Prideful lack of self-esteem.

August 10, 2010 – 4:41 am

I don’t know how to really start or end this blog:

 


The lack of self-respect comes from your pride.

 


The reason you lose respect for yourself is because you keep thinking “I can do better, I can do better”.

 


My friends, no you can’t.
You cannot do better.
When you just got done clearing your browsing history for the hundredth time, getting mad at yourself because you could have done better.
When you just got done realizing how you gossiped about or mistreated one of your friends, you start to have worldly sorrow of your sin and think “I knew better, I shouldn’t have said that”.

 


I have a lot of “filmmaker” friends that sit around and talk about what films they are going to make and what they would have done differently when they watch films, but they never make films. They are not true filmmakers, because filmmakers should make films.

 


We are sinners, real sinners and we sin. If you think of yourself as anything more than a sinner you start to fall into a rut of lack of self-respect and lack of self-esteem.

 


It’s funny to think that I am actually telling you that it’s when you realize you are worthless is when you start to gain your self-esteem. But it’s so very true.

 


Once you realize that you are a sinner and that you couldn’t have done that better or not fell in that area, once you realize that is when you realize how much God loves you.

 


If you think of yourself as a good person you will think “of course God loves me”. But it’s when we see how flawed we are that we think “God loves me despite of all this??”. God’s love is shown to us in our realization of our true selves.

 


I have never felt so loved in my life until I realized who I really am and saw how God accepts me still.

 


If you think you deserve the love of everyone, you will be disappointed very quickly. You will start thinking “why don’t they love me, they should love me, it’s them, maybe if I kill myself they will realize how much they should have loved me, maybe if I moved to a foreign country, then they would miss me…” you will lose your mind.

 


We all are not worthy of love, but are loved. That to me is amazing.

 


God loves you. That should surprise you. When you realize He loves you despite of you not being able to do better is when He makes you better.

 


your friend,

 


-Isaac

By Isaac Deitz | Posted in I've been learning about | Comments (3)

Land of Milk and Honey Bunches of Oats

July 18, 2010 – 1:51 am

In the story of Moses, the plagues and Pharaoh. Moses kept pleading with Pharaoh to “let God’s people go” so they may serve the LORD and give sacrifices to Him.

 

When Moses asked this, Pharaoh not only didn’t let them go but he made them work harder. Which made all the Israelites despise Moses, saying “let the LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh…”

 

Eventually God kept showing the Egyptians that He was the LORD, with plagues, signs and wonders. After a lot of heartache, disease and even loose of the first born of every creature. Pharaoh let God’s people go.

 

When the Israelites were free but in the desert, they said to Moses, “let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians, for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.”

 

Forty years later, they were in the promised land.

 

God taught me so much through this:

 

First, the Israelites said to Moses “Let the LORD look on you and judge” in ignorance, not knowing that God Himself is who called Moses to do what He was doing. First off, I think it’s right of them to give judgement to God. The Bible says judging is for God and God alone. But it was wrong of them to assume, imply or suggest what Judgement the LORD should apply.

 

Basically, let God and God alone be the judge of you, and me also. But I should never assume that His judgement would be what mine would be.

 

Because the whole time, they thought Moses was out of line, but actually was walking right on it, by grace.

 

How many times do we think, “I can’t wait for God to judge them” but really it’s us that needs to be judged and they are actually doing the will of the Father?

 

On the other side of that coin, Moses prayed after hearing that saying “LORD, why have You brought trouble on this people? Why is it You have sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people; neither have You delivered Your people at all.”

 

and God said “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name LORD I was not known to them.”

 

Moses felt hated and un-accepted by his own people. Moses was, in a sense saying “God why are you making them hate me?”. He basically was saying “you didn’t do what you said you would, you didn’t deliver your people like you said, and now they think I am nuts and also I made their life worse”.

 

There is many times God will tell us to talk to someone, love someone or share the gospel with them* and we pray “God they didn’t change, they didn’t accept the message, they didn’t want to hear it, now they don’t like me and they stopped following me on Twitter”. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we do what God wanted us to do, whether or not the outcome is what we expected.

 

What God said to Moses basically said “I’m the LORD, they need to go through this so they know me as the LORD, because they do not”. If Pharaoh said “ok, I’ll let them go” the first time and also didn’t chase after them later, God wouldn’t have gotten the glory as He did. God wanted to show them He is in control of the weather, the sea, nature and even the life of first born children.

