The Ballad of Nice and Easy

Being An Example

2010-04-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

People tend to go with what they know. As a whole, humans tend to gravitate towards that which is comfortable and understandable to us. I remember back when I was working at the bank, whenever they tried to implement new procedures for us to use, everyone tended to be hostile towards them. There wasn't anything wrong with the new procedures at all. Sometimes they could be more time consuming than the old way of doing things, but they mostly made sense overall to do. Yet, still the employees tended to only do things the new way for about a week or so until things went back to normal. And then they would only do things the new way when someone was watching. It continued to this way until finally someone said something to them about not doing things the old way anymore.

People aren't as obliged to go with what's easy so much as they are to go with what they know. I think that's why we have such a hard time accepting grace. The things we know in life are control and works. When there's a set list of things to do, even if the things are impossible, we have control over what we do. That's why we love the idea of works based salvation. We get that. Our life revolves around getting what we deserve and giving others what they deserve. The idea of grace is that we get what we don't deserve and there's nothing we can do to change that. Control is completely removed from the scenario.

There are very few examples of grace in our lives, so we have a hard time comprehending it. So here's my thought for the day: We as the Church should start doing a better job of giving people a tangible example of what grace is. In John 13:15 Jesus says that He's our example and we should do what He does. He gives grace freely, so we should start doing the same. That means being more generous with our money, not being mad if someone puts a dent in our car door, showing patience with the person who has to be shown how to do something 50 times and even, Heaven forbid, being a slightly less angry driver. People tend to flock towards what they know, so maybe if we start teaching people what grace is, then more people might accept it from God.

So that's my thought for the day. It's simple enough, but hopefully it's poignant.

That's His Specialty

2010-04-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

He's the God who can allow a 90 year old to become pregnant.

He's the God who can turn a prisoner into the ruler of a nation.

He's the God who can cut the sea in half in order to protect His people.

He's the God who would rather use 300 men to conquer a nation instead of 32,000.

He's the God who lights fire to a wet altar.

He's the God who would rather use a young boy to slay a giant than an army.

He's the God who stands in the fire with His children and doesn't let them burn.

He's the God who will chase His servant with a whale in order to save him from himself.

He's the God who can bring life to a valley of dry bones.

He's the God who can take a virgin teenager and give her a Child.

He's the God who wants to use the B squad to change the world.

He's the God who touches unclean things and makes them clean.

He's the God who heals the sick.

He's the God who will suffer for our salvation.

He's the God who killed death.

I serve a God who specializes in the impossible. No matter how big and impossible your problems seem, God specializes in taking care of them. No matter how small and insignificant your problems seem, God also specializes in taking care of them. There is nothing that He cannot do and no lengths that He isn't willing to go to for you to know that He loves you.

Another Milestone Reflection

2010-04-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

If you would have asked me a year ago what what my life today would look like, I would have painted a romantic picture of me working in a foreign country like England, or doing mission work in some magical, tucked far away part of Africa. If you would have asked me even a few months ago, I would have told you that I'd be living in Charlotte with one of my best friends, hopefully with a decent job, starting up a career path that might lead to some good money. But none of those things happened. The Lord apparently has other plans for me. In case you don't know, allow me to share with you a little bit of my story from this past year. And by "a little bit" I mean "a long winded retelling that leave out a lot of stuff."

It's funny how, no matter how good of an attitude you have when you start a job, when the job seemingly has no point, you eventually start to have regular "what am I doing with my life?" check ups in order to find an excuse to quit and do something crazy. This is where I was when the Lord met me in November of 2008. I was driving down the road on a Friday night, pretty depressed about the seeming pointlessness of my life when the Lord spoke to me from my iPod of all things. (It makes sense seeing as how God loves Apple and all.) I had it set to shuffle, and every song that came on kept talking about needing to get away and leaving, which was weird as I didn't remember having so many songs of escape at my fingertips. And then, not audibly, but still very clearly, the Lord told me to quit my job and backpack across Europe.

Isn't it weird how we assume that the Lord is vindictive and would never allow us to do anything that we might actually want to do, even though He's the one who puts desire into our hearts? It's kind of like the person who's afraid to give their life completely to the Lord because as soon as he does, the first thing God will do is make them sell everything they own and move to Africa. And I, falling in line with that reasoning, thought, "Is that really You, Lord? Because that's something I actually want to do. No; it couldn't be."

What followed were some of the most crazy and life-changing months of my life. Work wasn't so bad anymore because I had an exit strategy and plans for my trip just kind of fell into place. Money started showing up out of no where, and my roommate who owned the house I lived in was getting married, so I would have had to have moved out anyway. It was all perfect. I had no idea why the Lord wanted me to go; I was just excited that He was giving me the go ahead and something so amazing.

Then, if you know me at all you know that last February my dad passed away due to complications in surgery that was supposed to remove a significant portion of the cancer from his body and my whole world got turned upside down. A lot of stuff happened in me during that time. It was a very dark, lonely and confusing time. I had no idea how to even begin grieving. But, one of my favorite things about the Lord is how well He knows me. He knows that I'm easily distracted. He also knows that when there are people around me who need help, I'm going to help them long before I help myself. And that's not so much because I'm such a great guy, as when I'm busy helping others, I don't really have to deal with my own stuff. The Lord had me makes plans to travel before my dad passed away because He knew that getting away for a while would help me to mourn and heal the best.

So here I am. One year ago today I was getting ready to board a plane for the first time in my life and head to Egypt to begin the biggest adventure I had ever been on. I had no idea what I was in for and no clue what life would be like when I got back.

It's a year later, and other than a short stint answering phones, I've spent the past year jobless. But I've yet to do without even some luxuries in life. I have a roof over my head, food to eat, a car to drive, gas to put into said car, and family and friends who love me. I've changed more in this past year that I knew I could. I'm still on this up and down roller coaster of figuring out what I'm doing with my life and there's no sign of it stopping anytime soon and I have no idea what tomorrow will bring for me. There are times when I start to freak out and worry what I'm going to do when my money runs out, but a little prayer tends to quench that fear. At the end of all of this, probably the most surprising thing I see is that, regardless of what's happened in this past year, both good and bad, I wouldn't change a thing that's brought me to where I am now.

