Static Truth

Trying to Serve Two Masters

2010-07-02T08:56:00.000-04:00

Matthew 6:24

Jesus is speaking

“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

For the longest time, I’ve ignored the above verse. Not because I didn’t want to hear it, but because I didn’t see it as applicable to my life. I’m not miser. I’m not a greedy individual fighting for every penny, and I tithe and give money on top of that to charity. Sure, I’m not the biggest giver in the world, but I by no means serve money. Why would I have to worry about it then? So I’ve often skipped it in search of verses that meant more to me.

Recently, though, I’ve become less and less comfortable with this verse. As I’ve looked at the lives of amazing individuals such as St. Francis and many modern day Franciscan monks, I’ve been blown away by the intensity with which these people serve the Lord. To put it frankly, these saints, a term I don’t lightly use, are insane. They give up all worldly possessions (literally, mind you) and will go into absolutely horrendous situations that many other Christians have given-up on, and they not only bring the Truth of salvation in the next life, but they bring the light and joy of salvation in this life. We are talking about flat-out, awesome individuals.

The more I hear stories about these and other saints, the more I’ve been challenged to think that maybe the life of a saint should be the normal life of a Christian in general. That’s not to say that we should all be martyrs, not marry, or other such things, but we all should serve the Lord completely. Isn’t that the whole idea behind the Gospel, anyway? Isn’t the point of Christ’s death and resurrection to reconcile us to God so that we may be free to serve others as He served us? Isn’t that why Jesus sent forth the disciples and why the disciples sent forth more disciples? We are supposed to be the Body of Christ, striving for the perfection of the whole world.

What I’ve found with me, though, is that I try to find some mythical “middle road.” I want to live for Christ, but I don’t want to be that extreme about it. I want to live for Christ, but you know, Christ wants us to be happy, too. We don’t want to give too much ourselves away because if we do that then we will stress-out, and we’ll have high blood pressure. What good is it if we are disciples but work ourselves to death, right?

This line of thought is dangerous, though, because, at the heart of it, is a desire to have my cake and eat it, too. Essentially, I don’t really want to serve God. I just want to serve Him enough so that I don’t feel guilty and can enjoy serving my worldy desires. You see, this verse isn’t just about money. It’s about who you are serving and why. If living a comfortable life comes before giving to those in need, I feel like we’ve missed the point. If we go on one or two short mission trips a year just so we don’t feel bad about not serving our local communities the rest of the year, then something is wrong. Jesus never said, “Well, work as much as you’re comfortable.” In fact, He said a lot about the opposite.

Now, we are not expected to get it perfect immediately; the teaching of the Church has always been that it’s a process of getting it right. In addition, “giving your all to Jesus” doesn’t mean forsaking loving your family and friends. Instead, it means that all of our lives should be focused on striving for holiness in all its various forms, and I know that I can’t do that and serve myself at the same time. It’s one or the other.

Sam Hunley

Even the Demons Believe

2010-04-15T10:22:00.000-04:00

1 Corinthians 13:2

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

James 2:17

In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

Probably the biggest division between Protestantism and the more eastern traditions of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy is the debate over the importance of faith and works in salvation. While Catholics and Orthodox would say that, though one first receives grace through faith, salvation is not completed until one makes an effort through works. It’s almost as if, through grace, God has extended His hand to lift us up from our sin, but in order for Him to lift us, we must first grasp His hand. In the end, we ourselves are doing comparatively nothing, but we still must do something.

Protestants have traditionally held a distinctly different view. Instead of seeing salvation as faith and works, they would say that we are saved by faith alone, or sola fida. This belief is based on the ideas presented in Romans where Paul explains that we are so depraved as human beings that we have no way of working our way to God, so therefore, we can only be saved by faith. In regards to works, Protestants typically say that we must have works, but they naturally process from our salvation. In the end, you have these equations: Catholics and Orthodox => Faith + Works = Salvation, Protestants => Faith = Salvation and then Works.

In Protestantism, this emphasis on faith turns into a huge emphasis on knowledge, which means that it’s what or whom you know that counts. However, even though I’m a Protestant myself, scripture challenges me to say that something is fundamentally wrong with this mindset. As James explains and Mark demonstrates, even the demons believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. In fact, they seem to know and very much believe all that we say would be “doctrinally correct,” but they don’t seem to be in anyway saved by this mere knowledge. So, along that line of thought, are we? Are we saved by mere knowledge of who Christ is?

As Paul says, we can have all the knowledge of God possible, but if we don’t have love, for God and for man, then we are nothing, or as James would say, our faith is dead. Now, I know that I’m probably about to sound pretty “fire and brimstone” –ish, but I don’t want to soften this message. If we don’t have love for God and for our fellow man, then why are we pretending to be Christian? Jesus commands us again and again that we need to care for those who are oppressed, in need, or suffering, and He says that when we take care of these people, we are effectively taking care of Him as if He were truly present. The flipside of this coin is that when we neglect these individuals, we are neglecting Christ Himself.

In saying all of this, I need to admit that I don’t live up to this call myself. I fail miserably in “feeding the sheep.” I am addicted to comfort, and I usually rather promote my own happiness than get my hands dirty and actually help people. As it is right now, though, many people, including me, are missing the point. We are not on this earth to be saved and then just relax. We are here to bring the Kingdom of God to the people who need it most, now, which involves a little work.

Sam Hunley

The Song That Never Ends.

2010-02-10T20:30:00.000-05:00

While Furman offers many great places to live, I have to say that the past two years I have lived in one of the best dorms on campus: Poteat. It’s great because the rooms are big, and it’s far enough away from classes that you can escape without being so far that walking is a pain. The only drawback of Poteat is that it sits directly across from the soccer field, which is great if you want to watch a soccer game from your room but not so great if you value you peace and silence. The games themselves aren’t that bad, I can handle the noise of a crowd; however, the problem comes in when the soccer team and various other groups blast music. Granted, that doesn’t happen all that often, but it is certainly often enough to notice.

Anyway, at one point this year a group had a soccer tournament and were playing their music particularly loud. Since I didn’t have homework, it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, except for the fact that I truly did not care for the music being played. I hated it, but being the lazy individual that I am, I just kind of sat there in the room enduring it. A little while later, I left to go get my car, and the music was still playing. Frustrated, I tried to focus on something else, so I started thinking about my footsteps, which is when I realized an annoying fact: despite hating the music, I was walking to the beat. To be stubborn, I tried to move out of sync with the beat, a feat that is usually quite easy when I try to dance, but no matter how hard I tried, my feet were always landing on the beat. Even if I stopped or scuffled my feet, I couldn’t stop myself for walking in time.

This experience made me realize that, while we try to be strong individuals, we all tend to walk to the beat of whatever group, culture, and/or historical context in which we are immersed. Yes, there are definitely exceptions to this rule, but in general, one will tend to act along the lines of whatever group he or she is involved in. Why? Because over time, behaviors and opinions that are approved of by the group are reinforced such that they become stronger, causing an individual to grow slowly to be more like the people around them. Of course, this doesn’t mean that everyone in a particular crowd eventually comes to act and think in the same way, but it does mean that members of that group will have a tendency to act in a way that the group accepts.

What this means is that, if we don’t choose what group we immerse ourselves in wisely, then we can end-up walking to a beat that we don’t really care for. Now, most of us have probably heard this whole spiel when we were teens about how we need to choose our friends wisely and all that jazz, but what I’m attempting to say here extends well beyond that. The bottom line is that we will be shaped and influenced by the people we surround ourselves with; however, this is far from a bad thing. In fact, I would venture to say that is the way God intended it, and that is why He instituted the Church.

When we immerse ourselves in the world, we are shaped and changed to be as the world likes. When we try to escape and immerse ourselves individualism, we end-up following a beat that brings us nowhere. Everything changes, though, when we are immersed in the community of the Church. Instead of marching to a useless beat, we are moved to a song that shapes our steps to the steps of Christ. We can only be Christians if we are in the Church. Like a cell taken out of the body, we do not survive on our own. In Protestantism, we have this nasty tendency to go out and do things on our own, but we must learn to seek to work through the Body if we wish to change anything about this world. Not only that, if we want to true change for ourselves, it will be best done immersed in the song of the Church. Does this mean we will cease to be individuals? Far from it. Instead, it is by working as the Bride of Christ, along side our Brothers and Sisters that we will be brought into a truer knowledge of who we really are and who we can really be.

Sam Hunley

Stealing From Myself

2009-12-20T18:54:00.000-05:00

There Was No Thief – Relient K

For a time I thought there was a thief among us, 

I thought I'd track him down but prior to my pursuit, 

The smoke had cleared and to my disbelief, 

There was no thief cause it was me that lost you.

I don’t think that this is in anyway a new trend, but I’ve recently noticed that there are a lot of books, essays, and songs that talk about how we Americans have become trapped in our culture. Basically, the writers of these pieces explain that the American Dream now comes pre-packaged, limiting our desires and preventing us from ever reaching our true potential. As we age, the dreams that we had as children are slowly killed and replaced with more “reasonable” and “attainable” goals, so instead of reaching for what we truly want, we settle for something much less. Something that may never bring us satisfaction.

Many Christian writers have furthered this complaint, adding that our society is destroying our relationship with God. Since our own dreams have been limited, they claim that our understanding of God has also been limited, so even though we claim God to be infinite and beyond comprehension, we have tried to fit Him into nice molds so that we can keep Him at a comfortable distance. Because of this distance, though, we are prevented from having a true, deep relationship with the one who made us.

Personally, I think that these writers are right, but who is at fault for our corrupted society? They are. Yes, you heard me correct, They. That collective mass of individuals, who through their cultural expectations keep the rest of society bound in tight chains that prevent us from breaking free, and if we try to live in a way that differs from They’s expectations, we are scorned and shunned from society. So what are we told as Christians? Gear-up and prepare for battle! We need to fight cultural norms in a battle to the death, and to do so, we need to be loud and proud as we fight our way on to victory.

I tried this tactic. I was going to be a rebel who fought against society so that others could be free of its bonds. However, I ran into a slight problem: there was no battle to fight. Since we live in a generally accepting society, when I spoke-up most people were supportive of me having my own opinion. Furthermore, when I mentioned the aspects of Western society that I did not like, everyone that I talked to agreed. Basically, I went out looking for an enemy and found none. If there was no enemy, though, then who was holding me back from my true potential?

I was. I am the enemy. I am the one preventing me from reaching my full potential. You see, we have this tendency to blame others. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the Serpent, and who does God hold accountable? He holds each person accountable for his or her own actions. Adam is guilty because of Adam. Eve is guilty because of Eve, and let God worry about the Serpent. We can spend all day pointing fingers and try to pin down some particular aspect or group within our society that hold us back and destroy our relationships with others and with God. However, at the end of the day, these most of these so-called enemies don’t exist. They are simply manifestations of the evil that is within our selves. Do problems exist in our society? Sure thing they do, but they exist because of individual problems within individual people adding-up to form much larger issues. How do we fix these things then? Not by attacking others and protesting, but by first changing our selves.

Sam Hunley

What If God Was a Democrat?

2009-09-24T16:36:00.001-04:00

I enjoy perusing the Christian section of bookstores because I’ve found that it’s really interesting what the owners of secular stores tend to toss into the category of “Christian.” For instance, I was in Barnes and Noble the other day, and right next to books written by real saints was a joke book about how to become “saintly,” which highlighted all of the “crazies” who have been honored by the Church. While that sort of stuff really bothers some people, it doesn’t really get to me. The people who write these books usually don’t know what they are talking about and also generally have good intentions, so while it may be frustrating that they are missing the point, I have hope that God will show them the Truth.

However, there are some books in the Christian section that I have real problems with. For example, immediately after finding the saint book, I found another book entitled, Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America. Titles like these inspire me to invest in a Zippo to take on my next trip to the bookstore. Why does this bother me? Well, first off, the title (and I’m assuming the book) implies that God supports a certain political position. Really? God is Republican? Hm, that’s funny, last time I checked God didn’t seem all that interested in human politics. In fact, the last time God interacted with a human government, He was killed. Isn’t it funny how Christians for about 400 years were considered anti-empire? Anti-world? And now Christians are making power grabs and attempting to be empire? To be the world?

Now, hopefully at this point I haven’t made anyone mad enough to stop reading, but even if you are a bit ticked, keep reading. If you are mad, feel free to send me an angry e-mail later, but people need to hear this out: Christianity isn’t about making sure one party is in office and another isn’t. As Christians we shouldn’t be that concerned about politics at all. As is incredibly evident, this world is a very broken place, and it’s not getting better. Since the world is a broken place, then I think that it’s fairly obvious that the institutions and things of this world are broken as well. If that’s the case, then why do we trust in human institutions to fix things? Why do we think that if we support this or that political party, it’s going to make things better? Don’t let either party fool you: neither is working to make God more real in this world. They may have good aims and produce some good things, but overall, political parties are looking for political control, which they will very gladly take with your vote.

Saying all of this may make it sound like I don’t trust the U.S. government, and if you’re thinking that, then your spot on. I don’t. I don’t trust any government in this world. Why? Do I think that their trying to establish totalitarian governments and use thought control to make us do Big Brother’s every whim? Not at all. However, I do not trust any government with fixing anything about this world. I have given up on this world fixing itself, and I will not be fooled into thinking that the institutions of this world have its best interests in mind. That is why I’m a Christian. I have denied the forces of this world, and pledged allegiance to the only Kingdom that can do anything.

As the Church we are not supposed to be mini-politicians, fighting for this or that political party so that they may “fix” everything. Instead, we are supposed to be Jesus carrying the light of Truth and Salvation to the world. We are supposed to be the healers. We are supposed to be one restoring the world. Through God’s infinite Grace and Power, we are working to make all things new. While the powers of this world will ultimately fail, God will not. Instead of making the Church an agent of these falling powers, let us remember that we are serving a new kingdom with a new Lord whose goal is healing, and not political power.

Sam Hunley

Doing Nothing for God Can Be a Good Thing

2009-08-28T17:54:00.003-04:00

Mark 6:31

Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest."

Ok, so I haven’t exactly been writing a lot here lately, and that has partly been because I’m a college student moving back and forth between my home and a dorm. As many of you have experienced, it can be a little stressful having to change where you live twice a year, and all of that moving makes it particularly hard to make your thoughts stand still enough to get them typed in any coherent fashion.

However, while frustrating, I don’t think that these transitions were really the source of the problem. Rather, I think that God was preventing me from writing. Every time I would sit down to write, my mind would go completely blank. Even if I had something planned to type-up before sitting down, all thoughts and plans would seem silly and unimportant as soon as the computer screen lit-up. Here’s why I think that it was God, though: every time this would happen, I would be calm. Before when I’ve had writer’s block because of my own issues, I’ve been incredibly stressed and worried, but over the past month I’ve been incredibly calm and at peace with the fact that I was producing nothing.

While I’m not claiming to be under the same stresses as the Disciples (trust me, I’m not), I do think that Jesus was telling me basically the same thing that He told the Disciples in this verse: get some rest. Why rest, though? If we rest, that means we stop working, and if we stop working, doesn’t that mean that we’re not producing? And if we’re not producing, aren’t we being bad Christians? I know that I personally struggle with these questions. Hence, the reason I’ve had a really tough time trying to start taking a sabbath: I just can’t convince myself that I’m allowed to stop.

If you take time to look at the commandment regarding the Sabbath, it says, “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Exodus 20:11). You know what’s funny about this command? It doesn’t have anything to do with what we do. In fact, the whole day is supposed to be dedicated to what God did and does for us. Why is this important? Because it allows us time to remember that this life is not about us. It’s not about what we do. Instead, we are shown that this life is entirely about the infinite mercy that God has shown to humanity.

