Warrior Life

Abba, Father, would You purposefully put me in danger?

Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that there is a battle raging. Domesticated Christians are far too willing to abdicate the batle for the soul of the world… We spend our lives emphasizing our personal development and spiritual well-being. We build churches that become nothing but hiding places for the faithful while pretending that our actions are for the good of the world.

…In contrast, Jesus calls us to a different way. He tells us this is a battle of kingdoms… We are called to be warriors of light in dark places.

p. 108-108, The Barbarian Way by Erwin Raphael McManus.

Abba, Father, would You purposefully put me in danger?

“Yes.”

Counter The Culture

I would not want riches
If I was poor in love
and did not have the heart to give it all away

I would not want a weary soul
That had lost sight of Your goal
But one that had given all to save the Harvest

I would not want tired feet
Because I walked away from Thee
But ran the miles to bring Good News to dark lands

I would not want Your grace for me
To lead me to complacency
But grace that drives me onwards to love You

I would not want another way
To steal this heart, lead me astray
For what else in this world could I live for?

by Tuuli Platner, 2009.

Love With All Your Mind

Apply Your heart to instruction
and your ears to words of knowledge.
Proverbs 23:12

A few years ago theology never even crossed my mind, and I bought a lot of Christian books based on cover and not on content. And when reading them I only managed to finish the biographies; I had a short attention span and little perseverance when it came to non-fiction. (Nor did I have any appreciation for them, thinking at the time that I knew a lot!)

I rated sermons on how well they were delivered or whether the application at the end was challenging enough. And the way I read stories for years involved skipping over everything bar the parts with dialogue. It made for some confusing narratives, to be honest, and re-reading the Narnia books the second time around revealed some amazing new parts I could not remember in the slightest from the previous reading!

Now you’ll find that most (hopefully all) Christians agree it is important to read your Bible. You’ll also find that a lot of Christians believe it’s important to go further afield and read theological books as well. I’m in a camp that believes that we should be reading even more than that.

My mind goes back to a story about Jim Elliot, a missionary killed by the tribesmen in Ecuador he was reaching out to. While studying in university he ate healthily in accordance with his ideas ‘about preserving a rugged body for missionary work in the future’ (Shadow of the Almighty, 1958, p. 39), and took up wrestling, believing that ‘participation in some sport contributed to his training as a soldier in Jesus Christ’  (p. 45). While wrestling wasn’t a ‘Christian’ endeavour, the reasoning behind it was for Christ’s glory – if not in the present, then in the future.

I believe there should be a similar motivation in what we read – we should learn what this world believes, and it should send us back to the Bible to confirm and reaffirm our own beliefs.

We should learn about effective communication and marketing, so that our churches can break through and capture the attention of an advertising-saturated audience.

We should learn about design and aesthetics, so our creations will reflect the beauty of our Creator and raise people’s eyes heavenward.

We should learn business and finance management so that we can be wise stewards of our time and money.

We should learn new languages to communicate the truth more clearly to others and grow in our awareness of cultures other than our own.

But in all this, it is important to remember Paul’s warning that ‘knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God.’ (1 Cor 8:1-3).

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Further Reading
If you so wish!

The Art of Non-Conformity – Hints, life-hacks, tips, inspiration.

The Well-Read Christian – Why saints should read.

Between Two Worlds – Collection of mostly-Christian blog posts, articles, book reviews, videos and interviews.

Are You Easily Edified? – Challenging post from the Rebelution blog.

An eg. of The Thought Process of Tuuli

I have been thinking for a while that I need to write a new post before the dust begins to gather on this blog. I wasn’t sure exactly what to write though, as a lot has happened and most of it is difficult to put into words that are worth reading.

Still, I suppose I could write a brief overview of a few things.

One of the biggest things to happen has been the marriage of my best friends to one of the coolest guys out there (I know he’s cool, I spent 20 minutes moving his two BMX bikes from one room to the other, as well as his computer racing wheel and pedal controls. Plus he does rock climbing and stuff.) So the wedding went off without a hitch, no problems, and it was all so fun. Hats off to the best man to at least knowing what was happening all the time, I think I just went with the flow most of the time. I can’t wait to see how the rest of their lives turn out, there’s going to be exciting stuff out there!

This past week has led me to some interesting thoughts. Now, let me explain how my thought process works: it’s very random, often ideas sparked off by seemingly unrelated things, and usually no one else can understand why I come to the conclusions that I do. And, sometimes, those conclusions, when thought through once more, are not as intelligent or reasonable as they first appeared. But anyway, here’s the latest process of thought I have had:

So a few weeks ago one of my main focuses has been to see and learn how I can serve others and show them more of Jesus in me. Which is a seemingly great idea, but I found it incredibly difficult and I often failed.

