The Chase Chapter Seven: Help in the daily battle

I like the little summary of what my life sorta is at the beginning of the chapter, although the story isn't my testimony the points in my life with that story still connect.

Although some of the questions they ask really don't relate to me, about how I think something about the last chapter, I do love the point they make after it.

Part of the rescue from sin is the ability to win your daily battles against it.

Then we get into being alive in God, which is something talked about, but not really discussed. The book to this point has made an emphasis behind being dead to sin.

But now that we are no longer under the influence of sin and its control and under the new influence of Christ, we can start to live a holy life.

'You can't live a holy life on your own. Christianity is not a do-it-yourself thing'.

I love that line, we really can't do it without God.

Then they talk about how we can pull of these victories in our daily battles, through the strength God gives us, and through our perserverance.

Holiness isn't just about following a list of do's- and don'ts it's about learning to listening and obeying God.

God doesn't push us around, but he works through us and gives us strength for our internal battle.

"Brent White" is alive to God and dead to sin.

We all need to put our faith in the word, and practice resisting sin's advances and temptations don't we?

The book makes a great answer on how we should do this.

'You count on the fact that every time your tempted, Christ will give you the strength you need to resist temptation and beat back sin.'

Remember God allows us to be tempted and provides a way out so we can grow to be better Christians.

God gives us the holy spirit to give us the strength to beat sin, and to convict us of it when we make mistakes (which we do, all the time).

The book makes a good point about practicing what you hear and read from the bible. It's one thing to listen to something, but another to act it out.

We need to depend on the holy spirit because we simply can't overcome our sinfulness on our own. The strength the holy spirit is their to help us.

The book gives us two ways to express our dependance on the holy spirit, both which I have been lacking to do lately;

Keep a constant intake of the scripture, and to pray for holiness.

This brightens my outlook on the chase for holiness, knowing that I have help.

-Brent

Business

Not buisness, but business, is that even a word?

Whatever it is in my dictionary.

Have you ever been stressed? If you said no, stop reading.

I'm totally sick, I mean, fever, cough, chest pain, bleeding eyes, the works.

So today was total crap for me, I mean I lasted through A&B block, but after my Magic show, I was totally wiped, I mean I was having hard time breathing, but I pressed on, but at a point of physical and mental health, I was dead, when I got home, I just collaspe on the floor, and woke up to a phone call.

Nothing special, wrong phone number, but I decided to call Ashley Mayer for being a big help today, I mean I don't think I would've been able to pull off that show had it not been with her and others help.

But I'm just wiped as well in my life period. Today was awful, but my life recently has just been really, really chaotic. Karyn you think your stay in Texas was bad with all those misfortunes over and over again, well I basically have been having that happen to me all week, I don't have the strength to keep going.

I want to stay home and sleep tomorrow, but I can't, Chemistry and Socials test on stuff I haven't studied. I want to study but I tried earlier and the thinking part hurt me so much, and stressed me out that when I just wanted to weep in pain, blood came from my eyes. Luckily I have medicine for that, but its just really bad.

The only thing that has kept me going today is the fact that God is with me, he doesn't mind if I complain every step of the way, he keeps his head up looking at all the high points of the day, and someparts of the day he kept reminding me of them, but right now I just want to put my complaints out there, you know, just get them off my chest.

My schedule is chaotic, provincials are coming up, and ha, guess what, I get to be sick as soon as school becomes super difficult. I just hope God's strength really is boundless, because its going to be impossible to do this without him.

Now before you post a comment let me just tell you, this is just a rant about the bad parts of my day.

When things calm down I'll keep posting 'Chase' blogs, but for now, I need to stop, I need to focus on one thing at a time, right now its finals and provincials. I just need to contact Jon somehow and explain this to him..

*sigh* I'm going to bed,

-Brent

PS. Karyn you rock for showing up and giving me support, same goes for all you guys.

^_^ Jen Champ doesn't read my blogs!

New song

I actually chorded this one out, because I wrote it whilst playing guitar.

Live for you - Brent White
Em C G
Oh, Lord I tried it my way, I tried it my way,
D
Not what I thought.
Em C G
I tried it their way, I tried it their way,
D
Not what I expected.

Em C G D
When I was lost you found me, in your open arms.
Em C G D
When I was broken and wounded, you healed me with your loving heart.
Em C G D
When I was tempted by Satan, you lead me on the righteous path.
Em C G D
When I was going to surely die, you took my place upon the cross.


