one Sunday, when Pastor Ron was still the pastor of the English ministry, he led the youth group during Sunday School, and billy closed in prayer. he prayed that each day we could get closer to God. well, today is the first real day where this has happened. or at least it will be the first day i remember specifically for getting closer to God. i had a great day, really blessed. and i say this to God's glory. it shouldn't be mine, and this is a rare moment because it is now that i would give everything away. it is now that i am sensitive to the Holy Spirit, that i am eternally minded more than i am focused on the things of this world. so this is to God's glory and it should not and cannot be my own. i also pray that it is edifying.
i remember i forgave my dad at my first Acquire the Fire. with Restoration, we started doing this devotional thing called The Prayer Driven Life, and it's written by this guy named Bishop Robert Oh who's actually pretty cool. (check out the website, the whole book is there in pdf format. it's under PDL OH on the right column.) it's 21 days long and it's all about prayer, and that is what we have been talking about in Restoration, how important it is to be in prayer with God, in communication with Him. anyways, in the Prayer Driven Life, he was talking about forgiving others, because just as God forgave us, we are supposed to forgive us, and it says something to the extent of if we are so selfish that we won't forgive others who have wronged us, why should God even listen to us? it reminded me of the parable of a guy who had a huge debt to a king. and the guy didn't have the money, but the king still forgave him. then, another guy owed the first guy a little debt, no where near what the first guy owed the king, but the first guy wouldn't forget about the debt that he was owed.
i need to forgive some people. because i'm no different, and i've hurt them and others just as i might have been hurt by them (but it shouldn't be about me...i could have hurt them more and am still so selfish as to not see). and all of this is in the past, and things change. it's wrong to hold a grudge, wrong to think they won't change when there's a living God who changes people, who moves mountains. wrong to say they don't deserve love. because they're just like you, just like me.
anyways, my dad. he's hurt me a lot, but i didn't help him. i made fun of him, and i didn't reach out a hand. i didn't try to help, either because it was inconvenience or simply ignorance. i will try to continue to love you, because you're more important than i give you credit for. and i want to see you excel. i want to see you live again. and love again.
and..aileen. i never really came out and said this in public, but we were dating and i loved it. she said it was her fault, but it's not. it's not your fault. don't be ashamed of what you did, and even if you hurt me, that's behind us. it's in the past and it couldn't matter at all. things change. anyways, well.. i'm doing what you asked of me. i'm becoming a man of God, a real son. it's great. i wasn't the best boyfriend either, and i don't deserve to be your ideal. you know as well as me that you gave me plenty of chances i didn't deserve and you chose to help me and spend time with me when you didn't have to. you did a lot for me. anyways, the mistakes are in the past. they won't dictate the future. you deserve something great. love never fails.
those were the two big ones. i know i've hurt a lot of people and been selfish in my relationships... i have hurt a lot of people. and that's not what they needed. they needed someone who could love and help them out and be genuine.
i don't usually run with this much adrenaline. not this much momentum. today is weird. i hope i don't burn out. God is good. i heard Him, i actually heard Him. i was sitting in my room playing guitar wondering about tonight, because i usually play guitar on Sunday night prayer meetings, but the idea popped into my head that, instead of playing guitar, we should just go on a prayer walk. i called up daniel and asked what we were going to do night and he said we would probably go on a prayer walk. just kinda unbelievable...
and i went to a korean church today, the whole thing was in korean. i couldn't understand the sermon, so i read the story of Samson in Judges. he killed a lot of people. one time, when he got mad, he went out and caught three thousand foxes. three thousand! and he tied their tails together, set them on fire, and burnt down like all of the grains of the Philistines, who were ruling over them. even though he was seduced and betrayed God, God still came through for him and let him kill about three thousand Philistines by pushing the temple over. collapsing it from the inside out. three thousand Philistines and three thousand foxes. that would be good television.
anyways, yeah. that was my day. God is great. it's all about Him.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
character and cutting peoples' ears off
the weather in Norman is extraordinary. it's getting colder, but it'll still be really nice.
