Simmering Thoughts (19 May 2007)

Simmering Thoughts

Its been awhile since my heart has really been gripped by a vision of my own. I have to say that there was a bit of rebirth while I was on vacation reflecting back upon my own life. I wonder to where will it go and what is God's vision for me. On the plane, I got an opportunity to read Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and it really struck a chord with me. Here's a man who was around my age when he decided to plant a church. His principles are relatively simple and his ability to reach the lost is tremendous.

I dream of such a place and community where those who are in need can find rest, joy and salvation. I wonder what that would look like? I have my inklings and yet there's a growing frustration at the state of the church right now as a whole. When will it become a place where those who are in need find true salvation? I don't know, but I do dream.

I have been getting pursued to take on a youth group recently. Its been weird and yet somehow stimulating to see that I am wanted. I am reminded time and time again how the harvest is great but the workers are few. This also led to a conversation I had with my brother Chris on the trip. He spoke about how there are so few men of God that women often settle for less than they ought to. I chewed on that statement a bit and realized that the burden does fall upon men as much as we blame the women for this and that, the men take the onus of the responsibility. In a general sense, I stand unashamed and unafraid as I realize God calling me to be a man of God. By far, nothing is more attractive...as Chris said, Jason, woman will be lining up to want to marry you. ha ha ha...gotta love that encouragement. And then he said that in light of the fact that there are such few men these days.

This got me on the stirring of my heart recently as I was watching Blood Diamond, the desire for adventure, the greater meaning and fulfillment and how the things of our society has become such an imprisonment to chase the very core of the heart that has filled men through the ages. The movie made me want to go to Iraq and Afghanistan, to experience life in such a setting and to serve my fellow American soldiers. I want to minister in a place of great darkness as there is so much meaning in this place for light to exist. I desire to taste the sweetness of the gospel be given to a life that has no hope, to see the hope arise in such a life to live for the greatest desire that is ultimately meant for their life. It is glorious!

All in all, I have seen that I am a man that dreams dreams far greater than I can accomplish at the moment. Each day is a brick that provides a piece of that dream a reality in this life or the next. I am unsure if I will ever fully finish such dreams, or if I am just laying the foundation for future generations to build upon.

As I live, I live with intentionality to build God's kingdom here today. The decisions I make and the paths I take are to fully form into the man God has made me to be. I will know that new risks and new challenges will arise, but I do not deny the truly transforming nature that occurs when I walk in faith with Him who is forming me through the days of my life.

I apologize but then again I don't apologize for the way your lives might be affected b/c of mine. Who knows what life would be like if I didn't exist or didn't take risks? I don't know, but only the future will begin to show what will happen as I do take such steps to follow my God as faithfully as He enables me. My only hope is that you' all come for the ride. It'll be a crazy one, but it'll be one that will be for the ages.

I speak abstract but hopefully such ideas will become dreams that breathe passion into tangible expressions for the glory of God.

Second Chances....

I feel like my life has been a pattern of falling down, getting back up, taking a couple of steps and following down again....sometimes those falls cause me to get some rug burns, other times bruised knees, and sometimes it makes me just want to give up.

I see in John 21:15-25 where Jesus reinstates Peter. The irony is the fact that the gospels ends with this message at hand. In our failures, Christ is able to reinstate us...and the fact is not b/c we deserve it, but because Jesus loves us.

So in the culmination of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, this story wraps it up as the last message and often those last things you say are the most powerful and potent words.

It is not this glorious chance of being more sucessful in the world's eyes that Jesus grants Peter, but it is the opportunity to show Jesus that he loves Him. Isn't that interesting...that it isn't about the accomplishments, it isn't about how sucessful you are, but in the end, those relationships are the things that matter and they matter to Jesus.

Even in the midst of the conversation, Jesus gives Peter a glimpse of what an opportunity to love Christ would cost him. v. 18-19 paint a costly picture of that....but when in love, the cost does not matter.

I've been reading this book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan, and it comes with this idea that our life and our response to Christ comes from a deep well of love that is replenished by every glimpse of the Cross...

As I look forward to this life, it is learning to depend on Christ work in me and through me, knowing that even in the times I fall, He always reinstates me, He always gives me a second chance, and perhaps that is the greatest lesson to be learned through the gospels. Jesus' grace is more than enough....not to aim for success necessarily, but to be reconciled to Christ no matter how great our sins are....they are never too great to separate us from the love of Christ.

