My Heart

"You're my beloved
Lover I'm yours
Death shall not part us
It's you I died for
For better or worse
Forever we'll be
Our Love it unites us
It binds you to me
It's a mystery"

I often go through my life confused with the idea of, "who am I, really?" I've been a believer for a little while now, and even though I hear how I belong to Christ and that's who I am, sometimes I just can't grasp that. I look at my heart, and I am often discouraged by who I am. There is an fight going on in my heart deciding who I am. By nature I am a mean, selfish and prideful man. Yet because of this mystery I am bound to, my heart is continually being renewed. This time it is being changed from falling in love with the things that fall, into something.... bigger. I love that has proven that it does not know how to fail.

Who am I? I'm the love of an all knowing God. I am God's beloved. I'll be with and will worship this God for the rest of time. This mystery I will never solve, but I can release the lies that I so easily believe, and hold onto the truth. Perhaps the hardest lie to overcome is how loved I am. Luckily God gives me practical examples of how much he loves me. Through relationships he's blessed me with, through a purpose, a mission God shows me, an undeserving man, that I am his beloved, I am his, I will not be parted from him because he has died for me. For better or worse, forever I will be in the truth. Tasting this life, I can see a love in God that will not fail.

This makes me smile.

So I was all about doing a sudo miniseries but I decided to take a quick break. Why? Well, to just laugh at our Lord's sense of humor. 4 months ago I was a rowdy mess that enjoyed having a good time by myself (well with friends). Now, I am a rowdy mess that enjoys having a good time with a great God loving woman, who for some reason likes me in her life. When I met Katie I had no concept of how God was going to use her in my life. Back story: yes four months does not seem like that long, but every past relationship that I had before Katie had always failed by this point. Normally by some shenanigan that I would pull, and I would usually have already made a "B" line for the door. So when I look at our relationship I can be thankful. Because A. The Lord has a sense of humor, by wanting Katie to keep me around while we try to work with a couple of stumbling Christ-lovers, and focus on who Jesus really is. And B. The girl is awesome. She actually laughs at about sixty percent of my jokes. That's a landslide victory. So for you guys that think 4 months is not long at all: How about them apples?

The Voice: Part I

In between the old testament and the new testament, after Malachi and before Matthew there is usually a blank page. This page does more than signify the transition between the old and new testaments. What this signifies is a time when God was silent. This was a time when the world was dark and dim. This was a time when the once Living God no longer spoke to the people he so cherished. For 400 years God was silent. This may not seem like that big of a deal to most, but imagine this time. It's hard for me to write about this time, because the thought of a God that so loves us not being there is hard to grasp. However this time had to happen. This time had to come so we could experience the greatest story ever told.
If you have ever seen the movie or read the book: Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis brilliantly described the time in which God was silent. When Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy arrived to Narnia they arrived to a land that was cold, dark and lonely. Sound familiar? This would be that 400 year time that earth was cold, dark and lonely. Yet the prophecy in Narnia began to become true. Aslan who had been gone for many years, yet upon the arrival of these four youths, the true king of Narnia was on the move again.
Upon the arrival of Jesus into this world, the true king of Heaven and earth, God began to go on the move again. After 400 years of silence, after the conception of the prophesied Messiah, God went on the move. God who did not fill his anyone with his spirit for nearly half a millennium came onto Mary, and chose her to be the mother of his flesh into this world. The silence had ended. God was on the move again, the true king was on the move...


More to Come...

More to come...

This is what the beach looked like tonight...

Decisiveness

One of the most intriguing decisions to make is when your response is going to alter your life. A more intriguing decision to make is one that you have to continually choose that will alter your life. Not only is that decision intriguing, but it is often difficult. Our nature is to put ourselves in such comfortable positions so that we won't have to make the hard choices that may jeopardize our comfort. For 18 years I lived a very comfortable life. Any difficult decision that I had to make that would possibly turn my world upside down I refused to make. I like the fact that I wasn't challenged past what I wanted to.

