Wanting to Hear from You

Hey friends, 

I’ve had an interesting, busy and difficult few weeks.  I guess it is just that season in life, a lonely season. And today I was just thinking that I want to hear from you guys.  

 

I want to hear about your struggles. 

I want to hear about your triumphs. 

I want to listen to your question and objections with life. 

I want to hear your stories. 

I want to hear what makes you laugh, smile and cry. 

I want to hear your good and bad jokes. 

I want to hear about what God says to you. 

I want to hear about what you say to God. 

I want to hear your from YOU. 

 

Send me an e-mail with your stories at jjdhali@yahoo.ca. You’ve been faithfully listening to me, time for me to return the favor

Blessings, 

G VAN

In your presence.. .

Saying Goodbye

Today is a sad day.

We had a wonderful girl in my school and my congregation who was diagnosed with Leukemia. We banded together as a congregation and as a community praying for our sweet darling. Last night my sister in Christ went to be with the Lord.

Needless to say I’ve got a heavy heart and my heart breaks for my Pastor’s family who has lost a young daughter. What a terrible loss, it truly has devastated our community and needless to say those closely affiliated with our girl.

And this is not the only heartbreaking time, this year has been filled with trauma and death. And yesterday as I lay there I thought about death. What a terrible incident it is. We watch it in movies and brush it off, but truly when you think about it death is so permanent and its a complete annihilation of a person. 

Then I couldn’t help but think about how wonderful the promise of the Resurrection really is. The promise that we will see our lost again. The promise that we will live and breathe and be again. The promise that we will sing and dance with our Jesus. How profound is the love of God? How incredibly rich is His gift?

I also realized last night about how short life it. And yes, that sounds cliché, but seriously. Our job as Christians is a life and death matter. There is a sense of urgency in our mission. There is no time to dabble in sin, and no time to experiment in the profane. We are on a time limit and time is going fast, we must not live half heartily  just as we ought not to pray half heartily. Of course life will continue to be life and there will be things we don’t understand. But we must not hinder ourselves, we must run the good race, we must live and rest and breath in our Father’s grace. Because ultimately, when I see the hopelessness of death, I can;t help but realize that Christ is the only hope for mankind.

So I just wanted to leave you  guys with that. If you’re mourning right now, please grieve, and grieve in Christ. And please know that this world is not eternal, it and its pains will soon fall away  There is hope in Christ and in His Resurrection  And Lord I pray you’ll continue to lead us, comfort us and love on us. I love you Jesus. 

 

As for my darling sister, I will see you again one day.

 

 

A Lesson in Strife

So… the Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Bruins last night.

Anyone who follows hockey knows that these playoffs were exponentially special as the Leafs have not made the playoffs in 9 years. Anyone who is Canadian knows that this game had the buzz going all over Canada. In fact there were game updates at local gyms and night schools! The season was exciting and the game was a hard hard hard loss, needless to say there were a lot of sorrow and bitter faces across Canada, specifically Toronto. I myself being one of them.

I was just so upset, maybe a little irrationally irritated  but irritated all the same. So when two boys in my class decided to pick on me, out of by irritability I was rude. Then one of the boys, who was a fellow Christian, good guy, but I have never really gotten along with him, started to intensify his “teasing”. At one point I just couldn’t take it, he was being frustrating and I was just in a terrible mood and I snapped at him. I was rude, I was irritable and I was definitely unkind. He laughed it off and continued to bother me. Boys.

But through the day I thought OK I was irrational and exceedingly rude. Maybe I should apologize. So I made my way to him and… apologized. At first he continued to joke around and then he went for the blow. He said how I could call myself a Christian and then be so rude as if it were nothing. OUCH. After such a blow to my ego he said I was forgiven- words that seemed bitterly pretentious at the time.

Immediately I put my guards up, made my way out of the conversation ASAP and of course my mind started buzzing. How dare he?! Would he really judge my sincerity of faith with one screw up? It wasn’t even that bad to completely belittle me and my love for God! It’s not like he is any better! Who does he think he is? Maybe he should get off his moral high horse… and the grumbling continued.