Passion, Identity and Twilight

2010-03-31T07:00:00.000-04:00

I have a confession. I judge anyone over the age of 18 who reads and enjoys Twilight. For those under 18, I judge their parents. It's an unnecessary problem. I'll give you that. But it's still there. I will confess that I've never read any of the books. I have, however, read synopses of them and in context excerpts. From them, I've been able to pull that the story is horribly bland, the characters are of the kind where you hope the guy in the hockey mask learns how to run to save you the next 85 minutes of your life, and the writing is so bad that I feel like the editor should be put in a cage with and handcuffed to a cougar for allowing such a monstrosity to leave his office (And not the cat kind of cougar either; the 43 year old woman who hibernated in a tanning bed for most of the 90's kind. Or as she's known in the wild: the Leathery Death.) To put it simply: I hate these books.

But realistically, why do I even have an opinion on this? Why do I so passionately hate them? I'm obviously not the intended audience for these books and their being horrible has no real effect on my life. I hate Twilight for the same reason that anyone else does; because there are people out there who not only love it, but think that it's good, and it's my job to show them that they're wrong.

I think that's the trick with passion, it has to go both ways. No one really hates anything that someone else doesn't love. If people don't think something is worthy of love, others don't think it's worthy of hate. It's almost as if love validates hate. I really can't think of a subject that people passionately love that doesn't have a group of just as passionate haters who feel it is their job to counterbalance the fan club.

But the thing I'm learning is that our identity is found, not in what we loves, but in our passions. That means that when we love something passionately, we're identifying ourselves with it. You can tell this because the haters don't just hate the object of love, but the lovers themselves. But, if passion is a two-sided coin, then that means that the haters are identified with the object of their hate as well. For instance, if I think about abortion, before I picture any type of advocate, I can't get out of my head a picture of a group of activists protesting a clinic. They are identified with what they hate.

This leads me to wonder, am I known more for what I passionately love or what I passionately hate? The beauty of grace is that my identity is found in Christ no matter what I do, but what does the evidence of my life say? Nothing that I do can take away who I am, but if 1 Corinthians 4:20 is true, then I shouldn't have to tell people where my passion lies. It should be obvious.

PS: Kelly, you're the exception. I don't judge you no matter what you read.

Knowing the Ending Ruins the Story

2010-03-29T07:00:00.001-04:00

Being a literature lover makes you a little weird. You develop little ticks that make you stand out as the weird, antisocial old man who keeps trying to show kids a magic trick that wouldn't have impressed Cro-Magnon man that you will someday be (or crazy cat lady, depending on your gender).

What is one of mine you ask? I'm a freak about not knowing how a story ends. And when I say freak, I mean that. I'm a sucker for a mystery. I remember when I went to get the last Harry Potter book with my then girlfriend. We waited in line at Walmart for the midnight release and after we received our copies and walked towards the checkout she opened up the book to the last chapter. I almost gave a "spoiled thirteen year old who just heard no for the first time" worthy tantrum and definitely raised my voice more than a little bit (fun fact: the spoiled thirteen year old tantrum thing is where the term "spoiler alert" came from). Mind you, all I saw was the picture for that chapter, but still. From then on I knew that the last chapter had a broom and a bucket in it! Book=ruined. (By the way, if you're reading this "then girlfriend," my bad.)

The cool thing I'm starting to realize about God is that He's a master storyteller and I think we have in common that neither of us like for the ending to be ruined. Well, we sort of have that in common. I mean, I'll freak out over finding out the ending to a story or a movie, but I'm even more frustrated about God not giving away the ending to the "Tale of David" before it's completion. But, God being the master storyteller that He is knows that a story just isn't a good if we know the ending. The ending isn't the most important part of the story, but it's often hard to justify paying attention to the actual story if you already know the ending.

The middle is the most important part of the story and if we know the ending, it cheapens it. And we need the middle. The middle is where faith comes from. The middle is where the adventure happens, and adventure isn't adventure if we know the outcome. So, as much as I want to know how this season of my life is going to end, the most important part of my story would lose much of it's value if I did. So, as much as I wish I knew where or even if I'll be working a month from now, I'll trust that the Lord knows what He's doing. After all, He's not going to give away His secrets when He doesn't want them known. No good author does.

Fun Facts Friday!

2010-03-26T08:00:00.003-04:00

It's that crazy time of the week where you get to learn more about me than you probably wanted to know. I've never been accused of being a private guy, so it's not like I'm opening up Pandora's Box or anything here. But regardless, this week I'm going to share just a few of my life goals to give you an idea of where I'm going. Please take notes as there will be a test.

So, presenting, in no particular order, David's Life Goals:

Visit six out of seven continents. It's nothing personal Antarctica, but unless I get an all expenses paid trip to you, I can see penguins at the zoo. (I've actually hit up four continents already. Just South America and Australia to go, plus a more proper trip to Asia would be nice since I just barely nipped the tip.)
Backpack the Highlands of Scotland with a couple of my guy friends. Not that I have a problem with girls going, I just don't want them to see me in snotty crying mode if the Shetland ponies don't like me.
Go skydiving. Anything that I'm this scared to do is probably something that needs to happen. But logically speaking, this is the most likely goal that will lead to my death, so I might save it for when I'm in my 80's.
Buy a house for each of my kids with cash.
Pay for my kids' and grandkids' college tuitions with cash. (No funny comments for these two. I just think they'd be awesome.)
Get something of mine published in a place where people will actually want to read it. Let's be honest, I have words that need to be heard on a grand scale.
Run a marathon with my wife. This is mainly a precautionary tactic. If she ever runs away from me, I'd like to know if I have a shot at catching her.
Read Moby Dick, Les Miserables, and Atlas Shrugged. Though I realize that at least two of those books are amazing, I mainly would be doing this for pretentious reasons. I mean, it will be awesome to make a reference to these books, and then when people look at me like they don't have a clue what I'm talking about, I'll get to remove my monocle, sneer and say, "Oh...I guess you've never read that before. How quaint." You have to have read at least two of these before you're even allowed to integrate "quaint" into your vocabulary.
Give away $100,000. Again, nothing funny here. But how awesome would it be to write that check to someone who really needs it?
Have a daughter. Hold your aww's. This is for more selfish reasons than it might seem. You see, the thing is, I just inherited a lot of guns and I don't want any of them to go to waste. I might let her start dating when she turns 16. From that point on, let the games begin.

