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abrammicah
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Name: Abe
Birthday: 8/4/1978
Gender: Male
Interests: Foreign cars, mountain biking, skiing, books, art, music, guitar, xbox, climbing things and eating.
Expertise: Old school Nintendo
Baseball
Risk Taking
Occupation: Mortgage Originator
Industry: Real Estate
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  abe1414
Member Since:
1/5/2005
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| I've been tagged by Halfmom. I have to post 8 things about myself that are relatively unknown. I don't think this should be too hard.
1) I once beat Super Mario Brothers in 6 minutes, 37 seconds.
2) I was homeschooled through the 7th grade.
3) I was an official Albion College Dancer. (there was a girl)
4) I used to fight people a lot.
5) I'm an ENTP (Myers-Briggs)
6) I really hate it when I know someone is mad at me.
7) I tested out of high school in the 6th grade.
8) I was voted Greek Sophamore Man of the Year 1998/99. (Fraternity, not Ethnicity)
There ya go. Clearly I've tried to tell you some of the more flattering things about myself,..for the most part. I'm guessing that's all boring info the most people, but it's stuff that I don't think many of you know. If you study hard, you can clean up next time you play Trivial Pursuit Genus 214 Abe Loper Edition.
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| :) Ok, so there was no public clamouring for a new blog, but it makes me feel good to pretend that there was.
I'm working my tail off right now due to the incoming real estate season and I'm actually enjoying it. I'm finding that I'm a pretty good loan officer, and that bodes well for me, considering it's my job. God is really good to me and I'm enjoying the life that He's given me.
There's really not much else to report. Backstop is starting to love the warm weather (as am I) and my roommates Brian and Ian are both blessings to me.
Did I mention before that my roommate Dean was arrested? Well, he was. He wasn't dangerous. Just some white collar crime. But I needed a new roommate nontheless, so Ian (the new CCC Staff guy in town) swooped in and grabbed that room.
My mom is in town right now, just for one day, so that's really awesome. She had a friend that was coming to the city for a birthday party, so she hitched a ride and split the gas.
If you have questions about other parts of my life or need carification on the afformentioned notes, feel free to ask me. I'd love to hear from everyone and learn how you're doing.
Abe | | |
| If you've read my last 10 entries or so, then you know that, at least from time to time, I've been learning about the concepts of self-sacrifice, courage, real love, etc. I'm learning to deny my inclinations to obey my fear and self-preservation. So, I got an email from a buddy today. He sent me a quote from a recent graduation speach given by Bob Lupton at Eastern College. Check this out. If you know me, you know that I'm psyched that there's someone else out there as crazy as me. Yess!
"World changers are those who swim against the values of the dominant culture. They are the risk takers who know that history is shaped on the front lines.
Self protection has never been a value of the Kingdom. Self-sacrifice and risk-taking, on the other hand, these are the traits of the saints who have gone before us.
But the question I ask you today is “Will you be world changers?” Will you use the giftedness your parents nurtured in you and the training that this institution has invested in you to impact history in the name of Christ? How will history remember you? Will the writers of history look back on your generation and describe you as the class that succeeded, that did well, that were good church members, that had good kids, that lived the American Dream to the fullest? Or will you be known for something far more noble and redemptive? Will you be the class who caught hold of a vision for changing their urbanizing world, who stemmed the tide of escapism? Will you be the ones who looked squarely into the face of overwhelming urban problems and did not shrink back from the epidemic of drug addiction, teen pregnancy, homelessness, racism, and the host of other plaguing problems that defy solution? Will you be the ones who advanced to the front lines and, armed with the radical love of Christ, brought down the strongholds of the enemy in the cities of our world?"
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| Imagine standing in a sailboat that is floating on a placid lake. If you've ever done it, you know that it's not very hard. On the contrary, it's relaxing. Now, imagine that you're on that same boat and lake, but this time you're in the middle of a storm. The boat is being tossed from side to side. You're standing, knees bent, arms out, like you're a base-runner in a baseball game about to steal second. Huge waves are crashing against the side of the boat. Water is splashing in and sloshing around your calves. Strong winds are blowing your hair and clothes as they swirl around you. Horizontal rain is pelting you in the face with stinging force.
