Love Helps… Just a thought.

“Love helps is when we instill hope in others by pursuing their significance, not our own”

A thought. A singular thought. Not more than two words: Love Helps. This thought started in 2011 when I had the opportunity to spend six months in Brazil, South America. I went down to Brazil to teach English at an international school in Carpina. I had traveled to Carpina before on short-term mission trips with my church’s youth group, and I had also known the missionaries since the early 1990’s. But I soon realized that I was unprepared for what God had to teach me while I was there. I was so completely unprepared to be a teacher, but now I have come to realize that not only had God brought me to Brazil to teach, but for him to also teach me.

The first couple of months were anything but easy. I had difficulty in adjusting to the culture, I struggled with living with the missionary family, and felt more homesick than I ever have in my entire life. There, I found myself vulnerable, broken, and hurt. I had nowhere to run, and there was no escape. I couldn’t just leave and not teach. I had to face the pain.

There was one day that I remember particularly well.. It was after I had taught my morning classes and I came back to an empty room where I usually took breaks between my classes. That morning I had felt so defeated and I thought my students were not learning anything. I was really questioning why I had come 2,000 miles away from home and put myself through this. Even as I think about it now I still feel the pain of that day.. I literally cried for an hour or more, asking God “why”.

My plane ticket said I wasn’t leaving until July and this was March, so I had no choice but to stay. In that moment, in the midst of my defeat, is when God showed up. Through my tears, I realized where I was hurt, broken, and vulnerable in that place. God started asking me to be honest. He asked me to try to answer why I had come. As I thought about it, I did not want to answer, because I knew my reason was wrong and foolish. When it came down to it, I had come to Brazil for me. I came because being a missionary teacher seemed like an awesome experience. I thought most people would not have dared to to get up and move to Brazil, so it would make me better than them.

Honestly, I had been pursuing my own significance. Selfishly, I wanted my students to all learn English really well because it would mean I did something good. That is when God broke my heart. I felt God tell me to stop trying to teach these student and start loving them. Like most of the time whenever God asks us to do something, we start making excuses.

I told God I’m not any good at loving people… His response was, “it’s not up to you”.

Out of those next few months, God started to lay upon my heart a dream of Love Helps. Simply put: I want to help others live love. But what has been incredibly challenging about this is the fact that to help others, I have to first accept and trust that God loves me. It sounds easy, but it’s not, because it forces me to be honest about the state of my heart, my love, and my life. On May 13^th, 2011 I wrote,

“When I looked at myself I didn’t like who I saw, anger and hate had enslaved me to my lies, farther from the light, from the light… but LOVE HELPS, it set me free, made me who I am, Unashamedly Me”

When I was able to accept the fact that God loved me even though I was selfish and unconcerned about the world around me, I started to realize that life wasn’t about me. The last three months in Brazil were full of great experiences. I began to learn how to love my students and appreciate them for who God created them to be. I started to forgive myself and allow God to free me up be the man he created me to be. This is a process and journey that I am still on.

Fast-forward to the now.. Recently, my wife and I were having a conversation about love and how this society and culture both try to get us to buy into the lie that life is all about us. That it’s about our significance. It’s a lie that started in the garden of Eden when the serpent told Eve that if she ate from the tree, she would be like God. What Eve forgot was that she was already significant. Her significance came from God.

See, God already loves us. Our true significance, if we are honest, can only be found in him, but so often we chase after everything else to fill that void. We try to pursue our own significance. We buy all the replacement Jesus’ that the world offers, but refuse to open our hearts to let God in. Out of that conversation with my wife came the line, “Love helps is when we instill hope in others by pursuing their significants…Not our own.”

But what does that really mean? How do we live that out? At the end of the “love chapter” in 1^st Corinthians (ch. 13), Paul writes, “These three remain faith, hope, and love but the greatest of these is love”. I have always thought this whole chapter was rather poetic, especially this last line, but as I have studied it I have come to notice a connection between all of these things.

First, we have faith. Faith in it’s most basic terms is full or total trust. In this case, it is full and total trust in God. When we have full and total trust in God, we are honest with him. We understand he loves us, died for us, and forgave us of our sins. It is tragic to think that many times we have faith that heaven exists but we lack the ability to fully trust that God loves us and wants to be in relationship with us. Faith is not about heaven, faith is about God. Ask yourself these questions:

Am I pursuing God, or am I just pursing Heaven?