By commanding us to take a break, God is reminding us to let go and to let Him be our ultimate guide. That is exactly why we are so afraid of taking breaks. We think to ourselves, “If I let go will everything be ok? If I let go, won’t everything fall apart? If I stop and rest, won’t I fall behind?” In this way, the Sabbath becomes one of the ultimate signs of faith. By committing time to trusting in what God has done and what He continues to do in our lives, we are declaring our faith that God won’t let us go. That He will take care of us, and has taken care of us. We are declaring that it is our faith that saves us, and while our work brings us closer to God and allows our faith to grow so that it does not die, it is ultimately not our works that bring us salvation. Instead, it is that one Work which Christ performed on the Cross that saves us.

That is why I'm going to try taking a Sabbath because when I forget to take a break for God, I tend to forget who God is. That is why I feel that God made me stop writing this summer: I can talk about who God is all day, but it's not until I truly see who He is that things change.

Sam Hunley

Between God and Men

2009-07-16T10:38:00.002-04:00

John 1:14
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Timothy 2:5
For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

In the 1,976 years of Christianity’s existence, more than a few understandings of Jesus’ purposes on Earth have developed. You have the basic understanding of Christ coming to the world to die for our sins. Then you have the belief that Jesus came to show us how to live a life of sacrifice, and you have more organized beliefs such as liberation theology, which is characterized by the belief that the whole of God’s purposes can be summed in that He is working to free the oppressed. Of course, most people hold more than one understanding of Christ, and these beliefs change over the course of one’s life. In fact, one’s understandings of Christ changes throughout the year as church services move from discussing baby Jesus, to the acts of the adult Jesus, to Jesus dying and being resurrected, to the resurrected Christ working through the disciples. All of these times of the year bring to light different aspects of Jesus, and it is very normal and healthy for us to understand Him in different ways.

While there are many different, legitimate, understandings Jesus, there are some understandings that have definite flaws. For example, one understanding of Jesus see’s Him as a sort of super human that is better than other humans. OK, now I realize that what I’m saying sounds funny because Jesus was the greatest human being to walk the Earth, and He will be the greatest again when He returns; however, by better, I mean that they see Jesus as having a certain advantage over other humans because He was God, allowing Him to live the perfect life that He did.

On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with this belief because Jesus was definitely 100% God, but significant problems arise when one remembers that Jesus was also 100% man. Why is this important, though? For two reasons. First, the “Word became flesh” in order to fully participate in creation. By becoming human, Jesus was able to fully relate to our joys and concerns and also to show humans how they are to live. When Jesus calls us to imitate Him, He isn’t saying to attempt something that a human could never possibly do. He is calling us to do something that a human has already done.

Second, it is the fact that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man that makes Him the mediator between God and humanity. He is man’s representative before God and God’s representative before man. He’s a middleman, and how else could one be a middleman other than be in the middle? This fact becomes even more important when you consider the fact that Jesus was and is supposed to be like a second Moses. Moses represented humanity before God as a human, and he spoke to humanity for God. However, Jesus supplants Moses in that He was/is a human speaking for humanity and God speaking for God.

It is because Jesus made the connection between God and mankind that not only was God able to participate in our humanness, but also we are now able to participate in God’s holiness. Furthermore, it is because of Jesus’ participation in the pain, suffering, and death of humanity, that we are able to participate in the love, joy, and life of God. To forget these facts would be to forget the Gospel entirely, and to miss out on the fact that the Son of the God, humbled Himself enough to become fully man in order to save humanity.

Sam Hunley

Faith and Fear

2009-06-30T01:26:00.000-04:00

Mathew 20:25-28

25Jesus called them together and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

As many of you probably don’t know, I have issues with authority. More specifically, I have problems with other people using their authority to limit my personal freedom. In some situations, this zeal is a very good thing because it allows me to get fired-up about protecting and working for the freedom of individuals, especially within this country. However, in other situations this rebellious tendency can get in the way of serving Christ.

For example, last week I went to Summerville, SC to work at Salkehatchie, a camp that focuses on repairing the homes of those in need, but in order for me to go, I had to agree to not drive my car and to follow the direction of the camp director. Now, I could handle obeying the camp director. He is an awesome individual and is very reasonable, but I had a serious problem with turning over my right to drive. Why should I have to do that? I had just turned 19, I had completed my first year of college, and these people wanted me to act like I was a freshman in high school again? No way.

Needless to say, I went anyway. At the beginning of the week I kept my grumbling to myself, but when another person in a similar situation voiced his frustrations, I also spoke-up and told a few of the leading adults how stupid I thought the driving rule was. If we were legal adults, why did we have to give-up our rights? Well, it turns out that due to finicky legal issues regarding the insurance that covers the camp, those running the camp would be responsible if someone between a certain age range drove and was injured somehow. In other words, the camp insurance would cost much more and, therefore, hinder the work that the camp was designed to do. Meaning, if I was going to serve God, I was going to have to deal with losing a little freedom.

Of course, isn’t that what serving is all about? When we become servants, aren’t we essentially lowering ourselves to the level of a slave for the sake of another person? Unfortunately, I think many Christians, particularly American Christians, have forgotten this fact. Above all else, we want to be comfortable. Comfortable where we sleep. Comfortable where we work, and comfortable with what we do, and the best way to be comfortable is to be in control. Why did I want my car? I wanted to be able to control where I was, and I did not want someone else to control my mobility. If I wanted to leave, then dag-gummit, I wanted to leave! However, Jesus has called us to serve, not to control, and we can’t serve if we aren’t willing to demote ourselves because serving innately entails that one is putting his or her self below another. This many times means sacrificing comfort and sometimes means sacrificing liberty.

That’s not all, though. At what times do we call on Jesus most often? When we are afraid, unsure, or, you guessed it, uncomfortable. If you are constantly in control and comfortable with your situation, then why would you bother trusting Jesus. Think about Peter jumping out of the boat to walk out to Jesus on the water. Sure, he sank, but it was not until he took that leap that Christ was given the chance to take hold of him, and it is not until we are put into a situation where we are weak that we will see the power of Christ.

Sam Hunley

Giving Your Relationship Meaning

2009-06-03T14:49:00.001-04:00

John 21:15
When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me more than these?"
"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs.”

In my life, I have found that relationships often swing between two poles. On one end, you have relationships that work off an emotional buzz. Basically, whenever you’re around the person (be it a friend or a significant other) you are always excited and happy, but in the end, the relationship has no substance because neither person is doing anything for the other. On the other end of the spectrum, you have relationships that only involve action, they revolved around what each person does for the other, but in the end, there is no actual emotional connection between the two individuals.

Of course, neither of these poles represents what one would call “healthy” relationships. As I have found in my three years with Emerald, you really have to strike a balance because, if you work purely off emotions, the relationship dies as soon as things get rough, but if you work purely off of actions, then the relationship dies as soon as someone else remotely more interesting comes along. In my understanding, a truly good relationship has emotion and action. Now, sometimes both might not be present at the same time, but when one is lacking, the other picks up the slack. For me, this means that if I’m feeling the emotions, but lacking the energy/ability to do something, then I have to ability to tell Emerald in words how I feel for her, but if I am lacking the emotion, then I can do something in order to show her that I do care for her even though I can’t quite say it at the moment. The times that I have both emotions and energy, I’m lucky and am able to use both. This combination and balance of emotion and action is what I identify as love.

Now, let’s apply this idea to the disciples. As things got rough, they scattered, which points to a more emotion based relationship, bringing us to the conversation in the verses above. Now, in these verses (and the verses after them) Jesus repeats His commands three time to Peter, which is commonly interpreted as reinstating Peter after he denied Jesus three times; however, I think we can pull more from it than that. If you notice, in each of Jesus’ responses He emphasizes actions: He wants Peter to feed and care for Jesus’ lambs (a.k.a. the new Christian community that would be forming).

In our culture that has become so feeling-oriented, these verses carry great importance. Jesus knew of Peter’s strong emotions because He had witnessed them over the previous three years with Peter jumping out of a boat, quickly answering questions, and even at one point trying to stop Christ from allowing Himself to die. Jesus wanted more than that, though. He wanted Peter to live out His emotions because love is not a one sided thing: it needs both emotion and action. Sound familiar?

In order for us to have truly life changing interactions with Christ, we must love Him with both our emotions and our actions. As scripture emphasizes time and time again, we cannot say that we love Christ and then completely ignore His commands. Of course, we are not expected to be perfect either, and we are not supposed to try to earn our way into heaven. However, if we are to pursue the more abundant life that Jesus has called us to, the only true form of life available to us, then we must cultivate not only our emotional love for Jesus but also our actions. In this way, just as in an earthly relationship, we will be led to a deeper and stronger relationship with God.

Sam Hunley

The Discovery of the Obvious

2009-05-09T15:57:00.001-04:00

Romans 12:1-2

^1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

OK, so I had probably the biggest no-brainer of my entire life this week. You know one of those where it just leaves you smacking yourself in the head because it was just so irritatingly obvious? Yea, one of those. However, in the end, I’d rather feel stupid and realize my mistakes than to continue doing the same stupid things over and over again. Anyway, what I realized is this: we are supposed to live our lives for Christ. See what I mean? Kind of a biggie that you would have thought I would have picked-up on a wee bit earlier, but stick with me here, I have a very serious point with this.

When I first became a Christian, I worked very hard to add Jesus into my life. I started going to church every Sunday, became involved in a youth group, started going to Bible studies, and later, I even started writing a devotional (just in case you didn’t know). I took my life + Jesus very seriously, and I tried to never miss any of these things, even if it meant losing sleep or missing other events. Now, all of these things have been great, and I am very glad that I stayed involved in all of them; however, something was fundamentally wrong. What I was doing was changing. What I was thinking about was changing, but my overall attitudes were not. Because of this stagnation, I was still committing the same sins that I had been before I was a Christian, and I didn’t feel any closer to Jesus.

What was wrong, though? Not only was I trying to do the right things, but I also had faith. If I was at least attempting to live rightly, shouldn’t God be holding-up His end of the bargain? These questions eventually made me pretty angry and frustrated with God, which I certainly let Him know about. After venting, I realized that if someone was at fault, it was me, not God, but even still, what was I doing wrong? As I thought about it, the problem became incredibly obvious: I wasn’t living my life for Christ, and simply doing more wasn’t going to fix it.

Here’s where my epiphany comes in. Living your life for Christ doesn’t mean doing certain things for Jesus. It means doing EVERYTHING for Jesus. In other words, the equation of Christian living isn’t “your life + Christ,” but “your life = Christ.” In a way, this news is kind of relieving because it means that you don’t have to constantly trying to make sure you have the right amount of Jesus in your life. However, on the other end of the stick, this realization is scary because, when you turn your life over to Christ, it literally means that you turned your life over to Christ. It is not yours any more.

This does not mean that you need to quit your job, leave home, and walk around preaching Christ. Instead, this simply means that Jesus should be present in every part of your day. When you work, work for Christ. When you interact with others, treat them as Christ would. When you play, play for Christ. When you relax, relax for Christ (which is actually sort of commanded in the Sabbath). When you live, you live for Christ. Jesus is not the icing on the cake, He is the cake.

Sam Hunley

The Difference Between Static and Stagnate

2009-04-17T11:03:00.000-04:00

An excerpt from a comment on my blog…

Could you sometime write an article explaining [the title] "The Static Truth?" To me, that phrase is antagonistic to a progressive, academic, or welcoming view of the Christianity or Biblical commentary. Particularly, the word "static." Perhaps I am mistaken, but I would love to hear your take on this…I could write a book explaining the problem I have with your word choice as it illuminates a greater problem of contemporary Christian culture in America.

The above is a comment taken from my blog. Now, I think that this person has some very valid points, hence the reason that I reposted a section of his/her comment here.

Why would this person consider calling something “static” as problematic? Well, it implies that one knows the single, unchanging truth, which doesn’t sound bad on the surface but implies that everyone else is wrong. In a Christian context, this can come across as, “I am right. I know all the answers, and when you end-up in hell, you’ll know that I was right and you were wrong.” Harsh, huh? Now, what bothers me about this issue is that there are a lot of people who will gladly make statements just like this one. Heck, I even thought at one time that this form of argument was not too inappropriate, but why is it wrong? Well, for one, it’s not incredibly loving, and two, it implies that the speaker knows everything about Truth and that there is nothing left to learn.

OK, the problems with the first reason are obvious, so I’m going to deal with the latter. When the title “Static Truth” first came to me, I didn’t see it as a way of declaring my complete and constant spiritual knowledge to the world. As I realize more today than I did then, God is big. He is infinitely big, mysterious, and beyond anything I can comprehend. He is bigger than my life. He is bigger than this universe, and He is bigger than the Bible. Does this mean that I am rejecting the Bible as a valid source? No, I am simply saying that, while the Bible provides the lens through which we can interpret our experiences with God and provides us with guidance, it does not in anyway give us a complete picture of God. The Bible is holy, blessed, amazing, and beautiful, but it isn’t God.

What does that mean? That means that if our primary written account of God and His Son can not possibly give us a full picture of God, how can anyone else claim to do so? Let me make this particularly clear: my Truth is in no way static. If you look back to my older post, it is very plain that my understanding of God has changed over the years, and especially the past eight months. In fact, my understanding of God changes on a daily basis. So then, why call this the static truth? Because, even though my truth isn’t static, God’s truth is. While our understanding of how God works may change over the course of our lifetime, God Himself does not change. That is why I chose the name Static Truth because I hope to in some way describe some aspects of the infinite nature of God and to aid others in their pursuit of these mysteries.

Here is where I agree with the above reader: there is a distinct problem in contemporary Christian America. We have this issue where we try to find truth, nail it down to one understanding, and then, once we have done that, we believe that the truth can never change. Now, I affirm Christian doctrines such as the Trinity, but the problem we have today is very different. While these doctrines provide access to the mystery of God, Christians today are trying to kill mystery. When there is no longer mystery, it implies that we then completely know God, which is impossible. If we are to grow, we must hold unswervingly to the Truth of God’s eternal glory and salvation, but we must also keep our hearts and minds humble so that we may continue to learn and grow in Christ.

I hope this answered the question!

Sam Hunley

Death by Opportunity

2009-04-07T13:49:00.001-04:00

Luke 9:1-5
Jesus now called the Twelve and gave them authority and power to deal with all the demons and cure diseases. He commissioned them to preach the news of God's kingdom and heal the sick. He said, "Don't load yourselves up with equipment. Keep it simple; you are the equipment. And no luxury inns—get a modest place and be content there until you leave. If you're not welcomed, leave town. Don't make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and move on."

When it comes to technology, I used to always look for the one widget that would do the absolute most for the least amount of cash. Makes sense, right? I mean, why buy the phone that can only take pictures, text, and make phone calls when you can buy the phone that can take pictures, text, make phone calls, play music, act as a GPS system, search the internet, play video games, find a good restaurant, tell you which stock to buy, and do your laundry? However, I think that there is a downfall in these technologies in their over complication.

Now, by over complication, I am not referring to hard to use technology. While there are some people who simply struggle with newer technology (which is fine!), most electronics and other devices are becoming easier and easier to use. An iPhone for example has a single screen, with pretty buttons that clearly indicate what they do, and all you have to do is press the desired picture. That’s pretty simple if you ask me. In fact, these things are so user-friendly that one of my mom’s friends (the absolutely least techno-savvy person that I know) can easily use and enjoy an iPhone. Over complication becomes more of a problem in two other areas.

First off, there is the most the obvious problem: overly complex systems trip themselves-up. As I found out the hard way, if you slap a bunch of incredibly intricate hardware into a computer, you can end-up with incredibly intricate problems. Essentially, these systems basically get tied-up in their own awesomeness. The second, much less obvious problem is the issue of having too many options. Have you ever realized how it gets harder and harder to choose something to do as the number of options increases? For example, having hundreds of TV channels but never being able to choose one to watch.