Jesus is not looking for results, but He's looking for love, and perhaps that is the continual paradigm shift I must seek in my own life. I'm not here to produce results for an organzition or grow a better resume, but it is learning to love and learning to offer Christ example to reinstate those and to reconcile those to Christ. This is my call, this is my responsibility and I won't ever be able to grow to that point until I truly believe in the reinstatement that Christ has done for me, each moment of failure, becomes the catalyst of growth into another moment of grace....

The dryness of our throats desiring an unquenchable grace to fill us, so they we might not become insecure, but find true security in knowing that Jesus is always with us, guiding us, providing for us, and leading us...no need to fear, for He's always with me and will never forsake me.

Reinstate me Jesus to be reconciled to Your heart and lay my sins at the foot of the cross so the guilt and shame would be washed away and all I would see is your face.... for I know even a glimpse will change for me for eternity. This is my cry....this is my prayer!

Shephers and Sheep

Ezekiel 34: 11-12 "For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a sheperd looks after his scattered flock when he is withem, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the plces wehre they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.

Ezekiel 34:14-15 "I will tend them in a good pasture and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd teh flock with justice."

Ezekiel 34:29-31 "I will provide for them a land renowned for its crops, and they will no longer be victims of famine in the land or bear the scorn of the nations. Then they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them and that they the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Sovereign Lord. You my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, are people, and I am your God, declares the Sovereign Lord."

I feel that these verses resonate the heart of God. Chapter 34 of Ezekiel speaks of the failure of man and the redemption of God. This continual mantra is seen throughout the Bible and it is always a reminder in my life not to rest on my successes or failures, but to rest on the redeeming power of my Savior.

I pray that as I grow through this time of training, that Jesus would grant me His heart and His eyes to see this world. Surrounded by so much that is counterintuitive in this world, I find myself clinging on the meditations of Proverbs 4 in allowing God to direct my steps and to guard my heart completely.

I wonder about this world and about this life that God has given me. I sit here in a barracks in Ft. Benning, GA pondering the future not of only myself, but my peers, my sheep that God has entrusted, my parents, and so many....... I sit here with so many questions, so many thoughts, so much.....wondering....thinking....and I suppose there's a moment you have to give all that up and trust God...a moment where its just too much.

I'm just not there yet, I'm letting it weigh me down, letting it get to me and I just cling to it....its like that point of maturity where you're able to let go of that security blanket and realize you don't need it anymore. Or maybe its the time when you're riding the bike with the training wheels on it and finally your parents take them off.

You step on to the bike with butterflies crashing into your stomach lining and questions upon questions of what is going to happen... you visualize this thought of falling, scraping your knee..or even worse, not being able to break and getting racked by the handle bars....

But you hear a voice in the background....you turn around a second and see your father stare back at you with that stern confidence that comes from weathering so many storms. His determination becomes your determination, his resolve becomes imbedded into your DNA, and with that you look out and you go....

You go with the confidence of that Father, and that is my hope as I look at my Shepherd, as a scared sheep, that I would learn to run with the confidence of my father, that His resolve would become imbedded in this spiritual DNA of mine and manifest itself in a way that others see Christ in me!

God grant me the strength, the joy and the freedom, but most of all, help me to remember the grace by which I am saved....Thank you always!!!

Our debts have been paid...

Do you know that feeling where you feel like you've been had...  Its like everytime you see that person, you know they owe you something and they know it too.  They always seem to not be where they should be and avoiding you and inside you feel this monster come to life.  All of a sudden someone you hadn't thought much about becomes your consuming thought, and its incredible how your heart turns so ugly so quickly.  Or maybe that person you use to think about so highly all of a sudden drops to your negative list where all you can see is their flaws...whether its how they chew their food, their random idiosyncracies...whatever it might be...

Its like a nagging feeling that you can't get rid of, but you know you should...and the more you feel like you should get over it, the more than monster just feeds and grows inside of you...

Why do we have that feeling?  I believe that much of life is not waiting on others to act according to our parameters to make us feel better, but learning to have perspective that is beyond this world so that we may learn to understand what is going on this world.