I know that this has been mostly a downer week. In case you're wondering, I'm doing tons better, so no worries there. Next week will be a lot happier. Monday there'll be a crazy cat lady reference and even a story about me freaking out. Stay tuned!

Down and Out and Whatnot

2010-03-24T08:00:00.002-04:00

I don't feel like I've shared a little bit of what the Lord's been teaching me in a while, so I figure I probably should. I brought it up the other day, but I've been pretty down lately. Downright depressed is probably the best way to put it. Being unemployed takes its tole. I try not to think about it too much, but I've been struggling a lot lately. My self-worth has been taking a pretty heavy hit. Add to that the fact that I really haven't been hearing from the Lord much lately and you've got a good recipe for the mopeys.

But I've had Abraham on my mind lately. Specifically that part in Romans 4 where Paul talks about Abraham. When the Lord calls Abraham and promises that he will have tons of descendants, he's 75. I'm pretty sure that that means that his wife Sarah was around 65. If at that moment God had allowed a 65 year old woman to conceive, that would have been miraculous and the Lord would have received glory from that. But that's not what happens. Twenty-five years pass with nothing good happening in the baby making department.

The way I am, I feel like if God promises me something and I've waited a couple of weeks, I should be exalted as the patron saint of patience. After 25 years, I would had already moved through the doubting phase and moved straight to the "I must have heard Him wrong" phase and moved on. But Romans 4:20-21 says that Abraham never wavered in his faith. It just grew stronger everyday and he held on to the fact that God is able to exactly what He promises. So even when the Lord wasn't doing the miracle, He was still getting glory from Abraham's faith.

And a bit of wisdom that John Flowers told me recently keeps being brought back to my mind. Abraham having a son after he was called would have been a huge miracle, but the longer the Lord waited to give him what he was promised, the more impossible it seemed and the bigger the miracle would be and the more glory God would receive.

That's what I'm trying to hold onto right now. Because that's how I feel right now. It's easy for me to think that everyday that passes without me getting a job, it becomes even more impossible for me to get one. But if I view my situation the way the Abraham did, then I realize that everyday that passes brings me one day closer to the Lord doing a miracle.

An Explanation In Oh So Many Words

2010-03-22T08:00:00.001-04:00

I'm not a great writer. Just putting that out there in case you were expecting something else when you come to this side of the interwebs. This is evidenced by the fact that I didn't blog last Friday as I promised. I made it nearly three weeks without breaking stride, which is, admittedly, longer than I thought I would make it; but it's more the reason why I didn't blog last Friday that makes me not a great writer than the fact that I didn't write itself.

I didn't write something for last Friday simply because I just didn't feel like it. That's the big difference between a good writer and a great writer. A great writer writes out of passion and a good writer writes outs of emotion. There's a pretty big difference there. Passion allows one to work regardless of how one feels. In fact, it's hard to get someone who's passionate to not do what's in their heart. Emotions, when allowed to control a person, tend to be evoke a lot of self-centeredness. And being self-centered is something that, sadly, I do usually excel at.

I'd like to think I'm a pretty funny guy when I put my mind to it. When I post a new blog to my site, I would like to think that I put a smile on someone's face. And the truth is, lately I've been pretty down. This whole being unemployed thing is taking it's tole on me and has been zapping a lot of my joy lately. Since I set up Friday to be a day for me to goof off and be funny, I just didn't have anything in me that was all that funny, so I skipped it.

I say all of this for a couple of reasons. First of all, I could use your prayers that I find a job soon (or a direct hire if you're able to give me the hook up). Also, I do intend to take my promise to blog regularly seriously, so just know that if I you don't see anything up on here when you might expect to, it's probably because I just didn't have anything to say. I would rather not say anything than waste your time with filler.

And for those of your worried about my self-esteem, though not great, I do actually think that I am a good writer. I mean, check out the last sentence of that first paragraph; it's over three lines long with commas coming out of the wazoo (which, contrary to the OED, is actually located behind the ear), and not a bit of it is a run on. I even threw a semi-colon in there. That junk's not easy, my friend. See, you're not even sure if I even used it write. It takes skillz to know how to do that.

I'll accept the fact that I can usually communicate pretty well through writing. But if you've ever actually talked to me in person, I'm sure you realize that there was a bit of a trade off there.

Thoughts on Encouragement

2010-03-17T08:00:00.001-04:00

I don't know a lot. Shocking I know, but I'm not nearly as wise as I wish I was. But there is one trick I've learned in my life that's never led me astray, and that is to encourage people with abandon. If you need encouragement right now, don't wait around on someone to bring it your way, send it out to others instead.

Granted, this principal doesn't work for everything. If you need a car, I doubt you'll be able to give one to someone else (but you can still, however, be generous to random people). This tends to qualify more for the intangible things. I know that I've had times in my life where I've been down and really wished someone would go out of their way to randomly encourage me or just let me know that they're thinking about me to let me know that I matter and then I get even more down when no one does.

So I finally figured out that rather than sitting around waiting for someone to come along and help me, I could just go ahead and give to others exactly what I wanted myself. Instead of waiting for someone to encourage me, I can just go out of my way to encourage someone else. So whenever you're down, take the focus off of yourself and try to lift up someone else. I guarantee that you're not the only one needing it in that moment.

Discouragement and depression are not of the Lord. They are often weapons that are used against us, so whenever we take the focus from ourselves and lift up others, it's like using the enemy's weapon against him.