i went back to tulsa for the weekend, since billy was leading worship for the big English service as well as youth group. interestingly enough, i kind of got caught up in the moment during youth group worship (i was playing keys). there was this song called Rain Down, and in it, it seemed like we were getting kind of mad at God. well, i was anyways, and if i had only ever lived in that moment, i would have been a rather mean person. i was mad at God because He put up with us and put up with our stagnancy and He let us live these lives that weren't necessarily glorifying to Him. i guess, essentially, i was calling God's character into play. i later realized...i need God to be God. i need Him not to change for my sake, as if things were about me. but God is God and He is perfect and He knows all things and shouldn't change and, even better, won't change. He doesn't change, He is always loving, though there are about an infinity of different dimensions to His character, i think, and we only see a couple of them. and then i remembered...that i pretty much do it to myself. stagnancy. i asked to be separated from Him, i told Him to get lost, i asked this upon myself. so... what i said during worship yesterday completely undermined grace. it kind of said that i had a right to be glorifying to God, and it sorta also blamed God, in a way, that i wasn't being glorifying to Him. i was in the wrong. i was mad at God for the wrong reasons. i was reading in Acts, and someone is talking to a church somewhere and talking about the people who killed Jesus... he said that they couldn't find anything wrong with Jesus, but they still killed Him, without reason, just because they wanted to.
actual, looking throughout the book of John, not many people seem to understand Jesus. most try to kill Him, and most are certain that He is speaking lies and He is either demon possessed or a drunkard. Jesus came to be the King and Savior of the Jews and yet, even the Jews didn't want to claim Him as their king. (John 1 - Jesus came to His own and His own did not receive Him.) i read somewhere (i think in Donald Miller) that Jesus must have been insane or the real deal - He's actually who He says He is. even His followers didn't exactly follow Him. they diverted from His ways and there were times when they acted out of their own impulse instead of considering what Jesus would have done. which doesn't make them any different from us. just as they fell asleep when Jesus went to Gethsemane, i seem to fall asleep on Jesus on a frequent basis, perhaps when big things are about to happen.
when Jesus is in Gethsemane and some soldiers come to arrest Him, Peter ends up slicing one of the soldiers' ears off, maybe just caught up in the moment of it all. now, keep in mind this is very gross. and you'd probably be pretty mad if someone just came at you and cut your ear off. you would be hurt and you would think they were crazy. and it must have hurt a lot. even though this is a guy arresting Jesus, Jesus corrects Peter and puts the guy's ear back on, whose name is Malchus (the high priest; interestingly enough, his name showed up in one translation i was reading, but it's not in NKJV...), and you have to wonder whatever happened to him. things like that don't happen everyday.
but this was Peter (his name is not actually mentioned in NKJV either...it simply reads "one of those who were with Jesus") - this was someone that Jesus chose to follow Him. i'm not saying i'm better than peter, i'm certainly not saying that. and this is the story of any one who follows Jesus and even any one who doesn't follow Jesus - you end up hurting someone, even if you didn't mean to. Peter, who said he was a follower of Jesus and actually was a follower of Jesus (literally), diverted from the ways of Jesus, and hurt a guy by cutting his ear off. the guy was probably mad and confused and in a lot of pain and, if the guy who cut his ear off was one with jesus, he probably wouldn't like Jesus. but Jesus deals with what peter has done and He fixes the situation - He heals who has been hurt, saying.
a lot of people have been hurt by the church and people who say they follow Christ, and there have been a lot of lame things that have been done in Christ's name and i know that i myself screw up and am a perfect example of beautiful chaos. someone who tries really hard to follow Jesus, but i'm really not unlike anybody else. i make mistakes just the same and i give nonbelievers and believers alike the ability to say that Christians are no better than anybody else, and on occasion, severely worse. people don't like God because people don't like the church, and i can't really blame them, and they turn away from God because the church has turned away from what it is supposed to do. because the followers of Christ have set bad examples and diverted from the ways of Jesus, going around cutting peoples' ears off, people respond naturally. they are turned away. they are mad and they are in pain and they are confused.