(chorus)
G D Em C
Oh God, I wanna live for you, in everything I do, I'll live for you,
G D Em C
Oh God, I'll live bring you praise, all of my days, I will live for you.

If you want to see the actually chord layout you have to check out the forums.

-Brent

The Chase Chapter Six: The Battle for Holiness

"The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up."
-Romans 7:21

All the first verses to each chapter to "The Chase" were really good, but this one basically talks about our struggle with sin, and how it trips us up. You see I tried for awhile to live a holy life and I was on a spiritual high from it, but as soon as I fell back into my sinful life I had before I was easily trapped by the enemy. Don't worry I'm still pursuing a holy life, but for awhile, I didn't want anything to do with it, because I had tried and failed, and I kept telling myself what was the point in trying something that I'm going to end up messing up anyways?

But then I heard from God, that we don't have to be perfect for him to love us, he loves us just the way we are. I needed to hear it too.

Let's dig further into this chapter shall we.

The fact that we will face sin all of our days on earth is brought up here, and it is a tough struggle to face. A struggle that lasts a life time, not a kind of battle to fight in. But we know the outcome due to our salvation, so we should press against the enemy no matter how tough the battle may seem, we know that thanks to God and his son Christ Jesus the battle of sin controlling our lives is over, we need to now not let it tell us what to do, instead listen and obey to what God says and commands.

I like how this chapter sums up what battle they are talking about. The battle in our heart between 'the nature we have to sin' and 'the desire to live a holy life'.

Even though sin doesn't control us, it is still attacks us, and will control us if we let it.

'We've got to be on watch constantly, because sin is ready to make sure we don't come out ahead. It wants us to fail.'

I like how the book meantions a battle plan of how to win the war against sin.

It first begins with are heart. Our heart to me is basically our focus, but the book talks about your whole being and motives behind your actions as your heart. It says we can't understand our own heart, and agree to a point, but in my opinion we can put motives in our heart, for example the desire to live a holy life is a motive in my heart, even though I can't search it, I want to pursue holiness as a choice.

But anyway, the book talks about how sin can lay dormant in our hearts, and the only way we can know about it (usually it is hiding there without us knowing, b/c we don't classify it as a sin, or we don't think its a problem) is to allow the holy spirit to search our hearts and reveal our hidden sins to us. I know personally the holy spirit has revealed a bunch of sins that I really didn't classify as 'sins'. I have really hard times overcoming some of them, and others are easy to stop.

What the book meations next is allowing God to give you, your desires (his desires, your purpose, your focus.. etc.) and allow him to remove the desires that will result in you lead into sin. We still need to allow him to do so.

The book brings up the fact that we choose to sin, it's from our own desires that we are lead into sinning by our own actions. Not Gods, not Satan's. It's US who sin.

Sin is a crafty enemy and we need to be ready to take it down at any time. That's why memorizing scripture and praying continually is so important, it keeps us in constant connection to God. Like having him on the other line on the telephone whilst talking to someone, and when a desire to sin happens to come along into that conversation, we switch lines and ask God what to do.

I learnt another vital thing from this, don't get caught up into spritual highs and think you can never fall from them, what I mean is, don't think that just b/c your not doing a certain sin that you are invulnerable to sin. We can fall victim to sin anytime, and being cocky will take us off our guard to be tripped up by the enemy.

There was a man who lived in spain in the 17th century, he was the greatest fencer in the whole world, no man could beat him, but he was defeated when he let his ego get in the way of his fight.
He decided he was beating his opponet left, right, and center, but his opponet was using his right hand the whole course of the match, and stopped and said, that if he was so good he could beat him using his other hand, and he would use his other hand as well. Well the man let his ego get the best of him and agreed, not having any practice with his left hand was easily beaten by his left handed opponet.

I sometimes let my ego get in the way of a direct fellowship with God. Without that friendship we won't get some of the nessasary trade resources from our alley God and be beaten by our enemy when we are starved.

Hopefully you get that.

-Brent

Scary moment

I was walking home from Friday youth at Cariboo, and almost home, just as I turn the corner in my alley way, I see this huge dog.

I mean huge, it was a rottweiler bigger than me. It looked fierce.. I was like "oh crap" in my head.

It stood still, as I saw it, it could tell I was afraid of it ( great just what I need, it to smell my fear).

