if you have been watching my antics on WordPress… I have news for you. To be updated on my life and connected to thoughts, project experiences, and life in general… please go to the following site:
www.ryananfinrud.tumblr.com
here I will be constantly updating… I may come back to wordpress someday… but Tumblr has currently stolen my heart!
Live in peace and in God’s Love!
I have decided that I will be returning to North Myrtle Beach this summer 2011! God has shown me again the need of those in South Carolina, and I believe God is calling me back.
The support raising process has begun and I will be trusting God to bring in the resources I need. I am very excited to be serving the people of NMB and hope to be able to be a blessing to those of you back home too!
The training I will receive will enable me to be a blessing in the best way possible!
I am trusting God with the support raising process, the job I will get, and the relationships I will develop with those I am serving with.
Praise God for this opportunity!
As I go through college (especially being involved in Campus Crusade for Christ), I am amazed at how people interact within this Christian community and how we get along. A possible reason for how it works is that we all have something in common. We love Jesus! Isn’t it strange that people can choose to live in this community, and even with all the different personality types, can still get along!
One problem… not everyone in the community has, well… community. Not everyone is able to be plugged in to the big group. These people tend to cling to their smaller groups and hang out together a lot. I am one of these people. I have my friends, and I cling to them. In order to connect closer to the body of Christ, I need to seek out that community.
I was listening to a sermon a couple weeks ago… and the point was made: you become like those who you hang out with. If you want to become a Godly husband and father someday… go spend time with Godly husbands and fathers!
I thought about this decided to seek out that kind of community. In the mornings on Wednesdays (6:30 am wow!) I started going to Salem’s morning accountability group. we talk and make sure we do our Bible study each week. At the same time, we share struggles and successes that we have in the week. I am able to get that discipleship that I need from these older guys!
Over time, I hope to grow in my faith through these men and their encouragement. I also hope to become more of an encourager and to help others grow in their faith as well.
What matters in the long run is that glory is given to God. I’m not creating community, I’m simply seeking it out. God does the work and will bring the community together.
Seek it out and enjoy!
First, I’d like to give a little shout out to my awesome cousin Danielle who hounded me to write a blog about this Christmas, and talk about her in it. So I did, and this is it. Thanks Danielle!
First, I feel that I need to define what the word “Quixotic” means. Most people don’t usually know what words like that mean offhand. (Thanks Dr. Nelson!) I supplied you with the word, so I might as well supply you with the definition. Quixotic means (according to my professor Dr. Nelson and whatever dictionary he used…) overly idealistic, unrealistic and impractical. Exceedingly chivalrous or romantic. Fanciful.
In the context of the words, this post is about an “unrealistic Christmas.” That doesn’t sound very good… does it? Allow me to explain.
What do we WANT Christmas to look like though? We seem to want to have the family or friends come together, happy and healthy. We want to se the joy in each other’s faces as gifts are exchanged and opened. We want the meals to come together beautifully and to be cleaned up efficiently.
I hope at this point you realize how Christmas wasn’t perfect.
We all know that none of our Christmases turned out the way we wanted. Think about it: this Christmas, did you every have the stress of preparing for family? Did you have problems and issues thinking of gifts? How about children who didn’t seem to emanate thankfulness? How about appearing thankful for the sake of those who gave you gifts that you don’t really want… or need?
I am a firm believer that our image of Christmas is quixotic. It’s unrealistic and idealistic. We want things to be perfect and they rarely are. I believe this is because we believe that presents and “things” are the center of Christmas. We might go to church but we don’t understand the purpose.
The reason we celebrate Christmas is the same reason we celebrate Easter. It’s just that this holiday celebrates a different event in Jesus’ life! To understand this reason, check out this blog! Even in Celebrating Jesus’ birth, we are celebrating his death. That is the reason we have been saved and why Jesus is important! Thank God!
Even though our view of Christmas is Quixotic, I believe that it can become much better if we simply love Jesus and understand his sacrifice for us!
After a great semester, I can’t help but look back and thank God for the realizations and lessons I have learned.
I’ve learned/realized that every portion of the Bible actually ties back to the Gospel. Jesus is the fulcrum of the entire thing! Everything gets its meaning from him. I have been praying for wisdom in understanding more about the Love and Grace of Jesus. I have understood his love even a little more after this…
I have recently finished a book called “Just Do Something” by Kevin DeYoung. Throughout the book, DeYoung challenged me to quit sitting by and waiting for God to move and let me know what I should do, and instead, choose to do something for God!
Sod the end of the matter is this: Live for God. Obey the Scriptures. Think of others before yourself. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God.