Stop Getting Saved

2010-03-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

It's hard to believe that I haven't worked in youth ministry for nearly 8 months. That fact kind of crept up on me recently. Prior to these past few months, I have a good five years of youth ministry experience under my belt. I'm pretty passionate about it and I can't wait to find a new outlet to do it through.

But something like youth ministry is bound to have it's ups and downs. I can take ups and downs. But there is one thing that I've experienced countless times that has become a pet peeve of mine. My goal is for this to be more of a processing than a rant, so bear with me. But I get a little tired of seeing students get saved...then get saved again...then get saved again...and again...and again!

Please don't misunderstand me. I realize that salvation is a process. Myself, I said a prayer when I was five, then I accepted Christ when I was 12. If all someone did was say a prayer, then the best thing that they can do is actually accept Christ rather than continue a life deceiving themselves.

But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about someone who feels conviction, accepts Christ, eventually gets into sin again, feels conviction, assumes that a real Christian would never mess up so badly and get as far away from God as they did, say another salvation prayer, repeat.

I feel like a lot of the mentality behind this is develops because often, when someone accepts Christ, it's a very emotional thing. I know in my case, I really did feel God in that moment. Faith can bring about great feelings and experiences in a believers life, so when someone stops having those feelings it's easy to feel far from God and for us to question whether or not we even knew Him in the first place. I get that. I've been there. It's a depressing and often dark place to be.

But the question remains then: Why do we no longer feel God? The solution certainly isn't the answer to every case, but I do feel that it is to the majority of Christians around here, myself included. Dead things don't feel. James 2:26 says that faith without works is dead. How are we going to be close to God when our faith is dead.

The times that I'm closest to God come not when I'm just spending time reading my Bible and praying, but when I'm also out serving the Kingdom. In fact, ministering enhances those other times with God. We can't afford to be lazy; it kills our faith. I've heard it said that following Christ is like swimming in a river, you're either going forward or your going backward, but you can't stay in one place. If you're pursuing the Kingdom then you're gaining holiness, if you're not then sin and satan are gaining a foothold in your life and you're separating yourself from the Lord. So of course we'll feel doubt in those times, and we'll feel like we have to say a prayer to make it all better. But if we do that we're just setting ourselves up for a never ending cycle of failure.

Christ called us to follow Him, not pursue emotional encounters with Him. If we're following Him, then ministry will flow from our lives. You can't convince someone who's serving the Lord that they don't know Him.

PS: I totally stole this awesome little bit of wisdom from David Schendel. Sadly he doesn't have anything to link to, so you'll just have to talk to him in real life.

PPS: Sorry for the super long post today. I hope you enjoyed it.

Fun Facts About Women

2010-03-12T08:00:00.001-05:00

I'm a people watcher. I try to refrain from making that known too often, because, quite frankly, there's a very fine line between people watching and stalking. If I go to a coffee shop with a book for a couple of hours, I'll probably spend thirty minutes reading and the other hour and a half looking a folks. Part of that is because I love seeing how people react to one another; it's always very telling about who they are. It could also be that, though I've never been tested and diagnosed, I'm pretty sure I have, at least, light ADD. So whenever I'm sitting there and someone walks by, it takes considerable effort to not look up and see who it is. Another contributing factor could be that I'm kind of a creeper. Who knows?

Either way, I'd like to share one of my findings from my creepy, ADD induced social observations: Women who love the Lord are hotter than women who don't. It's what they call in the social sciences: the Spiritual Gift of Hotness. I can't explain all of the reasons why it's true, but I'm pretty sure I have a basic formula for some of the surface level hotness.

Smiling people are more attractive. If there are two attractive women sitting side by side and one of them is mopey and the other is cheery (I think I'm on my way to creating seven alternative dwarfs that won't get me sued), the happier of the two is always more attractive. So my formula goes like this:

If Smiles=Hotter, and Christian Woman=Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit=Joyful, Joyful=Smiles, then Christian Woman=Smiles, therefore Christian Woman=Hotter.

I'm still working on getting this published in a reputable journal but I'm pretty sure in the next few years this will be pretty widely accepted. Since non-christian women do actually smile, this isn't a foolproof wife finding formula, so don't treat it as such. There are a number of different factors. And as I've established before, Christians are really weird. Christian guys in particular. So things that we find hot are bound to be different from more "normal" guys. But the smile's all I have figured out at this point. Sure, it could have something to do with the fact they these women realize that they need Jesus instead of you and for some reason that's attractive. But for now, I don't have a formula for that one. Check back with me in a few weeks.

u haf 2 no the rulz b4 u can brake thm! lolz

2010-03-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

I only came close to failing one class throughout all of high school. As it turns out I actually made a D in it. Due to me having an English degree, it might surprise you to learn that this class was Honors English 3. My teacher, Mrs. Hunter, was a former Clemson professor who decided to teach high school instead, which I think is the reverse order of what people usually shoot for, but I'm not one to judge.

I remember that her class was relentlessly hard. We had to memorize dictionary definitions verbatim, read big books at a pace I was never expected to read at except when the book had pictures, memorize lots of lines from big books with even bigger words, and write horrendously long papers. I also remember her filling our heads with horror stories of how much harder college would be. For those playing at home, I'm sure you realize that that last one is a lie. I can't speak for every major, but no college English class is all that hard, and I'll tell you why: English professors are either so absent minded that you can always convince them that you've done something that you really haven't or they're softies who love for you to visit their office and will go out of their way to help you pass their class (or they're too smart for their own good and resent you for not being as smart and make it their goal to make you drop their class, but we won't talk about those teachers).

