Listening to David Crowder, something comes across and rises in me which I seldom feel from other groups, and that is devotional joy. It's strange that they would be one of so few bands which cause this reaction in me, I am sure many other Christian bands put great joy into their music, and this is not meant as a slight to them. However, for me, something about the way the David Crowder Band goes about it serves as a vehicle for joy more than any other group I know. It may be a combination of several things: technical artistry, musical skill, poetic yet rock-solid lyrics, and their own devotional joy. Perhaps the technical artistry and musical skill allow the truth in the lyrics and joy in the realization of their truth to come through uninhibited.
However it may be, God uses them for me as a vehicle of His joy, and it's one of the better ways to start off a morning that I know of.
I've had a busy time of it since I last wrote.
The Taiwan trip was first, and getting stuck there for a few days (again!). I may record some of my impressions of that trip next entry, as I have not yet written them down. Doing so publicly means not every detail will be shared, but it will be good to have many things transcribed. If anyone can benefit from them, so much the better.
I will only say now in passing that it was a good trip, especially since two of my siblings who had not previously been able to go could join us this year.
Upon returning from Taiwan, I had about two days of self-imposed downtime before I had to start the process of finding a place to live in Dallas for seminary. In this, as in so many things, God's plans were different from and greatly superior to my own, and instead of the decent off-campus housing I had located, I was able to secure a room on campus, only days before class started. This happened due to a missionary friend in Taiwan tracking me down at camp in order to introduce to me a Chinese lady who worked at Dallas seminary who "just happened" to be visiting her while our group was in Taiwan. The lady invited me to visit her church which was in the Dallas area, and gave me her contact information. She later contacted me saying that there were rooms available on campus, and not only was I able to secure one, but received a signing bonus, credit for the campus bookstore which payed for my textbooks. (I think I have payed approximately $1 of my own money for them all, and they are a veritable pile)
Once I was settled in, I was able to visit the church as well, and have gotten involved with the youth group there. There are actually two youth groups, an English-speaking group and a Chinese-speaking group. They are radically different, one being primarily comprised of ABC's (American-born Chinese) and the other of comparatively recent immigrants from asia. Cultural differences are striking; a doctoral thesis could probably be written merely by studying the differences in the two groups at this one church. My intention is to work with the Chinese-speaking group, they are a good group of students, and one full of potential. Lord willing I will be able to write of the progress of that ministry here in the future.
The church itself is interesting. The Chinese congregation is 3 times the size of the English congregation, and the membership is roughly half Taiwanese and half Chinese (there are Malaysians, Singaporeans, and others there too), which in itself is a small miracle and testiment to God's unifying love.
So many blessings in so short a time; the mind is still spinning, but the heart is grateful.
God shows in so many ways that He is a loving father Who knows my needs better than I do, and Who arranges accordingly. So far from being a wrathful Deity waiting to bring pain into my life as a (totally justified) punishment for every sin, He delights in blessing me and showing that He has thought of me and made a plan just for me. The realization hits me often, and never quite loses the sense of a thing being realized for the first time.
Now I'm studying His word seriously in an academic setting, a first for me.
Many have had the joy of their walk and faith in the scriptures leached away at seminary; the enemy must laugh at the irony of going to study the Bible being the downfall of one's faith in it.
Having arrived and started classes, I have little fear of this happening at DTS. Not only do all my professors have a professed and obvious love for the scriptures, but they have cautioned us against this very dryness of spirit which can occur when studying them as a textbook versus reading them as the Word of God. Most have supplied strategies for combatting this tendency.
I have been consistently impressed. No school is perfect, but DTS seems to have intentionally sought the best route for conveying the mastery of Biblical truth to their students for many years, while also seeking to serve God wholeheartedly as an institution. And it shows.
To be able to study here is a great blessing, the magnitude of which I will come to understand even more the longer I stay, I suspect. For now, I simply marvel at the love which can grant such things to someone like me. May His name be greatly praised, for He has done, and will do, and is doing, great things.
More to come...
-Joseph
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