Distractions

It feels amazing to be back here writing again. This semester at UM has been the busiest, craziest, most awesome time of my life. Unfortunately, with all of the craziness, I had no time to keep my blog running. To start off, I began the semester rushing a few fraternities here on campus and ended up pledging Beta Theta Pi. I also now have a girlfriend who is the light in my darkness, my foundation that keeps me standing tall. Lastly, school hit me this semester like never before. All three of these things, pledging a fraternity, girlfriends, and school, take a lot of time. With so much of my time consumed by these three things, I let my pursuit of Jesus fall a little behind in some ways. I stopped reading, writing, and barely was able to go to Church, Bible Study, or Cru. What this did was help me learn to spend time growing closer to God in other ways. Whenever I would be struggling to keep up with school, devote enough time and love to my girlfriend, or getting through pledgeship, I always prayed. I truly felt God's presence by making all of the stress and pain of the semester have visible worth that He showed me daily. He answered prayers this semester like never before. I was having issues finding a roommate, prayed about it, and within a day I met the guy who would end up being my roommate just a week later. I had no idea what I was going to do with my summer this year, I prayed and my friends form home reminded me to apply to work as a counselor at LLYC (Laity Lodge Youth Camp), which they had told me multiple times before but I never listened. I decided to apply and I got the job! Now I get to spend my summer ministering to kids and having a blast hanging with some of my best friends doing a job I have wanted to do since I was a kid. God has blessed me with an awesome Big Brother in Beta who probably cares more about his littles than anyone else in the Greek system nationally. God pulled me to a new church, Granada Presbyterian, where I have found an awesome college small group that I have really enjoyed getting involved with and cannot wait to get even more involved next year! What is great about this is that even when I was not doing the "normal Christian things" like gong to Church or Bible Studies, etc., God was still right with me. I knew he wanted me in Beta and I am so excited to see what He has in store for me there now that I am a brother. He never left my side, even when I would fall and sin, even when I was distracted from Him. Sometimes I would forget about God for over a week, but I know He never left me. He continued to bless me daily with amazing brothers and happiness, joy, and strength. The trials I endured this semester would not have been possible without the strength He instilled in me.

       "God keeps his promise, and He will not allow you to be tested beyond your power to remain firm; at the time you are put to the test, He will give you the strength to endure it, and so provide you with a way out."
                                                                                      -1 Corinthians 10:13

He definitely tested me this semester, but as He promised, He always gave me the strength to persevere.  The growth I have experienced this semester has been unsurpassed. I thought I had the biggest growth semester of my life last semester, but this semester has already surpassed it. Learning to depend on God in ways I never have before, learning to lean on others to get through tough tasks, receiving unconditional grace from my girlfriend when I never deserved it has been eye-opening. While I was worried this year was a huge distraction, it was in reality just a short deviation from my normal path so that I could learn some invaluable lessons that I will keep for the rest of my life.

Life is crazy. We will always have things come up that consume our lives. I am not saying that I handled this semester in the best way possible. I did have some down time that I spent sleeping sometimes 11 hours in a day, or watching TV when I could have been reading or writing. Even though I chose superfluous sleep, TV, or other worthless things over Him, God always stood right next to me through it all. He never left my side, and now that I have the time, I am running to Him and He is sitting there with His arms wide open just ready to love me, as He always does.

The biggest lesson I learned from this semester is this:
     
        1. When you trust in God and have faith, you WILL succeed and your life will be great. He rewards for faith, and I have countless examples in my life where He has rewarded me, even just this semester, for taking steps in faith.
       
         2. Even when you are distracted from what are considered the "normal Christian duties," the whole point of Christ is that He came to Earth in the form of a human, lived a perfect, sinless life, and died so that WE could have grace and forgiveness for our infinite sins so that God could be with us and we with Him. Because of Jesus' grace, I had God with me every minute of everyday this semester. He never abandoned me.

God sometimes can seem far away, I felt that last semester, but He never really leaves. He does test us and put us through trials, but they are always for a reason that end up helping us or others in the end. Never forget that God is with you and will support you, and try taking a step in faith, you have no idea the wondrous places it may take you.