Life as I knew it came to a screeching halt one day when I decided that I was going to make a decision that would alter my life completely. It was a decision that seemed foolish to some, but to others it was a decision of life. I was questioned about whether or not what I was doing was "logical". I was called wrong for my decision. Then there was the other side, there was the side who came along side me and encouraged me. This was the same side that didn't see this as a simply "illogical" decision, but a decision that would lead me on a path that would be filled with highs and lows (and I do mean lows), but would ultimately give me such an adventure, such a thrill of life and honestly life itself.
I thought that once I made that decision everything would be different. I thought the confusing things in life would be figured out, and I thought that hard things in life would become easier. What I found out was that the confusing things got more confusing, and the difficult things got more difficult. As that happened I began to go back on my decision, I wanted to revert to what I thought was the more comfortable time, the easier times. As I reverted I soon discovered that the farther I put myself away from my decision the less...alive I felt. When I made the decision and went after it, although things were hard, it was honestly the most rewarding time of my life. I don't think alive is a cliche word here. When I say alive that is how I felt. Imagine standing on top of a tall figure whether it be a building, rock face and looking over what is below you. You take a second to breathe it all in, that moment you exhale and open your eyes, that's how living with this decision feels. I'm not saying it's easy, as a matter of fact I'm saying it's hard, at times this life is hard, but you experience things you never thought you would.
I know I reference songs quite a bit, but I feel that songs tend to grasp much of what people are thinking. The Switchfoot song, "Dare You To Move" grasps beautifully what it means to make this decision:

Welcome to the planet
Welcome to existence
Everyone's here
Everyone's here
Everybody's watching you now
Everybody waits for you now
What happens next?
What happens next?

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened before

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened

Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself?
Where you gonna go?
Where you gonna go?
Salvation is here

Life at times feels like we are just laying in a pile of our own mess, unable to move. So what if I said that there was more to life than that? What if I said that you are worth more than that pile of mess you think you are? I say that because I believe it. You are worth more than you could ever realize, you are loved more than you have ever felt, You are going to do more than you could ever imagine.
The decision that I had to make was the decision to get up out of my mess, and realize that redemption was upon me, that forgiveness was upon me in the form of a Jewish carpenter. A man named Jesus, who being God in flesh decided that I was worth more than mess I thought I was, and took my mess upon himself so that I may experience life through him. Who conquered death and came to me with that same life, telling me,"I dare you to move."

Each day I wake up I have to choose lift myself up off the floor, and make that decision over and over. There are times when that decision is still hard. Each day continually giving up everything I am is hard, but as I said is more rewarding than I ever thought anything I would ever do could be. I'm choosing to be different today than I was yesterday. I'm choosing to say," God, you may not like me today, but I know you love me today, so I'm going to go for it." To me a decision that is easy and comfortable isn't worth making. A decision that involves the ups and downs, the likes and dislikes, the uncomfortables, that difficult times is worth making, it's worth saying yes to. I'm still trying to figure this all out, but I know each day I choose "yes", each day I experience life a little more. It might not always seem logical, or make sense, but I don't want to make any other decision. So yeah, I'm going to keep doing this, all of this.

Hallelujah

So recently I've been trying to broaden my interest in music, and I came across an old song on my ITunes by Jeff Buckley titled, "Hallelujah." Which was actually written by Leonard Cohen. I googled the lyrics and when I saw the last lyric, I decided it was time to blog.

"I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah"

The word Hallelujah means "praise, or an exclamation of joy." I'm trying to learn a lot of what it means to be wanted by God, to be sought after by him. We live in a world that when we wrong people or when people wrong us we hold grudges. I constantly have the thought in my head that if I do wrong, then I'm no longer going to be wanted. The truth is I expect the same grace from God that I receive from people. I am limiting the loving power of Christ because I always ask why would God want to accept me. Instead of looking at this unconditional love that I am given I focus on what I am doing wrong, and how I am going to fix it. I try to do my best, it doesn't work. I try to act holy, I fall short. When things go wrong in my relationship with Christ I run. I turn around feeling rejected and don't allow myself to see this love. I don't allow myself to see the cross, the forgiveness and the fact that he died for us because he knew we weren't finished.

So what is the point of this entry? It's to hopefully remind people and myself this: "You're Wanted" One day we will all be standing together, transgressions behind us, before the Lord with nothing on our tongues but Hallelujah.

"You're Wanted."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8AWFf7EAc4

Where the Streets Have No Name

Why is this song incredible?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDkBzkA9L4s&feature=PlayList&p=0E283097E3B236D1&index=0&playnext=1