Dental Ow-age

This week has been ridiculous, but hopefully after tomorrow's meeting with H&R Block, I can be done with obligations for the break!

Dentist & Orthodontist
I'm very good about brushing my teeth and flossing. I got a perfect 10 on dental health, and I got a "none" rating on gum bleeding after the dentist's brutal flossing adventure. On a typical day, I brush 4 or 5 times and floss, but even with this all in mind, I had three cavities in my front four teeth.

They were shallow and early in their decay, but today's trip to the dentist was ridiculously painful. I don't know what my deal is with being numb. First, when the topical anesthetic is put on my gums, my heart races, and I keep thinking, "I'm going to be numb," and I have to breathe deeply so I don't black out. I don't know how much is mental and how much is physiological. I know some is definitely physiological, and probably most of it since I've fainted from a reaction to a numbing eye drop before, and my heart does crazy stuff after the topical stuff.

However, even more, once I get the numbing shot, in 10 minutes, I feel everything again. EVERYTHING. Maybe it was because the cavities were so far forward. However, every time the drill went on (I cringe every time I think about today), it was horrible. Oh man, especially when they'd drilled it down and then the assistant blew cold air on it. OWWWWWW.

Ug. Yeah, so I kept getting shots, and then 10 minutes later, I would feel it all again. About 5 minutes after walking out, I felt everything again. Yeouch.

I'm glad that's done, but man, my teeth were throbbing after I felt it again.

I told my nephew Evan (he's 5), and he told me:

Evan: "Uncle Sterling"
Me: "Yeah?"
Evan: "You should brush your teeth...EVERY DAY!"
Me: "I do! I usually brush 4 or 5 times a day!"
Evan: "Oh.......You should stop eating food!"

haha

Evan also insists that I want a boomerang for my birthday (instead of a wife or ordination or both, which I really could go for).

Done in May
It's about TIME! I can't wait to be done with school for all intensive purposes. Maybe one day, I'll be "Dr. Sterf" instead of "DJ Sterf," but I really just want to get out and pastor a church. I'd do the degree if the church or elder board wanted me to keep up some form of Theological education, though that'd be well within part-time.

32-Minute Video
I had an interview with a French gaming mag, and they literally took out everything I said about Jesus and Salvation. They did keep a general 'God' in there, but yeah, here's the entire interview unedited:

http://www.djsterf.net/articles/franceinterview.html

They did want to link a YouTube video from my channel to the interview, so I made a 32-minute evangelistic video with a lot of random stuff in it (DDR in a suit, a tour of the church, Buffalo Wild Wings, Psalm 23 devotional, etc.). It's 32 minutes long.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJVzkMeF1W4
Embed:

Church
I finished the series on being sent & commissioned by God (Isaiah 6 - Matthew 28 - Acts 13). I'm starting another on some passages relating to the power of Prayer (starting w/ Acts 3 & 4). The Minor Prophets continue with Micah this Sunday. I think I'm done with Youth Group for a while.

I did a show for the Youth Group, and I played MAGIC Speedball as the last song. I still have the audio from when people absolutely freaked out during the speed-up. I had eight sections this time, each separated by a song or set of songs. The sections this time were: General Intro - Testimony - Talents - Glorifying God - Perfection (our lack of and God's solution to) - Discipleship - Suffering - Hope.

Hehe that's enough for an entry. God bless.

Comfort in Grief: Part I

This topic is not a result of the pad miss you see to the right on the Max 300 picture, though I would have been annoyed (though not really very grieved) had I not AAAed it a few times before! I want to talk to you about Grief.

A Key Purpose in Going through Grief...

The Lord puts us through situations that try us, stretch us, and often make us grieve quite a bit. In going through tough situations, there are two options:

(1) Run to the God who comforts us and gives us peace (as Job initially did in Job 1)
(2) Run away from God in fear, anger, or both (as Jonah did in Jonah 1 and 4)

It's more useful to run to God, though it's not our natural instinct to do so. Given a healthy approach to grieving, we can receive comfort from the Lord, and He can carry us through really hard times in life. One important dynamic to note is from 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 --

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God."

