Hi everyone!
Before I tell you guys a story of mine on this blog I want to provide 3 verses that really ties in with what I have to say. They are:
"And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."- 1 Thessalonians 5:23
"For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace."- Romans 8:6
"For the word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart." -Hebrews 4:12
With these verses, I highlighted main words in the verses to show how man is of three parts. In the first verse it shows that we have a body, soul and spirit. The body is our physical self that includes our arms, legs, hands and etc. Our soul is our psychological self, it is who we are, it contains our mind (how we think), emotions (how we feel, love or hate) and will (the ability to choose, i.e.: this morning I chose to eat a biscuit over oatmeal). In summary, our soul is our personality (i.e.: for those of you who know me, I kind of have a goofy personality, I tend to do things that are odd and somewhat stand out. It's who I am and it is me expressing myself [my soul-life]). Along with our physical body and our psychological soul we have a spirit! What is the spirit you ask? The spirit is the part of us that is made to contain God. What we are made to contain God? Yes check out Romans 9:21. The Triune God Himself lives in us! In our spirit! When we set our mind on the spirit (Romans 8:6) we not only get life and peace but we get life and peace Himself (1 Thessalonians 5:23). Our spirit is the part of us that can contact God, fellowship with Him and worship Him truthfully (John 4:24). This is marvelous! Because He went on the cross to die for our sins, resurrected in three days, ascended to the heavens to now become the life-giving Spirit in us (1 Corinthians 15:45), we can be intimate with the Triune God Himself! Since you are all were faithful with me to stay this long, I will reward you all with a personal story of mine.
During the last week of September 2011, I was studying in an abandoned classroom at Cal State Northridge with three brothers in Christ of mine: Josh Herman, Jesus Hernandez (if you ever see his name in a blog again, it will be Jesus H., so that you wont get confused with our Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus H.) and Kenny. In this classroom, I was taking an online quiz for a Biomechanics class I was taking. I was super stressed taking this quiz because online quizzes made up a total of 15% of the total class grade and if i did bad on this quiz it would seriously lower my grade. The quiz only contained 5 questions but they were so hard. After looking at my notes and the book, I answered all the questions and pressed submit. I was devastated. I only got 1 out of 5 of the questions right. At the time I was so upset. I even let my emotions show physically and Josh H. even asked if I was alright. I responded that I was fine (but inwardly I wasn't). This day was originally a great day for me because I had finished reading the whole New Testament, but now may whole day turned into gloom as I failed that quiz.
At the end of our study session, Josh H. drew on the chalkboard I diagram of our body, soul and spirit, with our spirit containing the Triune God and then having Him spread to our soul and even to our body (Josh might have referenced 1 Thessalonians 5:23, but I don't remember). This illustration and Josh's sharing of Christ to us was good and it helped me turn my mind from my sad emotions to my spirit, but I was still kind of sad. After we were done studying, we all went into Josh's car and went to Del Taco's drive thru and ordered some food. After we got the food, Josh whipped out a Bible and shared with us Colossians 1:26-27 which states:
"The mystery which has been hidden from the ages and from the generations but now has manifested to His saints; To whom God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory"
After Josh H. shared this verse with us, we pray-read (using these verses as prayer) these verses. This really helped me turn to my spirit and helped me to enjoy the Lord. Just praying over these verses with other brothers turned me from gloom into joy! Getting the word of God into me during this time became the gladness and joy my heart that day (Jeremiah 15:16) and I felt as if I was saved from my emotions and my fallen flesh filled with death to my spirit which contains life and peace (Romans 8:6). Even though my soul was sad, my spirit was rejoicing. If we did not pray over these verses, I probably would have gone to bed feeling sorry for myself and probably would have had a tough time the next morning trying to fellowship and contact the Lord. I am glad God made us with three parts instead of just a body and soul. It is truly wonderful to pursue Christ not just by myself but with others (2 Timothy 2:22)! Anyways, thank you all for reading my blog as I will write another one very soon within the next few days. The next story is even better further proving man is of three parts but for now I got to go. Bye everyone!
-JP
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Hi everyone!
A year and a half ago a started my own blog site and said that one day I would blog. However I never really was serious about this until I started reading blogs of other college aged Christians a few weeks ago. When I was thinking about what I should write about, some options included: 1) Writing about Major League Baseball's off season and making some predictions for the upcoming 2014 season. Although I think I am very knowledgeable about baseball, some very serious baseball fans might disagree with what I have to say and I will make people who are not baseball fans extremely bored. 2) The second option was writing about comical experiences of mine from high school. Although this would be pretty funny for you readers (I think), I don't think this would be very beneficial for you or me at all. 3) What I really wanted to blog about was some of my personal experiences of Christ during my college years! During my college years I have had the opportunity of pursuing Christ personally and with other brothers and sisters in Christ! When I first came to college I didn't plan on doing anything "Christian" even though I was raised Christian, but I am so glad I got to know this wonderful Person. Since I recently graduated from my undergraduate (CSUN) a month ago, I wanted to share select experiences of mine to you all.