and...Jesus grabs that ear, grabs what has been hurt, and puts it back. that's about it. He doesn't say, "now you should believe" or "you owe me this one." He does it and then He lets them arrest Him. interestingly enough, the followers are about as wrong as the people about to kill Him. we're both alike, we're both human. you ask what's the difference then, and what's the significance of following Jesus if it creates no difference in a person's life from someone not following Jesus. and i have an idea what the answer is, but if you asked me to live it out, i'm not sure. i could point to DL Moody or Billy Graham or Mother Teresa, i could point to other peoples' lives and say - hey, look at that. that was what it meant to really follow Jesus, but probably the best way i could show you is with my own life.
you see, a lot of Christians (or at least people like me) are stuck between truly committing everything to God and being in compromise with the world. things like pride get in the way, things like not being willing to live a life totally centered around God, focused on God and getting God glory and forgetting about ourselves and not thinking highly of ourselves at all and not even wanting things like popularity and grades and money like everyone else. but when you really follow Jesus... things change. your life changes, your source of energy changes. it should. because all of a sudden, you won't be living for yourself. you'll be living for God, and God approves of that. you'll go through hard times, and hopefully you won't crack and turn from God, but as long as you're focused on God... i don't know. things might be like hell, but i really believe that you'll see God smiling down on you. i really believe that you'll know in your heart and soul that you're doing the right thing, even if it hurts.
and here lies the challenge that i extend to myself as i type this. glorify God. give Him your time. talk to Him. pursue actual relationship, be open to change, be open to be changed and have expectations be changed and be open to having your dreams and your own plans fall out of the picture. ask Him how to spend time with Him, ask Him where to find Him. because it's not always just reading a Bible and praying and meditating and playing a guitar. life is worship. you can worship, you can find God, just by living. by going throughout your day just like any other day and having it look like just another day, but knowing in your heart that there is a tension that you need to see God today and bring glory to Him because if you don't try today, then who's to say that you will tomorrow? there should be no waiting. now's the time to worship, to get serious.
i read this yesterday night:
"We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises - human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God - but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people."
OUTEDIT (tangent):
the first church starts in Acts after Jesus had died and risen and the apostles are baptized in the Holy Spirit. they get "tongues of fire" and 3000 people are saved that day and they all hang out together, "continuing daily with one accord in the temple...praising God and having favor with all the people. and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." and then Peter and John went on a walk a little while later and a blind man gets healed in the process and they speak with boldness, how God has healed the blind man and how "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." and the multitude grew and they shared everything "and with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked" (Acts 4: 33-34). everyone sold everything they had, so much so that they didn't own anything of their own, and they gave to the disciples, who then distributed to those in need, so that everyone was taken care of. people actually gave away everything they had - that's why it was such a big deal that Ananias and his wife Sapphira claimed that they had given everything away when they had secretly kept things for themselves - they had kept things away from the church, which was actually weighing it down...and so they were killed on the spot. but this is so radically different from our lives now. we don't do things like this. many of us don't even believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and "tongues of fire." i think that the apostles and the first church honored and glorified God in everything that they did. they worshiped God. and now, we worship religion.
i went back to tulsa for the weekend, since billy was leading worship for the big English service as well as youth group. interestingly enough, i kind of got caught up in the moment during youth group worship (i was playing keys). there was this song called Rain Down, and in it, it seemed like we were getting kind of mad at God. well, i was anyways, and if i had only ever lived in that moment, i would have been a rather mean person. i was mad at God because He put up with us and put up with our stagnancy and He let us live these lives that weren't necessarily glorifying to Him. i guess, essentially, i was calling God's character into play. i later realized...i need God to be God. i need Him not to change for my sake, as if things were about me. but God is God and He is perfect and He knows all things and shouldn't change and, even better, won't change. He doesn't change, He is always loving, though there are about an infinity of different dimensions to His character, i think, and we only see a couple of them. and then i remembered...that i pretty much do it to myself. stagnancy. i asked to be separated from Him, i told Him to get lost, i asked this upon myself. so... what i said during worship yesterday completely undermined grace. it kind of said that i had a right to be glorifying to God, and it sorta also blamed God, in a way, that i wasn't being glorifying to Him. i was in the wrong. i was mad at God for the wrong reasons. i was reading in Acts, and someone is talking to a church somewhere and talking about the people who killed Jesus... he said that they couldn't find anything wrong with Jesus, but they still killed Him, without reason, just because they wanted to.
