Thrive in college - PASSION

PASSION is imperative.

            Choose a major which fits your passion!

   As a student at Colorado Christian University, I was totally engaged because I was carrying out my passion!  And I had much hope my studies would lead to a career which fit my passion.  Success resulted.

            What is your passion?

Study with success!

   The best way to engage in studying is by interacting with your textbook.  Do not just read a textbook, rather interact with that book!

   How do you interact with your book?

You highlight key points in your book.

You ponder what the author is saying.

You respond to what he or she is saying by writing notes in the margin.

   Interacting with your book, you go from listening to a long lecture to having a conversation.  You are more likely to remember what took place in a conversation.

   One of my great unexpected blessings as a student at Colorado Christian University was my opportunity to serve as the Biblical Studies tutor for one year.  I totally enjoyed it.

   In that position as a tutor, I stated to every student: ‘A highlighter is your most important study tool.’

   I know there is much more online reading today.  Yet you can still do electronic highlighting.

   One barrier to highlighting: When I was in high school, all of our textbooks issued to us students were the property of that school.  We were instructed not to write in them at all.  How limiting.  Unfortunately, many students develop the mentality that it is wrong to write in a book, even when they are at the university level where textbooks are often their own property.  If that is the case with you, write in one of the first few pages of one of your textbooks which you own: 'Highlighting my book is a good thing!'

   When reading library books for research papers, you obviously cannot highlight.  For a physical library book, plop sticky notes right where main points are stated in the book, so you will have that information marked for when you start writing the research paper.

   Finally, write all you want in books which you own.  It is your book, thus get personal!  When I really agree with what the author is saying, it often helps to write personal supporting statements in the margin, and to give my logical reasoning.  When I really disagree with what the author is saying, it sometimes helps to write out my disagreements in the margin, and to give my logical reasoning.

   Ponder what the author is saying!  Then respond in writing!

   The bottom line: Highlighting, pondering statements made by the author, and responding in writing in the margins of the book, fosters textbook engagement.

   My formal education at all levels was not interactive enough in my opinion, with the exception of Colorado Christian University.  Yet one great blessing regarding my life long education over many years: When reading, I have interacted with countless books with a highlighter and a pen.  If you do likewise, you will learn more.  And if you are a student, you will have key information on paper to review before you take an exam.

Hunter Irvine

Do great on a test!

   I am an interactive learner.  I am a thinker.  I am creative, in my own personal way.  On the flip side, I do not like standardized tests!

   Yet when a student at Colorado Christian University, I learned some techniques which aided my success.  I would have never graduated summa cum laude without implementing these techniques.  Consider them, and discover whether they will help you.

   When starting your exam, scan the entire exam to see the nature of the test.  Then my big suggestion: Start with the essay questions if there are some.  And of those questions, start with the one of which you are certain of your response.

   Why?

   Essay questions are the most challenging, yet if you are prepared, then you will be all set to write your answers without the distraction of the many issues covered in multiple choice questions.

   As you continue, if there is an essay question you do not know the answer to, skip it until later.

   Second, go to the short answer questions.  After doing the essay questions, thoughts should be flowing on the subject at hand, and you should rock the short answers.

   Again, skip any questions you do not know until later.

   Third, answer the multiple choice questions.  After writing those essays and short answers, you are on the downhill slope, and you can roll into multiple choice questions ready to focus on the correct answers, rather than getting distracted by the junk heap of possibilities.

   Again, skip any questions you do not know until later.

   A big tip: I use to cover the multiple choice possibilities with my arm when I was reading the question.  I would try to think of the answer without looking at the selection.  Thus I had my answer before looking at the various wrong choices.

   For the finale, go back and answer the questions you did not know and thus skipped.  (If you skipped many, scan the entire exam at the end to ensure you do not to miss any.)

   Hopefully by the end you are in a zone on the subject, and hopefully you are not feeling a time pressure, thus it is the best time to consider any answers you were not sure of earlier.