Let Me Love You

Here in Miami, I go to church at Crossbridge Miami which is a Presbyterian church near campus here in Coral Gables. Yesterday, our pastor, Felipe, talked about love in relation to God. What is love? To me, love is putting someone before yourself. Love is sacrificing your self, your time, your desires, your everything for someone else. Now there is not only one type of love. While many may believe that the word love only refers to couples who are dating, engaged, married, etc., this is not the case. In the Bible, four different types of love are mentioned: Storge, Philia, Eros, and Agape. Storge refers to the type of love one has based upon familiarity or for family members. Philia is brotherly love or friendship. Romantic love is called Eros, and lastly, Agape is unconditional love. The first three types are pretty self-explanatory and everybody experiences them in some way or another, so I will not go into depth on those. Unconditional love however, is something that, unfortunately, many people do not have the blessing of experiencing. Unconditional love is when you love someone no matter what and with no strings attached. It is like loving someone even if they do not love you back, even if they hurt you, even if they try to push you away and do not seem to deserve your love. As humans, Agape is extremely hard for us to give to others, in fact, I believe it is impossible for us without God. Not only does God love unconditionally, but He loves EVERYONE unconditionally!

When Adam & Eve acted against God and committed the first sin back in the Garden of Eden, God was hurt. He loved Adam & Eve will all of His self, yet they betrayed Him. While most of us would cast out or leave someone who betrayed or cheated on us, God did not do that to Adam & Eve. He still loved them, He still cared for them and never left them. I know that there is no way I could do that. If someone I love betrays me and keeps betraying me, I lose faith in them and my emotional hurt takes control and I start to resent them. God wants to love us, each and every one of us, yet we do not let Him. He showed His love for us when He sent His only son, Jesus, down to Earth to die on the cross for our sins so that we could have eternal life. That right there is the perfect example of unconditional love. Jesus left his spot next to God the Father up in Heaven, a place that is amazing beyond imagination to come down to Earth, a place filled with brokenness and sorrow, as a human (which by definition is not as awesome as being God...) so live a modest life of servitude to others. Not only did He serve others the whole time He was on Earth, but Jesus allowed himself to be sacrificed on the cross fulfill God's wrath that He did not deserve at all. He went through a tough life and an absolutely miserable death for the sole purpose of saving us. If that is not love, what is? What is crazy about it is, He not only died for the people that He met during His time on Earth, but also for you, me, our grandparents and our great-great-grandchildren! It is so sad that Jesus loves us so much but we push Him away and do not believe. All He wants to do is love us. He is literally pleading out to all of us, "Please! Let me love you!" Without God's love, there is no way that we can even begin to imagine loving others unconditionally. Without an example, we do not know how and we may even feel it is impossible.

This reminds me of a popular R&B song by Ne-Yo called, "Let Me Love You" (click link to view the song with lyrics). Even though the song is talking to a girl, the lyrics do have a great depth to them if you give them some attention. The song starts like this:

"As much as you blame yourself,

You can't be blamed for the way that you feel

Had no example of a love,

That was even remotely real

How can you understand

Something that you never had?"

Right here, he seems to be talking to a girl who doesn't know how to love and is telling her that he understands why. If she has never had anyone love her of even seen an example of real love, how could she possibly understand how to love someone else like that? I have had the luxury of a loving family, but even with all of their love, I do not feel that it is 100% unconditional and it is more of the Storge type of love than Agape. Once I learned about God's Agape love for me and now that I have lived, experienced, and felt it, I am just beginning to understand how to try and love others unconditionally. Even now, I cannot say that I love anyone this way. No matter how hard I try, I always fall, but that is what Jesus' grace is for. God knows that we cannot do everything that he commands due to our weakness towards the Devil and sin. But the next few lines of the song mimic what God is saying to us:

"Ooh, baby, if you let me,

I can help you out with all of that

Girl, let me love you,

And I will love you,

[...]

I know your trouble

Don't be afraid"

God is begging us to let Him love us, to open our hearts to Him and His grace. He understands that we cannot be perfect alone and that we are afraid, but He wants to be with us and comfort and teach us! All we have to do is let Him.