I'm usually not scared of big tough dogs, but ones at night, in a dark alley off a leash with no-one around, changed my outlook of this one.

Then I heard God say to stand still, thinking it was just something I heard on a nature show about black bears, I did it what I was thinking. I stood perfectly still, it still didn't move, this wasn't looking good.

I was going to shout out "God save me" but instead in my head I pretty muttered "In the name of Christ, leave me alone".. then it started to walk toward me, but in a creepy manner, very slowly it walked passed me, never taking it's eyes from my own, like it was staring into my soul.

After it was pretty much far away from me, I started to walk to my house in a calm manner, the whole time thanking God in my head for protecting me.

I turned to look back at the dog, and it was doing the same... creepy..

Anyway I went quickly into my house and breathed a sigh of relief.

Whilst on the toliet ( yes I needed to go really bad, and I'm not ashamed to bring the story to you honestly) I asked God what was the whole point of that test.

God pretty much said that the Dog was like Satan ready to pounce on me. He said b/c I stood still and let God protect me instead of running (which is human nature) I was safe for trusting in me. I could totally picture me trying to outrun that dog and failing horribly, but instead I stood still and let God protect me, even when I was scared out of my mind.

No further comments, as I nearly had a heart attack.

-Brent

The Chase Chapter 5: Change of Kingdoms

Ok seriously, had I read this part of the book before spiriling into a month of depressed defeat, I probably would've had my answers from the get go.

This is an awesome chapter so lets pull out some stuff in it that really spoke to me.

"Does it seem like the same issues and sins always come creeping back into your life?"

Yes

Seriously I love the questions this book asks b/c their realistic. Anyway the book tells us not to get comfortable with our sins, and why? B/c Christ put to death our sins so we would no longer be held back by them.

"We don't have to live like sin is controlling us... unfortunately for most of us, that freedom passes by us and we end up frustrated."

You see, choosing not to sin is exactly that, it's a choice we choose to take. It's not forced upon us, we aren't given no choice but not to (b/c, hello we've been talking about LIVING A HOLY LIFE! ding ding other choice) its a path we choose, far too often to find ourselves walking down. Why?

Why do we sin?

One answer I know, is b/c we enjoy doing it.

The book gives a bunch more, like it's what were raised into being natural. Like follow your parent's habits, we as humans follow the world into sinning, but we shouldn't be making excuses, ultimately we choose to sin, what we need to do is choose not too.

No matter how hard you try though, your old life of sin keeps creeping back though...

Exactly what got me depressed in the first place.

I love how the book describes us moving away from a country where sin is soverign, we don't have to let sin control us anymore, but we do, b/c why?

It's comfortable and what were used to. Other words, it's a habit, and like most habits other habits, its a bad one, we need to stop doing.

We need to rely on God to help us with beating our habit of sinning, and to not get beat down by it over and over, but to run into Christs open arms for help and future strength to win the battles to come.

We need to all spend more time in rehab learning to live in this new life, instead of going back to the comfortable old life. I didn't become a Christian to live an easy life, and if you did, you picked the wrong crowd to hang out with. We will be looked at differently, insulted for doing whats right, and mocked for standing up for what we believe in, by hypocritical society.

"We can wrap up all of this by remembering that God has made a way for us to be holy. Because of what Christ did on the cross, we've been freed from our sin's control and we can now resist it. The responsibility is ours- we must resist sin."

It reminds of a message I once wrote about how faith is established.

Basically I got this vision of me sitting down at the dinner table with God, and it was sorta a pot luck between the two of us. We each had to bring something, both had to bring something unique that the other couldn't bring. One was trust, and that comes from God, the fact we can trust in him, and we have to bring obeidience to go along with his trust, so that the turkey of living a faithful life tastes really good.

But ya, we have to bring our effort, God has already brought his son Jesus to die on the cross, for our freedom of sin. The buck has been passed to us, and don't worry, your going to drop it, but the best part is, God is there to help us pick it up again, just like he is always willing to pass the salt if our corn of obedience is a little dry.

-Brent

The Chase Chapter Four: The holiness of Christ

If I know about Christ's holiness I'll feel secure with him? When I first read this I was like, pfft, whatever, but as I come to see Christ's holiness I can truely trust him as that very best friend who will never let me down.

