My name is Nate. I am 22 years old. I'm a country boy from the foothills of Northern California (yes, it basically is a different state; and no, I'm not a surfer). I graduated from the Master's College in December of 2012, and literally had zero direction. The last year, in fact, has been quite the whirlwind, but I'll get back to that in a later post. Let's go back to the start of this whole thing.
By "back to the start," I mean when I was born. March of 1991. I was born in Placerville, California. It's a REALLY small little town where the Gold Rush of 1849 happened. My family owns a ranch in Placerville that's been in the family for 6 generations (including me). When I was 3 months old, my family moved to Papua New Guinea. My parents moved there to be missionaries. I was raised in a family of faith. We've always called ourselves Christians. What does that mean? Nowadays, the word "Christian" means a lot of things, so let me clarify. We're not Mormons. We're not Catholics. We believe in Jesus like 70% (or something crazy like that) of Americans say they do. I go to church every Sunday, and I'm involved in lots of other things throughout the week. I don't do it because I think I'm better than anyone else or because I have something to prove. I do it because I believe that Christ died for His church, and because I love Christ, I love the people that He left behind to represent Him.
When Christ died, He lived a perfect life of faith in God the Father so that He could save others in a perfect display of love. In fact, there's no greater love than that (John 15:13). There's two ways to get to heaven (Romans 10). Both involve complete perfection from you. One is to actually be perfect. The other is to submit your life to Christ and He will vouch for you to God, saying that you are worthy of the reward of eternal life, because of Christ's righteousness. In other words, you can depend on a righteousness that you do yourself, or you can depend on Christ's righteousness for you. Here's the problem. "Without faith, it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6). "Anything apart from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23). What these two verses mean is that good things aren't necessarily righteous. If you do not have faith while you walk the old lady across the street, it is impossible to use that "good deed" to please God. In fact, without faith, no matter how good your deeds are in man's eyes, God still views you as a sinful person. So how do you get to heaven? "For it is by grace that you are saved, through faith, which is a gift from God; not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Did you hear that? Faith is a gift from God.
God is a giver. He created everything for the our pleasure and His. If we use the things He's given correctly, it is a delight both to Him and us. God loves it when we ask for things (Matthew 7:7-12). Therefore, when He gives us faith, it is the greatest thing that He can give, because it's the most practical gift out there. By faith, we are satisfied with what we have, and by faith, He is satisfied with anything that we do for Him. So how do you walk the old lady across the street in a way that pleases God? You walk her not because you want to get into heaven but because you want to make God happy. Glorified. Pleased. You want him to accept your sacrifice of time and energy.
Through Christ's sacrifice, all of this is possible. If you trust Him in faith to vouch for you before God and say "this person is good to go because of the righteousness that I achieved," then God won't deny you access. That's what I mean when I say I'm a Christian. I wanted this to be my first blog post, because this is what defines me. If you don't know all of this about me, then you don't really know me at all.
Going to China, if you choose to read about it, will be pretty unpredictable. I don't know any of the language or culture. I don't know what all will happen. I'll probably see a lot of people who give me funny looks. I'll probably return said looks. The only predictable thing about this whole trip is that it is part of a larger journey of faith. All I know about this trip to China is that I'll come out the other side with a stronger faith and knowing God better and having ministered to as many people as I possibly can. I'll be working at a school. I'll be involved in a church. This trip will be for my good, and that's really the only thing guaranteed about it (Romans 8:28). I don't even know when I will be leaving yet! I'm flying standby, so it's either the 7th of August or the 9th of August. Let the journey begin!