And about a few hours I realized… he was right. Even if he was using the moment to shame me, does his purity or impurity of intent change the truthfulness of his statement? NO.

And seriously, how could I call myself a Christian when I could be so rude just because I had a bad day, and the Leaf’s lost? Yes, I know, I know. We are saved by grace- but not cheap grace! And when I take these “little sins” and deem them insignificant I cheapen the profound grace God extends to us. I ought not to dabble in sin- God calls us to a higher standard of living! And with that it is imperative that He calls me to a higher standard of living… and you.

And I started thinking, what if my actions had faltered someones faith or turned someone off from God? Thankfully it didn’t. But what if they did. Then what? I would be working against my Lord…. all because I wanted the Leafs to win! The absurdity of my sin is just striking, and it leaves me with little legitimate justification for it.

These little sins, that I slide under the rug at times really do show a clear window to the state of my heart. And in these little “slip-ups” I fail to show people the love of Christ. Whatever the “context” of my mood may be, I fail at loving them. How terrible is that! And think of people in your church, those “harsh”, “unkind” Christians- come on, you know they are there! What legacy do you think they leave? Sure, we as Christians can make profound change, but if love is not part of our everyday language can we say our love is legitimate for “big events”? Most of us may only have one or two “big events” a year to love on others. This suddenly makes the little everyday moments seem more precious, does it not?

And today I just can’t help but think about how I stumble because I fail to recognize and love the person I’m talking too. Maybe its time, for us North American Christians to take a deep breath and live the gospel in a cold-business like world. To show love in all the small ways and not just in grand gestures. To be consistent and humble servants like our Lord intended. Sure, our world and Jesus’ world has major differences, but the principles remain the same. And who knows, in a world where people barely stop to hold the door maybe the small gestures will scream louder than we think.

And that is my goal now. To let the love and grace of God to seep deeper and deeper into my conduct that I may not fail Him. And hopefully, with my conduct others may realize that there is something special in the name of Jesus- and even if that does not happen at least my act of worship will give glory to my Father in Heaven. Because that’s what it’s all about. Loving God and Loving my neighbor. God, please help me do just that.

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. – Hebrews 12:14

Fighting the Good Fight

Hey guys,

I haven’t posted in a long time but I wanted to share where I am at right now.

I would ask that you guys keep me in your prayers, this last few weeks has been a battle between the flesh and spirit, and unfortunately it seems that the pendulum keeps swinging towards my flesh.

Now where do I start. I was often told that I am “too hard” on myself when it came to my sin. That I need to make room for grace, do my best and let God do the rest. Now that is true… unfortunately I warped it the wrong way.

I took this message and applied it in a way that I ought not to have interpreted it. I assumed that to be “easier on myself” I should let sin fester in my life to “make room for grace” rather that extract it.

Oh my my my my. That did not work, does not work and will never work in life. And I started experiencing distance from God and was not sure what had created the rift. And I’m just not happy, not happy with my life and my spiritual state, I just ughhh! I hate myself.

So I began trying to “cleanse” myself and not just allow sin to “happen” but I began to try to actively fight it. And I fought for a few days and for those few days I experienced such a beautiful intimacy with God, such beautiful love and then… I fell. And I just can’t find the energy in me to get back up and face the battle field again.

And I just can’t believe it. Why is it that our struggle against sin is so profound and so perpetual? In fact there is a lot of sin in our lives that we don’t even realize is there! And the fight is so frustrating, because we pronounce one thing with our mouths, and then we have moments in our lives where we do other things with our hands.

Sounds like a hopeless life. But it’s not. That’s the Christian life. I once heard Pastor Bruxy Cavey explain that God’s “level” is 100% because He is holy. His life and ways are on the highest scale. Then comes our scale, say my life is a 34%, my actions are only just over 1/3 of what God finds pleasing please note that this is just a “mathematical” analogy, I don’t really think God measures like this . The distance between our level and God’s level (in this case 66%) is known as “hypocrisy gap”. And everyone has it, but the goal of EVERY Christian is to lessen the gap between what we know to be right and what we “do right”.