Do I honestly love God with everything? And I mean everything…

The second thing we have is hope. Well, what is hope? When you look up the word hope in the Dictionary, you will find the words “to believe or trust that something is going to happen”. I think a good way to put hope is to “be encouraged or to encourage”. When we trust God and believe in him we give hope to the rest of the world. God’s love for us gives us hope. It encourages us to live life. Faith and hope are tied tightly together. We, as people of the earth, need to be encouraged but we also need to learn to encourage. This is what it means to instill hope, to encourage. Ask yourself?

Am I so busy pursuing others significance, or my own?

Am I being a voice of hope to those around me?

The most important of these is love. Why? Because faith plus hope, in action, equals love. Not that it’s a simple math equation that should be so easy to figure out, but when we understand that God is the variable that makes all this work, it starts to make sense. When we put our total trust in God and fully accept his love and forgiveness ,we receive hope from that; a hope that is well worth sharing with the rest of the world. When we put that faith and hope into action there we find our ability to love. We find that we can pursue others significance over our own.

I had to ask myself “why do I lack the ability to truly love others”? I found the answer was because I was pursuing my own significance outside of God’s love for me. God is still working on my heart and shaping my life. Now I can say that I have a deep love for humanity. A fire within my bones to see the world alive, awake, and moving toward loving God with everything we are by using our abilities, strengths, gifts, talents, and passions to help our neighbors in any way that we can, with open hands of love.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

SportsCenter hosted by God…

 “God Will write them by updates on ESPN online…” 

So this morning I was messing around with a facebook status generator that takes old facebook statues and meshes them together to make new ones. Interestingly enough one of the ones that came up on mine got me thinking. This line of “God Will write them by updates on ESPN online…” makes me think of how sometimes we read everything else but the words God has written to us. Sometimes as a guy I gravitate toward the ESPN updates that really have very little if anything to do with my life and I read them word for word as if there might be just maybe something in there for me to take away. However, when it comes to God’s word, the stuff that really does matter I skim it looking for the point to teach someone else and forget that maybe God wants to teach me something. Maybe God wants to get our attention and speak to us. I don’t think he is going to use ESPN to update us on how to love and live, but maybe thats the only way he can get our attention, which is sad. God is more important than sports and worthless competitions, but it takes intentionality to give him our attention enough to realize that he is writing and speaking to you and me. Just a thought for today and for the next time you get on ESPN to catch up on whats going on in the wide world of sports.

 

-Caleb Hunter

11/14/2013 

Who Do You Say I Am?

Our understanding of who God is and who we are drastically affects our understanding of who Christ is and why we need him”– David Platt (Radical pg 34)

Over the course of the past year as a youth pastor I have been trying to help my students get a better understand of Jesus by leading them through the life of Jesus. I think sometimes we focus so much on “the manger” and “the cross” that we miss out on how Jesus really lived his life. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus birth and death are important but we have to see the story as a whole to really grasp how significant both of those events are. I think many times as Christians we treat Jesus death and resurrection as really the only important things that happened, it’s like we open a novel and read only the part about the hero dying. That is important, but thats not everything.

I believe that the more that we read and study the life of Jesus, the day in and day out doings of Jesus, we will start to experience him in really and intimate way. It’s like when you read a well written novel you get emotional attached to the characters and you start to feel the pains, joys, struggles and change that they go through. You choose to be invested in the story, you choose to let yourself be swept away in what is going on.

Last year I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I didn’t necessarily want to read it. The idea of kids killing each other honestly still makes me feel sick to my stomach, but my little sister convenience me to read it. As I started reading I went from having no interest to feeling emotionally invested in the story. Collins evoked emotions through the book that I didn’t want to feel. I found myself crying and cheering at times. I could have just avoided all this if I had just put off reading it. It’s easier to not read it then put myself through that, however, thinking about it now that is the same reason sometimes we put off reading the Bible. We put off reading the story of God’s relationship with humanity because we might be affected. We might change and feel things we didn’t want to, BUT isn’t that the point.

The Bible is the story of God’s relationship with humanity, a story that is full of conflict, struggle, and pain but it is also a story full of grace, love and redemption. Jesus life is part of that story, arguably the most vital part, so what is holding us back from opening the book and being invested in the story. I think maybe what holds us back is how we view Jesus. Let me explain by looking at Mark 8:11-30.