OK, so what the heck does any of this have to do with your relationship with Christ? Well, like our technology. We tend to make our lives exceedingly complex. What does that mean? That means that we become increasingly bogged-down and overwhelmed by everything that we make ourselves do. We try to make ourselves good at everything, and we place so many options in front of ourselves that we can never decide what to do. We are the generations that have been told that we can and should do everything within our power to do anything big, and dad-gummit! We try! We drive and push ourselves trying to create a name for ourselves, but the whole time, we get nowhere because our powers are not truly focused on God.

You see, we may set all of the goals and do all the work we want, but if all of the options and goals we set before ourselves are not focused within the will and desire of God, then all of our noble purposes only entangle and distract us. We are to keep it simple because, if we are not first seeking the Kingdom of God, all of our efforts are built upon sand and are, therefore, worthless. While Lent will be ending on Sunday, I encourage everyone to re-evaluate how their lives are focused, and if you find that becoming more like Christ and closer to God is not at the absolute top of the list, then you need to rethink your priorities. This isn’t about fire and brimstone. This isn’t a threat. This is a call to life.

Sam Hunley

Infinite Grace for the Infinitely Stubborn

2009-03-26T19:08:00.001-04:00

An Excerpt from Isak Denisen’s “Babette’s Feast”

“We have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason we tremble…We tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite…Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all into its bosom and proclaims general amnesty.”

Finding out what God wants me to say can be quite a pain. First of all, I don’t exactly hear a literal voice giving me words to write down, and He isn’t exactly dropping parchment in my lap either. Second, I kinda have my own agenda when I sit down to write. Often when I think of the Static Truth, I think of a possibility of doing something great, which on the outside, sounds quite nice; however, when I say “something great,” I mean something to the glory of Sam. In fact, sometimes when I write, I think that the subtitle to this devotional should be changed to “A Testimony to Sam’s Awesomeness.” Besides, I really am that great of a person, ain’t I?

The rather ironic thing about me when I become egotistical is that I can’t write. I’m become so over-confident in my writing that I either encounter severe writer’s block or what I do write is so horrible that I have a good feeling that Mrs. Blackmore (my high school English teacher for those who don’t know) would probably have a fit. Anyway, what does all of this have to do with grace being infinite? Unfortunately, not too much because it has a lot to do with grace being finite.

You see, when I get like this I work myself into such a hole that I’m completely at a loss in terms of writing, and since I see writing currently as my main ministry, if I fail at writing, then I fail at the purpose God is currently using me for. If I fail at doing what God has specifically made me for, then that means one of two things. Either A) I am not worthy of performing this ministry, or B) I’m performing the wrong ministry, in which case I am completely at a loss with my spiritual life. I usually end-up accepting both of these verdicts, which doesn’t exactly leave me as a satisfied human being.

Don’t we do that a lot, though? We see ourselves floundering in various areas of our lives, and we deem ourselves failures? I know that’s the way it works for me. I see myself weakly making an attempt to become closer to Christ, and then I see myself either fail or give-up before I get started. If I can’t make even the smallest change in my life, how can I expect in anyway to work up to the standard of perfection that we’ve been called to? Therefore, I must be a failure.

You know what? All of what I just said is very true. We are all failures. At some point in our life we have broken at least one of the commandments, and just by doing that we have condemned ourselves as sinners. However, to say this and leave it at that would be to completely ignore the life the Christ is actively living in us. At this point in the year, we remember that Jesus Christ died, but more importantly we remember that He IS risen. Through His death, He killed sin, and through His life, He has brought us infinite grace and life. Infinite means much more than “everyone can be saved.” It means that every single sin or mistake, past, present, or future, that we have ever committed is covered. We have been set free from all bonds, period. Your sin can no longer keep you from God. Now, it is our duty to teach others of this reality.

Sam Hunley

Heroes and Heroines in Our Midst

2009-03-18T19:00:00.004-04:00

My Hero – Foo Fighters

(Lyrics)
There goes my hero,
Watch him as he goes,
There goes my hero,
He’s ordinary.

I’m going to take a wild guess here and assume that many of you have not had the privilege to read an Ayn Rand novel in your lifetime, which is rather unfortunate. Even though a lot of Rand’s philosophy either simply doesn’t jive with Christian theology or is blatantly against it, her novels are still wonderful. They are full of colorfully evil antagonists and larger than life protagonists who overcome absolutely amazing odds to achieve their goals. In Rand’s eyes, her protagonists represent the ideal. They are the best of the best, and simply by existing, they demand that the rest of humanity live up to their standards or get the heck out of their way.

Even though all of Rand’s characters were atheists, you can see these sort of idealized characters in the modern Church, which is great. We need highly driven individuals, who form internationally known organizations, write captivating books, and deliver enthralling speeches. We need people like St. Paul to singlehandedly start and maintain multiple churches, and we need people such as Billy Graham, who work to re-inspire millions of Christians. We need people who can endure the pressure of the spotlight to lead the Church forward; however, what we don’t need are millions of Christians who think that they can’t do anything unless they have that sort of spotlight.

Let me give an example from my own life. I want to do good with my life. In fact, I want to do a lot of good, and I want to do good that will last well after I’m gone. However, I feel like I have to be well-known (A.K.A famous) in order to do good because if I don’t get media attention, then how will I affect people’s lives in an effective manner? Basically, I feel like if I don’t start a new Christian movement, a well-known group, or become a nationally known speaker, then somehow I’ve failed. Besides, if I’m just a normal pastor or layperson, then how will I ever be able to create lasting effects?

Over my spring break in a Pass Christian, MS (a city destroyed by Katrina), I worked with individuals, who have proven me to be very wrong. I met real heroes and heroines, who have selflessly worked to help those around them often at their own expense. I met Skip, a man who has worked with over 2,000 volunteers despite having his own home destroyed two times. I met Glenn, who left the safety of a hurricane-proof hotel room to rescue the elderly and disabled tenants on the floor below him from flood waters and who is just now working on building his own home after helping others. I also met Jeanie, a woman who has worked for the past four years to bring-in volunteer builders to help rebuild, while living in an incomplete house herself. All of these are normal everyday people that will (unfortunately) never be known outside of their community, and you know what? They don’t care. They are doing what God has called them to do, and the only person, who needs to know their name is Jesus.

You see, so often we sit around waiting until we find the right connections, the right spotlight, the right something to motivate us before we try to pursue what the LORD has placed before. What we don’t realize is that we have all of the connections and spotlight that we will ever need so long as God knows our name. In the past week, I have learned that I have all of the opportunities that I will ever need laid out before me. It is now my turn to make a move.

Sam Hunley

Love or the Lack Thereof

2009-02-10T23:53:00.002-05:00

All You Need Is Love - The Beatles

Mark 12:28-31
One of the religion scholars came up. Hearing the lively exchanges of question and answer and seeing how sharp Jesus was in his answers, he put in his question: "Which is most important of all the commandments?"
Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these."

If you spend any brief amount of time listening to a newscaster, you will probably hear multiple times about how bad things are on planet Earth, and I have to say that they are right. The economy is languishing. The human race has done a lot of damage to the environment. Violence and hatred are present throughout the world, and people in general just seem to argue and disagree on a lot. The world is very much in a sad state of affairs.

Of course, none of these problems are new. Yes, since there are more humans around some of these problems are worse, but the main difference is that we now have more information about all of these issues. Because of this information, we now have groups and movements dedicated to fixing certain aspects of the world. For example, we have entire scientific and political groups dedicated to working to fix the environment and other organizations working to ensure justice throughout the world. Despite their diversity, most of these groups claim the same thing: if you donate money, time, and energy to their individual causes, then you can play your own little part in “making the world a better place,” almost implying that we humans can “fix” the world. Great, huh? We can all now play our own part in saving the world! Yay! Unfortunately, I think that these groups and organizations are simply focusing on fixing the symptoms of a greater problem.

Now, please don’t take my sarcasm as making fun of the many very good organizations out there that have made huge differences in the world. I in no way condemn them. What I want to do is to point out what I see as the main problem in the world because I feel that if we know what we are really facing then we have greater potential to seriously affect the world. What is that problem? Well, as cheesy as it sounds, it’s that we don’t have enough love in the world.

Think about it, why do we have problems with the environment? A lack of love for God’s creation. Why do we have injustice in the world? A lack of love of truth and justice. Why do we have murder, rape, torture, hatred, slavery, etc.? A lack of love for our fellow man. Yea, I am oversimplifying these issues to no end, but once you really get down to it, not enough love seriously is the problem: a lack of love for God and lack of love for our neighbor.

So what? All I’ve done so far is just describe a still massive problem. How can you fix the problem of not enough love? The Beatles certainly couldn’t do it. Mother Teresa couldn’t do it. If these big shots couldn’t do anything, then what can us “normal” people do? Simple: we need to learn how to love. We need to honestly pursue truth and righteous, and we do that by asking God to teach us how to love Him and how to love each other. This is not something that will happen over night. It is a process of learning, changing attitudes, and then changing actions that will take many years to develop; however, as we learn how to love God above all else, we will begin to see the world through His eyes, and as we do so, we will see how to love even the most unlovable of individuals. By us as Christians working to live out our lives in love, we will be able to change the world for the better.

Sam Hunley

Only Child with One Brother

2009-02-02T21:19:00.001-05:00

Hebrews 2:10-11

10It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reasons Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters…

For those who don’t know, I’m an only child, which I actually like because I’ve been able to really get to know my parents; however, there was a time when I was little that I wanted to have a sibling. That was a very short period of time, though. As my parents love to recount, one day I walked into the room and announced that I wanted a sibling. My parents looked at each other, and then my dad turned to me and said, “Ok, go into your room, divide your toys in half, and that is what you will have after you have a sibling.” After assessing the situation for about two seconds, I changed my mind. I was (and can still be) a greedy child.

Twelve years later, I arrive at Furman. Originally, I had absolutely no intention of pledging a fraternity because one, they have a bad reputation, and two, I was handling things pretty well by myself. I didn’t need a group of guys to give me a life. One semester later, I’m pledging a fraternity, and I am incredibly excited. Why? Well, I found one that isn’t about outrageous parties and drinking and is made-up of some truly awesome guys, and I also learned that Greek life is about much more than a social network. I learned that true fraternities are about brotherhood.

Now, I know that none of this devotion thus far has had anything to do with Jesus, but I’ll get there. Anyway, so far, my fraternity experience has been awesome. I’ve developed friendships with guys from all over campus from all over the U.S., and even though we’ve really just met each other, we are already working as a team. It’s also amazing to know that if I truly needed help, I have about 19 guys that I could call at any hour of the day, and they would do whatever they could within their power to help me. That is an awesome feeling.

Ok, so back to Jesus. If you’re a Christian, you’ve heard about God as our Father, and you may have heard of God as our friend. Both of these descriptions are very true and certainly amazing images for how God interacts with us in our daily lives, but have you ever thought of Jesus as a brother? I hadn’t. I was flipping through my Bible randomly the other day, and for some reason, I ended-up in Hebrews. When I read the verse posted above, I had to stop. Jesus Christ, our Messiah, the Incarnate Word, the Son of God, is my brother. I cannot emphasize enough how crazy that is.

While that is nifty to think about and everything, so what? Just because someone is your brother doesn’t always mean much because, like college fraternities, families can become corrupted; however, Jesus was not, is not, and will never be corrupted. He wants you to get to know Him. He wants to be there for you. He wants to fight for you, and He will come to you when you call Him, even if everyone else has left you. Why? Because He is your brother. Through faith in Christ’s death and resurrection, we may come to enter His family, and because we are family, He will always love us no matter what we do.

Ultimately, I cannot tell you what it means to you for Christ to be your brother, but I can say this: we are never alone in our pursuit of Truth. Even if everyone else leaves us for dead, our Brother is still fighting right there with us.

Sam Hunley

Faith, Works, or Jesus?

2009-01-25T14:23:00.001-05:00

Romans 12:1
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
(Same Verse in the Message)
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

How does one share the Gospel? Does one use words and try to tell everyone possible, or does one try to refrain from words and simply use actions? Many people have many different answers to this question. For example, several local churches in Greenville feel that if they go to rock concerts and hold-up signs outside condemning sin and glorying Christ as Lord, then people will be saved. These individuals are fairly adamant about this technique because I have so far seen them outside two concerts and at both times, the temperature was sub-freezing; however, I can’t say that I agree with this approach. For starters, I personally find it quite annoying to have people holding-up signs condemning rock music, seeing as I love the genre, but the main problem lies in the fact that these individuals were avoiding personal interactions with those that they were trying to save. Basically, they were copping-out.

The other typical approach that you hear of is that of using actions. People who advocate this method believe that one best demonstrates Christ’s love by doing good deeds and avoiding words. These individuals believe that it would be rude to try to force their beliefs upon others, and they feel that they would simply be pushing these people away from Christ instead of bringing them closer. Essentially, they want to be nice, and they don’t want to make people feel uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, I think that these people have also missed the boat. If one reads any of the Gospels, he or she will quickly see that Jesus was not always nice, and He certainly didn’t seem to care if He made people uncomfortable. Remember, Jesus at one point hand-made His own whip to chase merchants out of a Temple. Quite honestly, I wouldn’t be very comfortable being chased by a guy with a whip, and I certainly wouldn’t think that he was very nice.

How does one witness then? If neither words nor actions are enough, then what do you do? I’ve heard some say that sharing the Gospel is somewhat like a plane. As a plane needs both of its wings to fly, you need to have both faith and actions in order to have a good witness. While I think that this concept is much closer than an “either/or” approach, I still think that it is too simplistic and, in the end, still misses the point. In fact, I think the idea that the Christian life is based simply on works, faith, or a combination thereof is misguided because the Christian life should be based on Christ.

What does this mean, though? How does this play out in our witness and in our lives? The answer is that it should play out completely. Our whole lives should ideally be centered around our relationships with Christ. Our focus should not be whether or not we have done enough or whether or not we have enough faith, it should be about loving others as Christ has loved us, humbling ourselves as Christ humbled Himself, giving as Christ gave, constantly pursuing truth and righteousness in our lives, and at the end of the day, recognizing that none of what we do saves us because only Christ can save us. That is how you witness to others: with your life.

Sam Hunley

The Go-Getter in All of Us

2009-01-15T14:01:00.001-05:00

Romans 12:2
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

You know, there is something unique about America. Not that there is anything wrong with other countries, but America just has something special. Many people point to the incredible diversity and, at the same time, unity of the people of this country as what makes us distinct, but I think it’s something different: the fact that our country has built itself off of amazing go getters. Think about it. Our Founding Fathers relentlessly pursued their desire to build a country based-off of their ideals, influencing many other people to fight for their own freedom and basic rights.

Inspired by this zeal, millions of immigrants moved to this country in pursuit of the American dream. Amongst these immigrants were many individuals who saw something that they wanted fixed and therefore they fixed it themselves. For example, Amadeo Giannini, whose parents were Italian, noticed that immigrants either distrusted the established banking systems or were mistreated, so in order to fix this problem he created the Bank of Italy, which later took on the name Bank of America.

This example is one of many in American history of individuals seeking to fix problems that they see in the world, and thankfully, this spirit is still alive today. From a very early age, we teach our children that they should seek to solve difficult situations in their lives, inspiring new generations to do what they can with the world. Although I can’t say that I agree with his politics, our president-elect is a prime example of this “go-getter” spirit. As Christians, though, can this attitude become a problem in and of itself? Sure, we are charged with going-out and doing good in Christ’s name, but can our “go out and change the world attitudes” hinder our personal relationship with Christ? I would argue yes. How so? Well, let’s take a look at how many new Christians are told to approach their faith.

OK, as many Christians accept Christ, they are immediately told that they need to change the way they live because right now they are currently living in sin. Now, nothing is wrong with this. In fact, if you read the gospels, especially Mathew and Mark, you will see that Jesus emphasizes time and time again that the importance of hearing His message is actually putting it into action. As He says, “… everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” However, many fledgling Christians misunderstand this advice.