Standing in that boat doesn't seem as easy anymore does it?
Storms change everything.
They can mean the difference between standing up, or, sitting below deck. There's a guy in the Bible named Jonah. You've probably heard of him. Jonah found out the hard way that storms change everything.
Jonah was a Jew, called by God, to go and preach against a huge city called Nineveh. Jonah either didn't think that this was a good idea, or, he just didn't want to do it. We know this because the Bible says that Jonah ran away from the LORD. Specifically, Jonah hopped on a ship to a place called Tarshish. He tried to get away from God. I often respond to Jonah's running with a snicker and think to myself, "That's so dumb. God is everywhere." But when we take a closer look at our lives, isn't it easy to see that we do the same thing? Name anything that God has ever led you to do. Then, think of what you did to get out of it. I often rationalize my actions by claiming that I don't have time to serve this person or share my faith with that one. Or, I don't have the money to give to this or that organization. Or, it wouldn't be fair to me if I were to allow myself to be unappreciated again, like I was last week. I'm full of excuses. I'm full of my own ideas of how I think the world aught to work and I usually follow my own ideas, rather than God's.
Like Jonah, we are always leaping out of one thing and into another. We are constantly trusting something for our happiness, fulfillment, or satisfaction. More often than not, for most people, it is our selves. Jonah had a gift in this situation that you and I are not always given. He knew, with one hundred and ten percent certainty, what God was telling him and how to go about doing it. It wasn't an ambiguous command or difficult journey through a wasteland and over a mountain. God was clear and simple. "Go preach against Nineveh." That's all. We know, too, that Jonah heard God and that he heard Him clearly. You and I don't always hear God clearly. Sometimes God's instructions are not this simple. But, when all is said and done, we are responsible for hearing God when He speaks and how we respond when He does.
Like I often do, Jonah ran away from the LORD. He tried to find a way to get out of the assignment. He leaped out of God's plan for him and into his own desires. Jonah is a great example of what can happen when we intentionally and deliberately turn from God. I don't recommend you try it.
If you remember, I mentioned that Jonah got on board a ship that was headed for a port in a city called Tarshish. While Jonah was on that ship to Tarshish, trying to evade the hands and eyes of an all-knowing and infinite God, a great storm came over the ship. So strong was the storm that the Bible tells us the ship was about to break apart and all the sailors on it were afraid.
Let me paint another word picture for you here. Most of us have been on a jet and have flown from one location to another at some point in our lives. If you fly often, you've experienced a little joy called turbulence. I joke about turbulence because if you know what I'm talking about it's anything but a joy. The plane hits pockets of air or wind (if you're a pilot or meteorologist, please forgive my ignorance) and it bounces and jerks in the sky. Turbulence does to a jet what pot-holes do to cars. Once, on a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles, I was seated on a jet that was racing through the most turbulent air that I could have imagined. Now, as the jet was jerking and bouncing, it would occasionally feel like it was actually falling out of the sky. My stomach would jump into my throat and stay there for a few seconds. This was beyond the boundaries of your every day turbulence. Still, I was able to rest during all of this because the flight attendants were calm. They flew for a living. If the shaking didn't phase them, then I knew that I would be fine. You can imagine my horror when, as the jolts to the plane became harder and more prolonged, the flight attendants started to gasp out loud. The gasping became short squeals of terror. Now I had the freedom to be scared. The professionals on board were scared. This meant that the situation was bad.
This is exactly what happened to Jonah. Remember? The Bible says that the storm that overtook Jonah's get-away ship was so strong that the sailors were afraid that the ship might break apart. If the sailors, who sailed for a living, were afraid then this must have been some storm. A storm the likes of which they had probably never seen. All this time Jonah was sleeping below deck. When the sailors woke him up and questioned him, he told them of the great God that he served and that he was running from this God. After further conversation with the sailors, Jonah asked to be thrown overboard, insisting that this would end the storm.
