my thoughts

2009-04-30T10:29:00.003-04:00

"God tested Abraham and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." ²He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you." So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you." And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. ⁷And Isaac said to his father Abraham, "My father!" And he said, "Here am I, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" Abraham said, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me." And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, "The LORD will provide"; as it is said to this day, "On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided." - Genesis 22:1-15.

This account of Abraham offering up Isaac has been on my heart. What sticks out to me about this passage is that Abraham didn't withold anything from God and God never withheld anything from Abraham. I believe Abraham's faith was pleasing to God, not because he proved himself by offering up his son, but because he knew that God would provide the sacrifice. Despite the fact that it didn't make sense to Abraham, he didn't suddenly change his perception of God. He knew what God had promised about Isaac and yet he still went with the full intention of slaying him on that mountain. Abraham told Isaac, "God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering." What a picture of how God provided for Himself the offering of Christ. Anytime God asks for something, we have to look and trust that He has provided for Himself the offering, the sacrifice. Do we really believe that the Father has provided the Son for us? For every need to be complete in Him? Will we withold any good thing from the One who has promised us that He will not withold any good thing from those who trust in Him? He hasn't witheld, He has already provided, He gave His Son.

I was reading Matthew 10 the other day when Jesus commissioned his first disciples. The call to discipleship isn't one of worldly success, though we like to dress it up like that. If the Master was hated and maligned for who He was, than we can expect the same. I believe those who are serious about following the Lord should count the cost. There were multitudes who heard Him, were blessed by His miracles, but never followed Him. They loved His signs but they didn't love Him. A true disciple must receive the love of the truth, the love that the Holy Spirit puts into our hearts to show us how beautiful this Man is. Jesus will never force us to carry the cross, He beckons us, but He desires a bride who will set her affections on Him alone. She will be sustained by His love so that she can undergo persecution like Him and identify with His heart in the midst of it. As I read Matthew 10, I had to ask myself: "Am I ready for the Lord to lead me to be a sheep among wolves?" We often underestimate the evil in human hearts but Jesus saw it clearly, which makes His love all the more incomprehensible. Do we really get that there is no good thing that dwells in our flesh and that God's graciousness is the only reason why we are saved? We desire God's best but will we trust in Christ alone, that He isn't witholding any good thing and that if we truly present our Isaacs on the altar that we won't be disappointed?

I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good and I can't live without Him. What can this fading life offer that is better than knowing and experiencing the love of Christ and making Him known in all that I do? I believe the Lord is honest with us at all times and desires that we realize the cost of discipleship, He doesn't want to trick us. He even asked Peter at one point if he would stop following Him, as others did. Peter responded, "where else will I go?" I want to be so wounded by His love that I cannot help but answer the Lord, "where else will I go? Your words do something to my heart and I cannot live without You." I believe the Lord also desires to show us through revelation by His Spirit that there is a reward, that knowing Him is truly more satisfying than anything we could desire, that He is truly the answer to all that we need. We have hearts that are designed for pleasure and God knows that. The question is will we delight ourselves in Him? Times are here when men's hearts will begin to fail them from fear and others will be deceived, even the elect, I want to receive what the Bible calls the love of the truth. I want to properly understand Jesus and His heart so that I can stand in the coming days, that I can know and be persuaded by revelation of God's Spirit that my reward in Christ is incorruptible and undefiled. I want to laugh at what the world calls riches, I want to love Jesus enough that I will embrace the cross. I'm not saying that earthly blessings are all bad but I don't want to cling to any Isaacs but lay them on the altar believing God has provided for me all that I need.

Refocus me Lord, I have been sidetracked and I am sorry. Jesus, place Your seal on my heart and take the desires of my heart. I want to do Your will and I cannot do it without Your help. You said that the work of God is to believe on the One whom He sent. Jesus, grant us a spirit of wisdom and revelation to grow in the knowledge of You, to know the great hope of Your calling, Your glorious inheritance in the saints, and the exceeding greatness of Your power towards us who believe in You. I want You first above all things and everything else to consist in You. Jesus, draw me and speak Your words of life to my heart. Awaken me, lest I fall asleep. Help me to love You more and obey You better by the power of Your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

"The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be My son" - Revelation 21:7

2009-03-23T11:56:00.002-04:00

"But those things which God foretold by the mouth of all His prophets, that the Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began." Acts 3:18-21

One of the main differences, I think, between the modern church and the first century church was their vision. Their goal was to see Jesus return, they desired this, they eagerly waited for it and they even wanted to hasten it. We preach a gospel of just getting sins forgiven, which is good, or the gospel of being refreshed and finding "peace," which is good. Why are we trying to persuade that people need peace with God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ? So that people can know where they are going when they die? Jesus didn't define eternal life as merely going to heaven, He defined it as knowing the One True God and the One whom He sent. Jesus told us to pray for heaven to come to earth not that we will just float through this life and go to heaven. The complete gospel message that Peter preached in Acts had to do with forgiveness of sins, refreshment in Christ and the return of the Christ to rule this earth. Romans 16 says that the God of peace will crush satan under our feet. Jesus said the meek will inherit the earth, we have a literal inheritance that is more real than what we see on this earth, it is eternal and incorruptible. What kind of vision do we, the bride of Christ, live with?

I get leary when I hear preachers preaching messages about having perfect prosperity in this age. What it sounds like to me is "give me all the blessings of the kingdom but we don't want the King Himself." We don't see it as a good thing, the best thing, for Jesus to come and rule and reign forever - even when He desires to rule and reign with Him. We shoot so low and we have a low estimation of who the Man and God Jesus Christ is and so we also have a low estimation of our identities in Him. I can almost hear someone say, "now, now, we don't know the day or the hour." That really isn't the point and that scripture is often misused so people can feel comfortable with compromise. The point is that we're supposed to be praying and making disciples with the goal of having Him return. We submit to the Word of God and take an uncompromising attitude with sin in our lives and seek to live unspotted from this world and raise up our children in the fear of the Lord to prepare the way for Him. So that He can return for His bride, Ephesians 5 says that He gave Himself up for His bride so that He could wash her in His word and present her to Himself as a radiant bride. That blows my mind.

I ask myself as I read the description of God's throne room in Revelation 4 and 5, 'why is this so foreign to me when the Bible says I am a citizen of heaven?' God unfolds this beautiful drama before John's eyes as the four living creatures praise the One who sits upon the throne. In His hand He holds a scroll with seven seals and an angel cries aloud "who is worthy to take the scroll and open it?" There is a silence and no one is found worthy in heaven or earth and then the Lamb of God, the Lion of the tribe of Judah comes to take the scroll and open it. The song that the four creatures sing changes to praise the Lamb who is the image of God, the radiance of the Father's glory. When I read these words something in my heart cries out that there is so much more, there is so much more to lay hold of. Paul said in 1Timothy 6:12 to "lay hold" of eternal life, this isn't a passive thing and it won't just take place without our permitting God to do His perfect work in us and laying hold of Him.

2008-05-13T00:46:00.002-04:00

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..." John 3:16
"For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him." Romans 8:15-17

I was thinking about these verses today and John 3:16 and I've heard them and read them but the magnitude of them really hasn't sunken into my heart. It's easy to shrug off these verses, but God giving His only Son for me because He is that loving is a deep mystery that I hope never ceases to amaze me. I stray so often from pure and simple devotion to Jesus even within spiritual disciplines. In all of my striving, I lose sight of grace sometimes. I come face to face with the fact that my strength is meager and my works are tainted but God is rich in mercy and loves me and has redeemed me not because I am at all good but because He is so gracious.

In some of my less self-absorbed moments, I realize that God is showing His abundant love for me right within my present circumstances. My pastor is like a father to me, he has taken me into his home, given me all the rights and privileges of a son and exemplified what it means to be a godly husband. The interesting thing about the word adoption in Romans 8 is that it means to be adopted into a family with all the rights of a full grown son. There is no distinction in treatment in this kind of adoption, the adopted child is now a son. I stand back in awe that God would not only give His Son for me but adopt me as His own. I told my pastor once, "you and your wife treat me as a son" and his response was "that's how we see you." What did I do to deserve to be invited into this man's home and treated with such love from him and his family? Absolutely nothing and I am a better man for the experience.

I have learned so much from my time living in his house. I have learned that discipline that isn't motivated by loving adoration is mere self-service. I have been learning to do because I am not try to perform to live up to some standards to prove who I am. I have learned that my works amount to nothing, that the only works that have value are the preappointed ones ordained by God for me in Christ. I have been learning that God loves me and delights in me because His Son lives in me. I echo what David said in Psalm 18: "Your gentleness makes me great." God loves me and I love Him, His love is deep, unfailing and cleanses me from every false way. God's love changes me, it motivates me, it creates love in me for others, it purges me from everything that would hinder me from knowing Him. His thoughts and love for me is intense, jealous because the Father loves me like He loves the Son. The Son delights in representing the Father and the Spirit guides us into all truth. God gives Himself entirely, He has given and gives of Himself entirely. He has given, gives every day and has blessings that He promises for the future.

All I can ask is: Lord, help me to love you in return. I don't want to neglect so great a salvation, purge me from every false way until Your character is perfected in me and all that You have won on the cross is worked into me. Forgive me for being ungrateful so often, thank You for Your mercy and patience. I pray that anyone who I know has never received the love of Christ in their hearts, for those who have not been adopted, that their hearts would be softened. I pray that we wouldn't choose friendship with the world and buy into a lie, that we wouldn't sell what Christ has payed for by His blood. I pray Lord that You would save us from the deception and wickedness that leads us away from Your pure love. Renew our minds and may we be found in You, unspotted and joyful. May we not despise Your gentle chastening, knowing that You are saving us from being condemned with this world. I thank You and I pray that by the grace of God that Jesus would be exalted among us and in us and we know the glory He desires to share with us. In Jesus' name, amen.

2008-04-01T00:56:00.003-04:00

Some time ago, I had the pleasure of being involved with discipling a teen in my church. He wasn't really walking with God when I first met him. There was one day when I just asked him if he wanted to practice martial arts because I had experience in it and I knew that he studied. It's amazing what God can show you when you invest in other people's lives. I will call him "Chip" for privacy purposes. Chip had a real affinity for martial arts, he had pretty good technique and he could throw good kicks. The thing is, he could learn things fast and emulate them but he lacked the patience and diligence to perfect his basics. He could throw a kick hard, high and fast but he couldn't throw kicks slowly with control. The stabilizer muscles in his legs weren't that strong, so he would easily lose his balance. I made him throw kicks slowly and stress developing his core muscles and technique. People who blow themselves out by just trying to get to the end often end up with injuries or just get tired and give up when they don't see the results that they thought would bring satisfaction. This young man gave his life to the Lord at a conference and became one of the most hungry teens for God that I had ever seen.

I checked up on him now and then and one Sunday in particular he seemed kind of off. I asked him how youth group was going and he looked down and confessed he hadn't been going. He said he had playing football with some kids and how he wanted to preach to them but he hadn't. He looked ashamed and tired. He would always tell me how he would witness to his friends and sometimes he would get frustrated when people didn't repent and receive Jesus right then and there. I emphasized knowing God and having a quiet time to be alone with the Lord and hear from Him. He wanted to throw his techniques flashy, fast and hard but he lacked stability. Too often we get away from the basics and it takes a life time of diligence by grace to master them.

Trials are necessary in this process, the book of James says to let "patience have its perfect work" in the midst of a trial. Trials are when we realize it's not about us, we're not as spiritual as we think we are and it's where God does His best work in us. Trials are an opportunity to die, to embrace the cross and know intimately all that Christ has earned for us in His suffering. Jesus said that if we are to follow Him that we are to deny ourselves and take up our crosses and follow after Him. I think there is a distinction between denying ourselves and taking up our cross. Denying oneself simply takes discipline but taking up our cross takes faith in God. When we deny ourselves, we deny the sinful desires of our fallen nature but in the midst of trials is when we die to self - the good and the bad and is replaced with the life of Christ. When God does a work in us it isn't merely "putting things behind us" but a replacement of what we see as good with God's best. Even our best fleshly efforts are incomplete but Romans 8 says that when we follow the Holy Spirit we walk in the fulfillment of God's law. To walk as Christ did takes dying to the flesh and full reliance on the Spirit and cooperation with Him.

Some can deny themselves alright for a brief period of time and put on a nice, exterior religious guise but their pride still hasn't been dealt with. David prayed that God would cleanse him of his "secret sins" and not to let pride have dominion over him. The pharisees knew self-denial and could put on a nice facade but they didn't abhor the wickedness of their own hearts and embrace God's remedy. The deep inner work of the cross results in the lifestyle on the sermon on the mount; finding joy in being reviled and praying for those who curse us, forgiving people, finding the Lord in the secret place, giving sacrificially - all because we desire to love God first and people second. This comes and grows and patience has its work as we are faced with trials that are too much for us to handle in our own strength and we come to the end of ourselves. New life springs up in us and we have deeper revelation of God's complete and perfect love for us. But there has to be the process of dying to self so that we aren't reliant on ourselves or how devoted we perceive ourselves to be but we have faith in Jesus and His work. Instead to trying to do things so that we can feel like we're somebody, we realize more of who God is and who we are in Him and from there come good works that are acceptable to God. Our good works should come from the place of already being accepted in Him.

Too often we lose sight of the basics but God's commands aren't burdensome - His commands are to trust Him and love people. Jesus said that the work of God is to believe in the One whom He sent (John 6:28-30). Too often we tell ourselves merely to do. To those who don't live lives of obedience, the book of James says their faith is dead not that they need to do more. Faith in Jesus will produce obedience, by the grace of almighty God it will because faith by its very nature is only expressed in action. Faith isn't merely mental acknowledge but it is an inward compulsion that grows as we know more about the object of our faith. Knowing Jesus through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is crucial because we must know Him whom we believe in order to work the works of God. And a big part of this is the spiritual process of the cross in our lives that God works in us through various trials and temptations so that we aren't just outward, flashy Christians but people who have the real presence of God in their lives.

2007-12-19T11:51:00.000-05:00

“In the light of the king’s face is life, and his favor is like a cloud of the latter rain.” – Proverbs 16:15

“But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. I will praise You forever, because You have done it; and in the presence of Your saints I will wait on Your name, for it is good.” – Psalm 52:8-9

It seems odd that the sign of God’s favor over a saint’s life is the “cloud of the latter rain.” Clouds filled with rain tend to dim the sun’s light, sometimes even to the point of making it as dark as night. Sometimes they hover for quite some time as we tense for the coming rain. Sometimes the rain never comes, other times it pours and floods the streets. Still other times we feel one drop and wonder whether it was just our imagination, or had the anticipated rain begun? Sometimes we enjoy the light of the King’s face like the warmth of the sun and seem to thrive spiritually. But then the clouds come and we wonder “why is it so dim?”

In beholding Christ we are filled with His light and are content to bathe in His warmth because we are the “olive plants” that David spoke of. We look for His rain to be poured out onto our ground. In beholding His radiance we see His heart and are assured of His love and plans but we do not see these come to fruition until the rain from heaven descends to the earth. Throughout the Old Testament the prophets saw the salvation of God in the promised coming of the Messiah. Revelation of God’s promise sustained and preserved a remnant of His people by His grace. The intercession and prophecies of God’s people had gone up (they prophesied by “the Spirit of Christ” it says in 2 Peter, so that wasn’t to their credit). After the last recorded events of the Old Testament, there was a two hundred year period in which “nothing happened.” There was nothing else written until the account of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. He came as a drop from heaven in the body of a newborn after two hundred years of cloud cover. Many missed the time of their visitation when He came. His people were oppressed by Roman rule and had little hope. They believed God would rain down in judgment on their enemies. Yet He didn’t come with the fire of heaven, but He came humbly as one drop from heaven. He came down from heaven and spent the better part of His years as a carpenter who grew in favor with God and man. At the proper time, He was released to do His work and it was quick and powerful.

When Christ rose from the dead, before He ascended into heaven He told the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem until they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. The clouds overhead aren’t a sign of despair but favor, if we will wait, just wait for the Holy Spirit. I’m not suggesting laziness, the disciples prayed together as they waited on the Lord. As David said in the above written psalm, “I will praise You forever, because You have done it; and in the presence of Your saints I will wait on Your name, for it is good.” Christ has done it all, it’s our duty to receive, walk and give. The light of the sun gets blocked out because we would be content to sit all day like fools staring at the heavens. Christ desires to pour out His Spirit into us – we need light and water to grow. Don’t be moved away from your hope and neither should we strive anxiously to bring the rain down before God desires to pour it out. Our works and striving will not hasten the rain.

Wait, knowing that it is finished, the work has been completed by Christ. Our redemption is in Him and His Holy Spirit is our only hope to work out our salvation and to live out God’s calling on our lives as children of the King. God prepares us for His outpourings by cleaning out our temples by the inner dealings of His Spirit. As we surrender and repent, He purges us of the remnants of sinful strongholds in our minds. He does this so that His grace can labor in us effectively so that we can be sent out as laborers by His grace “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). There are few laborers who labor with God’s strength. I have tried in my own strength often but God is growing me in His grace. It takes surrender, it means putting your hope in God as the olive tree in psalm 52. The plant’s only hope is that God will rain on it, our only hope is God’s mercy. That is to be the picture of our lives, even to the extent that people don’t understand our hope. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:19: “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.”

We are waiting for the resurrection of God’s Spirit in revival, which should point us to ultimate resurrection at the return of Christ to rule this earth. This will be preceded by the darkest times the world has ever seen. The patience and hope of the saints for the “latter rain” of the King of kings, which the Spirit guarantees us of, will be our only strength. The antichrist will war with the saints and will be allowed to win for a time (Revelation 13:7). It will appear that hope is lost and our only hope will be God’s mercy and the promises of His coming kingdom. Our trials and afflictions now, I believe, are exercises of that. Revivals are a small picture of the greatest revival that is yet to come at the return of the King of kings and Lord of lords to reign and rule with His spotless bride (the church).

Paul also wrote in 1 Timothy that godliness has promise for this life and the next. We cannot sever the connection between the two. I’m not suggesting we sit and wait until Christ returns, we must see the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit break through into this life. God desires to work miracles among us to show that He is presently the resurrection and that He is returning with a kingdom in which there will be no suffering or death and it will be forever. The point is to be heavenly minded and knowing God’s plans and seeking God in even the most mundane circumstances so that His life will be exalted in all that we do. The point is the reward of the kingdom and not the pursuit of the world or its passing pleasures.

The clouds hanging over our present circumstances in our individual lives and as the body Christ hold the rain that God wants to pour out so that we can ever be more effective witnesses of Him and His power. Remain in Him. Sometimes God lays a promise or a divine commission before us, neither of which we can fulfill by ourselves. Before the promised desire is realized we must tarry and wait to be imbued with power from on high by the Holy Spirit so that all the glory, honor and power in the church will be unto the Head - Christ Jesus our Lord and Bridegroom.

