One time I was on a film shoot with a child actor and his mother. This kid would just walk all over his mother, he knew she had no backbone and you can tell. He would hit on the girls on set, tell disgusting jokes and do whatever he wanted. His mother kept saying “Billy” after he would drop some F-bombs in front of a bunch of girls. That’s all she would say is “Billy” in a “I don’t really approve of this behavior” sort of way. Basically she didn’t want to look like a bad parent in front of the film crew, but she also didn’t want her kid not to approve of her parenting. So I guess she found a spine-less medium.

(For the record, I thank God and my parents for every spanking and/or disciplinary action I received, even the ones I was wrongfully accused of)

I think we all have had to deal with the Billy’s later in their life. We know how some, maybe even most, but certainly not all, can and have turned out. My point is that this whole “trying to be a cool parent” thing usually backfires later on.

We all need discipline, without knowing it, we crave it. I wish I had the discipline to wake up on time, read books more and exercise more. Discipline is one of the most lacking yet important things in our life. If they sold it in a can, I would buy a lot, probably too much because I lack discipline.

There were times I was so mad at my parents for disciplining me, I would threaten suicide or running away. They held their ground and I am glad they did. They loved me and were making me the person I am becoming today. They were my parents and they made sure I knew that. But now I consider them my friends, I call them sometimes more than once a week and just talk about whatever.

Either way, I was thinking how much I treat God like Billy treats his mom. Hopefully it’s just me. But recently I have been thinking how much God loves me and forgetting that the God of the Bible still gets angry.

I think sometimes our love for someone is what makes us angry with them. If I saw someone totally ignoring correction and advice from destruction, I would get angry that they aren’t taking heed any warnings. There was a guy at the bottom of Mount St. Helens and he refused to move when everyone said it was going to blow up. I am sure the marshalls got frustrated at him, because they were trying to save him and knew what was coming.

I used to sin and think of God loving me despite that, but I think it’s healthier to think of Him angry that I am choosing to do these things because of His love for me. Saying “COMO’N ISAAC I HAVE SO MUCH MORE FOR YOU!!”.

I think we try to see Jesus as our ‘homeboy’ and not our Lord. We think he is looking for friends and not servants. We think he needs us and we don’t need him. We are doing him a favor.

It’s cliché because it’s true; God doesn’t need us. We need Him and we can never experience the fullness of Him unless we see him as our Lord first and friend later. We need to realize that Jesus is Lord, submit to him, obey him and follow him, we will soon start to call him ‘friend’.

your friend,

So now the question for me is, “Do I love God?”. Are my actions showing God I love him? He did and still does a great deal of things to show me he loves me. Am I showing God that I love him?

I used to think that when I sinned I thought that God stopped loving me. That God turned his face on me because of my actions. But what I am learning is that because of my actions I am turning my face on God. When I sin I always feel a lack of love, I think we all do, I think a lot of us assume that God’s love is what begins to lack, but it’s really our love for God that starts to diminish.

It’s like a staring contest with a statue. The game never ends because the statue blinks, that statue will never blink, but it ends because I blinked. Every time.

Whatever I do, I will remain in God’s love. But anytime there is a gap in the relationship it’s because of me. I am like the friend that doesn’t return the phone calls, then start to wonder where my friendship went, when it was me all along.

When I sin and feel separate from God it’s not because God can’t handle ‘that sin’, it’s not like Jesus says, “wait a minute, I died on the cross for those people and these sins, but I can’t forgive this, this wasn’t in the contract”.

your friend,

-Isaac

“The Common Cold”:

or Watch on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/tubopopcorn

I did an interview with “The Advocates of Love” about this film, you can read that interview here:http://advocatesoflove.blogspot.com/

Thanks, I hope you enjoy!

your friend,

-Isaac

When I was a kid I used to have a glass piggy bank, after praying for something or someone I would write it on a piece of paper and put it in the bank. When it got full I would break it and read all the things I prayed for and what ever came of those prayers. 100% of them were answered. I am not saying I got everything I asked for, but I knew exactly what God did through those prayers. An example is that I wanted to learn how to kickflip on my skateboard so I can meet other skateboarders and show them God’s love through skateboarding. When I read the piece of paper with that prayer, I realized that I still didn’t know how to kickflip, but I knew how to do a one-foot nose-manual, an Impossible and other uncommon tricks. And I met more people through those tricks, I knew what God was saying to me, “if you knew how to kickflip you would just be a dime-a-dozen skateboarder, but knowing the tricks you know is what will break the ice with conversations”.