Regardless of how hard I remember that class being, I ended up gleaning gobs of wisdom from Mrs. Hunter. One in particular has shaped the way I think for a while now. "You're not allowed to break the rules until you know the rules." The beauty of the english language is that you can pretty much make it up as you go along. We're constantly creating words, changing the meaning of words that already exist and turning other words into verbs, even when it's a sin against all that is good to do so. (I'm looking at you "facebooking.") But the difference between Faulkner writing a book without punctuation to make a point about how well the human brain uses context to figure things out and the church sign down the road using "u" instead of "you" in pure ignorance is that Faulkner knows the rules. (On a side note, if you're an adult and you still text using u, r, y, or 2 instead of real words, just stop it!)

Most good artists are the ones who know the rules and break them. When someone knows the rules and they see that you've broken them, the question stops being, "Why didn't they know better?" and becomes, "They absolutely know better, so why did they do this?"

I bring this up because so many Christians today are against the "religious rules" that are all around us. But the thing is, most of us are ignorant of what the rules even are, and when we're ignorant of the rules and why they're there, we're setting ourselves up to fall into the same trap as those who came before us did. I guarantee you that no one in any church ever said, "We should wear suits and ties to church and the ladies should wear nice dresses. That'll really stick it to the sinners out there!" The religious rules that exist today, like the dress code, drinking restrictions, music styles and even what version of the Bible to read didn't start out as religious rules. They started to help bring people closer to God.

My point is this, if you try to break the rules without knowing what they are, you're setting yourself up to create a bunch of new religious rules. Rebelling for the sake of rebelling is stupid and I fear that for many Christians my age, being nonreligious is the new religion.

My Brain is Full

2010-03-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

It's time for one of those super honest blogs where I talk about something I'm struggling with and give you a little insight into the inner workings of David. Pardon me while I grab a chair and sit in it backwards, AC Slater style, and just rap with you about what's going on in my life.

I'm distracted. My mind goes a mile a minute lately. It's not like I have tons of deep thoughts going through my head at once. I'm not under the burden of genius or anything like that; I've just been easily distracted lately.

I'm pretty sure that the reason I'm distracted is because I don't allow myself enough quiet time to just get my thoughts out there. The other night I was driving home from downtown, and rather than turn on my iPod or the radio, I just sat there in silence. I usually stay away from situations like that because I really like music and honestly, with all of the bad stuff that's happened in the past year, sometimes I just don't like to be alone with my thoughts.

The thing that really bothers me is that the times that I tend to get most distracted lately is when I'm trying to spend time alone with the Lord. Maybe that's because I have to be quiet during those times and all of the thoughts just attack me at once. I'm not sure why it's happening, but I do know that it's frustrating. Whenever I'm reading any other book I'm fine, but when I try to read my Bible and connect with the Lord it's like I have a little Micheal Scott in my brain keeping me from naming the 13 original colonies (ooh, pop culture reference!).

So I have a plan, and I would appreciate some prayer that I implement it well. First of all I'm going to start allowing more quiet in my life. I'm going to have times where I'm not on the internet, watching TV, reading, or listening to music. I'm just going to get alone in my room and just sit there with my thoughts.

Second of all I'm going to put 2 Corinthians 10:5 into action. The way I see it, Christ is in everything, so no matter how out there and distracting a thought may be, it still connects to Jesus in some way. So whenever I'm trying to concentrate on the Lord and I start thinking about how great some blueberry pancakes would be, I'm going to take a second to thank the Lord for blueberry pancakes and bring it back around to Him. (On a side note, how great are blueberry pancakes? I mean honestly, thank You Lord for creating a dish that allows us to have something that tastes like candy for breakfast!) Everything can be brought back to the Lord, so that's what I'm going to do. My goal is to become a master of taking my thoughts captive and causing them to worship God no matter how out there they might be.

Friday Fun Facts

2010-03-05T08:00:00.001-05:00

Okay, I'm going to try out this format and see how this goes. I'm going to try to start pumping out Monday/Wednesday/Friday posts. This week has obviously been a success, but let's see how long I can keep it going. I think Friday's are going to be my fun day where I just share something funny or embarrassing about myself for your enjoyment.

Currently, I'm not a fan of assigned small groups. I just think it makes more sense when stuff like that happens organically, but this was not always so. I led two different small groups during my time at Clemson. For one I took time to carefully plan out Bible studies and then got mad and frustrated when they preferred to watch Lost or the conversation went to places where even the demons went, "Whoa guys! That's a little much." By the time I got my next small group I was so burned out that by the end of it we were mainly just thinking of creative ways to shoot each other with an air soft gun.

Would FCA have approved of what we did weekly in the name of "fellowship"? Probably not? Was Joe Mata uncomfortable that time that he was the only one who showed and it was just the two of us? Absolutely! Was it good times that led to friendships that I still have? Definitely.

Either way, these two groups had one major thing in common. I started them both with the obligatory "I have no idea what I'm doing leading this thing, so let's share the intimate details of our lives" conversation. AKA the "here are my worst sins" conversation. AKA the "I used to drink a lot and look at porn" conversation. It's probably the most awkward way to get to know someone, yet I've embraced it twice for some reason.

You might think that I'm dumb for thinking that was a good idea, and you'd be right. You might even think that FCA was dumb to put me in charge of anyone, let alone an entire group of guys, to which you'd also be right. But you're forgetting the most important point in all of this: I found out how easy it was to get my closest friends to divulge their deepest, darkest secrets.

The Villain Has to Die

2010-03-03T08:00:00.001-05:00

One thing you should know about me is that I'm a sucker for a story. Honestly, it's one of my weaknesses. I love to put up a facade that I'm a huge book snob who snubs his nose at bad writing, but honestly, I can get hooked to any narrative, no matter how poorly written it may be. It doesn't matter how weird and out there the story is, if there's a good flow to what's going on, I'm involved in it.

The reason I love stories so much, I think, is because I love people. Characters always hook me and keep me coming back for more; especially villains! I love villains because they tend to have more depth than any of the other characters. Most of the time the villain is just a normal person with a skewed view on things. Like in real life, there's rarely such a thing as the evil scientist bent on world domination. Everyone tends to think that they're doing the right thing, even if the means aren't too great.

