Soldier of the Cross - Jay Henning

"It's been a dog's age"

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:18:00 GMT

Wow! Looking at my last blog entry I realize that it has been over a year since my last blog entry. During that time, I have had several significant life events consuming me. I retired from the United States Army after 22 years, I found a new job working for Kansas State University, and I started to take seminary classes through Regent University. I don't want to spend the entire blog time talking about me, but I just wanted to update some things as to why it has been so long between entries. The most significant reason I was not writing was because of the seminary classes. I must admit that the graduate level classes consumed me more than I anticipated, which is one reason why I decided to take this semester off. I will return to school and finish, because I do believe that is what God has called me to for this season, but the writing I had to do while in school consumed me and really left me not wanting to write for the blog anymore...so, I'm going to try to write at least once a week while I'm not in school (hopefully more). I know writing is a gift that God has given to me and I enjoy it. The problem I have many times with writing things in blogs is that I'm always looking for this great big revelation from God that I can pass on to others and be a blessing in a way people can relate to, but I have come to the realization that sometimes the small things in life can be powerful too, so I will try to reflect more of what is happening in my life (spiritually speaking) and pass on that to you.

First things first, I entitled this entry, "It's been a dog's age," for a couple of reasons. One, because it was so long between my entries and I wanted to explain why, which I did above. But secondly, it made me think of expressions that we use in culture today (or even ones I remember from growing up) that come form the Bible. No, the "dog's age" one doesn't, but one in particular that I wanted to mention that I learned about years ago and didn't have a clue that it came from the Bible. There are a bunch of modern-day expressions that have their origin in the Word of God that I didn't realize until I started to study the Bible and tried my best to live what the Word says. Interestingly enough, when you type "expressions from the Bible" into a search engine, you come up with numerous expressions, including the one I am mentioning here: "apple of my eye." This expression is first mentioned in the Song of Moses, which is the song that Moses spoke to the Israelites shortly before his death. The expression is found in Deuteronomy 32:10 when Moses is speaking of God's love for the patriarch Jacob: "He (God) found him (Jacob) in a desert land and in the wasteland, a howling wilderness; He encircled him, He instructed him, He kept him as the apple of His eye" (New King James Version). God kept Jacob as the apple of His eye and that's what God does even nowadays as His children; He keeps us as the apple of His eye. One Website defines "apple of my eye" as "Something, but usually someone, that you cherish above all others."¹ This fact is mind boggling to me and even has been described to me by someone as impossible. "If each one of us is the apple of God's eye, then none of us are the apple of His eye," it has been reasoned to me. Maybe that reasoning is something you've thought about, but the fact is, God is bigger than any one of us, and bigger than all of us combined; He created us and has abilities beyond our understanding or reasoning. It is one of those mysteries of God. Personally, I have difficulty enough managing my own life most of the time, but God knows each of our thoughts and loves us anyway. When I was in Korea, I would occasionally go up on Mount Apsan, which was right behind the camp I stayed on in the city of Taegu. I would look down at the city of nearly three million people and think about the awesomeness of how God knows each one of those people, knows their thoughts, their hopes, their aspirations, and their hurts and pains. Then I would also think how that three million people is not even one-thousandth of the population of the earth and God still manages to know us. He desires to know us intimately, but the level of intimacy is up to us. God is so awesome that He desires to have a relationship with us, but does not want to be pushy about it. The level of relationship we develop with God is up to us, and we can develop a closer relationship to Him by following His Word and the plans outlined in the Word; prayer, fasting, reading the Word, and fellowshipping with other believers are all good ideas on how to develop intimacy with God.

Speaking of that, the last point I wanted to make revolved around reading the Word. Today, my reading included the expression "apple of my eye," the one found in Proverbs 7:2. This is something I heard early in my Christian walk and has come back around numerous times in my life. If you do not have a daily devotional and do not know where to start, try reading a chapter of Proverbs every day. There are 31 chapters in Proverbs, one for every day of most months (you can either double up chapters on the shorter months or forego the last chapter/s). For instance, since today is the seventh, I read Proverbs Chapter 7 today. This book is chalked full of wisdom, which God desires to give us liberally, for us to not only use to guide our living, but to be a witness to a lost and dying world. Thanks for your attention, support, and for reading this entry! I'll "talk" to you soon! :-)

[1] http://www.phrases.org.uk/, accessed January 7, 2012.

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Running a Marathon

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 01:38:00 GMT

“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” ~ 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, NKJV

