My Spiritual Journey

                  I grew up in a Christian household where we went to church every Sunday. I have an incredible family: a little brother who is three years younger than me who I grew to become very close with and consider a best friend, sister who is two years older than me who I often struggled to get along with growing up but still loved nonetheless, and two amazing parents who have loved and supported me in all that I did. Going to church for me was never what it should have been. It was always this time to just hang out with friends, play games, and do whatever I could to not get bored when it came to hearing the sermon—I disliked that part more than any. I certainly understood God and believed in him; however, that was as far as I went with him. There was no existing relationship.

                  Skipping all the way ahead to my freshmen year of high school I was excited. I knew it was a time to be the person I wanted to be and to me, I thought it was being a great soccer player. I focused just about all of my time into soccer and it was about the only thing that mattered to me. My sister invited me to something she went to called Young Life and I always told her no and put it off. After about the 10^th time she asked me I finally decided to give it a shot and I loved it. The games were absolutely crazy, the songs were so much fun, and more than anything I found myself very interested in the talks at the very end. I was surprised of how little I really knew about who Jesus was. That summer I signed up for Young Life camp and had the best week of my life. It was the most fun I had ever had in my entire life. More importantly, it was the first time I had learned that I could have my own personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Unfortunately with hearing that great news, I told myself I would put it on hold for now and come back to it later.

                  Not much happened in my sophomore year of high school. I was still very into trying to be the best soccer player I could so that had about all of my focus, that and Young Life. I signed up for camp again that summer and didn’t take nearly as much away from it like I did my first year. More than anything I got extremely close to my Young Life leader. So close that I looked up to him like an older brother and I really trusted him with so much. To my complete surprise, after camp he quit being a Young Life leader. To this day I have never found out why but that was a pretty big turning point in my life. I was in such shock that the guy that I told everything, trusted beyond belief and looked up to had just quit and left without saying goodbye.

                  Going into my junior year I almost became a different person. I hated Young Life. I felt so betrayed, stabbed in the back, and blindsided by my leader quitting that I was completely against it. More so, I started to really find my identity in girls. They suddenly became everything to me, and I liked it. I was still very committed to soccer but if I wasn’t playing soccer than in some way, shape, or form I was talking to some girl. I was always with a girl, and if I was no longer with that girl then I was with another, it got to the point where I was just about never alone when it came to having a girl around. I didn’t want to commit to them as a boyfriend, but having them around was enough for me. That is pretty much all of what my junior year was about, consistently using girls and finding my identity in them.

                  As I went into my senior year of high school we got a new Young Life leader whose name was Carl. Carl was very intentional and was always at my high school at the end of the day, I did whatever I could to avoid him but sometimes he managed to sneak up on me. He had invited me to the first young life club in a long time and I told him I would go. Minutes before it started I told Carl I wasn’t going to make it because my stomach hurt and I didn’t feel like going. I was waiting for Carl to go off on me in anger and lecture me on how it’s wrong to lie to people and to throw it in my face, but he didn’t. I’ll never forget his response to me, he said “Luke I don’t care if you come to Young Life or not to be completely honest, I just want to hang out with you. If you don’t want to hang out at Young Life then let’s hang out another time somewhere else, I just want to be your friend.” I was in such shock when he told me that because before I always felt so used when I would go to Young Life and Carl made a point to me that it wasn’t like that. The next week I made it a point to go to Young Life for Carl and I loved it. Once again, everything about it was amazing. Shortly after that Carl asked me if I would be interested in helping him out with skits and I told him I would- later down the road I realized it was Carl’s secretive plan to get me to keep coming back- how awesome was that. I got pretty involved with Young Life and I was starting to really understand God so much more than ever before, but then I got a girlfriend; My first one ever. The first month of dating her was great- I had someone to depend on, talk to, make me feel wanted, give me satisfaction, someone to call mine. Then things started to slowly go downhill. She started to get involved in the party scene and it gradually became an every weekend kind of deal- I was completely against going out to parties in every sense so it really took a toll on me. She would start to lie to me. I remember finding out one time and did my best to talk to her about it. I remember pouring my heart out to her and telling her how much it hurt me, but she didn’t seem to care. I slowly pushed everything that once mattered away from me; my family, soccer, Young Life, my friends, God, everything. I made my girlfriend my priority above all else and put every ounce of hope I had into her. Things started to get even worse and she partied more, treated me with less and less respect, and started to ignore me. I was slowly becoming more and more depressed. I lost my apatite so I stopped eating as much, I lost the energy to work out because she was always on my mind, my grades in school started to really slip, soccer was no longer that important to me, and I would start napping throughout the days to make time go by faster so that it wouldn’t feel like she was actually ignoring me all of the time. My parents got really worries about me and took me to the hospital to get tested for MONO. They were really surprised to see that the results were negative but it turned out that I was just so depressed and no one knew about it because I pushed everyone away.