In the first eleven verses of Mark 8 Jesus fed four-thousand people with seven loaves of bread, there are a couple of things we can learn from that but the important one is that Jesus had compassion on the people. His motive for feeding the four-thousand was not to do a miracle or show off, it was simply to feed the hungry because he knew what it meant to be hungry. If we pick up the story in verse eleven it reads:

“11 Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. 12 He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.” 13 Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.” Mark 8:11-13 (NIV)

Why would they come ask for a sign? It amazes me that the Pharisees would come to Jesus at this point in his life and ask for a sign, some miracle so that they might believe. When I read this I think Jesus was frustrated with them (He sighed deeply). He had just fed four-thousand people, before that he had healed a deaf and mute man, even before that he had fed five-thousand people with five loaves and two fish, he had walked on water, he had cast out evil spirits. Weren’t these things a sign enough for the pharisees. Of all people they should know right? The pharisees prided themselves in their study of the law and of Moses. They would have read the prophecies about the Messiah but they had their own ideas. Reading on…

“14 The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15 “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” 16 They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”

17 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” “Twelve,” they replied. 20 “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” They answered, “Seven.” 21 He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”” -Mark 8:14-21 (NIV)

In this passage we find Jesus with his disciples, they have very little bread which makes me think the disciples were worrying about how they were going to get more and in that moment Jesus warned them. I use to read this and not really care to understand what Jesus meant by this but now it’s starting to make sense after reading N.T. Wrights commentary about this passage. Wright writes “Now Jesus speaks of ‘leaven’, not to warn the disciples about the wrong sort of bread, but to put them on their guard against the wrong sort of kingdom-vision (Mark for Everyone, pg 104).” As I thought of that I realize why Jesus used the word yeast to describe this to the disciples. See yeast is very small but very powerful, when it’s mixed in with flour and water it’s nearly impossible to get it out and it affects the whole loaf.

Jesus warns the disciples of the yeast of the pharisees and Herod. The reason for this is because the pharisees were looking for a Messiah that would come restore Israel politically and spiritually. To them this meant that the Messiah would come and overthrow the Roman’s and take the throne of David here on earth. Secondly, they thought the Messiah would restore the temple to it’s original glory like in the days of Solomon. The temple was central to their spirituality because it was the place God dwelled. That was their focus and it affected everything they thought and did. Thats why when Jesus came they weren’t convinced he was the Messiah because he wasn’t doing what they thought he was suppose to do.

Herod was concerned about his throne. He was a puppet king for the Romans and anyone he thought was a threat to Roman was a threat to him and his “kingdom”. Herod had already put John the baptist to death for speaking against him and I am sure that the stories of Jesus had made it to his ears. Herod wasn’t interested in knowing if Jesus was the Messiah, he was simply concerned about himself and making sure Jesus wasn’t a threat to him. I am sure the crowds that followed Jesus worried Herod, but he didn’t really want to know Jesus.

Jesus warns the disciples and then reminds them that they don’t have to worry about having enough bread. Jesus is almost sarcastically saying “Remember when… I fed five-thousand and four-thousand people with very little.” Right after this Jesus encounters a crowd that brings Jesus a blind man to be healed.

“22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” 24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into[a] the village.”

-Mark 8:22-26 (NIV)

This experience that Jesus has with the blind man has a few things that could be missed if we just read it as another healing. First, a crowd gathers bringing Jesus someone to heal, like many of the crowds before they might have had different motives, but Jesus actions speaks of his heart for people. Jesus didn’t just heal him right there in front of the crowd. He wasn’t about putting on a show or simply doing miracles because he could. Jesus took the man away, outside the village, away from the crowd. He didn’t say any magical words or forgive the guys sins, he simply took a little spit and rubbed the man’s eye. Then like an eye doctor would he asked him what he could see, finding that he didn’t have 20/20 vision Jesus touched him again giving him permanent contacts. He then just sends the man away.

The second thing I see in this is the kingdom-vision of the crowd and possibly the blind man. The crowd had come to see a show. They weren’t all concerned that Jesus might be the Messiah, they thought he was the greatest show on earth long before the Barnum and Bailey Circus. They wanted to see miracles. We see that also with the crowd of the four-thousand who followed Jesus for three days. After reading the stories of Jesus healing I always wonder what happened to the people he healed. How were their lives changed and what did they do after that experience. We don’t really know, some may have followed Jesus and others may not. For this reason I think for those that were healed they really might not have cared if Jesus was the Messiah. They might have seen Jesus as the healer, the best thing that ever happened to them, or the only doctor who really knew what he was doing.