2007-05-11T23:54:00.000-04:00

I'm listening to "Mighty to Save" by Hillsong, it's a favorite song of mine right now. I love it because it's about Jesus and who He is and how great He is and not necessarily how good or bad people feel (I'm not knocking those songs completely). I have been reading Colossians a lot lately and I love that letter because it's all about the superiority of Christ and how in Him is wisdom, knowledge and redemption. I find it interesting that Paul said in chapter 2 that he was not only concerned for the people in the Colossian church but also in Laodecia and Laodecia was the Church in Revelation that was rebuked for its lukewarm attitude. The letter warns against listening to false teachers who tell you that you need to do something to attain knowledge, that it's only for the elite. Paul answers all arguments by preaching Jesus. For all that I hear I don't hear much about the person of Jesus Christ, I hear new methods of circumcision, new ways to "improve yourself," and other teachings that cannot be understood and done by anyone but the gifted.

I hear about people going to other countries and preaching the cross but here we discuss our higher, lofty ideas and as a Church we lack true love and power. We have added to the truth and people (and I include myself in this) don't preach Christ and Him crucified because it isn't what we have determined to know. I heard a Japanese karate instructor comment once that American students were tougher to teach because they always demanded explanations for everything, whereas the Japanese were more unconditionally obedient. I'm not saying we shouldn't exercise discernment, but unless we humble ourselves as children we will by no means enter the kingdom of God. The lifestyle that Christ talks about in the Sermon on the Mount is something anyone can do and understand but hardly anyone does it because it's too hard on the flesh. I have found my greatest times with the Lord have been when I have ceased demanding reasons and worshipped Him for who He is because that never changes. What a hope we have that we have a God that we have access to, that His love has been poured out into our hearts by His Holy Spirit. We need not go far, we have but to look to Him and find our all, every need and desire is in Him. I am grateful for the days when I feel weak and I am reminded that apart from Him there is no true peace. I pray that we allow the Lord to apply the cross to our lives, to kick the props away until all we really stand on is Him rather than have a "Christ and this other thing" type of Christianity. Let us not settle for anything less than God's complete best. Why would we? Lets forsake the immediate gratification and strive to the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. We have no idea what our identity is as Christ's beloved bride who He wants to show the depth of His love to and move through like no other time in history. Stir us and awaken us, Lord and we will run after You.

2007-04-25T22:06:00.000-04:00

Well, here I am again. I had just about given up on this blog and I don't know if anyone still reads this but lately I had felt stirred to share some things I had been praying and journaling about. I was thinking about lawlessness today and how the Word says that the Law was our tutor to lead us to Christ. The Law does not justify us but shows us our need for justification before God through Jesus Christ. I see our nation fast deteriorating not just to immorality but amorality. There was a time when sin was frowned upon by society, abortions and divorces weren't just "social issues" but they were seen as wrong. Sex before marriage was frowned upon, we were founded on Christian morals and ethics. The Bible says we have freedom to love and serve the Lord but our freedom is largely an occasion for the lust of the flesh and I'm not just talking about the world, I'm talking more about the Church.

The Bible talks a lot about avoiding "the harlot," she is mentioned much in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Revelation. She has more appeal than the voice of wisdom because wisdom offends people, it tells people to repent and, well, that just isn't very "nice." The voice of wisdom cries out in the streets, it says in Proverbs, begging people to turn from their ways and find true delight in the knowledge of God (Proverbs 1:20-33). I'm not arguing against pleasure, I'm saying we sell ourselves short on the dung of this world and neglect the fact that God made us to delight in Him and nothing else will come close. More than that, finding delight in other things quenches the Spirit and grieves the heart of the Lord. Our deepest need and desire to really know love and return love reflects the deepest desire of God because He is love (1John). I don't see a hunger but in a few Christians because we spoil our appetite on diluted truth that doesn't challenge us or stretch our faith. The harlot soothes with false promises of fast and easy pleasure and fulfillment. Proverbs 27:6 says "faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of the enemy." I believe we are being lulled to sleep by soothing kisses of deception, lies about who God is, that He doesn't hate sin even though He loves people. Lies that He won't judge sin in and outside the Church.

I'm not preaching to just "be holy" because that is the other extreme but I do think we need a sobering look at our spiritual maturity as a Church and as individuals. Holiness is a scary word now because everyone thinks it's impossible and it is without grace. Setting ourselves apart to receive the love of Christ in our lives and to love others as He loves us is holiness. It's walking in the Spirit so as not to fulfill the lusts of the flesh, not just a set of rules about the length of your hair or what kind of music you listen to. God doesn't just frown on sin, He is personally wounded by it, He was delivered up to death because of our sin. His blood is on our hands and that can be a freeing thing or a very condemning thing. We are fast becoming a nation that embraces lawlessness and where there is no acknowledgment of law there is no need for Christ. The Bible says that "the mystery of lawlessness is already at work" (2 Thessalonians 2). It also says that Christ will not return until the man of lawlessness is revealed and there is a great falling away.

What I see happening in my life and I thank God for is His discipline. It's His awakening me, taking away the props I rely on besides Him that cause me to realize my ever deepening need for grace and mercy that He gives freely. I believe there will be a move of repentance that is already occurring that will precede revival and a great end times harvest. I see among the truly hungry a desire to simply know Jesus intimately not just to have a good ministry or a comfortable life. I see some, and they are few, seeking a very real kingdom that they know isn't of this life but one that Christ will bring when He returns. Christ is returning for a bride without spot or blemish, without compromise who has broken friendship with the world and embraced friendship with the One true God.

Trials strip us so that we get a good look of how much faith we have and how much we really desire the Lord and nothing else. What we feel is NOT a reflection of God's love for us and many believe the lie that the Lord is suddenly frowning on them and doesn't love them and their love grows cold and hard. What we're seeing is OUR hardness and our work is to trust in Jesus and stand firm in the truth. To lay down the idols, to walk away from the sin and trust that if we delight ourselves in the Lord He will grant us the desires of our hearts (Psalm 37). A big part of abiding in Christ is enduring, accepting and appreciating His discipline. Jesus wants us to choose Him willingly on every level, to willingly turn aside from sin as He shines light on different areas of our lives. The Lord is waking up His bride and separating us unto Himself, let those who reject the truth do what they want. Let us come away and repent of our harlotries as the Holy Spirit reveals them - "come away from her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and receive of her plagues" (Revelation 18:4). 1 Peter 3 says that judgment must come to the house of God first, Paul also wrote that when we are disciplined by the Lord it is so that we will not be "condemned with the world" (1 Corinthians 11:31-33).

Don't resent the Lord for His discipline, it's not that He doesn't want us, He does desperately but He has to show us that in certain areas of our lives we are saying 'no' to Him and He is patient with us so that we will all come to a saving knowledge of Him. It is by His grace that He changes us but He can only give grace to the humble or else He would be violating our freewill, that is why He can't just "do it all in one shot" because He wants our most conscious decision to follow Him and trust Him. The devil is the one who wants to deceive your heart but Christ wants every part of your heart, soul, mind and body and He wants your 'yes.' Our faith delights and ravishes His heart as it is expressed in seeking Him and falling more in love with Him as we come to know how great His love towards us. The anti-Christ will come with many signs and wonders and deceive many and that spirit is already at work - it tries to get us to replace Christ as the focus of all that we live for. Let us repent because we have the freedom to do that in Christ and He is forgiving and abounding in love to those who call upon His name.

Lord, forgive us for our lack of desire and compromise. Forgive us for choosing to be yoked again into bondage rather than be embraced as Your precious children. Your love is past feeling or understanding and I pray that You would release a spirit of wisdom and revelation over Your Church and that You would draw us. We cannot come unless drawn and we cannot stir up or awaken Your love without Your Holy Spirit. Stir us and awaken us to our high calling as Your bride and by Your grace guide us in continuous repentance from this world to be found faithful and crying out in unison with the Holy Spirit "Come!" I pray that You would find faith when You return and that we would be watching and praying with eager expectancy. Come Lord Jesus and renovate our hearts and let our lives be fully pleasing to You, Jesus. Seal us with Your Holy Spirit and burn away the chaff in our lives. May we be guided by godly sorrow to repentance into the newness of life and grieve over those who don't know You. May the love of Christ constrain us and compel us to love You with all that we have and love others as You, the Lover of the ages, love us. In Jesus' mighty and precious name I pray. Amen.

2006-09-22T15:19:00.000-04:00

"For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" - 1 Corinthians 1:18

You know what struck be about this verse? That we are being saved. We aren't just saved and that's it, poof and off to heaven we go. I'm realizing that people are either being saved by responding to Jesus or they aren't and that doesn't always go the way we think. People who haven't said the "sinner's prayer" are responding to God and people who have been "saved" seem to act as if good works are optional, an extra favor to God in addition to our "heart-felt" prayer of repentance. 1John says that if we claim to have fellowship with Him but walk in darkness then we're liars. Don't get me wrong, there are pivotal moments and the moment when we are brought to the place of surrender and that is important but that is the first step of the journey. Jesus said we have to take up our crosses daily to follow Him, so if we're going to walk with Him and not just meet Him and stay where we are then repentance has to be a lifestyle. We're called to a life of turning away from sin and friendship with the world to friendship with God. I'm not saying to buck up and just be holy, I'm urging myself and all who are reading this to let God start 0r finish His work. The "word of the cross" speaks life to us, it shows us God's work to cleanse us from all of our sin, of what God did so that we could live a life of repentance. I'm encouraging us to go to our prayer closets and rend our hearts before Him and ask what hinders the power of God in our lives. Does the gospel speak of power to us or does part of it seem too radical, or dare I say, foolish. Are there areas of our life that are perishing without the power of God? A new ministry isn't going to do it, God's message hasn't changed it just seems foreign to us when He shines His light into new areas of our life and we realize that we still have sin in us (1 John). The acknowledgment that sin is in us means that we're responding to Jesus because if we claim to have no sin than the truth (Jesus) is not in us.

2006-09-16T10:51:00.000-04:00

Stuff...

I couldn’t for the longest time see the connection between the concept of intimacy with Christ and at the same time acknowledging Him as Lord of my life. I realized the other day that one really can’t happen without the other. Intimacy or friendship with God can’t happen until He is Lord. This may seem like an obvious point but really digesting it should challenge the way we live our lives. Jesus said His family were the people who did the will of God. Don’t get me wrong, we can never earn friendship with God by any works or anything. However, I wonder how much of how we live show Jesus as a nice friend without the costs of having Him truly as Lord. I realized the other day that as I submit to the Lord I allow Him to love me more but it comes with the initial question of ‘will I bow my knee?’ It’s nothing Jesus forces but when we finally do, we realize that He is truly worthy of all we have to give and more. In seeing His worthiness we also see His love towards us. But if we don’t acknowledge Him as Lord first and foremost than we can never truly appreciate how precious friendship with Him is. When we can truly conceive that He brought us from dust and made us vessels to receive His love simply because He desired to do so it consumes us. Friendship with the Lord is truly rare, there aren’t many who He tells His secrets to and it’s not because He doesn’t want to it’s because, as one evangelist put it, we won’t "trade our comfort for commitment." What builds my zeal for Him and what steals it? What ways do I seek comfort and not true rest from Him?

I tried for a long time to discipline myself and I thought that made me humble but what I came to realize was that I still wanted to be master of my life and I didn’t really want to submit to the Lord’s discipline. When I finally did, it hurt but in the time following I experienced freedom that I didn’t think was possible. 1Peter says that "he who has suffered in the body is done with sin" that we should arm ourselves with the same attitude as Christ who suffered for sin. Am I done with sin? I’m not talking about stupid vices, I’m talking about dying and taking up my cross daily to live a life of repentance, a life of turning the other way from the world and towards God. Have I committed myself completely into the hands of a faithful creator (1Peter) just as Jesus committed Himself into the hands of the Father and "gave up His ghost"? Peter was writing to people in the midst of trials and every trial we go through is an opportunity to die so that we can truly live. Is there some part of me that the Lord has asking for me but I want to save it only to have it breed death instead of letting it die and seeing His life manifested to a greater degree? Jesus had the option to get off the cross at any time and we can drop ours at any time. Some of our suffering has to be chosen, "yes Lord, I will endure this, I will submit to you because I know that there is a greater joy set before me even if I can’t see it yet." The physical suffering of Christ is scratching the surface of the price He paid, He suffered separation from the Father for the first time in all of eternity and that is something we don’t ever have to bear if we choose Him. The suffering we chose as we die to ourselves is something Jesus really only appreciates and empathizes with and that is why it’s called "the fellowship of His sufferings."

2006-07-31T13:30:00.000-04:00

I haven't written in a while, so I'll ramble for a while. I was thinking about the Church the other day and having one of my critical moments when I started asking why the Church doesn't stir things up like it did in the bible. The Church, moving in the power and the authority of God, made leaders feel uneasy, healed people and all that good stuff. I know what I'm saying has been said at least one billion times, "the Church isn't where it ought to be and it's because (insert solution here)." I started looking at my life and what hinders the power of God in my life how I get entangled with my "stuff" and how I can get so busy grappling with it that before I know it I'm not going anywhere and haven't been for quite some time. I get wary of the idea of us finding a "new thing" when God has always been the same. Christianity without Christ just doesn't work, that is what I have been learning. A wrong view of Jesus, not gazing at Him and immediately I start to become a Christian with a nice exterior but hollow on the inside. I think over and over about when Jesus said "I am the way, the truth and the life." Jesus told His disciples that He was going to the Father and that they knew the way and they in turn said they didn't know the way and to show them the Father. To which He replied with something along the lines of 'I've been with you all this time and still you don't know Me.' I seek Jesus for truth and He says "here I am" and I ask Him for a way, a direction and He says "here I am." It makes me wonder if I really want Jesus, to get to know His heart instead of asking what I have to do be OK. I wonder if I really know the commitment He calls for, He doesn't force it, but He beckons. How much more I have to explore the depths of His desire for me. He calls me to surrender my life because He desires me that bad, how often do I look for a certain set of rules to surrender to so that I can feel secure. I see parts of me that God is calling and I am running desperately just like Adam and Eve covering up in shame. I can sense the tender question, "how come you won't trust Me with this?"

I always found it interesting that God asked Adam and Eve "Who told you you were naked?" Who told you that you needed to cover up? Who told you that there was something wrong with the way I made you? I remember my father told me there was something wrong with my body as a boy. Offhanded comments that, unbeknownst to him, cut me to the core and gave satan the opportunity to lie to me about what it meant to be a real man. I covered up and ran in shame until I found appreciation from people. Let me stop here and say that I love my father and I have forgiven him and the one whom I hate was behind it all. Evil forces unseen that have been at work since the Fall had worked on the men in my family, we believed lies, didn't know how to love and so they hurt until that became how to love someone. I heard it said once that love without understanding condones cruelty and that is true. I have hurt people many times because I didn't know how to love them and I didn't how to be loved. So God has been asking me "who told you that weren't a man?" I'm tired of seeing people victimized, tired of seeing the patterns and the cycles. I am glad that Jesus has condemned sin in the flesh, so that while I still live in this earthly body there will always be this stupid sinful nature that wants love in all the wrong ways there is the eternal part of me, my flesh is passing away and God is greater than all of that. I am choosing to exercise God's power in my life by forgiving people. I reject and renounce the voice that tells me that there is something I can do to get what I have born to receive from God; love. This flesh is passing away and I am by no means no where near perfection but I really do have an eternal hope. There are lies about what hope is, some think of as hope as unrealistic and impractical. "Hope for the best and expect the worst" is something I think is absurd. My hope is the most practical of all, it is hope in God, the God who is love. He is the love He expresses, He moves in His complete nature and nothing He does is separate from who He is. People do things with wrong motives and facades but not Jesus. Hope in circumstances is where I find distress and disappointment and that is why faith and hope are looked as weak nowadays. People have put their hope in things and when it didn't work we've looked to the sky and shook our fists at God.

When I am not bearing fruit in my life it's because, simply, I need Jesus. When I am bearing fruit, I still need Jesus. When Jesus left He said He was leaving so He could send His Spirit which came to testify about Him to give us understanding in our hearts so that we could move with the emotions of His heart and out of that love we would have power to move in. Even these gifts of the Spirit that allow us to move in His power will pass away and all that we have left is how much of God's love in Christ we have chosen to accept. I want to see revival come and I believe it is but I want to see us walk rightly through it and not just have it be something that is an end unto itself. I'd rather have personal revival that helps me in the every day, mundane drudgery of life still look at Jesus with love and adoration. Moments of intense experience are good and necessary but what good is it if I build on that alone? On Christ alone, not experience, not things I do for Him, but on Him alone rests my redemption, the ultimate revival of my soul.

2006-04-15T12:54:00.000-04:00

I have been reading Ezekial 36 ever since I heard a sermon based on it. The sermon was about how it takes faith to please God and that receiving life from Jesus only comes by faith and not our own actions. The pastor focused on verses 26-30 which are very encouraging because God tells us He will put His Spirit in us and give us hearts of flesh and blood. Yes and amen, but as I reread the whole chapter something else stuck out to me; before and after God tells His chosen people that He will deliver them for their evil ways He says, "I am not doing this for your sake, but for My Holy name." As a church I see us moving in greater intimacy with Jesus I sense it's of great importance that we don't lose our fear of the Lord. Intimacy with Christ means embracing everything He says and grace isn't given to us so we can become lax but it empowers us to face the truth that God reveals to us. God does love us unconditionally, we are His bride but it's not because of us at all, He is doing this for Himself first.

If He were to do it just for us than He would be lowering Himself. Jesus came to do the will of the Father and it was the will of the Father to give up His son for us to reveal His great mercy. Exodus 33:19 says that God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy because He is good. Taking up more of our bridal identity in Christ also means understanding our fallen nature and embracing the work of the cross in our lives. The Lord says in Ezekial 36:32 to "be disgraced for your conduct." I'm not saying to look inward here and dwell on our sins, I'm saying we have to let the Holy Spirit show us the things not of God in ourselves and constantly be reminded that we are not good apart from God. We have to be broken of our own notions of holiness and continuously strive to keep our eyes on Jesus. Not to try and do things to justify ourselves before God because that is really just pride. The bible says that it's only by the cross so that no man should glory, when we set up hoops to jump through it's because we want to be acceptable to ourselves, we want something to take pride in. Jesus said "if you being evil..." Jesus didn't say to take up our cross sometimes, He said take up our cross daily and deny ourselves (Luke 9:23). That means constantly surrendering our own ideas even when they mask themselves as holy. None are good except the Father and we're told to be perfect as our Father in heaven and Romans 14 says that "anything not of faith is sin." A life that is fully entrusted to Jesus is a perfect life a life that has undergone complete death from the old, Adamic nature.