"A heart of numbness gets brought to life
I'll take you there"

Those two lines there also exhibit what God's love does for us. When I experienced His love, my heart changed. I already was a decently caring person, but I was always #1 on my list and #2 was a million miles below. God has helped me shorten that gap and insert Himself above me. someday I hope to be able to close the gap between myself and others and even put them before myself, but I have a long way to go, yet I know that with His love, I can get there.

I will close by mentioning Felipe's three main points from his talk yesterday in church: 

1. God is love 

2. He is a God who shows love

3.He is a God that commands love

God is loving towards everyone and everything that He has ever created, and He shows us daily and continuously, even when we do not happen to notice. My youth pastor at my church back home in Houston gave a great example of this one day: If God doesn't love us, why did He make the world beautiful, why did he make flowers smell beautiful, why did he make sounds of waves or music pleasing? He wanted us to be able to enjoy His world with the senses that He gave us. He has loved us from before we were ever created and He had planned out our future pleasure before even Adam & Eve ever stepped foot in the Garden of Eden. Lastly, He commands us to love. In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus says that the greatest commandment is: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" and the second greatest commandment is: You shall love your neighbor as yourself". Unlike what many religions of the world believe, God does not say that you have to do anything but love. You do not have to go to church, you do not have to give to charity, etc. All that you have to do is love, and that is because God loves. These last few lyrics of Ne-Yo's song help close perfectly:

"I can see the pain behind your eyes
It's been there for quite a while
I just wanna be the one to remind you what it is to smile
I would like to show you what true love can really do"

We all suffer and have pain, especially if we do not live a life following Jesus. If we let Him love us, He will give us joy and happiness and we will learn the true power of love. So go out there and love! If you give out some love, you will undoubtedly receive some back.

Love,

    Ty

A Little Sense in Suffering

Before I start my third post, I just want to thank all of you who have been checking out my blog. I never expected to have so many hits, especially this early on. I truly appreciate and love every single one of you! Please let me know how I can improve my blog or let me get to know you by commenting or e-mailing me at tylerlivingdifferently@gmail.com. Jesus is just plain amazing, there is no getting around that.

Ok, number 3!

Life on Earth is not meant to be easy, not in the slightest sense. I believe that our existence on this planet is what God uses to shape us into Christ-like people who belong by his side in heaven, and for people to undergo great change, suffering and pain is often required. When you want to change your body by losing fat and building muscle, the cliche phrase, "no pain, no gain" is completely true. If you do not push yourself to the point of exhaustion, you are not going to change your body. God uses suffering in other areas of our lives to help shape us into the sanctified people he originally desired us to be before the Fall. Without pain, we assume everything about ourselves and our lives is perfect and dandy, believing that we as humans can take care of ourselves without God. When we suffer through pain, God uses that to show us our weakness and dependence upon him and our need for His grace and love.

I suffered through many familial and social issues throughout my childhood and through most of high school, but senior year, God finally decided to reach me through my pain. Because I felt so alone and confused, I was willing to listen and talk to people to try and understand life, and that is how I learned about Him and how Jesus saved me. If my pre-college life had been super peachy, I would not have opened my heart to new things. I know myself, and I would have been content in my current situation and not cared about learning about something new, especially God. Due to my acknowledgement of my brokenness, my depression, my loneliness, my confusion, my hopelessness I was able to open my heart to something different; in fact, I fought for something different, I wanted to change things and turn life around. When I was posed with the idea that this Jesus guy could be the answer, I was willing to give anything a try.

In the movie, Courageous, a father loses his young daughter when she is in a car accident. He was never a good father and often neglected his older son, caring only about himself. Through his suffering of the loss of his daughter, God reaches out to him and helps change him as a person. The father realizes how he has been an awful father and husband for the first time in his life and recognizes the need for change. Not only does he work to change himself, but he teams up with some of his friends and they sign pledges to be better fathers and husbands, which starts a movement that eventually spreads throughout his whole town.