Why?
Because Christ was perfect, he never sinned, thank goodness too, I mean if Christ was a sinner, I doubt Christianity would have an impact as it has today, people could call us idiots for following a hypocrite. But Christ is not. He never sinned, he is perfect, and b/c of that perfectness he could do something I could never do, die in place of my sins.

I don't thank God enough for that, I think we all do, we tend to remember around easter or Christmas, but I think we need to thank God every morning for being saved.

It's rocking that Christ is perfect, b/c he is like the manual of how to be a christian. Come into a problem at school, "WWJD" and follow what he would do and it will please God.

Jesus' holiness was not just on the outside but in his heart as well, his motives were for God, everything he did was for bringing God glory. What really got me down was failing to be like Christ allowed my emotions get me into a hole of despair that helped Satan take me down. Luckly God was still rooted in me enough for me to call on him and his servants to help me get back on my feet.

God loves me the way I am, so I don't have to be wrapped up in failing God, b/c I'm going to do it alot, and it's just going to keep tripping me up. What I need to do is learn from my mistakes and look to the example of Christs holiness to guide me on what to do next time so I don't keep repeat sinning.

I need to have Christ blueprint of holiness shine in my life, and it requires me to stop being tramatized for making God upset, and to run into his open arms and allow him to guide me out of it, and to continuly show me what to do next.

I'm tired and my spelling went intot eh garbage

-Brent

The Chase Chapter Three: Holiness isn't an option

Because Christ died for me, I can be holy in the presence of God, b/c Jesus took away my sins, it's my salvation that allows me to be holy, but I still need to strive for holiness in everything I do.

Having holiness is needed for fellowship with God. Our salvation is not a get out of hell free card, God freed us so we could be holy. He died for our sins so we could be free from them and be able to acheive holiness. Holiness isn't necessary for Salvation but it should be a product of it. Which is something I seriously need to start taking seriously. If I'm going to be "Christ-like" I better be striving for holiness and turning away from my sins. Even the ones I've fallen into a trap of repetition too. I need to stop being cozy with some of the sins that control my life, there holding me back from true fellowship with God, no wonder I couldn't hear God clearly, I had let these sins control what I hear, and not only that, control my urges, emotions, and thoughts.

I'm glad that I don't have to be perfect, b/c that's pretty much impossible, but I also know that I have to have my heart set on God and chasing after his holiness if I want to bring him anything, including my praise for him.

I'm glad God disciples us, I love it when he slaps me in the face, b/c then my eyes are open and now I can see what I'm doing wrong and how I have to change it. This chapter talks about that, but it states something really good as well. God is with us in are walk to change our lives from sinful baggage we bring into the relationship and to live a life of holiness for him.

And so the chase continues, this time though, I'm going to listen to God and see my temptations from God's view before I sin, that way I can avoid making God upset in the first place.

-Brent

The Chase Chapter Two: The holiness of God

All Christians are called to live a holy life. Why?
Because God is holy, I'm called to live a holy life because God himself is holy and I want to have my character more like God's don't I? Don't you?

I like how this chapter refers to christian chameleons who well, blend in when the going gets tough, or they conform when around their friends, so they look cool. But we are called to stand up and stand out for God, not blend in.

I haven't had a large problem with this in my life, I'm really unique and mostly everyone knows that, but the one thing I've learned is as soon as we stand out, we have more eyes fixed on us, and that makes it far more tougher to live a holy life. Remember we are called to be holy 24/7 in everything we do.

So if God is holy then why do we bother blaming him for being unfair, I know I've done it a few times, but God can't be unfair, he is perfectly just, he's holy for goodness sake. God's clothes are always clean, never stained. Holiness is a part of God, and since we are made in the image of God we should strive to have holiness a part of our essence.

What's even cooler is God never makes mistakes, so you know when your hitting rock bottom, it's because God is allowing you to grow more like him.

:)

"Be holy, because I am holy" says God, means we have to look at sin seriously.

From God's perspective in fact, we know that God loves us, but we also need to know that he hates sin. Our sin, he hates it everytime we sin. We need to strive to do the right thing, even if it doesn't turn out the way we wanted it, it pleases God, which is a fact I tend to forget alot of the time.

We need to stop justifing our sins, even the "little" ones we do, like downloading music off the internet for free, and strive to be different from the crowd, strive to be holy.

