INFJ, Dad/husband, he/him. I long for Christlikeness in Christianity. https://t.co/e21hAbn84g ; @MattJThiessen@deacon.social on Mastodon
Jun 24, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Okay, I don’t know who will see this, but my wife asked me for one present on our 26th Anniversary.
That I share a Tweet to the online community I’ve become a part of, tagging her in it.
It might seem like a weird request, but I get it.
She knows you are important to me.
She can’t share too many deep, meaningful, personal thoughts online because of her job. (Because it’s Twitter… everything’s controversial, right?) She can’t wisely navigate what she does at work—which she does excellently, btw, imo—while putting herself out here like I do.
May 14, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
It feels like looking at everything through a filter of despair. Every positive gets discounted, and the world starts to confirm to me in excruciating detail my view of my own self worth.
My rational arguments for low self esteem make the most sense. I long for someone to come along with a better argument as to why I‘m worth something, but the better argument never happens.
May 10, 2020 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
I’ve just called 911 for a friend who told me he was suicidal, that he has a plan, and that our FaceTime call was the last time I’d be seeing him.
I’m asking for prayers right now. All of them.
@HeatherTDay, @AliaJoyH, @aundikolber, you’re the first that come to mind with tender hearts and a following. Please.
Apr 26, 2020 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
I love this question. I know it can easily become a simple semantic argument, but I think the question of Faith is worthwhile.
For me, faith has become equal to "trust." It doesn’t HAVE to be opposed to certainty, but we have to know what it is exactly we’re trusting in. 1/
My whole life I’ve tried to get my emotions (what I consider my heart to believe) to match what my head wants to believe. But, so as not to be led by emotions, I kept them under firm control so I could be a better Christian—bc it was obviously what God would want, right? 2/
Apr 11, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I think of this day a lot... The time in between times, where Jesus died horrifically, and there’s no context for anything else to come after. There’s no hope today...only hurt.
I know a lot of people are dealing with hurt. I know what it feels like not to be able to hope.
To need someone just to sit with that with you, without trying to fix it, because in the moment it can’t be fixed.
There’s healing there. I know the beginnings of wholeness start in that place. My heart is that we don’t skip it in our rush to rejoice.
Mar 25, 2020 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Prayer requests, for praying types—and thoughts and heartfelt, good wishes from those who aren’t (as my heart believes God hears those, too).
I have a friend who is high risk and presumed positive. Can we maybe start a thread and boost a signal for prayer for these people?
For healing and protection, definitely. But most immediately I think of the isolation—literal and figurative, as they deal with their own fears, and fears of family for them as well.
The feeling of being a threat to those closest to you has to make one feel so awful and alone.
Dec 28, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Peter was also the only one to step out from the boat. He risked that failure where others would not.
Then later, when he finally recognized the risen Jesus on the shore, he was still the only one diving from the boat to reach him. The others stayed inside to bring in the fish.
It’s amazing what you can see when you stop looking through the lens of shame, and start looking at every positive step God counts.
Oct 25, 2019 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Twitter, I need help.
I‘m in the US and I have a friend in Haiti that I‘m desperately trying to get books to. There are many I follow and interact with here who have written books that bless us—my heart is to include him in this circle of peacemakers. He follows some of you too.
The question is how.
I could (& would) buy physical books to ship, but am unsure of my reading of the laws there. It looks like there could be a tax that HE would have to pay before picking them up. If this is the case, I couldn’t pay it for him. I’ve only tried googling this...
For many who won’t know what I’m talking about, this is a deep cut into my EXTREME nerdy side—including my love of Jon Heder, also commonly known as the star of #NapoleonDynamite.
I just got a tweet in my feed bc someone I follow—and had some respect for—apparently follows this person. The guy was apparently saying the "Left" was trying to get pedophilia to be normalized in the LGBTQ community.
The replies were filled with conservatives bashing this "leftist, pedophiliac agenda." My words, but still... The thread attracted a certain sort of person and it made me sick.
Jun 26, 2019 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Okay bird lovers/aficionados, I have a question.
Birds have made a nest IN the wreath we hang on our front door, and have laid eggs.
Yes, this is a real picture.