   For this last step, if you have extra time, take it!

   When I was a student at Virginia Tech back in the last century, I was often one of the last students out of a class during a test.  And some of those classes had more than a hundred students in them.  I studied for those tests, and I realized that spending an extra fifteen minutes or so working on my test could result in getting one or two answers correct which would have otherwise been wrong.  Those were some of the best spent minutes for me at Virginia Tech.

   Take your time and do it right!

   And stating this at the conclusion, I declare what should be done first: Pray.

   If you say a prayer sometime before the test, even if it is on the way to the class, you are opening yourself up for God to help you become more focused!

Hunter Irvine

All children need Jesus!

Matthew 18: 10-14

   I grew up in a large townhouse complex in a big metro area.  There were many children who lived in the townhouse complex, so there were often other children to play with.  I was considered a ‘goody-goody,’ which in retrospect I am thankful for, since being nice to people is always a good thing.

   A bunch of us kids were playing “kickball” one day.  Then one of the kids rolled on the ground, and grabbed the ball.  He said he was not going to let us have it.  We all circled around him and told him to give us the ball.  He said “no.”  So I gave the ball a kick, trying to knock it loose.  In doing so, I hit his finger.  That kid started crying in pain.  And we happened to be right in front of his townhouse.  I had never had something like that happen, and it scared me.  I left, going down to the end of the block of townhouses.  When I look behind, I could see the boy’s mom come out, and the other kids yelled to her, “He went down there.”  Then I was really scared.  I ended up running down an entire two blocks of townhouses, which was a long ways for me at that age.

   I looped around the edge of townhouses which face the parking lot.  Then I walked back up towards my townhouse row.  I perched behind a stairwell.  The kids had gone back to playing kickball.  All was back to normal with them, yet I was separated.  Being ‘in trouble,’ I did not know how I could go back.  I watched them play kickball for a while, but then they stopped.  I went down a bit by the road, and stood in the deep door well of a ground floor townhouse.  One kid, a kid I considered a bully, came walking right by.  He was calling out my name.  I stood still, and he walked right past me as I stood in the shadow of the door well.

   Yet the longer I stood there, the more distraught I became.  I wanted to go home, but I felt trapped.

   What may have been only a few minutes later, though it seemed like a long time, my dad walked by.

   “Dad!” I said in an enthusiastic yet muffled voice.  Dad and I took a walk around the neighborhood and he listened to me.  Then during the walk, Dad stated how it is always best to stay and deal with a rough situation rather than running away from it.  It was wise advice for a lifetime.

   Now Isaiah 53:6 states, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his or her own way;

and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (NIV).

   In my youth, I was a ‘goody-goody,’ and I was Captain of the Safety Patrols, and I was an Eagle Scout, and I had much success as a student at Virginia Tech, yet there was a separation from my Father in heaven.

   Now I did gain in my youth a private belief there is a God, sometimes praying for young ladies I liked.  And God kept reaching out to me, and there came times when I was seeking truth about God.  But because there was a separation between God and myself, I was spiritually dying.

   On April 15, 1990, that separation came to an end as I gave my heart to Jesus.  The second statement in Isaiah 53:6 is: “…and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  That Him is Jesus the Messiah.  Jesus was the One who took all of the sins of every person of all time, past, present, and future, in His own heart, and died for those sins as the substitute on the cross.

   And now the decision is yours.  Jesus has found you!  If you receive Him, you will be saved from the consequence of yours sins, which is spiritual death, and you will have eternal life.

   For those of us who have been saved, we have a mighty calling.  And that calling includes doing all we can to love the children in our lives.  May I get personal here and say that at this time in history here in America, we are living in a time of cultural decadence.  Even at a young age, many children are being exposed to a barrage of evil.  Even in some schools they are being taught many things which contradict the teachings of Jesus.  Even in some Christian churches, children are being taught some things which contradict the teachings of Jesus.  Instead, we followers of Jesus need to be warning people of the tragic consequence of sins.

