Peter Wooley’s Blog

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I think when I say “everyone”, I am referring to the 3 other people that I’ve told about this site. According to my logs, I’ve hit the site about 3000% more than anyone else—go figure.It is 12:51am here on the West Coast, and that means it’s Thankgiving! I’d just like to say that I have a lot to be thankful for this year, as many others do. I’ve been blessed with a terrific fiance, a wonderful family and an amazing job oppurtunity. I’ve also had the recent fortune of going through spiritual struggles with God. I’ve never stopped believing in Him, but through some classes at school, it’s thrown things into question. It’s hard to explain, but I’ve basically seen the distance I’ve walked away from God, but through it I’ve prayed a lot and talked with a lot of close friends. Some of them may not know they helped me through anything, but if you’ve had positive contact with me in the past two weeks, you probably helped me.

The real turning point was this last Sunday when I had an actual fruitful interaction during church just pouring over the Gospels (Sorry Pastor Arden, I wasn’t totally paying attention.). Some things I was looking at just didn’t make sense, Matthew 7:21-23 was really sticking me. I’ve heard this verse that says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in Heaven.” For some reason, I couldn’t see how this aligned with simple salvation through grace, and then I realized that the Will of God does not consitute works, but rather the actual message of Christ, acceptance of Mercy through Christ. It took me nearly 20 minutes to come to this decision, but I know that it wasn’t me who finally figured it out.

In the same way, a class I am taking at the Art Institute of Portland is trying my faith. Each week I struggle to, if not prove then, stand up for Christianity. While I was doing that, I was not even prayerfully considering what God might be asking of me. Well, through this ordeal, I’d finally prayed and found words tonight. Granted, they weren’t perfect as I am sure the Holy Spirit was guiding me to actually say, but I felt emboldened. And when I started to question what I had said and thinking of what it might be like to believe in nothing, I felt God say, “It’s easy.” And it all came flooding back to me! Of course it is easy to believe in nothing. To such a mindset, you can get away with anything. It was at that time tonight that I realized I am moving forward—moving from Milk to Steak, if that makes sense.