There was one night when I was sitting at home, I just got in a bad fight with my Mom and was alone in my room and I started to think about ways that I could just end my life. I thought life was supposed to be so much better than this and I had no idea what I was supposed to do so killing myself seemed like the best option. Before I got too far something popped into my head and I felt the need to just text Carl and see if he could meet up with me because of how hurt I was. It didn’t take long for him to respond and he was instantly there for me. We met up and for the first time in months and I finally told someone everything that I was going through and how bad I was hurting. Carl felt for me and told me that I desperately needed Christ back in my life; that I was made to have him in life. He also told me I needed to dig deep and pull out all the things that were really hurting me, starting with my girlfriend. I didn’t want to believe him but deep down inside I knew he was right. One week later the Lord gave me strength and empowered through me and I was able to break up with my girlfriend. It was one of the hardest things I had ever had to do because I gave her so much of me, but God got me through it. I then decided that night, on January 19^th, 2012 that I was going to not only believe in God but take my relationship with him serious. I felt like a new man, the old was gone and the new had come. I went into my high school and ran harder with Young Life than I ever had. I tried to be the best influence I could on my little brother and his friends. I got to help lead Young Life as a high school student and never felt so alive with Christ at the center of my life. That summer I signed up for camp and got to help lead a cabin with my best friend, Carl. It was life changing, I realized how empowered as a leader I was with Jesus Christ in control of my life. I was broken down and lost, but resurrected through Christ sand more than happy to get to serve him in this world.

What have I been doing? (2015)

Right now I am a junior at Christopher Newport University. Things are getting wild here and in Virginia campuses. Specifically, I am a co-founder and the current president to an organization called THRIVE that unites the campus monthly for a night of worship. We have seen people MEET THE LORD, we have seen people revive their relationship with him, we have seen ministries come together in the name of Jesus and love one another for the simplicity of his love. I am going to every ministry on my campus as a servant, a friend, and lover because I believe the Lord is calling me to be there in hopes that they will align with my vision from the Lord to unite as a family in the name of Jesus and revive our school. Additionally, I travel to different campuses in Virginia when the Lord calls me to. I have been all over the place and it is amazing what he is doing. Campuses are aligning in visions and doing similar things. We are FOR one another and we all want to see Virginia go on FIRE for the Lord. I love the Lord's voice. He is FAITHFUL and for that I pray for boldness and discernment to simply follow him and do anything he calls me to. He recently sent me to a party where I was able to pray for a guy there and the Lord literally restored this man's faith. God has me on this wild kick where he is calling me to go do something and he SHOWS UP every time. So I love what the Lord is doing in and through me right now and I want more of it. I believe he will increase.

Listening in the Moment

Dexter the Homeless man, NC.

A few months ago I was in Raleigh, North Carolina at a conference. On Friday night my good friend, Luke Jeffery, and I were meeting some friends for dinner. As we were walking to the restaurant, we ran into a homeless man named Dexter who asked us if we could help him out by giving him some money for a bus ticket. Honestly, everything in me did not want to give him the $10 in my wallet, but I felt the Lord telling me to so I did.