I wonder if our anxiety stems from our own necessity to feel like we have to pay back debts that we owe.  You know what its like....we see in classicly portrayed in the movies, where that one character has run into gambling debt and tries to cash in on all his friends to pay that big debt and is rushing frantically around b/c he doesn't want to lose an appendiage.

I think that's me spiritually.  I allow other people's actions to be colored in a way where I feel like I'm owed something.  The more I try to let it go, the more I get consumed by it and I find the only way to get pass it for me is to learn to find debt forgiveness by the one who has already paid it for me.

My anxiety and bitterness grows as I grow apart from God b/c I forget that my debt has been paid so I'm looking for others to cash in on.  However, as I approach Christ, I have to confront the ugliness of my own debt and the costly price by which it was bought for....Sometimes I want to scream, God NO!!!!!!  I don't want you to, You don't deserve it!!!  I have to learn, I have to pay it, I have to bear the punishment......

Then the sweetness of His voice always captures me...He says, "Son, you will never be able to pay back a debt so great, and you will only learn once you learn to accept my grace...."  Slowly, I hand over my debts again that I desparately try to hide from God....feeling so ashamed with the tears slowly rolling over my cheek, my lips quiver...and I can't help but to feel so worthless.... and once again His voice speaks, "Son, you are my child, you are forgiven and free....always remember to live that way so others can be reminded of the privledge to be called a child of God....You don't have to pay me back, but live out who you are...."

And so I look back into the face of my Savior, and the guilt turns into joy, the pain turns into inspiration, and I am back again...God, you never fail, you're always the same, you are amazing God!

Rush of Fools - Freedom Begins Here

You think you're all alone

When everybody knows

We all have the scars inside

That tear us apart after night

Is this where you are?

Step out to the light 

Come outside

Step out to the day

It'll be okay

We're all the same, don't be afraid

Let your freedom begin

Let your freedom begin here

Goodbye

Gone are the days

We buy the lie.

But we're not right, we're not right 

Is this where you are?

All the secrets we keep 

Are making us

Who we don't wanna be

It's killing us

Like we're drowning in a sea

Just coming up

We're just coming up for air

Tell me are you there?

The preciousness of today and the hairyness of the past

Do you remember that phrase..."back in the good old days..."  Its so casually thrown around as you gather with people you shared so much with....a similar history, experience, or whatnot...

Sometimes its easy to get stuck there....to get so caught up in the nostalgia of the past to forget the treasures of today.  Memories become catalyst to grow into tomorrow, not stationary places to live in.  Its amazing how my memories sometimes become so unlike the reality out of which they were born out of.  I can look back on Basic Training with a certain fondness, the memories, the friendship, but if you were to ask that person back then what he was experiencing....I was lonely, sad, and wondering if I made the right decision.

The truth is everything is 20/20 in hindsight....but the question isn't whether that is true or not, but it is how we deal with the presentness of our lives.  It is the way we live today that matters for that shapes tomorrow and brings honor to yesterday.

As we reminisce, things aren't going to be how they were....

Its painful b/c life isn't static, b/c it ebbs and flows, life continues...time continues although our hearts don't want to.  The fact that time continues means that we aren't who we were and things aren't the way they were.

Sometimes the hardest part of the past is learning to make it the past.  Living in the reality that the pain, the joy, all of it is part of something that cannot be recaptured, but only in flashes of emotion and thought.

I've learned that learning to make the past the past is one of the greatest steps in growing.  It helps us to not make it tomorrow, thereby giving us the freedom to live in today.  So as Rob Bell states in one of his Noomas...

If you have to remember, remember, grieve, then grieve, apologize, but give yourself that opportunity to do so.

so you don't miss a thing on this day.....

there's a certain kind of despair when we're still holding on to the way things were, our arms aren't free to hold on to today...

God give me the freedom to heal from the wounds of yesterday, to not be so caught up in the worries of tomorrow, but trust in Your unfailing love....draw this child ever closer to understanding this great truth more and more through our relationship together.  Take me by the hand and lead me where you want me, help me to remember that this life is for you always...help this mist reek of your glory!

"Intellectually we all know that we will die, but we do not really know it in the snese that the knowledge becomes a part of us.  We do not really know what it in the sense of living as though it were true.  On the contrary, we tend to live as though our lives would go on forever." Frederick Buechner

James 4:13-14  "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

Philippians 1:21  "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."  -My prayer, my hope, my life...

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