Every time someone asks me to pray for them I tell them, “I will pray for you, but please keep me updated on this situation”. I feel like a prayer is incomplete without an update. It seems like people ask other people to pray for them because it’s the Christian thing to ask for or it’s a way to share your hard times with someone without having to bring it up at random. So to offset that, I ask people to update me, if I am praying for something I want in on the end result, the testimony of it. If I am going to share sorrows with you now, I want to share triumphs with you later. I believe a huge part of prayer is seeing how God answers that prayer. After the piggy bank, I had a respect and belief for the power of prayer. So I always see updates are very important. Prayer brings Christians together, prayer teaches us and it especially does when everyone is updated. I truly believe updates are how God gets the glory. Just like in John 9. Jesus says “this man is blind so God might get the glory”. When people saw the update that that man was no longer blind, Jesus got the glory. Prayer is admitting our weakness and updates are admitting God’s strength.

After asking everyone I prayed for for an update, almost 90% of them have never given me one.

After about 3-4 years. I have heard a ton of stories and prayer requests of depression, addiction, struggles, despair and received only a handful of updates. After that time, without realizing it, I’ve lost hope in people, I’ve lost hope in myself and hope in God. About a week ago I was going to write a blog about how I used to selfishly desire for people to seek my advice but after hearing all of these stories I wanted this burden to be taken from me.

I have been praying for around six months for a revelation, I knew I wasn’t loving people as God had me love them in the past and I missed that. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong until a few nights ago, God showed me how we can’t love someone with hope.

Basically after all these stories of addictions and struggles without any updates, I lost hope. When I heard yet another story of a struggle or trial, I didn’t see any lights at the end of any tunnels. I just thought, “I’m sorry to hear that, that sucks”. (Ironically at the same time I would pray asking God why I can’t love people like I used to, I hope you can see the connection).

If you meet someone with a struggle or an addiction, you might pray for them or try to help them, but unless you believe and have a hope that they can be saved from that, then your efforts will be mediocre. Sometimes it’s so hard to help the homeless because we think ‘they will always be like that’, but we give them a sandwich and let them go about their day.

Paul says, “out of faith, hope and love the greatest is love”. It may be true, but let’s not discount the other two. Unless we have faith that God’s kingdom can come onto Earth as it is in Heaven, then we won’t have the hope for it to, and we won’t make the efforts to love and bring His kingdom onto Earth as it is in Heaven.

When I started thinking that ‘they will always be like that”, I started to think with my own struggles and addictions that “I will always be like this”. Believe me, when you think like that, you don’t make much efforts to change, you stay stuck, you stay addicted and stay struggling with those things. If you don’t believe that God can redeem you and free you, then you won’t get out of His way and allow Him to.

How does Jesus love the hopeless? Because he doesn’t consider anyone hopeless. Your love for someone can only be as big as your hope for their lives.

I had a friend that was very selfish and rude. Everyone thought, “I’ve known him for 10 years, he will always be that way” but this was a few years ago when God changed my life and I had a fresh hope. I believed and had faith that God can change his also (even though he was already a Christian) and after 6 months, he is still a totally different person.

If you see your efforts as another drop in the bucket, your efforts won’t take much effort. We got to believe that every act of obedience to love our God and love our neighbor will change the world. But if we don’t believe that, if that faith and hope isn’t in us, then how much do you think we will love one another?