In that moment I got a word from the Lord over this man's life and it was that he was involved with gangs years ago. I asked him if this were true and sure enough he admitted that a huge part of his life, and a lot of the mess he is in today, resulted from the fact that he used to be in a gang and had invested all of his life to the streets. After talking with him a little more, Dexter openly confessed to us several addictions with which he struggled and that despite once being a Christian he had completely fallen away from the Lord. Luke and I asked Dexter if we could pray over him and we asked the Holy Spirit to completely free him of his addictions. I thought this was the end of the story...

When we ended the prayer Dexter kept talking to us so I asked God what more we were called to do for him. It became so clear all of the sudden that Dexter's soul was begging us to boldly declare to him that God wanted him back and that he needed to recommit his life to Jesus. I asked Dexter what he was waiting for and told him that it was so clear he not only wanted, but desperately needed to ask Jesus to come back into his life. Dexter’s response to us was something that completely shook me up... he told us that he didn’t feel worthy to be in a relationship with Jesus. WHAT A LIE THE ENEMY HAS FED MY FRIEND. I reassured him how false that was and then told him that the reality of the Gospel is that when Jesus went to the cross He took ALL the sin in the world with Him and that He desires to take those burdens from us still today. I told Dexter that even in the darkest, most broken place of his life God still so badly wants to be in a relationship with him and that no sin is too dark for the power of Christ to wash it clean.

After hearing all of this, I am ecstatic to tell you that Dexter then prayed to the LIVING God for forgiveness and received Jesus as his Savior. Witnessing this man feel the presence of God was indescribable. He was FULL of joy and claimed right then and there that he knew God was real. Right there on the streets of North Carolina this man surrendered his life to the Lord and it was one of the most beautiful prayers I've ever heard in my life. Nothing fancy, nothing poetic, just a broken man asking God to give him another chance. I felt funny not wanting to give this man $10 because the reality is that his soul is priceless. If you're reading this and don't know Jesus, know that you too are NOT too far or too sinful to receive Him as your savior.

Encountering Holy Moments Head on

A Life Changing Encounter: THE John Johnson

            While I was in California at a ministry training school called 21 Project, I had the wildest encounter with the Holy Spirit that truly changed my life forever.

            It was my fourth day in Pasadena and I was in a specific track at the school called Circuit Riders. Essentially, that track was all about evangelism and the equipping of sharing the Gospel anywhere you go. In the beginning of, for lack of a better word, class that day we were doing an exercise in which half the students in the room shared the Gospel and the other half improved a character that has never heard of God. I partnered up with my good friend, Alan, who happened to be black. (For whatever reason I just feel like this is an important point to add to the story). Our dialogue went just like this:

Luke: “Hey, what’s up man! My name is Luke… what’s yours?”

Alan: “Ayo wassup homie, muh name is Ace Hood.”

Luke: “haha c’mon bro, what’s your real name? That’s who I want to meet!”
Alan: “Oh word dog, well my name is John.”
Luke: “John!? Nice man, Luke and John… we’re in the bible together! Haha”
Alan: “Yeah word dog…”

Luke: “What’s your last name, John?”
Alan: “Oh my last name? Uhh… shoot. My last name? Uhh… Johnson!!”

Luke: “John… Johnson? Haha cool, nice to meet ya dude”

Anyways, long story short there I end up sharing the Gospel with this random character named John Johnson. Towards the end of our class we partnered up again and we were confessing any disbelief that we had to our partners in the room. I partnered up with my friend, Michael, and told him that I had such a lack of faith in my heart to believe that ALL of mankind could be saved by the news of the Gospel. I then told him I was specifically speaking of people from the hood that are in gangs. I confessed how wrong I was to believe that and that I wanted to have faith that ANYONE could be saved because Jesus died for EVERYONE! I prayed that prayer and believed God was going to help me in my unbelief… little did I know he would do it that very day.