I like how the book talks about how God will never put you in a position where the only way out is to sin. I remember a long time ago, Karyn was teaching us about how God can never tempt us of sin, but allows us to be tempted and that he provides a way out.

God calls us to be different b/c he is different.

"Sin isn't just distressing or defeating to ourselves, its displeasing to God."

The holiness of God is a high standard, but it's a perfect one, one that I'm definitly going to chase after and never quit on striving for, even if being holy doesn't turn out the way I want, it pleases God, and that is definitly worth doing.

-Brent

The Chase Chapter One: Holiness is for you.

After reading this first chapter this book really felt like God was laying the words directly on my heart. This was totally my story. I went to the first XLR:8 and actually did obey to what God asked of me, but then the idea of holiness (before I even read this book) showed me how unholy I truely was, and how hypocritical my attitude towards others was. I let it trip be up.

I love the line in this first chapter
"All too often, though, sin gets the upper hand. Obedience, along with holiness, goes out the window."

Seriously, how awesome is that, thats totally for me. I started to let my sin push me away from a life striving for holiness (for my birthright) and fell into a life playing Maple Story all day and everyday.

God expects us to live a holy life, ya I know that first hand, it's something God hit me with hard when I was pursuing his goal for my life and the lives around, we had to work on my character, it had to be more Christ like, and I had and still have real problems with holiness.

But since only God can tell me how to live my life (the right way) sin no longer has command over this vessal for the lord.

I love how the book points out, that we have to make ourselves humble throughout this chase, indicated in the part about the "holier than thou" attitude.

Holiness may seem impossible, in fact it is without God, so therefore I know that I can't say that after achieving it, that I accomplished anything, it was only with God's help that one can acheive holiness, and holiness then can definitly be used as a witness to everyone. It stregthens the body as well as evanglises, it's definitly worth chasing for.

This book is awesome and I'm not even done the first chapter yet.

Then the book talks about how this seemingly impossible task can give you excuses to not even pursue it anymore, haha, I get it God, you can stop now... As you can see that talks to me as well, I let myself fall into that trap first hand.

But this first chapter answers a great question:

What exactly is holiness?
"To be holy is to be morally blamless. It's being separated from sin and set apart for God."

Then they start quoting scripture in this chapter about holiness, a few of these verses I memorized in some of my earlier blogs, neat eh? Anyway I'm going to pull one that really speaks to me;

"Don't lazily slip back into these old grooves of evil, doing just what you feel like doing."

Oh crap... now that definitly is for me, and yes I used crap in a sentence.

Holiness requires not conforming to the world, well thats one thing I'm good at, you ask anyone if I'm normal, and they'll probably laugh in your face, but at least I have good practice of being able to stand out, and how to coupe with people persecution for it and such. Heck I've dealt with it b/c of faith before as well, but what I really need to work on is the humility factor behind that as well.

Then we go into addressing our problems with experiencing holiness.

-Sin hurts God (We don't see sin from God's view but more from our own)
-We've misunderstood living by faith( accepting personal responsibilty for our sin as well)
-Not taking all sin seriously (catagorizing sin)

The first one and third one I have problems with, but mostly the first one, for example giving into temptation feels good for the flesh ( I mean why would we do it in the first place if it didn't make our flesh feel good) but I always seem to forget at the moment of how my sin makes God feel, I always go crap, and apologize, but I take my eyes off the fact of how God took to me sining. If that last sentence made sense then the rest of my blogs will be your friends.

Anyway, this chase for holiness is something I really want to pursue, and need to be held accountable by you all, to keep it up, and please feel free to point out anything I'm doing that would be unholy, I mean I don't want to be walking around wearing a stained shirt all day without knowing it right?

-Brent

Worship the King

I was walking home from walking Ashley home, and I'm glad I did, because I was all like praising God without really realizing it, and I was just singing some songs that came from my heart,

One was about taking a step out in faith, the other was about evanglism, and the one that I liked the most out of random singing, was about the true heart of worship. When I sing worship songs, I always feel oblegated to sing along, but when I truely hear the words speak to me, I try to remain silent, to show God that my worship is not in my singing but in my heart. Where is should be, we bring God pleasure through our worship, but I often think that were too focused on singing good, to really look at the words of a song and see what God's lays on our hearts.

Well anyway, I decided to write down the lyrics, and record the tune of it, but the tune I'm keeping for myself so I don't forget the tune, but anyway, you guys can read these lyrics because I they refocused my heart on true worship, and I think sharing them might help ours in general.