But once in a while, a story will give you a larger than life villain. This is the one who is more of a force of evil than a real person. The things that they do and the ends they long to produce just aren't redeemable. As soon as you meet this character you know that the only way for the hero to live is for that villain to die. The Wicked Witch has to melt in order for Oz to go back to normal. Agent Smith has to be deleted for there to be hope for humanity to be free of the Matrix. Voldemort has to die in order for Harry to live a normal life. The Emperor has to be thrown into the reactor for the galaxy to be free.

So imagine this: Christianity is born and is gaining a lot of momentum. Those in power are all speaking in whispers with one another, "We have to stop this." But none of them has to gall to go against the people to start the oppression. But one day, a mob gets angry and is incited against a man named Stephen. When asked to defend himself, Stephen instead decides to defend God, and in doing so, angers an already angry crowd to the point of where they actually do what had only been spoken of in secret before. Things get out of hand and they kill him. And in the shadows stands a man watching the whole thing. He looks like he could have orchestrated the entire spectacle himself. He doesn't throw one stone. He just stands there, approving of everything that happens. We just know that this guy is bad news. His brief mention is a hint that we'll hear more about him.

The next thing we know, this man, Saul, has made it his personal crusade to go from town to town and kill every Christian he can find. Reading this story for the first time, you just know that like the Egyptians, Canaanites, and Philistines before him, this is our new, larger than life villain. And the only way that we'll be able to solve the problem he creates is by killing him. If his goal is to kill all of the Christians, then in order for the heroes to succeed, he'll have to die.

But then there's a twist. This villain decides to go to Damascus to hunt more Christians. Everything changes here. You see, the hero does have to succeed. The villain does have to die for the things that he's done. The only problem is, when Saul goes to Damascus, we get the big twist that the Christians aren't the heroes of the story after all; Jesus is! And Saul is the villain, but he's not the only one. If Jesus is the hero, and the villain is whoever has wronged Him, then that makes the villain of the story everyone who has ever sinned against Him.

So what does Jesus do? He kills the villain of course. Saul doesn't survive his encounter with Jesus. The man who leaves for Damascus and and the man who arrives there are two different people. In the same way, the David who entered into a church one Wednesday night in seventh grade was not the same David who left. The old one was a villain; he had to die because the things he had done to the Hero were far too horrible for him to live.

Thankfully, in this story, the Hero has control over life and death. In this story, the Hero can bring dead things back to life. In this story, the Hero can make old dead villains new and good.

Stop Trying to Get Sin Out of Your Life

2010-03-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

I feel like there's a pretty big mistake that I've been making for years and I've seen a lot of fellow brothers and sisters making the same mistake. That mistake is to try to get sin out of my life. I remember I was going downtown Saturday night and before I left, because there tends to be a few temptations when I go downtown, be it having a drink too many or letting my eyes wander to the girls all around me, I prayed for God to help me not sin that night.

I then felt the Lord give me a very clear realization about that prayer. Was that really my goal for the night? Was my only concern to just not do anything wrong? The Lord didn't put me on this earth to just "not sin". I'm here to bring Him glory. So my prayer changed from "help me to not sin" to "help me to see the opportunities to glorify You." This small shift will change everything! I guess that means it's not a small shift after all, but regardless, it's a necessary shift.

The problem with focusing on getting sin out of my life is that whether I'm actually sinning or just trying to stop sinning, my focus is still on sin! Here's how it usually goes for me: I pinpoint what I need to stop or start doing, I go a little while without messing up, I let my guard down with a good pat on the back, I slip up, I feel guilty, I feel even guiltier so that I think I can't approach the Lord, I stop doing it until I feel like I can approach the Lord again, repeat.

This concentration not only leads to constant failure, but it leads to me feeling like I'm not good enough for Jesus and bypasses everything having to do with grace so that it becomes about what I can and can't do.

When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus' response was not any of the "thou shalt nots" but it was to love God. So my goal as a Christ follower should not be to stop sinning, but rather to love God with all of my heart. And Matthew 6:33 tells me that when I do this, other things just kind of fall into place. When I love God, the effect is that I sin less in the same way that when I love a friend I don't do things that hurt them, but instead do things to let them know that I love them.

One Year Later

2010-02-27T08:00:00.002-05:00

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor can'st thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones and rest their delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, sickness dwell,
And better then thy stroke; why swell'st thy then;
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, though shalt die.

From Holy Sonnet X by John Donne

I'm Back, Baby!

2010-02-24T21:45:00.003-05:00

Wow, so it's been a while since I've come on here. Last September I set the goal of writing four entries a month. I celebrated this by never blogging again after September. So, to say the least, my writing is a little rusty, so I ask that you bear with me a bit.

Life has been pretty crazy since last September for me. Actually, life has been pretty crazy for a while now if you've been keeping up. I think that that's just how life is and how it's going to be for a while. Growing up you never really pay attention to all of the change going on because it rarely effects you. It's like we make this gaping assumption that the way life is when we're kids is the way life has always been for everyone around us before we ever showed up.

Life is always changing. So far my life in 2010 is nothing like what it was in 2009. And my life in 2009 was vastly different from life in 2008. Maybe I'm wrong and it will slow down eventually, but I just don't see that happening.

All of this is why I find it important to blog and to journal. Life in interesting. Even a life as seemingly mundane as my own is interesting. These past couple of weeks I've been reading about David in 1 and 2 Samuel and I've almost made it through the Psalms once this year. What I find most interesting about the things I'm reading is that I'm reading writing about David's life, and he's such a man after God's heart that when I read about him I learn about the Lord. That's what I want from this blog and my journal. I want to write about life and I want people to learn about the Lord because of it. I want someday for my grandkids to pick up my journal and not just learn about who their grandpa was, but to learn about the love of God through my life.

So, with that in mind the blog will take a different shape. The biggest change will be that I'll actually be making entries. But other than that, I have mostly used this thing as a chance to write a devotion, which I will definitely continue doing because I love sharing what the Lord is teaching me, but I'll have more "Life of David" entries just telling you about what's going on in my life or what's on my mind. We'll see how that goes and whether or not I'll actually stick to it.