Recently at college, God has used my pain from relationship issues, friend issues, family tensions, and more to show me that His love is the only thing I can rely on in this universe. He is teaching me to depend upon his love, instead of a girlfriend or friends or material things. For a few years now I have been depending on this one girl for much of my happiness. Whenever I would feel sad or worthless, I would use our relationship to give myself some pride and satisfaction. On my birthday this year, God decided to teach me not rely on relationships with girls or anyone else on Earth for satisfaction and completeness when he took the relationship as I knew it away. I have also had a major issue with dependance upon material things for satisfaction and giving myself a sense of worth or pride. I always spend my money on ridiculously expensive things that I can barely afford and have in the past had a problem with being "braggadocios" and trying to make myself feel cool and successful because I have things. Well that is just plain dumb. As I experienced during my low this semester, even when i had all of the objects I could dream of, without living for God, you can never be satisfied. I already had very expensive and high quality headphones, but I was not satisfied so I ran to BestBuy and got some more. Well i have been suffering from that bad purchase since. Did the second set of headphones make me fee any better? No. Only when i decided to start living for Jesus again and leave my sinful college ways behind did I begin to feel satisfaction and joy again. From this suffering, I have begun to let God take the reigns more and more and my life has been ever improving. I do not worry about my future as much anymore because I know God is watching out for me and will not let me fall into anything that I cannot handle. I now have more friends than I have ever had in my life, I have more hope for a happy future for myself and my family than I have ever had, and I smile every morning when I wake up. Why wouldn't you just trust God so your life could be awesome? I promise you, it is worth it.

Suffering sucks. No matter how hard, and no matter what your spiritual beliefs may be, when you are going through pain in life, try as hard as you can to not just ask, "Why me?". Try to not just feel bad and depressed, try to see how this trial can better shape you for the future and what you can learn. God loves you and will not allow you to go through anything that you cannot handle. Keep your faith my friends.

What have you been suffering through recently? Is there anyway I can pray for you? Do you have any awesome God stories about suffering and how it has changed you for the better? Please comment below or shoot me an e-mail at tylerlivingdifferently@gmail.com. Also, if you like my blog, please subscribe or follow by e-mail to the right, I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks!

Ty

The Ring

When I graduated from high school, I decided to buy myself a grad present that would not only be attractive, but also help me in my future as an independent man trying to live a Godly life. I bought myself a pretty cheap silver ring from James Avery (the exact one depicted above) with a cross in the middle. I chose one that was not flashy or too obnoxious or attention grabbing. I just wanted to have something that I wore everyday that told those who saw me and reminded myself daily that I am a Christian and that I love Jesus for fulfilling God's wrath against me by dying on the cross for my infinite sins.

After having this ring for 6 months, I have greatly appreciated having it. When people see it on my finger, it is always a conversation starter. A few people have thought it was a promise ring, but I am not pre-engaged... When I look down at my ring, it always reminds me of my faith and often convicts me of my sins. Earlier this school year, I went through a period of time where I stopped going to Church, stopped being active in Cru, and didn't really think of God anymore. Strangely, my ring turned really black and gross, and even started to fall off of my finger, so I took it off and stopped wearing it for a little while. Then I ended up going to Cru's Fall Retreat and my faith had a resurgence and I became very convicted and decided to turn my life back around. When I got home, I decided to put the ring back on and just live with the un-attractive look of it and fight to keep it on my finger, even though it seemed like it was trying to fall off. After a while, I distanced myself from my sinful actions, I became closer to believers, gained an amazing community, started being extremely active in Cru, and started loving Jesus again. After I had been in this life-revolution for a few weeks, I looked down at my ring and noticed that it shone as bright as it did the day I got it; all of the black-ness had disappeared, it did not fall off of my finger anymore (even though I have continued to lose weight). All that is left are a few scratches. 

It is crazy to think that a ring can symbolize my path with Christ, but man mine sure does. Earlier, I had covered God up with the evil and darkness of my sin and new life choices, I was trying to push God away, and he was having trouble staying with me because I wouldn't let Him, and eventually I pushed him away so much that I had started living life away from Him, without thinking about Him at all. 

At Cru's Fall Retreat, God called me back through the speaker, the great community, and feeling loved in a way I have never felt before in my life, especially from people I just met. I began fighting through my evil and sin in my life from abstaining from drunkenness, distancing myself from bad friends and places, I began surrounding myself with Godly people and having a blast in a Godly way. Not only did my ring start to shine, but my face and mood started to shine. Immediately after Fall Retreat was extremely hard for me because I knew I wanted to live for Jesus, but I had to fight my addictions. Now living for Jesus is starting to fit with me and settle into normalcy again. Just as my ring has started to fit again.