Later in the evening everyone at the school went hiking to an amazing spot where we overlooked the entire city of Pasadena. We worshipped and prayed over the city and asked God to save the people of that city and for them to be encountered by his powerful love. It was a beautiful moment. On our way back to the school my good friend Allie who drove us to the mountain asked if we didn’t mind stopping at the store so she could buy some tea. We all had no objections and planned to stop by the next grocery store. Of course we missed our turn and decided to go to the next one we saw… coincidence? Nah. As we made our way in the store and nearby homeless man shouted out to us asking if we could spare some money for him. We told him on the way out we would give him any change we had. As soon as I walked in the store the Lord spoke to me and told me to go back out and talk to the homeless man. Everything in me wanted to just get what I needed and go on with my day but I knew I needed to be obedient to the Lord. So I made my way back to the front of the grocery store.

I went up to the homeless man and said hello to him and asked what his name was. He looked at me with a smirk and asked why I wanted to know his name… understandably so I guess. I told him my name was Luke and that I just wanted to talk with him and ask how he was doing. He then lightened up and told me his name was John. I laughed on the inside and figured I could stick with the script from earlier that day and joked with him about how we were in the bible together. He laughed at the joke and seemed to know what I was talking about so I had him if he was a Christian and he told me he was. I then asked him what his salvation story was or in other words how he came to know the Lord. He told me that his family is Christian and therefore he was. I did not want to judge that answer and told him I thought that was awesome and asked if I could pray for him and he gave me permission. As I prayed for him God immediately spoke to me and told me that He wanted to transform John’s heart through a Saul to Paul conversion. Referring back to the Bible of Saul who was persecuting Christians but then countered God in a mighty way and turned his life around by truly following God with all of his heart. As I was praying John interrupted me and told me he had to leave. I was confused by the sudden impulse and asked him why that was and he then responded to me telling me he had to do something that I couldn’t be around for and had to leave because of that. I knew John needed to stay and let me pray for him but also wanted to honor his requests so I asked him if I could buy him anything in the store. Reluctantly enough he was willing to stay and wait for me as I went to get him some orange juice in the store.

By the time I got out of the store my friend David walked out with me and saw two homeless guys nearby (John being one of them) and thought it would be a cool idea to pray for them. I chuckled and walked with him towards the homeless guys handing John the orange juice I bought for him. There was another homeless guy with him named Samuel and we asked him if we could pray for him as well as John again. Samuel’s face lit up as he said “yeah what a great idea! Let’s all hold hands and pray and allow God to do something cool.” I figured he was mocking us but I figured what the heck, if anything this guy really does need prayer. As I started to pray for him God put the actual person of Samuel from the bible on my heart. I told him how Samuel was a prophet for the Lord and would anoint the next king to be. I then told the man in front of me, Samuel, that I felt like the Holy Spirit was going to empower Samuel and mark him with a similar calling to speak life over other people and anoint them through prophecy. As I was saying that I was thinking to myself, this guy is homeless! He has absolutely no idea what I am talking about… am I really hearing from God!? Well that answer was quickly answered and it was so affirming to realize that I did indeed hear from God. After I finished praying for Samuel he immediately laid his hands on me and started praying over me. He prayed over the things I had already accomplished and prophesied over me the things I was going to do which lined up accordingly to what I was passionate about and felt God calling me into. I kid you not, I even felt burning on my chest from where he had places his hands. At some point you just have to accept that the Holy Spirit is moving and it was in that moment that God was taking a lot of doubt out of my own heart and showing me how real and tangible his presence was.