And do you now what? It is a life long battle. And yes it stinks and you’re gonna hate part of yourself. And there should be sinful parts of our lives that we do hate. But we cannot, I cannot, be tired of the fight. We will fight our flesh and extrapolate what God does not want, with His help. And when we fail, we will pray for forgiveness.

And all the while we will work to lessen that hypocrisy gap and give God glory.

 

Hope you guys had a good few weeks.

Pray for me and each other.

 

G VAN

The Ugly Face of Beauty

I don’t have a problem with beauty. I honestly don’t. People can spend time grooming themselves so they look attractive, and putting their best foot forward. Nothing wrong with that, it’s actually good to take care of yourself. 

But I am starting to have a problem with the obsession of a narrow form of “beauty”. A kind of beauty that starts small, like untagging unflattering pictures of yourselves, and periodically fixing your hair in the bathroom mirror. But then starts getting a little bigger, by judging other people’s looks, laughing at “ugly” physical characteristics and finding and unhealthy joy of seeing celebs without makeup. Then it starts to encompass a beauty-obsessed-and-dominated-society. Where a pregnant Kim Kardasian or Aishwariya Rai can’t gain weight. Victoria Secret products are marketed to younger girls to feel “sexy, cosmetic surgery is a multi-millionaire dollar industry- where its gross income far exceeds that of money spent on Alzheimer’s research. Where eating disorders will reach an all time high, a disease that now captures 8 million Americans and 1 in 4 girls in Canada alone. Where a woman’s worth is in her looks, and after she turns 40, well… she had her time. That’s a society we live in. Where we are dying to be beautiful. 

How do we combat this? Well lets just say “we are ALL beautiful!” We all have our beauty, and are sooo attractive. Dove tries to convince us that we are more beautiful than we realize… but COME ON. Why is it SO important to be beautiful? It’s nice yes, sometimes we have really good days but you know what? Sometimes… we are “ugly”. It happens. Sometimes hair doesn’t sit flat, sometimes you laugh too hard on a joke and you face scrunches up weird, sometimes the camera grabs a bad angle, sometimes you break out, Sometimes you will get sweaty and your face will turn red. IT HAPPENS. The problem here isn’t that we “don’t think we are beautiful” the problem is we don’t realize that it’s ok to be “ugly”. Just like sometimes we are happy, sometimes we are sad, sometimes… we aren’t the most attractive. But its ok, that’s life and things will move on, it’s NOT the end of the world. 

So yes go take care of yourself, put your best foot forward. But if its an off day, whatever. You are “beautiful” just like we are “ugly”, ang guess what everyone else is too. 

Oh wait… did I insert an unattractive picture of myself in this? Oops…

 

Seek First the Kingdom of Righteousness… or second… or third..

You know I’ve gone through an interesting time recently. The last few months have been the first time I’ve gone through a “resting period” with God. What I mean is usually I have a lot of new news and discoveries made and for the first time in my relationship with God the “honey-moon phase” per-say was gone.

 

Then do you know what, so was the zeal. Now DON’T get me wrong. I still loved God and cared for Him. But somehow I found more time to work out and sleep then I did to be around Him. Then I began to realize I spent less time with Him and blocked out times for bible readings, but because I wasn’t pursuing God first, these meetings became cynical and legalistic.

How different the Christian faith is. Although an individual can fool themselves into being a “good christian” mere practice will never bring you to be a fruit-bearing follower of Christ. It’s only genuine love for God that causes any change or motivation in us. So yes to use the Christian cliche it IS all about “relationship.”

 

And you know what, we all worship something. When I wasn’t worshiping God I felt my heart stray to illegitimate pleasures, I started dabbling in the past and in worldly nonsense. But how great is the love of God that captures every wandering heart.

 

And how incredibly true is it, that only through Christ are we sanctified. If there is anything I’d love to worship its Him. I’m sorry Lord, teach me, remind me and correct me to always seek FIRST the Kingdom of righteousness   

HEY guys, I’m trying to reach a wider audience. If there is any article that you enjoyed or any article that spoke to you share it with others! E-mail your friends and family and spread the blessings If you have any comments, questions or suggestions feel free to e-mail me at jjdhali@yahoo.ca