late night stress

Here I am. It's 5 am and I can't sleep, so I am going to just write. I have a few more things to do in the next 2 days but other than that I am done with my first year of College. Even though I am practically done I am stressed out. Summer looms like a giant tree above me. I need to find job and figure what I am going to do with myself besides that. I do not want to leave Biola but at the same time I know I need to. I need a change of pace for a bit. I need to figure myself out. I still feel like a child in so many ways. My passions continue to lie dormant for the most part. I hate this feeling of being unable to be who I want to become. I still feel daily enslaved to the cheap pleasures that surround me. I am still so very selfish and a master of taking the easy way out of everything. This is hurting my schooling and learning and my integrity. I simply want to pursue the heart of God but this is only part of who I am. The scared human nature within me still rules most of my life. My faith is still so weak. I desire to trust my God more so that he can do his work in me. I am slothful in my zeal and not fervent in spirit (Romans 12:11). A friend of mine likes to talk about consistency in the Christian life and I feel like there is so little consistency in my life. I write this now and feel passionate about it but when I wake up in the morning my flesh will take over yet again and nothing will change. It depresses me how weak I am. Pray for me that Christ's power comes to rescue me in my weakness. Pray that Yahweh will be who I turn to in my difficulty.

A professor of mine once described the difference between a wise man and a foolish man:

A Foolish Man is one who is "pursuing strategies for living that bring asense of control (over vulnerablility) and satisfaction (over thristiness) in the midst of the uncertainity and difficulty of life"

A Wise Man is someone who is "pursuing knowledge of the Holy One that leads to absolute confidence in his person/works even in the midst of the uncertainty and difficulty"

I see myself in that Foolish man.

Uniqueness of the Bible's Gospel

I began reading Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans tonight and came across a section of note.

"The Gospel is not a religious message to inform mankind of their divinity or to tell them how they may become divine. The Gospel proclaims a God utterly distinct from men. Salvation comes to them from Him, because they are, as men, incapable of knowing Him, and because they have no right to claim anything from Him. The Gospel is not one thing in the midst of other things, to be directly apprehended and comprehended. The Gospel is the Word of the Primal Origin of all things, the Word which, since it is ever new, must ever be received with renewed fear and trembling. The Gospel is therefore not an event, nor an experience, nor an emotion-however delicate! Rather it is the clear and objective perception of what eye hath not seen nor ear heard. Moreover, what it demands of men is more than notice, or understanding, or sympathy. It demands participation, comprehension, co-operation; for it is a communication which presumes faith in the living God, and which creates that which it presumes" (28).