investment

OK SO if you want to skip all the fun stuff and get to the meat of this post then skip down to the next word that is in CAPS.

This past weekend was a weekend of full of stress, and yet awesomeness at the same time. Actually last week I had two papers hanging over my head all week, which is actually somewhat usual for me because I am such a big procrastinator.

Like, I'm not sure if you realize how big of a procrastinator I actually am (dangit, this next sentence may come back to bite me if a future employer read this, o well). A couple examples: Freshman year I took two classes titled "Old Testament Survey" and "New Testament Survey." For these classes we were required to write summary papers for books of the Bible, and these papers would easily amount to 11 or 12 pages. Just to give you an idea, I always completed every single one of these papers the night before they were due. I'd sit down at my computer and not move for at least 6 hours straight until the paper was completed.

That is just how I worked. I feel like I have no motivation trying to complete a paper a week or two weeks before it is due. I am just more motivated under pressure.

So now that you have a better idea of my philosophy on much of the homework in my life allow me to continue with this story.

So I had two papers that were due today (Monday, 2/23). For both of them I needed some sources from the campus library. With this in mind I headed to the library on Friday and retrieved my sources for my first paper which was only 3 pages in length. I completed this paper in about 3 hours after which I went to an awesome cafe that I had never had the privilege of experiencing before. So it was great to spend some time with them. Though I knew I had a long day ahead of me the next day so I got to bed a bit early, and actually woke up the next morning around 10:30am, which for those of you who know me is early for a Saturday morning.

The second paper that I had to do was an exegetical paper on a passage in Romans. Now this was the big kahuna. It had to be 9–10 pages and I had to use at least 8 sources, and it was due on Monday. (yeah what your thinking right now is exactly what I said to myself). Dangit!

To make a long story short, I spent a couple hours in the library scanning all of the sources I needed and emailing them to myself because I knew the library was going to be closed on Sunday. I also did this because I had made plans to go to a friend's apartment that night.

So on that note, I went to my friend, Dan Andrews' apartment and we had dinner, and played a game called "Consequence", which ended in an interesting way. Lets just say that I was on the floor having hot wax poured on my bare chest (I just wanna say "your welcome" in advance for that image that you have in your head right now). It was basically a truth or dare type game, and one of the rounds the loser had to have hot wax poured on his chest. That lucky person was me. So needless to say that was a blast.

The next day I had to work frantically to get this paper done.

WATSUP!

Ok, now lets get to the meat (the important stuff) of this post. The basic thing I had to do for this paper was exegete Romans 8:15–18 in a length of 9–10 pages. This means go through each clause, and sometimes each word of each verse and study it, and exegete the meaning of the passage, or draw the meaning out of the passage, by means of commentaries, or Greek Lexicons.

One thing that I realized as I got further into this paper is that I wished that I had started it much earlier than I did. I wish that I had more time to work on it. It has been a while since I've done that type of in-depth study in a passage of Scripture and I missed it so much. Actually, that is how I used to do my daily devotions, and then for a couple different reasons (that aren't good reasons) I stopped doing this.

One of the reasons is because it just takes alot of time to do, and not that I didn't want to spend time doing it, but many times I would do my devotions in the morning before class, and I would only have 20 or 30 minutes. With so little time I just would not get much study done. For those of you who have done exegetical studies of Scripture, you know what I am talking about. I mean I wrote 10 pages yesterday on just 4 verses alone and it took about 7 1/2 hours.

But that is still not a good reason. If I don't have enough time, then I just need to get up earlier.

I had just forgotten how much I can learn from doing studies like that. After completing the Romans paper I now understand those four verses so much better than I ever could have understood them without doing that paper.

Another thing I was reminded of were my days in high school when my youth pastor asked me and my friend, Heidi Summers, to teach a workshop for the youth group on how to study the Bible. I miss this as well. After I learned how to study the Bible in this way I was so passionate about it, I always had to tell someone what I had been learning from my studies. Where did that passion go?

These are some things I have been thinking about.

Another thing I missed from teaching that workshop was being able to take my passion for studying the Scriptures and invest it into my piers. Like this workshop was intense. Me and Heidi had almost no outside help at all. We came up with the lesson plans ourselves, and we taught it ourselves. We taught them how to cross-reference verses, how to use different versions, and even how to use a Greek-Hebrew Lexicon. I got that feeling like I was useful and investing into other people's lives, much like I've gotten that feeling here at my PCM in Chicago.

It is a great feeling to know that you are investing into someone else's life and having an impact on their life. It is something that I want to do more of in the upcoming days, weeks, months, and years. Especially as I go throughout the rest of my time here at Moody in Chicago. My thoughts on that subject are another post for another day. Also, another upcoming post is going to be about my ideas that I have everyday about using media in churches, and just in ministry in general. Great stuff.

but goodbye for now. do you have any stories about how you have invested into another person's life? If so, write a blog post about it and then leave a link to your post in a comment.

investment