Our Clumsy Hands...

God of this City

You're the God of this city
You're the King of these people
You're the Lord of this nation
You are

You're the light in this darkness
You're the hope to the hopeless
You're the peace to the restless
You are

For there is no-one like our God
There is no-one like our God

Greater things have yet to come
Greater things are still to be done
In this city

Greater things have yet to come
And greater things have still to be done here

You're the Lord of Creation
The Creator of all things
You're the King above all Kings
You are

You're the strength in our weakness
You're the love to the broken
You're the joy in the sadness
You are

For there is no-one like our God
There is no-one like our God

Greater things have yet to come
Greater things are still to be done
In this city

Greater things have yet to come
And greater things have still to be done here

Joel 2:28-32

The Day of the LORD

28 "And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.

29 Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days.

30 I will show wonders in the heavens
and on the earth,
blood and fire and billows of smoke.

31 The sun will be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.

32 And everyone who calls
on the name of the LORD will be saved;
for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem
there will be deliverance,
as the LORD has said,
among the survivors
whom the LORD calls.

There's something about the simplicity of this song that speaks volumes of the power of Christ. I remember thinking that life in itself is this idea of how humans come up with way of bringing complexity to simplicity. In a nutshell, the simple things of life become so complex when put into the hands of humans. I have found the truth of that in my own mind as it surges forth trying to answer every question within my head and understand every situation surrounding me. There is this song by Mainstay that has these lyrics "I keep on searching for the answers I don't need..." and this brought about another in my mind is that often times the depravity of my own mind asks questions that search for answers that I don't need. In the bombardment of these questions, I found my own heart getting lost in the "what ifs" and "uncertainties" of life while having such a stranglehold on my life...

However, as God has brought me out of such a place and bringing an amazing security, there are different impulses that raise up from my heart out of the depths of my soul from the Holy Spirit that revitalize me with life. In a world with such hurt and pain, our God is the God of our city...and my heart couldn't help but beat harder for Tuba City...As I reflected on the experience, and the visions that God placed on my heart to see that place won for Christ, my heart couldn't help but to send off a shout at the tips of my toes hoping that extra inch would help God hear the cry of my heart a little louder!!!

In a world with so much calamity, we can trust in a God who is the light extinguishing the darkness, the author who is writing out a redemptive story through our lives, and a father who is picking up his broken child to carry him through...this is the message that is burning like embers in the depths of my bones...Our God is able...and may He securely fix it upon my life so that I would never lose sight of this God who we can call upon His name to be saved...

And so in this, I hope to share with you the sweetness of Christ, the amazing grace that liberates our souls, and the changing power of the Holy Spirit that fills our lives. There will come a day and perhaps it in this day we must see the outpour of God's spirit...within the honesty of our souls, God comes and invades our hearts in ways that we cannot explain.

Lord, I pray that our lives would be investing in those things that would last an eternity. Burn within these hearts a desire to not just grow in maturity, but also with intimacy with your heart. May you share with us your thoughts, your visions, your purposes, and your plans so that even through broken lives, you can begin to shape this world with the transformative love of Christ. God, reclaim your kingship, right here and right now..... not my will, but your will be done.

Surrender and Trust

Rereading Old Posts...Feb 5, 2007

Surrender and Trust

These are two things I constantly struggle with in my own walk with God. I can't surrender b/c I can't trust. I think trust in itself is one that is such a delicate balance of understanding personal responsibility vs. divine sovereignty. Where is the line I draw in terms of ambition, but at the same time, not walking away feeling like I did it. Its a dependence on self and I see it all the time. I think the tell-tale signs are the habits of worrying that have developed and it provides no sense of peace when I think about the future. There are only anxiety and thoughts of what might and will happen, and predicated on those thoughts are the constant feelings of uncertainty that exist in a world that is not for certain. And so what it is that I able to hold onto is myself for in myself, I feel a sense of immediate certainty but at the same time, it is built on a foundation that is so uncertain. My own self knowledge is made of my own thinking and my own perceptions and values of how I view myself dependent on a gradient that has been shaped ever since my own birth. Whether it be parents, society, and/or inner proddings, I find myself aspiring to this greater thing that I ought to be without any thought of what God wants from me or so it seems.

