kelly vs. the grand canyon

Okay, so I just listened to this great sermon by John Piper through a podcast. He talked on John 11 about being thankful for the love of God. He says this, "God's love is His doing whatever needs to be done at whatever cost to Himself or us, so that we will see and be satisfied by Christ forever." (John 14:24) - ultimate satisfaction is seeing Christ.

I think this is so awesome because it really helps to explain a lot to me about God's love, that His motivation is us seeing Christ and therefore Himself for who He really is...not to mention that in so doing He salvages our souls from death.

Piper brought up another interesting point that our American culture seems to drive home...why do we want to be loved by God? For most of us it's because He will make much of us. But yet, really the only way we will ever experience and know the true love of Christ is if we make much of Him forever.

We know that we are all made to know Him - because when we live for praise of self or for that next promotion, we feel dirty - because we are made to live for so much more. Piper uses the parallel that no one goes to the grand canyon saying, "look how important I am" no way...we go to the grand canyon to behold its splendor.

The ONE thing that will satisfy us is the splendor of Jesus Christ.

I'm so thankful and feeling so loved by God. Happy Thanksgiving.

why blog?

You're probably wondering the benefits of the blog. I've come up with a list of some.

1. where else can all 2 billion people in the world read your thoughts?
2. a good way to consolidate links
3. i'm a verbal processor, but sometimes i don't have anyone to process with, like when it's 3 am.
4. meeting random friends in south korea that have a heart for slovakia
5 .google created it
6. it's not as trashy as myspace
7. i'll never be able to track who reads this - who are you?
8. a good way for me to share what God is doing in my life without mass emails
9. let's face it, i just needed one more way to procrastinate
10. staying connected with the many people i know through their blogs or xangas