Finally we come to Mark 8:27-30…

“27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?” 28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” 30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him” (NIV)

Here all those other things make sense, as if Mark is building everything to this climax, a question that Jesus asks “Who do you say I am?”. We just looked at the pharisees and how they thought Jesus might have just been a prophet or really good teacher or just a radical guy, because he didn’t fit their view of the Messiah and their Kingdom-vision. Then we looked at Herod and how he thought Jesus might just be another John the baptist, a crazy man who could draw a crowd, which was okay as long as he wasn’t a threat. Then the crowds and the blind man, who might have saw Jesus simply as Elijah come back from the dead because he could heal and do miracles.

But, who do you say I am? is Jesus question, not to them but to his disciples. Peter makes a really bold statement with his response “You are the Messiah”(vs.29). This was a bold statement because not even the pharisees who knew the law and the prophecies would say this. Herod wouldn’t believe it because Jesus would then be a threat. The crowd was to caught up in the show to care. However, Peter knew, he knew because he had been with Jesus he had experienced Jesus.

Peter and the disciples had something that none of the other people in these passages had. They had three years with Jesus. They had invested in being with him, they had given up a lot along the way but they had experienced life with Jesus. They hadn’t settled for waiting on the outside to see if Jesus was going to redeem Israel. Even though at times they got caught up in thinking like the pharisees and being wowed like the crowds the whole of their experiences with Jesus lead them to understand that he was the Messiah.

So what does that have to do with us? Well the first thing I think we have to ask ourselves is who do we say Jesus is? Do we know him well enough to even give a good answer? I believe that being a christian isn’t so much about when and where we prayed for Jesus to save us from our sins as it is about the process that we go through when we surrender our kingdom-vision and begin investing in knowing him. This means the relationship is important. Those three years Jesus had with his disciples were very important! Every moment we have with Jesus is important. Because the experiences we have with Jesus will help us answer that question.

Who do I say Jesus is? God started a relationship with humanity in the beginning, you and I are part of that humanity. When I realize that I am a part of humanity that God has created to have a relationship with I have a better understand of who I am. That this life isn’t about me it’s about my God and the relationship I have with him. Jesus is the only one that can restore that relationship, he is the redeemer, the Messiah. “Our understanding of who God is and who we are drastically affects our understanding of who Christ is and why we need him”– David Platt (Radical pg 34).

Think about this. I dare you to ask the question, “Who do I say Jesus is? Do I really believe he is who I say he is?

-Caleb Ross Hunter

10/8/2013

Once Upon A Time + As We Go

Once upon a time, just a month ago I stood on the other side of a doorway waiting to seeing my bride for the first time. In that moment I stood there thinking everything is about to change. The world I once knew will no longer be the same and the future is just on the other side of the door. The future, the unknown, the adventure is about to begin.

“Once upon a time”… those words at the beginning of every good story that tell you something is about to begin. That moment in which you are about to be swept away to a different place and time, and everything you once knew is going to change. There are a few moments in my life that could be prefaced with the words “Once upon a time”. Like Once upon a time I packed up my car said goodbye to my parents and sisters to set out on a long drive to a small college I had never visited in Kansas. Or once upon a time I lived as a missionary and english teacher in Brazil, South America for six months. Or once a upon a time I packed up everything I owned to move by myself to North Carolina to be a youth pastor.

When I left for Kansas I knew I was setting out on an three year adventure for which I had hoped would bring me the opportunity to learn and get a college degree. The goal was set and navigating the trails was to be much easier than the Lewis and Clark expedition. Then when I set out to go to Brazil my visa only allowed for one hundred and eighty days in the country and so it was obvious when I would return home. In Brazil the future was not as clear cut as college, however, once I figured out how to teach and adapt on a missions field the adventure mostly enjoyable. After living in Indiana, Kansas, and Brazil, North Carolina just seemed liked another place to explore.

However, all of these other “Once upon a time” moments in my life pails in comparison to that moment where I stood waiting for my bride to walk down the aisle. As those doors were opened and I saw her standing there in her white dress any fears I had of the adventure a head of us was swept away with joy. For the first time in my life I realized I was not walking into the unknown future alone. In Genesis God said “It’s not good for man to be alone”, and everyday that becomes more clear to me.