actual, looking throughout the book of John, not many people seem to understand Jesus. most try to kill Him, and most are certain that He is speaking lies and He is either demon possessed or a drunkard. Jesus came to be the King and Savior of the Jews and yet, even the Jews didn't want to claim Him as their king. (John 1 - Jesus came to His own and His own did not receive Him.) i read somewhere (i think in Donald Miller) that Jesus must have been insane or the real deal - He's actually who He says He is. even His followers didn't exactly follow Him. they diverted from His ways and there were times when they acted out of their own impulse instead of considering what Jesus would have done. which doesn't make them any different from us. just as they fell asleep when Jesus went to Gethsemane, i seem to fall asleep on Jesus on a frequent basis, perhaps when big things are about to happen.
when Jesus is in Gethsemane and some soldiers come to arrest Him, Peter ends up slicing one of the soldiers' ears off, maybe just caught up in the moment of it all. now, keep in mind this is very gross. and you'd probably be pretty mad if someone just came at you and cut your ear off. you would be hurt and you would think they were crazy. and it must have hurt a lot. even though this is a guy arresting Jesus, Jesus corrects Peter and puts the guy's ear back on, whose name is Malchus (the high priest; interestingly enough, his name showed up in one translation i was reading, but it's not in NKJV...), and you have to wonder whatever happened to him. things like that don't happen everyday.
but this was Peter (his name is not actually mentioned in NKJV either...it simply reads "one of those who were with Jesus") - this was someone that Jesus chose to follow Him. i'm not saying i'm better than peter, i'm certainly not saying that. and this is the story of any one who follows Jesus and even any one who doesn't follow Jesus - you end up hurting someone, even if you didn't mean to. Peter, who said he was a follower of Jesus and actually was a follower of Jesus (literally), diverted from the ways of Jesus, and hurt a guy by cutting his ear off. the guy was probably mad and confused and in a lot of pain and, if the guy who cut his ear off was one with jesus, he probably wouldn't like Jesus. but Jesus deals with what peter has done and He fixes the situation - He heals who has been hurt, saying.
a lot of people have been hurt by the church and people who say they follow Christ, and there have been a lot of lame things that have been done in Christ's name and i know that i myself screw up and am a perfect example of beautiful chaos. someone who tries really hard to follow Jesus, but i'm really not unlike anybody else. i make mistakes just the same and i give nonbelievers and believers alike the ability to say that Christians are no better than anybody else, and on occasion, severely worse. people don't like God because people don't like the church, and i can't really blame them, and they turn away from God because the church has turned away from what it is supposed to do. because the followers of Christ have set bad examples and diverted from the ways of Jesus, going around cutting peoples' ears off, people respond naturally. they are turned away. they are mad and they are in pain and they are confused.
and...Jesus grabs that ear, grabs what has been hurt, and puts it back. that's about it. He doesn't say, "now you should believe" or "you owe me this one." He does it and then He lets them arrest Him. interestingly enough, the followers are about as wrong as the people about to kill Him. we're both alike, we're both human. you ask what's the difference then, and what's the significance of following Jesus if it creates no difference in a person's life from someone not following Jesus. and i have an idea what the answer is, but if you asked me to live it out, i'm not sure. i could point to DL Moody or Billy Graham or Mother Teresa, i could point to other peoples' lives and say - hey, look at that. that was what it meant to really follow Jesus, but probably the best way i could show you is with my own life.
you see, a lot of Christians (or at least people like me) are stuck between truly committing everything to God and being in compromise with the world. things like pride get in the way, things like not being willing to live a life totally centered around God, focused on God and getting God glory and forgetting about ourselves and not thinking highly of ourselves at all and not even wanting things like popularity and grades and money like everyone else. but when you really follow Jesus... things change. your life changes, your source of energy changes. it should. because all of a sudden, you won't be living for yourself. you'll be living for God, and God approves of that. you'll go through hard times, and hopefully you won't crack and turn from God, but as long as you're focused on God... i don't know. things might be like hell, but i really believe that you'll see God smiling down on you. i really believe that you'll know in your heart and soul that you're doing the right thing, even if it hurts.