1 Peter 4:12 says "it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And 'If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?'" I am praying that we will not be offended as the sin in our lives comes under judgment. There is no condemnation because we have been saved but we aren't without sin and God doesn't tolerate sin, He hates it and He is jealous. Don't let condemnation and shame have a foothold anywhere in your life when you are disciplined. Shame and condemnation stand in opposition to faith in the cross, embrace Jesus as we see He loves being intimate with us. The sin in us is under judgment but if we continue to take up our cross and work out our salvation by walking in faith (which inspires acts of obedience) than we will persevere. We've got an enemy and the Word says to be sober and to add self control and discipline to our faith because he is going to try everything to twist the movements of the church to get us to focus on anything (no matter how good) but Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith. Amen.

2006-02-01T18:04:00.000-05:00

"Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness..." - Matthew 6:33
"My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways." - Proverbs 23:26
"Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask we receive from Him because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. And His commandment: that we should believe on the name if His Son Jesus Christ and love one another..." - 1 John 3:22-23

God has been freeing me lately from things have bound me for my whole life. After months of wrestling with something and knowing it conceptually, it has finally taken root in my heart. Christianity is about seeking Jesus’ righteousness being confident in how righteous and holy He is and how His holiness extends to cover me. So often I would see sin in myself and pray for God to take it away. I wasn’t able to accept myself (don’t confuse this with being comfortable with sin in my life), instead of letting the Holy Spirit show the things He wanted to work on I was looking at the old man. Christianity is the pursuit of God and oneness with Him, not the pursuit of good character. Holiness is a byproduct of a vibrant relationship with Jesus Christ, how often have I believed the lie that if I practice more holiness God will move more? The mere idea that I could practice holiness on my own is ridiculous. The more I realize that I have no righteousness in me, that even the "good tendencies" I’ve always had are tainted apart from God the more I lean into Jesus. The confidence we have before the throne must be solely in the atoning blood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We say that so often but until God showed me my heart and what I was relying on besides Him (and I know I’m done yet) that revelation could not take place.

The psalms say that those who look to Jesus are "radiant," in the Song of Solomon the Beloved says He is "overcome" when the bride looks at Him. The fact that Jesus is overcome when I fix my eyes on Him blows me away. When we come to simply gaze at Him He tells us we are beautiful. I believe this is the "one thing that is needed" mentioned at the end of Luke 10. Martha who hustling around the house, "serving alone" was angry with Martha and Jesus because she was doing everything in her power to serve Jesus and here Martha was sitting at Jesus’ feet. Jesus told Martha that Mary had "chosen the good part, which will not be taken away from her." All aspects of self reliance must be broken, a contrite heart is a broken one. Natural strengths and weaknesses don’t matter with the Holy Spirit. I have to be reminded time and time again that God loves me because He is God not because of anything I have done. Our heart will condemn us if we rely at all on our own goodness, if I start along the line of thought that I am good, I buy into the lie that God loves because of who I am and then when I come to a part of me that isn’t good in my eyes I have a hard time believing that God loves me. God loves me because of who He is, Jesus loved me when I hated Him, when my sin put Him on the cross because He is that merciful. We must be wary in these last days that worldly theology doesn’t dilute our confidence in God. Our holy identity is only in Christ and not to be found anywhere in ourselves.

2006-01-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

I wrote this a while ago, I was praying that God would give me a hunger and recently He has touched me, I felt like I did when I had first gotten saved. I'm seeing more and more how much He loves me, desires me and I can't help but love Him more. He has put in me a desire to settle for nothing less than the complete work of His Spirit in my life, I love to whisper to Him that I belong to Him because He loves it. I know that growth doesn't take place on the mountain tops but after months of a valley it was a welcomed respite and a renewing of my zeal for Him. If any of you are at a time when God simply seems silent, no trials, no intense experiences I encourage you to pray for hunger. You may seem to be waiting on God but it may very well be that He is waiting to hear you say, "draw me, and I will come running after You."

Will the silence
test me more than
the giants?

Against the giants
You guided me.

Gave me specific stones
for my sling
my strength, I knew
was in You.

Now
I have come to silence,
to stillness.

Here,
I must pray
for hunger
lest I erect idols
or be satisfied and
gloat over slain giants.

Let my soul
rest only in You
and not slip into the
comfort of the stillness.

2006-01-03T17:50:00.000-05:00

I was reading back on some old posts and I smiled at my zeal a year ago. In all honesty, I've lost some of it. God got me past emotional experiences and that is a good thing but I sense that I have let too many "good" things keep my focus on God's best. It's not a matter of doing certain things, sin is a reality that hast to be dealt with in the depths of my heart. Tozer made a good point about people who were faithful to God, what would have happened to history if they had settled for a haphazard walk with God? What if Noah wasn't faithful to God? The show would have been a lot different. God wants a Church of people like that, every step we compromise with Christ someone else is going to pay for. I was listening to the radio the other day and I heard the Evanescence song "Bring Me to Life." I don't know what their beliefs are but can anyone tell me what they're crying out for in these lyrics? "How can you see into my eyes like open doors /Leading you down into my core /Where I've become so numb without a soul/ My spirit sleeping somewhere cold/ Until you find it there and lead it back home/Wake me up inside...call my name and save me from the dark/Bid my blood to run/Before I come undone/Save me from the nothing I've become." Tell me, who is this singer talking to whether she knows it or not? Tell me, anyone, that the void that this person professes to have can be satisfied by anything other than Jesus. Jesus wasn't kidding when He said the harvest was ready but the laborers were few. No one can make a connection between that deep need every person has and to Jesus except God, the Word says none come to Christ unless the Father draws them. How often do I (I was going to say "we" but I'll leave it to the reader to decide whether he/she does this) want to receive from God just enough to be okay, enough to get by when God longs to give us so much that we have rivers of living water flowing from us (John 7:38).

To truly work with God is a privilege and I often lose sight of that. Woe to me if I lose my wonder and I must confess that I have felt it slipping. The wonder of the cross, the indescribable wonder that God became man and offered Himself as a silent victim to be humiliated and killed to defeat death for our sins. Satan rebelled and God cast him out, we rebelled and God immdetiately made a divine plan to get us back that would cost Him more than we could ever conceive. The bible doesn't talk about compromise, it says "anything that is not of faith is sin" (Romans 13). We have two options: walk in the flesh or the Spirit. If we're not striving for the very best, than we're not following Jesus. He wasn't kidding when He said we have to lose our lives to gain them, that means my whole life. We live in a society that is built for comfort and I really believe that times will come when are comforts are taken from us because God sets up "preappointed times and boundaries" so that we would "yearn for Him and know that He is not far from us" (Acts 17). We yearn for God when we need Him, when we have nothing else and I honestly believe times are coming when we won't have as much comfort as we rely on now and where will we be with God when that happens? The writer of that Evanescence song knows he/she desparately needs something, have we forgotten how much we still need Jesus and how much more other people do?

2005-11-29T12:16:00.000-05:00

"THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART"--that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation." - Romans 10:8-10

How often have I recited this verse to someone with no fervor in my voice? How often have I treated like some formula, or a sales pitch? How often have I rejoiced in it? This is the knowledge of my salvation, the "helmet" in the "armor of God" which guards my mind. One of the most successful lies of the devil is that there is something else to find out. That somehow the problems you’re facing are so new and novel and beyond comprehension that you don’t need the fundamental truth of God’s Word. He whispers to us to get us to remove the helmet and I get to arguing with him or I try to do the work of God without God. You know you’re helmet is off when everything is juxtaposed - your relationship with God feels burdensome (when He promises rest for us) and your problems SEEM to have sovereignty instead of God. "For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness" - I don’t have to justify myself, there is no amount of "Godly" things I can do to make myself a Christian I am as much a Christian as I trust God to make me. God has brought me some way in this area but some works of deliverance take time, He started the work and He’ll finish it. I’ve read a lot lately about great men of God who fell when it seemed they were at the pinnacle of their careers or ministries. They fell for sin that were obvious: sexual immorality, drug addiction and other stuff. The Word says the sins of the flesh are "obvious," it seems like a real no-brainer. There were always two reasons; lack of intimacy with Jesus and lack of accountability to members of the body. They started trying to do it on their own, removed themselves from God’s protection, ran out of steam and lost their spiritual effectiveness and had no power to resist the "obvious" sins of the flesh. It isn’t a matter of how much you can see, or figure out, it’s actually a lot simper than we make it. God’s command to Adam was pretty straight forward - "don’t eat from that tree." It was satan who complicated by asking questions to draw Adam and Eve away from the simple knowledge of God. Don’t get me wrong I love getting revelation from God but revelation comes from relationship not from having figured anything out - "Lean NOT on your own understanding," Proverbs says. The most basic way to activate faith in your heart is to ask for help, some part of you wants to ask for help and that, I believe, is the free gift of faith, the mustard seed, that God gave you so that you could be saved from whatever you’re in. If there is a desire in your heart to ask for help that you have faith because if you didn’t have any faith you wouldn’t even think or want to ask. The confession from the mouth is the activation of the faith in your heart. I am justified because I believe Jesus died for my sins and I have to activate that faith every day and confess His Lordship. If that knowledge isn’t what you’re relying on, I wonder if you’ve misplaced your helmet. I've just secured mine and it feels pretty damn good.

2005-11-10T17:52:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a bit soooo here I am. So, I'm being promoted at work and I've been praying that God keeps me in line as far as not getting caught up in the business of life. I heard a good word the other day, "business creates barreness." I wept in prayer not too long ago because I felt like I was growing weary between my time with God, work, all the church meetings, making time for people, so forth and so on. I asked is this how people lose their first love? The church of Ephesus was complimented for their good works but they had become busy with doing things for God and not taking time to allow Him to love them and to love Him in return. I can't do this on my own and I and thank God that He reminds of that, He consoled me with this scripture; "As a father has compassion on his children so the Lord has compassion on those that fear Him; for He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust" (Psalm 103:13-14). Hey, if God made a plan to restore His children to Himself despite Adam and Eve handing the world to satan then I think I can trust Him with the plans of my life, no? He's not sweating over it so I don't think I'm going to either because I belong to Him.

2005-10-04T21:36:00.000-04:00

this is a first draft of a free verse poem that I just wrote:

When will I see past myself?

I remember my sin
I remember him who stood to condemn me

I remember my wounds
him who stood to stab me
each slice, each cut was deliberate and precise

I remember entertaining him
I remember believing the lies
being seduced by his promises

I remember seeing the mirror
seeing the cuts, the scabs, the bruises

I remember hearing his jeers
I felt the pain and then the numbness
as he drugged me
lured me
with more promises

I remember stepping into the light
and seeing the darkness
I remember the mirrors everywhere
seeing myself
wretched
poor
blind
naked

I remember seeing Jesus
the needles filled with apathy
couldn’t numb the pain

my accuser’s promises no longer stirred me
his touch now made me vomit

I remember my riches
my Lover giving me his garment
his gentle hands lifting my head to see

when will I no longer look back to the mirrors?
when will I look to him with a single eye like the dove?

my accuser stands condemned
who is he to condemn me?
I can hear my Savior’s voice calling me
"look away from the mirrors
gaze at me my love."

2005-09-14T21:15:00.000-04:00

So, here we are again and here I go. I often hear about trials, I hear about taking on giants in our lives and all this stuff. What I want to know is, what about the silence? I received a word in which it was said "the silence tests our faith more than giants do." What will we do when there is no circumstantial reason to cry out to God? People always say in the midst of a trial that we must thank God and rejoice in Him even though our feelings tell us otherwise. It’s easier to recognize our need for God when things are obviously too much to handle. Therein lies the blessing of a trial; that we come to rely more on God than anything else. It is a blessing when we are forced to put our hope in only Him, but why wait? Sometimes it takes an event for us to wake up and if that is what it takes than so be it. However, it doesn’t always have to be that way. I want to face trials the way David did, he strolled up to Goliath and told him he was going to serve him his head (1Samuel 17:46). God prepared him for that moment with Goliath, he was killing bears and lions to protect his flock before that fateful day (17:34). Jesus warned against a complacent attitude in Revelations 3:17, "you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful , poor, blind, and naked." It’s not about feeling good in the midst of a trial and the goal is to resist the temptation of becoming absorbed in our own suffering. Inversely, you don’t have to start making yourself miserable in a period of rest to remember how much you need God and the goal is to not become sleepy and too comfortable.

We used to say in karate that a fight was decided the months, days, hours, and minutes leading up until the match. The moments you spent sparring, doing pushups, running, etc. Chances are, the person who trained the hardest is going to win, the fruits of your labor will be manifested in that clash and there is no sense in looking back and wishing you had trained harder. The bible clearly states, "the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames" (1 Corinthians 3:13-15). You don’t work on your house in the middle of a storm, you work on a good day realizing that some day a storm is going to come and you should be prepared. Does this mean you spend every waking hour preparing for disaster? Obviously not. We don’t spend time with God just so we’ll be ready for challenges. Nevertheless, challenges will come and I’d rather receive discipline from my Father who delights in me than have to find my bearings in the midst of one of life’s tragedies. The tragedies will still affect us, but it doesn’t have to be a set back in our walk with God. In the dojo, students were in an environment where they could be tested, they could face the fear of confrontation, learn that being hit wasn’t the end of the world, they could learn to be calm, not to fly off in a rage at someone else. Better to learn in a safe environment like that than to have to learn on the street. Better to seek God now, to hang in there when He is working in us, to be "zealous and repent", to realize those whom He loves He will "rebuke and discipline" (Rev 3:19).

Will we be like Israel who went from being delivered from captivity to doubting God? Or will we go from glory to glory? Will we cling to the hope that we will be like Him one day and be purified by that hope(1 John 3)? We must put our confidence in His promise that He will be faithful to complete the work that He started (Phil 1:6). Let’s please Him by trusting Him, because we can’t please Him without faith and "anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6). We can’t please Him without faith and we will not know peace and joy from our relationship with Him until we trust Him. We were made to worship, God made us to do that, we worship something when we trust it and put our hope in it. We have the faith, we have the hope, it’s simply misplaced. God is love and love hopes and believes and we’re made in His image and that is why "the just shall live by faith" (1 Cor 13, Genesis 1:27, Romans 1).

2005-09-13T17:55:00.000-04:00

"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" Proverbs 27:17

So, every once in a while I dedicate a post to someone when I've noticed some sort of impact they have had. In a previous post a while ago, I thanked Paul and Ryan for being awesome friends during my whole ordeal a year ago. There are numerous people who I might not get to mention here who are awesome, so don't think people who are mentioned are the "elite." Unfortunately I don't have all the time in the world to mention everyone so I just go with someone who is at the forefront of my mind. So, Jake here is to you, bud.

You've been an awesome roommate and brother and I appreciate you listening to me complain about random stuff. It's great to have someone who can relate to a lot of the same daily struggles and all that other tumultuous stuff that we face together at work and everything else we do together. I know this great time in the apartment won't be forever (much to Tim's dismay) but I am enjoying this time a lot with you and Nate. You're my bro in arms, my tag team partner right now and God knew that I needed one and who more solid and trustworthy that Jacob Waugh? Just wanted to express my appreciation for being you and to tell you that I'll kill anyone for you. Keep buidling solid walls and remember to stack your incompatibles on the right side of the trailer.

2005-08-02T18:53:00.000-04:00

I felt very moved to write this and I hope it ministers to someone at some point somewhere. Do you remember being a child? How easy was it to have faith when we were children, to have all the confidence in the world that everything was going to be okay? Why can’t we have that faith today? As children, we put our hope in circumstances; summer was a taste of heaven, Saturday morning cartoons were the high point of the week, sleep overs...I can go on. Children are meant to be taught to have faith because it’s easy to believe when things are easy. I suspect this is why Jesus was so severe about "causing children to sin" and that it would be better for that person "to have a millstone around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea" (Matthew 18). As adults circumstances get a hold of us, cause cynicism, they steal our hope. However, Jesus said to enter the kingdom of God we must be like children - "unless you change and become like children you cannot enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 18:3). He also said that the Father had hidden the mysteries of heaven from the "wise and the learned" and "revealed them to little children" (11:25). You are meant to have that faith and that hope throughout your life, but you can’t have it with anything here. We learn things as adults that start to break down our ability to trust and so Jesus tells us we must be born again. We must learn why we were ever given the ability to hope, to dream, and to believe. We were given these gifts to know our Father.

Anyone who claim to be completely pessimistic is lying to themselves. If you claim not to have hope, you’re simply putting your hope in your negative disposition thinking that that will somehow save you from pain. It won’t, and you know in your heart it isn’t sparing you from anything except truly being alive. God has faith in us, He is love and the bible says love "hopes all things" and "believes all things" (1 Corrinthians 13). We’re made in His image so we do have faith, we just misuse it. If God didn’t have hope for you He wouldn’t have created you, loved you, or came and died for you. Let’s start with where you are and ask yourself if anything here is worth all of your hope. Nothing sustains you more than hope but hope needs to be put into something, so why not take a step and have faith that He loves you. Why not put aside some of the things we think makes us "wise and learned" as adults and become like children and just approach Jesus? God said of Israel that they "do not cry out to Me from their hearts" that they "wail upon their beds" (Hosea 7). I’m not saying to be naive or ignorant, you’ve learned some hard lessons but instead of wailing about it to no avail, why not have faith that when you cry out to God because you know you need Him that He will hear you? Jesus desires to live in our hearts to restore our relationship based on hope and faith with our Father. What have you got to lose except the burden you know is getting too heavy?

2005-07-28T08:36:00.000-04:00

"They do not cry out to me from their hearts but wail upon their beds." - Hosea 7:14

I often wonder if we really know what we've been saved from or what we have attained in Christ. Lord, open our eyes to the reality of the death we have been spared and help us to see the life You have given us, let us be truly transformed by the renewing of our minds. God never said He was merely the right way, He says He is "THE way, THE truth, and THE life." Have we come to the end of ourselves when we say, "though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him" (Job 13)? Being a good or bad servant is nonsense - either you're serving the Lord or you're not. Let's simply choose today whom we will serve, allow the Spirit to have free reign, and decide to let God be the ultimate reality in everything we do.

2005-07-17T22:26:00.000-04:00

Today was an awesome day mainly because of an hour (or more) that Alicia, Debbie, Heather, Jake and I spent in prayer and worship. It wasn't planned at all and the Holy Spirit spoke so much it was phenominal. A big thing we were all getting, something that brought us to tears was breaking formulas. For too long Christians have been living on formulas in their walk and it extends to the way we see people. All this emphasis on saying the sinner's prayer and all the regulations and boundaries that we use to define Christianity. Somewhere after the intense moments I think we listen to sublte suggestions, we forget to be like children, we start becoming yoked into slavery when we're supposed to be free and showing others freedom. Paul spoke so much about this in Galatians, he really summed it by writing; "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (5:6). Our faith and love are intertwined and if we love and trust and love God than that will express itself in our love for one another. I'm learning to be blatantly honest with God in prayer, I do all my complaining to Him, I repent for unbiblical feelings (like anger and resentment towards God) but I still tell Him how I feel but in the midst of those feelings is when I know I have to choose to love and trust God and that is when God helps me endure. Bring it all to Him, nothing you do makes you worthy in God's sight, it's only Christ that does that. Bring Him all the feelings - good, bad and ugly. No one cares more than He does. It's all about Him - I think if you want to increase your faith, focus on how faithful Jesus is, increase your love, meditate on His great love. In beholding Christ with the eyes of our heart we are transformed, the more we lift Him up in our thoughts the more free reign the Holy Spirit has within us.