In this tension I live in, and so I have to reconcile this deeper divideness in my heart, for it is this despondent cry for identity that is leaking ever so slowly into the fabric of my own daily life. This is where I need God to speak again and for myself to see who I am in light of the creator. This is why I so desperately desire to hear His voice in the quietness of my soul. There was a time where I would've yearned for that spiritual high, that feeling of no greater thing, but I have found those to be mere experiences, some lasting, but most an experience that left me unchanged. How foolish we have become to think that experiences measure the depth of our own existence. Emotions and good feelings guide are own spirituality and we wonder why we ride this roller coaster of a faith. I cannot sit here in judgement but only in confession knowing that I am oh so guilty of that sin...and to place in one step more, my own knowledge condemns me once again.

And it is here in the deeper parts of my soul that I find a longing to be with my creator. It is here in my brokeness and my desolation of hopelessness, that the creator arises and speaks truth. In his whisper, I find peace and in His vision I find ambition. Here is where the dreams are produced and life begins, and I must come here once again.

Just as that song says, when the music fades, and all is stripped away...the bustling of cars honking, the weaving inner thought colliding, and that consistent nagging that persists in wondering whether you will receive all you want.... This is where I want to be....to hear my maker, to respond to His annoucement for the life He's given me. It is here I realize that it isn't me that made me, but it is Him that gave me it all.

Perhaps what we need is not more, but less... the real truth is we have heard the sermons, the messages, prayer meetings, this and that....spiritual experience spiritualized....Christian life disected, re-disected, analyzed, scrutinized, and here we come unchanged for all the analysis and describing of what our life ought to be...we are left....so still...so unsure... so fragile. And perhaps this is part of the existence God calls us, for in this we find are own desperate need for hope, and a grace that can quench that thirst. Another voice that has been there always, wishes just to spend time and to come close, and this is what we need. It is as if we try to have all the fluff and appearance of a healthy relationship, but behind closed doors, it is but a rotting carcass of empty promises and unfulfilled dreams. We have sold ourselves out for the appearance b/c we want the easy way to it all...the quickest way to be spiritual, but yet we don't realize how this is an impossibility and we admire from afar the great stories of old. Our own imagination plays with these thoughts of being great, living for Christ, yet we don't realize that these great lives were forged in the inner depths of the daily grind, the appreciation of the seconds of each waking moment...to appreciate breath is to appreciate life and here it is where we have become so consumed in consuming....

How can it be that revival meetings....can fail??? Doesn't revival meeting connote the fact that revival exist and revival itself points to a communal change in spirit...I don't condemn the good intentions behind it, but I do ask the question to all of us, does not revival start at the cross? Divine inspiration meets its appointment on our knees in front of our maker...not in front of another good praise band or another great speaker. God has given us all we need...but yet we think we need more and this is one of the most clever concepts pulled by the devil. Here we are, 21st century Christians, who have everything they could ask for...desiring more and needing less... and so it is the fact that our faith has become so dependent on experiences and not on our relationship with God.

It is said that a preacher often preaches to himself and that is probably what I'm doing....but in it I find a truth that arises to speak to those around me...so often frustrated at the condition of self....how do we change....

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G.K. Chesterton

Mainstay - Believe
I don't know if I still have the strength to get up again
I don't know if I can face my own reflection
Jesus, take this heart that feels
so cold again, and make it new

I hold this hope inside that you'll never leave me

When all around me starts to fall,
and when my faith it seems so small
Even in my darkest hour, I will believe
Even if the sun begins to fall,
even when I feel nothing at all
Even if I'm all alone, I will believe

I don't know how I could turn my back and walk away
All I really want is for your love to hold me
Jesus, take this heart and make it whole again

I know you'll never leave me