This was strange to me. I have always pictured God having a single will for my life that I can choose or reject. That I can get right or wrong. But really, as long as I’m seeking God and following him, I AM choosing his will and I AM choosing the right path. Within God’s will, I can do no wrong! Thank God for his mighty ways that can put me on the path even when I think all I’ll do is screw it up!
Thankfulness. That’s an attribute usually associated with a soon, upcoming holiday called ‘Thanksgiving.’ This is a time where we are supposed to show our thanks and to remember to be thankful for the things in our lives.
I would like to share about something that we can all be thankful for. Even those in a place in their lives where they don’t feel there is very much good that can come out of life. In order to fully understand why we can be thankful about this thing, I am going to describe the underlining problems behind why we can be thankful about this. Things may look bleak, but keep reading!
In order to understand how great it is, we need to understand how bad we are. We aren’t perfect. None of us are! We have all done things wrong in our lives. correct? (If you disagree, I think you may need to add lying to your list of things done wrong. Just saying.) In fact, think about your own life. Have you ever done something wrong, said you’ll never do it again… and then did? yeah. Me too. We just can’t help ourselves!
Lemme use the analogy of school to help drive this point home. If you are taking a class and you get a single point wrong on a test or a homework assignment and there is no curving or extra credit in this class, is it even possible to get 100% anymore? No. Assuming you get 100% on everything else for the rest of the class, you’ll only be able to get up to 99.999% (99.999 repeating.) In the same way, in life if we do a single thing wrong, our lives a
re no longer perfect. Heaven requires 100% perfection to get in. Think about it. Heaven is 100% perfect. If something that isn’t up to that standard is let in, then heaven is brought down from it’s 100% standard. That’s why God doesn’t allow “sinners” into heaven. In essence, I just finished saying that we all deserve to go to hell.
So far, this news kinda sucks… luckily, I’m done setting up the bad news. Keep reading and learn about what I am super thankful this year!
I will just cover the highlights (because there are so many details to this story!) God loves us. No matter what, when we sin and when we do good, He loves us! Because of this love, he wants us to be able to love him back. But we can’t because of the wrong things we’ve done in our lives. That’s why he sent Jesus. Jesus died for our sins. Not because he was sinful, but because our sins mean WE deserve death. He took our punishment so we wouldn’t have to! What Love!
Sounds good right? yeah. But unfortunately, most of the people I talk to stop there. They think that because Jesus died for our sins, we’re all good. They don’t understand that we need to accept the gift. Think of Christmas. You can have a gift under the tree that has been given to you. But if you don’t open the gift, you haven’t actually received the gift, have you? NO! You just let the opportunity pass by and the gift got thrown out with the rest of the wrapping.
If we don’t consciously accept Jesus and Pray to God to ask him to be a part of our lives, then we have missed the gift… But the great news is that this gift is offered to everyone! And once it is accepted, the acceptor has been forgiven of all their sin and will have been given bonus… they then are 100%!!!! How cool is that? :D
That is what I am most thankful for this year at Thanksgiving. I’m thankful that God gave me the opportunity to accept Jesus and to be able to spend forever in heaven! The great part about this is that you can be too!
Flash Bang. As soon as you hear those words in tandem, you are thinking about the military word. It is a type of grenade that blinds and disorients the enemy for just long enough to get the upper hand. They are bright, loud, and fast. At this point, it doesn’t sound like my usual blog post… Allow me to start from the beginning…
This summer, I received a book called “Fireseeds of Spiritual Awakening” by Dan Hayes. As the title sounds, it’s about revival and the main premise of the entire book is prayer. I may have discussed some of the content of the book in another blog post, but to sum it all up, I was impacted in a huge way!
When coming back to school, I dedicated to prayer. I even fasted one lunch time a week to dedicate that time for prayer for NDSU. Through this time, I began to desire prayer with others. I considered asking others to skip lunch with me, but the awkwardness prevented me from following through. The desire to pray with people weighed on my heart and I had a discussion with some of my Bible Study guys about getting together to pray before Cru one day. We followed through and met that next week.
It was so exciting to see people coming out to pray! It escalated from there where we needed to come up with a name… Flash Bang! Instead of an hour long prayer session, like many people go out of their way to avoid, Flash Bang is only about 10-15 minutes of prayer. A small amount of time that anyone can give!
We’ve been gathering every Tuesday at 6 before Cru, and in the evenings on Wednesdays. My dream for Flash Bang is that it would grow to where there are a couple meetings going on every day! :D
Soon, Flash Bang will become an offical Campus organization. I have two officers to help me out, we made a constitution, an advisor is on the verge of accepting that position of advisor… It’s all lining up! Praise God!