and here lies the challenge that i extend to myself as i type this. glorify God. give Him your time. talk to Him. pursue actual relationship, be open to change, be open to be changed and have expectations be changed and be open to having your dreams and your own plans fall out of the picture. ask Him how to spend time with Him, ask Him where to find Him. because it's not always just reading a Bible and praying and meditating and playing a guitar. life is worship. you can worship, you can find God, just by living. by going throughout your day just like any other day and having it look like just another day, but knowing in your heart that there is a tension that you need to see God today and bring glory to Him because if you don't try today, then who's to say that you will tomorrow? there should be no waiting. now's the time to worship, to get serious.
i read this yesterday night:
"We do not need the grace of God to withstand crises - human nature and pride are sufficient for us to face the stress and strain magnificently. But it does require the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours of every day as a saint, going through drudgery, and living an ordinary, unnoticed, and ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God - but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people."
OUTEDIT (tangent):
the first church starts in Acts after Jesus had died and risen and the apostles are baptized in the Holy Spirit. they get "tongues of fire" and 3000 people are saved that day and they all hang out together, "continuing daily with one accord in the temple...praising God and having favor with all the people. and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." and then Peter and John went on a walk a little while later and a blind man gets healed in the process and they speak with boldness, how God has healed the blind man and how "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." and the multitude grew and they shared everything "and with great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. Nor was there anyone among them who lacked" (Acts 4: 33-34). everyone sold everything they had, so much so that they didn't own anything of their own, and they gave to the disciples, who then distributed to those in need, so that everyone was taken care of. people actually gave away everything they had - that's why it was such a big deal that Ananias and his wife Sapphira claimed that they had given everything away when they had secretly kept things for themselves - they had kept things away from the church, which was actually weighing it down...and so they were killed on the spot. but this is so radically different from our lives now. we don't do things like this. many of us don't even believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and "tongues of fire." i think that the apostles and the first church honored and glorified God in everything that they did. they worshiped God. and now, we worship religion.
Friday, October 19, 2007
girls
everything has been chaos lately. okay, not necessarily chaos, just really busy. really quick. over a span of three days, i have averaged about five hours of sleep, going to sleep at 2 at the earliest and 3:30 at the latest. i have logged about two four hour straight programming sessions, and about ten total, and i have skipped two chemistry lectures doing so. so...you know the funny thing is i feel like crying. i feel like being mad, because it's like i end up spending so much effort and all of this time on something, and it hardly works, and even if it did work, it wouldn't have been worth it. i mean, the A would have been great, and honestly, i would probably be seriously irked if i didn't get an A and i might secretly care a great deal, but... it's not worth it. when you spend almost as much of your day on homework as you do sleeping. it's whack.
i've heard that there are people who go through their entire lives without working a single day, even though they go to work every day and have inevitable responsibility. but that they enjoy all of it so much that they don't think it's work. it's what they want to be doing, it's what they take joy in, where they come alive.
our lives are delicate. we're fragile. words cut like fire, cruel actions give way to crueler backlash. we won't let ourselves be hurt or wronged. we won't let ourselves look weak or vulnerable, we won't cry out. we won't admit anything's wrong, we won't share our lives, we won't believe things will be all right so we freak out at a bad grade, at a bad day, at a bad moment. we won't let ourselves be lesser than someone. we won't let someone else control us. we have to be in control. we have to be better than everyone else.
our lives are delicate. one wrong step and we're done. in a relationship, one bad move could mean the end. one mistake, one sentence, one thing could ruin everything. and yet, when grace and mercy are our redeemers, we only dig ourselves deeper, farther into the abyss, into the cracks in the ground. we take more and more wrong steps, our stumbling and failure only more frequent, more violent, more heart breaking, more significant. this is why we need something bigger than us.
i've heard that there are people who go through their entire lives without working a single day, even though they go to work every day and have inevitable responsibility. but that they enjoy all of it so much that they don't think it's work. it's what they want to be doing, it's what they take joy in, where they come alive.
our lives are delicate. we're fragile. words cut like fire, cruel actions give way to crueler backlash. we won't let ourselves be hurt or wronged. we won't let ourselves look weak or vulnerable, we won't cry out. we won't admit anything's wrong, we won't share our lives, we won't believe things will be all right so we freak out at a bad grade, at a bad day, at a bad moment. we won't let ourselves be lesser than someone. we won't let someone else control us. we have to be in control. we have to be better than everyone else.
our lives are delicate. one wrong step and we're done. in a relationship, one bad move could mean the end. one mistake, one sentence, one thing could ruin everything. and yet, when grace and mercy are our redeemers, we only dig ourselves deeper, farther into the abyss, into the cracks in the ground. we take more and more wrong steps, our stumbling and failure only more frequent, more violent, more heart breaking, more significant. this is why we need something bigger than us.
