A Frog Blog...

Hello, everyone! My name is Jonatan Barahona, keyboardist in the band, as well as night-shift driver during very long road-trips. :-) 

First, I want to mention that I'm the crazy kid that Tony mentioned in the earlier post. To clarify some things, i'd like to [quickly] point out that it was not an easy task dealing with me the first couple of years (and there are still things they put up with!). 

Before IRM, I had never in my life, played with a professional touring band and because of that, there required TONS AND TONS of patience on behalf of Tony, Ingrid, and the others. From forgotten passports--to starting songs in the wrong keys--I'm so lucky that they never gave up on me. For that I am grateful to no end... I'm not too sure that they will ever know how much I appreciate their friendship and mentorship as they came alongside of me and gave me the opportunity to try this 'music' thing with them. 

You guys already know how much I love y'all.

So I guess it's time to explain why I titled today's post "A Frog Blog." 

Recently a friend of mine emailed me a very insightful letter that Pastor John Piper wrote to an 'incomplete, insecure teenager' (much like I was when I first met the folks at IRM). 

One thing that I noticed in all these years of traveling is the amount of young people at our concerts. Our listeners are not limited to just middle-aged/older adults, but for some reason God has been gracious enough to have our music appeal to many generations all over Latin America, including teens and pre-teens. In my attempt to not limit my service to these people with just music, here are some very encouraging words about being a young christian and dealing with that annoying 'identity crisis' thing. Piper shares some insight on how we can glorify God during these critical stages in which we can be confused and feel like we have nothing figured out. I am positive that his sincerity and honesty will be both relatable and disarming.

Why the Frog? Because as you will read....we're a lot like them!

Letter to an Incomplete, Insecure Teenager

by John Piper July 16, 2011

"Four years ago a teenager in our church wrote to me for advice about
life in general, and identity in particular. Here is what I wrote,
with a big dose of autobiography for illustration.

Dear ________,

My experience of coming out of an introverted, insecure, guilty,
lustful, self-absorbed adolescent life was more like the emergence of
a frog from a tadpole than a butterfly from a larva.

Larvae disappear into their cocoons and privately experience some
inexplicable transformation with no one watching (it is probably quite
messy in there) and then the cocoon comes off and everyone says oooo,
ahhh, beautiful. It did not happen like that for me.

Frogs are born teeny-weeny, fish-like, slimy, back-water-dwellers.
They are not on display at Sea World. They might be in some ritzy
hotel's swimming pool if the place has been abandoned for 20 years and
there's only a foot of green water in the deep end.

But little by little, because they are holy frogs by predestination
and by spiritual DNA (new birth), they swim around in the green water
and start to look more and more like frogs.

First, little feet come out on their side. Weird. At this stage nobody
asks them to give a testimony at an Athletes in Action banquet.

Then a couple more legs. Then a humped back. The fish in the pond have
already pulled back: "Hmmm," they say, "this does not look like one of
us any more." A half-developed frog fits nowhere.

But God is good. He has his plan and it is not to make this
metamorphosis easy. Just certain. There are a thousand lessons to be
learned in the process. Nothing is wasted. Life is not on hold waiting
for the great coming-out. That's what larvae do in the cocoon. But
frogs are public all the way though the foolishness of change.

I think the key for me was finding help in the Apostle Paul and C. S.
Lewis and my father, all of whom seemed incredibly healthy, precisely
because they were so absolutely amazed at everything but themselves.

They showed me that the highest mental health is not liking myself but
being joyfully interested in everything but myself. They were the type
of people who were so amazed that people had noses—not strange noses,
just noses—that walking down any busy street was like a trip to the
zoo. O yes, they themselves had noses, but they couldn’t see their
own. And why would they want to? Look at all these noses they are free
to look at! Amazing.

The capacity of these men for amazement was huge. I marveled and I
prayed that I would stop wasting so much time and so much emotional
energy thinking about myself. Yuk, I thought. What am I doing? Why
should I care what people think about me. I am loved by God Almighty
and he is making a bona fide high-hopping frog out of me.

The most important text on my emergent frogishness became 2 Corinthians 3:18 —

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are
being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to
another.

This was one of the greatest secrets I ever discovered: Beholding is becoming.

Introspection must give way to amazement at glory. When it does,
becoming happens. If there is any key to maturity it is that. Behold
your God in Jesus Christ. Then you will make progress from tadpole to
frog. That was a great discovery.

Granted, (so I thought) I will never be able to speak in front of a
group, since I am so nervous. And I may never be married, because I
have too many pimples. Wheaton girls scare the bejeebies out of me.
But God has me in his hand (Philippians 3:12) and he has a plan and it
is good and there is a world, seen and unseen, out there to be known
and to be amazed at—why would I ruin my life by thinking about myself
so much?

Thank God for Paul and Lewis and my dad! It’s all so obvious now. Self
is simply too small to satisfy the exploding longings of my heart. I
wanted to taste and see something great and wonderful and beautiful
and eternal.

It started with seeing nature and ended with seeing God. It started in
literature, and ended in Romans and Psalms. It started with walks
through the grass and woods and lagoons, and ended in walks through
the high plains of theology. Not that nature and literature and grass
and woods and lagoons disappeared, but they became more obviously
copies and pointers.

The heavens are telling the glory of God. When you move from heavens
to the glory of God, the heavens don’t cease to be glorious. But they
are un-deified, when you discover what they are saying. They are
pointing. “You make the going out of the morning and the evening to
shout for joy” (Psalm 65:8).

What are the sunrise and sunset shouting about so happily? Their
Maker! They are beckoning us to join them. But if I am grunting about
the zit on my nose, I won’t even look out the window.

So my advice is: be patient with the way God has planned for you to
become a very happy, belly-bumping frog. Don’t settle for being a
tadpole or a weird half-frog. But don’t be surprised at the weirdness
and slowness of the process either.

How did I become a preacher? How did I get married? God only knows.
Incredible. So too will your emergence into what you will be at 34 be
incredible. Just stay the course and look. Look, look. There is so
much to see. The Bible is inexhaustible. Mainly look there. The other
book of God, the unauthoritative one—nature—is also inexhaustible.
Look. Look. Look. Beholding the glory of the Lord we are being
changed.

I love you and believe God has great froggy things for you. Don’t
worry about being only a high-hopping Christlike frog. Your joy comes
from what you see.

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet
appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him,
because we shall see him as he is.

There is another metamorphosis awaiting. It just gets better and
better. God is infinite. So there will always be more of his glory for
a finite mind to see. There will be no boredom in eternity.

Affectionately,

Pastor John "

I hope this letter can be a blessing to many young people as much as it was to me yesterday upon reading it!

Always praying for His kingdom to come and His work to be done in your life, 

~ Jonas ~

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