   I am heartbroken by the sinful teachings our children are being enticed with.

   I know there is still hope, since Jesus goes after the lost now with endless vigor, just as He has daily throughout the past 2,000 years.  And Jesus works through the hearts of His followers.  We need the Holy Spirit to help us love children.

   The bottom line: We need to fully rely on God to give everything we have in order to love the children in our lives!

   Children need our genuine Christian love.

   All children need Jesus!!

Hunter Irvine

Blessed dependence on God

Matthew 18: 1-4        At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

He called a little child and had him stand among them.  And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (NIV)

   Serving as a youth minister, paid and volunteer, for a number of years at a small church in the Denver metropolitan area, I had a loving friend named Shirley.  A retired woman, that saint dedicated herself to volunteer ministry work at that church.  She was an expert quilter and a longtime quilting teacher.

   Every summer for many years, that church carried out VBS.  For those five days every summer, Shirley was there to teach the kids arts and crafts.  I was in my 30’s at the time.  I always carried out the Bible teaching sessions, and sometimes I felt as though I would not make it through all five days.  And year after year, Shirley would say, “This is the last year I am going to do this.”  Her statement was more emphatic each year.  Yet year after year, Shirley would come all prepared to teach.  She did so up until she died of cancer.  She loved those children.  And the children loved her.

   Throughout the year, after a typical church service, many students would rush to the fellowship hall and load up on donuts.  After having two or three, they would then run around the church, inside, outside, or both.  On the flip side, after worship Shirley was one to take the fellowship time to socialize.  A meticulous crafter, she did not remind me of a kid in her actions.  Yet Shirley was always young at heart.  She was quick to laugh, and simply full of life.  I never once thought of her as “old.”

   Shirley is in the kingdom of heaven now.  She fits the type of person Jesus was talking about, yet not because she acted decades younger than she was.  The reason: She was dependent on God.

   When Jesus states a person needs to become like a little child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, dependence on God is what He is talking about.  Children are utterly dependent.  Children need daily help from their parents.  Children need to learn much.  (Many children love to learn if the learning has an element of adventure to it rather than being boring.)  And children need guidance and encouragement.  And first and foremost, children need love.

   Truth is, all of us people need daily help from our heavenly Father.  All of us need to keep learning from God.  All of us need daily guidance and encouragement from the Lord God Almighty.  And first and foremost, all of us need true love.  “God is Love” (I John 4:16).

   After graduating from college, I backpacked the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.  It took me 164 days.  It was one of the greatest accomplishments in my life.  I loved the hiking, and I would engage in thinking galore as I spent hours and hours of hiking.  After one afternoon of hiking and thinking in Maine, I stood at a vista pondering.  And that pondering led to my personal embrace of a consideration which I decided was true.  I wrote it down on a piece of paper.  Turns out, that conviction is the principle being taught by Jesus in this passage.  Thus I close with my quote from 1990:

“True freedom is an acceptance of your absolute dependence on God.”

Hunter Irvine

Love God

Matthew 22:15-22

   Please allow me to jump ahead for a day to a passage involving paying Roman taxes, since the message has the same principle as the passage regarding the “temple tax.”  In my previous piece regarding Matthew 17:24-27, a drachma was the coin used for the temple tax since it was a Greek coin, and gave no homage to the Emperor.  Yet here a Roman coin, a denarius, is the fitting visual for this subject of paying taxes to Rome.

   Quite tragic you had religious leaders of Israel, the Pharisees, working to get Jesus in trouble.  And they were exerting much effort to do so by inviting some Herodians to accompany them as they went to ask Jesus a question.  I speculate Pharisees and Herodians rarely cooperated before the time of Christ’s ministry.  A perceived threat to their power brought them together.