Soon, with the meetings, we will appoint other leaders who want to grow and help lead as well. They will be involved in Flash Bang happenings and will grow in their skills.
Come and Pray! join the faceboook group here. or email me at (rmanfinrud@gmail.com) if you want me to put you on a texting list!
Selfishness is running rampant in this day and age. When I am provided with a choice, I will nearly always choose the option that is in my own best interest. In itself, this isn’t a bad thing, but what happens is that I don’t always think about how my actions will effect those around me. Unfortunately, people get hurt.
Sometimes, I pass by someone who’s struggling to accomplish something that I am good at or who is different from myself. It is during these times that I judge them on their skills or appearance. I think of myself better than them because of very superficial reasons. VERY pointless reasons. This is called pride.
Pride shows up in many shapes and sizes. It comes when people are different, when people are less skilled than me, and it even shows up when people are MORE skilled than me! I can’t escape it at all! I hate the fact that the sinful nature keeps coming up in this way.
Sinful nature comes in other ways as well. Idolatry anyone? When we put something in front of God, we are committing idolatry. This could come in the form of TV shows, Movies, Video games, and the ever present Facebook. Now, I need to confess… Facebook beats out God in the fight for my attention sometimes. Why? because I let it. My selfish and sinful nature wants me to turn to anything but God. This means that when I don’t turn to God, I am turning to myself… and when I’m turning to myself, I am showing Pride. Woah! Did I just say that?
PRIDE IS IDOLATRY!!!
Pride is putting yourself on a pedestal and worshipping it! Pride is making an idol out of yourself! Imagine that. If Satan can’t get us to turn to other things instead of God, he’ll convince us that we are better than we are, and we’ll begin to put ourselves before God!
The only remedy for this that I can think of at the top of my head is a simple realization. It’s the fact that we cannot do anything right in God’s eyes and we need to see our sin. I discuss this in an earlier post on my blog. you can find that post here. Turn to God! He is the only one who can clear you out!
Jesus! Don’t let me turn to myself or other things before you! You are my God and I belong to you alone!
So an event happened today that happens to be once in a lifetime. The month is October, which is the 10th month. The day is the 10th. The year is 2010. and the time was 10:10. (okay, so it happened twice today. TWICE in a lifetime.)
It also happens that this day is my birthday. I turned 20. 20 on 10/10/2010 at 10:10. Crazy huh? :D
I had just over 125 people wish me a happy birthday on facebook. That’s a lot! It’s so many, I don’t know what to do with myself!
Thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday and who made my day just a little more bright!
Yes. That was my birthday. And I will be glad. And I am. But I will also thank God, not for allowing me to be born on that day (which is pretty cool), but that he allowed me to be a part of his plan. I don’t remember exactly when I accepted Jesus, so my physical birthday (decided as of now) stands as a representative day for my spiritual birthday! Life with Christ is a huge blessing! Unfortunately, it eludes so many people!
Although it is evident that I love you… Jesus loves you so much more!
Remember that.
Life is like a book.
We always hear of waking up each day by turning to a new page. Clean Slate. Starting fresh. Good stuff, right? Yeah. It’s good. The idea behind it is to wake up each day, knowing that we are forgiven and can live for the Author again today. Live for the overarching Author.
The issue with this idea is that we rarely turn the page. We don’t start again. We wallow in our issues of yesterday and keep writing on the same page. We don’t forgive ourselves and pour over the same things over and over again.
We see people who have hurt us and pay extra attention to that part. We keep writing there until the ink bleeds through and the pen rips the page. The hurt continues to get bigger as it harder to write and keep track of what’s going on in that day. We become distracted and unable to discern any of the Author’s movements.
Turning the page is about forgiveness. It’s about opening our lives to the Author’s power and accepting the fact that the Author is in control. That’s right, we’re not writing this book. We’re just living it out and filling in the blanks. Turning the page is not only being able to accept forgiveness from the Author, but also being able to forgive ourselves and to forgive those who have wronged us.
Sometimes, instead of wallowing in how we are hurt, we wallow in our successes. After something going our way, we prefer to live the moment over and over again. Think of it. How many times have our friends heard the cool stories of things that we’ve have done? Sometimes, they get annoyed at how many times we share. They can quote these stories! We are simply re-reading previous pages in the book of our life. We aren’t moving on. Yes, successes are great, but they should not hold us back from continuing our growth and travel through the book.
Turn the page. Forgive. This is God’s plan for our lives!
