Superheroes

I believe superheroes are a very good allegory for the relationship between man and God. Let’s start with Spiderman, but only because I probably know his story the best. Think of the radioactive spider has the hand of God and Peter Parker being us—humans. Think about it for a second.

Do you have an idea? Okay, let’s work backwards.

Peter Parker is a big time nerd in the Spiderman series. He studies hard, does his thing in school, and lives a relatively humble life with his aunt and uncle. He gets picked on in school often but he doesn’t retaliate. It can be argued whether or not IF he would have fought back, but that’s not the important point. So one day, Parker is doing his usual nerdy stuff—attending a science convention of sorts involving spiders (boring!). I’m sure he didn’t expect much from the shin-dig, but unbeknownst to him, he would proceed to get bitten by a radioactive spider and gains some sweet powers. Peter Parker didn’t expect to gain super powers, nor either did he want to. He was in no way a power-thirsting teenager. Parker was just doing his thing, and bam! Out of nowhere the god of the marvel universe decides to make Peter Parker a superhero better known as Spiderman.

How does that relate to God’s teachings? How about Psalm 147:6 “The LORD lifteth up the meek: he casteth the wicked down to the ground.” Peter Parker was pretty meek I’d say. And the bible teaches us to be meek, and be humble in life as well. Look at 1 Peter 5:5 “Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” When Peter Parker became Spiderman didn’t he in a sense became “subject” to New York City? Didn’t he make himself unto the form of a servant? He battles the wicked and evil and all the while he has to hide his identity and still take crap from everybody around him (him and Spiderman, actually). I guess you can think of his superpowers as the Holy Spirit that dwells in us, in a sense.

Parker was given his superpowers, but he still had free will. He didn’t have to do anything with his powers. Or worse, he could have done evil with it. But he didn’t. We’re given the choice to become Christians, and some people chose to. Some people instead choose with their free will to do bad things. Speaking for those people who did choose to become Christians, it’s a big responsibility, isn’t it? We aren’t just defending New York City against evil. That would be too easy. Instead we’re called to proclaim the kingdom of God and live a life that would be glorifying to our Creator. That’s a lot harder than Spiderman’s job.


P.S.-Just because a good allegory can be drawn from the story of Spiderman, by no means does that mean Marvel Comics is justified in biblical terms. Sure, I do WISH Stan Lee was purposely and secretly trying to draw Christian analogies with his comics, but deep down…nah. I deem it unlikely.

Don't Disappoint Your Father

Disclaimer: I’m sorry if anyone reads this that happens to not have a father. May you allow God to your one and only father if that’s the case. He’s the ultimate Dad, and He’ll be a better dad than anyone on this earth.



I often neglect the fact that God is the Father of all fathers. He treats us as how all fathers should treat their children. We may not always agree with our fathers or listen to them, and I must say I do the same with God.

Even though we go through trials and punishments, it’s because God wants the best for us, just like our dads. I never knew my dad well because I didn’t live with him much when I was growing up. Whenever I did see him though (which was about once or twice a year), he would lecture the crap out of me. Whenever he’s around I hide in my room. When he tries to lecture me I would zone out and not pay attention to him. I moan and complain when he makes me do something. Earlier in my life I refused to acknowledge the fact that he did all the things he did out of love. I did not like him at all. As I grew older though, I begin to understand and accept where my dad was coming from. He truly cares about me, or else he wouldn’t bother lecturing me.

Can you see the parallel of my life compared to the relationship we have with God? At least that’s how it’s like for me. God speaks to people, and I’m sure He’d speak to me. But this cannot happen if I’m not paying attention, when I don’t care about what He says. This is what praying for God to “open our eyes” and “soften our hearts” mean! Ah, it’s all because He cares about us. He loves us in a way that no other being can. That’s why He does the things that He does to us. We may not be able to comprehend it at the moment, but some point later we’ll realize that what God did was not bad. It is actually for our ultimate good.