These are the verses from Galatians 5 that we were really on my heart this afternoon:
"You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace."
"You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?"
"You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature...The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself""

We have to stop trying to do things to justify ourselves before God so as to expect that from others and judge them. We're free, not to sin like crazy, but freed from judgment and having to live up to a standard on our own power by man made rituals or rules. We are free to love God with all of our might, to meet with Him and have interactions with Him that aren't designed for anyone else but you. How personal and intimate is Jesus to us? I asked God today at church to speak to me, I didn't want anyone else, don't get me wrong, I need prayer just as much as anyone else and I love my friends and family, but ultimately the One that I need is God and I wanted something just from Him. I didn't get it that moment but a few minutes later, He spoke to me using a specific memory to convey something about Himself that brought me to tears and encouraged me like nothing else ever could. I know if I told some people what it was, they might say "aww" or something like that but no one will ever understand that moment, as well as other moments, and that's okay because it's strictly between God and I. I am His and He is mine.

2005-07-13T17:56:00.000-04:00

People aren’t enough, relationships aren’t enough, love (as the world experiences it) is not enough. Your career isn’t enough, money isn’t enough, ambition isn’t enough, passion isn’t enough, brilliance isn’t enough, achievement isn’t enough, potential, skill, talent, strength, intelligence is not enough. Your significant other, your sibling, your best friend, your soul mate, your pet, your self. Is not enough. All these things combined at the same time and place aren’t enough. This world is not enough and it never will be. Something that transcends how we feel yet causes us to taste of feelings that we can never know anywhere else is what we need. We need something that we can never get in this world. We need something that lies beyond our expectations because, lets be honest, we don’t know what we want or need half the time. There is a God that created you, gave you everything you have, gave you the capacity to enjoy the things of this world. He also came in the flesh to show you how to live and He came to die and to be raised up to give you what you need the most. He left room in you, a part of you that will know no satisfaction until you meet Him and recognize the need for Him, until you realize that what you really want, what you really need, is Him. He came to defeat your worst fears. He came to bring you love that is everything that you need, but not always what you want at first. It is perfectly honest, forgiving, merciful, appreciative, humbling, uplifting and beyond our understanding. It is perfect and that is why we will never fully understand it.

Let’s admit that we’re not perfect, let’s admit that if perfection was staring us in the face we wouldn’t know because we don’t have perfect eyes to see perfection. We don’t have perfect to hearts to feel perfection, we don’t have perfect minds to comprehend perfection, we don’t have perfect ears to hear the perfect message. The only way is to believe and understand it more and more as we grow closer to that perfection who is Jesus Christ. We need to be perfected and that is something only He can do. Let’s admit that our logic is a far cry from perfection and our answers lie in the realm that we might consider illogical. We don’t have control, what we do is at its best a spark in a giant stadium, that we cannot live up to the sense of morality we have in our hearts, we can’t live this life the way it’s supposed to be lived. Let’s admit that the things we look at and think about on a daily basis are jaded. Let’s admit that we want to be God, to be in control of things we never will be, that we think by doing this or that that we’ll be able to make our lives right or change our destiny. Let’s admit that we can’t. Let’s look at the cross. Let’s look to Jesus because we have to admit that nothing we’re doing is working. He promises if you give your life to Him and that you won’t have to worry about it anymore. Let’s look at the fact that there were hundreds of prophecies foretelling details about His life, death, and resurrection and that He fulfilled every one of them. Let’s look at all of His actions and see which ones weren’t done out of love. Let’s ask ourselves why we wouldn’t believe in the God of the bible. Perfect honesty is a hard thing to accept but we aren’t perfectly evil, so maybe there is a part of us that wants to believe but there is another that simply doesn’t want to believe that we need Him. Lets be honest, we really don’t know what we want or need half the time. Lets talk about "blind faith" as the world sees it. Do I understand why God does everything He does? No, but a good relationship is based on trust. To insist that we have to understand all the facts before considering God or that He has to meet some requirements is arrogance.

Let’s get past the idea that God is what you want Him to be that He has the standards you want Him to have. That idea completely reverses the dynamic of a relationship between a superior God and an inferior man. If the inferior is deciding for himself what the superior is than he has broken the relationship, in his heart he wants to be God. Let’s go back to the garden where the devil told Adam and Eve that they could be like God. They believed the lie and so do we. We can admit that God is perfect and we’re not, yes? Wouldn’t it then stand to reason that at some point we have to admit that what we want to think about God is going to be wrong? If God was one to be completely figured out by our mere minds than He wouldn’t be God. Ah but God tells us things about Himself, that He is good, that He loves us and that we’re lost and blind without Him. This is also why the bedrock of Christianity is repentance and surrender, because it has to be God who does the work in us to make us the people we’re supposed to be.

Christ came with the perfect message - that we can’t be perfect, that God desires you but the relationship has to be on His terms. He gave Himself up for us in a way that no one ever could, He also created us, so He hasn’t fallen short on His end. If my relationship with God isn’t where it should be and He is perfect then the issue is with me. We have to step outside ourselves "those who seek to save their life will lose it and those who seek to lose their life for my sake will save it." There is a part of you that insists there is nothing in this world for you, that it’s all for naught and there is a part of you that insists that there must be more so you seek to fill that need by latching onto things of this world. Both of those sides are right and wrong, There is something more to all of this and it isn’t in anything of this world. This world is a waste without God. Some people say, ‘what would happen if we all loved each other?’ maybe in a perfect world, right? There will be no perfect world and the only thing you can change is your own life and you need Jesus to do that. The only heart you have to give is your own and it’s precious to Him. Don’t take my word for it, approach God alone at night, talk to Him when you gaze at the night sky. Ask Him if this whole Jesus thing is a quack, that is what I did. Put it all aside and approach Him with a clean slate and I know He’ll answer, just make time to listen.
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." -Matthew 7:7-8

"Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you" - James 4:8

2005-07-02T22:31:00.000-04:00

so, I'm back. I might start putting more of my creative writing in here for some feedback. criticize if you wish, just be tasteful or I'll punch you.

the end, sucka.

2005-06-26T22:52:00.000-04:00

I had stuff that I was going to put in here, but I figured I'm just going to write. It's amazing how littleI care about the things in front of me...maybe "care" is too strong of a word, more like "anxious." God is my reality and at this point when it becomes a choice between God and other things I feel like asking, what choice do I have really? I feel like I've been going through this Job-like internal experience. God has just closed doors allowed circumstances to really press in on me and for a while I was feeling real kicked around, I had to really fight by clinging to the promises of God - He is the only reason why I'm not defeated. I'm at a more peaceful time after all the crap and you know what the best part is? my circumstances haven't really changed, God has taught me to look squarely at Him and find peace right where I am, I don't have to scramble for it by looking to anything here, it really becomes a matter of choice. Pastor Stahl told me that as we get closer to God we see more of our sinfulness and I definitely saw it and grieved over it. I know that seeing my potential for evil apart from the grace of God but choosing to believe that I'm wholly accepted and loved because of Christ is one of the keys to seeing sin in others but hoping for them anyway. I'm a work far from completion, because I'm slow, but to say I haven't grown lately would be an insult to God because it's all because of Him. I know I've grown because simply I love God more, I trust Him more. my reality has been juxtaposed so much so that I have a dettachment to everything and God is more and more becoming my stability. too often I see in popular books or churches a user-friendly Christianity in which it talks only about purpose, peace, and joy. yes to all that, but Christ came to save a lost world, to restore a broken relationship with the Father and that brings the greatest peace and joy and it is the one true purpose for a human being but it involves a lot of pain. Job was brought to a point where he said even if God slew him he would still hope in Him - now that is faith. that kind of work isn't something you can just work up, it's constant surrender. my life is in God's hands but everything else is subject to rearrangement to God's plan of revealing Himself to me and then me showing Him to others.

I'm working on being a teacher, not an infant. it's not about asking whether God is for me or am I still saved, it's living "up to what we have already attained" (philippians 3:15). What have I attained? I can sum it up with this verse, "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'yes' in Christ. and so through Him the 'amen' is spoken by us to the glory of God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us, gauranteeing what is to come." (1 cor :20-22). Seek God at all times and we won't be the people being spoken of in Hebrews 5 who need the basic teachings of God taught to us all over again when things get tough. Believe it, use your will because our will, our ability to choose is what makes us in the image of God. Love, hope, joy, peace, and faith are largely a matter of choice. Even asking for faith is stepping out in faith because if there was no reason to believe then you wouldn't be asking God for faith in the first place. Trust me, you have all the faith you need. we put our faith in things all the time that don't deserve it. the bible is pretty clear on choosing and not choosing Jesus and it's also clear for the believer that he will be tested. 2 Corinthians 3:12-15 talks about building on your foundation and that what you build will be tested and, if you so desire (and if you desire this, I wonder if you honestly know Christ) you can be saved by the skin of your teeth. I'm not interested in the milk, I belong to Jesus, there is no option of turning back or glancing over my shoulder wondering if God is mad at me, all the wrath of the Father is satisfied with the acceptance of Christ. any disciplining we go through now is out of love because our Father delights in us (proverbs 3). and if Christ had to learn obedience through suffering that means we do too (hebrews 4 or 5). it's odd how so many Christians take God's rebuking as condemnation. the more important and grand we are in our own eyes, the more we're actually trying to be like the great I AM and not like Christ. one of the best things God can do is show you worth by yourself, else we would set out to take on everything and get crushed. If we're going to trust Him as our refuge than we have no really see that there is no true safety except in Him.

There are times when God has to get a hold of us, like children who have to have a bottle put to their lips. but if God is in us willing us to act "according to His good purpose" than we have to start choosing to seek Him for no other reason to do so, so as to model Jesus. it's about rousing yourself in your devotions, being blatantly honest in prayer and when the Spirit leads you to something you go for it with reckless abandon. and no, it's not always comfortable, but that's why we "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil 2:12). we don't face trials here because we probably couldn't handle it, because we're seeking God when we have to or only when we "feel led." do it all the time in all that you do ask for a revelation of God in whatever you're doing. I want to be like Jacob who really reached out and wrestled with God, the most dangerous times are the mundane periods when we can fall asleep in the comfort of lukewarmness. we have traces of the truth in our culture with Jesus conveniently left out and I honestly believe it's partly because of dilluted truth in the church. I believe leaders have to stop wanting to be right and starting wanting Jesus to be glorified and then the body will work together because we'll all finally be listening to the head.

I know my posts are long, not sure how many people still read this, if you did than I pray that some part of this babble blessed you. good night.

2005-06-20T13:25:00.000-04:00

just wanted you to know that I've been doing a lot of writing, some of it might make it here...or it might not. BACK OFF!

2005-05-23T14:07:00.000-04:00

I remember when someone was eager to learn the next kata in karate my sensei would ask him/her to perform the one that he/she had been working on. After studying the person, he would usually get up and go through it with them and correct them. Afterward they would usually ask, "so, I can learn the next one?" to which he would reply "you have to work on what you’ve already learned." When someone would ask me to teach them something new, I’d appreciate their eagerness but I also knew if I taught them something new at the wrong time that they wouldn’t appreciate what they knew. I almost never taught someone something new when they asked me to. I looked for the students who loved what they were already doing, the few that took joy in diligence, not novelty. We always think that when we get something new, we’ll be satisfied it doesn’t matter if it’s something material or from God. We come to the teacher, asking for revelations, to be "taken higher." Jesus said to learn of Him because He was "meek and lowly of heart" He didn’t say, "learn of me, because I know everything." I am learning the lesson to find God in the smallest things (or, small in my prideful eyes) and suddenly every day becomes huge. To me, this is one of the keys of obtaining an eternal perspective. I felt God repeating the thing about being meek and lowly in heart and I became elated and I thought "that’s it!" If you want to go higher, you have to make yourself lower. I wonder at my own motives sometimes when I think of doing "great things" for God. I have asked God to give me the drive and desire to disappear, to be meek, to serve and love others whether they see it or not with the faith that God delights in it. I think that can only start to happen when I can really be assured that God loves me for all that I am, for all my mess ups, that He created me down to the last detail for a specific purpose for His glory and delight. I hear so many pep talks where people say "we gotta start serving Him! Get off your butt, church!!!" I’m not saying there isn’t a discipline here, or that we don’t need a kick in the butt every once in a while, we’re told not to resent our Father’s discipline. However, I also think people need another kind of motivation, we need to be motivated by grace, not peer pressure. God blesses us every day, we have to put ourselves in the position to receive it, which is on our faces.

People who grow spiritually are people who are taking Jesus up on His offer in Revelations 3:18, "I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see." But to be in the position to receive one must realize that they’re "wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked" (3:17). We buy riches from God, not by giving Him something great, He rebuked David when he wanted to build God a cedar palace (2 Samue7:5-7). God isn’t asking us to push away our sin, problems, and anxieties aside and give Him something "great." Buy His riches, cast off the anxieties, trade the burden of your sin and worry for His lighter burden. Allow God to enrich you by trading in the sin that He convicts you of. God never just takes, only Satan does that, Satan is the destroyer, he takes and takes until you’re consumed. God replaces with His love until you’re perfect. If Christ is in you, if you’ve accepted Him and His sacrifice then He is at your center, in your heart and He wants to grow and push ignoble things out. Jesus’ prayer for believers would be that they would know that the Father loves us just as much as He loves Christ (John 17:23) and that we would show that to the world. How can we show it if we’re not assured? Jesus endured the cross for "the joy set before Him" (Hebrews 11). We have to endure times of trial, looking to the "author and perfecter" of our faith and trust that though the giving of ourselves is painful, we will be all the more enriched for it. Focus not on what you give but what God gives and when that trust in His love and generosity abides in you you will endure. You’re feelings might not change, neither will your circumstances immediately (maybe not for a while). To be a conqueror in Christ is, I think, to have times when you feel stressed, angry, or even sinful but to stand on the promise that nothing will separate you from God’s love. I felt guilty for feeling angry and impatient for feeling beaten and weak in some of my present situations but I realize that the feelings will come and go, circumstances might kick me around but I really don’t care because my strength isn’t reliant on how strong I feel, it isn’t reliant on me at all. God is my strength, don’t ask for God to give you strength, thank Him that He IS your strength. Paul was a broken man but he was boastful in God, "if God be for us, who can stand against us?" (Romans 8). If you’re asking God to be your rock, then you’re implying that at some point He wasn’t or that He needed an extra reminder. You need to be reminded that He is your rock, your refuge, your strength. Automatically, the enemy will suggest your selfish for standing on these things, but you’re standing on promises that God already made. Temptation isn’t a matter of tempting with pleasure, that’s a foolish, religious idea. Temptation is Satan trying to use any means to look to yourself instead of God. Peter always blabbered on about how much he gave for God but when it got put to the test he denied Jesus. He relied on his own promises to God and didn’t stand on God’s promises. None of us can say ‘I’ll do anything for God’ but we can say "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" (Phil 4:13). Try and motivate yourself to be Godly and that goes nowhere, come before God acknowledging that you’re blind, naked, sinful, poor and He gives you sight, clothes you with Himself, forgives you and enriches you. The closer you get to God the more sinfulness you see but you have to stand on the promise that there is "no condemnation for us in Christ" and that you are wholly accepted and pleasing to God because of Christ.

Paul always seemed to talk about two things in his letters: false discipline or no discipline. Either people were subjecting themselves to religious laws that "indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack ANY VALUE in restraining sensual indulgence" (Colossians 2:22). Or people were sinning like crazy because of a misinterpretation of what grace is. Either way you go, it’s a lack of Godly discipline. Either way, it’s self-centered, resisting God and laying down for the devil. In my view, Godly discipline is standing on His promises when you go through trials, or times of inner breaking and pruning, and straining to go on whether you see results or not in the moment. It’s laying down on the operating table and saying "just do it, God."

2005-05-11T20:46:00.000-04:00

Everything in karate is built on the kihon, or, the basics. Stances, block, strikes, and kicks. Every complex form, sparring tactic, or self-defense maneuver is comprised of the basics. Every revelation is comprised of one or more simple principles that we’re ready to see in a new light. I think about not judging people by our own measures and the way people are tested in karate. C.S. Lewis said that it’s more virtuous for a naturally mean person to be nice than a person who is naturally given to more kindness to be kind. As it is more virtuous for that kind person to be more assertive for a good purpose than it would be for the more naturally aggressive person. We all start at different points and, realistically, most will only grow to a certain extent given their circumstances. I tend to look at people like my father when he gets gruff but I fail to look at the whole picture. His dad died when he was nine and his mother was an alcoholic, yet by the grace of God he is here today with a family for which he provides greatly for, gives generously of his money and time to his church, above all, he strives to love God with all his heart, mind, and soul. I am trying to learn to see everyone that way. Indeed, we should be bearing fruit but I know I have to be patient with where I came from and learn to see the fruit in my life and learn to see people the way Christ does. When we test people in karate, we look to see how often the person showed up, how diligent and respectful they were. Ultimately that will show in their technique, with the right attitude they will stay determined and get better. However, not everyone is going to be Bruce Lee and that’s not any fault of their own, they might have every bit of heart that he did. Turns out, it's your heart that God really cares about. I spar everyone differently, it isn’t about going as hard as possible with everyone. If I’m more experienced I work to help them, going just hard enough to keep them moving. If someone doesn’t want to be touched, if they just want to play then I play and respect the kind of person they are. Of course, there those of us that love to push each other, to really go at it and I can honestly say there has never been any maliciousness or anger. The sparring always stopped at a moments notice if someone had to stop, when someone hit you you acknowledged the hit with a smile and a nod. It’s not about how hard you go, it’s about pushing yourself. Sparring is an exchange, it should really be mutually beneficial for both people. Whenever someone wanted to spar to see who was the better, truth be told there were times when I wanted nothing more than to give them what they were asking for, usually my conscience weighed on me and I’d kindly decline. Then there were those who just wanted to spar because they just enjoyed it and I’d have some of the toughest, but most enjoyable, matches in which me and the other person would have a weird kinship afterward. How a person trained and fought usually spoke volumes about their character, martial arts is very expressive, you learn to read people on a deeper level through their movements.

Everything except sin points to the truth of God and the way He works. We were always told to keep a beginner’s mind in karate, always be willing to learn from those who were higher and lower in rank. When someone came in we would have to teach them movements that were contrary to the way they were used to moving. You had to unlearn old habits and replace them with new reflexes through hours of arduous training. Just like Christianity we must come as children always willing to be taught, always willing to unlearn old ways and have them be replaced by Christ likeness in our constant seeking of Him through reading the word, prayer, and worship.