Obviously, Paul wrote these words to the church at Corinth for spiritual implications and application. However, word pictures which we can physically apply to our lives have so much more meaning to individual lives and the Bible is full of word pictures which have both physical and spiritual applications. Never has this set of Scripture been so physically applied to my life then these past few months, when I competed in and finished my first marathon (26.2 miles). Some of you at this point are probably wondering what would possess a normal human being with a rational thought process to such extreme insanity? To tell the truth, I’ve wanted to run in a marathon since I was in high school and our cross country team always gave out water and electrolyte to runners of a local marathon. I did not do it to be the “one (who) receives the prize,” as our Scripture suggests, as I am nor will ever be an elite runner that will be able to compete with world class or professional athletes. But, two things stand out from this Scripture that I had to apply to my life while training for a marathon. (1) Being “temperate in all things” and (2) “disciplin[ing] my body.” To properly train for the agony your body endures during a marathon, you cannot wake up one day and say, “Oh, I think I’ll run 26.2 miles today,” if you’ve never run before. You have to be temperate by watching what you consume and you have to discipline your body to run even when you do not want to. This temperateness and discipline comes in different forms for different people, but everyone has to change something in order to properly compete. I started training for an October marathon in April while I was still in Iraq. I did one long run a week, starting with 8 miles and building up to 21 miles (side note, anyone looking to do this and who does not like to run on treadmills like I don’t, please learn from me and run at night time during the summer in Iraq – the sun is no joke, even in the early morning J). I also ran one sprint workout a week and ran a five-mile run twice a week. Even though I only ran four days a week, there were still plenty of times I didn’t want to run, especially during my long runs (the ones that were 20 miles or longer took more than three hours)! Even though I ran upwards of 500 miles during a six month period, when it came to actual race day, there were still things I had not anticipated. Once the emotions of the start of the race set in, the natural inclination is to take off extremely fast. I had anticipated this and was running a minute faster than pace time for the first six miles or so. Once I noticed this, I had a decision to make: I could keep up the fast pace and drop off later, or drop back a little now and save some energy for later. This is where knowing your own body and its capabilities come in handy. Generally, the smart thing to do is to slow down and save energy for later, but I decided to keep going with my fast pace. I did this for two reasons: (1) Although this was my first marathon, I am a seasoned runner and know that I always slow down throughout races anyway and (2) Even when I do slow down in the early parts of races, I slow down even more in the later parts of races. Well, about mile 23, lack of motivation, lack of energy, the wear and tear on the body, it all hit me, and I finally gave in and walked a little bit. Would it have been different if I had slowed down about mile 3 or 4, like I had thought? I don’t know, it may have…but for me, the bottom line is that I did finish and finish under my goal time of 4:30, at a time of 4:24:34.

I know all of you “bottom line” people are going crazy about now, but believe it or not, this story does have a spiritual point and application, and this is it: Our spiritual walk and relationship with Jesus is like a marathon. Typically, we have a zeal at the start of the race and want to run, love the race and the feel of it all, but then the wall hits us…we don’t know of our effectiveness, we don’t have the zeal we once had, we get caught up in putting on a face (acting better than we really are), we let the humdrum repetition of daily living steal our joy, and we sometimes even wonder if God hears our prayers. It is those times we need to push through and keep our eyes on that “imperishable crown” that Paul writes of. How well we start we race does not matter if we do not finish…let’s finish strong, saints!
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Drinking the Cup

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:55:00 GMT

“But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you ask. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’” Mark 10:38 ~ New King James Version

Often times, I think that the disciples of Jesus get a bad rap. Considering the Jewish culture, their Jewish upbringing in a Jewish home, and other factors that led to form who they were by the time Jesus popped onto the scene, I don’t think anybody else placed in their situations would have done any better of a job. In this particular story, James and John, also known as the “Sons of Thunder” (which sounds like it should be a name of a wrestling tag team if I’ve ever heard one, but I digress), ask Jesus that they would “sit, one on Your right hand and the other on the left, in Your glory” (Mark 10:37). Jesus replies with the Scripture at the opening of this blog, to which James and John quickly and confidently (or at least that’s how I envision it) reply, “We are able” (Mark 10:39). I would encourage you to review the rest of this story where Jesus teaches James, John, and the rest of His disciples a powerful lesson in serving, but the crux of this blog revolves around drinking the cup.

Christians seem to pray prayers of grandeur, power, and fruitfulness, but often times don’t realize the costs that come with those prayers. I do not say this to discourage anyone from praying these prayers, as it should be any Christian’s desire to develop as close a relationship to Christ as possible. My main point is that words have meaning…yes, obviously, they have meaning to other people, but words also have meaning to God. One example that comes to mind is that when I was in South Korea, one of the word plays of the church I attended seemed to go kind of like this: “Oh brother, don’t pray for patience, because you’re going to go through things.” My thoughts toward this seemed to revolve around, “But, yes, that’s exactly what I need to develop a deeper relationship with God.” Bring on the trials to teach me patience, Lord. Bring on the unlovable to teach me love, Lord. That’s how our prayers should sound, as trial by fire is the greatest, and many times the only way, that God can get through to us.

If anyone should know anything about what I’ve been talking about here, it would be James; the author of the book of James and a half-brother of Jesus. I would encourage you to read Chapters 3 and 4 where James writes of the tongue, wisdom, pride, humility, judging, and boasting. Although I do want to mention these specific verses from James 4: “You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” ~ James 4: 2-4

Our desire should be to pray the prayers that Jesus wants us to pray; to get to a point in our lives where we trust God enough to provide for all of our earthly needs and just pray the prayers geared toward the Kingdom and Kingdom purposes. Our desire should be as John the Baptist’s desire was: “He (Jesus) must increase, but I must decrease.” ~ John 3:30. Lord, help us to decrease!

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The Three R's

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:48:00 GMT

We have what have been termed "the three R's" in school. What about possible "three R's" when it comes to God's Kingdom?

Begging Jesus to Leave

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 19:04:00 GMT

What could possibly cause a whole town to come out and meet Jesus and beg Him to leave the whole region?

One church = One vision; Many churches = division

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 13:58:00 GMT

Many times in the body of Christ, there is division. This was not always so and this is not how God intended it to be. 1 Corinthians 12 goes into great detail discussing the body.

"Judge not"

Thu, 13 May 2010 19:05:00 GMT

If I had a chance to gander at what would be the most misinterpreted Scripture, I would render a guess that these two words would at least be in the top five: "Judge not."

The God Box

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 16:29:00 GMT

Do Christians limit what God can do?

My "Bad" Good Friday

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 18:36:00 GMT

In Reverence to the King

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:14:00 GMT

God's kingdom is a monarchy and the negative connotation Americans have toward kingdoms could hinder obedience if care is not taken.