Instead of letting their new attitude towards and relationship with Christ change their lives as Paul commands, they seek to change from the outside in. As they see their sin, they think, “Oh, if I only prayed more, I could know God better!” “If I could tithe more, then I could change who I am.” “If I could only do more for God…” However, as these individuals pursue personal change by doing things, they find themselves stuck at point A, not any different from when they began. I’ve been there, and that is a pretty depressing place.

The flaw in this attitude comes from the fact that it believes that something must be done to earn salvation. That fact is, Christ has already done everything. As He said on the cross, “It is finished.” Done. Complete. Over-with. How do we change then? By allowing our actions to be changed by the renewing of our minds. Our actions change because our attitude changes. As we realize God’s love for ourselves and those around us, we begin to see the world in light of love rather than in the light of personal greed and, therefore, to see life in the sun of eternity rather than the spark of the temporary.

Sam Hunley

Comfortable Christianity

2009-01-04T16:50:00.001-05:00

Mathew 3:1-2, 4
1In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea 2and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." 4John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.

You know what the most awesome feeling in the world is for me? Comfort. I love having a comfortable bed, in a room set at a comfortable temperature, and having comfortable pajamas. My love of comfort extends well beyond where I live, though. I also love comfortable situations with friends, where I know that I am loved and accepted, and I love having a comfortable car to drive in. I even love comfort food.

But who doesn’t love comfort? I mean, seriously, the opposite of comfortable is, well, uncomfortable. Imagine if you had to sleep on an uncomfortable bed in an uncomfortable room with uncomfortable pajamas, that would be pretty miserable. Also, uncomfortable situations with friends are equally as bad. What if you weren’t sure if you were loved and accepted? That could lead to frustration, pain, worry, and general unhappiness, so it is natural for us humans to try to avoid such things. However, is there a point at which the eternal pursuit of comfort becomes a problem? Meaning, can pursuing comfortable places and situations hurt our relationship with God and prevent us from fulfilling His purposes for our lives?

Unfortunately for me and many other people, the answer is yes. Think about it, though. If God calls us to a life that is often very different from the way people live around us, then how can there not be some sort of friction? I’m not saying that we are supposed to purposely create conflict, but when you attempt to live the radical life that Christ sets before us in the Sermon on the Mount (Mathew 5-7), you will most definitely stand out in sometimes awkward ways and sometimes even draw hatred from those around you. As the writer of 1st John says, “Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.”

Physical comfort is also not necessarily something that you’ll find on the Christian path. For example, look at St. John the Baptist. If you read the verse that I posted above, you will quickly notice that Mathew points out the incredible discomfort of John’s situation. He was wearing camel hair clothes, living in the desert, and eating bugs, and this is the man who announced the coming of Christ? Wouldn’t you expect such an important man to receive a much more comfortable welcoming? And yet, God allowed him to live in discomfort and eventually be beheaded by Herod. Christ Himself was born in a barn, and if you think that modern barns are dirty, think about a first century barn without electricity or running water. That would be absolutely miserable.

Does all this mean that comfort is innately bad? No, as Solomon says in Ecclesiastes, “…when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work--this is a gift of God.” However, if our desire for comfort begins to conflict with God’s desires for our lives, then we have missed the point. The focus of our lives should be serving and glorifying God by seeking what is eternal over what is temporal. This means that we have a lot of work ahead of us if we want to overcome our fleshly desires, but if you feel called to do something (go on a mission trip, witness to someone, preach, help someone, etc.) and haven’t because of potentially uncomfortable situations, I encourage you to pray to God for help in overcoming your fears, so that you may fulfill His purpose for you life.

Sam Hunley

Furball's and Grace

2008-12-25T14:36:00.001-05:00

OK, so I’ve been a wee-bit slack in writing devotionals here lately. I would blame most of my slowness on Furman, but unfortunately, I think that much of the fault lies in my own laziness and tendency to let myself become overwhelmed by schoolwork. In any case, I’m finally writing again, and that makes me happy. So now, enough explaining myself and onto the actual devotional.

As anyone who has been with me at my house will know, Lucy, my cat, and I have a love/hate relationship. Love because Lucy is a cute, fuzzy, multi-colored, little fur-ball that loves attention. Hate because SHE CAN BE INCREDIBLY ANNOYING! How so? One may ask. How could I ever be annoyed by a cute, little, ol’ kitty cat? Quite simply. You take a fur-ball and give it an extreme desire for attention. Then, you give it an extreme amount of determination (or stupidity), and then you give it the most obnoxious “meow” that you could possibly think of and set said fur ball loose. With all of these wonderful traits, you get Lucy, the cat who will, literally, follow you all over the house “meowing” for hours until you finally give in and pick her up.

Oddly enough, this spiel does have something do with God. You know why? Because the Grace of God is an annoyingly persistent force. For example, when I’m tired and frustrated, I don’t want to deal with anyone, especially God; however, even when I’m my most frustrated and down on myself, I feel this annoying nagging feeling at the back of my mind. I can ignore it all I want, but I know that it will not go away. I can yell. I can be angry. I can sin all I want, and Grace is still meowing annoyingly at my heels. I don’t know about you, but this is a truly annoying experience. I want to get away from God, but despite all of my efforts, He never leaves.

In my attempts to deal with these pests, I developed a successful tactic that will make both Lucy and God shut-up. It’s called giving-up. You heard me. Straight-up surrender. It may sound a lot like losing, but trust me; it’s more of a victory than you can ever know. Besides, when you finally pick Lucy up, all she does is crawl-up on onto your shoulder, curl around your neck, and go to sleep. In fact, she acts as a very nice scarf. A very nice, quiet scarf. Likewise, God quietly makes Himself comfortable in your heart.

God is a bit better than Lucy, though. You see, I’m allergic to cats, so even though I like holding Lucy, I become sniffly and get an itchy throat. God, on the other hand, heals rather than hurts. Before I surrender, I am angry, tired, and hard hearted. As I allow the Holy Spirit into my soul, He soothes my anger, rejuvenates my spirit, and warms my frozen heart, allowing me to breathe again. All of these things happen as I surrender. As I let go. As I acknowledge that can’t have control over everything and that, on my own, I will surely fail. In short, as I submit to God.

Now, I need to make some clarifications. I am not saying that surrendering to God will make all of your problems go away. To be sure, your problems will still be very present, and you will still have to deal with them in one shape or another. Jesus does not come in and make all the bad things go away. Instead, He gives us the strength and wisdom so that we may make it through bad situations. This strength allows us to firmly stand on the hope one day, maybe even one day soon, Jesus will return to set all things right.

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful Christmas!

Sam Hunley

Summer Day Dreams - In Early Fall

2008-11-11T16:30:00.001-05:00

2 Corinthians 5:2ish-5ish
Sometimes we can hardly wait to move—and so we cry out in frustration. Compared to what's coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we're tired of it! We've been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what's ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we'll never settle for less.

Is it sad that I haven’t even made it halfway through November, and I’m already thinking about how great summer will be? If so, I blame college. Yea, sure, Furman has been a truly wonderful experience, but dang-it! This whole college thing is hard! I have a lot more work to do, I have to study a lot more, and I don’t have nearly as much free time as I used to have…Correction, I shouldn’t have as much free time as I used to have. All of these things make life much more complex and stressful than I would prefer it.

In light of these stresses, I want out. Well, not out completely because that would have certain implications with my quality of life, but I want a significant break where I don’t have to worry about studying, homework, quizzes, tests, essays, and/or exams. I want to be able to chill and not feel guilty because I am losing time that I could (and should) be working. Unfortunately though, I must wait for the summer to experience this freedom. I can’t speed-up time, I can’t skip a semester, and I most definitely can’t drop our of school, so therefore, I must settle down and simply focus on the work at hand so that I may truly enjoy the break to come.

On a spiritual level this desire is exactly what Paul is talking about in these verses. As we struggle against the stresses of attempting to follow God’s commands while fighting against our own desires, we can easily become burned-out, disenchanted, and flat-out tired of dealing with this world. All of this stress is made worse by the fact that we know that something better is coming. As Paul says, “We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing,” of how life is supposed to be, and we want it. Unfortunately, just as I, and many other students, must wait for summer, Christian must also wait for the world to come. Why? Well, you can’t exactly skip a semester in life and dropping-out isn’t exactly an option.

If copping-out isn’t an option, then what next? Are we supposed to sit here and wallow in the despair of this world? Sure, if you’d like. That is an option that many people choose. However, I know that is not our purpose in this world. God has called us to something much more. As Jesus said, we are supposed to be the “light of the world,” bringing the good news to those who are in despair. What does that mean, though? Live a good, mission oriented-life, and help those in pain. Not exactly.

Yes, those things are great, but we have a much greater purpose than that. As Christians, we should be a light shining in the darkness, showing that there is hope in this life. As Alexander Schmemann put it, as the Church, we are supposed to be a sacrament to world. Meaning, we are supposed to be a way for those in this world to experience the grace of God here and now. We aren’t supposed to be the band-aid dispensers, handing out temporary fixes. No, we are to be healers and guides, leading the lost to a relationship with God that will last for all eternity but starts now.

As we try to show others this truth, we must also always remember that this good news applies to us as well. God is as real for us as He was for Christ, and that fact will never change.

I hope that all is well!

Sam Hunley

Dear Disciples, won't you come out to play?

2008-10-28T10:02:00.001-04:00

Mathew 5:14-16
14"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

I love how more traditional Methodist and Episcopalian services are filled with so much symbolism. In a way it helps me to focus because, even when I zone out, I often end up thinking about some object within my frame of vision, which then leads me to think about the symbolism behind that object, which then brings me back to focusing on the sermon or scripture being read. My favorite symbols would have to be the cross and torches carried by the acolytes.

For those of you who don’t know the format of these services, here is a brief overview of what I’m talking about. As the service begins, an acolyte proceeds down the central isle of the church followed by one or two torchbearers (a.k.a. candle lighters), and they proceed to the front of church, lighting candles as they go and/or when they reach the altar. These individuals represent (pastors, correct me if I’m wrong) the Holy Spirit descending upon the congregation because where two or more come together in Christ’s name, He is with them. At the end of the service, these same individuals reverse this process, symbolizing the church bringing the light of Christ to the world. Great symbolism, huh? I’ve always found it nifty.

However, this Sunday I noticed an unintentional symbol hidden in these acts. After the acolytes exit the sanctuary, instead of proceeding out into the world, the torches are snuffed, the cross returned to its place, and all are locked-up until the next week’s service. Kinda funny, huh? If the light of Christ is supposed to proceed from the Church into the world, then why do they stay locked-up?

OK, just so you know, I’m not suggesting that we should have the acolytes walk throughout the week, carrying the torches and the cross. Instead, I think that this symbolism highlights the fact that it should be the congregation, not the cross and torches, that should be bringing the light of Christ into the world. How are we supposed to do that, though? Witness to everyone we see? Volunteer at the church during every free second of our life? Quit our jobs and travel the countryside preaching the Gospel? Not necessarily. Sure, I think that there are some who are called to devote their life serving Christ in these ways, but I don’t think that is what Christ is getting at in these verses.

If you go back and read the rest of this chapter, you may notice the same thing I did. Jesus is calling us to something rather extreme. He wants us to, as Paul describes, “take [our] everyday, ordinary life—[our] sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.” That means that Jesus wants more than just our “church” time. He wants all of our “worldly” time, too.

It may just be me, but that sounds hard! How can we ever be expected to completely dedicate our lives to God? To be honest, I don’t know. However, as I have stumbled and crawled in faith down the path that He has laid out before me, I have found that, in some mysterious way, Christ is with me, slowly forming me into the man I supposed to be. Whether in this life or the next, God will bring all of His works to perfection. Therefore, I have faith that He will not leave me incomplete.

I hope that all is well!

Sam Hunley

Making the Yoke Complex and the Burden Heavy

2008-10-23T10:19:00.001-04:00

Wow, imagine that! Sam, actually was able to write consistently! Now I have to shoot for three in a row. Hmm, this is going to be tricky. Anyway, enough of my rambling and onto the devotional.

Mathew 11:28-30

(Jesus is speaking)

28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

One thing that I am learning in the three religion courses that I’m taking now is that theology is awesome. Yes, I am a nerd. Seriously though, this stuff blows my mind. I have found that early Church fathers wrote whole books and collections of books explaining the different aspects of the spiritual interactions between God and His people, and all of them amazing. It’s thrilling to be able to understand the beliefs behind the sacraments, salvation, and perfection, and in some ways, it helps me to worship because I better understand what is going on. However, there is a dark side to all of this learning. I have found that the more that I learn about the beliefs of the Church, the more I think about them, which isn’t necessarily a problem, but it is a problem when these doctrines become the point. As Rob Bell, a Christian author put it, “Doctrine is a wonderful servant and a horrible master.”

What do I mean by this? Well, as I said, the more that I learn about theology, the more I think about it. If I’m not careful, I start thinking about these beliefs more than I think about Christ. I begin to think about Christ in a purely theoretical light. Essentially, I try to turn Jesus into a science, which is wrong. Why? Because, as a speaker on campus recently put it, Jesus is not some abstract ideal concept. He is not some theory by which we may test our other theories. He was and is a living, breathing, real human being. We can interact with Him intellectually, spiritually, and personally. He is not some unattainable goal. Instead, He is someone who we may come to know now.

All of these things bring-up my main point: we humans think way too much. Why do I say this? Read the scripture above. How does Christ describe His yoke and His burden? They are easy and light. Great. What does that mean? It means that He will never lay something on us that is either too hard for us to bear or so complex that we will never be able to untangle what He meant. Basically, you don’t have to be the next St. Paul in order to be saved.

If this is true, why do we humans complicate things? We spend thousands of hours trying to “figure things out.” We try to find and fix all of our problems so that we can then go to God. We worry about whether or not we are saved. We worry about if God loves us. We worry about whether or not we are using the right translation of the Bible. Anything. You name it, we worry about it, but what did Christ tell us to do? Not to worry.

Does this mean we should forsake the sacraments that confuse us or ignore doctrines that we don’t understand? No. They have been intricate parts of our faith for thousands of years, and they do provide beautiful ways to interact with and come closer to God. However, we must always remember that Christ called us to love our God above all else and to love our neighbors as ourselves. His promises tell us that His love for us is eternal and that nothing can separate us from Him. This is what we have faith in. No more, no less.

Sam Hunley

Pursuit of the Impossibe

2008-10-14T10:41:00.003-04:00

Andy Timmons - Gone (9/11/01)

Hebrews 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

For those of you who don’t know, I love guitar, and when I say love, I mean that I am absolutely and positively addicted to it. I can easily say that, if it weren’t for God, I could live and breathe for that instrument not because I love pieces of wood with string on them but because I love the absolute pure emotion and satisfaction that one can receive from playing a guitar well through good equipment.

Because of my obsession, I also love to listen to guitarists who exemplify near perfection in their expression and playing abilities. Joe Satriani and Andy Timmons are two players who stand out in my mind when I think of this quality of playing. Now, most of you have never heard of or will ever hear of these guitarists beyond this devotional, but they are absolutely mind-blowing, especially Andy Timmons. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Satch (that’s Satriani’s nick name), and I am extremely proud to say that I have met him; however, I have found no one who can express emotion through an instrument better than Timmons. The amount of control he has over every aspect of his playing is phenomenal.

Of course as a guitarist, I look-up to these guys. I want to play like them. I want to somehow reach their level of ability. I want to do what they do, but you know what? I’m so bogged down in everyday life (i.e. school) that I will never be able to practice enough to get to their level, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to quit guitar. Instead, these players inspire me to keep playing in the hopes that I will some day be able to produce something anywhere near the quality of music that these guys produce. Sound familiar?

