So long twenty10...

Where to begin with 2010? This year has been one year where God has been showing me His faithfulness.. sometimes immediately, sometimes months later. 2010 began in the middle of my freshman year of college, when I was still trying to "find my place." Although I didn't get all or any of the answers I sought out, the connectedness and pieces are enough for me to see that God truly is faithful. There were never any out of the ordinary experiences but simply a laid-back flow of events.

Over this year, God prepared me well for change, with moving from Oregon to San Diego in fall 2009, to developing great friendships in spring 2010, to moving back to old life in Oregon in summer 2010, and moving down to a different San Diego in fall 2010. Throughout all these moving experiences, I changed, friends changed, and ultimately, life changed. God showed me that wherever I am, His people and His community are there. Title IX biz shook me up, but God has a purpose although I don't know what it is. He worked it out so that I can continue to run for Point Loma until I graduate, but now, it's not looking like that will be happening. Whatever does happen though, I can trust in God's faithfulness that He's got something beautiful hiding there in store. This goes along with my post about Hosea... over this year, God tore me apart (again), but through it all He's pieced me together to learn new things. At times, relying on this truth is difficult and I may lose sight, but I will choose to return to my Lord.

So as this year starts to come to an end, I'm thinking of an epic New Year's resolution. This resolution will challenge me mentally, psychologically, and spiritually. This resolution will come out of my desire to improve myself in order to further God's Kingdom. This resolution will entail diving into the unknown. This resolution will presuppose living out of the truth of God's faithfulness. This resolution will be life-changing.

As I've met people over the last year, I've seen their skills, their experiences, the places they've been, and I want to experience more places and moments. I realized this after looking at Garrett Richardson's blog. I realized I just want to explore life and... learn. With my list and ideas of things I wanted to accomplish this year, I couldn't come up with a strong resolution but instead a list of goals. So... I guess this is a pretty flexible resolution and not what I intended at all, but I feel this is the best way of completing them all. I just want to do/try more things by living out my faith in God's faithfulness and not let fear of the unknown hold me back.

With this blog starting up, I find it easier follow through and keep this going. Without the ability and self-imposed responsibility to share, I'd become far too lazy and lose drive. This blog will be a place of updates, experiences, writings, and pictures.

This is my list so far. I'm relying on my No. 2 strength Adaptability to add more to it.

◻ Resurrect meeting a new person everyday for a month (maybe even longer) and writing a blog about it.

◻ Plain and simple. Get better at guitar... entailing knowing scales and chord variations well.

◻ Learn a new language (right now I'm looking at Japanese or Hebrew, maybe Tagalog)

◻ Read and write reactions to religious/theological books.

Abstractability

I talked about my number 5 strength the other day, and as I think more about my strengths, I realize how I see them on a day-to-day basis.. Today, my adaptability strength definitely showed up.
Adaptablility

You live in the moment. You don’t see the future as a fixed destination. Instead, you see it as a place that you create out of the choices that you make right now. And so you discover your future one choice at a time. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have plans. You probably do. But this theme of Adaptability does enable you to respond willingly to the demands of the moment even if they pull you away from your plans. Unlike some, you don’t resent sudden requests or unforeseen detours. You expect them. They are inevitable. Indeed, on some level you actually look forward to them. You are, at heart, a very flexible person who can stay productive when the demands of work are pulling you in many different directions at once.

This speaks for me 100%. I'll make an end goal, but the way I get there... is not always planned out, and even if it is... I'll change them to handle the current situation. My schedule continually shifts as events come and go. I'll have specific things that I MUST to in a day, but what fills the empty space is absolutely tentative. On a normal day in Oregon during break, I'll plan on one thing, maybe two if you even count the second. Number 1, I'll go to Peet's coffee and work on.. something. "Number 2," hang out with friends. So I'll wake up and do random home activities til I head to Peet's around noon or 1, and after Peet's, I'll plan on hanging out somehow with friends... I don't know who, what, or where, but I'll take it as it comes. Basically I choose the option that'll give me the most satisfaction, like any other normal person.