Monday, October 15, 2007
revolution
revolution, at any level, requires you to be aware of something greater than yourself. it means stepping out of yourself. getting away from yourself, separating yourself from yourself, if that made sense. because revolution is change, and change for the better requires God.
when i am feeling good, i might take a shower, put on some baggy jeans and maybe wear my glasses, clean everything up, make my bed, and sit on it at my laptop or to read and maybe even sometimes ponder how great it feels. but really, that's a pretty small deal. in fact, the only thing it accomplishes is making me feel better. i mean, that's great for me, and it's convenient, but i'm not sure it exactly gets anything done.
God's revolution goes deeper then a clean room, then a clean appearance. it touches a heart, changes a soul, alters a personality. something like...pride. lust. malicious thoughts. what about brokenness? self-doubt? what about pretending? performance mentality? deception? God's revolution cleans the soul. but it requires...God. God's got to be in the driver seat of our lives, instead of us. we can't lead ourselves, we can't guide or direct our lives. we're lost. we're fragile. we're misled. we've misled others. we need to be found, to be corrected.
and so revolution takes stepping away from ourselves, perhaps outside of ourselves. it requires us to have our eyes focused on greater things than feeling good. and it's possible to use God to feel good. it's sin too. you can sin in the church just as easily as you can outside of it, and you can keep your eyes on yourself through the whole service and whenever you pray. i forgot and that's what i did.
i have a misconception about God. when one girl says that she cares about me, i think "oh, now i have a reason to try to succeed. i better get my act together because someone is watching," but i didn't think that in relation to God. i didn't value that God was watching everything, hoping that i would make the choices, but also violently disappointed at my compromises and agreements with sin. and all the more violently disappointed because i didn't consider Him as my audience, my singular audience. and i didn't consider Him as a worthy audience. i didn't consider Him as my only real audience.
that's why i used to run. the little things that no one saw, i knew God saw, so i did them. i worked hard when no one saw because i knew God saw. in the little things that no one sees or pays attention to, in those secret places, God speaks. it's like how there were thunderstorms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters when Elijah was running away, but God didn't speak in any of those things. He spoke in the silence, He whispered in one of those moments most would have missed. i would miss. anyone would miss if they were not looking for it, desperate and set for it.
i don't run like i used to run. when i see people running, i spite them. i think arrogant thoughts and shoot them down, jumping to competition. i want to get away from that. i want something better. but it's still a bigger fight than i can even begin to battle or think of battling. i'm cornered on all sides, the time isn't to fight. the time is to praise. the time is to worship, and to lose myself in worship.
i was reading the first couple chapters of Acts, it was talking about how the first real revolution came when the apostles, 12 of them, were all in one accord, and they were blessed and taken over by the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and that day, 3000 got saved because they saw something they had never seen before and they all lived together and shared together and people were being daily added to their fellowship, daily saved.
revolution, at any level, requires God. we don't know how to do it. need to step away from pride, need to stop taking stock in what i think i know, in what i have. and try to give to God. because He's worthy.
when i am feeling good, i might take a shower, put on some baggy jeans and maybe wear my glasses, clean everything up, make my bed, and sit on it at my laptop or to read and maybe even sometimes ponder how great it feels. but really, that's a pretty small deal. in fact, the only thing it accomplishes is making me feel better. i mean, that's great for me, and it's convenient, but i'm not sure it exactly gets anything done.