Let’s look at this situation again except change-up a few of the nouns and people involved. As a Christian, I have learned to love Christ. His love for others, closeness to God, extreme desire to follow God, and absolute perfection exemplify everything that I now want to be; however, there are several problems. Not only am I far less of a being than He is, I am also bogged down in the problems associated with this world. Basically, I have no hope of ever becoming anywhere close to how amazing He is in this life or the one to come.

What does this mean, though? Do I give-up? Heck no! Even though I know that anything I could ever be is far below the perfection that exists forever in Christ, I continue to strive to imitate His life, not so that I can somehow earn my salvation, but so that I may become more like the man that God designed me to be. I continue running the race knowing that God both recognizes and aids my efforts and, most importantly, that He will complete His work in me when my days are through.

Why go through all the effort, though? I mean, if we are saved simply by following Jesus and knowing that He is God, then why do all of this extra-work? Why? Because faith without works is dead. If you haven’t left the couch, then how can you say that you are following Christ? Does this mean that we have to have everything – or anything for that matter – perfect? No. It is the Grace of God which brings us all to perfection. However, this Grace works in us and through us only as our faith propels us forward, crawling, stumbling, and meandering after Christ.

Sam Hunley

I Give Love a Bad Name??

2008-09-28T13:13:00.001-04:00

You Give Love a Bad Name – Bon Jovi
Shot through the heart
And you’re to blame
You give Love a bad name
I play my part and you play your game
You give Love a bad name

The Hunley family has a history of raising their children on good music. For example, when I was an infant I went to sleep listening to classical music by composers such as Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, and my cousin on the west-coast sang her first song to the tune of the classic piece posted above. What does this have to do with God? Probably not much, but it certainly explains my tendency to head-bang. Anyway, I shall move onto the point of this devotional.

When this song comes on the radio, you see a lot of people who start singing along. Why? Well, for one, it is an awesome song. The second reason is that many people have experiences that allow them to relate to it. They have in mind a specific person to whom the “you” refers, and they put themselves in the place of the speaker. Let’s put a twist on this scenario. What if the singer were singing to you? What if you were the one who had given love a bad name? Not a pleasant thought, huh?

Here’s why I say this: us Christians tend to become over-zealous for changing things outside of ourselves. We support/fight politicians, social change, and many other things in the name of our God, saying that it is our “Christian duty” to do so. Now, doing such things is not innately wrong. In fact, as followers of Christ we should be the ones in charge of positive political and social changes. However, I think we often become so caught-up in achieving our goals that we stop caring how others see us.

You see, we need to be conscious of our image, not because we want to look trendy, but because we need to be conscious of how the world sees the image of Jesus. As Paul says, the Church is the embodiment of Christ to the world, and as individual members of that body, we each play a role in how the body is perceived. If we, as the representatives of God, charge out, not caring who we may offend so long as we are able to “win the day for God,” then how do you think that makes Christ look? Wouldn’t we then be giving Love a bad name?

Once again, I am not saying that Christians should not be deeply involved in positive political and social change, and I am not saying that Christians should not stand their ground on moral issues. What I am saying is that we should do so and live out all aspects in our lives in love. What does this mean? It means that we have to become more personally involved in the lives of others. Instead of blindly condemning the actions of certain groups of people, we need to find ways to interact with and converse with members of those groups. Basically, as Christians, we should talk to and learn to love people with whom we strongly disagree not so that we will change our own views, but so that we will best be able to communicate the Truth. We must also always remember that the most important part of this Truth is the saving Grace of Jesus Christ, which overcomes all sin.

Sam Hunley

Life Just Ain't Fair...

2008-09-11T17:45:00.001-04:00

Be My Escape – Relient K
I’m giving up on doing this alone now
Cause I’ve failed and I’m ready to be shown how
He’s told me the way and I’m trying to get there
And this life sentence that I’m serving
I admit that I’m every bit deserving
But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair

For those of you who have been reading my devotionals for a while, you have already heard me talk about this, but for those of you who haven’t, we most definitely live in a do-it-yourself culture. We are supposed to be strong and tough it out. We must battle our personal demons – alone – and give others the space to do the same, and if we fail at this, we are viewed as either cowardly, weak, or emotionally unstable.

In many ways, I try to live this way. For example, when I’m dealing with low self-esteem or doubts, I will let very few people know about it, and even the ones who do know only get a limited picture of what I’m struggling with. Why do I do this? Because I feel that I can handle it, I can support myself, and I don’t want to burden others with my problems. Besides, if I tell others that I doubt my self and even God sometimes, then they might think something is wrong with me. I’m supposed to be a strong Christian and be the salt and light of the earth. I am supposed to be a super-disciple, fighting the forces of evil, and super-disciples don’t struggle with issues of faith.

OK, from this perspective, it’s very easy to see that there are several glaring problems with this viewpoint, pride being the most obvious. However, I think it will be much more productive if I focus on one aspect of this flawed approach to life that is often over looked. That flaw is the assumption that we have to “have it all together” in order to truly be a Christian. Yea, sure, we acknowledge by our lips that we can never be perfect, but why don’t we act like it?

As the words of the song above indicate, we all have this life sentence that we deserve. We deserve every bit of punishment that we have stored for us. Here’s the problem, though. We try to fight our sins and desires by our own efforts, and when we fail, we see ourselves as failures. Therefore, as we struggle more and more to overcome our sin our self-esteem drops lower and lower as we see ourselves continuing to fail.

Let me let you in on a little secret, though: if you try to overcome your problems by your own efforts in order to please God, you will fail. If you try to earn your salvation, you will never make the mark. As I said, we deserve death, and there is nothing we can do to deserve life. Depressing, huh? Good thing life isn’t fair. Yes. I did say good thing. You see, if God treated us fairly, we would be dead now.

In this world, people are rewarded or punished for what they do, and institutions and people are judged as being “good” depending on how closely they stick to the rules. God doesn’t play that way, though. God loves us no matter what we do. We can reject Him. We can yell at Him. We can be angry with Him, and we can flat out ignore Him, but at the end of the day, He loves us. That is why He sent His Son to bring us back to Him.

Sam Hunley

A Vicious Cycle

2008-08-28T19:19:00.002-04:00

I greatly dislike blank sheets of paper, or in this situation, I loathe blank computer screens. In the case of The Static Truth, my computer has been rather empty here lately. Do you know how hard it is to create a new piece of writing after not writing at all for three weeks? It’s a pain. It’s not that I’ve forgotten how to write but that I’ve lost the routine. You see, when I’ve been writing devotionals for several weeks in a row, my brain is generally is in a creative mood, and even when it’s not, I can think back to the previous week for inspiration. Now, I have nothing.
College life is throwing its own little wrench in the system because, in addition to being a totally different environment, it has also brought along a nice collection of distractions, including Target and Wal-Mart. These distractions would not be nearly as problematic if I had established some sort of system before leaving Greenwood, but alas, I must start again and fashion a new approach to my writing.

All of these problems boil down to the problem of not being prepared. I assumed that my approach to writing would always be the same, and therefore, there was no need to develop my system in order to accommodate new situations. Unfortunately, I let this lack of preparation leak into my spiritual life.

In developing my relationship with God, I based my understanding of Him on how I knew him within the boundaries of little ol’ Greenwood, South Carolina, and that system worked. However, now that I’m at Furman, I’m lost. I’m stuck struggling with thoughts and sins that I had “under control” back home, and I’m left desiring sin rather than righteousness.

Why all of these problems, though? Shouldn’t it be as easy as developing a new routine with God? No, the problem runs much deeper than that. You see, the routine* was and is the problem because the routine made me forget that God is a real being that desires to have a constant personal relationship with us. It made me forget that God knows me inside and out, and that He wants me to fully know Him. Most importantly, I forgot that God truly loves me for who I am.

When I forgot all of these key concepts, college sent me into disarray. When I became stressed, I failed to turn to God. When I’ve been tempted, I’ve relied upon my own efforts rather than God’s grace, and when approached with philosophies that have contradicted my beliefs, I have been left confused rather than leaving my feet firmly planted of the Rock that is God.

What does this mean? Are new experiences and concepts evil? By no means! Encountering new philosophies and situations helps us to grow in our understanding of God and the world, but we can not let all of this newness overwhelm us so that we loose sight of God. How do we prevent this situation? By developing a strong personal relationship with God based upon prayer because, as with any relationship, communication is central to a strong and close friendship.

(*NOTE: By routine, I do not mean the weekly rituals found within churches such as the Episcopal Church. Rather, I mean when one allows their relationship with God to stagnate, having the exact same interactions with God everyday and not pursuing a deeper and more true relationship with Him. I hope that clarifies what I mean.)

I hope all is well!

Sam Hunley

Thoughts on My Upcoming Transition

2008-08-04T18:41:00.007-04:00

Yesterday my girlfriend’s little sister left with their grandparents to go camping for a week, but before she left, she began crying. It wasn’t that anything in particular was wrong. It was just that she really, truly wanted to go on the trip, but at the same time, she also really, truly wanted to stay home with her parents and friends. Boy, can I resonate with those emotions. On the one hand, I can’t wait to get to Furman because I need to get out of my bubble. I need change, I need to grow, and I need to learn more about who I will eventually become. However, on the other hand, I have learned to love my home.

Let’s face it; I am an incredibly fortunate individual. I mean, seriously, when I walk outside my back door I have this view:

When I come home, I have parents who love and support me; I have friends who have been with me for years, and I have a wonderful girlfriend. Then there is my room. Granted, as you can see below, it is buried in several years of junk, but it is still my room; it is the culmination of all the feelings that make up the word “home” to me.

When I leave for college, I will have to leave all of these people and things, all that I have ever known, behind me in order to move to an unknown place where I must trust unknown people to provide me the sources with which to develop the rest of my life.

Does anyone else see how incredibly scary that thought it? Yea, yea, I know. Furman is a wonderful school, and they will provide me an excellent education. I understand all of that, but dang-it! I feel like I’m still a kid, and in less than three weeks I have to start pretending to be an adult… Well, considering I have a full beard, am almost six feet tall, and have a deep voice (sometimes), the pretending part won’t be particularly hard, but believing that I’m actually an adult will be a much harder task.

For these reasons, the next couple of weeks will include much more than simply cleaning-up, packing-up, and saying goodbyes. I will also need to spend many hours simply preparing my mind for what is to come. Can I do that, though? Do I have the ability to prepare myself for something as big as college? Heck if I know, I’ve never been to college before, but I’ll found out. Besides, if I can’t prepare myself mentally, then what do I lose by trying?

Anyway, over the next couple of weeks, my schedule will be quite sporadic because, in addition to cleaning and packing, I will also need to make sure that I spend as much time as possible with family and friends. Therefore, I don’t know if I will be able to update the Static Truth as much as I’d like, but don’t worry. I am going to continue the devotionals throughout college even if they do happen to become slightly less common.

I hope that everyone's summers are wrapping-up well!

Sam Hunley

Controlling My Desire for Perfection

2008-07-30T12:01:00.000-04:00

As I try to admit often, I struggle as a Christian. Meaning, I have sinful desires that I have a tendency to fall to, so I spend a lot of time and energy trying to, essentially, defeat myself. However, several nights ago while trying to think of a new scheme to improve myself, I encountered what seemed to me to be a rather profound question: Can we become more focused on bettering ourselves than loving others? I mean, I know that we are supposed to work to control our desires in order to honor God, but what if controlling our desires becomes our point in life?

With this idea in mind, I perused my Bible sort of looking for scripture that would answer my question when I remembered the two great commandments: 1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and, 2) Love your neighbor as yourself. Neither of these commandments says that we should work to perfect ourselves. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that seeking self-perfection would actually be two forms of sin.

For starters, if you seek to make yourself perfect then do you truly trust in God’s grace? It’s kinda like you are saying, “I’m saved! My sin has been erased! But…erm… just in case the whole grace thing doesn’t work out, I’m going to become perfect on my own.” I’m not saying that we should not try to stop sinning. Like I said, that is one form of honoring God that Paul tells us to pursue, but it’s a problem when it becomes the point. This is something that I have found that I struggle with. I get caught-up in the idea that I need to remove my sin, forgetting that Christ has already done that.

The other sin that you encounter is selfishness because instead of spending our time loving and helping others, we spend it loving and helping ourselves. OK, this statement needs clarifying. Remember, when I say all of this I am talking about being over focused on fixing ourselves. It is not wrong to try to improve your life, and it is most definitely not a sin to make an effort to stop sinning; however, when your desire to improve yourself overshadows your love for others, that is a problem.

Why am I saying all of this? Because I see some problem in society that I want fixed? No, it’s because I see a problem within myself. I see myself making an honest effort to do good but then pulling out a gun and shooting a hole in my foot. I search for change but find myself stuck at the drawing board. How do you fix this? How do you change if every time you try, your efforts fail? The answer is faith.

You see, in an odd, ironic, and semi-annoying way, I have found that when I stop worrying about whether or not I’m perfect yet, put my focus on loving God and others, and have faith in God to change me, change actually happens. I honestly, don’t know how, though. I guess it comes from the fact that if you put more effort into loving others as yourself, your mind is changed and therefore your actions change, but I can not understand why your mind changes to begin with. Which amazes me because, so far in my faith, I have been able to make everything logical, so to finally be able to find something that I can’t rationalize is amazing.

Now I can honestly say that I have found a being much greater than myself. Not only that, but I now know that this Being is far great than I can understand and loves me deeper than I’ll ever be able to know. Will I still have doubts? Yes. Will I still falter? Yes. But I know that my God will never leave me because He has changed me despite my resistance. You know what, though? I’m nothing special. Everyone has the ability to experience God at this and far greater levels.

Sam Hunley

Hobbies and Interests

2008-07-10T14:20:00.002-04:00

Do you have a hobby? I do. Actually, I have several. I play guitar, I write, and occasionally I play video games. Now, since they are hobbies, with the exception of guitar, I don’t really spend too much time with them. I work on them only several times every other week so that I may slowly get better at them. I would work at them a bit more, but other things take-up my time such as friends, family, school, those sort of things. That’s fine, though, putting friends and family before a hobby is a good thing. After all, a hobby is just a hobby. It not that important in the overall spectrum of things.

You know what? I have this other hobby I forgot to tell you about. It slips my mind a lot because I don’t really work at it as much as the other ones. It’s kinda hard to put into words what it actually is, but I’ll sum it up as my relationship with God. If you’re a Christian, this very well may be one of your hobbies, too. Occasionally I’ll spend some time reading my Bible or extra time praying, but more often than not, friends, family, school, and some of my more important hobbies just get in the way, you know? Besides, if I really wanted to build a relationship with God, I would need to work at all of the time. How inconvenient is that? Seriously, imagine hula-hooping through town trying to do all of your normal daily activities? That would be a pain! It’s the same with God. He wants us to think about Him all the time and do things for Him all the time! That’s just asking too much.

It seems to me that many Christians, most definitely including myself, have fallen into this trap. We play with God while it is fun for us, and when we get tired of Him, we put Him back in His place and go play with something else. It’s not that we act out our job as Christians and then turn around and do evil, becoming hypocrites, it’s that we are molding God’s call to be disciples into something that is more convenient for us, a hobby.

Since I won’t have room, I want everyone to look up these verses: Mathew 8:18-22. If you don’t have a Bible handy, go to www.biblegateway.com and check them out there. Think about those verses and then come back here. Now, did what Jesus say make discipleship look like something you could do as a hobby? Heck, did it look even the least bit convenient? No. You see, the truth of the Gospel is very much an inconvenient truth. God is calling us to put everything else, our hobbies, friends, families, jobs, school, EVERYTHING below His will. That means putting the needs of others before our own desires.

Even beginning to do any of this is extremely hard. That is why Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” He is saying that if anyone truly wants to be called a follower of Christ, he must be willing to shoulder his own pain and suffering so that he will be able to work to fulfill the will of God.