   I own Nelson’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Bible Facts, an excellent resource, which has an informative piece on “The Herods,” a family who ruled for about one hundred years.  The title I personally give King Herod is Herod the Horrible, though most western historians for many generations have called him Herod the Great.  A deranged murderer, for starters, he killed a number of family members.  Matthew Chapter 2 reveals much about that evil monarch.

   Key context for this passage involves two points stated in that “Encyclopedia” piece.

   First: “In his will, Herod the Great divided his kingdom among three of his sons.” (1)

   One of those sons, Herod Antipas II, ruled the region of Galilee and Perea during the time of Christ.  The Bible refers to him by his title, Herod the tetrarch.  He is the man who executed John the Baptist as we learned earlier here in the book of Matthew.

   Second: “Herod’s death in 4 B.C. brought a new era to Judea.  Just before his death, Herod formally gave the Roman emperor power to supervise his kingdom.  (Rome had been the real ruler of Palestine since the overthrow of Aristobulus in 63 B.C., but it now exerted its control more directly.)” (2)

(Please note Jesus was born around 6 or 5 B.C., since the early Christian calendar was off due to not taking into account leap years.)

   Thus, we can understand Rome had an increasing role in that region of the near east.

   Back to the entrenched though unstable monarchy, Herod the tetrarch and his family had their supporters.  And the Pharisees invited those Herodians along for what must have seemed to them like a no lose confrontation.

   Wicked win scenario number one: Jewish people, under the Mosaic covenant, were supposed to be serving the one and only true living God.  However, if Jesus said paying taxes to Rome was not necessary, He was going to get in big trouble with the Herodians, who relied on Rome for power.

   Wicked win scenario number two: Many Israelites tolerated Rome, yet many Israelites despised Roman rule which blocked Judah’s self-rule.  Thus if Jesus favored Rome, He was going to get in big trouble with the Pharisees.

   Being confronted by this power house conglomeration of religious leaders and monarchy cronies, Jesus was asked to share His conviction.  Jesus did, giving a preface to this answer which involved calling them all “hypocrites.”

   Then Jesus, using a visual all of those leaders knew well, a coin, made the statement: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

   Wow.

   We know what the Emperor required: tax money.

   Yet what does God require?  Israelites knew the “Shema.”

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 states: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

   From you and me, God is asking for love.

   Money can be given for doing good for God, yet the core issue in devotion to God is not money.  At issue here is what flows from your heart.

   If you want the fruit of your heart to be love, you first need to receive what Jesus offers to give you!

   I John 4:16 states: “…God is love…”

   Jesus offers true love, which involves Jesus offering Himself.

Jesus physically died for you on the cross, and He spiritually died for you on the cross.  And now He desires to spiritually dwell in your heart.

In order to receive Jesus into your heart, you need to believe in Jesus.

Then living by His love, you will bear much fruit for Jesus Christ!

Jesus loves you!

Hunter Irvine

(1) J.I. Packer, Merrill Tenney, William White, Jr., eds., Nelson’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Bible Facts (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995), 635-636.

(2) J.I. Packer, Merrill Tenney, William White, Jr., eds., Nelson’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Bible Facts (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995), 635.

Matthew 17:24-27 A son or daughter's privilege

   Having studied and pondered the book of Matthew since November of 2020, I have reached Chapter 17:24.  So soon?  Seriously, I have studied and pondered the book of Matthew several times before, yet this time has been more meditative.  Also many other short term studies have been interspersed during the time.  I do emphasize that going slow and being meditative is the way I learn best.

   This grand study has been expressed here within Scripture Love Blog over these two and a half years.  We will continue.

   Continuing on, let us start by recalling the very first verse of the book: Matthew 1:1   “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:”

   I made the following statement in my first blog piece for this current study back in November of 2020: “The literary nature is established from the start: historical.  Yes the content of what is to come is going to involve the supernatural, however the author is tactfully stating from the start that this is no fantasy story.”

   That is a great reminder as we look at this passage where an unusual supernatural event takes place.