God's revolution goes deeper then a clean room, then a clean appearance. it touches a heart, changes a soul, alters a personality. something like...pride. lust. malicious thoughts. what about brokenness? self-doubt? what about pretending? performance mentality? deception? God's revolution cleans the soul. but it requires...God. God's got to be in the driver seat of our lives, instead of us. we can't lead ourselves, we can't guide or direct our lives. we're lost. we're fragile. we're misled. we've misled others. we need to be found, to be corrected.
and so revolution takes stepping away from ourselves, perhaps outside of ourselves. it requires us to have our eyes focused on greater things than feeling good. and it's possible to use God to feel good. it's sin too. you can sin in the church just as easily as you can outside of it, and you can keep your eyes on yourself through the whole service and whenever you pray. i forgot and that's what i did.
i have a misconception about God. when one girl says that she cares about me, i think "oh, now i have a reason to try to succeed. i better get my act together because someone is watching," but i didn't think that in relation to God. i didn't value that God was watching everything, hoping that i would make the choices, but also violently disappointed at my compromises and agreements with sin. and all the more violently disappointed because i didn't consider Him as my audience, my singular audience. and i didn't consider Him as a worthy audience. i didn't consider Him as my only real audience.
that's why i used to run. the little things that no one saw, i knew God saw, so i did them. i worked hard when no one saw because i knew God saw. in the little things that no one sees or pays attention to, in those secret places, God speaks. it's like how there were thunderstorms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters when Elijah was running away, but God didn't speak in any of those things. He spoke in the silence, He whispered in one of those moments most would have missed. i would miss. anyone would miss if they were not looking for it, desperate and set for it.
i don't run like i used to run. when i see people running, i spite them. i think arrogant thoughts and shoot them down, jumping to competition. i want to get away from that. i want something better. but it's still a bigger fight than i can even begin to battle or think of battling. i'm cornered on all sides, the time isn't to fight. the time is to praise. the time is to worship, and to lose myself in worship.
i was reading the first couple chapters of Acts, it was talking about how the first real revolution came when the apostles, 12 of them, were all in one accord, and they were blessed and taken over by the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and that day, 3000 got saved because they saw something they had never seen before and they all lived together and shared together and people were being daily added to their fellowship, daily saved.
revolution, at any level, requires God. we don't know how to do it. need to step away from pride, need to stop taking stock in what i think i know, in what i have. and try to give to God. because He's worthy.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
transitions
i guess i'm in that weird spot that probably all college students have to go through. i don't really have a home. i don't really have a family, or a church, or a best friend. i don't really have a mentor, and i don't have a girlfriend.
the only thing i still have is God, and i must admit that it's not exactly satisfying. i don't think i'm giving Him my whole heart, but...i've still given Him something (the easy things, probably, until it gets hard), so i expect to go somewhere, and if i don't, then it's not exactly satisfying. i think i want it to resemble work too. i want to go out and save people and end poverty and hunger and change things and...maybe get a rock star kind of personality, the kind of Christian heavyweights like Rob Bell or Chris Tomlin. but...it's not about that at all, and if i want it to be like that, it'll be the same as giving up on God with the alias of a Christian.
each day at a time. no regrets. do what you can, nothing more. don't get down on yourself. failure happens. but success happens. don't be so numbed that you don't enjoy it. God will enjoy it too. weigh your relationships. count your blessings and your priorities. consider changing. consider work ethic - all things that are worth doing are hard and may take discipline. change what needs to be changed. evaluate yourself. be reflective. seize the day. no regrets.
we're all blessed. what's funny is that usually only the destitute and blind see it. only the truly destitute and blind understsand what it means to love and the simple joy of an answered prayer. we don't know love and one answered prayer only seems to prompt more and more requests for answers and signs than praise for a God who hears, tolerates, and grants us our deepest wishes and, sometimes, our most on-the-surface wishes.
oh yeah, and add to that second to last paragraph. it's gotta be God. don't be so consumed by work or stress or schedules or laziness that you miss it. every moment is precious, every heart beautiful. everything cries out to His glory, to this Savior, even if they don't know who they're crying to or can see who it is they need. there's a reason why we love movies like Finding Nemo or Pride and Prejudice or Spiderman 3. because we believe. we want life to be like that, filled with love and the drama and such belief in a hero who will push himself to all sorts of limits to overcome the evil that is separation or a villain or misunderstanding.
