A different perspective...

I just finished watching the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and I find it fitting as I reflect upon this summer and remembering the love theat God has shown so graiocusly to me. Its interesting how in so few months so many things change. And even in seeing God's gentle hand guide me, I can have relapses of forgetting the one that has done the work in me. I came from a sense of brokeness...lost and afraid, unsure and insecure...wondering if I royally messed up and staring at the reality of my life in my face. The difficulties of seeing it was overwhelming. Those days, I prayed ofr change....my prayers were formed under the context of desiring that the situation around me change. I didn't want to change, but I pleaded with God to change the circumstances. His gentle no became the greatest blessing as I realized in those moments of heart wrenching yelling that the circumstances did change. I had lived my life with the knowledge of God, even experiencing Him every so often, but in these moments that the days went by....it was only with Him that I was able to get through it all.

As He filled me, I sensed even my prayers changing. All I could ask is not for the circumstances to change, but that I would see His purposes through the circumstances. The desire was to change and be a better man. Perhaps it was prayer that fell too short for the aim He desired for me. My own self-fulfillment and realization became a goal, but one that only centered around me. In my heart, I knew there must be more....

He was the potter and I was the clay, Jesus was shaping not only me to a better man, but me into Him. From those prayers 8 years ago, questioning whether He really exist to now....I had asked if He did, that He would give me a heart after His own. That He would shape this self-centered heart to reflect the selfless heart of Christ. That His name and not my own would be known and the people that would see me would see an amazing God who is able to do amazing things through those that offer their lives to Him.

As I look forward to see what God is gonna do, I can't help but feel my heart lurch a bit in expectation of the blessings God has for me.  I was reminded today to keep all doors open to allow God to move in the way He wants to move in my life.  Each moment that I took this uncertain hands to give over a portion of my future to Jesus, I had in my heart that certain sense of angst, but each time I look back, I cannot believe how good He has been to me.  May you help me to continually hand this life over to You, my maker, my Father, my Savior....

What are we searching for?

Its 1:58AM and I don't know why I'm up. I don't know what is compelling me to even journal at such an insane time or that I even have an inspiration to write. Who knows what's really going to come out, but perhaps I write at night because my inhibition aren't as strong, the walls are a bit weaker and with hope, I wonder if I can take a peek into the depths of my own soul.

Lately, I've seen how the thoughts of insecurity keep me from really being who I am. I am afraid of what people think, what people wonder, what people care about...in the end I find that as I think of myself in the context of the center, it makes me actually very scared to be in the center.

The funny thing is that as an only child, we're suppose to play the main part. We are the leading role in the lives we live, but there's something oddly uncomfortable about that thought. I only want to play the leading role when the lime light is shining brightly on me, with the makeup and the nice suit, perfectly taylored. I want to think that people admire me or want to be like me...but when the cameras are off, and I become naked in my own self, I wonder if all of that was a mere illusion, a dream perhaps...

Living in this false sense keeps me from living in security....it has been my struggle...only glimpses of freedom do I really get to experience and how liberating it is. The ability to tap into the depths of my soul to cast away all the other misconceptions of other people's thoughts to care only to be the man that God has created me to be. It is the freedom I desire...that I sometimes taste and become so intoxicated with.

Perhaps the search I'm seeking for is the search for me. However, I have found that every attempt that search beings at myself, I find it to be incomplete....as if there is something inside of me that desires something to be greater than the search for myself. I wonder if the error begins at the beginning. Those glimpses of freedom, that breath of fresh air came when I did not begin with me, but stood at the hill of Calvary....

It is here I stare at the face of the one who loved me so deeply. It is here I seem to always find myself at during the worst of times asking those questions for which I cannot answer. It is here that I begin to find myself. However as life starts happening again, my starting point shifts....further from the cross and closer to the ideas of others. I live in this eerie in between of in the cliche sense living for this world and living for Jesus.

I might have to restate my first question. Maybe the search isn't something we find, but a place of reference. Maybe what we continually search for isn't the destination, but the starting point. The discovery of this starting point begins to draw in all the other experiences into a beautiful tapestry of experience that has coherence and understanding.

Jesus, may I start at the cross each morning to remember where my existence begins....as I kneel at the foot of the Cross, I offer this mess to you again... I offer my heart leaking and bleeding through the crevices of my shaking hands....however, I sense myself changed this time, knowing that I do not doubt the work you will do, the victory you have already won. Maybe this is the change that is beginning in me, that I do not doubt whether You will do what You will in my life, but as I offer this heart again, I know You will do it, b/c the work has already been done. I live in victory, not defeat, not even in question or wonderment, but in confidence knowing that You are love and You displayed on that cross is the very definition of You.

Thank you Jesus.....

Phil Wickham - True Love
Come close, listen to the story
About a love more faithful than the morning
The Father gave His only Son just to save us

The earth was shaking in the dark
All creation felt the Father's broken heart
Tears were filling Heaven's eyes
The day that True Love did, the day that True Love died
When blood and water hit the ground
Walls we couldn't move came crashing down
We were free and made alive
The day that True Love died, The day that True Love died

Search your heart you know you can't deny it
Come on, lose your life so you can find it
The Father gave His only Son just to save us

The Earth was shaking in the dark
All creation felt, the Father's broken heart
Tears were filling Heaven's Eyes
The day that True Love died, the day that True Love died
When blood and water hit the ground
Walls we couldn't move came crashing down
We were free and made alive
The day that True Love died, The day that True Love died

Now, Jesus is alive
Jesus is alive
Oh, He is alive
He rose again

When blood and water hit the ground
Walls we couldn't move came crashing down
We were free and made alive
The day that True Love died, The day that True Love died

Come close listen to the story