God works in miraculous ways, and I love Him for that.

Jesus is the Difference

To quote the lyrical genius of 2 Chainz, "I'm different". Since I met Jesus on November 24, 2011, I have been constantly changing. Now that I have been a Christian for over a year, there is no question that I am different, different from who I was back in high school and different than who I was without Jesus in my life. To quote 2 Chainz again, the pre-Jesus me and current me are "cut from a different fabric." When I found Jesus towards the end of my first semester of Senior year in high school, I was reborn, reborn with a new heart, a heart that was focused on Jesus and pursuing a relationship with Him.

Let me back up now and give you some background on who I am so you can understand how I got to where I am now and why Jesus is so important to me-

I was born on October 10, 1993 in the beautiful city of Houston, Texas to two loving parents. I grew up a lonely only child. I had no siblings and very few friends until high school. I always made good grades and had average athletic ability. If you haven't caught on by now, I was a huge nerd. Luckily I did break out and start to play football in 5th Grade and was actually quite good after lots of work and practice. I have realized in my life that I am not naturally really good at anything, but if I force myself to practice and keep working on a skill, I will improve and I can actually attain a level of admirable proficiency. Growing up, God was never important to me. My immediate family is culturally Christian where we celebrate the holidays and pray before dinner, yet we never went to Church and I did not know who God was or even really care. 

Finally in high school, I started to gain really strong friends who cared a lot about me. I do not really know how this happened, but most of them happened to be really strong Christians. God definitely had me in his sights for a long time before he decided to call me to Him. I went through the first three years of high school not caring about God at all, and I was still battling some of my loneliness, depression, and anger issues that I had my whole life and I had little hope of a positive future. I could only look for the day I left home and went to college for a chance to break out and start a new life for myself. God realized my huge desire to start a new life and took the necessary steps to shape my new life to be one that followed him. Around mid-October of my Senior year at St. John's School, one of my best friends, Alex, told me about this new thing called Young Life that was starting up at our school. She kept begging for me to come with her to come sing songs, dance, play games, party, and hear a little about Jesus. Even though I had never cared about God, I did not have anything against Him. I decided to go, not because of Jesus, but because I wanted to do something fun with my friends. 

My first Young Life "club" (what they call their meetings on Monday nights) was outstanding! I had so much fun playing the ice breaker game with my friends, singing the songs and watching the skit. When the time for the message came, I was already in such a great mood that I decided to listen to what the guy had to say. The head leader for St. John's, Mike, talked that night, and he had no idea about the prodigious implications that his subject matter for that night would have for my life. He talked about Jesus in a way I have never heard Him talked about before. Mike started his talk about by saying that Jesus was a "badass". Immediately I was stunned; since when do Christian leaders say things like badass? It seemed kinda blasphemous, yet I was intrigued. He referenced John 18:3-6 which says, 

            "3 So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns ad torches and weapons. 4 Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, "Whom do you seek?" 5 They answered him, "Jesus of Nazareth." Jesus said to them, "I am he." Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. 6 When Jesus said to them, "I am he," they drew back and fell to the ground."

From that, Mike explained how Jesus' power and absolute confidence (since he is God) shocked these strong soldiers who were adorned with "torches and weapons" so much that they fell to the ground. My whole life leading up to this moment I had perceived Jesus as this wimpy hippie of a dude 2000 years ago who was a really nice guy who also happened to be God's son. After Mike's talk that night, I had a completely different view of Jesus. He was a man of great power who left his peaceful and perfect existence as God in Heaven to become a human on Earth, living a tough life full of pain, suffering, and temptation. From the great fun I had at club that night and the message Mike gave, I decided to continue gong to Young Life and give it a shot.

After I had been going to Young Life for a while, I found myself hanging with two of my best friends, Nick and Nathan, who were super strong Christians. I do not remember how we started, but we found ourselves talking about Young Life, which led to Jesus and God in general. I had never heard anyone talk about their religion so intensely. Those guys truly believed what they were talking about and they absolutely loved Jesus. Their extreme vested interest in the subject stole my attention and interest and we found ourselves talking until about 5AM. By the end of it, they had convinced me to talk to our Young Life Leader, Mike, and learn about God and decide what I believed. At this point I did not believe in Jesus really yet, but I had come to the conclusion that I did want to find the truth, whatever it was.