At first we thought it was cute, as it flies away unobtrusively whenever we go out or come home.
Jun 7, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Praying types, please.
We’ve found out that our son’s Godbrother has Classic Hodgkins Lymphoma. He’s 18 and due to graduate HS in the next couple of weeks.
We don’t know what Stage yet. He goes in for that appointment the day before his graduation party.
My son is 9 and loves his chosen brother with his whole heart. We haven’t told him yet. We will need to tell him soon.
By coincidence, he also told his Mom today that he learned about Charles Lindbergh in school, and that he died from lymphoma.
Jun 6, 2019 • 28 tweets • 12 min read
@ashleybc33 @Reimer3Judi There are..have been..key moments in like a 15-20 year period where he kind of popped in... not to end it, but to keep me going.
@ashleybc33 @Reimer3Judi Your circumstances and mine are not the same, but emotions and profound loneliness are spot on.
Jun 6, 2019 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
@ashleybc33 @Reimer3Judi Can I just poke my head in here and say I love all of this? Not the pain, frustration, loneliness, obviously..but the wrestling with God.
There is no easy answer, and not even hard ones. All of it hurts. I relate to not trusting God bc he’s given you legit reasons not to trust.
@ashleybc33 @Reimer3Judi I relate to a trauma response from an asking prayer. I relate to God pushing my longing and suffering way further than I’m able to go, and then extending it for years more. I relate to him showing up for other people, and consistently not for me.
Jun 3, 2019 • 25 tweets • 14 min read
My childhood experiences weren’t the best, so that might play into it. I do have one good memory though that affects me to this day:
We lived in the country about a mile outside the city. It had rained the day before, cold and miserable, and then in the night freezing temperatures came, promising to make the roads dangerous. Snow began dumping in the dark in thick, matted flakes.
May 21, 2019 • 22 tweets • 13 min read
I started to try to give a one-tweet answer to this, but then just kept going. Appreciate my new-ish friend @NickScutari and his question—he made me think hard about this.
Like so many, I always think about Peter’s exchange, too—Jesus asking him 3 times, once for each denial: "Do you love me? Then feed my sheep." Peter is facing his shame of denying Jesus bc of overriding fear of public torture and death.
May 11, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I opened Twitter today with some trepidation. Notifications showed maybe 20 new followers almost all at once, and I immediately thought of the troll I’d replied to on a different thread, the day I wrote this one.
I’d given some sort of semi-humorous, snarky reply, then blocked him. He simply made a new acct and replied back. I hadn’t been mean, but I figured these 20 or so new followers had to be him—a malicious targeting.
May 9, 2019 • 23 tweets • 10 min read
These are very good questions. My impulsive response is "yes" to all.
I realize I’m RTing this as a Christian white male, and anything I have to say on this comes with a lot of context re: my privilege, and anything else so many other Christian white males have said, with no empathy for the mother or her child once he or she leaves the womb.
May 3, 2019 • 19 tweets • 10 min read
#whyImaChristian There has been proof to me of God in big ways and small, which in hindsight can seem strange considering how much I doubt.
The best descriptor of my faith, or ‘trust,’ actually comes from a movie based on a book written by an agnostic about a devout atheist.
This was Carl Sagan’s "Contact." To try to summarize the part I identify with so hard: Jodie Foster’s character, with the world’s eyes on her, has an experience with alien intelligent life so profound that it changes her concept of what’s real from that moment forward.
Apr 25, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"The truth about the Truth is that it’s a choice: you choose love, or you choose fear."
This struck me. It lines up so perfectly with where I believe our motives come from, in any big choice.
Do we opt for love, leaving ourselves vulnerable and trusting in a chance that God could show up?
Or do we choose fear—where we circle the wagons, cite cost-effectiveness, and cut and run?
Apr 21, 2019 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
Let the King of my heart
Be the fire inside my veins
The echo of my days
Oh, He is my song
You are good
This was a song sung in worship today that my heart responded to. It was so good. Needed.
I looked it up, and realized it was from Bethel Music—which I’ve been profoundly affected by in the past. Also which, like any one of us, has been a source of blessing and trauma for some.