After Samuel was done praying we learned that he loved God and how he committed his life to going wherever the Spirit led him. During that time John was walking back and fourth hovering in and out of our conversations. In the process of Samuel leaving the Holy Spirit gripped my heart for John in a supernatural way. I couldn’t really explain what happened but all of the sudden I felt the hurt in john’s own heart and God was highlighting a moment in his life to me that hurt him. I asked John if there had ever been a moment in his life where he got really hurt or just felt broken. To my surprise, john opened up to me. He told me that back in the day he rolled with a well known gang known as the bloods. During that time, he got thrown in prison and while he was locked up the blood’s rival gang known as the crypts has attacked his little brother in a car and killed him. John expressed his hatred for the guys that did that and told me that everything in him wanted to get back at them and kill them. As soon as I heard that I understood the pain I had felt in my heart and realized that God had shared that with me so that I could challenge John in an attempt to allow the Lord to heal his heart. I asked John if he forgave the guys that killed his brother. Immediately after I asked John that he aggressively got in my face cursing me out and angrily objecting the question I asked him. I felt the authority of the Holy Spirit and came back at him with aggression telling him to hear me out before he came after me with such hatred. I reminded him that he told me he was following Jesus and asked if he realized that we, as humans, did a very similar thing that the crypts did to john’s little brother. I explained to John that it was our sin that hung Jesus on a cross and killed him yet Jesus didn’t seek revenge but only forgiveness for our wrongdoing. John took a long pause and looked down and when he looked back up at me I realized there was something different about his look. I took the opportunity in that time to ask him if I could pray for him again with my friends and he allowed it. As we were praying the Lord spoke to me and told me that he wanted to come back into John’s life for real and change it. I asked John if he wanted to give his life back to Jesus and he confirmed that he did. I then led John on what to say and listened as this broken man humbled himself and gave his life to Jesus. It was absolutely incredible.

What happened next was a moment that seriously changed my life forever. After we prayed John’s face LIT UP with a smile. Roughly half and hour ago this man wouldn’t even share his name with me and now he was embracing all of us with a huge hug and was filled with laughter. I literally witnessed this man have a Saul to Paul transformation just as God promised. In the process of praying of him some lady had stopped by and gave one of our friend’s an invitation to her church. She said that she saw us praying and felt called to invite us… what is hilarious is that God knew what he was doing all along. As we were saying our final goodbyes to John I asked him what his last name was, he looked at me and said Johnson. I swear time froze in that moment. I was in absolute awe of what God had done. He perfectly orchestrated every step of mine from the beginning of my day and had completely revived my faith that all men could be saved by the Gospel, even the gang bangers. It was a moment where I truly was undone by God’s power. It is real and impossible to explain. It took me to a place where I realized that I don’t even want to comprehend it, I just want to trust that He truly is who He says He is and never doubt Him again. God is GOOD.

Outside Reading: Spoken Language

In this course, we have explored different aspects of Primal Religion and the influences of it on religion today. The topic of spoken language is integral in the discussion of these early practices. A friend of mine that majors in Linguistics at William and Mary graced me with a conversation about language when I told him about this aspect of our class. 

There are a ton of differences in language that influence our livelihood today. We don't notice it too much in every day life because we're so absorbed in our own context. Even the foreign language we tend to learn in America are closely related European languages that aren't too different structurally. You can only think in the terms that your language has provided for you...

Most languages I know are built around complex verb conjugations that allow description of events with a lot of precision. In some cases, you even need to refer to the way in which you learned about an event. Some languages have distinctions in the person (like 1st, 2nd, 3rd person)- these distincitons convey whether they include the person you're talking to or not. When these details are a required part of your language, you're naturally going to be thinking about those things. 

Languages in Africa have whole systems of classifying nouns that classify based on physical or spiritual properties. A system like that is naturally going to have many more connotations about relations and functions of objects. Family terms are different in lots of language - for example, in some, the word for brother/sister is the same as the word for cousin. The words you use to talk about your family can affect how close/distant you feel about them relationally. 

One of the most interesting topics in this line of thought is time - In western language and thought, time is very commoditized. To Americans, time can be "saved" and "spent"... We adhere to schedules and view time as something linear. In other languages and cultures time can be viewed as cyclical or free flowing like a river. Christianity asserts that time is something that solely resides on earth and this life as we know it, but God sits outside our concept of time. Time isn't thought of in terms of discreet events and blocks but as interconnected patterns and symbolic events, like the passage of seasons. A culture is inextricably tied to the language spoken in that culture... Different languages aren't just different vocab words for things, but completely different ways of describing and viewing things. 

