Paul Prins

Marking the start of the third month of the Occupy movement’s work in lower Manhattan I feel like I have finally had enough time to process through everything that has been going on to share a few thoughts and one frustration. Let start by saying that I believe this is a thoughtful group of people with important things to say.

My Frustration

First the frustration. There has been widespread attempts to marginalize this movement of people. This has been done by attempting to hijack their slogans (We are the 99%, etc.) and calling them to get jobs. Those who have marginalized this movement have – more than likely – avoided interacting with their very clear core complaint. This also includes all of the spin-off advertising (Jay-Z…) and attempts to redirect the frustration into other pursuits.

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Life is a rolling series of new beginnings that we often fail to acknowledge. It seems that life can be viewed one of two ways, as a series of conclusions, or of beginnings. With the deluge and overlapping story lines of our lives, every day we are rolling through these points. Points that can be viewed either way.

Over the last many weeks I have been watching my own life, and those lives intertwined with my own, to see how we view these moments. There have been many big changes in my life this year that fall into this category: my dad’s passing away, changing churches, and bringing on staff to help Fresh Vine grow (amongst smaller stories). The same goes for my friends, but I won’t write of them here.

I try to look at each of these being the beginning of a new story. My dad’s passing starts the story of my life continued without his council and smile. Starting to attend Mill City has been the beginning of many new friendships and opportunities. Fresh Vine is a different organization than it was a year ago (two new employees, many new clients, amazing opportunities, new branding, and more exposure).

Looking at scripture this plays out as well. When Adam/Eve fell in the garden it was the beginning of the story, not the end. When Christ died on the cross it was not a conclusion, but another beginning. There is life after the fall, there is life after Christ, and there is life after death. This is not mystical hogwash, but reality. Yet many want to look at Christ as the end of faith, yet I believe Jesus saw himself as the beginning and means to a new life. The life that God intended from the beginning and was never possible before Christ. Even death is a new beginning, eternity is not an end but another beginning. There are no last pages in life, only starting points to what is to come.

Starting points call us to live each moment with excitement for where the story goes next.
I can promise you it will be good, bad, and ugly – and I can’t wait.

Press at a National Event (USFO)

It’s a bit bizarre, but every now and then I find myself in one of those moods. Wondering what life would be like had I not walked away. After years of hard work I had achieved an incredibly unique situation, having access into a very closed off industry and getting offered several jobs every year to do whatever I wanted (magazines, event production, filming, etc). This was a deep honor, and amazing considering I wasn’t even 18 years old. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week Dr. Philip Jenkins came and spoke to a number of faculty and students at Bethel Seminary on the subject matter of several of his books (most recently ‘The Lost History of Christianity‘). It was very eye opening. His focus has primarily been the eastern and African church during the millennium of the church. Here is a brief except from an interview with him discussing the eastern church.

Also, this Eastern world has a solid claim to be the direct lineal heir of the earliest New Testament Christianity. Throughout their history, the Eastern churches used Syriac, which is close to Jesus’s own language of Aramaic, and they followed Yeshua, not Jesus. Everything about these churches runs so contrary to what we think we know. They are too ancient, in the sense of looking like the original Jerusalem church; and they are too modern, in being so globalized and multi-cultural.

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This past weekend was our spring retreat for our crusade movement here at Stout. It was a fun weekend to spend hanging out with friends and meeting new people. While the content of the talk was fairly familiar to me, the Lord still moved in that time to revel things to me that require my attention.

Nothing in my faith has been as fundamental or important as the time I spend daily praying and weekly fasting. This past weekend the Lord reminded me how much he wants to hear my prayers so that he can give the answer to them that he wants too.

“You do not have, because you do not ask God.” James 4:2
For a long time now I have been rationalizing my prayers to god, trying to explain to Him why he should answer my petition and this truth had been forgotten. That God desires to answer our prayers and I was lacking to confidence to believe that.

Instead believing that it was my persuasiveness that would bring God’s will to earth, not his infinite love and passion for his children.

If only Aristotle was alive today to observe and comment upon everything in our present world that he could have hardly dreamt of. Lately in two of my courses we’ve revisited his study of rhetoric in one form or another. They always say that ethos, or personal reputation, holds the most weight with people and is the most influential towards our decisions. Yet I wonder if this is true in the traditional sense anymore.

With the advent of the internet it has allowed anyone with grammatical skill, ability to research, and to present sound arguments and professional appearing materials and literature. What reputation does anonymous Joe have who creates an alias online under a presumed name and background. Only a perceived reputation and thus perceived ethos, this ‘phantom ethos’ would allow anyone with wit and skills to influence multitudes of people as themselves or as a fictitious character.
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I’ve never had one. It wasn’t that there weren’t people in my life who had admirable accomplishments, but they all had so many failures attached to them. Here is the other catch that is never realized. By defining a role model we are un-verbally deciding that the level of their achievement is un-attainable. No matter what I do, who I become, I will always be second to this person.

By looking up to and striving after anyone other then the Christ we are going to fall short of everything that we are possible of becoming. Since no-one can become Christ, we all fall short by our very nature, we are thus striving to the peak of everything possible. Until the day I die I will be running after my first love, the tender embrace that brought me life, the one who saved me from a life of routine, and for whose name I will scream with my last breath before the hush of the worlds.

Fall short of perfection, or fall short of imperfection. The choice is not mine.

It’s muses like this which are so rich in my life that cause me to wonder if I am truly the same as those around me. Things I’ve known since I before I can remember.

Look around yourself and you see people, more noticeable then the majority of their characteristics is there confidence. It is something that people can just sense in others. So here is the base of confidence. It will always fail you, no one is perfect and we all struggle and falter. No one is exempt. Yes there are things one can do to improve his odds, to stumble and fail less, yet it is still there. False confidence is something else all together, the man who has given in to believe he’ll never be what he can and doesn’t have the courage to show the world.

Here is the clincher, God will never fail, and He is never wrong. Men run to the ends of the earth to build their confidence in themselves when God is just waiting. He waits for us to put our full confidence in the only confidence that will never fail. The plans of God are flawless from tomorrow’s provisions of food and love, the minor details of life all the way unto eternity in Heaven. So like really is just what the title states, confidence. The only determining factor is where we place ours. Where do you?

Lately this has really been press upon my mind. In one of the forums God helps me provide spiritual insight and prayer a person is really challenged as of late. Best friend died, parents split, and his whole life seems to be going down the drain. But at the same time God has been showing me more and more of His glory than ever before.

The higher the God becomes in our sight, the further above us that He rises in all his Glory, Majesty, Splendor, Righteousness, and Holiness, the less unjust the world appears. For in truth, the very rising of the sun every morning is an act of completely mercy on a worthless and broken creation, that had it been me I would have abandoned. Yet God is continually choosing us, loving us, and searching for his lost folds of sheep in this world.

In the presence of the indescribable Glory of Jesus Christ, every ‘injustice’ is beyond deserved because there is nothing we deserve, even today. May this truth only increase my worship and praise.

In elementary school the girls used to fill pages in the notebooks with names, and the names they wrote didn’t exist. They were the name of their friends with the surname of their crush, or even theirs. There was this excitement at the prospect of changing their name. An excitement that was laughable by nearly every boy.

Ten years later Jesus saves me. Yet my name is still my name, even though the word of God says I am now part of the bride of Christ. How I wish I had the same excitement about this truth, as those innocent and young school girls had about a crush. That I would desire my name to fade that Jesus might be exalted in everything and though every breath of mine.