Love is the car we need to be driving, hope and faith are the fuels. God is the giver of all three.

your friend,

-Isaac

Jesus’ name has become like a celebrities name. People use it in jokes, stories and to name-drop. Name-dropping is when someone says they know someone when they really don’t, they’ve just met them or something, but name-dropping gives them street-credit. People hear you say “I know Jennifer Anniston” and freak out, they give you more respect and for some reason want to know you better. That is how we treat Jesus. We drop his name for street-cred and respect when we might not actually know him personally. It’s funny because if someone is truly friends with a celebrity they mention them only when they mean it. You can walk into a conversation and say “I know Brad Pitt” and say it to make friends or get people to remember you. But if you really knew Brad Pitt and someone was talking about funny stories about going to Wal-Mart, you would bring up the story of the time you and your friend Brad went to Wal-Mart. The difference is intentions. People all the time wear Jesus T-shirts, bracelets, hats and tattoos to make friends with other people that respect Jesus [not everyone that wears the Christian clothes have these intentions, but it happens a lot]. But people can tell when you really know him. I knew someone that wore the tackiest Christian T-shirts, but for some reason he pulled it off, everyone knew that it was genuine. Maybe because he wore them when he was in a secular hard-core band that played in bars or he had a certain demeanor to him. It may be hard to tell when someone is singing and name-dropping Jesus’ name, but it certainly hits a chord [no pun intended] when they are singing with complete honesty, conviction and a desire to write the song to God instead of their Christian demographic.

There are about 10 songs I have ever heard with this honesty. I have heard a lot of songs that may have been written with honesty but performed and recorded to please people instead of please God. There is one recording of a song that has brought me to tears with their honesty and desire, that also makes me just dance and feel true joy, but the album version though almost similar seems tainted with record sales, producer opinions, and radio plays.

“Purity of heart is to will one thing” -Sören Kierkegaard

Sometimes we want good things but for wrong reasons or we attach our agendas along with them. Like I want to see people reconcile with their creator to experience true love, hope and joy but I want to be the person that introduces them. Kind of like how people want their friends to hear good music but they want to be able to say “I am the one that told you about that band”. I think my will has been changing. I have been realizing how depressing it is to have more than one reason for doing something. It is very draining to do something with that mindset. I think that is why God says “love me with all your mind, heart and soul” and “you can’t serve two masters”.

I believe you can take any simple piece of art, whether it’s music, film, painting, photography, etc and make it incredible with one intent. Having multiple intents is my definition of selling-out.

Honesty in friendship, one intention is also what makes some of the realest friendships. I have friends that talk to me about their struggles, fears and doubts and it gives me hope to know I am not alone. I think this is why Jesus says to “walk in the light”. To be honest with each other. It’s funny how many times we are trained as Christians to give the appearance of perfection. We assume that to have everything under control is what other Christians will look up to. So we put our skeletons in our closet, go to church or dinner with friends and just smile and wave. We don’t let people know who we really are, which is flawed humans that need Jesus just as much as everyone else.

I read the Bible and read about Lot sleeping with his daughters [Genesis 19:30-36], Noah getting drunk [Genesis 9:20-23], Moses murdering an Egyptian [Exodus 2:11-15], King David breaking all of the Ten Commandments including having someone killed so he can sleep with the wife [2 Samuel 11]. The point of the Bible is to show that we are not made righteous by our prayer life, our devotions, our church-going, our friends, our ministry, our charity work, our abstinence from certain things, or our religious status, but by Jesus alone. When we stop believing that we need to attempt righteousness to become righteous and believe that Jesus makes us righteous, we should stop getting in the way and allow him to truly change our lives and make us righteous. When we think ‘repent for our sins’ we think repent from our hate, jealousy, gossip, lust, etc. I think that is only half of it, we should also repent from our charity work, Bible reading, praying, giving to the poor and everything else we do to try to make us righteous before God without Jesus Christ.

