establishing a common foundation of belief from which to launch such discussions. One of these foundational beliefs that I find most people take for granted is the mere existence of Good and Evil. We say we believe in their existence, but most of the time what people really believe is that good things happen and bad things happen. So few people want to ponder the reality that Good and Evil exist with or without the corresponding actions that we associate with them.

This issue has recently become even more obvious to me through a conversation with a young man at my home the other night. He asked me, "If sin had not yet been committed in the world, how was sin introduced then? I mean...if they didn't even know what sin was, how did they know how to commit sin? I know they were "tempted", but it doesn't make sense to me." It was after he explained his thoughts further that it hit me...

We say we believe in evil, but we mostly just believe in sin...

What we fail to want to think about is that evil, pure unadulterated evil, EXISTS. It exists with or without actions. It exists in a spiritual world that we cannot see. It existed before the first act of sin, and although we're not quite sure how this world will play out, I'm quite sure that evil will continue to exist after all is said and done. That final existence is a place most people call hell.

True hell, to me, is not necessarily the existence of evil, but the absence of good. Conversely, true heaven is not the existence of good, but the absence of evil. Not that I know what heaven will be like, but to me heaven will not be complete until evil is extinguished and defeated.

The Fine Print

Lately, as I've engaged more and more with God and trying to put Him back into the equation. As I've tried to see Him in the Liquid Sunshine of life, I've found that my faith has been built in just about every situation.

One recent example is found in the story of one of the youth in my youth group that is in the hospital with severe Mono. So severe that he had to have his spleen removed...

For the past few weeks this young man has been in and out of the hospital trying to fight off this thing, and finally, last week they went back into the hospital because he had severe pain in his stomach. Come to find out, his spleen had ruptured internally and was swelling and about to start bleeding poison into his body. Thus, they decided that they needed to remove it.

Well, being the great man of paste and powder (I mean faith and power) that I am, I went to the hospital and prayed for him. I then went home and spent 2 to 3 hours in prayer and wrestling with the Lord. In praying for him to be healed, I kept praying that he would be able to keep his spleen, and I felt like the Lord kept saying no. (I won't go into why I felt God saying no, but I will say that I couldn't blame Him for not being willing to heal this young man given the faithless generation that exists in our country.)

Anyway, I kept asking God to have mercy on this young man and not to hold the sins of others against him. After about another hour of prayer, I felt like I heard the Lord say, "OK, he can keep his spleen." As I get more and more in tune with the Holy Spirit, I have more and more confidence that I'm actually hearing Him correctly, so, after I heard God say this, I went upstairs to bed and told my wife that God said "OK".

The next morning I woke up and went to the hospital and found out that this young man had the surgery last night, and that his spleen was removed in the nick of time. I was happy that he was OK, and I was thankful to the Lord for the fact that they caught this problem before the spleen ruptured inside his body (that would have caused many more problems), but inside I was disappointed and confused. I mean, I truly felt like the Lord had honored my prayer and answered me clearly. And then the following day I find out that my guy still had to have the surgery. What do you do with that?

Well, when I went to the hospital the first time, this young man's family had gone home and I couldn't talk with them to find out any more info. The next day I came back and he wasn't accepting any visitors. So I spent 2 full days wondering why God had said yes, and yet the surgery still went through. I eventually came to the conclusion that I heard wrong in the first place and that I still had a long way to go in hearing the Holy Spirit.

But then I went in to visit again and this time he was accepting visitors and his mom was there. As I was talking to her, she told me something that would normally seem weird, but not necessarily amazing. Remember that I felt like I heard the Lord say, "Ok, he can keep his spleen," well, come to find out, 10% of all people have two spleens and this young man was one of those 10%. When the surgeons removed his spleen they found a second smaller one hiding behind the swollen first one, and what is normally an off-the-wall abnormality became a faith-building miracle for me.

You see, 14 years ago God had answered my prayer (or maybe He even created the second one after the prayer), and in the normal "God fashion", He answered my prayers in a way that I would have never thought of.

Now, many people would look at the fact that he had two spleens and would say, "wow, that's fortunate." Even many Christians would look at this story and reason in the favor of chance and luck. But I choose to reason in the favor of God. I choose to believe that God answered my prayers, and the prayers of others. Although I can't touch and feel the move of God like I would be able to if He would have miraculously healed this young man right in front of the surgeon's eyes; I can see the results of God's work, and choose to see Him in the situation.

My hope is that you read this story and choose to do the same. If you're a Christian, don't just look at life through the eyes of reason and fate. While both of them are important and given to us by God, choose to look at life through the eyes of faith. Choose to reason in the favor of God and see him in the Liquid Sunshine.