I've noticed this strength is outstanding for the changing waves of life. Moving from Oregon to San Diego was rough. I can tell you that for sure. Leaving friends behind, leaving everything I knew behind, and moving to a place that was seemingly completely foreign.. so difficult. Being able to adapt and trust God with the times transformed my thoughts from, "I hate this place" to "I don't wanna go back to Oregon." Coming back for summer after my first year of college was hard for me. I developed good friendships in San Diego that I didn't want to leave, just like the ones that I had when I left for San Diego, and my friends back home started feeling like people I didn't really wanna surround myself with. Once again though, being able to adapt and trust God transformed my mindset again, and I didn't want to leave Oregon. Now, I'm stuck in that mode, but that's beyond the point. Trusting God with your life and being able to adapt and accept change is VITAL. God's faithful, and it's just a matter of allowing Him to be.

So I bet you're still wondering where "abstractability" came from. Well, with these whole life-changing and meeting people situations. I realized that I adapt to meeting these new people... which you know, seems like everyone does. But today, I took the time to think about it all. When I'm in San Diego, I'm a different Sean than when I'm back in Oregon. The activities I do are different. The types of people I'm around are different. The environmental dynamic is different. There are all these different conditions which contribute to how I act, and I abstract various parts of myself to these conditions. There is the whole of me, but in certain places, I abstract a part of myself that fits the suiting condition. Sometimes it may come off as a people-pleaser, like when you talk about things someone likes and do things someone does, but not entirely.. it's finding that commonplace where you can connect with someone.

Where I'm trying to go with this (and it sounded MUCH better in my head) is that by doing this, I'm hiding all of who I am from the people I know. People only know the part of me that I show them, a part which may be a large portion of who I am or a miniscule one. To understand me, to understand anyone, who must get to know all of them, not just the part that they abstract for you to know... where my "relator" strength comes in once again. haha.

So, I Wanna Know You...

When you decided to go to Point Loma Nazarene University, they have you take this survey called StrengthsQuest, and they take it quite seriously. It's these series of questions like the Meyers-Briggs but slightly different. The point is to find these 5 strengths out of 34 which best describe you, and I would say that mine describe me pretty well. I never really dwelled on the results until recently.

Restorative: People strong in the Restorative theme are adept at dealing with problems. They are good at figuring out what is wrong and resolving it.
Adaptability: People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to "go with the flow." They tend to be "now" people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.
Individualization: People strong in the Individualization theme are intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. They have a gift for figuring out how people who are different can work together productively.
Developer: People strong in the Developer theme recognize and cultivate the potential in others. They spot the signs of each small improvement and derive satisfaction from these improvements.
Relator: People who are strong in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.

All of them other than adaptability basically revolve around others, but recently, I have been thinking about my relator strength and how I'm really starting to see it... A LOT.

Relator

Relator describes your attitude toward your relationships. In simple terms, the Relator theme pulls you toward people you already know. You do not necessarily shy away from meeting new people — in fact, you may have other themes that cause you to enjoy the thrill of turning strangers into friends — but you do derive a great deal of pleasure and strength from being around your close friends. You are comfortable with intimacy. Once the initial connection has been made, you deliberately encourage a deepening of the relationship. You want to understand their feelings, their goals, their fears, and their dreams; and you want them to understand yours. You know that this kind of closeness implies a certain amount of risk — you might be taken advantage of — but you are willing to accept that risk. For you a relationship has value only if it is genuine. And the only way to know that is to entrust yourself to the other person. The more you share with each other, the more you risk together. The more you risk together, the more each of you proves your caring is genuine. These are your steps toward real friendship, and you take them willingly.

When I looked this up and I read it earlier today, I was astounded... I truly do value those personal intimate relationships and knowing those people closely. Some of my other strengths like to bring out the best in others, developer and individualization, but relator is at the core of it all. I try to get to know those around me more deeply, trying to dig into who they and what makes them function. Most of all, I want to see how God is working their life. God works in crazy ways which are so particular to the individual. I want to know their likes and dislikes, their passions and their apathies, who they are and how they got there. The more I understand an individual, the more I see God.

This strength is evident in almost every aspect of my life... at times to the point of frustration. I know that there are things going on with people and I know there is a fear that gets to every person, but I want to know what those are. Yeah, that's a bit nosey but I really just want to get to know people. So I'll shoot up some questions to get to know them, but when they absolutely don't allow me to get to know them, I get completely frustrated: "I wanna get to know who you are, but you won't let me." Let's just say it's hard to get some people to really talk about their fears... especially when their fears are of other people.