I messaged Mike on Facebook and he immediately showed great interest in me. We met at Freebirds World Burrito. After getting to know me better, he gave me three books that we were going to go through together. One was, The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel, which is a book that proves the Gospels through archaeology and history, which was very important for my math and science brain. The second was The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, which was a 40 day journey book where you are supposed to read a chapter a day and hopefully find the truth and learn about Christianity and Jesus. Lastly, Mike gave me my first Bible. Mike and I read through the books together and met weekly to talk about what we read, any questions about Jesus or Christianity I had, and also just to hang out. All of those meetings with Mike, all of my reading, all of my talks with people like Nick and Nathan, all of my Young Life clubs and bible studies, culminated in a decision that changed my eternity: On November 24, 2011 I gave my life to Jesus Christ and accepted Him as my Lord and savior who came to Earth and died on the cross to release me from the punishment for my sins.

After that moment, I started learning how to lead a Christian life. I became active as a leader in Young Life, I attended Christ the King Presbyterian Church, and I started trying to think about God continuously, day in and day out. My life immediately started to change. Through God, I started making more and more friends who turned out to be the closest friends I have ever had, and even through living over a thousand miles from each other this first semester of college, we keep in touch regularly and I could not love them more. I became a much happier person too. I even started to grow closer with my extended family and cannot wait to spend more time with them over Christmas break. My priorities and desires slowly started to change. My once trashy mouth has now turned pretty clean (not perfect, but I am working on it). I have started trying to put others above myself and learn to serve instead of just trying to find what I can get from others. And on January 11, 2012, I was Baptized by Mike at a Young Life bible study before school in a Young Life kid's hot-tub. The experience was truly fantastic and I will never forget it for the rest of my life.

Just days after my high school graduation, I left to serve kids through Young life at a camp up near Whistler, Canada called Malibu Club. While there I had the chance to work day in and day out cleaning dishes in an effort to display the love of Jesus to kids for 4 weeks. In that experience I learned loads about what being a follower of Jesus means and I also learned how to trust in Him for confidence when I was asked the first week to share my testimony in front of around 300 people that I either did not know or had just barely met. With Jesus, anything is possible.

When August came, it was time for me to figure out how to follow Jesus as a college kid at the University of Miami. I found an awesome on campus ministry called Cru. Through Cru I have met all of my best friends. For the first time in my life, I have more friends than I have time to hang with every week! They all love me to death and I couldn't imagine life without them now. I have awesome freshman friends, but some of my closest friends are sophomores, juniors, and even seniors! All of these kids absolutely love Jesus and have been great role models for me. Here in Miami, I go to college at Crossbridge Presbyterian Church and I attend bible study through Cru and also am engaged in a leadership role in Cru as a part of the Freshman Leadership Team.

Anyway, you may be wondering, "why are you writing this blog and what is the purpose of it?" Well I have hated writing my entire life, until Jesus, Benjamin Alsup, and Tyler Cooney entered my life. This year in my English 105 class, by professor Benjamin Alsup made us write on Tumblr daily. For a long time the task was absolutely horrid. I never had anything to say and it seemed like a waste of time. One night, I decided I was going to write about my faith a bit. Before I knew it I had written pages of awesomeness that I had no idea I could, and I had kinda enjoyed it. Every once in a while I would write about my faith or Jesus on my Tumblr for class and I always enjoyed it. Also, one of my bible study leaders and best friends here at UM, Tyler Cooney, has recently started a blog, Walking Campus With Jesus, and I really enjoyed reading what he had to say. Tyler's blogging and Ben's constant nagging for me to write, eventually gave me the idea to start my own blog. I have found that when I write about God, I grow closer to Him. it has become our time when we hang out and get to know each other, its how we bond. So through this blog, I hope to strengthen my relationship with Jesus and share with friends and family and anyone else who decides to read this.

I love all of you and thank you so much for reading! (My future posts will be much shorter, don't worry)

Ty