Thursday, August 28, 2008

My opinion doesn't matter

I'm a bit of a worrier. It's an issue, I know. But I might as well put it out there. I'm a worrier.

God is very much using situations and key people in my life to break this, though. Which is awesome. But what I'm learning so much about worry is that the only reason worry comes is that I don't trust God. He has control over everything, and if I believed that, I wouldn't have a problem with worry.

So here are a few things I'm worrying about and what God has very clearly communicated to me thanks to a very dear friend of mine.

I don't feel like I'm far enough along in my relationship with God at this point. I'm doing everything I can to grow closer to Him but I just don't think I'm doing enough.

God's answer: Your opinion of our relationship doesn't matter. You're not getting any closer to Me than I allow you to no matter how much more you pray or read your Bible. It's not about your works it's about My grace.

I desperately want God to be proud of me but I just don' t think He is.

God's answer: Your opinion of how I feel about you doesn't matter. There's nothing you can do to change the fact that you belong to Me. You're My son and I designed you to do great things for Me.

I'm entering into a leadership position with the Greenville campus' youth group. I'm in way over my head and experience. I have no idea what I'm doing and I don't see how I can do a good job with this.

God's answer: Your opinion on how good of a leader you are doesn't matter. That's for Me to decide. That's for those you lead to decide. I put you there and I wouldn't have if I didn't have a plan for you.

Needless to say, I left these encounters very humbled. My opinion really doesn't matter. After all, who am I anyway? If I continue to seek after and trust God, He'll tell me how I'm doing. His is the only opinion that counts anyway.

Fun times to be had...elsewhere

So, you might have noticed that lately this blog has been more like "The Ballad of Deep and Pensive." And I'm planning on putting some lighter things up to even it out.

In the mean time, however, I've started twittering and there's lots of light stuff on there. You'll get anything from stupid things customers do at the bank, to fun quotes that fill my day, or even extreme excitement over food of some sort. Check it out, it'll be good times for everyone.

And some changes are coming soon to "The Ballad." Hold tight my brothas!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

God's Face

We have to pursue God's face, not His hand.  It's when we pursue His face that we're even able to see His hand.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Hunger

Last week God led me to fast for three days and it was quite possibly the most challenging thing God's ever asked me to do. It required a lot of self restraint and I think for the first time in my life, I finally have a grasp on what true hunger is.

Basically, not eating for a long amount of time sucks. When you don't have food, it's pretty much all you think about because that's all your body is telling you. But what really kept me going was one thought in my mind:

Food's coming. I'm starving right now, but food is coming.

The hunger I had inside of me was there because there was something I needed but hadn't received. If I didn't need it, there wouldn't have been the hunger for it. And that's the point; God gives us a hunger for many things, and He wouldn't do that if there wasn't something to satisfy that hunger with.

By day three of my fast, the hunger pangs had stopped. My stomach wasn't growling. The headaches were less. I wasn't overly irritable. But I still had a hunger. I knew that there was something inside of me that needed food. If I wanted to live, I had to have it. And to be honest, when I first had food after the three days were up, it wasn't really the amazing moment I had imagined it would be. My tongue didn't explode in flavor and my soul didn't sing the praises of the chicken noodle soup pouring down my throat. I hadn't used my digestive system in days, so it actually kind of hurt to receive what I needed so badly. I couldn't even have the good stuff that I wanted so much because my body couldn't take it.

And I don't think I'm the only one who can say that lately, I've been having a dire hunger for God. I've been receiving a lot of Him, but I just know that it's not enough and I need more. He's doing more apparent things right now than I've ever seen Him do and my first prayer when I see all of this is, "More, God!" And, much like my first bite of food last week, what I've seen God do in these past couple of months is more than I can handle. I don't know what to do with any of it. But I know I want more.

And I know that many other people in my life right now are experiencing this same hunger. Well here's what God very clearly spoke to me last week,

"I know you're hungry now, but food's coming!"

We're on the verge and even in the midst of a great move of God. And if you haven't seen it yet, I promise you that you will. It's so much more than just one church. It's God bringing the Church together to bring people closer to Him. I'm not sure what any of it is going to look like.

But here's what I do know. God doesn't give us any hunger that He's unable to satisfy. And I know I have a hunger for what's coming and so do so many others. So rest easy. Food's coming and it's going to be a feast.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

God Speaks

I've never hung up on a customer before at work. Honestly, I've never really wanted to. I've definitely had awkward and angry conversations that I've wanted to end, but I never thought about actually hanging up on any of them. But today all of that was thrown out the window.  I came within seconds of hanging up on this guy.

He was having a few issues with his account most of which could have been solved if he would manage his finances rather than hope they'd manage themselves.  But tons of our customers are like that and as far as his problems went, I had no issue with helping him. The problem was that he wouldn't shut up.

He would ask a question and then spend the next five minutes talking. Even when I knew what was wrong I couldn't tell him because he wouldn't be quiet long enough for me to get a word in and eventually I just gave up and went into, "uh huh" mode where I just agreed with whatever he was talking about, showing just enough interest to keep him from thinking I was just being sarcastic. It was pretty annoying. On my end, I actually did have other stuff I could have been doing. And on his end, he had problems, and he was talking to the guy who could solve them but he wouldn't shut up long enough to let me answer him.

My prayer life is a lot like this I think. Too often I have a lot of questions for God and I'll ask them and never wait on an answer. I think I've just adopted this belief that God doesn't answer questions directly. I feel like the only way He answers questions is through some mysterious method that I'll never figure out. But God isn't that complicated. And I think if I just shut up a little more often after I ask Him things, He'll answer me.