and that is truth is this: our lives are just like this. they're precious, they're beautiful. but our only audience will be God. don't let other people be your audience, because they're actors right alongside you, living their own movies. the only one outside of the story - heck, even telling the story - is God. and your life is like the movies. when you fall in love, God sits back, overcome by joy, and wants it to last just like you do. when you fall into depression and deception, a tear comes to God's eye and He wants it to end just like you do. and when everything has become so numbing, so stressful and seemingly meaningless, God pursues. God heals. God moves.
your life is a movie, it's something wonderful. but you've got to overcome first. you might have all this crap and junk in your life, i know i do. maybe you have to get out of school first, maybe it'll take a couple of years. maybe it's something that needs to change now, maybe something that should be handled later. but you don't have to overcome it; in fact, i wouldn't be surprised if the fight was so much bigger than us that we couldn't stand up against our Goliaths. God's there. God's the hero in the movie, the one who gives everything away so you can finally stop and realize, at the very end, how much He had really given away. so you can stop and finally see everything He had really done was, in fact, for you. and He did all of this so that, at the end, the bombs will be going off and people will be screaming all around you, and time will slow down, and the only words that anyone will ever hear are "I love you. I love you, God." and the only words you'll ever hear again are "I love you too."
the only thing i still have is God, and i must admit that it's not exactly satisfying. i don't think i'm giving Him my whole heart, but...i've still given Him something (the easy things, probably, until it gets hard), so i expect to go somewhere, and if i don't, then it's not exactly satisfying. i think i want it to resemble work too. i want to go out and save people and end poverty and hunger and change things and...maybe get a rock star kind of personality, the kind of Christian heavyweights like Rob Bell or Chris Tomlin. but...it's not about that at all, and if i want it to be like that, it'll be the same as giving up on God with the alias of a Christian.
each day at a time. no regrets. do what you can, nothing more. don't get down on yourself. failure happens. but success happens. don't be so numbed that you don't enjoy it. God will enjoy it too. weigh your relationships. count your blessings and your priorities. consider changing. consider work ethic - all things that are worth doing are hard and may take discipline. change what needs to be changed. evaluate yourself. be reflective. seize the day. no regrets.
we're all blessed. what's funny is that usually only the destitute and blind see it. only the truly destitute and blind understsand what it means to love and the simple joy of an answered prayer. we don't know love and one answered prayer only seems to prompt more and more requests for answers and signs than praise for a God who hears, tolerates, and grants us our deepest wishes and, sometimes, our most on-the-surface wishes.
oh yeah, and add to that second to last paragraph. it's gotta be God. don't be so consumed by work or stress or schedules or laziness that you miss it. every moment is precious, every heart beautiful. everything cries out to His glory, to this Savior, even if they don't know who they're crying to or can see who it is they need. there's a reason why we love movies like Finding Nemo or Pride and Prejudice or Spiderman 3. because we believe. we want life to be like that, filled with love and the drama and such belief in a hero who will push himself to all sorts of limits to overcome the evil that is separation or a villain or misunderstanding.
and that is truth is this: our lives are just like this. they're precious, they're beautiful. but our only audience will be God. don't let other people be your audience, because they're actors right alongside you, living their own movies. the only one outside of the story - heck, even telling the story - is God. and your life is like the movies. when you fall in love, God sits back, overcome by joy, and wants it to last just like you do. when you fall into depression and deception, a tear comes to God's eye and He wants it to end just like you do. and when everything has become so numbing, so stressful and seemingly meaningless, God pursues. God heals. God moves.
your life is a movie, it's something wonderful. but you've got to overcome first. you might have all this crap and junk in your life, i know i do. maybe you have to get out of school first, maybe it'll take a couple of years. maybe it's something that needs to change now, maybe something that should be handled later. but you don't have to overcome it; in fact, i wouldn't be surprised if the fight was so much bigger than us that we couldn't stand up against our Goliaths. God's there. God's the hero in the movie, the one who gives everything away so you can finally stop and realize, at the very end, how much He had really given away. so you can stop and finally see everything He had really done was, in fact, for you. and He did all of this so that, at the end, the bombs will be going off and people will be screaming all around you, and time will slow down, and the only words that anyone will ever hear are "I love you. I love you, God." and the only words you'll ever hear again are "I love you too."
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