COFFEE! Biblical Counseling! MatSoD!

Alrighty, here is a brief run down of todays events:

Body:
I had a shake an energy drink for breakfast, and Chinese food for lunch/dinner.
I went to my yoga class for today's work out.
Overall I think I could have done without the Chinese food, tomorrow will be better!

Mind: I didn't do too much reading today. No interesting blogs to report or anything really. We are discussing Heidegger in my Roots of Existentialism Class. His thoughts are pretty interesting...his Nazism, not so much. Basically today we talked about the struggle between inauthenticity and authenticity. The closer one gets to becoming authentic the more anxious one becomes, and the more difficult it is not to slip back into the inauthentic. The Professor drew a diagram on the board showing that we can never really reach true authenticity, but that we can become approximate. In my copy of the chart I wrote God underneath the term authenticity because God is really the only authentic being (in the sense that he knows himself and is not capable of losing this knowledge, or being anything except himself).

I also had a healthy discussion about the place of politics (or lack thereof) in a Christian's life. What are your thoughts on this? I'm of the opinion that politics don't really matter too much.

Listened to III by Maylene and the Sons of Disaster today while I was at work.

"Mama said I was a no good son
I think it's time for me to make my mark
Headlines and police cars...
A tragedy from the start"

Soul: I finished reading Ezra today. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of this short book. My favorite part is when it was talking about the old men weeping over the old temple while the young men praised the foundation of the new temple. It's a very powerful image and I think there is a lot of depth to that passage that I need to unearth and explore. Thank God that Jesus is our temple that shall never be destroyed!

I had a lot of interesting conversations today. I talked with Lisa, my fiancee, about the vision we have for our future family and different sins or issues that might prevent that from coming to fruition. I had a talk with Miles and Doug about things that are going on in their lives. That was a lot of fun. God gives us a lot of tough decisions to make, but he gives us the wisdom to make them too. I had some great discussion about Biblical Counseling too. I think it's really clarifying to talk with people you might not necessarily see eye to eye with. Doug made an interesting point about how Christian Counselors should approach the unsaved that I think I need to chew on for a while.

Repurposing of the blog...

"The Cure for Pain is in the Pain
and it's there that you'll find me
till again, I forget and again
you remind me..."

and again,

"Shame is the anchor tied around my ankle
Shame keeps me low and close to the bottom
Where I am the least..."


I feel like this is the level I see at. Everything, and everyone is coated in the unspeakable shame of existence. A shame of living that doesn't know how to live. A living that is death. These are where my thoughts dwell and I can make sense of the world. People tell me about this thing called "joy in the Lord" and in truth, I'm not sure I quite understand what that means. Is that something I hav experienced but just don't remember. All I recall is the quite ache of melancholy existance. Not unstatisfied, but never fully quenched. And so in my honest moments, this is where I find myself. I think it all stems from living my life inside of myself too much. I was telling my fiancee today that I value ideas more than i do people. I think that is a bad place to be. So, I'm trying to be more practicle. More present, so to speak, in the sense that I want my thoughts to be more than thoughts. I want to Try to find what it means to turn my living into dying in the Christian sense where it has meaning and is based on something, rather than the earthly sense where it is something we are simply thrown into.

I say all that to tell you that as of tomorrow, I'm going to repurpose this blog to be more fully rounded. Before I was just focusing on my thoughts, but that is not what we as Christians are to be soley about. So I want to focus on the body, the soul, and the mind.

The Body:
I want to monitor my diet better, so I'm going to be letting you all know about my failings/victories in that area of life.
I want to do the same with exercise as well.
I want to do this in order to become a more disciplined person who is in control of his body.

The Mind:
I want to talk about things that are discussed in my classes. This won't be an everyday thing, more like an 'if it's interesting' type thing.
I'm also going to try and post a book review every few weeks or so.
I still want to keep posting thoughts on different subjects and things, because I don't think I could ever really stop doing that. It just can't be the main focus anymore. Life is multilayered.
I'll be posting blogs of interest. Assorted things that are interesting around the interwebs.
I also want to keep you all informed with my different musical listenings, so I'll be trying to post what I've been listening to lately.

The Spirit:
I'll be posting different notes I take while studying the bible. Mostly, I'm just doing this so I can start learning how to share things I think with people.
I'll be posting notes on different books I'm reading (for pleasure) for the above mentioned reasons as well.
Life lessons- thats pretty self explanitory
bible memorization (weekly)
and I want to post one of Jonathan Edwards Resolutions that I would like to work on every week.