Anyways, the point of this post is to tell you that you shouldn’t sin. Duh, you knew that right? Yeah we all know that. But! Think about it this way—

Would you share with your biological father all the dirty and shameful things that you did? All the sins you committed in your life, ever? Probably not. And if it were our decision, we’d probably prefer our heavenly Father to not know these things, either. But He does. He knows all that we did. Yeah He forgives us, but imagine the pain that He feels when we sin. Imagine how shocked and disappointed your dad would be when he finds out about a certain bad deed that you did. Just one. Multiply that by ALL that sins you’ve ever committed in your life. God knows about all of them. Just try and imagine what grief and disappointment we are to Him. Yet He forgives us. Not only does He forgive us, He forgives us in a way by sending His OWN son to pay for our iniquities. Wow. That is how much He loves us.

Ch-Check It Out

Rap is awesome.
It is hard to find good Christian rap.
Lecrae is a good Christian rappper.
Listen to his song and begin to like rap.

Another and Another

I felt down in the dumps tonight. The spiritual dumps. On top of that I'm sick. I had a quick, but good talk with my friend Mike online, and he pretty much told me what's up. It wasn't exactly about the stuff he told me, but it was more about what I came to realize as he talked.

I told him that I've been praying a lot more, and reading a lot more often than I had before, but I felt more of a spiritual deprivation than ever. As Mike and I talked I realized that I've been reading and praying for all the wrong reasons. I prayed daily for God to help me get through the day. Now that's not a bad prayer, but it definitely wasn't setting me up for anything. So I get through the day. Now what? I pray for another day. We should live day by day because God could take us at any moment. The problem was I wasn't setting any goals in life. I had no hope in my life. This is coming from a neutral point of view (neither religious or secular I suppose). Living without hope is living in despair. That is going to get you nowhere. No wonder I felt like crap!

So I guess I gotta pray less about the daily stuff, and more about the grand scheme of things, and pray more for God to work in my life to glorify Him than to just help me to "get thru the day". It's selfish stuff. We need to constantly set up goals. But not "personal" goals. A good way is to think constantly about more ways to help His kindgom to grow. If that involves fixing yourself, do it. So you can become a better servant of Christ. This "personal" goal is for the His greater glory and not for our worldly desires. It is personal yet very impersonal at the same time.

Finished with one goal? Go on to another. Never stop, never stop. Keep working hard in this life until God wants you to stop. At that point He'll take us and we'll be happy.

Enjoying Free Stuff

The other day I went to the bank. Upon the counter I requested to deposit a couple of checks. As I handed my signed paychecks over, the banker on the other side of the counter said to me: "Here! Have a free t-shirt!" Wow. Just like that, totally unexpected. I received a free gift without clear reasoning or former knowledge. That totally made my day.

On my way back from the bank I pondered. The best things in life are the things we get for free, isn't it? Waking up one day and a hundred-dollar bill just falls on your head is definitely better than, say cleaning bathrooms all day to earn that one hundred dollars. But of course, earning something definitely gives us a better sense of personal accomplishment than say, just getting for no reason. But say there are two choices. You can either a) get it for free or b) work for it, and the condition states there are no negative consequences either way. It is unlikely in this situation anyone would pick "b".

Keep in mind though, the best things in life aren't always the most appreciated things. The most appreciated things are the things people themselves "earned". Probably not many people thank God everyday for giving them the breath of life and their mother for labor. But likely many people show off their knowledge every day or brag about their affluence. Think about it. Birth was free to us, but it's seldom thought of. Having a good job that makes a lot of money probably costs years of education and precious hours every day, but we won't forget to talk about it any time soon.

So, "earned" stuff are good, but "free" stuff are the best. What else is free in life? How about God's grace and salvation? How about Jesus's death on the cross to free us from sin? All the things we've earned ourselves is crap in God's eyes (Isiah 64:6). Let's enjoy and rejoice in what's free, shall we?

Down with the Sickness

No...I'm not talking about the song by Disturbed, even though that is a pretty sweet song. I am titling this post as such because I am literally sick. Some kind of viral infection and strep throat. I've been sick for three days now, and usually when people are sick they get pretty down, but to my surprise, the last few days I had were actually pretty awesome.

I speculate the reason as to why the sickness didn't bother me was because I began to pray more often. I kept myself in God and the negatives of this world didn't bother me.

