James Harmer

Man, when I’m about to fall asleep I get the best ideas for writing entries. I think it’s because I have the whole day to reflect on and my mind awakens and thinks all of these thoughts… very meaningful thoughts, but sometimes I wish it would shut up at night, because I want to sleep. So yeah, I usually come to this blog to write in the morning, because at college that’s the only time I have… the morning. And because my mind goes full-throttle at night, it doesn’t function well in the morning. It’s hard to get it running on all four cylinders(Actually mine is probably like, two cylinders.)

Seriously, as I lay there in bed I start to think all in depth and stuff, and I’m all like “Tomorrow I’m gonna write about this!!” And then in the morning I can remember… but it’s not the same as at night, my mind is no longer interested in those kind of things… it can’t handle it and simply will not work. I get here and I can remember what I thought about, but I can’t write about it like I can at night, when my mind is alive. I just can’t generate the moment again… because the first time it happened it was spontaneous, and I was ready to post right then. But now? I could write about it, but it wouldn’t translate to anyone well because I would be trying to work my self up and get back into the thought process I was in. I simply can not do that, because it would be like an attempt to Copy and Paste thoughts… it won’t work.

You know, how I just mentioned above, trying to “generate the moment again?” How often do we do that? I was thinking about when I led worship at the school prayer meetings at HD… for a while I was trying to emulate things that had worked before, but it just made things worse. We can’t think that way with God, He is the God of all Creativity, and He loves spontaneity, it’s a big part of His character if you read the Bible. There are some parts of traditions, and everyday life that have great meaning, and should always stay the same. How would you like it if you were having brain surgery and the doctors were like “Well, we don’t want to be religious or anything… so today we’re going to have a Bunny do the operation… and while we’re at it… we’ll replace the tongs with Chop Sticks!!” It wouldn’t make me comfortable.

So yeah, some traditions and Religious practices are great, and God ordained them. But I’m talking about things that God did not ever want to be Religious… but men have made Religious. Worship is such an amazing thing… prophetic praise and worship, intercession. They are all big words and people often associate things with them. They hear the word “Worship” and picture a bunch of people in a church with their hands lifted, or people singing, or maybe people clapping their hands… etc. They hear “Intercession” and they think of people laying on their faces, people shouting, people flopping around like fish(that freaks me out), and they picture other things too. The thing is, all of these things happen sometimes(Except the part about flopping around like fish… I hope that doesn’t happen in your church.) God moves in so many ways, but we narrow what He can do with tradition and often, fear. I wonder what the root of all man-made tradition is… I wonder who came up with the first church tradition that the Bible makes no mention of. Was it someone who saw God use something great a number of times, and thought “That must be the only thing God uses!!” Did they read about something God did in the Bible that worked amazing and think, “That’s what we need to do!” Maybe today while I’m eating lunch I should stand on a table in the cafeteria and take someones pizza and coke and make five-thousand of them to feed the 200 College students in there(you know it would take that many to feed them… they’re college kids!)

I think that maybe most man made traditions are simply the result of someone trying to “emulate the moment.” And it was probably a good moment, and God used it… but people took it too far. Who knows, maybe once a statue of Jesus cried tear-drops of blood, and it really moved people and a whole bunch got Saved!! You know, the Bible says that signs and wonders should follow those who believe, not those who believe should follow signs and wonders. Maybe a church a long time ago didn’t have chairs, and it had these big benches… that had red(or blue if you’re baptist) fuzzy stuff on them… and God moved greatly in that church and millions of lives were changed!! So now, most churches don’t have chairs, they have these things they call “pews”, and there’s something Holy about a pew that somehow a chair simply can not emulate. And then there are many traditions that I just don’t understand how they could have started… but sometimes it seems like we worship traditions. I always wonder why some churches have their Priests/Pastors dress like Pharisees did. Why Mormons have their “Holy Underwear”, why traditional churches rule out all contemporary worship… why all contemporary churches rule out traditional hymns. Why Catholics baptize babies… why do we think angels have halos? And why do we get the idea that we will be angels and “get our wings” when we get to heaven? Why we do things that aren’t in the Bible.

Some things are just a battle over interpretation of the Bible(Speaking in tongues, Calvinism/Arianism, the five billion interpretations of Revelation) … but the Bible never mentions pews, crying statues, contemporary worship styles, baby baptisms or special garments for the five fold ministry. Oh well… this is what happens sometimes when I write my entries. You witness a part of the process of my mind coming alive. It’s waking up right now, and this is my thought process recorded. You now know what James Harmer was thinking about at around 9:48 AM, on Monday, the 5th of March. You have witnessed the transition from my morning brain to my… twenty minutes after morning brain? I’m not fully awake yet that’s for sure. That’s all this blog is for the most part… a little look into my mind. Sometimes you see it at it’s high places, sometimes at it’s low places… and sometimes at it’s strange places. Where is it today? Only you can judge that, and I guess that’s what comments are for. What do ya think, am I weird? I’m pretty sure I am, I just hope it’s in a good way.

Oh well… I’m going to eat some food.

Later’
-James’