When Jonah asked to be thrown overboard, he was really jumping out of his own plan and back into God's. He realized that it would be safer to be thrown into a stormy sea, and into God's will, then to be sleeping below deck, outside of God's will. When he awoke, he saw that there was no way he, or the people around him, were going to survive his rebellion. And, isn't it amazing that as soon as he gave up his own will and plan, reluctant though he was, the Bible says that, "the raging sea grew calm."
Even after he was thrown overboard, swallowed by a huge fish, and then spit back on land, Jonah didn't want to do what the LORD had originally commanded. Still, he did it. The book of Jonah never gives us any indication that Jonah was happy doing what God had commanded. Even when the Ninevites repented of their evil ways and turned to the LORD, Jonah was angry with God. The story tells us nothing about what feels good or makes us happy, it tells us about what is safe and what is not. Maybe Jonah would have said that going to Nineveh and preaching against it was something that was likely to get a man killed. I'm not sure. But in the end we see that he did in fact go and do what he was told to do. I guess it's fair to say that Jonah learned that no matter how unsafe or scary following God may seem, it is always more dangerous and more scary to disobey him. God brought Jonah to a place where being thrown overboard into a raging sea and being eaten by a huge fish seemed safe. This is the danger that God called Jonah into. This was the adventure that his faith took him on. This leap was God's tool in bringing the city of Nineveh to its knees. Without this leap, Jonah would not likely be mentioned in the Bible, much less have a book named after him. He would have likely been just another guy that drowned at sea after his ship was wrecked by a storm. Making a mark for God is not about doing big things. It's about obeying God in everything and having the faith to leap into the unknown.
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| Do you like Halloween? I can't figure it out. It seems as though a holiday is supposed to be a day when we celebrate something good. We celebrate the 4th of July. We celebrate Thanksgiving. We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, and positive things that happened in the past. In fact, and I think we all know this, the word holiday comes from the combination of Holy and Day. So, why on earth is there a holiday for all sorts of negative stuff? I'm not a big party pooper, but I figure, if you're going to make a holiday where people dress up and get candy, then associate it with pumpkins and fallen leaves and omit such things as blood, gore, fear, death, skeletons, graves, screeching witches, and werewolves. I can't understand, for the life of me, why the whole Western world celebrates such negativity. Now, I'm aware that Halloween began as All Hollow's Eve, which was the eve of All Saints Day, where deceased saints were honored. But how does something akin to the celebration of Lincoln's Birthday (which is a celebration of a person's life) become something as twisted as what we've got today? Well, I don't really care. I'm not going to go on and on, but I just think it's dumb that we celebrate all that bad stuff.
On a completely different note, I was talking to a friend the other day and we were talking about our lives and occasional hardships and how God plays a role in the way things go down. She made the statement "When it's God's work, it's clockwork." I think that what she was implying is that when God is the instigator of a process then the process is smooth. Being an English major, I like the little rhyme, but as a student of the Bible, I'm not sure if I can accept that as truth. It seems to me that the Bible makes it clear that even when God is doing a particular work, (let's say, for the sake of example, that he's taking the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and into The Promised Land), he allows Satan and the decisions that people make to alter those perfect plans, causing all sorts of detours. Maybe I'm wrong. Tell me if I am. But if I look at the story of Moses and the Israelites, I'm most impressed with the fact that God did not intend for all those people to be in the desert for 40 years. He took them to where he wanted them to be and they were too afraid to take hold of his gift. So, he allowed them to reject his plan and his gift until they were so sick of living outside of his perfect plan that they were desperate enough to walk through their fear. Not much like clockwork is it? This, of course, doesn't explain how bad things happen even when we are full of faith. But the fact is, they do. By all indications, Job was as good a man as ever lived, yet, he was the subject of a bet between God and Satan, which injected terrible misery into Job's life. Even God's work + Faith does not always make clockwork. But, I think we've all got a better shot at clockwork lives when we're rejecting fear, embracing faith, and actively defying the flesh in us that calls for self-preservation.
In case you're wondering, I'm doing well. I'm working at a mortgage company called Guaranteed Rate and I'm having fun. My roommates are awesome and my Backstop is awesomer. I hope you have a great week. I'll talk to you again soon,
Abe | | |
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