From the conversation with my brilliant friend, we came to the conclusion that you can only think in the parameters your language lays out.

Assigned Reading: Lane

In Lane's work, a concept is proposed to depict a way of life. Habitus is defined as a ritual way of living in a place, where the habitat is the place itself. From this topic derives the thought, how would this be manifest in present day America? With this entry, I would like to assert a notion that the American Dream has manufactured a certain habitus in our country. What began as a movement to achieve equality and equal possibility for success among different groups of people, regardless of social class and stature. Here, a social industry such as the caste system is turned on its head. Essentially, hard work determines success. In this way, the habitus of America has become a self centered and self-promoting society. American-Dreamers claw their way to the top to achieve their idea of enlightenment in wealth.

In America, it became a widely accepted way of life that is obsessed with achievement. Identity relies on occupation and worth is counted in dollar signs. As foreigners come in, the standard is clear-on one hand, there is a wealth of opportunity in America for redemption. No longer do they have to live under the mistakes of their past-they enter a new place in hopes of a resurrected life on the terms of a hopeful reality communicated by the "Land of the Free". However, on the other hand,  this works-oriented society is surrounded by invisible gates of discrimination against foreigners and anyone that carries the face similar to a person who has betrayed trust in the past. This habitus of the country contains requisites that are not explicitly stated but are in fine print between the lines of immigration bills. The American Dream is a dream if we accept you. The people of America work hard to reap well, manipulate a sense of education to climb the social spectrum and knock anyone down who is in the way.

Assigned Reading: Abrams

On pg 120, Abrams notes that story or songs "readily incorporate themselves into our felt experience". What is it that we think of when we see certain things? I am constantly mistaking perfect strangers for a dear friend, simply because my brain will connect a certain facial feature to that of someone I know well.

As Abrams brings up the concept of "animate terrain", we are prompted to consider two coinciding, yet self-contrasting ideas:

practical orientation versus conceptual orientation

While a person may think of something in a practical manner and see a rock as what it is-a rock, another person may see it for its potential. What does the rock contain? This rock could be crushed into a powder used for paint or used as a cornerstone for a home. These methods of thought are not always exclusive within a person, but are typically contradicting urges of thought. As the class engaged in discussion on this topic, I came to realize why I don't test well.

Cognitively, I can grasp any material that is introduced to me in an educational setting. However, when it comes time to recall and reapply the material, I take an approach that diverges from what is typically expected. While there is a straight-lace, A-to-B approach to a question or prompt, my brain frantically circles multiple possibilities of the implications as to what the question could be asking (or what a given word could mean). While there is a desired end (when it comes to learned content recollection), my means to get there is roundabout and unbiased when it comes to extracting a conclusion. Anything could work and everything has reason. Even with math problems, there are different manipulations with the numbers and infinite possibilities of methods to get there. A shallow understanding of science is a line, but even the most mathematical of disciplines contains an artistic array of possible outcomes.

Kip Redick, Introduction

Welcome to the 2016 Primal Religions class blog.

Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry. Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The student should bring questions from the blog to class and ask those questions that were raised in specific blog entries. As those questions are addressed and answered in the classroom discussions, the student should make note of the discussion and answers within subsequent blog entries. This class blog will reflect the quality of the student’s daily classroom participation and completion of homework assignments, and will be graded with this in mind. The student may submit the blog for grading at several times during the course of the semester. The blog is not the same thing as a compilation of class lecture notes; it is the product of written personal reflection related to the class. A good journal will contain at least 15 entries.   5 of the entries must relate to assigned class books or journal articles.  5 of the entries must be reflections on outside readings, something not assigned as part of the class requirements.  Finally, 5 of the entries will be centered on a topic of the student’s choosing.  Each blog entry should be dated and given a title related to the subject of reflection.