Ezra

We were talking about Ezra in home group the other night, so I decided to read it and I actually shot through it in a couple of days. It's a pretty cool history book. But I got convicted a little bit when I read chapter 9, though.

In this chapter, the Israelites have been given a second chance. Because of their sins, they were exiled from Jerusalem and their temple was destroyed, but through God working on the hearts of the kings who were over the Israelites during their exile (showing that leaders don't have to be Christians for God to use them) they are allowed to go rebuild their temple and return to their land.

But, regardless of the blessings God gives to the undeserving Israelites, they begin to intermarry with the surrounding countries which God forbid them from doing. Chapter 9 revolves around how heartbreaking this was to Ezra and it got me to thinking about how I often do the same thing.

I am so undeserving of God's grace in my life, yet He blesses me anyway with more things than I could imagine even though I have sin in my life. And regardless of this, rather than humble myself to my creator, I start to get the feeling that God is just ignoring my sin and I can do whatever I want and I'll get blessed anyway.

So I'm pulling away from Ezra with this in mind. God blesses me out of His grace and forgiveness, and the least that I can do is to try to live in a way that reflects His grace. I need to be more observant to the things God has blessed me with and live my life with an attitude of humility and thankfulness and not come away with pride. The Israelites' sin ended in having to divorce the people they had married, and in the same way, I need to divorce the sin in my own life.

A few random thoughts...

• I have the best parents in the world, by far! They're letting me freeload for the next year while I search for a job and try to get myself established.
• My girlfriend is awesome! We've been together for over a year now and I'm happier today than I've ever been. I didn't get to see her today and it made me sad, but we get to have lunch tomorrow, so it'll be great. :)
• I can't wait until the Gauntlet. I'm excited (and scared) about getting to spend the whole week with my kids. I'll be really sad if I find out work won't let me go.
• I'm pretty nervous about getting the job I've interviewed for, so any prayers you could send my way would be greatly appreciated.
  
• I'm having trouble getting myself back into the habit of reading, but every time I actually sit down and do it, I love it.
• On a similar note, even Donald Miller's lesser stuff is better than most writers best material.
• I would probably have an easier time reading if this game weren't so addictive.
• I'm excited at the chance I have to watch the season finales of The Office, Scrubs, and Heroes on my new HDTV!

My church is awesome!

For the longest time I wanted a job at my church. It was only recently that I realized that there's really no need for that and it's not what God wants for my life at this point. But I never really took the time to think about why I wanted to work there until I read this. For so long I had gone to a church that I got absolutely nothing out of that, and when I found a church that actually fed me spiritually, I felt like the only possible option for my life was to work there.

In the week since I've been home I've had to hear about all of the crap going on at my old church and about all of the drama going on there. It's sad. There's so much that they could be doing for God, but they're too busy arguing with themselves and fighting for power. I always kind of laugh at the idea of fighting for power in a dying church. What do you get when you're the king of that mountain? Full rights to decide the color of the bathrooms?

The state of that place makes me sad, but at the same time, it also encourages me about my own church. We are doing everything that we can to spread the Gospel of Jesus. We are aggressive in our faith, and not spiritual pansies who are, at best, passive aggressive. More importantly, we have one focus: Making the name of Jesus famous. So, when I felt a ministerial call on my life, I didn't see how there were any other options for me than to go to work at my church. Since then God has shown me what my purpose is (to a small degree). I'll try to talk more about that later.

For now, continue to pray for me while I'm pursuing a career.

Jonesing for a journal...

I was in Barnes and Noble tonight and I saw the set up of Mole Skin journals and my first thought was how much I want one. But then I realized that even if I did have one, I have nothing to really put in it. So more than a Mole Skin, I want to be important and interesting enough to need a Mole Skin.

I got a Phenomenal!!!

Let me say that today has been an amazing day! The past couple of days have kind of sucked. But church got me completely fired up. It was "punch your mama" good! Anyone who wasn't fired up after Perry got done talking about the future of NewSpring and then tons of people coming to Christ needs to get their pulse checked. If you've never been to NewSpring before, there's no reason you shouldn't start next Sunday. I believe that it is the best church in the world.

I got to spend some time with the most beautiful girl in the world today, as well. I completely love my girlfriend and tonight I was reminded of how much I love her. It's great getting to work with her at Ignite. She's finally found her niche in there I think, and it's been spectacular seeing her start to shine.

And to top my day off, I won a Phenomenal award for "Phenomenal Small Group Event Planning and Execution." Movie night with my kids on Friday turned into a "why do I even bother" night, so this really did help me to feel better about all of that. Also, Ali won a Phenomenal too! So it was cool getting one with her. It was a precious moment.

This is the beginning of a week of rest and fun for me, so I should get to post more this week, which excites me. The week after that, however, I begin my job search! Say a prayer that I find a job that God can use me at. I'm pretty certain that He doesn't want me to work at a church at this point in my life, so it's my job to figure out where He wants my ministry to be.

I don't need one

For some reason, I really want a Playstation 3. I have a Wii without many games, and could easily spend the money I'd waste on a PS3 on some good games, but I still want one regardless of the fact that I don't have an HD TV to play it on, making it pretty pointless to have one in the first place. But I know that I don't want to spend half as much on an X-Box 360.

When asked today why I wanted a PS3 instead of a 360, the best answer I could come up with was this: I am an Apple freak! And the 360 is made by Microsoft. Now, Apple doesn't have a video game console, but I feel that if I bought a 360, I would offend the nonexistent Apple video game system if I bought one.