 

And in the desert the Israelites, just like us, found a way to complain, even in their freedom. They said “It would be better for us to serve the Egyptians…” how many times, do we say “it would have been better for us to just give into sin, serve ourselves than to serve God our LORD?”. We don’t say it verbally, well maybe not all of us, but we say it with our lives. We forget about the promised land and think about the current time, the desert, the hard part and we want to give up and go back to our slavery to sin.

 

In the new House of Heroes album, Suburba, it’s not out yet, there is a song called “So Far Away”. In the chorus it says “what if I told you it was so far away, if I told you would you go with me anyway?” I am not sure the writer’s intention or meaning of the song, but I love thinking of Jesus saying this to us. What if I told you righteousness is far away? Would you still follow me? What if I told you that the path is hard and narrow? Are you still in? What if I told you that the promised land is forty years later? I am very aware that you are far from righteous, but I am in, are you?

 

Basically, I hear Jesus saying, I know what I am getting myself into when I offer you righteousness, I know it’s going to take work and teaching, do you know what you are getting into?

 

I love this picture because it flips around what we are taught the gospel is. We think, if we keep trying we will be saved, if we stay committed to Jesus we will be saved. But as one guy I met asked me, “would you want to get to heaven and base your salvation on your commitment to God or God’s commitment to you?”.

 

When I think of Jesus saying “If I told you it’s going to be hard, are you still in?” I think of Him saying “I know you, I know you are a screw up and a sinner, I know you are going to keep going back to that sin, I am already committed to seeing this through to the end”.

 

I sometimes believe the lie that I committed a sin that Jesus wasn’t prepared for, or that He looked at me and said, “I didn’t think you would do that…I’m not sure if I can save you”.

 

The great thing about Jesus’ resurrection is that His heart is still beating, so the blood that makes us righteous isn’t going to run out. It continually will make us righteous. If He didn’t rise again, his blood would have ran out thousands of years ago.

 


Don’t think that Jesus is ever saying “whoa, I died for all that, but this, this is a new sin that I wasn’t aware of and I can’t forgive that”.

 


Cause He can, don’t flatter yourself to think that you invented a new sin that nobody else has ever thought of. Satan has thought of them all by now and Jesus knows about them and still died for them all.

 


Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. God’s kingdom of Love, grace and peace cannot be obtained by following rules, but only by repentance and depending on Christ for your salvation.

 

your friend,

 

-Isaac

 

*I think the gospel should be preached by people that know the gospel, the true gospel. So the spirit guides them and shows them God’s timing.

By Isaac Deitz | Posted in I've been learning about | Comments (4)

Swimmers and Sinners

July 16, 2010 – 1:15 pm

I don’t believe that one sin is what condemns us. I don’t believe it’s that one time you lusted in your heart or stole that candy bar that sends us to hell.

 

I have a close friend that believes God condemns us for eternity for metaphorically running one stop light, he says, “God is unjust for doing that”. I don’t think that is the case. We are not righteous people who sin here and there or once in our life. We are sinners. The point of the Bible isn’t to tell us all the things we aren’t supposed to do and what we are to do. It’s to tell us what we can’t do, it’s to show us our nature and ultimately our need.

 

You might think you are a good swimmer, but when some book comes along and says to be a good swimmer you have to swim 5 miles in one minute and you tried, you would realize then you aren’t a good swimmer and not even close to a perfect swimmer. The Bible tells us what righteousness looks like, it says “don’t look at a women lustfully” or “don’t hate” try that for just a year and you’ll realize you aren’t that good of a person.

 

Jesus says “that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment” and “that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart”.

 

That didn’t make sense to me, I thought he was trying to say “don’t lust and don’t hate”. The problem these days is people start seeing the Bible as a list, instead of a mirror. A list tells you what you need to do and don’t do, a mirror shows you your flaws and what you look like. The Bible does that to our heart, shows us that we aren’t good people, but sinners.

 

Jesus says “unless you surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees you will not enter the kingdom of God”. The Pharisees were the religious leaders in Jesus’ day, think pastors, priests, Bible teachers, etc. Everyone looked up to the Pharisees to see what “righteousness looked like” because the Pharisees kept the Law, they tithed, prayed, kept everyone and themselves in check with sin, even obeying the Sabbath day. Jesus said we had to be more righteous than the pharisees.

 

This is the whole point of this blog and the Bible, so please get this:

 

Jesus wasn’t saying, “the Pharisees are keeping the commands, but you need to try harder if you want to enter the Kingdom of God”, Jesus was saying “you will never be able to obtain righteousness on your own, so give up, come to me, repent and I will make you righteous”.

 

If you want joy, repent.
That stuff hasn’t been making you happy anyhow.

 

 


your friend,

 

-Isaac

By Isaac Deitz | Posted in I've been learning about | Comments (2)