In this paragraph, you might expect me to say something such as, “Don’t worry! Christ is with us! We can do all things!” Well, that’s true, and that is how we do become true disciples, through the power of the Holy Spirit. However, that is not what I want to say. Instead, I want to put a reminder to everyone reading this and myself: there is a distinct difference between being saved a being a disciple. Basically, if you are not truly a disciple right now, that does not mean that you are not saved. No, salvation comes through faith alone. Never forget that fact. We are saved by what we believe, not what we do, but if we desire a closer, stronger, and more true relationship with God, we must be willing to take the hard road, fight our own desires, and live a life in service to others.

I hope that y’all’s summers are going well!

Sam Hunley

A Real-Life Metaphorical Journey

2008-07-06T21:18:00.001-04:00

You know what’s one of the worst situations in the world? Not having a place where you can fall asleep. It’s even worse when you know that the next day you’re expected to be fully functional from 7am to 11pm, so if you don’t get any sleep, you will be miserable. You want to know how I know this as a fact? I experienced it a couple of Saturdays ago at a Church camp.

Of course, I didn’t plan my night to turn out in such a lame fashion. In the church where we were staying, I had staked-out wonderful sleeping real-estate: two couches put together directly beneath two ceiling fans. I had it made. However, these feelings of contentment lasted only for a few brief moments because I soon realized that the other ten or so people in the room had no plans of going to sleep anytime soon. No, they were going to stay-up late, and they weren’t going to be quiet about it either.

At first, I figured that I could ignore the noise somehow, but that hope quickly faded. I then tried to blast out the sound with my own noise (i.e. my iPod), but then my own noise prevented me from falling asleep. After a few more failed attempts to find peace, including the use of pillows and diplomacy, I determined that I had two options. I could either give-up, hang out with people, and be extremely tired the next day, or I could go out on my own to find sleep somewhere else. Seeing as I was tired, I chose the latter option, so with as much dignity as possible, I grabbed my sleeping bag and pillow and left my cool, comfy couches for the hard, unknown of the halls..

Like my couches back in the room, I initially thought that I had all of my problems solved. The hall was cool with what appeared to be comfy carpet.. However, all feelings of comfort were quickly wiped away as I realized that directly beneath the nice carpet was concrete, and in addition, I could still hear the people back in the room talking. Desperate to find a place to sleep, I rolled around, pushed myself against the wall, and fluffed my pillow, but all of my attempts to create some sort of bed failed.

At this point, I sat-up and contemplated my situation. I was tired and desperate because I knew that I would feel worse the next day. I was so frustrated that I was almost in tears. What if I couldn’t find a place to sleep the next night? What if I couldn’t find a place to sleep the whole week? At this camp, we would be working on homes, so if I couldn’t sleep, then there would be no way I could work. I started listing my problems off to God, asking Him for help. That is when an idea popped into my head. There was a fellowship hall down stairs used as a sanctuary, and I remembered that it had nice, fluffy chairs out of which I could make a bed. I was scared to go through with this idea, though. For one, I didn’t think that I was allowed to go downstairs, and for two, it felt like I was giving up. It was kind of the same feeling you get when as a kid you have to call your parents to pick you up from a friend’s house because you either couldn’t sleep or were sick. Once again I was left with two options, give up and wallow in my own misery or go down stairs and sleep on the pews, and once again, I chose the second option because it offered a possibility of rest.

After a few more moments of contemplating my circumstances, I gathered my stuff for a second time and made my way for the sanctuary. Once there, I couldn’t quite get myself to settle down, so I sat down in one of the chairs, asking God if that was where I was supposed to be. I quickly returned to the idea that I wasn’t supposed to be there and that I should just go back up stairs. In fact, I had almost stood-up to leave when I heard a noise that I quickly recognized as snoring. “If someone else is sleeping down here, then I can sleep down here!” I reasoned, so I fell over and went to sleep.

Sometime over the next day, I was considering all of these events, and I thought it rather interesting that the only place I could find true rest was in the house of God. With this imagery in mind, I traced back over my adventures, and as the pieces began to fall into place, I realized that God had done something amazing. Let’s take another look at everything that happened.

OK, when life starts out, we are generally comfortable and happy with everything around us. We view the world as benevolent, and we think that we’ve got it made. For some of us, these times may last only a few brief years while, for others, they may last into adulthood, but sometime early in life, we realize that the world is not so nice. We see that, if we want to get any sort of rest in this life (and in the next), we have to do something. This is very much like my experience that night. It started out comfortable, and it seemed that the night would go perfectly. However, I quickly realized that I would not get any sleep, and if I wanted rest, then I needed to do something.

In life, we initially try to solve our issues the same way I tried to sleep. First, we try to ignore the problems within the world and ourselves, but our attempts fail. We then try to block them out by distracting ourselves. That night I used music, but in our lives we may use relationships, jobs, entertainment, drinking, anything that keeps us thinking about something other than our own problems. In the end, these efforts also fail, and we are left with two options: fight the issues by our own effort or succumb to the problems of the world.

Like I did that night, many of us choose to fight and make our own way. A lot of times we end-up some place where we think we are safe from the problems of the world, but we inevitably find that where we end up is just as bad as where we left. We then find ourselves separated from our origin in a place that is equally uncomfortable and equally hard to find rest in.

After all this fighting, we are again left with two options. We can either give in, thinking that we can never find rest, or we can turn to God, hoping to find rest in His sanctuary. Many times we are uncomfortable with this idea, though. We feel like we should be able to solve our problems on our own. After all, we are taught from birth that we can do everything, so if that is true, why can’t we somehow eventually find a place to sleep? Also, we sometimes feel that we shouldn’t turn to God because we feel unwelcome in the Church for whatever reason, so we are tempted to, once again, turn back to our own efforts. At this point, though, many people are too tired to keep making their own efforts, and eventually turn to God for rest just as I eventually gave up and went to the sanctuary.

Many of us walk into God’s sanctuary the same way I did. We are uncomfortable and scared that we will be rejected for whatever reason, but we are too desperate for rest to leave. We find a place to sit, and while we wait for God’s love to change something in our lives, we may begin to doubt again. We feel that maybe we really should just go back to where we were, but before we get up to leave God does something that signals to us that we need to stay. That night, a snore caught my attention. In real life, it may be a person that shows us kindness or a sermon that catches our attention. Regardless, God does something to show that we are accepted. Now, am I saying that if you haven’t experienced something, then you aren’t accepted? By no means! If no one has ever told you that God’s love will bring you peace, then I’m telling it to you now. God will be your protector in all times, and He will bring you rest not only in this life but also the next! You see, God has brought me spiritual rest just as He brought me physical rest a couple of weeks ago. While sometimes I may still feel uncomfortable or struggle to get to sleep, I know that God has given me sanctuary many times before, and He will continue to do so for all eternity. How do I know? The Bible told me so? Yes, and no. Yes, because God has promised us many times throughout the scripture that He will protect us, and no because I first experienced His love through the people and circumstances that He placed in my life.

Others may have different interpretations of the events of that night, but to me, this is the general message. Each of us has individual experiences in our lives that shape how we view the world, and we have a choice as how to view these specific events. As I did throughout my experience, we have two choices. We can either choose to view our lives through the world’s eyes or through Gods. When we choose the world’s eyes, we often end-up lost, confused, and feeling purposeless; however, when we use God’s viewpoint, we are able to see that every experience we have, good or bad, can either pull us closer to or push us away from God, depending on how we react to it. For example, in bad times, we will see that we can either hold close to God’s promise to take care of us, or we can drown in our own misery. As we begin to examine these situations further, we see that God doesn’t give us situations that force us to Him. Rather, He gives us situations where we have the choice to move closer to Him, and my story, through the choices that I was forced to make, illustrates how God leads us into the sanctuary of His grace.

In my opinion, the most interesting tidbit that can be taken from this story is that God works with us on a highly, individualized basis. Basically, He cares about who are as individuals, not simply as a group. Isn’t that amazing? That the God of everything is personally looking after you? It’s as the senior pastor at St. Mark says, it’s nice that God loves everyone, but it’s awesome that God loves ME, and when you really get down to it, that’s one of the truest statements that has ever been said.

Sorry for the delay in getting this devotional out, but I hope that it was worth the wait and the effort to read! I hope that everyone’s summer is going well!

Sam Hunley

New Devotional Under Construction

2008-07-03T22:10:00.003-04:00

Just so you know, I am working on a devotional for this week, but it's going a lot slower than usual. God has provided me with more material than usual, so it will take a lot more effort to get it together the way it should be. Hopefully, I will be able to have it out by Saturday, but it may not be until Sunday. Anyway, I just posted this so that y'all would know that I'm still here!

I hope all is well!

Sam Hunley

Attitude Adjustment

2008-06-20T15:28:00.000-04:00

Mathew 4:2-11

²After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ³The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." ⁴Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ⁶"If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written:
'He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'

⁷Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ⁹"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." ¹⁰Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'"

¹¹Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

OK, so I realized that attempting to do a series of devotionals on an every other week basis would not be such a hot idea, so I decided to scrap that plan and move on in my usual, slightly random fashion. Now that I have that out of the way, let’s move to the scripture.

I’m sure that many of you have heard these verses at some point, and most of you have probably heard the same things repeated about them time and time again. Things such as: “See? Jesus was tempted, too!” “If you rely on the Word of God, you can over come any temptation!” or “No temptation is too strong!” – that sorta stuff. While all of these conclusions about this scripture are good, I think they over look a very significant aspect of what God is trying to convey.

Let’s take another look at this scripture. Jesus is tempted three times by Satan in three areas where Jesus would appear to be the weakest. Since He is really hungry, He would want food. Since He is really powerful, He would want to show off, and since He is currently in a low-status position, He would want authority. However, instead of falling to these temptations He does what God would want Him to do. OK, simple enough. We overcome temptation by relying on what God says to do, right? Not really.

Jesus overcame these temptations not because He relied on the Word of God but because He realized that life was not about getting what He wanted. You see, when we turn our lives over to God, we give-up our right to living our lives for ourselves. We no longer have the option to fall to whatever temptation because the only option we leave is the one that God would want us to choose.

Now, is this some magical way to brush-off temptations? No. It can be incredibly hard to live this way because sometimes the temptation is what we want most. However, when we sacrifice what we want for what God wants, God does not leave us empty handed. Instead, He rewards us with a closer relationship with Him.

I hope all is well!

Sam Hunley

King Herod and Me

2008-06-05T11:00:00.000-04:00

Mathew 2:1-4

¹After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem ²and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him."

³When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. ⁴When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born.

How many people here know a lot about this first King Herod? Yea, that would be almost no one. I can safely say that, excluding Christmas, Herod is the least preached about character in the Bible, and in addition to that, he is generally portrayed as that evil and stupid character who tried to prevent the savior of the world from doing His job. I mean, seriously. How stupid can you get? Jesus was (and is) God’s promised savior, and Herod wanted him dead for a little power? Pfff, idiot.

OK, so now you’re expecting me to take all of the above and turn it around in order to prove that Herod was actually smart and important, right? No, Herod was rather stupid and his role in the Gospel is rather unimportant. However, what I do want to do is to point out that there is significant spiritual value in this story. In order to find it, let’s reanalyze Herod’s actions.

First, Herod heard of Jesus coming to become “king of the Jews.” He reacts with fear, why? Because he has heard the prophecies of a coming Christ all his life, and he knows that this Messiah will have much more power than him. In short, Herod thinks he will soon be out of a job and, more importantly, out of control of what’s going on around him. As he puts all of this together, he realizes that, in order to maintain his position, he must kill Jesus before he becomes an adult, and he tries to achieve this goal by killing all of the children in that area. Unfortunately for his plan, Jesus and his earthly parents had already escaped to Egypt, and Herod is left to die a worried and corrupt old man.

What can you learn from Herod’s actions, though? Well, look at it this way. All of us try to play king over our lives. We love the idea that we are somehow in control over our jobs, relationships, and personal lives because we want to run things the way we want them. When Christ tries to come into our lives, he threatens this “authority,” so we resist. We hold on to old habits, bad relationships, and wrong attitudes. We fight to do what we want to do rather than what Christ calls us to do, and we make requirements, such as performing miracles, that Jesus must meet in order to enter our hearts. Essentially, we try to kill His presence in our lives. You know what that means? We are on the same level as Herod!

How do we change this problem, though? Well, for many of us, we know what we need to let go of or change. In order to expanded upon these things, though, over the next several weeks (most likely excluding next week), I am going to discuss the idea of Christian living. Hopefully, this next little series will help you, the readers, just as much as me in determining how we should approach life!

I hope all is well!

Sam Hunley

Closing Remarks... Sorta

2008-05-28T22:56:00.000-04:00

It’s here! The end of the school year has arrived! You know what that means? No more study! Yay! We now have three months of mindless freedom where we can be just that – mindless! Isn’t that great? My mind is free!!! Blissful apathy! It such an amazing feeling not to care! Isn’t it?

Well, yes it is. It does feel great not to care about anything and just accept all things as happy, joyful, and perfect, but is it the wise thing to do? Don’t get me wrong. I praise God for the times He frees me from my concerns. These times allow me to see how great He is, and they calm the worries that all too often rage within my soul. However, these times can quickly become dangerous to our spiritual lives if we allow this freedom to become apathy, and while God wants us to be free from the bonds of this world, He also wants us to be mindful of what is going on and what His Word has to say about it.

For this reason, I issue a challenge to everyone who reads these devotionals to not let this summer’s freedoms get to your heads. Enjoy the times with you parents/kids. Enjoy the times that you (kids or parents) don’t have to worry about school but don’t lose focus on the only One who matters! How do you do this, though? How do you stay focused on God when Church once a week simply doesn’t do the trick?

Here’s what I do: I spend at least 5-10mins a day praying and/or reading scripture. Is that much? No. Should I do more? Probably. However, this amount helps me to stay focused without “burning myself out on God.” Now the praying part is easy. All you do is take time to find some peace in your day and list-off your thoughts to God. If you want a better explanation of this, e-mail me! My e-mail will be in the last paragraph. You could even call me if you have my home phone number or my cell phone number!

How do you read scripture, though? The Bible is huge and a lot of it may be really boring at times. Well, what I do for this problem is that I have a devotional that I read everyday. It gives a few verses of scripture and explains it in an applicable way, allowing me to work it into my life.

Now, I am going to continue writing The Static Truth over the summer, and it will be on the website. However, I also have an e-mail list if anyone is interested. Each week I will update the website with either a new devotional or an excuse to why I don’t have a new devotional, and then I will send out an e-mail with the actual file so that people can print it out if they would like. If you are interested in this idea, send me an e-mail at bored_maniac33@yahoo.com, and I will add you to the list. Thank you to everyone who has supported me as I have continued to write this devotional! I pray that I have helped people grow closer to God in any way, shape, or form. Thank you for a wonderful year.

Sam Hunley

Philippians 4:8

Summing it all up, friends, I'd say you'll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

More than a Picture

2008-05-15T09:31:00.002-04:00

1 Corinthians 15:12-19

¹²But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ¹⁴And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. ¹⁵More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. ¹⁶For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. ¹⁷And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. ¹⁹If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

If you’ve read last week’s devotional, then you would have noticed that I love metaphors. They are fun little tools that make your writing at least look that much better, and they are very nice if you are having trouble wording things. Besides, who would have wanted a one page lecture on persevering in faith when they could imagine their own metaphorical golf ball!

Now, some metaphors just don’t fly with me. For example, there are many people who say that Christ’s death on the Cross in the Bible was simply a metaphor meant to show God’s extreme love for us. Well that sounds nice doesn’t it? It makes more sense, too. I mean, seriously, someone dieing on a cross and then coming back to life three days later? Peeshaw! That doesn’t make one bit of sense! It would make much more sense if Christ’s death was simply a picture of something bigger! Besides, it doesn’t really change anything…right??