If there is anything that I have learned over this first month of marriage it is that life is meant to be shared. Not just the living space, or the bed or the food we prepare for dinner, but the experience of life itself. The experience of our everyday living should be shared. When we decided to get married we were making the decision to be a community, a family, best friends, and partners in exploration. A team that is committed to love and share as we go through life.

Yesterday at a bible study at the church were I serve we had a discussion about missions and what does that look like to live out the call that God has given us. As you might expect we turned to the typical verse about missions Matthew 28:19-20 (NIV), “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.” Over the years I have been a little skeptical of the people that point to this verse and say lets help missionaries, but do little of anything but send money to foreign fields. We often forget that this was intended for us. For us to make disciples. Our senior pastor made the point that in the greek the “Therefore go” is better understood as “AS YOU GO”. As you go through life make disciples, baptize people, teach and do everything that I have done.

I think we have it all wrong if we think that the only way that we can make disciples is if we have classes or invite people to church. When I look at what Jesus did with his disciples I see a man who was willing to share life with people. To love them despite their faults, to teach when necessary, to forgive always, to tell stories, to travel with, to eat with and to simply live life together. Jesus lived out an example of what it meant to make disciples and so those disciples knew that meant that the future was not going to be clear cut and obvious. They learned that following Jesus was more of an adventure than a college course on truth.

Likewise in the past month I have been reminded that despite how many marriage counseling books or classes I taken, I have to learn to love as we go. I am learning that Jesus can us as a married couple to make disciples out of each other. To walk as Jesus did sharing life as we go.

Once upon a time Jesus descended into heaven leaving his disciples standing there in the field looking for him. They stood there much like I stood there waiting for my bride. Neither of us knew completely what the future would hold but the Holy Spirit has and will give us the strength to go forth into what God has prepared for us.

We the church are the bride of Christ he is waiting for us to walk through the door. To walk with people and to begin to be and do what he has called us to do. I can not say that I will ever fully have marriage figured out and I can honestly say that I may never fully have christianity figured out. However, I am committed fully to both, to living out to the fullest in sharing life with my wife and to following Jesus in this adventure of life. As we go, as we learn, as we share may we fix our eyes on Jesus knowing each moment is a once upon a time story that is just about to begin.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 58 “A Year of Thought”: Learn How to Live

Last week in one of my classes we were discussing divorce with three couples who have had experienced divorce in some way or another in their lives. I took a few notes during this discussion trying to get a grasp on their perspectives and with the knowledge that I am assigned a paper over this topic that is due later this week. In those notes that I wrote at the top of the page in all caps I wrote “LEARN HOW TO LOVE”

 

One of them mentioned when questioned about what made their second marriage last over thirty years and still be so strong, they replied with “We learned how to love.” Isn’t that the point of life, that all of us are searching for deep down in our souls. To live life. To learn how to live together and enjoy the moments that we have.

 

Tonight I was reading through a few of David’s psalms and Jesus teaching on loving out enemies. I believe David was a great example of trying to learn to live and love his enemies. Not that David didn’t make mistakes but through the whole conflict with Saul, David still tried to respect and love the king. King Saul made himself out to be the enemy and wanted to rid his life of David. Saul has given up on learning to live, to pursue the hatred that was brewing in his heart. He was moving out of fear, a life out of fear is a pathetic excuse for a life. It leaves us empty and unable to love the people around us.

 

So when Jesus talks about loving our enemies he is teaching us to live. To find life to the fullest pouring over in love. Life has very little space for hatred for it forms a black hole in our hearts and sucks the life we are called to live right out of us.

 

But life is hard, loving our enemies is hard.

 

Jesus never said love was easy.

 

Life isn’t easy, but learning to live is worth it. What made that couples second marriage sweet, they learned to live, they learned to love despite their differences. They learned the hard way that love is hard but it is worth it.