When I hear people, that haven’t allowed Jesus to make them righteous, talk about Jesus I just hear a name, just the pronunciation of “GEE-sus Kr-YST”. When I hear people say his name because he is their saviour, it begins to sound like a real person that walked the earth, instead of a name. If Jesus is your friend, your mentor, your teacher, your inspiration or anything else without first being your saviour, then you don’t know him, you don’t know his purpose for coming to this earth. When I hear it from people that know this I hear his name in association of the Lord that made me righteous, that reconciled me with God and showed me what true love, hope and joy look like.

your friend,

-Isaac

If you love God first, you will love people because it pleases God. If you love people first, you will love God because it pleases people. People sometimes pretend to love God because they will get more respect from other Christians, but not know they are doing it. I have heard sermons preached that seemed like they were written to make the congregation impressed with the speakers knowledge or relationship with God. When a Christian band gets on stage and says ‘Jesus’ it gets a thousand cheers and they sell a hundred records, whether they meant it or not. Some people stand up during worship because if they stayed seated it would seem as if they aren’t worshiping God.

A lot of us are taught that we shouldn’t worry about what the world thinks of us but we should just honor God. I agree. But how often do we worry about what the church thinks of us? How often does our fear of seeming ‘less-Christian’ stop us from honoring God?

If God calls you to be a office employee and you take the pastoral position, I would say that you are seeking to please people over God. You are seeking to look like a great Christian in front of people.

People have told me they look up to my relationship with God. I know why they do, it’s because anyone can look like a great Christian if they blog around 500 words every few weeks about God. They don’t see what goes on in my heart. Sometimes, without knowing it, I blog for my audience, if I haven’t blogged in a while I come up with something to write. I write for them, not God. I used to write when God taught me something, now I try to force up a lesson about God. I miss just seeing everything in life as a lesson. I want it back, I know it’ll come. I just need to worry about loving God above everything else, pleasing Him and only Him.

When we get in a argument with someone we usually try to get a second opinion and try to convince that second opinion that we are right in our actions. We have a longing for justification from our actions.

We don’t go to God for justification because God knows we are wrong and will be honest with us. If our actions aren’t justified, that means we will have to face up to our wrongs and that is never fun. So we go to people, that don’t know the whole story, and look for their justification. If we can convince someone else we are good Christians, then in a sense we have convinced ourselves. This is what drives us, this is what drives me. We write sermons, make quotes, say lengthy prayers, read the Bible, write worship songs, give to the poor, don’t sin and whatever else we can do to convince ourself and others that we are good people. After sinning we don’t seek forgiveness but justification.

Jesus said to avoid the yeast of the Pharisees, He also said that unless you exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The Pharisees were the Pastors and worship leaders of Bible times. They memorized scripture, gave to the poor, obeyed the laws and taught others to also do so, they prayed long prayers, they worshiped at church and Jesus says we have to be better than them?

The yeast of the Pharisees is loving God because you are trying to please people. The Pharisees got their second opinion that they were good and that was good enough for them. They convinced themselves and others that they are good people. Exceeding their righteousness is by seeking the opinion of the only one who matters, Jesus. Exceeding their righteousness is not convincing people you are righteous, but convincing yourself that Jesus made you righteous.

your friend,

-Isaac

Side note: the thing that makes us believe we are not like the Pharisees is that we believe the Pharisees did it intentionally, sought out to be like they were. I believe they didn’t know what they were doing. It took me a few months to have God just say “look at your heart”. It’s very easy to be in a church for a period of time and hear people say nice things about you but forget to seek out what God thinks about you. Are we obeying the laws of our church, our legalism, our social circles? That will start to make you feel safe. But are we seeking to please God instead of people, instead of legalism and churches? Without Faith it is impossible to please God. It’s not the laws and our actions that please God the most, it’s our faith that His son didn’t justify our sins but forgave our sins. That the law and rules didn’t make us righteous but His son made us righteous because there is no way we can do it ourselves.

The guy with the box said, “that which is in here is the most powerful, inspiring thing I have ever gotten to know”. Which doesn’t cure anyone’s curiosity but deepens it. “It must be some kind of creature” some said, the others said “It’s a answer book of the hardest questions” and he continues to carry it around, unopened but well embraced.