Well, let’s see. If Christ’s death was simply a metaphor for God’s extreme love, but God didn’t really send His son to the Cross for our sins, then God is rather lame. It would be like me saying, “Here, I would have bought you a great birthday present, but instead, I simply wrote you a story about buying you a present! It’s better that way anyway.” I would be considered a bad friend if I did that, right? Well, if God didn’t really send His son to die for our sins, He is a bad God.

Also, as I have already pointed out, Christ died for our sins. Let’s say that Christ didn’t really die. Hmm, I think we might just have a problem! We are still in sin. We are still going to die a nasty horrible and uncomfortably permanent death. There is no hope. We have no future. Give it up and go home because this game is not worth playing.

What do we have faith in? A picture? No, we have faith in God’s love which is shown through His actions. God didn’t simply tell us how much He loves us. He went out and showed us. Instead of telling us that He would like to save us. He actually did save us from our sins. It is through belief that Christ is God and that He died and rose from death into eternal life that we know that we too WILL be raised into eternal life with God.

Thanks be to God!

Sam Hunley

Perseverance and Golfballs

2008-05-07T16:16:00.002-04:00

Romans 5:1-5

¹Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, wehave peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only so, but wealso rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

So who’s ready to think abstractly! I am! So here we go, pull out an imaginary (or real) golf ball and look at it. I’m not much of a golfer, but I can tell you right now that you are looking at a ball that is probably white and has a bunch of little dimples in it, right? Golf balls are pretty sweet. You can bounce them. You can roll them, and you can even play catch with them; however, they don’t truly fulfill their purpose until you give them a good whack. I take that back. They don’t truly fulfill their purpose until someone who knows what they are doing gives them a good whack. I’m lucky if I can get a ball to go ten yards, and I’m not kidding. Never imagined you’d get to make-up your own imaginary golf-ball while reading a Christian devotional now did ya? I do have a point, though.

Let’s go back to the dimples. Say that the dimples represent all of the bad times in life. As represented on the golf ball, there are a lot of times in life when we will suffer, and a lot of times it seems like there is much more suffering than happiness in our lives.

Now let’s say that the golf ball as a whole represents our life as a whole. We can sit here on the ground, roll around, and bounce up and down, but that is not our true purpose. We were designed to fly. We were made to achieve goals and get places. However, if we work on our own we aren’t going to get very far because we are bad golfers. Sure we may work our way to beautiful parts of the course, but we will never make it to our goal.

On the other hand, God is the best golfer to walk the face of the universe, and He wants every golf ball to make it to the final hole, so He has designed each of us so that we will be able to make it. However, He has also given us a choice. We can either give Him control over our ball, or we can keep putting around on our own, getting no where. If we choose, His way, He will get us through all the way the 18th hole.

Here’s where the dimples come in. You know what helps a golf ball fly as far as it does? The dimples. If it was just a smooth ball, it would go less than half the distance that a dimpled ball would go. The dimples help to guide the air around the ball to keep it flying. The dimples, or times of suffering, in our life work very much the same way. They are what give us the perseverance to keep flying so that we may make it to our final destination. If we had that perfect, happy life that we all want, we wouldn’t even get halfway there!

When you put your life into God’s hands, He makes sure that every dimple serves its purpose. He knows what you need to make it to a perfect relationship with Him. Therefore, let’s rejoice not because we are suffering, but instead, let’s rejoice in the fact that God is carefully guiding us to where we need to be.

Have great week!

Sam Hunley

The World is Too Much With Us

2008-05-01T13:15:00.002-04:00

I’ve got to say, writer’s block is a true pain in the butt. Last week I tried blaming my problem on God, but now I’m just going to accept the fact my brain is too overwhelmed with the stresses and worries of this world to be creative. However, in realizing this fact, I discovered an interesting topic for this week’s devotional! God is cool like that. Anyway, read this poem.

“The World is Too Much With Us” – William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Thank you Mrs. Blackmore! I think we can all resonate with this poem at some point in time. Obviously I can. I’ve let my self become so weighed down with the “getting and spending” of this world that it has become hard for me to see the beauty in nature and in simply being alive. I have almost lost the ability to be able to see the simple truths in God’s word, and it has become increasingly hard to focus on God in prayer. As Wordsworth says, I’d almost rather be a pagan who has never known of the civilized world so that I would at least be able to enjoy God’s magnificent Creation.

But, that is not an option. We can’t simply opt out of this world and remain productive and useful members of God’s plan for it. What we have to do is find a healthy balance of working and living, giving and getting. If we become overly focused on working, we will no longer be able to live and enjoy what God has given us. If we put too much effort into giving to everyone, we will have nothing left for ourselves. Now, I’m not talking about giving material things. Rather, I am talking about giving yourself. If you give too much of yourself away, there is nothing left for you. If you spend all of your time encouraging others to better their relationship with God, what is happening to your relationship with God?

Live life. Work hard. Give freely, but never forget to enjoy what you get. Never let the world pull your attention away from the One who gives you the strength to make it through the hard times, and never forget to praise the God who brings all joy.
Have a great week!
Sam Hunley

Let God Be God

2008-04-24T17:57:00.002-04:00

God doesn’t always want to work. For example, I could not think of anything to write for this devotional. It usually takes me only about an hour to write one, but today, I spent several hours running through different topics and scripture without striking anything. You know? It’s incredibly frustrating when God simply won’t get off His butt and help. I mean, gosh, I’ve been sitting here for hours trying to do something worthwhile, and I need God’s help. However, the Bum has basically ignored me! Isn’t that a bit mean? Seriously, I have a class in the afternoon that I have to get to, I have homework I have to do, and I also have a life! So it’s not like I can sit around all day waiting for God to do His work!

Ever felt this way? Probably at some point. I bet at least one time in your life, you have wanted God to do something for you, but He never seemed to do it when you wanted, if at all. Frustrating, huh? You would think that if you ask like He said to, He would answer like He said He would. Why doesn’t he, though?

Mathew 6:7-8(ish)

(Jesus is speaking)

"The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They're full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply.”

You want to know why it seems like most of our prayers go unanswered. Because we are praying for the wrong reason. We are praying to get something out of God. What if we are praying for a loved one who is sick, though? How come God doesn’t answer those prayers? Why does God let the good people you know die in pain and then let those who you see doing evil live on in prosperity?

You want to know the truth? I don’t know. I honestly can not answer that question. I don’t have the life experiences or the wisdom to even begin to explain why these things happen. But, if I can’t answer this question, then why do I continue believing in a God who seemingly ignores the pain of the good and allows the evil to prosper? How can I say that I believe in a loving God if I can’t explain the pain in the world? Why do I even bother?

Why? Because God has turned my life around. I have seen God working in my life, turning me away from sin, and saving me from my self-destructive nature, and I have felt the hope that only God can give in the darkest of times. If God has done these things, He must be a good God as the Bible says, and if the Bible is true, then God must also be supremely wise. Therefore, if God is supremely wise and loving, He knows what He is doing, and He is doing the best for not only me but also the whole world.

Because of my experiences, I know that God can not be anything other than good and wise, so as hard as it may be, I must accept the pain that I see now, knowing that what God has planned is the best possible option.

Watch the video below. It sort of inspired this post.

Sam Hunley

Steven Curtis Chapman - God is God

Never Forsaken

2008-04-17T18:27:00.001-04:00

I apologize for my language, but you know what? Sometimes life just sucks. Now I’m not talking about those days when you forget your homework, get yelled at by your boss, or simply don’t get what you want. No, I am talking about those days that you would never repeat again, the days when you have absolutely no hope, the days where you just want to quit. Ever had one of those days? The ones where you feel like the only solution to your problems would be to fade out of existence? Was it the day a loved one died, or was it the day that a relationship with a good friend fell out?

Or maybe that time is now.

You may be reading this devotional, wondering why you try, wondering what’s the point. You may feel like you’re doing everything right, but nothing falls into place. You work all day long to do things right just to see them fall apart at the end of the day, or you may have the opposite problem. You may work as hard as you think you can to do good, but you keep messing things up. You don’t see how you can ever change, and you feel worthless. If you’re in either position, life sucks. How do I know this? I have been in both.

Deuteronomy 31:8

The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."

In times of trouble, it sometimes becomes difficult to even begin to think of God being with you, and it is incredibly annoying when you are down and out to hear someone say, “Oh, just have faith! It will all be better!” You want to know the truth? Having faith will NOT make all of your problems go away, and thinking that it does can cause serious problems. However, God will NOT leave us to deal with our own problems.

I used to think that when I became a Christian, all of my problems would disappear. They didn’t. Then I thought, “Oh, well, I’m just not praying enough!” So I prayed more. My problems remained. Struggling to find a solution, I did more good works in order to try to earn the favor of God. The problems still did not go away. Then, in the depths of my despair I screamed at God in prayer saying, “WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO EARN YOUR COMFORT!” And I received a response in heart, “Nothing.”

God’s comfort does not always come in the form of thunder and lighting, and it definitely does not always result in the problem disappearing. However, God’s comfort does come from simply letting go. It comes in the form of simply taking time not to think, not to worry, not to do anything except breathe and trust God that everything will turn out the way it should.

God has gone before us, leading the way, and He is personally guiding us through this world. He knows both our joys and pains, and He does not sit on the shore while we drown in our agony. No. He is in the water with us.

Have a great week!

Sam Hunley

An Idol's Mind is the Devil's Workshop

2008-04-10T12:45:00.002-04:00

Isaiah 40:18-20
So who even comes close to being like God?
To whom or what can you compare him?
Some no-god idol? Ridiculous!
It's made in a workshop, cast in bronze,
Given a thin veneer of gold,
and draped with silver filigree.
Or, perhaps someone will select a fine wood—
olive wood, say—that won't rot,
Then hire a woodcarver to make a no-god,
giving special care to its base so it won't tip over!

You know, there is one command that is fairly well ignored by most Christians: do not make idols. Why talk about this command, though? It’s so incredibly easy to follow, especially in our culture. I can tell you right now that I’ve never been tempted to go out, carve a log and then worship it, so if this is true, then why I am using this verse? Because there is more than one type of idol.

OK, so there is this awesome widget you want. This widget will, supposedly, greatly improve your life and make you so much cooler than all of your friends, so you spend hours researching exactly what this widget can do for you and work for months saving all of your money. During this time you think about getting your widget for hours and lay awake a night pondering just how much cooler and better off you will be once you get it. In fact, you spend more time thinking about this object than you spend thinking about school, hobbies, and/or God. Congratulations, you have just worshiped an idol.

What if you don’t obsess over stuff? Can you still worship idols? Of course! In fact, it’s as easy as focusing on anything more than you focus God. This means that you can worship any idol you want! You can worship school, work, money, friends, relationships, or anything else you can think of! You know what’s even better? It’s FREE!! At no cost to you, you can worship the idol of your choice! However…there is one small catch.

If you have a friend who you ignore for two weeks, what happens? Your relationship weakens. If you ignore them long enough, you will begin to lose connection with this friend, and you may begin to forget what made that person cool to you in the first place. This is exactly what takes place when you begin to ignore God for any of these idols. You lose touch with Him, and you begin to forget why He is amazing. Let’s go back to the friend situation. If you go to the friend you ignored and apologize, if he/she is a good friend, he/she will accept your apology, and the friendship will be restored. God works in the same way. If we ignore Him but then return to Him and apologize for our actions, He restores our relationship with Him because He is an amazing friend.

Sam Hunley

It's Greener on This Side of the Fence

2008-04-03T12:29:00.002-04:00

Another Kind of Green – John Mayer

So go and drift away from me
Adopt some new philosophy
That doesn't hold the two of us in mind
Move into someone else's place
Stare into some other's eyes
But slowly only come to realize
That you didn't need another kind of green to know
I'm on the right side

Isn’t the grass always greener on the other side of the fence? The kids always have more fun at that other school, people always make more money at that other job, that person’s stuff is better than your stuff, and other people simply live a much happier life than you do. We humans are hardly ever content with what we have, and we are always trying to improve our position in life. But is the grass really greener?
Don’t get me wrong. Attempting to improve your life is not a bad thing, and in fact, it’s almost required if you want to do something with your life. How can you be effective for God, for example if you don’t put any effort into improving the way you live? However, I think there is a problem with becoming so obsessed with improvement that we are not satisfied with anything that comes our way We become dissatisfied with friends, loved ones, and, sometimes, God.

In an attempt to satisfy our desires, we leave our relationships in search of that perfect something that fills all of our wants; however, in our quest to find all that we want we often end up leaving everything we need. “Another Kind of Green” talks about this sort of situation between a man and a woman. The woman wishes to leave because she feels that the man is not everything she wants, but the man tries to point out to her that, while he is not perfect, he fulfills everything she needs.

OK, here’s the fun part. Re-read the lyrics, and imagine that God is speaking them. So often we drift away from God, attempting to take on some new philosophy that claims to fulfill our every want. We move into a new situation and begin to adore someone or something else more than God; however, God knows that He is the only one who can satisfy all of our needs. Not only that, unlike the man in the song, He can satisfy all of our wants also. In addition, He has built us so that, when we leave Him, we will slowly come to realize that we are incomplete without Him, and we eventually see that we never needed another kind of green to know that God is best for us.

Thankfully, God is the most patient being in existence because time and time again I have had to learn this lesson, but each time that I move away from God, He proves His love is greater than anything this world has to offer. He never forces me to come back. Instead, I come back of my own accord because I know that my God is enough. I also know that if God will do this for me, He will do it for anyone.

And this week, you get an extra video!

Sam Hunley

Psalm 73 (My God's Enough) – Barlow Girl

Invincible

2008-03-28T11:44:00.004-04:00

Invincible - OK Go

Mark 14:27-31

27"You will all fall away," Jesus told them, "for it is written: 'I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' 28But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee."
29Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not."
30"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "today—yes, tonight—before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times."
31But Peter insisted emphatically, "Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you." And all the others said the same.

I think we all have all at some point had problems with IWNDT, or “I Would Never Do That,” syndrome. What is this syndrome? It’s a disease characterized by spiritual blindness, a swelling of the ego, and sudden bouts of stumbling. Translation? It is essentially spiritual cockiness.

How many times have you sat in church on Sunday and listened to a sermon, thinking, “Well, I don’t have to worry about that one. I would never commit that sin.”? If you have, then you suffer from IWNDT. Why is this dangerous though? When you say that you would never commit a sin, you are essentially saying that you are strong enough to overcome that sin, or in other words, you are saying that, at least in that area, you are independent of God. You are ignoring your capacity to sin, leaving a huge loophole for Satan to enter your life and wreak havoc because, if you don’t think you need help, why would you bother calling to God if you stumbled?

As Jesus tried explaining to Peter, we are going to stumble, and if we run headlong into situations blind to our own deficiencies, then we will never be able to prevent the sin, but what did Peter do? He ran blindly into a situation without considering his own spiritual deficiencies, leaving him open to attacks from Satan, and he stumbled. How do we prevent ourselves from running into the same situations, though? By using our brain.

While God has not given us the gift of foresight, He has given us a brain and the power of logic. With these two tools we have the ability to logically deduce what sins we may possibly commit or be tempted to commit in a situation; however, while knowing what we may or may not do is rather nifty, simply knowing something means nothing. Its like if you’re standing in the road and you see a car coming towards you. You may have the knowledge that the car is heading toward you, but you will not be saved by simply knowing that a solid object is heading quickly in your direction. You have to actually do something.

The more I’ve grown as a Christian, the more I have realized that our faith is not about what you know, its about what you do about what you know. If you know that you are struggling with a sin, do something about it. If you know of someone in need, do something about it. If you see someone who does not know Christ, do something about it. Jesus has sent us into a fallen world, and He wants us to do something about it.
Hope your week is going week!