2005-05-07T20:20:00.000-04:00

an enchanted moment

2005-05-07T20:18:00.000-04:00

all kinds of tough in this picture

2005-05-07T20:17:00.000-04:00

gangsta...kinda...

2005-05-07T20:16:00.000-04:00

you're the man, jon.

2005-05-07T20:15:00.000-04:00

if jen was any happier, she'd explode

2005-05-07T20:14:00.000-04:00

what?

2005-05-07T20:13:00.000-04:00

usually you kiss the cook, but in this case the cook was giving 'em out. don't hate paul because he's pretty, karen.

2005-05-07T20:11:00.000-04:00

lord of the grill

2005-05-07T20:10:00.000-04:00

alicia and brian (he spells his name wrong) saw God but everyone else was distracted.

2005-05-07T20:08:00.000-04:00

what a man, what a man...

2005-05-07T20:06:00.000-04:00

me.

2005-04-25T11:31:00.000-04:00

so, I don't have a premeditated message, I am just going to write about random thoughts and feelings. this might sound harsh, but just follow me. I don't care for looking ahead at the future, it's really been a big waste of time. the future is now, it's being determined by what God is asking me to do today. I hear too much stuff like "oh, I'm not called to do that," out of my own mouth and others. I am called to love and serve God, I don't care whether it's as an evangelist, preacher, teacher, prophet, missionary, fedex ground package handler, fireman, shoe salesman...you get the friggin' point. it's called a walk in faith, that doesn't mean I sit here and wait for God to shine light on my next step. it means I walk, I do things I do and don't have a preference for and trust that God will open some doors and shut others. God will speak when He knows I'm ready. I don't care about success as the world measures it, or even as some churches measure it. I don't care about the number of saved souls, I'd rather see one person saved and discipled to a life completely surrendered to Christ than one hundred people who get saved and do nothing. my sensei used to say "I'd rather one good pushup than ten crappy ones." I'm tired of insisting on what I'm called to do, that is complete arrogance. I've found discernment is keeping things simple, clinging to the simple promises of God regardless of circumstances. the complication comes with feelings, people, events and places that attempt to steal peace and joy from my life. I've tried too many times to see what God is doing in a situation before it's over and that's just stupid. I don't have to know unless He wants me to know, I know when I hear God because He is God not because of I have thought about things long enough. I'm at peace but I'm fed up with all of this and so until God speaks to me about the future, about a direction, I am going to "take up my bed and walk" not lay on it. the question on whether I can do something for God isn't "what am I good at?" it's "do I have the Holy Spirit?" What I'm good or bad at has its place but I don't care to think about it anymore.

so much for not having a message...

2005-04-15T21:32:00.000-04:00

Well, I figured I’d write because I haven’t in a while. I’ve been an odd place lately, a little rough but it’s probably one of the best stages of my spiritual growth. God has been silent and yet He hasn’t been. I have no clear direction right now, but He keeps reassuring me that He loves me. I realize that no matter how holy an idea seems, no matter how much thought I put into my future, it doesn’t mean a thing. I have learned that from this whole cop job disappointment. We can swear up and down sometimes that God is leading us somewhere but sometimes you have to see the doors get slammed in your face to realize He’s God. I’ve learned to start claiming the fruits of the Spirit to live in the every day because that is where everything begins - right now. I look at where I am right now and I ask myself "How can I get to know God more today? How can I serve Him? How can I serve others?" This time is a blessing, it has forced me to look away from circumstances and go into deeper communion with God. I won’t lie, I’ve had some moments in the past few days in which I was very close to saying "the heck with all of this." In drawing closer to God, I have come face to face with the selfish motives of my human heart. Without God, we really are selfish and wretched, I thank Jesus that I can bring this sin to the light and be renewed. God has shown me just how much I try and take control and I have a new appreciation for repentance. I realized just how much I was dwelling on what God was doing in my life (or, what I thought He was doing) and I was praying for others less, I was becoming overwhelmed. I tried to take the burden only to realize that I know nothing except that God is good and I need to listen more. I’ve had a few key people who God has used to minister to me, I thank you from the bottom of my heart (you know who you are).

I’m not "happy" right now, but I am at peace and I definitely have had to claim that peace daily because God offers it to me as His child, His beloved. We so quickly fall into the deception that our life is ours. No one did anything to receive life and they can’t control when they lose it. Pride and possession are closely interwoven, the minute I assume possession over something my pride rears its ugly head. Thankfully, I have been stripped of many things lately and God will put things back together as He sees fit and I’m not going to think about it. I’m taking a hands off approach and work on looking away from myself to God and to others.

2005-04-05T12:19:00.000-04:00

So, I have come to realize that incite gone astray is over-analyzation. Zeal and passion without temperance can lead to mere emotional highs, or even hysteria. Mercy without a backbone turns into mere pity. Conviction without mercy leads to condemnation. Love without action is infatuation, actions without love are meaningless.

I surrendered my passion for the things of this world to God. Turns out, He wants more. He wants a clean slate, He doesn’t just want my motives for doing things of this world. He wants to instill new ones, He wants my love for Him to be so set apart from, yet evident in, everything I do. I don’t know how that is going to be done, what I do know is that I am choosing to say, "yes, Lord, I love you."

2005-03-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

So, I’m back to share what I’ve gained with my intense introspection, er, I mean, my conversations with God (phew, the joke was almost up!). So much of this is about choice and God is just flat out lovely, worthy and, well, Godly. I’ve had a lot of time alone with God lately and He has really been talking to me about the motives of my heart. "Choose your motives, Bryan," is what He’s said. I’ve been trying to find the right motives to do things - things I enjoy and things I don’t. Finally, I realize the problem; the wrong motives for serving God lead to wrong motives for just about everything else. The bible says to be poor but to be rich in God (Revelations 3:17). I realized that I own nothing, I don’t love my life and it’s one of the greatest revelations I have ever come to. God gives us things like people, talents, maybe even material stuff but it’s not ours it is God’s. I can have many things but none of them are mine, not even my life. I can’t tell you how much joy wells up in me when I write that and say it aloud.

I woke up in the middle of the night and God spoke as I was stumbling into the bathroom "do not approach my throne just out of guilt." Godly sorrow is different than mere guilt, one you can gain from and one you don’t. I realized that sometimes I serve God out of guilt and fear, the same motives that I would sometimes use to motivate myself for other things. When I wasn’t a serious Christian I’d force myself to upkeep hobbies out of the fear that I would lose my worth and if I didn’t do them I would feel guilty. I realized that I have carried that into the kingdom with me. God wants me to serve Him out of love, to know His love for me and others. One thing I always remember is that it always goes back to the Garden. Either you want to be God or you want to obey Him. When I serve God to appease fear or guilt I am really serving myself, I want to stand in approval of myself and say "now, I have earned it." It’s pride, albeit a little warped, but pride nonetheless. I’m not waiting for the perfect motives to come along and then serve God, it’s always going to be a conflict. I love God more now than I did before and as a result I serve Him more. Early on in life, we have people who evaluate our performance and we internalize their measures and judge ourselves and others by them. Repentance for the internalization of these things, for using them against God, others and yourself is the only way to be free of them. Accepting Jesus’ forgiveness, forgiving the ones who have wronged you, forgiving yourself allows you to choose your motives. I have begun lately to really take advantage of the power of choice. I choose to believe that I have all the encouragement and fulfillment I will ever need in Christ whether I feel differently at the moment or not. I choose to serve God because I love Him.

I can choose the right motives, I can say that I love God and am going to serve Him because that is the kind of heart He has instilled in me when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. To say "I’m a bad servant" is to listen to the enemy, either I’m a servant or I’m not. Evaluating progress is a dangerous thing with fleshly measures, it irrevocably leads to disappointment and false guilt which lead me away from God. I can say that I will love God with all my heart, mind and soul, that I will persevere, that I will serve Him because (and only because) that is the work He is doing in me and to say otherwise is to imply that His work is null and void. Once you’re in, you’re in now you just have to keep your eyes fixed on Him, to trust that He is working in you. Trying to do it your own way, on your own steam is, in my mind, what causes people to fall. I am worthy not because I am worthy but because I have been made worthy by the cross and that is why I can stand up and say to the enemy "I’m not who you say I am." On top of that, when I am plagued by the enemy it sometimes can mean that I’ve allowed a stronghold in my life which I can take before God and receive freedom. So, in a sense, I can use the enemy’s attacks to my advantage.

It all works for good because I love God. He chose me before I ever knew He existed, He chose me so that I would have the option of choosing Him. What a lovely God that I love and serve. Blessed is my Father who guides me, my Savior Jesus who has redeemed me and blessed is the Holy Spirit who gives me the Godly passion for His namesake.

a love song between God and I...

Forever Lyrics
by Ben Harper

Not talkin' 'bout a year
no not three or four
I don't want that kind of forever
in my life anymore
forever always seems
to be around when it begins
but forever never seems
to be around when it ends
so give me your forever
please your forever
not a day less will do
from you
People spend so much time
every single day
runnin' 'round all over town
givin' their forever away
but no not me
I won't let my forever roam
and now I hope I can find
my forever a home
so give me your forever
please your forever
not a day less will do
from you
Like a handless clock with numbers
an infinite of time
no not the forever found
only in the mind
forever always seems
to be around when things begin
but forever never seems
to be around when things end
so give me your forever
please your forever
not a day less will do
from you

2005-03-28T18:05:00.001-05:00

well, stuff happened that I don't want to get into but the only that has kept me from going postal is the fact that God is good and that my life is His. the point of all this is to know Him and so regardless of cirumstances I seek to know Him in a new way. He is the author of peace and not of confusion but that doesn't always mean He gives answers. However, He has shown me once again that there is freedom and peace in knowing Him. I can try to expound on this but I don't feel there is much of a point right now because it's really not a matter of intellectual understanding, it's a matter of the choice to love and to trust. There's no formula here that will satiate the mind's hunger for "sense," God doesn't lower himself by trying to squeeze into the seemingly neat, secure dome of reasoning known as "common sense."

2005-03-28T18:05:00.000-05:00

2005-03-14T14:19:00.000-05:00

I think a lot, maybe too much.

No matter what happens, God's there, I'm His, and He's leading.

2005-03-14T12:30:00.000-05:00

I got to thinking about boats and how they’re mentioned a few times throughout Luke. Jesus gets into Simon’s boat and asks him to cast out his nets, to which Simon complains a little but he obeys. As a result he is blessed with more fish than him or his boat could handle. The funny thing is that as soon as they get to land He tells Simeon to abandon all of it and follow Him. Those of you who, like me, love seafood might be thinking "why the waste of good fish, God?" It wasn’t a wasted blessing, it achieved its purpose; to show Simeon how unworthy he was to be blessed so abundantly, to drive him to want to be completely devoted to Jesus. The blessing wasn’t there for Simeon’s enjoyment, it was there to show God’s goodness. I know if I were Simeon I’d want to sit down and have myself the fish fry of the century. The real blessing was witnessing a miraculous sign of Jesus’ power, and the unworthiness was a key part of it. He didn’t sit and wallow in his unworthiness and he didn’t get up and assume that he deserved the blessing and become fixated on it. Jesus beckoned and he followed. Yeah, it’s that simple and that hard.

Then we have the guy at Gerasenes who had a radical experience with being delivered from demons. He runs to Jesus and asks to follow Him, but Jesus tells him to go back. Again, I ask "God, what’s the deal? He would have made one heck of a disciple." Sometimes we’re asked to abandon spiritual blessings for the sake of others and that is a real tough one. We cry "Jesus I just want you" and He answers "Go to them." Obviously, He never leaves you but sometimes we see God moving in a great way and we want to jump on the boat but He asks you to be spent somewhere else. I look at that guy who had enough faith in Jesus that he walked away from Him visibly, didn’t feel abandoned and told everyone in his town about great Jesus was and the people welcomed Jesus when He came back (Luke 8:40).

I know I’ve been blessed a lot lately and at first it threw me for a loop. The blessings aren’t for me, they’re there for me to offer to God, to deepen my appreciation and devotion for Him. That is how blessings really bless your life, not just answering a need or desire, they lead you to closer to God. They help you to abide more in the fear of the Lord, to show His goodness. Miracles require faith and are granted to give more faith, so that we can witness God’s greatness. I felt callings over my life when I got serious with God and I jumped up and down for joy but then, peculiarly enough, I see Him sending me to the police force. I trust in the callings, but I feel Him asking "how much are you willing to give?" Am I willing to go so far as to say that I even surrender my calling? When He tells me to be in the every day dealing with people, to interact with them in ways that aren’t comfortable for me. Am I willing to have everything change in the blink of an eye? So many times I hear doing "great things" for God would be going to the nations or doing something grand in our minds. I’m not downplaying anyone’s dreams here, they might be from God, take it up with Him. What if His plan is for you to be in some small town in Utah for the rest of your life? To be spent so that two people are saved and they go off and witness to millions? Are we willing to never see the fruits of our labor?

What is faith? Is faith believing in Him doing amazing things according to our minds? Or, is it saying "I don’t care what it takes, I’ll be hated, I’ll be the doormat, I don’t have to be a super pastor who preaches to millions, or a ‘great’ missionary who travels all around the world...I’ll be whatever it is you want me to be regardless of what men think." Lofty, challenging statement isn’t it? I am praying for that kind of devotion because, quite frankly, I don’t have it. I want to be married one day, I want to be a pastor of a church, I want to prophecy and preach to lots of people. I want to lay the "Godly" desires on the altar because, lets be honest, even things we think are holy are sometimes tainted with a measure of selfishness. The real question to ask is, do I want to be lifted up or do I want to lay myself down so that Christ might be lifted up in me?

2005-03-10T14:54:00.000-05:00

I’ve heard so many times "practice what you preach" but I think you have to be what you preach. Jonah preached a message of conviction but he also learned a message of compassion in the belly of the whale. He assumed the second chance was for him only and the punishment was for the people of Nineveh. I look at that story and see someone who could have used his blunder to gain a deeper understanding of himself so that he could have a deeper understanding of the people he was preaching to. It’s easy to pass on a message of correction to others when you’re more spiritually mature than them. Unless I get a word for someone suddenly, something that doesn’t make sense in the context of my life, I assume the message is for me also. Jonah had time to sit in the whale, God gave him that time to reflect on his own shortcomings. How much more effective would Jonah have been in preaching to Nineveh had he really understood the message of second chances, had he really understood the compassion that God had on him. Jesus prayed that believers would know that the Father loves us as much as He loves Jesus. Do you understand the compassion God has on you every day? You have no right to condemn others or yourself.
Jonah preached the message to Nineveh out of obedience to God and God got His message across to those people despite the lack of love Jonah had in his heart. Jonah got the message to them but he didn’t get it for himself. How effective we could be if we really sought to know the love of God. To know His love is to know His will on the deepest level. Christ wants us to be like Him, He wants us to be so filled with the love of God that we are one with Him. I think Christians go one of two ways too often; either we look at other people and try to "have a heart for them" and strain to love them, or we look at what God is doing in our lives and become too fixated with battling our own strongholds. I think we need more of both. More self-examination with the mind of Christ helps you to step out of yourself, understand and be filled with the love of God, which motivates you to love others. Ministering to others should seem effortless in the sense of effort the way the world sees it. There is a different kind of exhaustion that comes when you’re really feeding others, it causes you to go right back to God to seek Him for your life which motivates you to go right back out to serve others. A happy little cycle that I hardly have down to a science.

2005-03-07T17:35:00.000-05:00

Testimony

another long one...

"And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death." Revelations 12:11

Too often I hear testimonies that end when someone was "saved." I used to pray with all of my heart as a boy that God would take my life and do with what He wanted. I read the bible here and there and it shaped my way of thinking. I had a lot of seeds that were scarcely watered with a good church. When I came into contact with BASIC and New Covenant I was painfully aware of the water I needed. I always say that this was always part of who I was and it was, it just had never been watered. I used to blame my father but as I look and consider his life I realize that he is definitely an example of radical transformation. His abusive father died when he was nine, he grew up poor in a bad neighborhood, his older brother used to beat the daylights out of him, his mother was an alcoholic, he ended up becoming an alcoholic. After being kicked out of his house by my mother he decided to earnestly pray for God to take his life because he didn’t know what to do with it anymore. Today, he is drug free, he rebuilt his marriage, and he is a dedicated Christian, at his worst he can be abrasive, judgmental and negative. Even despite his tendency towards anger, I’ve seen him soften through the years, I’ve even seen him cry while praying, I’ve seen him struggle to try and approach people better. I joke a lot at his expense but I really thank God for what He did in my father and it brings me great joy to be able to connect with him.

Sometimes I don’t like being asked the question, "how long have you been saved?" I had a sense of God my whole life, I had felt convicted before, I knew instinctively to avoid certain things and I attribute that to my very early experiences with God and His word. The fateful evening at BASIC was a long time coming and I knew it. When the seeds I had began to get nourishment by being around Spirit-filled Christians and having a few key conversations I began to not just seek God but now I was looking for Jesus, the stumbling block, the one who I heard would allow me to have a personal experience with God. That night I really felt God say something along the lines of, "You’ve always known Me, the past few years you’ve really walked away from Me. I’m here to offer you not just to come back but to put both feet in and to really know Me." Too often people look for the key moment, but approaching Jesus is often a long, hard but unbelievably rewarding experience. God’s grace is working everywhere in every living person’s life, knocking on every person’s heart seeking to free them from the bondage of this life.

We pray a lot of lofty prayers. ‘God give me a heart for this or that’, and I’m not downplaying the importance of those prayers. Pray them, but understand that you’re not just going to wake up one day and suddenly feel more love for people. To some extent, yes. However, Jesus told to love others as we love ourselves and we can’t very well love others the right way unless we have the correct view of ourselves. You can’t help anyone with their burden unless you can carry your own first. It starts by learning how the grace of God has worked throughout your life, not just until you prayed the sinner’s prayer. No one prays the prayer and lives happily ever after, your testimony builds as your understanding of God and His love deepens. That will allow you to understand others on a deeper level. It starts with what Christ did and then how that worked in your life and that understanding only comes from your devotional time with God. To see God we need holiness, the more of God you see in your life, the more holiness that you’ve got. The more holy you are the more people are drawn to you, the less you do things by your own effort, and, consequently, the more you will be attacked by the enemy.

The point here is that it starts with you. You don’t pray the prayer to sound holy at a meeting and then not follow up with God by reading the bible and praying every day (yes, every day). It doesn’t matter if it’s 15 minutes or three hours, different days lead to different things but be open to it. This is how your everyday things are transfigured - by preceding them with the word and prayer. This allows you to do even the most mundane things with an attitude of worship. How do you feel looking back on mistakes you’ve made? Times you’ve turned away from God? How do you see yourself when you look back at the years you didn’t know Him? Are you angry? You shouldn’t be. Lack of patience, lack of the right heart for people is there because you don’t evaluate your past with eyes cleansed by holiness, you don’t meditate with the mind of Christ. Somewhere along the line the enemy says to be a good Christian you have to berate yourself and you can’t love yourself. Love who Christ is in you, remind yourself that you’re under the blood of the Lamb. If you’re looking back at your past or the mistakes you’ve made and kicking yourself for them then you’re not having faith in the blood and then you don’t build your testimony and then you don’t overcome he who is in the world.