I came to the conclusion that sickness is part of the physical body, and if you think about it, so is hunger, thirst, and health in general. If you fully give yourself up to Jesus Christ, the aforementioned worldly things shouldn't bother you anymore. Don't get me wrong though, after your leap of faith you're technically still living in this world, so if you stop eating you're gonna die! My point is--stop worrying about hunger, wealth, sickness, and other worldly stuff like that because God WILL provide, as long as we are living and believing in Him and glorifying Him.

The Election Post

My apologies for doing things so out of time. I should have made this post two days ago, but WAY too many things were going through my mind and I had to do a great deal of "sorting." So, to the election.

Barack Obama is the president of the United States now. Some people are ecstatic about it and some people are probably angry/frustrated/sad/flabbergasted, maybe. I'm sure there are people out there that wouldn't have cared either way. I'm one of those people. Partially because I didn't vote. You could call me an unruly citizen who failed to fulfill his civic duty, but allow me to explain myself.

The reason I didn't vote was because I couldn't decide. I couldn't make a decision as to which candidate was "better." Know that I DO care about the welfare of this country and where Obama is going to lead us in the furture. But I also know that God will provide. Obviously Obama has won because it is part of God's plan. I could justify myself by saying: "I just let God chose the right person," but as true as it is, it still comes back as somewhat of an excuse because I really was not able to decide on who to vote for.

I'm sure there are fellow Christians out there who has done their research, and fully endorses one candidate over the other. I want to let you know that I did my research as well, but I still couldn't decide. How can that be so? Well, because during the process of which I looked each candidate up, I realized that I was simply seeing who's point of view I agreed the most with. Notice it is who "I" agree the most with. As a noobie Christian and a fresh believer, I couldn't trust myself to make a decision while fully knowing that I could go against God's will. Think about this. People pray for "their" candidate to win. Isn't "their" candidate a personal choice as to who they want to win? At times our selfish desire overcome God's.

At that time I thought of the phrase "WWJD". My reasoning was that Jesus is the king of all kings and president of all presidents. In the unlikely event of an election, Jesus would win without a shadow of a doubt. Well, so I thought, "Jesus is not on the ballot, how can I vote for him? I guess I'll just not vote and just believe in Him because I know this election doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things."

Looking back at my situation now, I think I failed. I failed to put my faith in God to know that He'll lead me to the right decision. Maybe the right decision WAS for me to not vote, but I guess in reality I could have voted, and it would have been okay. Because as I said, all is part of God's plan.

Sweet Song

Thanks to my friend Nate's Dad and the youth group worship team at my church back home. I bring you this awesome song.

Let's Workout!

Sometimes I try to use the process of sanctification to justify my reason to workout and/or participate physical activities. The verse I like to use is 1 Corinthians 6:19 "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is in us, and our body is kind of like a temple that hosts it. If this is confusing I like compare it to the place called "Holy of Holies" in the Old Testament. Of course we as sinful mortals are definitely not cool enough for a direct comparison with that place, but the analogy helps somewhat.

My rationale behind said justification is that: if our body is a temple, then we should make the temple pretty awesome. I mean, it IS used to host God, and I don't think He would be very happy if we had the choice to offer Him a good temple and we are giving Him a shoddy one. With this thought in mind, let me remind you that there is no excuse for being overweight, or worse--obese. I'm not saying that it's not cool to be fat, I AM saying that the side effects that comes with being fat are not cool. If a person can be fat and not have heart problems/diabetes/sleep apnea/high cholesterol then I would definitely say being fat is pretty awesome. That is not the case though. An unhealthy body equals a shoddy temple, at least that's what I think.

I think I also need to note in this post that there's a fine line between staying in good shape for Jesus and getting ripped so you can attract the opposite gender's attention. Personally I think I'm crossing that line a bit. I am by no means "jacked" looking, I'm just saying that my mindset is a bit off. Is it so wrong to attract mates though? I mean, I do wanna get married, and I don't think my future wife would enjoy dating and marrying a fat bum. I guess there's a fine line there too. This would go back to my What We Do, Why We Do post.