This is just one thing I'm starting to get to know about myself... I never realized that someone's lack of openness could aggravate me so much. haha. Well, I encourage you to look at your strengths. I never realized that some "stupid" little survey could teach me so much about myself, same with the Meyers-Briggs if you ever get around to that. Silly surveys although not completely accurate can tell you great things about yourself. They got me to notice things I never would have before.

Theology: New Bible Glasses!

One of my favorite and most life-changing things I learned this last semester in Old Testament and New Testament was the story of the Bible as a whole. The Bible contains the story of Israel (God’s People) and their relationship to God. In order to fully comprehend the Bible, these stories must be understood. Before taking these classes, I had a distorted view of the Bible. Although I understood it as the inspired Word of God and accounts of various people along with knowing it had great value in my life today, I still had a limited knowledge of what it truly was. After those two classes, I have a more full and realistic understanding of the Bible.

The basis of this story is the faithfulness of God. Yeah, I knew that characteristic of God, but I didn’t understand that trait of God was the core of the whole story. I’m sure you know the story of Creation and the fall: in the beginning, God created a perfect Creation, which by its own rebellion, idolatry, became corrupt. After the Creation became corrupt, God makes a promise to Abraham that He will make him a great nation in Gen 12:2-3:

“… I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those you bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

This promise continued through Abraham, Moses, and then the line of David. Through David, the Savior Israel is to come.

Isaiah 9:6-7 “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Might God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom…”

The foundation of Christian belief rests on this promise that He would redeem Israel and bring His people back to Himself through a Savior, Messiah. All the importance of Christianity is dependent on the Messiah, who was prophesized as the Savior of the world and came in the New Testament.

God proves Himself faithful with the coming of Christ, the Messiah. The gospel by Matthew tells us the story of the gospel as Christ being the “divine Davidic king (Jesus and Community by Gerhard Lohfink)” as well as incorporate the prophesies to connect it to the earlier prophecies told by the prophets within the Old Testament. The Messiah was the promise, the fullness and intensity of the fulfillment of God’s promise, that would end Israel’s exile from God, unify her, and give her rest from her enemies. Through Christ’s character, He taught her how she (God’s people) ought to live in community; and on the cross, He exemplified the epitome of love by showing us that "greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).” In His resurrection, He showed God’s power over death and fulfilled God’s promise to restore Israel. Christ, the Messiah, was the One who made eternal life feasible to us through His sacrifice, like in Hosea 6:2: “He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before Him.” Our sin was put to death on the cross, and we were brought to new life through the resurrection.

Through the teachings of Christ presented throughout the New Testament, we are encouraged to pursue the continuation of the Jewish messianic movement. Since the Messiah taught us how to live, we are to follow Him and the ways that He taught. This way of living is the image of life in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God includes love towards Him as well as love towards one another as Christ taught, and obedience is the manifestation of faith. When you believe and have faith in something, you do what it asks of you. Hebrews reminds us the trials and suffering others went through before us and encourages us to persevere. Christ took the ultimate extremity of suffering on the cross, showing that our faithfulness to God does not stop at death.

We all know that Revelation is full of apocalyptic stories, but I realized it goes beyond all the bizarre happenings and unveils portions of the story of Israel and God’s promise and faithfulness. Eventually, Revelation presents this time and place where God’s holy people will worship Him seated on His throne in His holy land, the gathering and community of God’s people in worship and praise. Christ is the central key that restored us back to God and turned the whole story of the Bible into a story of creation and new creation. God created us in the beginning and will restore us in the end. Through the crazy and strange stories of the apocalypse, Revelation reveals the perfect and complete creation that is to come, the “consummation of holiness,” the glorious end of our story.

This definitely ended up longer than I thought it would be, but I just found it all so outstanding. Just seeing it all come together in its unity amazed me. The whole story of the Bible revolves around God’s faithfulness and God restoring Israel, His people. I hope you got something out of this… God bless!
-Sean NicDao

Bible: Paul's Call to Remain

Tonight, today, or should I say lately? I've been feeling this great desire to develop some good solid Christian friendships. Good, right? The thing is this desire has started to lead me away from friendships of the past (not bad friendships, definitely good ones, but not so godly). Well tonight, as I started thinking about these friendships, I felt something was just not right and got led into this pensive mood. I decided to set out on an adventure through Scripture to find some sort of encouragement and decided to go to Paul's letter to the Philippians. After my New Testament class, I realized that Philippians is a great place to find verses on perseverance with an outcome in mind. So figured, "Why not find some encouragement to persevere?!" haha. Here's what I found.

