Well it's been a little while since I've posted anything, so I figured I'd give you all a quick update.
Things have been going great here, and God has been continuing to teach me and move in my life. We're kinda on a wave of hard weeks followed by easier weeks, with major prophets one week, followed by a couple minor prophets the next. Right now we've just started Jeremiah and will have our first teaching on Monday morning, which I'm really looking forward to. After just reading the book a couple times, my first impression has been how amazing Jeremiah's faith and endurance were to keep preaching even though nobody was listening to him and were persecuting him for preaching against them and preaching a message of judgment for their continuous turning away from God. I can't wait to dig in a little deeper and really see the full message that God wants to bring me through this book.
Last week we did Micah and Joel, which were both great small prophets, but I think I enjoyed Micah the most. Micah was considered kinda like a little Isaiah. He had a similar message to him, but most likely operated outside of Jerusalem and didn't have the same type of access to the king as Isaiah was. He did bring a similar message though, in that he spoke against the injustice that was happening among the people and among the leadership, and of course, about their coming judgment and the restoration that would come. The main thing that I got out of Micah was regarding leadership and the injustice that was happening within the religious leaders as well as the rulers of the people. It really showed me the importance of being a godly leader and of always looking to God to show you how to be a godly leader and also the importance of having people around you that will help keep you accountable and will help ensure that you are leading in a godly way.
The week before, we did Isaiah, which was a tough book for me, and was actually the first book that I didn't completely finish. My goal in SBS had been not to let this happen, so I was pretty disappointed, but it was something that God helped me accept and really taught me through.
The good part of it was that I was still able to interpret the entire book and was able to do my final application, but I wasn't able to all the insides on my charts and I missed about half of the New Testament references in the book, and there's a lot of them because Isaiah is the most quoted OT book in the NT. The neat thing was that God really taught me a lot about humility through not finishing the book and through being able to accept that I wasn't going to finish and changing my goal to reflect that so that I would still be able to get something out of it and not just go into auto-pilot trying to finish it. For me, this is a pretty big thing because I've had issues with being performance focused and a bit of a perfectionist in the past, so the fact that I was able to give that up and say that I was alright with not finishing so that I could really try to seek God in the text instead of just trying to power through it and not getting anything out of it was a pretty big deal to me and really showed me how much God had taught me through it.
The other lesson that God taught me, through my small group leader and one-on-one Brent, was that although I am a great finisher and always work hard to the very end and won't quit - which was something I was happy with myself about because I didn't just give up and accept not finishing the book, but finished it as well as I could - I don't always work hard throughout the whole process, especially in the early stages of big books. I tend to be one of those, work well under pressure guys, which is good, but God really showed me that I need to also learn to have the discipline to go hard all the way through and to have the sense of urgency that I have at the end all the way through as well. I also learned that I need to set myself up to be able to work hard, which I didn't do in this book because I stayed up to watch the Falcons game on Sunday night, and I ended up getting a little sick because of it and wasn't able to work as hard as I would have been able to if I got enough sleep.
So although I didn't finish and failed the book, I still was able to get a lot out of it and God really taught me a lot about myself, which really is a huge part of SBS, but I'm definitely not going to let it happen again and will learn from my mistakes (that's the good part of SBS, there's always another book to put what you learned into practice).
Starting tomorrow, we will officially be into week 6 of SBS, and I will only have a month and a half left in Taiwan. I still can't believe how fast it has been and it's hard to believe that I will be leaving my family that I've had here the last 7 months, but all good things must come to an end I guess. I've been trying to spend as much time with my classmates and to go for lunch with a lot of people in this term so that I can really connect with people and we can bless each other and speak into each other's lives, which has been awesome and I hope to do it as much as possible over the last month and a half. I'm also starting to have church with some guys on Sunday mornings in the coffee shop near our place where we just read through part of the bible a discuss what jumps out at us. Today was my first time joining them, and it was awesome. We went through Romans 1-7 and had some awesome discussions about it. The discussions that I have with people here is something that I'm going to miss so much because I've been able to learn so much from my fellow classmates just through discussing what we've been learning.
I was hoping to finally know what is happening after SBS for this update so I could let you all know, but unfortunately things are still up in the air. The only update that I can give you guys is that I am no longer doing the Titus Project (where we go teach the bible in 3rd world countries) after SBS as I had planned. I had applied to Titus, but I heard that they probably weren't going to be able to accept everybody, and since I wasn't sure I would be able to do it or not depending on when the Biblical Core Course that I'm planning on staffing in Oxford, NZ starts, I figured I would withdraw my application so that someone who will be doing it for sure could have my place. Also, as I been praying about it, and even when I originally applied, I just really felt that God was taking me in a different direction and that I wasn't supposed to do Titus at this time.
So right now I am still waiting on my acceptance with Oxford, as well as waiting to find out how it's all going to work out with me going there, but I'm just trusting that God has it in His hands and that He will work it out the way that He has planned. Please be praying that I will have peace while I wait to hear from them and that it won't distract me from my work at all.
Anyways, this ended up being a longer post than I planned, as usual, so I should wrap it up, but I hope that you are all doing great and that you're keeping warm as winter comes. Things have gotten a little cooler here, which is awesome because I no longer sweat just sitting around my house, but it's still fairly warm when the sun is out and I was still able to get out surfing with surf ministry this weekend. I will definitely update you all when I know more about the future and how it's going to look.