2005-02-21T18:07:00.000-05:00

This is really long...

A Deeper Surrender

"18As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demonpossessed begged to go with him. 19Jesus did not let him, but said, "Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you." Mark 5:18-19

"15 O Lord, open my lips,and my mouth will declare your praise. 16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 The sacrifices of God are [a] a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." - Psalm 51:15-17

Many times in as young Christians we become fixated with sacrifice. Now, I’m not downplaying the significance of sacrifice, I want to address what I am learning it to be. Frequently in the bible people look to the disciples who left their lives and everything they knew when Jesus said, "follow Me." At some point, we’re called to follow Him, to set everything aside, realize the futility of this life and all that is has to offer and cry out ‘Your will be done.’ We latch onto Jesus putting all else to the way side to be everything we can be for Him. The motives are mostly right and I have faith that God works with that. What is often forgotten is that God does not "delight in sacrifice," the true sacrifices of God are "a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart" (Psalm 51:16-17). God demands our hearts but He does not demand other things, like "burnt offerings" or things that we have. He needs nothing, the sacrifice of His only begotten Son was the perfect sacrifice and it is our continuous acceptance of that sacrifice and our identification with it and Christ that He wants. Jesus called the twelve disciples specifically, He didn’t stand somewhere and say ‘I need twelve, so whose with Me?’ He approached each of them in their individual circumstances and called them. When Jesus and the disciples were in Gerasenes, Jesus cast demons out of a tormented man and put them into swine who threw themselves from a cliff (Mark 5). This man ran towards Jesus, threw himself at His feet and cried "what do you want of me, Jesus, Son of the most high God?" after being delivered of his torment the man was very thankful and he begged Jesus to go with Him (Mark 5:18). Jesus didn’t say come and follow me, He "did not let him, but said ‘Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.’" (Mark 5:19). He wasn’t demanding that man leave his life and family, but to be with them and be a light unto them. What was important was the man’s broken heart and spirit and his willingness to do anything that Jesus said. Peter declared, "we have left everything to follow you" (Mark 10:28) and "I will never disown you" (Mark 26:35). Indeed, Peter had left everything to follow Jesus but he took pride in his devotion and denied Jesus and fell asleep in the garden. He also sliced off the guard’s ear, what does this tell you? He saw what he had given up and he had an elitist attitude as a result. So did John when he said he saw someone casting out demons in Jesus’ name and they tried to stop him, but Jesus said "do not stop him...for whoever is not against you is for you" (Luke 9:50).

To take up your cross and to love not your life is a little different for everyone. It is the surrender of your heart, your dreams, your desires - your will. When you have done that, you have accepted the sacrifice of Christ, the power of sin has been broken and you are now a slave to righteousness (Romans 6:17-18). Surrender is done daily, it is continually surrendering in faith your heart and being obedient to God out of love and devotion. From that, we cut the things which don’t bring fruit out of our lives. The more we align ourselves with Christ the less we will want those things. We are commanded to do all to the glory of God, that doesn’t mean everything we do has to be hard. When we sacrifice that which isn’t asked to be sacrifice we are taking control from God, essentially saying "you didn’t ask for this but I’m giving it up to make myself grow."

Is there a time for fasting? Of course. Those temporary times are times when we seek God for Him and Him alone. When we return to the point of it all, which is that Jesus is everything. It’s a time when we reevaluate how we might have gone astray, what isn’t bringing fruit to our lives anymore, and what we’ve outgrown. These are times like the man in Gerasenes when we run to Jesus and fall at His feet and He might ask you to go somewhere, or having gotten right with Him, He might say ‘go back to where you were.’ Whether you’re asked to go somewhere or go back isn’t the point, it’s that you’re being obedient to God. Maybe during this time we’ve spent less time with people or doing certain things, at the end of this we can go back to the things which Christ allows us to have but with a different attitude. Paul writes about our individual walk in Romans 14, "one man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God." Paul goes on to explain that this is the reason why Christ died, for this reason Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living." You cannot judge others based on the sacrifices of your walk with Christ, for "everyone will give an account for himself" before God. However, if you’re doing something that is a "stumbling block" to someone else’s walk you should put away around him/her out of love for that person so that you are not a hindrance to them, "Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way" (14:13). Paul writes that "nothing in and of itself is unclean except to him that esteems it to an unclean level" (14:14). If someone else considers something unclean, out of respect and love for them refrain from it in their presence. For those that consider something unclean consider that someone who you know that does it might not have esteemed it to an unclean level as you have in your walk. This section of the letter however comes after Paul writes about being a living sacrifice and being responsible towards higher powers. The things Paul talks about in Romans 14 are, I believe, what you do for fun or recreation, which are important. If you don’t take time to rest, to enjoy things that God has blessed you with (doing them to His glory) you will burn out, you’ll fail. These things cannot take precedence over or negatively affect things like your devotional time with God, your service to the body, your relationships with family and friends, and your responsibilities towards people in authority.

True surrender is an act of complete obedience, in that obedience there are sacrifices but sacrifice isn’t always obedience, let God lead and follow obediently laying aside things which He asks you to. Do no more and no less because in either case it’s you trying to be in control of the rate of your growth.

2005-02-17T14:54:00.000-05:00

So, I don't know how this fast is going for others but it's been a real blessing for me. God has been clarifying a lot of things for me, including more incite to my calling and I'm stoked. I know part of what I feel I'm called to do and that is defend the faith with my writing. I'm tired of hearing over and over again that someone read one line from the bible in a book or heard it from a friend who saw it somewhere and then form a whole opinion based on that. I can say "the newspaper is only about sports and nothing else," then pick up the sports section and say "ah ha!" That's not me wanting to see the newspaper for what it is, it's me wanting to just feel right. The newspaper is supposed to be there to deliver raw, honest news. Some things people want to hear and some things people don't but it doesn't change the reality that these things happen. The bible is God's most raw, authoritative, and honest way of communicating with people. It tells us many encouraging things and it tells things that we don't want to hear because He is perfect love and love is honest. The bible isn't there to support to support what I think, it's there to change the way I think. Obviously, I would use scripture to back up a point that I'm making but what I'm saying has to align itself with scriptural truth first and foremost. It's not just knowing sripture either, Satan tried to misuse scripture to tempt Jesus (Luke 4:10-11). It is possible to know the teachings of Jesus, but not really know Him. If you really know Him your relationship with Him is intimate.

I am going to the Union tonight to evangelize, I don't like first contact evangelizm, I am more of a one on one person. My calling doesn't seem to be geared towards that but then again I really don't know, do I? I know what led me to God but to assume that is the same path for everyone isn't right. I felt God pressing in on me to be there, to put off my ideas of how the gospel should be spread and trust that He can use anything. Do I agree with everything about first contact evangelism? No, but it's not about me and there are shortcomings in every calling, that is why we're a body with different functions. When I taught karate, I had to know all the techniques. I was really good at some and others I hated, I thought they were useless. I still had to know them well enought to teach them to a beginner so I didn't limit them. I hated back kicks but then I'd see someone who was devastating with them and I'd think "one of these beginners might be geared towards that." It's our responsibility to try everything to go beyond what we think God wants to use and really just get out there and do it. I don't have to be the best evangelist, I just have to try and have faith that God will use it whether I see the results or not. If you believe that "the word of God is living, and powerful, and sharperthan any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit" then you must believe that when the gospel is shared in any situation with a spirit of charity it will not be for nothing (Hebrews 4:12). What I say to someone might not have any impact for years but even them giving it a passing thought when times get tough is something, better than nothing. I don't even know myself what affect the gospel has on me sometimes so I won't presume to know the affect it will have one someone else.

I like Djere's quote the other day, "Jesus didn't say, 'c'mon and follow Me, it'll be a hoot!"

2005-02-16T16:46:00.000-05:00

I'm reading a book called, The Case for Christ, by Lee Strobel. Strobel was an athiest journalist who set out to investigate the gospels and their historical accuracy and any other corroborative evidence supporting or disproving their validity. It includes his interview with leading biblical scholars and archeologists and it's awesome so far. And yes, he ends up becoming a Christian. I highly recommend it.

2005-02-15T22:01:00.000-05:00

So, holy crap. God lays a message on my heart before the meeting tonight (conveniently located at 213 Hewett Union at 7pm every Tuesday) about faith. Jesus stated three times Matthew 9 that miraculous things were based on people's faith in Him. He didn't just up and do things, He demanded faith and He is demanding it now. So I bring the message to Djere, God puts another verse on Djere's heart and we share the message with everyone before worship. Worship starts and God's presence is strong. Why? Because people were believing. I thought to myself, "what would I do right now if I was completely convinced that Jesus was here?" My attention went to Cheryl who said a few hours prior that she had strep throat and couldn't really talk, much less sing. I was moved to pray for healing for her and stupid doubts came up that insisted that I didn't know her well enough and all that guff. I told the enemy to shut his pie hole and walked over to her and asked if she minded if I prayed for her. I did and a few minutes later I look up and she is singing. She said to me after the meeting that her throat got better enough to sing and worship after we had prayed. Take that as you will.

I was praying that God would draw people who had never been to BASIC as I'm sure others were. I envisioned it, I open my eyes and there were three people that came in and sat in the back. Brand. Spankin.' New. Take that as you will.

I'm excited to see what happens when we all really start raising our faith because I'm feeling that that was cake. God wants to do really awesome things and He is going to do it. Whether we're the ones who raise the faith or others it's going to be done. I say we hop on the bus headed for revival. This is just the beginning, praise God.

2005-02-12T22:23:00.000-05:00

I wrote a short story that I thought about posting, it's an ode to Valentine's day. I'm still considering whether or not I want to put it in here...

umm that's it for now...

I love this song

Jars Of Clay»
Jealous KindI built another temple to a stranger I gave away my heart to the rushing wind I set my course to run right into danger Sought the company of fools instead of friends You know I've been unfaithful Lovers in lines While you're turning over tables with the rage of a jealous kind I chose the gallows to the aisle Thought that love would never find Hanging ropes will never keep you And your love of a jealous kind Love of a jealous kind Trying to jump away from rock that keeps on spreading For solace in the shift of the sinking sand I'd rather feel the pain all too familiar Than to be broken by a lover I don't understand 'Cause I don't understand One hundred other lovers, more, one hundred other altars If I should slow my pace and finally subject me to grace And love that shames the wise, betrays the heart's deceit and lies And breaks the back of foolish pride

2005-02-10T18:23:00.000-05:00

I'm finding that when you really want to hear from God, He speaks. When I really seek God for nothing other than His face He reveals Himself. Suddenly, He doesn't stop talking and I love it but it's exhausting. Good thing all I have to do is rely on Him and He'll caryy me through it all. I've been having so many vivid dreams and more of a sensitivity to His guidance and it's just...great. God does bless people but when you really seek Him (not just for His blessings) just for Him He blesses you with just that. The more I make my walk about Him the more blessed it gets...and harder. I really believe this is definitely a matter of chosing your own level surrender. How much of my willingness will I give to Him? We have callings and dreams but are we willing to be a doormatt for His glory? Sometimes I think there is a tendency to have a dream that seems Godly but really has our best interests ar heart. Are we willing to be the ones tread and stomped for the benefit of others? The ones who get little, if any, praise from men? It's in God's will for some people to live to a ripe old age with a nice house and tons of kids and grandkids and they might be very surrendered, decdicated servants. There are also those who deliver powerful messages, lay their lives down and aren't remembered. I'm not saying God thinks, "I like people who suffer like this." God doesn't want people proving their love by putting themselves through hell. He wants people who are so surrendered, so committed to Him that Christ can be seen in them wherever that leads them. There is no lack of devotion on His part, there is only an unwillingness on our part to let Him have the inner most desires of our hearts. The goal of this isn't my devotion to Him but to show the world how dedicated and faithful Christ is.

2005-02-08T09:04:00.000-05:00

Firstly, let me say that Sunday's service at New Covenant was phenominal. God's presence was overwhelming and there was much victory in people's lives. People laughed and cried during worship and it was just beyond words.

Secondly, I heard of this fast until March 8th and at first I thought maybe I'd go Samali with the boys but I felt led in a different direction. So, I'm going Amish. Well, not completely, but where it really counts. I'm fasting from TV until March 8th (two days after my b day). No, this doesn't mean I can't be in a room with a TV, it means I don't give it my attention and if that means leaving the room than so be it. No video games, movies (TV or cinema), or Simpsons. Paul, if you're reading this, I apologize that the New York Samurai will have to do without me for the next month. I figure this will free up my time to do some writing and more in depth study and, well, on the whole TV doesn't bring all that much fruit to my life anyways. I have a distinct feeling that at the end of this I won't feel much of a need for it (with the exception of NFL Fever 2004, the Samurai are too close to my heart).

Thirdly, I need a haircut...maybe a shave, too.

2005-02-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

I’m mad as heck, and I’m not gonna take it anymore.

Yesterday’s service at New Covenant and other subsequent messages that I’ve gotten are starting to really culminate in my life. I realized that instead of standing in defiance to the enemy and being on my face before God I do the reverse. Getting impatient with God’s progress in me is me wanting to take control, charging head long into battle and falling butt over tea kettle in the face of adversity. I’m going to use the second person pronoun here, but realize that I’m talking to myself, or, allowing God to speak to me. If this speaks to you, awesome. If not, awesome.

Listen, the problems you face aren’t from God. God isn’t a divine bully, He isn’t a cruel master, He is my rock, He is a "strong tower: the righteous runneth into it and is safe" (Proverbs 18:10). God allows things to exist for your growth, He wants you to rely on Him. Growth is painful, there is no getting around it. This world sucks so forth and so on but God didn’t make it bad, we did. In the beginning God made everything and "it was good" (Genesis 1, seen a bunch of times). Paul illustrated the difference between being troubled and being defeated: "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed" (2 Cor 4). It’s ok to be angry, confused, and sad but with these emotions comes the temptation to distrust God. Jesus didn’t say ‘my office hours are between 9 and 5,’ He said "I will NEVER leave you or forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5). He also said that NOTHING in all creation is able to separate us from His love in Christ (Romans 8). If you’ve accepted Christ and surrendered your life to Him, than it’s His and you have to trust that He knows your growth and He knows what you can handle. You’re no longer against God so stop resisting Him. He wants to make you perfect and nothing in all of creation will stop Him except your decision to not let Him. "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as He is pure" (1 John 3:2-3). When you stop trusting in God you walk away from Him. It starts in your mind, perverts your heart, then dictates your actions. When you’re walking closely with God and you sin you know right away. When you’re not walking with Him you’re walking into darkness and you won’t know what makes you stumble (proverbs, somewhere). When you believe He has left you, you’re really turning your back on Him, so stop blaming Him, stop blaming yourself, stop blaming others. Blame gets you nowhere. If peace isn’t ruling your heart then get aggressive. As I struggled in my mind yesterday and I got angrier and suddenly I felt as though God stopped me and asked "Bry, why are you taking this from him (the enemy)?"

I come from a background that is a bit legalistic and lacking in grace. So I tend to get critical with myself. I gave up a lot when I got saved and it was necessary for a period but after a while I felt God say "I told you to sin no more, I didn’t say to stop being alive." There are two types of fear, the fear of the Lord and the fear that has no place in a heart surrendered to Christ. Proverbs says a number of times that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Fear of the Lord is awe, it should result in deeper love, devotion, and worship of God. God lets us know what happens if we deny Him and it isn’t pretty but He has to make it clear. I know it’s a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God, trust me. You realize your sinfulness, your wretchedness. However, when you surrender to Jesus that isn’t who you are anymore. Ahem, again, that isn’t who you are anymore. He changes your heart and your desires. If your fear of God leads to resentment that isn’t Godly fear. If you serve God out of fear of punishment you’re not trusting in the fact that your sins are forgiven. This is the difference between a martyr and a self-proclaimed martyr. Someone with enough devotion to lay his/her life down for God trusts Him so implicitly that they "take no thought" for their lives. They don’t worry that God will make them do this or that because they trust that nothing in the past, present, or the future will separate them from the love of God (Romans 8).

The thing that trips most people up is that God is completely devoted to them, not because He needs to be, He needs no one, but because He wants to be. Blows my mind. We have a hard time trusting in the fact that He simply loves you that much because of our tainted experiences with love and devotion in the world. He created me and then He came and died for me, in some part of me that makes perfect sense and in another part of me it doesn’t. The new man and the old man.

The difference between dead religions and real Christianity is this: it isn’t just a set of rules it’s the deepest relationship you can ever have. From that relationship, the rules get written on your heart. The more you love God the more you will want to obey Him.

You have God living inside you, the God of all creation is with you. There is a difference between being unsure or having a bad day/week/month/year but still having the peace of Christ ruling in your heart and being tormented. You don’t have to take it, so don’t. You have weapons to fight with, your feelings might not change in that moment but that is where faith comes in. Don’t let the enemy knock you down, he’s already been defeated, so lay the sucker out. God gives you what you need to get out of whatever situation you’re in and the only way you won’t get out of your hole is if you believe that He can’t get you out of it. If your trust isn’t in God, you’ll have a hard time loving Him, yourself and others. Loving everyone and God is interconnected no matter which way you look at it. You can’t profess to love God and treat others badly and you can’t really love others the way Christ did unless you really love Him.

2005-02-02T14:46:00.000-05:00

my sister's awesome. God's doing great stuff in her life. and she's awesome. if you read this, Melissa, this is for you. thank you for being my sister.

2005-01-29T09:11:00.000-05:00

quotes from Ryan while firing his lazer gun

"I'm sorry, dude, I just blew out your windshield."
"I'd sign your clip board, if you weren't dead."
"That's the red-hot heat of freedom."

my favorite quotes from Paul (he doesn't have a gun because he's a wuss among wusses)

"Ahhhh son of a...!"
"Wha'd you do?!"
"Ah poop..."

my favorite quote from me

"I'm gonna make the champaign bottle pop, then do a belly flop, and I'll raise all the crops."