 

This has made me thing hard about who my enemies are and who needs my love? Who have I hated (maybe for no reason)? How can I learn to live and move to a place of love? I am learning to live, learning to love and I pray that any small hatred be turned to love that I might learn to live with others and enjoy life to the fullest.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 55 “A Year of Though”: If a Son, If a Daughter

If I were to have a son I’d teach him such poetic verse

That when he speaks his words flow like the clouds

Their shape and form are created by imagination before education

His numbers mer markers for lines that run their course

For unbound by the world of standards free to be thus loud

In spirit full he will live life a legacy of quotations

 

If I were to have a daughter I’d read her such stories

That move her heart to be bold and brave yet sweet

Those things that shape her beauty from the inside to the out

Her own apart from the rest a simply elegant master piece

With each stroke of abstract art in the people that she may meet

Comes to persist in compassion her love they will not leave without

 

Such love in words and form and art they learn

Not from their father for my heart be torn

But from grace, life, and experience all their own

There they speak and seek a world unknown

Now clear to us by them and them alone.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 54 “A Year of Thoughts”: Stronger Inside and out

“Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come. This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe. Command and teach these things. Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers”. –1 Timothy 4:7-16

 

These verses were the topic of the message today in chapel, however, it wasn’t until this evening while working out that it became clear to me. I often hate training. I have all these goals and things that I know will make me stronger in one area or another but I don’t like disciplining myself enough to do them, to go beyond where I am. I had given up on working out really unless I felt like it from time to time, until my best friend challenged me in a way to do it again. We try to work out three times a week now. We have to be intentional about that time and work at it. Sometimes we get distracted but thats part of the learning to train that I need to work on.

I also have a goal of reading at least one book a months and I am behind on that. I have to be more intentional about planning time for that and making my mind stronger outside of the classroom. But when it comes down to it my strength and training must begin with the heart. I want to be a man after God’s own heart. So I have to be intentional and train myself daily in my walk with God. This is what I’ve been thinking on.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 46 “A Year of Thoughts”: Learn Their Interest

Relationships must be intentional

Get to know not just what you like

But learn their interests.

Relationships should shape us and

Help us to Grow…

They should move us

Motivate us and

Enable us to

Take the focus off of us and

Learn about them

Enter their world

Through relationships we should

Learn a lot about us

How we communicate

What we value

How we invest

How we love

How our lives will be lived

Love Helps

Learning their interests

Opens doors

For learning to love them.

Who are you getting to know…

Do you care?

About them and

Their interests

I’m learning to care…

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ,

if any comfort from his love,

if any common sharing in the Spirit,

if any tenderness and compassion,

then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love,

being one in spirit and of one mind.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.

Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,

not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Philippians 2:1-4

(NIV, my own emphasis)

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 41 “A Year of Thoughts”: Speak From The Heart

 

There are times when I fail to speak love from my heart. God has created us as human beings to love from the core of who we are. Yet we collectively fail at love each day.

 

I’m dying of heart failure for all the times I’ve failed to speak love from the core of who I am.

 

I’ve been selfish, withholding love. I fail at patience, I fail often at kindness, my words lack meaning and become that of a clanging cymbal. If my heart were a symphony I am the one instrument out of tune. My pride withholds love from those I might know to need it. If I am to live love, love always trusts, can I trust myself when my past is full of lies that lack trust, the failure to hold honestly to the truth.

 

                  But there is hope. 

 

Love still speaks because love keeps no record of wrongs, love forgives, it rejoices with the truth despite the evil of the past. It speaks through silence and pain, through joy and
laughter, love speaks when our hearts bleed. When we open them so that God’s love might begin to heal our wounds, so that we might find confidence to love despite our failure to love.

Love helps, it heals, it hopes, it’s kind and patient even when we aren’t. When I say I Love you I hope my heart speaks out of the core that I am.

 

1 Corinthians 13

 

Love speaks from the heart.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 39 “A Year of Thoughts”: Two Souls Become One

 

“Two Souls Become One”

What does that mean? In men’s group tonight this was something that was mentioned in the book that we are reading. When two become one, the topic of our discussion was on marriage, (I’m not married yet but hope to be eventually), but when two become one is more than just physical or flesh, it’s in the soul.

When I think of this I think of those elderly couples that know each other so well and they serve each other and their world with passion. The passion of one bleeds into the passions of the other, their callings are woven together, their interests complement and often over lap. It’s life shared, the joys, the tears, the concerns, the wants and needs, and the spirit. They move and breathe together. They know themselves so well, and they know each other so well that life has this flow and fusion to it. As their souls become one the world sees they are special and made to be together.

What I am learning about marriage and relationships is that they are deeper than emotions, attractions, physical touch, and love words, bills, housing, and weddings. There is a deeper connection to the soul. That life is more, love is real, God’s love for us in dieing on the cross is an example of the love that should be in marriage, as we die to ourselves we are alive in Christ and more able to see and love soul to soul. Deeper relationships, Deeper understanding, Deeper life.

-Caleb Ross Hunter