God bless
Things have been going great here, and God has been continuing to teach me and move in my life. We're kinda on a wave of hard weeks followed by easier weeks, with major prophets one week, followed by a couple minor prophets the next. Right now we've just started Jeremiah and will have our first teaching on Monday morning, which I'm really looking forward to. After just reading the book a couple times, my first impression has been how amazing Jeremiah's faith and endurance were to keep preaching even though nobody was listening to him and were persecuting him for preaching against them and preaching a message of judgment for their continuous turning away from God. I can't wait to dig in a little deeper and really see the full message that God wants to bring me through this book.
Last week we did Micah and Joel, which were both great small prophets, but I think I enjoyed Micah the most. Micah was considered kinda like a little Isaiah. He had a similar message to him, but most likely operated outside of Jerusalem and didn't have the same type of access to the king as Isaiah was. He did bring a similar message though, in that he spoke against the injustice that was happening among the people and among the leadership, and of course, about their coming judgment and the restoration that would come. The main thing that I got out of Micah was regarding leadership and the injustice that was happening within the religious leaders as well as the rulers of the people. It really showed me the importance of being a godly leader and of always looking to God to show you how to be a godly leader and also the importance of having people around you that will help keep you accountable and will help ensure that you are leading in a godly way.
The week before, we did Isaiah, which was a tough book for me, and was actually the first book that I didn't completely finish. My goal in SBS had been not to let this happen, so I was pretty disappointed, but it was something that God helped me accept and really taught me through.
The good part of it was that I was still able to interpret the entire book and was able to do my final application, but I wasn't able to all the insides on my charts and I missed about half of the New Testament references in the book, and there's a lot of them because Isaiah is the most quoted OT book in the NT. The neat thing was that God really taught me a lot about humility through not finishing the book and through being able to accept that I wasn't going to finish and changing my goal to reflect that so that I would still be able to get something out of it and not just go into auto-pilot trying to finish it. For me, this is a pretty big thing because I've had issues with being performance focused and a bit of a perfectionist in the past, so the fact that I was able to give that up and say that I was alright with not finishing so that I could really try to seek God in the text instead of just trying to power through it and not getting anything out of it was a pretty big deal to me and really showed me how much God had taught me through it.
The other lesson that God taught me, through my small group leader and one-on-one Brent, was that although I am a great finisher and always work hard to the very end and won't quit - which was something I was happy with myself about because I didn't just give up and accept not finishing the book, but finished it as well as I could - I don't always work hard throughout the whole process, especially in the early stages of big books. I tend to be one of those, work well under pressure guys, which is good, but God really showed me that I need to also learn to have the discipline to go hard all the way through and to have the sense of urgency that I have at the end all the way through as well. I also learned that I need to set myself up to be able to work hard, which I didn't do in this book because I stayed up to watch the Falcons game on Sunday night, and I ended up getting a little sick because of it and wasn't able to work as hard as I would have been able to if I got enough sleep.
So although I didn't finish and failed the book, I still was able to get a lot out of it and God really taught me a lot about myself, which really is a huge part of SBS, but I'm definitely not going to let it happen again and will learn from my mistakes (that's the good part of SBS, there's always another book to put what you learned into practice).
Starting tomorrow, we will officially be into week 6 of SBS, and I will only have a month and a half left in Taiwan. I still can't believe how fast it has been and it's hard to believe that I will be leaving my family that I've had here the last 7 months, but all good things must come to an end I guess. I've been trying to spend as much time with my classmates and to go for lunch with a lot of people in this term so that I can really connect with people and we can bless each other and speak into each other's lives, which has been awesome and I hope to do it as much as possible over the last month and a half. I'm also starting to have church with some guys on Sunday mornings in the coffee shop near our place where we just read through part of the bible a discuss what jumps out at us. Today was my first time joining them, and it was awesome. We went through Romans 1-7 and had some awesome discussions about it. The discussions that I have with people here is something that I'm going to miss so much because I've been able to learn so much from my fellow classmates just through discussing what we've been learning.
I was hoping to finally know what is happening after SBS for this update so I could let you all know, but unfortunately things are still up in the air. The only update that I can give you guys is that I am no longer doing the Titus Project (where we go teach the bible in 3rd world countries) after SBS as I had planned. I had applied to Titus, but I heard that they probably weren't going to be able to accept everybody, and since I wasn't sure I would be able to do it or not depending on when the Biblical Core Course that I'm planning on staffing in Oxford, NZ starts, I figured I would withdraw my application so that someone who will be doing it for sure could have my place. Also, as I been praying about it, and even when I originally applied, I just really felt that God was taking me in a different direction and that I wasn't supposed to do Titus at this time.
So right now I am still waiting on my acceptance with Oxford, as well as waiting to find out how it's all going to work out with me going there, but I'm just trusting that God has it in His hands and that He will work it out the way that He has planned. Please be praying that I will have peace while I wait to hear from them and that it won't distract me from my work at all.
Anyways, this ended up being a longer post than I planned, as usual, so I should wrap it up, but I hope that you are all doing great and that you're keeping warm as winter comes. Things have gotten a little cooler here, which is awesome because I no longer sweat just sitting around my house, but it's still fairly warm when the sun is out and I was still able to get out surfing with surf ministry this weekend. I will definitely update you all when I know more about the future and how it's going to look.
God bless
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