2005-01-24T18:20:00.000-05:00

I’ve heard people say that the grace of God saved them from this or that. I’m realizing nowadays that the grace of God has been saving me for my entire life. I grew up, by the grace of God, in a house with a stable marriage. I always seemed to meet people when they were being reformed. I was the only child of five to never see my father have a drink, I only knew him as an overbearing Christian instead of a raging drunk. By God’s grace he was saved and he decided that he really wanted to try and witness to me as a boy. By God’s grace I read the bible while my mind was still really forming and it shaped a large part of my thinking. I got to know my brother after he straightened his life out - after the drugs, the drinking, and the promiscuity. He learned true self discipline, by the grace of God, and he was a model for me. I got to know people after they made mistakes and they took time to forewarn me, to share (some without knowing it) the grace by which they were saved from self destruction. When I really got serious and gave my life to Jesus is when I was given the eyes to see this. The months leading up to that pivotal moment I wanted a sign. No sign that I wanted was given. And why should there have been? I had signs my whole life, the people were the road signs leading me to God. God didn’t owe me what I considered a sign. He gave me a lot and then He said, "If you want Me, I must have you."
Let me tell you, I was always told that I was motivated, smart, and just a "well put together" person. I had gifts and I wasted them for a while. I had no direction. Gifts don’t give direction and without purpose all those gifts are worthless. Telling yourself that you’ve got it all together just doesn’t cut it some days, does it? I didn’t then and I don’t now but I know God does. Often we hear the testimonies of the people on their death beds or out on the street with no one and nothing who suddenly meet with God in a powerful way. Amen to them. They’re blessed because they knew they had nothing. I wonder about the "well put together" people who have good backgrounds, good personalities, and brains. I must say, I read "to whom much is given, is much expected" (C.S. Lewis) and that hit me square in the face. The "good" people are the ones who have so much potential, born to be leaders but unfortunately the gifts became a distraction from the purpose until life became the cultivation of those gifts. The "gifted people" seem so close but they couldn’t be further. I brushed off God so many times because, well, I knew better, because I had it all together. I don’t need to display my weakness like those people, I’d think. That was me. By the grace of God everything started to feel empty, I felt as though I was losing myself when I started seeking God. He was showing me a life with gifts and other stuff but not Him. The more empty I felt the more I began to rely on praying and learning more about Him until I finally hit bottom. I was empty and all I could do was look up and see Jesus. The bible tells us we’re evil and anyone who has screwed up their lives with drugs or whatever will look at that with a better chance of admitting that the greater part of their lives has been self serving and empty. They’re more apt to listen, they’re more appreciative of God’s saving grace.

I pray that God will help me appreciate and love Him more because that is my purpose. My identity is in Christ and my personality is another color God wants to show the world of Himself. The more I love Him, the more I am sanctified, the better I can serve Him. My goal is what He set for me, to be perfect. By His love it will be possible, how close I come to it in this life is up to me.

2005-01-17T21:06:00.000-05:00

I'm back because I'm bored but I'm just sitting here thinking about God and how great He is. Throughout my life I've been to a few different churches, some horrible, some okay, some awesome. I've met some people who simply carry the fragrance of divinity that only a person who is submitted to Him can carry. I could never put words to it and when I came to college I met a few people like that at the same time. I used to pray to God when I was very young to take my life, I used to beg Jesus to use me and I had no idea what I was asking. People have been praying for me my whole life and I consider all the times I felt God speaking to me as answered prayers. God was answering the prayer I prayed as a young boy. A cynic might say "why would God answer a prayer when you didn't understand it?" Let's be honest, we don't fully realize the magnitude of what we're asking when we pray to God for things. I can say 'God bless this person' and God hears that and He will answer that prayer in His time but I have no idea what He will do.

Faith isn't about seeing the results, it's about raising your vision.

When the Lord revealed Himself to Saul and blinded him, He told him to go to Tarsus. The Lord then went to one of His followers, Ananias and told him to "put his hand on him (saul) that he might receive his sight" (Acts, 9:4-16). There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this but I feel compelled to focus on a few things. One, God could have restored Paul's sight and sent him on his merry way but He didn't, He sent him to one of His servants. He wanted to use one of His own to display His power. He also made Paul, a persecutor and murderer of Christians into a "chosen vessel." Ananias argues with God (I try it so often, angels must've laughed at my expense more than once) and says in, King Brooklyn version, "hey, I hearda dis guy and he's a section eight, I mean, no friggin' good." God used this to work on Ananias and his bias. Two points: God loves doing awesome things through those who know Him and He wants us to realize that He wants others, even those who seem least likely. Raise the vision for yourself and for others.

2005-01-17T19:37:00.000-05:00

I have a lot to say, but I'm not really sure I want to say it all here...

I'm reading a book called The Three Battlegrounds, by Francis Frangipane and I highly recommend people read it. It's all about spiritual warfare and how it operates in our minds, surroundings, and the spirit realm.

So, yeah that's all...

2005-01-05T18:10:00.000-05:00

So my coworker Ben says to me one day at 4:25 am as we're walking into work, "Morning. Did you know there are people living in the core of the earth?"
I replied, "I'll bet they have monorails."

As he walks into my trailer, "Did you ever think about how racist Rudolph is?"

Today as he came to help me with something, "We should just all become pirates, it'd be awesome until the FBI caught us."

I liked the pirate idea the best because we said we could hijack Fedex trucks. We would wait by the guard shack and then suddenly ropes with grappling hooks would be thrown from the bushes and we'd climb on. We would draw our curved blades, plunder, then make off with all the booty. When the authorities did catch us we would have a long, drawn out sword fight.

2004-12-31T17:54:00.000-05:00

"But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness." Romans 6:17-18

"For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after the kindness and love of God our Savior toward men appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us...that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which believe in God might be careful to maintain good works." Titus 3:3-8

People notice us, it can be scary and we don’t have the luxury of being caught unawares in our everyday actions. We are slaves to righteousness, that is part of our Christ-like identity and when we weren’t slaves to God we were slaves to sin. Only by the grace of God through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ were we saved. We acknowledge that even if we had coasted through this life living "good" lives (you know, not drinking, being nice, exercising moderation, etc...) but we didn’t acknowledge Jesus we would end up in the same place that the worst drug addict, murderer, or sexually promiscuous person would have and we would deserve it. Satan doesn’t care how much people realize they serve him, but God does. God makes it very clear how His followers are supposed to act and He forgives any sin as long as we repent. God doesn’t weigh actions, He weighs hearts. We have no right to mock anyone, to cast stones at them, because at one point or another we were the person on the ground and Jesus came, helped us up, and told us to "sin no more." The only measure we’re supposed to use evaluate is God’s measure and even then we are merely being mouthpieces for God. People who don’t know any better cast the stones to make themselves feel justified, we realize that nothing we do makes us justified, only Jesus’ blood. God has really shown me that faith and hope for people are not enough, I have to be a reflection of His love. The most intense experiences I’ve had with God are usually a result of me being so broken down that I cry out for nothing but His grace. There is a key difference between conviction and condemnation. We never have the right to condemn anyone because that would be us deciding their fate, deciding there is no hope for them whatsoever. Our job is to be filled with Christ’s love and preach His word and if that means convicting someone than so be it. Love is honest. Conviction should make someone reflect on their lives and lead to the need for repentance. Conviction is not the final verdict, condemnation is and that happens when someone stands before God. I ask myself whether I make people feel convicted or condemned, one shows the emptiness and consequences of a life without Jesus and the other makes me another person in the crowd throwing stones. I have been given a great gift, I am justified, saved, loved in a way that I never thought possible and my job when people approach me is to point right towards the cross and say ‘that is why and He is there for you too.’ I have been exalted, adopted as a child of God because I was humbled. God has lifted me up and I feel this indescribable desire to reach out to the people who don’t know true love, to have Jesus reach out through me so that people can know Him. It all starts with believing and understanding how God sees you, with and without Him, because apart from Him we are nothing. Love is honest and God is honest in His word and people need to know who to love. There is one God, one way to love Him, and one way to serve Him and He doesn’t hide that from anyone. With Him we are given salvation, a heavenly identity, and a divine purpose all because He loves us that much. Everyone is at a different point in their journey with Jesus, there are many paths to Jesus but once you get there you realize He is the only way to heaven.

2004-12-28T13:42:00.000-05:00

I'm going to ramble a lot in this post. I feel like the past few weeks have had so many highs and lows and I'm just tired. I don't really know where my direction is right now, job hunting is crappy. I was applying for one job when I overheard three of the bosses bashing Jesus big time. I don't expect everyone to be a Christian, but I am not denying what I live for and going to work in an environment like that. At first I got angry, but I prayed for God to help me respond with love and after calming down there was only one person left who was engaged in the God bashing conversation (who claimed to go to church). I handed her the application and told her to throw it out, she looked puzzled and I said, "I'm a Christian." She mumbled a few apologies and I was filled with a sadness I couldn't explain and I said that the bosses should probably exercise more discretion and I left. Other than that, there have been no jobs available, the one I have is cutting my hours severely because there is really low volume, my bills are rising and I'm wondering where the heck I am supposed to be. I've felt this way for a while and I keep just trying to wait on God, He answers me here and there but I feel like every time I feel aligned with Him I lose Him and have to fight to regain the peace. He gave me a destination that seems so far away and I trust that if He wants me there then we will get there. I'm just trying to really hear Him and I know He is there but I'm just tired. I feel like I'm getting knocked down time and time again and sometimes I think I'd rather just lay there.

2004-12-14T15:15:00.000-05:00

I draw a lot of parallels to my Christianity from martial arts. I know full well that martial arts is a limited analogy, as is anything you relate to Christianity, because anything that is not a complete following of Christ falls short. That being said, I remember at one of my promotion tests I was sparring my last round against my teacher. I was exhausted, I was doing all I could just to keep my hands up, I had aced tests before this one because I had a natural affinity for the art. However, now I was reaching a level where I was really being challenged. In the last two minutes of this two hour long test I didn't think I was going to make it. Was my karate teacher sympathetic? No, because he knew what I was capable of and he was going to push me past where I thought my limits were. So he pummeled me around the room and he knocked me to the floor at one point. I looked up at him expecting to be let up, but he wasn't letting me. He looked down at me and said all too seriously, "you have to get out of this." I kicked and fought my way back up, I even stood my ground at one point and delivered some of the hardest punches I ever threw. In all reality, he could have went all out and really not allowed me to get back up and beat me to pulp, but that wasn't the point of the test. Afterwards, I collapsed and a week later (when the swelling went down) when I went back to practice I knew more what I was capable of. Is God a brutal karate teacher who beats you down? DEFINITELY not. Does He allow you to struggle knowing better than you what your limits are and the best way for you to grow? Yes. In a discussion with someone, the point was made to me that the earlier revival of the church was somewhat of a twitch and that when we use our gifts often times it's a twitch or glimpse of the potential that God has bestowed on us. After throwing hundreds of techniques in karate day after day after a while it became a reflex when you went to apply it in sparring. However, as much as you practiced the techniques on a conscious level alone you had to have the experience of sparring, of getting hit (a lot) and then as you continued to practice alone and went back to spar the nervousness slowly went away and you were doing things that you didn't know you could. Obviously, karate depends on only what I can do, which is where it falls short. Christianity depends on God can do in, with, and through you. We have to pray and read our bible, we have to practice with our spiritual weapons on a conscious level hundreds of times day after day. That is when God works on us, that is where we hone our techniques, but we eventually have to get on the mat put up our hands and fight. Not fight in the marial arts sense against people, but against the ideas that are killing us. We can't go on the mat without having prepared and all our preparation is useless if we don't put it to the test. We have to fail, get pummeled, get back up, hit back, have victories but all the while trust that no matter what God is going to use it for our good (another plus to Christianity). Also, that the victory was already won on the cross, as long as we follow Christ we will have high highs and low lows but we will never fail as long as our eyes are laid on Him. I'm tired of practicing, I want to throw down. How about you?

2004-12-13T02:46:00.000-05:00

And in other news, a beautiful girl (for reasons unbeknownst to me) decided she likes my exclusive company and so we're dating...

2004-12-10T13:35:00.000-05:00

Self analysis can be a dangerous thing for a Christian. God shows us a gift He has given us or a goal He has for us and suddenly it becomes our focal point. Suddenly we think there is something we have to do to cultivate the gift or achieve the goal. How did we get the gift or the vision? By looking at nothing but the cross. How did we get to a place where God communicated something so clearly? By looking at nothing but the cross. Be mindful of the gifts and the visions and take joy (not pride) in them, but always recognize that it will be God who gets it done. Always remember that by what Jesus did on the cross that we were saved and never cease to appreciate it. Forget yesterday's successes and failures, take joy in the fact that God is going to use them because He is sovereign. The minute we start to look too inward in our role to play or how we will use our talents we turn our attention from Jesus. By recognizing that all these things are gifts keeps our attention on the giver. God gave us the gifts, the callings, the dreams and He will be true to guide us every step of the way and it will be all the easier as long as our focus is Him.

2004-12-08T14:32:00.000-05:00

I. Hate. Fedex.

2004-12-06T11:51:00.000-05:00

He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. John 15:2

No matter how complicated the problem seems, the answer is always simple. God is indeed "not the author of confusion, but of peace" (2 Corrinthians 14:35). I had been forewarned when I first came to Christ that there would be a season in my walk in which I wouldn't feel as though I was bearing any fruit. A time when I wouldn't feel God's presence as keenly and that it wasn't a reflection of me as a Christian, that it was actually a good thing. "The sacrifice of God is a broken heart, and a broken spirit" (Psalm 51:17). I've given God many "offerings" such as old passions, issues from my past, and other worldly things and it was all necessary. However, I still felt like there was something that He was taking from me. I woke up without my joy and I immediately thought there was something I was doing wrong. I would find solace here and there in His word and prayer but I couldn't shake this feeling. I realized that God wants us broken so that His strength will be all that we would lean on, for His power "is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corrinthians 12:9). I cried out that if I had to feel this way for every day of the rest of my life then so be it. If that is what it takes to be His instrument then so be it. He has saved me from an empty life that would have ended up in inevitable destruction and I never want to turn from Him again. I love Him that much, and He loves me to an infinitely higher degree. As I prayed to Him (before I put it all together) alone in my room I kept asking Him why I had to feel this way. I prayed every prayer I could think of, I did everything, so I had thought. Later, at prayer that night, because He is faithful, He answered me through Ben (if you're reading this, thank you so much for sharing that scripture, brother) who read the passage quoted at the top. I felt the words speak to my heart like only the words of my heavenly Father can. I dropped to my knees and did the only thing I had not done in my room: I thanked Him. He shows me more and more each day that this is about Him and not me and that is where the glory is. I want to go on about all the messages He has put on my heart that culminated last night but I can only say that my praises cannot encompass His greatness. To try and describe His holiness is far, far beyond the limits of my expression. That doesn't I mean I won't give it my best shot, I plan to on Tuesday. Praise Jesus.

2004-12-05T16:37:00.000-05:00

I don't know, I don't want to care, I'm trying very hard just to believe...but I really just don't know anything.

2004-11-23T09:34:00.000-05:00

"I am the way, the truth and the life, no one gets to the Father but through me...he who hates Me hates my Father also." John14:5-7, 15:23

Sometimes Christians tell people that are other ways to heaven, that there might be other avenues to God only to profess to our believing friends that we believe firmly in Christ’s ultimate sacrifice. C.S. Lewis wrote that Jesus didn’t give us the option to look at Him as merely a good man or a good teacher. He was either the Son of God, a liar, or a lunatic. He didn’t leave us many options; we either deny Him or accept Him. To try and be accepting and think or say that Christ might not be the only way is to believe in some part of your heart that His sacrifice was not everything the bible professes it to be. It is to ascribe to the idea that He was not God’s completion of Himself. We who are Christians have handed our lives to Christ, we seek to submit continually and let Him work in us. In doing so, we believe that He made the perfect sacrifice, that he was the "perfect penitent" for our sins, that we need Him and can do nothing apart from Him. To believe that He is not the way is to degrade your choice to give your life to Him and it downplays what He did for us. I think we can all say that our choice to sign over our lives was the most important one we have ever made. If it was merely a good option among other good options then why give Him everything? Stand strong, not in judgment, but in faith, obedience, and gratitude for what He did and stand strong in your choice to allow Him to live in you. You don’t have to condemn anyone by knowing that Christ is the only way, you’re being faithful to Him. If others take what you believe as a harsh judgment then that is there own reaction to God convicting them. Don’t force the issue, just believe. Don’t be scared, just believe. Don’t judge, just believe. Jesus came "not to condemn the world, but to save it" (John 3:17), but He never denied that He was the messiah and so we must not deny Him, because to deny Him in any way is to deny the Father.

2004-11-18T19:35:00.000-05:00

Nothing important, just felt like posting. It's amazing how a talk with my oldest sister (who knows almost everything) can help me put things in perspective. I was having one of those "WHAT THE HECK AM I DOING?" days and Laura basically said "Bry, you pray, listen and then walk and trust that God will guide you," and yeah I know that but she is a person who really lives that. She has been through so much and you can sense the solid faith in her. Sometimes you just need to hear the message from the right person, y'know? She doesn't complicate life in her head, she simply walks in faith because she has seen how complicated life can be. No sense in complicating life more than you need to, life will be hard enough on you, and I have God so I know I'll be good no matter what. S'all good, I still die for the hood.

2004-11-14T17:22:00.000-05:00

This has been a heavy day...I talked with my parents for a while and it was encouraging and hurtful. My father and I cried for joy that God mended our relationship and my mother cried as she confessed how much trouble she was having with my decision to leave the Catholic church. I told her I hated all the divisions in our family and between the denominations. I don't know, I ask God to break my perceptions and replace them with His truth. I no longer want to filter in the truth with my views, I want to filter everything I see through God's word. My mother wasn't hurtful in the way she told me, she said she knew why I did what I did and that it wasn't an insult to her but she couldn't help but feel confused. I thank God for granting her a measure of understanding, I thank God that she came to me honestly instead of holding onto all of this and distancing herself from me. I wanted to wait for all of this until when I went home, but He had different plans and it worked out really well. I'm in such a wierd place right now. I'm at peace yet I'm torn and I just don't know...all I know is that He works and that is really all I have to know. All glory to Jesus.

2004-11-11T14:42:00.000-05:00

For Ryan and Paul

I'm listening to "Getaway Car" by Audioslave, it's been stuck in my head since work for some reason. I went to the mall yesterday with Paul and Ryan and I realized that I'm a lucky man. When I was born, I'm pretty sure God said, "I am going to bless Bryan with some really good people throughout his life." I've met my share of people who have done me wrong but it hasn't daunted my love of people. I don't walk around thinking "I love him and her," but I really do love all the people in my life. I realize that no one will understand every decision you make. When I told Paul and Ryan how I was deciding to change my life they didn't hesitate to react in an accepting and loving manner. These are two examples of the friends that the bible tells me about, they love me and accept me. I've experienced some unintentional contempt from some people I love (I don't hold it against them) because they don't understand but I can honestly say that Ryan and Paul have been all support. I thought about that a lot yesterday as we walked around the mall, engaging each other in our usual, nonsensical humor. Both of them can go from silly to serious in the blink of an eye when I need their ears. I just wanted to express my gratitude to you guys.

