Heartburn (for the Loveable One)

“He is Himself the Loveable [One] in His essential Being, and gives Himself to be the object of our love. He wills our love for Him to issue in our bliss, not to be void and vain. His love both opens up the way for ours and is our love’s reward. How kindly does He lead us in love’s way, how generously He returns the love we give, how sweet He is to those who wait for Him! He is rich unto all that call upon Him, for He can give them nothing better than Himself. He gave Himself to be our Righteousness, and keeps Himself to be our great Reward. He sets Himself to the refreshment of our souls, and spends Himself to free the prisoners.”

St Bernard of Clairveax

Words like these make my heart leap, and give me hope that one day, I too, shall have such revelations of Christ’s love for me- for us as humans. I pray that the Lord would keep me and gaurd me, Psalm 91 style, that I would be found in Him and He in me to such a degree that people no longer see Joseph Paul Baron; rather, they see Christ living through me. That I no longer have my desires, but His, and His desires become so much a part of me that there is no more me, only Him. My heart burns for Him, and my soul yearns…

The other thought running through my head is that I long for others to know Him like this too. To me, it seems selfish to hide such a treasure, when the whole world hungers for this very thing. Why would I want to keep it bottled up? I pray that God would use me, like Paul said in I Corinthians that my message, and my words wouldn’t be wise and persuasive; rather, they would be filled with the Spirit’s power. The power of God lives in me, the same God who spoke and all that is came to be, the same God who raised Jesus (who’s name means “God saves”) from the dead, the same God that split the Red Sea, that spoke from the burning bush that wasn’t consumed, that hid Moses in rock with His hand so that he could see His glory- that God lives in me. I pray, as John the Baptist prayed, that I would decrease so that He may increase in me.

Lord use me.

Lust is Never Satisfied. CONSUME!!

The Spirit of our age:

(ladies watching this- you may want to stop it 20 seconds till the end as he is running into the ocean)

Relative Vengeance

(if you start this blog, please read all the way through. Then tell me if you agree or disagree or what questions you have– also you may want to follow the links to the video and the description of the event first so that you may fully understand what I am saying) 

“Things are friendly now. Everyone has had their blood,” said the chief of police after a brutal massacre following the violent murder of a 17 year old girl. Her crime was human emotion and frailty.

Today I watched a video that moved me to tears. It was a report on a girl named Du’a Khalil Aswad who was stoned to death on April 7th this year. Something rose up in me that cried out against such injustice and I had to stop the tape for a few minutes.

We live in such a fallen world. A part of me wanted to hurt the men who did such an ignoble thing to this young woman, that would be justice; however, to the men who did this, that was justice- the brutal murder of a ‘harlot’…. We are reflections of our Creator, desiring truth, justice, and vengeance. Jesus wouldn’t have taught to turn the other cheek had it not been relevant to all humanity. The natural reaction, when wronged unjustly, is to defend oneself, retaliate in kind, or retaliate with an increase in severity. We desparately need a Savior. On our own we can never truly know what justice is. Is it following the town rules to stone a whore? Is it murdering a group of men who killed that young woman? What is justice, and from what point can we view it? If all is relative, then there is no such thing as justice. Unless you are completely devoid of all human emotion, it is self-evident that this whole story involving Du’a Khalil Aswad is all wrong. Or, to be extreme, what makes killing a cooing baby, or killing someone because you want his money wrong? If everything is relative to the individual then nothing is just or unjust. It may be unjust to one and just to another.

Justice. Honor. Valor. Love. Hate. These words mean nothing in a world with no absolutes. Tell me, oh humanist, from what ruler do you measure morals, if morals are relative? A method of measurement can’t exist without measuring up to ultimate Truth. 

God is that ‘ruler’. He is the measure. And NO ONE measures up. God had no recourse for creating humanity other than love. What would a self-fulfilling being need in anything or anyone else? He, out of love, created us to experience love. God is love and apart from Him life is meaningless. Apart from Him justice has no meaning, pain and injustice rule.

This story was strikingly similar to one of my favorite stories that reveals the grace and love of my Beautiful Savior. The only Man who wouldn’t be unjust in condemning such a woman, showed her love. I would wager that, at heart, nearly every person could be called a harlot, or even worse. All God cares about, all the Father cares about is you, not what you’ve done, but you! It may, or may not be your fault that you’re screwed up; that doesn’t matter, but it is up to you to change that, everything in life is a choice. No one can force anything upon anyone. If you were convinced that mac and cheese was the greatest dish ever, and held a gun to my head trying to ‘force’ me to agree, I would still have a choice in the matter, either to agree or disagree. Where you are today is a result of the choices you have made to get there. You can turn a new leaf today! Today can be the start of something new, and the end of everything you regret.