---

Is your worship from the heart?
Or do you sing these words to fit the crowd?
Where is your heart?
Does your worship bring pleasure to the king?
Let me tell you,

Worship is for the Master,
bring your praise
your honest praise to him,
Worship is for the Master,
bring your praise
your honest praise to him,
Worship the King(x4)

These words I sing are not a farce,
I sing them straight from the depths of my heart,
I live my life to bring your praiseI will honour and worship you all my days

Worship is for the Master,
bring your praiseyour honest praise to him,
Worship is for the Master,
bring your praiseyour honest praise to him,
Worship the King(x4)

Take this time, to STOP,
access your heart,
Stop your singing and start your searching,
to bring your praise,your honest praise to him,
Stop your singing and start your searching,
to bring your praise,your honest praise to him,

Is your worship true?
Is it for your God?
Do you sing from your heart?
Just cry out,
Worship is for the Master,
bring your praise
your honest praise to him,
Worship is for the Master,
bring your praise
your honest praise to him,
Worship the King.

Well anyway, I know I'm not a very good song writer, but then again, if I cared about the quality of my song, instead of the quality of my heart while singing, I would've learned nothing from my own song.

-Brent

Hedgemaze

So an analogy God gave me today when talking with Ashley was pretty simple, and it summed up one of the things that was frustrating me to be tripped up by the enemy in the first place.

Picture this, your in a hedge maze and you have to find the exit, because the entrance way you came in closed up. What do you do? All you can see in front of you is hedge after hedge, and pathway that leads to pathway. But now picture this, your soaring like an eagle above the maze, and have a clear view of the whole maze, and know exactly where to go.

Well, thats the difference between our perpespective of our purpose and God's perspective. Well at least mine is. Because I'm idly lost in the hedgemaze. I caught a glismpe of the path to go, but that only got me through the first fork in the maze, and now I'm lost, walking aimlessly through the maze. I want to see things from God's perspective, but I don't, I wish God would give me more insight though, because I'm still running aimlessly through this maze, going through the right fork in the road at some points and yet also going down to dead ends as well.

One more note, that is technically off topic, the XLR:8 Book the Chase, I will be writting about each chapter here, and what I get from this book, in the coming weeks, I've read the first three already, but I want to start over, b/c the book kinda put me into a spiral of self defeat of how unholy I am.

-Brent

Trusting a stranger before trusting a king.

So one of the visions I was talking about, I decided to write down, and I talked with Ashley Mayer about it, well I talked to her about alot of things, but anyway,

So I was still frustrated with God, and how I feel he has just up and abandoned me, (right at this moment, I don't know what to think) and I got this vision that didn't make alot of sense, and if I can remember what all of it meant, I'll talk about it.

So here we go,,

I was walking either to or from the skytrain station at Braid, and I saw a man who was sitting alone on the bench near the bus depot, who you could tell was upset.

I decided to go over and talk with him, find out what was wrong really. I asked if anything was wrong, he just remained silent and didn't speak, looked very gloomy and upset ( the posture of the guy is what gave it away). I asked if I could help him out. He replied "Help, why would I need it?". I started to discuss about how if he opened up and told me what was going on that I could help. "I can deal with this myself" he said. "You've tried walking that path for far too long, and look where it has got you, at a dead end." I replied. He asked why he should trust me. I replied you have to trust a stranger before you can trust a king.

The vision ended there, and I realized that I was really the person sitting on the bench, and the man who walked over to help was Jesus. You see, I have been caught up with my defeat that I just wanted to take the easy route and mope on a bench like the man in this story. It was only before I actually discussed my problems with Ashley Mayer today that I finally could understand this. I tried, fell off the horse, and went back into a routine of doing something easy, like playing Maple Story 6 days straight. But you see, I don't see things from God's perspective, I don't see God face to face, right now, as the king upon the throne, I see him as the stranger who is trying to help me get back on the horse, I tried to shoo him away, but persistance and love eventually got me to begin to open up. We have to trust Jesus as a stranger before we can trust him as a King right? He is the good samartian in this story who gains are trust through love, and as we realize who he truely is, we come to respect him as a King.

Hopefully that makes sense. I think Ashley remembers some of the insights I said when I discussed it with her, b/c I don't remember them all. I might have missed some, oh well.

-Brent