Times like These

2008-03-20T13:55:00.000-04:00

“Times like These” – Foo Fighters

Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG294M_kYWM

Lyrics at: http://www.metrolyrics.com/times-like-these-lyrics-foo-fighters.html

It's times like these you learn to live again
It's times like these you give and give again
It's times like these you learn to love again
It's times like these time and time again

In case you were confused, “Times like These” is, in fact, not a book of the Bible; however, it is the title of one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands. You want to know why I love this song? It’s a song of freedom.

Many times in life, we let the world get us down. We become trapped underneath our own stress and become lost in all of the things we are doing. This song expresses the freedom I feel when this burden is lifted, and even though the band is not Christian, it expresses the freedom I feel when God’s grace removes all of my worries and doubts so that I may enjoy the life that God has given me. That is why I love this song. What does this have to do with you, though? Well, you may actually hate the song, but the meaning behind it has huge implications for you.

On Sunday, we will be celebrating the most important holiday on the Christian calendar: Easter. Why is it so important? Because on that day, we celebrate Christ being resurrected from the dead and his victory over death. Because of this victory, we have been freed from the chains of sin thus allowing us to live our lives without fear of the unknown because we have assurance that God is taking care of us. With this freedom, we are able to learn to live again for Christ, learn to give more of what we have to those who are in need, and learn to love our lives and those God has put into our lives, and you know what? God will remind us of this freedom time and time again.

Over the upcoming week, I encourage everyone to live life the way it should be lived: in freedom. Live life knowing that God has not only raised Christ from the dead but also raised us. We no longer have to live the way we did before we met Christ, but instead, we now have the ability to change ourselves and the world, allowing us to bring parts of heaven to earth.

This week I had a short message, and that is because of two reasons. One, there will already be a lot of spiritual messages give this upcoming weekend, and two, I have a challenge for everyone.

For many people, next week is spring break, meaning that, either during trips or sitting at home, there will be a lot of downtime. I want to challenge everyone to use some, not all, but some of this down time for God. You can spend it praying, reading a Bible, or simply reflecting on what God has done for you. If you feel the Bible is too boring, check out The Message translation. You can pick it up at almost every bookstore, and it is really easy to read, especially if you stick to the New Testament. If you think of something or find something cool during these times, post it on here or e-mail me! I’m really interested to see what you find!

Have a great Easter!

Sam hunley

For the Love of God

2008-03-13T13:19:00.002-04:00

Romans 5:7-8

We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

For those of you who know me, what do you think of me? More often than not I’m perceived as “the nice guy.” People call me sweet, giving, selfless, and an all around good guy. I’m smart, nice, and, heck, I’m good looking, too (HA!)! What am I getting at? Didn’t I just say that last week we weren’t supposed to glorify ourselves? If you are thinking this, then you are very much correct; however, I am not glorifying myself. I am exposing the truth.

You want to know why people call me sweet? Because I am good at keeping my mouth shut. You want to know why people call me selfless? Because people can’t hear all the praise I give myself in my mind. You want to know why people call me good? Because they don’t know all of the sins I have willingly committed. I have worshipped the idols of wealth and fame. I have used God’s name in vain. I have failed to keep God’s holy days holy. I have failed at honoring my father and my mother. I have committed murder through my anger at others. These may come as a surprise, I have actually committed adultery, and I have lied. In addition to all of this, I have stolen glory from God, and I have coveted the things of others. In essence, I have broken EVERY one of the Ten Commandments. Great guy, ain’t I?

You want to know what’s awesome about all of this? While I was still covered in my sin, while I was at my worst, God put Himself on the cross to save me. God saw me, a worthless excuse of a human being, and decided that He loved me enough to send His Son to die for me. He sent His son, who is worth everything, to die for a man who is worth nothing.

As the senior pastor at my church always says, it’s one thing to know that Jesus loves everyone this much, but when you know that Jesus loves you personally this much, it’s a totally different animal. Even if you commit every sin in the Book, God cares about you enough to die for you, and I don’t want ANYONE to ever forget that. God sees worth in every one of us, no matter how much or what sin we commit.

Why has God raised us from our sins? Why does He love us so much? So that we may share this love with others. God has sent us out into the world to be lights so that we may guide others to His love and show those that feel worthless that they are priceless.

Have a great week!

Sam Hunley

Good for God's Sake

2008-03-06T11:43:00.001-05:00

Matthew 6:1-4

(Jesus is speaking)

"Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding. "When you do something for someone else, don't call attention to yourself. You've seen them in action, I'm sure—'playactors' I call them— treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that's all they get. When you help someone out, don't think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.

Doing good works is fun especially when you receive recognition. Doesn’t it just feel great when someone tells you how awesome you are when you do something good? I know that I personally love it. It’s really awesome to have someone telling me that I’m a great guy. In fact, I used to live for that feeling.

Did Jesus receive recognition for the good things that He did? Oh, you bet He did. He had crowds following Him from place to place, but did He revel in it? No. Think about it this way. The God who has ultimate authority over EVERYTHING came to Earth as the child of peasants. He spent the first thirty years of his life as a day worker, and when He began preaching, He maintained this humble lifestyle. When Christ – God of the universe – was hanging on the cross, He could have called down thousands of angels to save Himself, but He didn’t. When Christ came to Earth, He didn’t come to glorify Himself. He came to save us. The highest authority, the ultimate power, and so much more came to die for those who had rebelled against Him. The purest of pure died to save those who were so covered in sin that they didn’t even recognize Him as God.

God has called us to live a life where we focus on much more than receiving recognition for what we do. Remember how I said that I used to live for that feeling I got from praise. Note the past tense. You want to know why I changed? That feeling got me nowhere. It became like a drug. In order for me to be happy, I had to have some sort of praise, and if I didn’t get any, I was down and felt worthless. You see, the problem with focusing on the recognition you get is that you begin to depend upon it for your self-worth, and when the praise is gone, your self-worth is gone.

I became a Christian because God offered me so much more than any adulation could get me. Now, instead of finding joy in something that may or may not be there on a day to day basis, I find joy in serving God who has been there, is there, and always will be there for me.

What does this have to do with the verse? When you do good, focus on doing it for God and not the praise you will receive from the world. What God can give you is eternally better than anything the world has to offer.

Have a great week!

Sam Hunley

Fear of the Unknown

2008-02-28T11:04:00.002-05:00

The Voice of Truth - Casting Crowns

Psalm 27:1

The LORD is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?

Ever been called to do something that you were terrified of doing? Like going on a roller coaster, bungee jumping, or, when you were younger, jumping off the diving board? For me, jumping off the diving board was a big thing. I saw all of my friends doing it and enjoying themselves, but I just could not get myself to do it. One time I even had to be carried away because I burst into tears when someone asked me to jump. I was thoroughly convinced that something horrible would happen if I jumped from the security of that board even though a parent was already in the water.

Just like me on the diving board, we all have a Parent who is sitting in the water waiting for us to jump. This Father of ours has called us out of our comfort zone (the diving board) so that we can do great things for Him; however, many of us, including my self, are terrified to jump because we don’t know what will happen when we land. We fear that our personal reputations may be ruined or we may even be physically hurt, so instead of jumping, we sit there and wait for someone else to do what we know needs to be done.

Remember last weeks devotional? God calls us to be so much more than simply couch potatoes. He wants us experience more and do more for Him than we could ever imagine, but you know what? He can’t do anything for us until we jump off that diving board. God knows that most people will have a huge problem with jumping out of their “bubble,” and He understands. Does that excuse us from not acting? Nope! Because instead of simply letting things be, God decides to get wet.

When we are worried and when we are not, God is right there with us. We have the love of His Son to catch us as we fall, the Holy Spirit jumping with us, and God the Father watching us from the edge of the pool, ready to step in when we need Him. God is the parent in the water, the friend jumping with you, and the life-guard watching over you all at the same time. He is the Holy Three in One, so as I said two weeks ago, what do we have to fear? Nothing.

What does this mean though? If we have nothing to fear, then what do we do next? Jump. Maybe there is someone you know who is a sort of outcast. Befriend that person and show them that they are loved. Maybe there is some you know who is made fun of a lot. Defend that person. Do you have an “enemy”? Show them love. Do you know someone who doesn’t know God? Try to show them who He is. God is our light and salvation. He is our stronghold, so do not be afraid. Instead, jump into His arms and begin living the life He has called you to.

Have a great week!

Sam Hunley

A Call to Live

2008-02-18T22:49:00.006-05:00

Romans 12:2(ish)

Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

What did Jesus look like and act like when He was on earth? Well, let’s see, He had long hair and a beard. Um, He was calm, peaceful, and cool in even the most heated situations. Oo! And He talked a lot about love. Congratulations! You just described the stereotypical hippy! Unfortunately, if you described Jesus in this way, you missed the mark.

You want to know something? Jesus was hardcore. Jesus was a rebel. One time, He even put together His own bull whip, went into a temple, and began over turning the tables of those who had turned His Father’s house into a giant shopping mall. Let me reemphasize this: HE MADE HIS OWN BULL WHIP! Kind of changes the picture doesn’t it?

So we can go out and make bull whips and attack those who disobey God? No. Jesus simply used the whip to illustrate a point, and I’m going to use that example plus the verse above to illustrate another point.

God called us to Him. Why? So that we can sit on our butts doing nothing? NO! As Christians, we are called to change things, to be radicals. We are called to spread the Gospel and love of Christ. People, we are called to DO SOMETHING! Let’s face it, there are a lot of horrible things happening right now in this world, but God has given us His power to change that. We have the same power that created the world running through our souls. Not for our own gain, but for the gain of others.

As Paul says, don’t become so well adjusted to this world that you blend in. Don’t become so well adjusted that you fail to realize the problems of this world. The fact that everyone does not know Christ as their Lord and Savior is NOT something that is OK. Can we expect everyone to accept Christ? No, Jesus Himself said that was not going to happen, but He sent us into the world to try to bring as many to Him as possible. He sent us into the world to heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and house the homeless. We are here to befriend the friendless, bring light to those in the dark, and let those who feel unloved know that God has loved them, does love them, and will love them forever.

When God called us, He called us to live at a higher standard than the world. He wants us to let Him change us from the inside out and to put a fire in us that fuels our desire to live for Him. He has given us the power to change things, so now, use it.

The video below is by a band called Barlow Girl. They are an awesome Christ alt-rock band. If you like this song, definitely check them out, but listen to the lyrics of this song or look them up online. The song is called Grey, and it deals with the same problem of blending in with the world

Just Listen

2008-02-14T10:59:00.003-05:00

Hello! I hope that y'alls week is going smoothly. For those who are at Cambridge, WOOHOO!! A BREAK!! Feel free to leave a comment. I changed it so that you no longer have to have a Google ID to comment, so now you no longer have an excuse! MWUAHAHAHA -cough- I mean, hope you enjoy this post!

Mathew 11:28-30

(Jesus is speaking)

28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest (NIV).”

___________________________________________________________________

"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest (same verse in The Message).”

Ever had one of those days? Weeks? Months? Years? Where it just seems like everything is falling apart? Well, not even that really. Just one of those periods of time where you feel completely overwhelmed? I have. This week has been one of those weeks. This month has been one of those months. In fact, this whole school year has been one of those times where it just feels like I can never get a break. I almost constantly have to think about school, and I have guitar, bowling, church, and college is just around the corner. Short story shorter, I often find myself running in circles and worried out of my mind.

And what does God say to me and others in the same situation?

Psalm 46:10

“Be still, and know that I am God…"

Essentially, He’s saying “SIT DOWN! AND SHUT UP! I know what I’m doing!” You may say, “Why does He say that? Isn’t that kind of mean? I mean, seriously, that’s rude.” Well, let me let you in on a little secret, this is the God of the universe, and He has very good reasons for what He does. But why tell us to just shut up?

First, as we all know, it is very hard to listen to someone if you aren’t paying attention. Second, God cares about each and everyone one of our problems, – no matter how small – and He wants to help; therefore, He needs us to listen. When we listen rather than run around flipping out, God gives us rest. What does that mean? Does that mean that our problems simply disappear? Well, no, but keep reading.

What Christ is trying to do in this verse and last weeks verse is to get us to realize that our problems are miniscule compared to what He can do. Once we stop worrying, God can enter the scene and show us that our problems are much easier to deal with than we thought and that He is there with us. Basically, even if your problem really is that bad, you have your Lord and Savior right there with you, so what’s there to be afraid of?

Nothing.

Sam Hunley

Introduction and "Worry, Worry, Worry!

2008-02-07T23:34:00.000-05:00

Hello! My name, as you may or may not have noticed, is Sam Hunley. I am currently 17 and senior in high school. I originally began writing this devotional for the students at my school, but it has since expanded. In order to provide easy access to me for comments and questions, I created this site. I hope to expand to eventually expand it into a full-scale blog. Well, here's the first, digital devotional! Enjoy!

Luke 12:22-26

22Then Jesus said to his disciples: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 25Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life^[a]? 26Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

In our half of the world, how does the ideal man or woman act? Take a second to think about that. What do you consider to be the best traits in a person? I am willing to bet that the person you are imagining is strong (mentally or physically), independent, and does what he/she thinks is right regardless of what others think. While you may think of other characteristics, those three things are pretty much consistent in western culture.

We are told everyday to be individuals and solve problems on our own. We are supposed to be as tough as nails, self supporting, self motivated, and self oriented; however, God calls us to a much different path. He wants us to be completely dependent upon Him for everything. He wants us to be the opposite of our cultural ideal and be God supported, God motivated, and God oriented. What does that have to do with worrying?

If we are worrying about what we are going to wear, what we are going to eat, or just about that test tomorrow, we are worrying about what we are going to do about whatever problem we are dealing with. We are trying to be the ideal of our world’s culture, but God calls us to trash this ideal and replace it with His own. Basically, He wants us to stop worrying and realize that He is in control.

Does this mean we should not plan ahead? HECK NO! If you don’t study for that test, I assure you that you will make a lower grade than if you had studied. Worrying and planning ahead are not the same, though. Worrying is when you are anxious about something you can not control. Planning ahead comes into play when you can actually control the outcome.

Did you know worry can harm your relationship with God? It can and does. We grow in Christ by growing in faith, but worrying weakens faith because we begin to doubt what God can do for us. Trust me, a God who considers adding hours to someone’s life a “very little thing,” is a God who can do a whole lot.

How ‘bout we try this idea, let us become independent in Christ. Let us learn to be independent of this world that will eventually be destroyed and to depend only upon the One who will never fade: Christ the Lord.

Have a great week!
Sam Hunley

Static Truth

Trying to Serve Two Masters

Even the Demons Believe

The Song That Never Ends.

Stealing From Myself

What If God Was a Democrat?

Doing Nothing for God Can Be a Good Thing

Between God and Men

Faith and Fear

Giving Your Relationship Meaning

The Discovery of the Obvious

The Difference Between Static and Stagnate

Death by Opportunity

Infinite Grace for the Infinitely Stubborn

Heroes and Heroines in Our Midst

Love or the Lack Thereof

Only Child with One Brother

Faith, Works, or Jesus?

The Go-Getter in All of Us

Comfortable Christianity

Furball's and Grace

Summer Day Dreams - In Early Fall

Dear Disciples, won't you come out to play?

Making the Yoke Complex and the Burden Heavy

Pursuit of the Impossibe

I Give Love a Bad Name??

Life Just Ain't Fair...

A Vicious Cycle

Thoughts on My Upcoming Transition

Controlling My Desire for Perfection

Hobbies and Interests

A Real-Life Metaphorical Journey

*New Devotional Under Construction*

Attitude Adjustment

King Herod and Me

Closing Remarks... Sorta

More than a Picture

Perseverance and Golfballs

The World is Too Much With Us

Let God Be God

Never Forsaken

An Idol's Mind is the Devil's Workshop

It's Greener on This Side of the Fence

Invincible

Times like These

For the Love of God

Good for God's Sake

Fear of the Unknown

A Call to Live

Just Listen

Introduction and "Worry, Worry, Worry!

New Devotional Under Construction