[21] For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. [22] But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. [23] But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; [24] yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. [25] Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy in the faith, [26] so that your proud confidence in me may abound in Christ Jesus through my coming to you again.
Philippians 1:21-26

Caliente? I would like to say it is very much so! haha. We all know the first verse, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." Yippee! Live for Christ, but death is the great end goal for heaven is so much better. What got to me now though is the latter portion of the passage. Paul becomes split between the glory of being with Christ and the responsibility to extend God's Kingdom. He realizes that it's much better that he stay with these people for their sake and the sake of the Kingdom of God so that Israel, God's people, may grow in community and relationship with one another.

When I read this the first time through, I didn't make the connection between death and Paul's desire to leave. I interpreted it as Paul thinking it would be much better for him to seclude himself that he may grow himself than stay with God's people. Boy did I have it wrong, but similar concept. My desire to withdraw from those old friendships that aren't "satisfying" me spiritually is wrong. Yes, Christ calls us to be set apart, like a city on a hill in Matt 5:14; but in the next verses, He calls us to not hide our light but let it "shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."

By withdrawing from my "non-spiritual" friends, I'm withdrawing some of their opportunity to se the glory of God, and what unreasonable attitude is that? I love how this passage reminded me that although I am called to be set apart, I can't be so set apart that I'm doing nothing to further the Kingdom. The Kingdom is most important, the rest comes later..

Bible: Come, Let Us Return...

In order to understand my relationship with God, you gotta first and foremost understand the passage God continually brings me to. To give you the full context of the my favorite verse (Hosea 6:1), I'll give you the chunk of passage.

5:14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim
   And like a young lion to the house of Judah
   I, even I, will tear to pieces and go away,
   I will carry away, and there will be none to deliver.
5:15 I will go away and return to My place
   Until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face;
   In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.
6:1 "Come, let us return to the LORD
   For He has torn us, but He will heal us;
   He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
6:2 "He will revive us after two days;
   He will raise us up on the third day,
   That we may live before Him.
6:3 "So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD
   His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
   And He will come to us like the rain,
   Like the spring rain watering the earth."
Hosea 5:14 - 6:3

So the first section (Chapter 5), God is rebuking Israel for basically her prostituting herself out to other idols, sin (I'm sure you all know the story, but just a quick recap). Once chapter 6 rolls around, Israel responds to God's rebuking.

I first found this Scripture back in my senior year of high school, I was going through a rough time, and someone I had talked to shared Shane & Shane with me. He explained how he love the analogy of Hosea, and one of their songs on their Psalms album, "Hosea" (yeah, silly huh?) is written after this portion of Scripture, basically word-for-word. You can even listen to it on YouTube, but unnecessay. Anywho, after he had shared this song with me, I absolutely fell in love with it a few days later when my life drastically shifted. This portion of Scripture has come up so many times throughout my life: when I was betrayed, when I made horrible decisions, when I left for college, etc. Ultimately, it reminds me of God's faithfulness and length of grace, I even almost got it tattooed around my forearm a couple weeks ago so that I would never forget this passage (not that I could).

I am in love with the analogy of God tearing us apart, simply to bring us back to Him. When we become so far gone, God is not just there waiting for us to come back to Him when we feel like it. We ARE His people, His sheep, and when we go astray, sometimes He has to rip us to shreds to get us on the right track: "He has torn us, but He will heal us (6:1)." That's part of His grace. His grace doesn't let us do what we want but entails Him leading us back to Him by shifting our lifes. He shreds us to pieces to get down to the core of our being, ripping away all the layers of idolatry that we build up, so that He can get who we are in our core to remember Him, His faithfulness, and His promise. Our job is to place our faith and trust in Him, to "press on to know the Lord (6:3)." Countless times, God has stripped away all my distractions in order to get my to refocus on him.

So even today, as I look over this Scripture for the hundredth time, it still seems like the first: impacting me every single time, reminding me of His faithfulness in the past, and leading me to trusting Him with the future.