So one KEY purpose of going through tough situations is for us to grow us so that we can comfort (and thus encourage) others in tough situations.

Comfort in Grief --> The Lord comforts us (and others) -- we comfort others with the same comfort which we have received -- others are built up in their times of grief -- others comfort others

What is Empathy?

Sympathy is feeling bad for somebody. Empathy is feeling with somebody. It's sympathy as well as showing that you care for others and understanding their pain (even more, bearing one another's burdens as in Galatians 6:2). Empathy also involves genuine interest and active listening. It's a wonderful thing, and a good counseling practice.

So I must mention: The Lord wants empathic comforters. I will cover that topic much more in Part II.

A Personal Case in Point

Oh hi. Hopefully this will be comforting to some -- I wanted to share a story of the Lord's comfort in my own life. I went through a situation that was very painful to me as of late, and it's a time in which the Lord is really carrying me through (slowly but surely).

The Lord really comforts through Scripture. Not only does Scripture change you from the inside out, but it also serves as great comfort in time of need. Here are some of the verses that have been a real comfort to me lately (ESV & KJV):

Psalm 38:21-22
21 Forsake me not, O LORD: O my God, be not far from me.
22 Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation.

Psalm 46:1
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Psalm 125:1-2
1 Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.
2 As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people, from this time forth and forevermore.

Psalm 37:5-6
5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act.
6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.

Psalm 37:30-31
30 The mouth of the righteous utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks justice.
31 The law of his God is in his heart; his steps do not slip.

Psalm 37:3-4
3 Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:23-24
23 The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.
24 Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand.

Psalm 37:25-26
25 I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.
26 He is ever lending generously, and his children become a blessing.

Psalm 37:40
The LORD helps them and delivers them; he delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in him.

As a human, I see the blessings and responsibilities of a wife and family in the future. As a future full-time pastor (if the Lord so tarries), I truly wonder about financial issues since a lot of churches throw a few dimes at a pastor and wish him well. The Lord will provide in the right way and at the right time, and those verses have been a comfort relating to some of those issues as of late.

One cool thing involved with this is that I prayed for help with assignments here at Trinity since I wasn't thinking straight and it was hard to focus. Grief often takes 4-6 weeks to really sort through and get over (see Kanel's A Guide to Crisis Intervention and Wright's The New Guide to Crisis & Trauma Counseling).

Here's what happened with my assignments that week:

Class 1 - No Reading, and no quiz!
Class 2 - The teacher told us to skim the reading instead of laboriously slaving over it, and she moved two projects and paper to a week later.
Class 3 - The teacher CANCELLED THE FINAL PROJECT. She said, "I don't know why, but I just feel that I should cancel it." Holy cow, cool? She also is giving me more time to take the last test since I'm going on tour next week.
Class 4 - The teacher has nothing due until November anyway, so that one was easy enough!
Class 5 - The teacher said that we would get 100 on the Final Exam if we took a 7-hour fast one day. I was already going to for personal reasons on the Saturday following his announcement, so I got a 100 on a Final Exam in addition to having the Lord help me through fasting and prayer.
Class 6 - The teacher moved a set of Journal assignments two weeks later, moved the study guides to next week (I already was done with those, though), CANCELLED THE MIDTERM. He's only done that once in his 30 years of teaching.

Two classes also finished this week. So that brings me down to 4 classes and a Pastoral Ministry Field Ed for the rest of the semester. That's a major relief, and at just the right time.

So for me, this has been a time of the Lord's comfort, the Lord's presence, and the Lord's amazing provision of so many things all at once that gives me time to grieve and adjust back to normal functionality. However, it would not be fair to neglect the fact that the Lord has been working out my schedule amazingly this semester.

It's exciting and amazing to see the Lord's Hand at work, and I pray that through tough times, you will run to the Lord as well and really depend on Him. He is truly the God of all comfort as well as an amazing orchestrator of so many beautiful things in their time.