Fast forward to last week, when the fan on my laptop began to buzz and sound a bit croaky. I decided to book an appointment at the Apple store to have it seen to, and when the day came I gave my computer a light dusting and then looked at the wallpaper on the desktop to decide exactly what to put up there.

Now, usually, there’s some beautiful scenery or such like that I enjoy looking at when my computer first boots up and the screen has yet to be  crowded by opened windows everywhere. But I found myself in a spiritual quandary – do I put up the usual pretty picture, or dig up the wallpapers I made a few years back that feature verses (quite prominently, too) that had inspired me? The question was, in essence, this: do I go for the subtlety of God’s creation or the unconcealed display of His Word? Or, to put it another way: Tuuli, are you embarrassed, or proud of your faith?

Now I’m sure there are many who would pick up on this as a very important point and who would now go on to describe the lesson learned from this realisation. But this is Tuuli-world here, and this new-found knowledge is not the point. No, the story continues:

So I chose a Word wallpaper that looked the nicest and headed into town for my appointment (which, halfway there, I realised was not that day at all, but the next day, and so I had to cancel it and have yet to have my fan seen to).

Fast-forward to yesterday when I was in Sunday worship and really thinking about a lot of things, tons of things, and my mind and my heart were being pressed down by all these things and I really knew that prayer was the only release – not to pray, but to be prayed for. I know there might not be a difference for some, but for me being prayed for is a powerful thing, and often others have the words and the spirit or that gifting that I do not, so their prayers can speak to an issue that mine cannot. But that, again, is not the point. It was afterwards, as I sang, that the verse on that wallpaper that I had put up onto my laptop for an appointment that I missed following on from a fan problem that developed after a weekend of trying to pour out my life into others’ in response to a resolution I had made a few weeks earlier came into my head:

Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted.
Psalm 46:10

It just about knocked me off my feet! All this time I was concentrating on myself, on how I could serve, how I could love, how I could bless others, when I should have been thinking about how I could serve, love and bless God – I figure, and I think I’m right, that once I’ve gotten round to loving and blessing Him then the loving and blessing of others will all fall naturally into place.

And He will be exalted.

My gosh, I love my God. He’s got patience for even my hair-brained thinking.

Today, also, something was repeated to me in one of the sites I read:

Are you easily edified?

It took a long time, but somehow I have been edified. I hope I continue to be, but perhaps more easily. Wouldn’t that be a great description of ourselves to have?

Times of Refreshing

So I went through a dry time for maybe the last two, three months, but recently God’s just slammed me with some awesome teaching and refreshment from his Word, and also demonstrating to me that often these dry times are not scheduled by Him into my calendar, but a result of not persevering in my pursuit of Him. And I wanna pursue Him! Here’s a list of the things that have been eye-openers for me lately:

Seeking God’s Face

A talk that was particularly influential in that was ‘Is He Enough (Ps 73)’ by Joshua Harris which you can find and download here – it’s under the New Attitude 2004 Conference at the very bottom.

Particularly cool in the message was a letter that Harris reads out from a girl who went from willing God to bless her plans to seeking His face and nothing else for three months – and being transformed by him within one. Totally exciting, and something I’m applying for the rest of the summer!

Not Seeking God’s Will

How controversial does this sound?! But trust me, it’s perfectly sound – another talk from the same conferences, it’s the Guy Talk (yeah, I crossed the gender-divide of conference talks, so sue me!) and I haven’t even finished listening yet but it’s really awesome. The title is Just Do it, by Kevin DeYoung, and it’s also found here under the Next 2009 Conference messages. It’s all about not seeking God’s will but just doing it – particularly interesting was that God rarely revealed a specific will to the disciples in the NT, and only when they weren’t specifically searching for it. Or something. It’s a very general quote, so I do apologise.

Other Resources

Kevin DeYoung name-dropped a couple blogs in his message, and I decided to check one out, Between Two Worlds by Justin Taylor, where there are multiple posts a day with book reviews, Christian resources, theological, philosophical articles and links to awesome stuff there. Through that I found a link to free PDFs of articles and books by DA Carson and have started to read Love in Hard Places, which should be good.

Entertaining Stuff

So I love Brooke Fraser’s music, and I read her blog, and in her most recent one, ‘Spelling Bee’, she writes of the differences between American- and British-English spelling and, I have to say, I’ve never come across anything clearer. If only this has been around earlier in my life!

Then I completed a funny survey that required me to write a haiku (5 syllables, 7, 5) about a time I was in a car during high school. Voíla:

Roll down the windows
Riding the wind with my hand -
Then arm eats a bush.

Finally, here’s the Birmingham weather forecast for the week:

So there’s a lot of random stuff here, but I like to write my thoughts down so that even if I forget them I can be safe in the knowledge that they will forever be on the web thanks to Google’s spiders…

PS Isn’t my header pretty? I just previewed this post and was overwhelmed by its beauty. Haha.