After many years he is on his deathbed with his box close by. His brother remembered the power he described about the contents of the box and decides to open it in hopes that the contents will cure his brother. After opening it, he sees that there is just a paperclip inside. “What is this?” he asks, and his brother replies, “I suppose that’s a paperclip”, his brother asked “I thought this box contained something powerful”, and he replied “it did, what that box contained, up until you opened it, was mystery, a mystery that kept me guessing, kept me searching and asking questions. When onlookers decided in their minds what the box contained, they lost inspiration, they lost curiosity. It was the mystery that kept me guessing, it was the mystery that kept me searching. Anytime I thought I figured it out, I stopped caring about the box, when I really learned that I didn’t know it’s contents, that is when the box became real to me again. Too often we think we explained the simple mysteries of life and forget to learn more about them. We start to be content with our conclusions and never keep guessing. That’s what we do with God everyday, we decide what kind of God He is and conclude, we fail to embrace Him as a mystery we can know”.

Eventually, the management of the Youth Center changed to the Christians that were afraid of sinners sinning. They started kicking the kids out for cussing. Eventually the numbers dropped to literally 5-10 kids a day, the remaining were the clean cut, good upbringing, non-swearing kids.

I was a youth leader at this Youth Center and I totally disagreed with this logic, it seemed so unbiblical. I didn’t kick kids out for swearing, I encouraged them to stop but I expected them to slip-up when they messed up a pool shot or skateboarding trick. These kids told me their thoughts and pains looking for my advice, but after the ‘no-swearing’ rule, they were too worried about slipping up with a swear-word so they wouldn’t be as honest as before.

The kids that were in the habit of swearing because their upbringing or whatever else didn’t stop swearing but stopped going to the Youth Center. Some of these kids I have seen their parents cuss them out, how are we going to tell these kids not to swear when their parents swear at them?

I feel like that Youth Center was a very positive influence on these kids until we started kicking them out. Some of the very kids I played pool with and started seeing positive changes stopped going because they weren’t welcome anymore. Those very kids I went to visit at prison. I can’t say their whole future depended on the Youth Center, but I feel like we failed to love them because we were afraid to hear a swear word. I am curious what would be different now if we didn’t chose the wrong battles to fight.

How many people at school or work do we avoid because of their vocabulary or smoking habits?

To love people we need to stop being afraid of them. I think that most our lack of love for people isn’t because of hate, but selfishness. We are too comfortable, we want to be loving to the well-dressed, nice smelling, non-threatening business man and women. A lot of times we don’t hate someone, we just love ourselves more than we love them, which is natural. As a Christian I believe that sin is in our nature and that kind of stuff we need to turn from.

Let’s stop worrying about our comfort and start thinking about people’s souls. Let’s love these people, not just the clean-cut non-threatening business men and women, but people. The ones that smell, the ones that swear, the ones that do drugs or treat women like dirt. A lot of times people don’t know how to love because they have never been loved.

your friend,

-Isaac

When I feel like I am truly loving someone and letting God love someone through me, a lot of those times I am not thinking of Jesus dying on the cross. Though I haven’t forgotten, I don’t love people because I remembered Jesus dying on a cross.

But I wonder if I am supposed to always think of Jesus dying on the cross. If I wore glasses, should I engrave a picture of Him dying on the cross so I see that over everything else I see?

The way I have come to think [correct me if I am wrong: isaac@tubopopcorn.com] is that it’s like my relationship with my mother. She went through a lot of pain in child birth to have me. Nobody else has experienced that pain for me. When I hang out with her, laugh and love, do I think of that all the time? Do I constantly remember that and it reminds me to love her more? No. I think that knowledge is the foundation of our relationship, and it hasn’t slipped my mind, but her motherhood is so embedded in my mind that I don’t have to think of that or all the other things she has done for me, when I see her, I know she loves me and if I ever doubt she loves me I can think of all the things she has done for me, if someone asks me why I believe she loves me, I can recall all the things she has done for me.