Some of my experiences will be titled:
1) Proving that man is of three parts (part 1)
2) Proving that man is of three parts (part 2)
3) Washing of the water in the word/ Let the word of Christ
4) God of glory
I will have a limited time to blog because I will be going off to bible school on February 16th so I will try my best to get these 4 blogs in by this time. Also I feel like I get a privilege to share a more organized or refined portion to you all because sometimes when I share at meetings about Christ I only get to share maybe 70% of what I had in mind or in paper. However, by blogging I get a chance to slow down my thoughts an organize something I really enjoyed. Maybe by doing this blog I could improve my speaking of Christ. But anyways, I just want to practice sharing what I enjoyed in the word of God and also mix in a subjective experiences I had to match what I read.
For example, I am currently reading Judges in the Old Testament. In chapter 7:4-7, Gideon was a judge for Israel and he had too many men for him to fight for Israel. So God told Gideon to give the men a test. The test was to see how each of the men drank water. If they drank the water by lapping or like how a dog drinks water they were able to stay. If they drank by bowing down on their knees to drink the water they were let go. Out of the 10,000 men who were under Gideon (please correct me if I'm wrong) only 300 men lapped for water like a dog. The majority of the men had to leave. The spiritual significance of this is that all people need to drink, but in this particular situation there was a limited amount of water. The ones who lapped like a dog restricted themselves in quenching their thirst and were willing to sacrifice in order to be used by God. The ones who knelt down cared for their own necessity more than for God's need and were sent home. Although this is not my favorite part of the Old Testament, this portion really touched me. Speaking for myself, I attend home meetings every Friday night to enjoy Christ and every time we have dinner for about 20-60 people (depending on the size of the meeting). One thing that touched me from reading this is that I probably should not get too much food so that other saints could get enough food. The saints, who are fellow believers of Christ make up the Body of Christ which is part of God's heart desire and God's need. If I grab too much food for myself then the saints wont be fed enough and I would be neglecting God's need. Well this was just a small example of my personal enjoyment of Christ. This wasn't my favorite part of the Bible but I will be glad to share more richer portions of mine very soon. Hope you guys stay tuned in the future but I have to end this blog right about here.
-JP
A year and a half ago a started my own blog site and said that one day I would blog. However I never really was serious about this until I started reading blogs of other college aged Christians a few weeks ago. When I was thinking about what I should write about, some options included: 1) Writing about Major League Baseball's off season and making some predictions for the upcoming 2014 season. Although I think I am very knowledgeable about baseball, some very serious baseball fans might disagree with what I have to say and I will make people who are not baseball fans extremely bored. 2) The second option was writing about comical experiences of mine from high school. Although this would be pretty funny for you readers (I think), I don't think this would be very beneficial for you or me at all. 3) What I really wanted to blog about was some of my personal experiences of Christ during my college years! During my college years I have had the opportunity of pursuing Christ personally and with other brothers and sisters in Christ! When I first came to college I didn't plan on doing anything "Christian" even though I was raised Christian, but I am so glad I got to know this wonderful Person. Since I recently graduated from my undergraduate (CSUN) a month ago, I wanted to share select experiences of mine to you all.
Some of my experiences will be titled:
1) Proving that man is of three parts (part 1)
2) Proving that man is of three parts (part 2)
3) Washing of the water in the word/ Let the word of Christ
4) God of glory
I will have a limited time to blog because I will be going off to bible school on February 16th so I will try my best to get these 4 blogs in by this time. Also I feel like I get a privilege to share a more organized or refined portion to you all because sometimes when I share at meetings about Christ I only get to share maybe 70% of what I had in mind or in paper. However, by blogging I get a chance to slow down my thoughts an organize something I really enjoyed. Maybe by doing this blog I could improve my speaking of Christ. But anyways, I just want to practice sharing what I enjoyed in the word of God and also mix in a subjective experiences I had to match what I read.
For example, I am currently reading Judges in the Old Testament. In chapter 7:4-7, Gideon was a judge for Israel and he had too many men for him to fight for Israel. So God told Gideon to give the men a test. The test was to see how each of the men drank water. If they drank the water by lapping or like how a dog drinks water they were able to stay. If they drank by bowing down on their knees to drink the water they were let go. Out of the 10,000 men who were under Gideon (please correct me if I'm wrong) only 300 men lapped for water like a dog. The majority of the men had to leave. The spiritual significance of this is that all people need to drink, but in this particular situation there was a limited amount of water. The ones who lapped like a dog restricted themselves in quenching their thirst and were willing to sacrifice in order to be used by God. The ones who knelt down cared for their own necessity more than for God's need and were sent home. Although this is not my favorite part of the Old Testament, this portion really touched me. Speaking for myself, I attend home meetings every Friday night to enjoy Christ and every time we have dinner for about 20-60 people (depending on the size of the meeting). One thing that touched me from reading this is that I probably should not get too much food so that other saints could get enough food. The saints, who are fellow believers of Christ make up the Body of Christ which is part of God's heart desire and God's need. If I grab too much food for myself then the saints wont be fed enough and I would be neglecting God's need. Well this was just a small example of my personal enjoyment of Christ. This wasn't my favorite part of the Bible but I will be glad to share more richer portions of mine very soon. Hope you guys stay tuned in the future but I have to end this blog right about here.
-JP
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