I'm sitting here trying to hold back tears. I'm a pretty manly man, who used to be very sterile and macho. I cry over the Word. I cry to God. I tear up a bit when the Lord presses something to my heart. Today's one of those .... awesome days. Everything is special about a day if it's spent with God, no matter how lowzy or awesome the events.

I've avoided posting here on tBlog because I just felt like I had to have something to say. But as Christian, whenever we do anything, it bears an exceedingly eternal weight of glory towards God. I heard Paul Washer quote Romans 3:23 earlier today, and said, not only is it that we have transgressed the law, but we have fallen short of the glory of God. We've been redeemed by Christ, and so we are offerings to God to the praise of the glory of His grace, showered upon us today and on into eternity. Man... Just... Wow. Sometimes the Lord gives such 'high thoughts' as my friend Joseph puts it. And I try to meditate on them, and they disappear. I've been keeping an offline journal, in a black notebook, because I want it to be a prayer closet between the Lord and I. But I can't help the sense that whenever I take something outside of the temple of my body, outside of my mind, and externally write it down, I'm speaking to the whole of the Church. The whole body is addressed, and my pen is my microphone. If I do anything on this earth to glorify God, I pray that the church is helped. People the Lord has saved like me who are struggling with holiness, trying to fathom the awesomeness of the mystery of Christ within us, trying to resist temptations and defeat trials and stay in the Word, who are struggling to stay away from legalism and to keep to relationship with God, who have these strange desires that weren't there when they were in the world - desires that others be saved, for bible knowledge, for fellowship, to go to church, to pray hard, to hear preaching, to say, 'Amen!'

Listening to Leonard Ravenhill right now. There's a video on Biblecia.com where it's just Joseph and I giving a faith statement for the website on video, talking about reasons why we prayed for Biblecia.com - I found out in the middle of the video that Leonard Ravenhill was dead, and died in 1994. Man, that was heavy. I thought he was still alive, living on social security. He was so adamant and forward in what he preached.

He's preaching right now on the Ark of the Covenant being carried, and when it slipped off of the cart and fell, a man went to grab it with his hand and the Lord immediately took him out - immediately he was smitten - no one touches the Ark. Leonard Ravenhill uses that as an illustration to say that today we try to paint and dress up the Ark of God - we try to dress up the Gospel. We try to make the words a little bit more easy (watering down the medicine to take away its funny taste, and at the same time taking away its curitive properties). All he did was try to steady the Ark of God - the ground it would have hit has never disobeyed God. God says produce fruit, God says drink in the rain, God says quake, and it always obeys. God says to man, Repent! And man says, no. We try to make the Gospel more acceptable, putting a little bit of humanism, organization in it, flesh in it. Leonard Ravenhill said, "You know, there's nothing this generation needs more than some old fashioned hellfire preaching. I'm sure of that." We need no lose sight of the wonder of God's salvation - we need to get rid of steadying the Ark of God these days. "These are modern days." Human nature hasn't changed - it's still a sinful nature, and it still needs God. It may be 2007, but it's the same wicked heart. "I think the biggest shock we'll see in eternity is how very little we used of the available power of God." "Workshops, workshops, workshops. The hardest work in the whole world is prayer! ... God will not stand for mediocrity!" "Who's touching the Ark?" "My dear, look, the first commandment is not, Thou shalt be a soul winner. The first commandment is You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength." We shouldn't be asking how to make the church grow, but how to take the church deeper - it shouldn't be 3 miles wide and only an inch deep. We're not to organize it, paint it up, or make it look more attractive. If they're not attracted by the glory of God in His mercy... Why should they come? Isn't Jesus Christ enough for them? He was enough for the apostolic church. Why make the churches seeker-friendly? "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God." According to Romans 3:10, there is no seeker - so who are we going to be friendly to? I love that sermon! Those are the things I was listening to around the time I'd heard it, a little while ago.

I've been praying about diligence in studying for school these days because of Organic Chemistry and Cell Biology and Genetics, some hard courses that will require a lot of attention. To this day, I've barely opened the books, have read only the first page of one, one remains in its plastic, and the other I just opened a half an hour ago. It's the 2nd week of classes and it's almost over. I have problems with study habits. And instead of studying, I've committed myself to the Lord in prayer about it and searching scripture. I journal it, but one of the greatest things I found and wrote was that the discipline needed to sit down and study, and not be lead astray with distractions, isn't found in self-imposed rules or laws or principles or guidelines, but it's first a fruit of the Holy Spirit: self-control, or temperance. Also known as discipline. It comes through the Holy Spirit, as a fruit, which means that it comes through spending time with God in relationship, in prayer, in bible study. That as I conform to the will of God and bring every thought captive to obey Him, that fruit of self-control and temperance in study comes from the Holy Spirit. Amazing. Another is the centrality of what I'm studying in school: everything that they can teach me, God founded, created, ordained. It says in Job that knowledge is disclosed by God, and proverbs is filled with proverbs that admonish the careful attention to and sacrificial purchasing of knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and in seeking discernment, correction, and instruction. I've been praying that the Lord will put those things in me - because it just seemed like I couldn't study because in my mind I didn't believe in the studying I was doing - which is funny, because I've gotten through 3 years of school without that troubling me, and I get a sense of a reality of how much that that thought isn't from God right around test time, when I frantically pray and say I was foolish to put off studying.

Another area of my walk with Christ is my eating habits. The blood of Christ must permeate all of my being, and every thought that God has put me steward over must be brought into obedience, captive to His will. Need to exercise, get better sleep, and eat better. Please pray for me on this, you guys. And for my sister Marley. Well, I should go to bed. It's 11:58PM - I'm already doing a poor job at getting to sleep on time.

Please pray for Matt to get a job. Cheers!

Isaac D.