I think that is what it means to think of the cross. Dying on the cross and rising again is what makes Jesus my saviour and that is embedded in my mind but I don’t think of that before I love someone, I don’t picture Jesus bleeding and dying for me in order to inspire me to love others. My relationship with Jesus inspires that. But if I need to remember that Jesus loves me, I can think of the cross. When I need to explain how Jesus loves them, I can explain that amongst other things. That is the foundation of my beliefs, but not something I recall before every action of love.

Once we are convinced that Jesus loves us, and we come to Him as our saviour, we start to love people, when we forget the love Jesus has for us, we should remember the cross and the other things he has done for us even when we didn’t deserve it.

your friend,

-Isaac

How I was raised I learned that if you take your lemonade stand out of neighborhood #1 and put it in neighborhood #2, you shouldn’t be surprised if neighborhood #1 no longer has any lemonade stands.

I worked for a TV station a few years back running camera, a specialty job, and I was getting 8 bucks an hour, which in New York minimum wage at the time was $6.50 people complained that that was too low, so they raised minimum wage to $7.50/hr. So basically, I could have quit running a camera and worked at McDonalds for around the same pay without needing any specialty knowledge. When you tell all the local businesses that they have to pay their employees more money than their responsibility demands, those employers are going to try to find ways to cut corners or raise prices. A lot of times employers move their whole factory to Mexico or China for cheaper labor laws.

As a nation we decided what is a fair price and what isn’t, besides a few cases, the only reason an American company sends their factory to China is because they can get something made cheaper than the decided minimum wage.

I have heard a girl working at the mall complain about her $7.50/hr while she was folding shirts that were made by people [sometimes kids] for pennies an hour.

The Bible says that workmen we have failed to pay are crying out against us!

James 5:4 “Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.”

I posted a twitter/facebook update that said, “Toms® shoes are made in China. I think they should change their slogan to; “For Kids, by Kids”. I got a lot of people disliking it, saying that was insensitive or whatever else.

I don’t think Toms® is an horrible organization, but I think there is a bit of ‘Slight of Hand’. ‘If you buy shoes that costs us probably $2.00 a pair, pay us $60 a pair, we will find it in our heart to give another $2.00 pair of shoes away.’ I think that is great that people are reaching out their hearts, I think it’s great that kids are benefiting from this, I really do. Some people wrote me and said they have over 6-7 pairs of Toms shoes. My question is, are we treating Toms® shoes and (red)® Ipod’s like Diet soda?

Diet soda is horrible for you, it contains aspartame, but it doesn’t have sugar or fat, so it makes you feel good about drinking it. If our bodies aren’t supposed to drink a lot of sugar, are our bodies asking us to drink less sugar or find a substitute? We need water, not fake sugar. If someone was hitting themselves in the head with a bat and said “this hurts, I need to find something that doesn’t hurt as much” and they look for a softer bat. I think anyone would say, “maybe you just shouldn’t be hitting yourself at all?”

Ipod had a program where if you bought a (red)® Ipod, they would give like five bucks to Africa or something. So people felt great and justified about buying an ipod, even if they didn’t need it or want it.

Jesus said not to look like the world. Do you think he meant ‘don’t drink’ or ‘don’t spend your money and time like the world does’?

If we really want to make a difference in this world, we won’t give a percentage of our spending to a charity or half of our love to God. We need to be whole people. It’s really hard, but that is how we will make a difference.

If someone said, “you can give a hi-five to a lonely person or be their friend” which one would you want to do?

I think giving them Toms® shoes and five bucks from Ipod is good, but I am just afraid that we might think our job is done or we’ve done our part. Love is not a 9-5 job.

I am sorry I sounded political or judging. I know it’s hard, in fact there are just too many things that don’t have a fair-trade alternative. I don’t give money like I should, in fact I am very stingy and greedy. God is teaching me though.

your friend,

-Isaac