If you actually enjoy reading my blog and you see that I haven't written for a while, feel free to yell at me about not writing. That's a freebie for the one of you who'll probably read this who doesn't happen to be my mother.

Fruit of the Spirit

2009-09-25T10:01:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing John Flowers speak at Kingdom Culture. Though I'm not exactly sure of what he said that sparked these thoughts, I know that since then I've been thinking about the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5 says that the fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And for the longest time I've always thought that the reason that these were explained were because when I received the Holy Spirit, I received these as well. But now I'm beginning to see that this can't be an accurate view of these verses.

There are two problems with the view that the fruit of the Spirit comes when you receive Christ. First of all, not every Christian possesses all or any of these at any given time. And secondly, there are non-christians who oftentimes do.

So what I'm thinking is that this fruit isn't supposed to be seen in the same light as the gifts of the Holy Spirit (which are things which only Christians possess), but rather an indicator of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If I see a clerk showing patience with a rude customer, I'm seeing the Holy Spirit work in them. If I see a kid full of joy, I'm seeing the Holy Spirit give it to them. If I see a teenage couple show self-control in their physicality, I'm seeing the Holy Spirit at work.

This view is so encouraging. It turns the fruit of the Spirit into a highlighter for where the Lord is at work. It shows that even when someone wants nothing to do with God, He still wants something to do with them. Whenever you see one of these things, they're practically screaming, "The Holy Spirit is working here!"

Looking Like My Dad

2009-09-01T22:25:00.002-04:00

My dad was a very hard working man. Sometimes he would wake up before everyone else in the house, go do a day's worth of work and still be back in time to cook us all breakfast before any of us even thought about getting up, and then go work a little more. I'm not sure I realized this as a kid, though. I always just saw him after dinner in his pajamas which consisted a green t-shirt and blue sweatpants. He would always put on his nightly uniform and then lay on the couch and watch some TV.

I was probably 8 years old when I realized that I too owned a green t-shirt and blue sweatpants, so one night, on a whim, I put them on and went to lay down with my dad on the couch and watch wrestling with him. We didn't really talk much, we just laid there together and watched the grown men in underwear beat each other up.

I thought it was awesome! So much so that I continued to do it nightly for a long time. My mom thought it was cute, and I know my dad loved it too, but there wasn't really anything seemingly significant about that time. Yet these still stand out as some of the fondest memories I have of my dad. I remember how much I loved imitating my dad and how great it made me feel to know that he liked it too. I really do hope and pray that someday I'll be the kind of man that my kids want to imitate.

These memories popped into my head tonight as I read Ephesians 5:1, which says, "Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children." This, like so many other commands of God, is a command of love, not a wagging of His finger. He's not saying, "Ya know, you really wouldn't screw up so much if you'd just act more like Me." He's our Father. He knows that just like, imitating my dad, brought me joy, imitating God will bring His children joy as well. And more than that, I doubt little more brings joy to the Father's heart than when His kids are trying to be just like their Daddy.

Jesus Changed Everything

2009-08-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

Okay, so there's this one part of the Bible that has always bothered me. I've never been able to figure out what on earth it's talking about. It's found in Mark 2:18-22. It doesn't make any sense! First, some people ask Jesus about fasting, and then Jesus answers by talking about new and old garments and wine. What does that have to do with the question?

Well, I was reading this a few weeks ago, and the Lord graciously gave me a little bit of wisdom, and it makes so much more sense now. I could be wrong, so bear with me. These people come up to Jesus and point out that John's disciples fast and the pharisees' disciples fast, so why don't His disciples fast? Jesus answers by telling them that you can't put an new piece of cloth on an old garment, if you do it will tear. And you can't put new wine into an old wineskin because the wineskin will be destroyed (I'm guessing this made more sense to the original audience than it does to me, because I know nothing about wineskins.)

John's and the pharisees' disciples were fasting in anticipation of the coming Messiah, so when Jesus actually came, the whole game changed. It would have been foolish for Jesus' disciples to fast in anticipation of Him. He was standing right there. They couldn't stick to the way they have always done things and expect it to work.

We no longer live in a time of anticipation, but a time of action. We can't do things the way they've always been done expect it all to work. We can't take the religion that we're comfortable with and add a little Jesus flavor to it. If we do, the whole thing falls apart. This parable teaches that if we try to have Jesus plus anything else it leads to destruction.

And the thing behind all of those fancy words is that it's really easy to type them out. It's also easy to read it and think, "that sounds really good." But when you really think about it, those are pretty empty words because if all we do is take one set of rules and replace them with a new set of words, we miss the entire point. We can't just say, "stop waiting and start acting," or "live a radical life for Christ," because there's nothing in any of us to be able to do that.

Following Christ is all about the heart, not actions, and this is where the beauty of Christ really shines through. Christ teaches this parable best through His actions. He didn't take us and just put new "things have changed" patches over our old tears. He knew that that wouldn't hold up. He didn't try to fix us, He made us new! He set the example of not putting a nice coat of Jesus on our old self, by actually remaking us, free of our bondage to sin. And in that example, He gave us the ability to drop religion and truly live a free life as a new creation.

How can we be recipients of such an amazing gift and not live differently?

King Jesus

2009-08-07T08:00:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I wonder why I journal everything that I do. I'll get these amazing thoughts, write them down, and then never look at them again. Maybe it's just because I remember things better when I write them down than I would otherwise. But, either way, on the rare occasion that I do look back at my journal entries, God typically reminds me that His truth is true no matter when I wrote it down. Here's a thought that He reminded me of.

I've heard Mark Driscol teach on how Jesus has three distinct roles: Prophet, Priest and King. Everything that Jesus does falls under one of those three categorizations. What this also means is that if we overemphasize or minimize an aspect of Jesus, we don't see Jesus as He is; we see a Jesus of our own making.