Anyways, I'm done ranting about that topic. Sorry if anyone finds this post offensive. But seriously, you know what's right and wrong. If you don't do it for God (But you should!) there's still all the shallow and vain reasons in the world for you to not be overweight.

Finding Our Comfort Zone

Home has always been the comfort zone for me. During my early years in high school, when some things happened to not go right, I retreated to my house. My house was quiet, a big ranch with just my mom and I. My friend Nate's house should be noted as well. We were and are best friends. His family generously shared their house with me, and on the weekends their house was also my comfort zone. When I came to Christ midway through my Junior year, I came to find church as my place of comfort. After school I would go there just to hang out and relax. Sometimes I did more meaningful things. And it was great.

Of course though, a person's comfort zone can be mental as well. I was comfortable with my own atheist/agnostic beliefs until I was bombarded with Christianity. After I became a follower of Christ, my comfort zone became having God as a personal figure, afraid to share Him with anyone. Even fellow brothers and sisters, sometimes.

Coming to college forced me out of my comfort zone. I knew it would be difficult, but I made myself do it. I felt that it was something I needed to do. A couple months into college life has slowly assimilated me into the sharing-the-gospel-and-fighting-for-God mode. This was a great thing and I felt I've grown so much after a mere two months. Riding on this new feeling, I returned home for fall break last weekend.

Back to the old comfort zone? No.

The break was great. I saw most of my friends, got in a good spiritual talk with my friend Mike, and also saw some of my friends fall into sin. Some of them just fell into a mud puddle, but some of them seemed as if they fell into sinking sand. It was only two months! Man did people change. Fortunately, my home didn't change much. I felt as though everything would just go smoothly. Nice home visit and then back to school again. No way though. God would never have my life go smoothly like that! And that's probably a good thing.

After the semi-rough home visit, I returned to Case very much unsettled. No more comfort zone for me. Every day I wonder what the heck I'm doing here in college. Without a place of comfort I felt I almost had no direction in life. Rabbits have their holes, horses have their stalls, and humans most definitely have their homes. Every day people go out, do their stuff, and at night there's a place for them to return to. May I draw a connection between myself and refugees in third world countries? I feel I don't have the right. But I think at least the mentality is similar here.

I guess the realization I came to tonight would revolve around Psalm 46:1 "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." The Christians out in the religiously suppressed countries are crying out the Lord's Name and suffering for it. Where is their comfort zone? I have it much better than they do.

I thank God for helping me catch a glimpse of what true faith is like. Tonight I'll look to God as my place of peace and refuge.

My comfort zone is the position of my head when I bow to Him in prayer.
My comfort zone is in the air where my hands are held up high to lift Him in praise.

What about secrets?

Recently in one of my classes here at Case we discussed secrets.

Are secrets good or bad? At first I believed secrets are a bad thing. As my teacher suggested, secrets can only exist if there is a community, where people are hiding things/information from one another (bad thing). He also goes to say that if you were the only person on earth, there would be no more secrets, because you then would have no one to hide anything from. I agree with him to a certain degree.

I thought that in an ideal community there would be no secrets, everyone can and would willing share their thoughts with one another. Because, I mean, if you're holding something in your heart it'll eventually bog you down, making you depressed or something. Also, in the grand scheme of things, you cannot hide anything from God. All the "secrets" you think you have He knows about.

With the idea of an ideal community in mind, I thought of the trinity. The trinity is the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all in one. Being in a community of three is a characteristic of God. As we are made in the image of God, shouldn't we all at some point strive for that characteristic? Having a holy community among the believers? Well, okay then. I thought in God's perfect community there are no secrets, seeing how the three separate "Parts" are actually the same. It's like two person sharing the exact same brain. The two persons are different appearance-wise, but they have the same "container" for thoughts. So how can you NOT share what's in the container if you're both using it?

I just read a passage that may refute this train of thought I had. Matthew 24:36: "But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only." WAIT. I believe this passage concerns the date and time of rapture, but that's not the point. This verse seemed to me as if the Father is withholding something from the Son, even though they are the same person. Could this be considered a secret? That the Father knows something that not even the Son knows? Before one goes on thinking too much about this, I want to make one thing clear, the clause "nor the Son" is omitted in some version, such as the KJV. Still though, is this a lie that certain editors put into the scripture then? Or does the Father really have something that the Son doesn't know about? I think this is a very curious case. Maybe someone would have answer out there. Please enlighten me if you know.