   Even if there was a rare natural occurrence that a fish swallowed a four-drachma coin, it was supernatural that Jesus would know this had happened, and supernatural that the first fish Peter caught after being instructed by Jesus to do so was that particular fish.  Probably for the sake of saving precious ink and papyrus, there is no record of Peter obeying Christ.  We trust the tax collectors were the ones to get that down on papyrus.  It was a miracle, a quite unique miracle compared to others in the Bible.

   A crucial contextual point is the fact the temple tax was not a standard Roman Empire tax.  King Herod began a grandiose expansion of the area surrounding the temple in Jerusalem in 19 B.C., and much of it was completed in ten years.  However, even though the tyrant King Herod died in 5 or 4 B.C., (our calendar is off due to leap years), his plan for temple expansion galore was not fully completed until around 64 A.D.  Herod’s project probably even involved some renovations on the temple itself, yet the temple was a basic structure from the start.  The dimensions for the temple are given in 2 Chronicles 3:3-4.  “The foundation Solomon laid for building the temple of God was sixty cubits long and twenty cubits wide (using the cubit of the old standard).  The portico at the front of the temple was twenty cubits long across the width of the building and twenty cubits high.”  But Herod’s temple and temple grounds renovations and expansion became an ongoing endeavor.

   What started as an apparent act to please the Israelites ended up being yet another tax burden on the Israelites, in addition to the Roman Empire’s giant tax requirement on people who were subjects but not citizens.

   Note the coin used to pay the temple tax, the drachma, was a Greek silver coin.  This detail is important, because using a Roman coin was not permissible for temple purposes.  The Roman denarius, a silver coin of a similar value, honored the emperor.

   Understanding this context, we can know the teaching of Jesus here has nothing to do with paying taxes to a country or state.  All Christians are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of heaven.  Secondly, most Christians are citizens of some country or state.  As citizens of a country or state, we Christians have no special privilege over our fellow citizens of our country or state.  Thus to not pay taxes to a country or state is a sin.

   Keeping that fact in mind, we can gain the intended message of this passage from Jesus.  Jesus, who started His teaching in a Socratic method mode, emphasized His point: “Then the children are exempt…”  Thus Jesus was gently stating that children of God are exempt from religious fees.

   Once again, Jesus teaches a radical lesson, and that lesson here is that a follower of Jesus is a child of the King of kings, and the relationship with the King involves love, not money.  Love is the foundation for citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

   To fully examine this passage, we must get into the controversial issue of the tithe, which was a standard or mandate under the Mosaic covenant, first of all, to support the Levites. (First, see Numbers 18:21-22, and second, see Deuteronomy 26:12-15 along with Deuteronomy 14:28-29.)  There was also a tithe involved when going to the three feasts, yet that tithe of an entire crop of food and olive oil was to be eaten and enjoyed by the family at a given feast in the presence of the LORD.  It was not given away. (See Deuteronomy 14:22-26.)

   Yet under the New Covenant we go by the commands of Jesus, the One who fulfilled the Mosaic Law.  And frankly, Jesus is teaching here that Christians are not under a mandate to give a “tithe.”

   A number of Christians disagree.  When worshiping at a church in 2014, one of the pastors gave a sermon in which he rebuked those in the congregation who did not tithe to their church.  He stated a tithe was mandatory for a Christian.  I disagreed, and I still do, with all due respect.

   Yet since the reality of Christian community ministry work usually involves plenty of expenses, how can a variety of needs be supported?  By realizing God wants us to give from our heart.

   Our heavenly Father provides blessings for us, not needing anything in return.  Yet our heavenly Father also wants us to give in love that we may carry out the mission of the Gospel and bless people.  For the offering of spiritual gifts and finances, a tithe might be a suggestion for some communities, yet it is not a biblical mandate.  The root mandate is to love God and love people.  A person who loves God and loves people will give, in a variety of personal manners, in love!

   And remember a final subtle point of this passage, which is that our triune God sometimes provides for His children in unexpected ways.

Hunter