next thing

i guess this book isn't going to change my life, make me famous, wealthy or attractive to women... oh well. the teaching opportunities have dried up. not sure what to do with my life. i'm an old man and i feel lost. i guess i'll make youtube videos

i'm currently reading Lorraine Boettner's Roman Catholicism and it's very interesting. i think i'll begin talking about this book. i also want to cover John Stott's The Cross of Christ since it's supposed to be a classic and i didn't really read it well when i covered it in my soteriology class.

i always go back to this one night sometime in 1990-something. i was in high school or just beginning college and attending Valley Bible Fellowship here in bakersfield. PRON was holding some kind of prayer meeting and i asked for prayer. i didn't ask for anything. i just wanted to give my life to Jesus -- "Whatever you want" -- i don't even think i was really saved at that time. i wanted my life to be God's like Jesus said

unless a man take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple

nothing seemed to change. i went to school. i got married. i struggled with porn. i had kids. i continued to struggle with porn. i got a teaching credential. i struggled. i lost my credential. i struggled at work. i got an engineering job. i lost my engineering job. i left my wife. i wanted to kill myself. i wept for probably accumulated years. i still struggle. i can say that i make slow progress. it's like i'm half alive in a desert wringing whatever moisture i can out of whatever dry cactus i can find and every day i get just a hair stronger than yesterday ... i'm literally nothing in this world and i've watched everyone pass me by in every possible way: success, relationships, mental health...the only thing i can point to and say "yeah i had a part in that and it's very amazing" is my children. i love them and i love that they're mine but i've done all i can to raise them influence them teach them. if my life has no other purpose, i might as well die.

the only hope i can possibly imagine the only purpose i can think of is something alan redpath and charles spurgeon said

when God wants to do an impossible task, he takes an impossible man and crushes him

when God means to make a man great, he always breaks him into pieces first

if this be not true if God has no plan in my unending failure if God does not exist if God is not mine--i have absolutely nothing. no hope no strength no future no life no purpose no sanity ...

i used to think i had such impossibly great faith. i wasn't even saved at the time. i know now that i have the least faith. i have the worst character. i have the most fear and the least trust in God. lots of knowledge. little maturity. some days i can't imagine any way i can belong to God and i get afraid i will burn in hell for eternity. 

where am i going with this? i don't know. maybe God actually has a plan for me but whatever i'm just glad no one reads this blog.