2004-11-08T16:07:00.000-05:00

"And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not...for I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say..."
John 12:46-50

I realized today that I don't have to argue for God. I always knew it logically but today I really saw the truth of it with my heart. I was talking to someone and they asked me what I believed and I told them, not my words but in the words of scripture, in the words that my Father provided for me. I knew they didn't agree with everything and that didn't bother me in the least. I told them not to take my word for it, take God's word. I am here to relay His message, it doesn't matter how good I am at arguing a point because some won't see it no matter how many ways I put it. I told them to take it up with God because I know He will answer. If you seek God for what He is and not what you want Him to be He will show Himself to you. Do I know how? Nope. It's different for everyone and that is the beauty of it, friends. I don't judge those who don't believe what I believe, I am here to relay God's message in the situations and times that He appoints and then it's between them and God. I won't force anything on anyone because I don't have to and that isn't what God wants (I don't want that either). Seek God and you'll find God, it's really that simple. I sought after Him without anyone standing over me with a bible, I opened the bible and I began to read and I saw things differently before I ever decided to step into a church. I asked questions of some, others shared God's message and I shrugged it off all the while thinking "they didn't prove me wrong." Then one night when someone didn't even intend to preach to me directly, the message that they delivered cut through my logical arguments right to my heart. I knew it was God's truth because no matter how I tried to think about it it didn't change the way I felt. The people didn't prove that I was living wrong, and they weren't trying to, God did. "Those that seek me early shall find me" - Proverbs 8:17

2004-11-02T06:26:00.000-05:00

It's about 6:30 AM and I'm listening to "Ahead by a Century," by The Tragically Hip - I love this song. I accidentally set my alarm wrong and overslept for work, so I called in and I knew my boss wouldn't really accept my excuse so I told him I had had car trouble (I know, I shouldn't have lied). Either way I couldn't really sleep and I felt the urge to pray and read a little so I did. I also did some research on missionaries, which was pretty cool. I think I'll ask for more info about it b/c I think it would be a good experience for me. I'm not sure what else I really want to write here *five minute pause* I feel encouraged, motivated, something is going to happen, God is going to do something that is going to be great and I don't know what it is but I just know He is. Forgive the rambling, maybe I'm just a man whose been up since 5 AM, or maybe...

2004-10-31T22:45:00.000-05:00

On another much more positive note, this weekend was phenominal. I came terms with issues from my past that I never thought I would have and I can barely describe how great it felt. By the end I was sobbing with joy and I felt, well, free. So, the Spiritual Freedom Seminar was aptly named. To spend time with everyone and see some of them be freed was an awesome experience. God has bridged the gaps to relationships with people I was distant from before I knew Him. He continues to amaze me and exceede my expectations. Overall, right now I feel better than I ever have and that's about all I really can say about that.

Holy crap! TWO posts in ONE night!!...

...maybe you're not excited, but I am.

2004-10-31T22:25:00.000-05:00

Letting people down. It's something I have a hard time doing. There are certain people in my life that I hate disappointing and that isn't necessarily bad thing, but sometimes I know I should say or do something and I don't because I don't want to rock the boat and risk their displeasure. God has put it on my heart that I have to talk to my mom about how I got baptized (I conveniently left that out when I talked to her last time I was home). I don't want to hide that from anyone because I am proud of who I am in Christ and I know I have to tell my mother and I know she is going to take it as a personal affront to her. There are certain view points that have changed since I have come to God and it's not because someone came up to me and said "this is how you should feel about this because we all do." When I gave my life to Christ, I felt things changing in me and God has given me a sense of what He agrees with and what He doesn't. I refrain from talking about certain things because I know some people won't like the opinions I now have. I don't think negatively of anyone but I do think differently about things. I still don't believe in forcing my opinion on anyone but I do feel like there are times when things are brought up in conversation or I'm asked about things and I don't say what I really now feel. It doesn't happen that often, I am upfront about who I am, but when it does happen it bothers me. I'm not going to force anything, just let God continue to work on me and see where it goes from there. It's a flaw, a weakness and I acknowledge that I need God to work on changing it.

2004-10-27T17:56:00.000-04:00

So, I thought God was telling me to do something and I was either wrong, I missed my shot, or God's working in His time and I have to be patient. Either way, He's faithful and I suppose He'll show me in the long run. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I don't feel discouraged, I feel like I just have to hang on and keep praying and that is the best I can do.
It still amazes me how much He has changed me inside. So many old ways of thinking and bad habits have been so easily overcome and I can't take any credit. I remember thinking before I came a Christian "there's no way I could do all of this," and I was right, I couldn't (not alone, anyway). I have tasted the grace of God and it has given me the power to overcome things I used to think and do that I thought I never would and I don't miss them at all. I constantly look back at the one night I really broke down and God put the choice in front of me, either Him or the world. I chose Him some of the changes were literally instantaneous. This is not to say that I don't still struggle with certain things and I know I will for my whole life but I know as long as I keep leaning on Him no matter big the problems seem they'll eventually fall, it's just that simple.

2004-10-18T13:13:00.000-04:00

It’s amazing to me how my priorities have shifted. "When I became a man, I put away childish things" Corinthians 13:11. When I decided to become a man in Christ, no longer a half hearted child who followed the way when it benefitted him, but a man who would devote himself to Christ, I asked God to show me what was standing between Him and I. I don’t desire to do the things I used to and I’m comfortable with that. My drive for things like fitness and martial arts has shifted to a drive for spiritual strength. Working out and martial arts are healthy habits and this isn’t to say that I’ll never go back to them on a much more limited basis, but they were the center of my life. My motto was ‘live for yourself’ and I did just that, I never compromised the time I spent trying to perfect my technique, my power, my speed, now all that time seems like a waste. I dedicated the time that I did and I achieved the rank I did and it will be an experience I will never forget but now it’s time to focus on what matters; God. I realized that these things could no longer be the center of my life, God wants all of me, so I gave up those things and He might give them back one day or He might not. Either way, it’s His Will that matters, not mine if He decides that where He wants me requires those skills than so be it but if not, that’s fine too. I want to be the most for God I can be, as close to Him as possible, I want for my only desire to be to do His Will. The things of this world, even this body, are far less important than what lies beneath. The spirit is what lives on, it’s the part of us that was built for eternity and it’s what allows us to be connected to God.. I began earnestly seeking Him a while ago and I felt a strange pull that I ignored. Finally I realized to get closer to God was up to me, I was putting things in between Him and I and then expecting Him to show Himself to me and just fit in somewhere in the grand plan of my life. I learned that He was and is there and I was impeding our relationship, not Him. I would have thought that giving up all these things would leave me feeling empty, but I’ve never felt more full, the things that I dedicated my time to were controlling and now I feel unburdened, I wasn’t fulfilled with my passions and I didn’t want to admit that to anyone. I covered up insecurities and emptiness in my life with these things, now I have gotten rid of them and God has unburdened the issues that were at the heart of it all. Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest onto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" Matthew 11:29-30. I used to focused on what I might lose in yielding to God, I used to pray to God as though I had no responsibility to Him, that He should reveal Himself to me on my terms. Now I see what I have gained and I’m happy to say my life is on His terms.

2004-09-29T11:40:00.000-04:00

I'm not really sure where to begin...so much has happened since I last posted and those that know me know pretty much all that has occurred. I've lost and I've gained at the same time, which makes for an emotional roller coaster. I felt a calling, a drawing that I'd never felt and I knew it was God calling me, calling me to acknowledge Him, submit myself to Him. I felt it for some time, I tried responding to Him on my terms and that only made me feel like a divided person, I would go to church and praise Him and adopt things to my life that were convenient for me. God was telling me that I had to either accept Him or not, I couldn't hit the snooze button anymore, He was waking me up. I told someone about six months ago that one day God would make me choose and I laughed in spite of myself. Finally, I broke down and asked Him what He wanted me to do, how He wanted me to live my life, what kind of man He was calling me to be. His answers were soothing and harsh, and He's not done with the answers, but He's giving me only what I can handle right now. I lost the most important person in my life and it's hurting me more than I ever imagined. Trying to be completely objective, I don't know if she would have been happy with the person I'm becoming. I'm still Bryan; I'm still introspective, fun, determined, a person who would die for the people he knows, but now I'm living my life first and foremost for God's purpose and deciding the direction of my life on God. I see myself going in different directions than I did not see one month ago. I can't compromise any part of what I do for God, I can compromise anything else, how much time I spend doing my hobbies and all that. I used to prioritize my passions first, and while they're still important, they've taken a backseat. I can no longer try to accept this way of life on my terms because that's not what it's about. The choice I made was mine, and I am happier with it than any other choice I've ever made but I've never been more sad about the loss I suffered as a result. I don't know where that leaves me, I try to get up and push aside the sadness and be faithful that God will help me in time to understand everything and heal these wounds.

2004-08-18T15:43:00.000-04:00

I love this song, Screen, props to Ryan for introducing it to me. I work at Fedex. I hate it. But I know it's gotta suck (might even get suckier) before it can get better. I had been praying a lot lately as to what I'm supposed to be doing and I realized I got my answer; gotta hang in there and keep trying. Being as impatient as I can be, I had hoped there was more to it right now but there isn't. I went to the coffee shop on Water street the other day for some peace and quiet so I could write and practice my Japanese. They had this crappy, heavy metal bands-who-couldn't-suck-more fest at Old City. So the music was blaring as these people screamed into the microphone. I laughed to myself, I came for solace and I got heavy metal. Bad, very bad, heavy metal at that. I stayed up at Oswego mainly for karate school and I got Fedex. It could be worse, though, they could have been playing country music at Old City that day and I could be unemployed. Bearing that in mind, I tuned out the music, sipped my hot chocolate and wrote for hours. After a while, I didn't even realize the music had stopped, goes to show what happens when I stop dwelling on the negative and use the resources that God is giving me.

"which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?" - Jesus' sermon on the mount, Matthew 6: somewhere towards the end.

2004-07-26T11:58:00.000-04:00

this weekend was good, so good that I have decided to write more than one sentence. our axis of awesomeness (located conveniently on 155 East 7th) was at full power with the three overlords present. some highlights; ryan and I ran through some sprinklers in a park nearby (at around 10PM), then came back and got a basketball, went back to the park, played basketball and ran back through the sprinklers. paul arrived on friday and ryan and I greeted him with embraces and other homoerotic gestures, made paul happy, it made me and ryan happy, too. I found a digital camera this morning. my wonderful sister sent me a link to a movie that is playing in only three theaters in NYC, it's called zatoichi and it looks awesome. why? b/c it's about a friggin' samurai!

in response to djere's comment, I charge a standard fee of 25 cents to stompkick arrogant people, the more arrogant they are the more I knock off the price b/c I enjoy it more.

I read this earlier today and it sums a lot for me:
"Nor is He worshipped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life , breath, and all things.
And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,
so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being."
Acts 17:24-28

2004-07-19T12:56:00.000-04:00

Arrogant people disgust me. I just want to stomp-kick them in the knee caps.

2004-07-07T16:23:00.000-04:00

This is my post after over a month. Nothing clever, or creative, just an update that I am alive, confused, shaken, but okay. I can't write about the issues at the forefront of my head but I guess the fact that I even mentioned them is a foreshadowing that they can only remain hidden for so long.

2004-05-28T14:59:00.000-04:00

I haven't written in a while, mainly because I've been running around trying to see everyone before I leave for my new temporary home in Oswego. Aside from visiting people, doing volunteer and paid labor, I've been training a lot and reading a few new books on martial arts. I'm so humbled by some people's detertiminaton. Ever since I got by black belt I felt like I've started over. The pressure of having to work towards that one decisive day is off my shoulders and my training has become more liberated. I find as a result of this, I'm pushing myself harder, I want to set an example for those who also want to pursue karate and the promotion to shodan has simply motivated to go beyond what I was striving for. Passing the test didn't give me the confidence to look at others and think 'I can kick his ass, and his ass...' it gave me the fuel to keep going further in my training. I want to learn more, I still feel like a child in so many ways to the world of martial arts and that comforts me. There are so many people to learn from (martial artist or not) and I want to keep learning. I parallel a lot of things in my life to karate. Karate isn't my religion, it's just my way. My way of conducting myself, my way of believing in myself, my way of trying to stay open to others, my way of treating others with courtesy and respect.

I've also found that I've returned to a lot of my spiritual roots since I've been home. I visited my old church and sat in my favorite room; the shrine. It's a small circular room with one bench in the center and red candles everywhere, there is a statue of Saint Jude (after whom the church is named). I had forgotten how much I need to go there and just sit in silence. It's in silent moments that I feel in touch with God that I take time to open my mind and heart and really listen. I'm not trying to preach to anyone, I'm just writing about what brings me peace. I think I will start doing things like this more often. The monotony of life can drive a person mad if you don't take time to cleanse the soul (however you choose to do it).

I love thunderstorms and one just started here, I think I'm gonna go sit and watch the rain.

2004-05-14T09:26:00.000-04:00

Commencement

I'm graduating tomorrow and I have learned many things in my time here. I'm a lot different than I thought I was because I am, to a large degree, who I've always been.

2004-05-08T01:35:00.000-04:00

Sho-dan. I attained that rank on Wed. after a 4 1/2 hour test. I've never felt so tired and beat up as I did after I did that. I walked away with several bruises, a sprained wrist, and a limp - not too bad. I feel like this achievement was hardly an individual one because I spent time praying before (cheesy? maybe), I read bible passages that my father told me to read when I was nervous, I had the support of many wonderful people. All in all, this test showed me how blessed I am as far as my girl friend and family. Of course when I say family I mean blood-related and otherwise. People helped me to train when I wouldn't have, my sensei's motivation and help in and out of the dojo has helped me in more ways than I can say, and the people who came and watched me and cheered me on and told me I could do it. Is this victory mine? Partially. God has blessed me with the opportunity to train with a great instructor, great people, and blessed me with a great group of friends. What was going to stop me with that kind of backing? All I kept thinking when I sat in front of the black belts after the test was how lucky I was (and how exhausted I was). Thank you all for the pep talks, the jokes, the silent support I felt whenever I looked in your direction, the love, thank You God for everything that I have (all of which I'm not sure how I earned). I love you all and thank you. I apologize if this sounded like a Grammy award acceptance speech, but I needed to convey how grateful I am and always wil be.

2004-04-28T23:44:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted in a while, so I figured I would now. I actually did make a really long post a few weeks back. I put so much thought into it, I sited articles as if it were a paper, I talked about religion and social movements and then my computer froze and it was all for naught. But that's life and I suppose it wasn't a complete waste of time, I still remember everything I typed so maybe I'll do it again on some rainy day. Basically, this post was to praise the post that never got to be. I might not do it again, because now you obviously expect a lot and the post wouldn't live up to your standards. Screw you for judging him, I'm not going to create him now, better for him to live happy and free of the standards you set for him. Better for him to remain not created then to stumble through this cruel world like an untied shoe.

I. am. odd.

2004-04-14T16:46:00.000-04:00

I haven't updated in a while, I don't plan on saying much right now because I don't want to discuss the particular issues that are at the forefront of my mind here. Anywho, this year is winding down quite fast and that doesn't scare me too much anymore. Ah fuck it, this is all I have to say right now.

2004-04-03T17:16:00.000-05:00

Today has been somewhat lousy and I'm in a lousy mood. I had a tournament today and at first I was pretty apathetic to the whole thing but now it's making me a little angry. I feel like in so many things I do, I give up before it starts. I wasn't really dissatisfied with my performance, maybe I'm just grumpy because I didn't get much sleep last night. There seemed to be a lousy mood pervading our crew at the tournament but we all covered it up with smiles and our enthusiastic greeting, 'osu.' I don't care for these tournaments, I don't care for the all the politics behind them. People favoring students from their own school, teachers with old grudges using their students to settle the score and show whose the best. Chojun Miyagi would be sorely disappointed at this defamation of such a great art. An art built on ethics of courtesy and respect. But all of this gets lost in this foolish competition. Karate isn't just about skills, it's about character. I went up to everyone who I competed against whether or not I thought I agreed with the judges decision and congratulated them on their technique. I bowed to the sensei who doesn't like me simply because of who I train under. If he won't show respect, then I will because that is who I am and I won't degrade my character because someone else degrades theirs. One of the main reasons why I train is because I meet some of the most open minded people and I get to share and learn from them. I will spar anyone, regardless of style, in my dojo until we both drop. Why? Not to try and prove that I'm better but to learn from them and hope that they can learn from me. I placed second in kata, everyone I spoke to says that the main judge favored his son and screwed me over because I trained under the person that I do. Everyone saw it, and a few people asked me why I wasn't angry. Because I don't do kata for the judges, I do it for myself. I honestly don't think I would have cared if I actually got first. I don't know where else to go with this, I just know it's left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It's also motivation for me to strive to be a karateka not just of skill, but of character.

2004-03-25T21:37:00.000-05:00

Ryan and I were discussing how the modern day zombie is significantly more athletic than the zombies of old. The zombies in Dawn of the Dead look like olympic runners. I thought to myself, maybe I'd like to be a zombie so I could win the olympics. But, I'd probably end up trying to eat one of my opponents' brains. Zombies are such wasted athletic talent.

2004-03-15T11:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been home for three days now and it's been okay. Going away has helped me appreciate home (although I do prefer to be away), every time I come back I make connections to how I am when I'm away from home and how my home has influenced that. I've made peace with a lot of the problems of my past, I can honestly look at me and my father's differences and not feel frustrated. I realize that holding onto that bitterness does nothing but burden me, blind me. I used to hold onto all that anger because I thought I was gaurding myself. This isn't to say my feelings of anger weren't justified, after all, he and I still don't see eye to eye on some things. But as time passes and I come to understand him and myself more and I even try to humble myself and to learn something from his perspective. I believe you can learn something from anyone, you just have to take what people say with that grain of salt. Some you take with more salt than others but you get the point. Instead of looking at how my father and I can't get along, I look at how we do bond and the similarities we share (note: for those of you who don't know, I used to NEVER admit that my father and I had anything whatsoever in common). I know I get my love of physical labor from my father, I can see the solace he gets in working with his hands and the gratification after he makes something new. From him I learned to take pride in what I can do without boasting it. A quiet confidence is something that my mother and father both taught me in their own ways. Confidence, to me, is asserting yourself through your actions, not just saying "I'm good at this," when you do something well it will show, and if no one else sees it then you have to. When I think of my mother, I think of spirituality and that I would have none if it weren't for her. My faith has gotten me through the worst of times, not just faith in God, but faith in what God has provided me with - people. All that being said, I smell bad and I have to shower.

"Many people seem simply not to understand love, [they] burden its beateous simplicity with preconceived notions and unrealistic expectations." - RA Salvatore

2004-03-09T16:00:00.000-05:00

I once wrote that there was nothing that felt better, worse, or more ambiguous than change. I also came up with an analogy to describe my view of the heart (in the symbolic sense) and the mind and their connection. The mind is a carriage driver and the heart is like an untamed horse. The two struggle to direct the carriage that is your spirit; the driver sees the logical destinations and plans for its stops along the way, and the horse just has a different plan altogether sometimes. It pulls the driver in directions that terrifies it at times and thrills it at others. Sometimes logic must win out because with no driver the horse would be too reckless, but with no horse the carriage would never get anywhere. At this stage of the journey, my driver sees only a vague picture of its path and is sharing the reigns with a much needed guide. For better or for worse, or maybe both.