What We Do, Why We Do

Acts 16:16-18 has made me think a lot about myself lately. Especially with myself in relation to the world. The said verses goes:

"And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, these men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour."

In this verse a fortune teller lady was possessed by some evil spirit and made her able to "tell fortunes" and what not. She went around saying Paul and the other disciples were "servants of the most high God." While this statement was true, Paul still turned around and cast the spirit away. Think about this, the spirit in the women wasn't lying, so why was it cast out?

Things may appear to be righteous in the world and be for a good cause, but we must discern which ones are for the glory of God and which ones are for self-righteousness and vain glory. The lady in Acts deceived others by telling "fortunes" while saying the disciples were the servants of God. So, one thing the damsel said was true, but the source of that truth was corrupted because the source (evil spirit) also made her deceive other people. There are similar situations like that in the world today. Some people work for and give to charity (the action performed). A few of these people do it out of the goodness of their heart, some for the glory of God, and some just wanna get famous (the source of the action).

Let's evaluate ourselves today. I know some of the things I like to do are for myself to look good and God doesn't appreciate it. Even though I know this, I lie to myself sometimes (don't do this) and say it's actually good work and for the glory of God. And think about this as you go on to do daily things as well. Are we holding the door for that person because of the Holy Spirit working in us, or is it because that person happens to be a hot girl/guy and we want to look good? Thin line, isn't it? Just one wrong turn and we're looking at hell instead of heaven.

Take it slow

Today I was at a certain place with a friend who lives in the same dorm as me. He got caught up in something the last minute so I left before him. A few moments later he caught up to me and said: "Wow, I caught up to you. I dunno, I think I'm a fast walker." That may be it, but I told him instead I told him I was a slow walker instead. This is true. To strengthen my argument I said to him: "Yeah, when I go to class I usually leave half an hour before hand." This may or may not surprise you, but it should (haha). Most people from my dorm, when they leave for class, usually leaves 15 minutes before hand. That just goes to show you how slow I walk.

I never thought much about this "thing" I did (walking slow). But my friend suggested that it could be an allegory to enjoying life, taking it slow. I found his insight interesting because I did enjoy life and like to take things slow. As I thought more about it, something sunk into me. Should we all take things slow and enjoy life? Everywhere I go I see people walking fast and trying to get things done ASAP. And I suppose this principle applies to studying for tests, as well. Why struggle to try and cram information the night before? Studies show that it doesn't work well and people are probably aware of that. Might as well just go to bed instead of studying.

James 4:14 says: "Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." This verse rings true for everyone. Our lives are so short in comparison to the grand scheme of things. Sure, the average human life span has increased over the years, but how much is 70, 80 years when compared to the history of the universe? Very small. And that's not even taking into consideration eternity. God is eternity, and eternity existed before time began and will continue after time stops. I think vapor is an overstatement to be honest.

So why ARE we hurrying? We should slow down, enjoy the beautiful Earth that God has created and humans have ruined. I'd say everyone should walk slower, maybe then we'll start to notice things that we haven't gotten the chance to see before because we've been walking so fast. Now as I say this, I don't imply that we should slack off. Sloth is a sin and slowing down our lifestyle doesn't necessarily make us less efficient. The span of our life has already been pre-determined by God, as wel as the works He wants us to do. We're only going to get as much done as He wants us to in this life time. If you get all the things done too early He might take you away earlier than you expect!

What is a "storm"?

I thought I should explain what the name of my blog means before posting anything else.

"Storm" is a very broad term for me. I consider most events that occur in my life to be a "storm." It can be argued that most things are not significant enough to be called a "storm," but I feel that all events, if not a challenge, can still be tested and evaluated through "bible goggles." If looked at that that, I'd say a lot more things in life becomes storms. Maybe even your whole life will be a storm (I mean, as humans, we constantly fall for sin, yet we ARE constantly challenged to live in a more Godly-manner).