Why do I think that? Because it happened that way today. I had some good times talking to God this morning. I was pleading with God about changing my heart but I told Him that I didn't know how to do it. So I asked Him what I needed to do to make it happen. Then I went to work and about five minutes after I got there I got a text message from one of my favorite people telling me, "God told me to tell you to do this..." Freakin' blew me away because there's no way she should have known what I was praying about that morning.

God answers prayers. I hope that blows you away as much as it does me. It's humbling to know that when I talk to God, He listens.  The question is, am I going to listen when He speaks?

Monday, August 11, 2008

What I learned at the Gauntlet part 2

I realize that there was a pretty long gap between these, but I'm trying to teach you guys to not make my blog into an idol. I mean honestly, whether it's one day or three weeks, I'm constantly getting e-mails saying, "when's the next blog post coming David? I just can't get enough!" But just hang in there and I promise you'll always get more from me eventually. On to part 2.

I need to just shut up. For way too long I've just preached at my small group guys. I felt like I had to really nail down the point by repeating it and making sure they got it. But God showed me that I'm not the one that makes a lasting impact anyway. When I keep rambling on, not only do I end up boring my kids and losing all of their attention, but I'm telling the Holy Spirit that I don't trust Him to do what He does.

Two weeks ago was my last full small group with my guys in Anderson. I knew it was a big night, so all afternoon I was praying for what God wanted me to say to them tonight since this would be the last time I really got to talk to them all together and I wanted to make it count. But I never really heard anything. And then I continued to pray that night during the worship service about what God wanted me to say during small group and God very clearly told me, "You just need to shut up and listen." So I did just that.

Matt led the discussion and the kids wouldn't stop talking. Every time I had something I wanted to say, I'd start to say it and someone else would start talking and I'd never get the chance to say anything. Eventually I just relaxed and listened to my kids talk. I got to understand how far these guys had come since I got them about a year ago and how much God had used me and Matt to grow these guys into who they are now. And I never would have gotten to see that if I had tried to talk to them the whole time.

In Matthew 21:2-3 Jesus tells two of His disciples to go get Him a donkey and a colt to ride into Jerusalem on. He tells them what to do and he tells them what they need to say for it to happen. Now, the story doesn't have a ton of details to it, but here's what I think happened. I think that God had been working on the heart of the owner of these animals for a while now. He had been teaching Him about trust and generosity. God might have even sent an angel to him ahead of time to tell him that a couple of guys were going to come get a few animals without asking and he needed to let it happen. Regardless of how it went down, God did some behind the scenes work to make this thing go down.

But, the two disciples going to get these animals didn't know any of this. Jesus just told them what their part in it would be and exactly what they needed to say. And I love that they didn't argue with Jesus and say something like, "but what do you want us to do if he says no to that?" I probably would have. I mean, they didn't know what God was doing behind the scenes and Jesus didn't tell them. But in verse six it just says "they did as Jesus directed them."

When God gives me words to say, I need to say them but there's no need for me to add anything to them. If God is telling me to do something, He's really just telling me to do my part in it. It's not all on me. He's doing tons of work preparing the situation behind the scenes. I just need to trust the Spirit to do His job and not worry about the "what if's?" and know that I'm only one part of what He's wanting to do.

Monday, August 4, 2008

What I learned at the Gauntlet part 1

So, I meant to start writing about all of this stuff a while back. I mean, I got back from the Gauntlet weeks ago. But tons of stuff has been going on, so I've been on hiatus. But I'm back now, so no complaining. Here we go.

God's love is absolutely unconditional. I struggle with this fact so much. My view of God's love looks like I'm on this ladder and I'm climbing it to get closer to God. But as soon as I mess up I fall back to the bottom of that ladder and have to start all over again. But God totally showed me how unconditional His love is at the beach.

The first day there I was tired. Really tired. We had just driving through the night and the only sleep I'd gotten was bus sleep, which only came to me through exhaustion. If you know me at all, you know that when I'm tired I have two modes: drunk David, which can lead to some of the most interesting conversations I'll never remember and grumpy David who can easily shift into jerk David.

This particular day ended up leaning towards grumpy David. I was ill with my kids that day and yelled at them more than I should have. I had an all around bad attitude and totally didn't have my mind in the right spot.

Now, there's this kid named Garret that was on the trip. Garret has been in my small group for a few months now and comes off and on. I've been completely burdened to pray for this guy and his salvation since I met him. He's been through a lot of crap in his life and I've gotten to help him out a little but I've just knew he still needed Jesus.

At the end of the sermon on the first night, Perry asked anyone who wanted to accept Christ to stand up and Garret did! He was on one side of the room and I was on the other. So when Perry asked leaders to take the standing kids outside to talk to them about it, I sprinted across the room to get to him. I think I jumped over a few folks and almost had to push Willie away when he started to grab Garrett before I got there.

I talked to Garret for a while and got to lead him to Christ. I got to lead to Christ the very guy I had prayed would meet Him. This was such an amazing moment for me.

So that night, once the kids were in bed, I sat on the balcony and looked out at the ocean. God spoke very clearly to me. I had been a jerk all day, especially to my kids. There are moments in the day where I absolutely screwed up and didn't make God very proud. But that night, none of that stopped my Creator from allowing me to be used by Him. None of my screw ups made me less His child. I didn't get knocked to the ground and have to work my way back up to God's, "I'll use you" level. God had a plan and I wasn't big enough to mess it up.

It's so humbling and amazing that no matter how big of a screw up I can be, God still wants to use me. Nothing can separate me from His love.