“Things are friendly now. Everyone has had their blood,” said the chief of police after a brutal massacre following the violent murder of a 17 year old girl. Her crime was human emotion and frailty…
I’m sure that police chief didn’t realize the Truth behind his words. Humanity has had its blood. Blood must be spilt in order for vengeance to be satiated. Justice was satisfied two millenia ago, on a tree outside Jerusalem. This isn’t a fairy-tale your parents told you when you were young to make you rest easier at night, this is fact. The God of the Universe gave Himself to redeem mankind, to bring us back to Him. The Creator of all that is loves you. Saying that He loves you is an understatement, no word is great enough to describe His love. His love is more expansive than the night sky, and far deeper than the deepest ocean, brighter than the sun and purer that the driven snow. You have captured His heart like no one else can. See yourself as He sees you, run to Him.

Choose life.

The Leprechaun

So I found this video on my friend Bennet’s blog I thought it was hilarious and decided it was good enough to share:

Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama

My favourite is the amature sketch. Bwahahaha

John 21

I was putting off posting my first blog till I had something absolutely amazing to say. Something that would make grown men sob tears of joy and babies giggle. Welllll I decided I just needed to post something for three reasons:

1) I tend to procrastinate FAR too much, and am trying to break this habit.
2) I think if you typed my blog page there is an Error 404 ’cause there’s nothing on it yet.
3) Only having two reasons sounded lame, so I added a third hoping one would come to me before I actually got to #3. it didn’t.

 Anyway so here goes my first wordpress blog…

I love talking about Jesus. I mean, if I could talk about Him and worship Him all day everyday, that would be about the best thing ever. We just had a prayer/worship night at a friend’s tonight, and afterwords some friends and I were talking about different things He had revealed to us… for example, did you know that in John 21, when Jesus is talking to Peter, in the Greek there are two different words for love that they use? The first being agape, and the second being phileo. Agape love is the type of love that a mother loves a child with. This love requires no reciprocation whatsoever, it is completely benevolent and is often described as the type of love God has for us. That statement is true, God does love us with a perfect, unshakable love that knows no bounds BUT there’s more. I feel phileo is the deepest form of love that you could love someone with. Phileo love is amazingly intimate, very physical, very close, very emotional- all without any sexual connotation whatsoever. It is often described as ‘brotherly love’, ie Philadelphia being ‘the city of brotherly love’. Phileo love requires relationship, whereas agape love does not, it is free love poured out upon an object with no required reciprocation. In order for phileo love to exist, however, there must be relationship, a reciprocation of love, a deep knowledge of one another shared by both parties. So, getting to John 21, the story where Jesus ‘reinstates’ Peter. Jesus asks Peter two times (I’m paraphrasing), “Peter, do you love me?” The greek word for love Jesus uses is agape, the broad, all-encompasing love, “Peter do you agape me?” Both times Peter answers, “Yes Lord, you know I phileo you…”

-backtrack on Peter-

Peter is brash, zealous, a bit of a stubborn hot-head who thought he knew why Jesus was here (to kick the Romans out and set up His kingdom here on earth). I see a lot of myself in Peter, at times I can be brash, I can be zealous without regard to anyone, and I occasionally think I know enough to boss the Creator of the Universe around. For example Mattew 16- Peter’s confesion, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” which Jesus tells Peter could only have been revealed by God the Father. Later in the same chapter Jesus tells his disciples that he has to go to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed, zealous Peter, tells Jesus, “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to You!” After this, Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” Haha…. so in the same chapter you have Peter’s divinely-inspired statement of faith, which the church is built upon, and within the same breath him being called Satan by Jesus! Another more potent example is how at the last supper Peter, again being zealous, tells Jesus that he would never deny Him. Ah Pete, how I love you! Jesus then tells Peter that he would in fact deny Him three times before sunrise the next day… When Jesus’ prophecy came true, imagine how broken Peter’s heart was! Such pain! Peter the zealot, saying he would never deny his Lord, then going on to deny Him that very night, to do the thing he swore he wouldn’t! Not once, but thrice! Just visualize what inner-torment he went through as Jesus’ words flashed in his mind after he denied Jesus the third time… wow.

Back to John 21-

The final time Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” He didn’t use ‘agape’ as He did the prior two times. Verse 17: (edited a bit) “The third time He said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you phileo me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ‘Do you phileo me?’ He said, ‘Lord, you know all things; you know that I phileo you.’” That is why Peter was hurt, Jesus wanted to know if what Peter was saying was true. That is how our Jesus wants to love us. He wants a deep, intimate relationship, phileo love. In this story we see the heart of redemption our God has for us, our entire existence is to love and worship the God of heaven, yet we can’t on our own, it is only through the violent mercy of our God that we can know Him. Through the Jesus, the love of all men, that we can know what that word means.

Anyway, I’m hoping this speaks to you in some way, the blogs will get better from here.