In my own life, I have no problem viewing Jesus as my Prophet. I experience Him naming my sin and convicting me to repentance. I especially have no problem viewing Him as my Priest. In fact, it's all too easy for me to view Him as the one who forgives and atones for my sin. But my problem becomes apparent when it comes as viewing Jesus as King.

Jesus is King of everything, and way too often I view Him as a just partner in my life; helping me make my way. But Jesus isn't my sidekick, He's my Master. He is sovereign over everything, especially me.

Viewing Jesus as King affects everything in one's life, but nothing more for me than my prayer life. When I don't view Jesus as King of all, my prayers tend to be pretty weak. It's only when I view Jesus as sovereign that I have the faith to pray big prayers, because it's only then that I see Him as capable of answering them.

Life as a Soundwave

2009-06-30T11:34:00.006-04:00

God spoke the world into existence. If we can agree on this, this whole post will go a lot easier for you. In my head I've always imagined it going down this way: God had in His head what He wanted to create, spoke it, and then boom, there is was. But what if there's a lot more depth to it than that?

God is real. Like, really real. His reality is greater than our reality. We're almost not real by comparison. James even compares our lives to mist. When I speak, sound waves are created that carry a short distance and are put out in such an order that makes sense to the hearer. Maybe creation is just what happens when God speaks. Maybe the Earth is just what happens when God says "Earth." Maybe the sun is just what happens when God says, "Let there be light."

What if God is so real that right now we exist on the effects of His voice? When we speak it is communicated in a way that one sense can process it. Look around yourself. Everything in front of you from the chair you're sitting in, to the car you drive, to the food you've eaten, to the body you exist in is all there because of God's voice! God is so real that when He speaks, it effects every sense. His voice can be heard, seen, touched, tasted and smelled by us.

So with all of that in mind, I have one thought that's blowing my mind right now. If we can be this overwhelmed by an effect of God's voice, what's it going to be like when we actually see Him?

Happy Father's Day

2009-06-21T06:00:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly certain that if you had told me this time last year that it would be mine and my brother's last Father's Day with my dad, I wouldn't have believed you. It's amazing how much can change in such a short amount of time. I've known this day was coming since I realized last week what day today is, but I still wasn't sure how I'd react to it, or if I'd even react at all.

It's all still so unreal. It will be four months this Saturday since my dad passed away. In some way it's hard to believe it's been that long and in others it seems like it's been unbearably longer. There are some days I think about it more than others, but I always miss him. And I'm thankful for the hope I have that I'll see him again.

My dad was such an awesome guy. The Lord could not have blessed me with a dad who loved me more than mine did. There's nothing he wouldn't have done for me and no sacrifice he wouldn't have made to make my life better. He dug his way out of poverty to provide opportunities for me and my brother that we wouldn't have had otherwise and we're the men we are today because of his example.

In his last few months, he would always go out of his way to come have lunch with me. He didn't feel like doing it. He would have been better off staying at home and resting. He could barely eat anything anyway, but still, he would come meet me at work almost every Wednesday and we'd walk over to Little Pigs and eat lunch together.

And he was such a godly man. He wasn't always this way, and honestly, one of the coolest things I've been able to see is how God changed my dad's heart and made him into the exemplary Christ-follower that he was. I pray to receive the same heart for evangelism that my dad had. He didn't have a plan for going door to door with a tract, ready to repeat the words he was supposed to say. He just knew what the Lord had done in his life and you couldn't stop him from telling everyone around him; whether they liked it or not. He was well aware of how much he needed the Lord.

Thank you Lord for blessing me with the father You gave me. And thank you for being my Father now when I need one so much. Especially today. You truly do know how to bless Your children beyond what we deserve.

Today, don't just go through the motions of Father's Day. Don't just tell your dad that you love him, tell him why. Don't hold any bitterness in your hearts towards him for things he's done in the past, but show him Christ's love (you aren't or won't be a perfect parent either). And call him tomorrow too and tell him you love him again just so he knows you meant it. You're not guaranteed to have your dad tomorrow, let alone next Father's Day. Make this one count.

Training for Godliness

2009-06-09T10:30:00.004-04:00

In my head I have an idea of the type of man I want to be. To be honest with you, he's a pretty awesome guy. He's patient, humble, funny without being crude, bold, capable, and loving. He's a pretty godly guy. And when I think about how I can get from being me to him, the only way i can imagine it happening is if the Lord zaps me and changes me into him.

But I've never known the Lord to be a character zapper, so I'm not sure why I imagine He'll work that way for me. 1 Timothy 4:7 says very clearly that I am to train myself for godliness. This means that God expects me to be a part of the change equation. The only problem I have with this is that it means that I'm accountable for my own character. I really don't like this plan.

So what does it mean to train myself for godliness? I guess, first of all, it means getting the basics down and the basics, sadly, is getting sin out of my life. All of it. This is where the fruit of the Spirit comes in because that's where self-control comes into the mix. This is important, because, to be honest with you, the sins I commit, I commit because I want to commit them. So part of training for godliness is saying no to the things that at least part of me wants to do. I'm sure that's a huge reason why the Lord gives us His Spirit; He knew we'd still want to sin even after we were His.

The fruit of the Spirit is an amazing arsenal that we use to battle for godliness. When I'm attacked and tempted to sin, it gives me weapons to use to attain victory. And there's a tool for every situation that could come: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are the things we use to attain godliness. This is how I can become the man of great character I see in my head!

God is infinite, and that's a lot.

2009-06-04T15:23:00.003-04:00

I'm still slowly rereading John right now and this morning I got to chapter 20 and read about Jesus appearing to Mary at the tomb. Verse 14 threw me a little bit, though. It says that Mary saw Jesus, but didn't recognize Him.

My first thought was that something about Jesus' resurrection must have changed Him. But that doesn't sit right. There are numerous verses that point to the fact that God never changes; specifically Hebrews 6:17-18. So why couldn't Mary recognize Jesus?

Let's say you've climbed Mt. Everest, all the way to the top. If you decided to do it again and started at the same point, it would still be a hard climb, but it would be familiar and you'd have some clue about what you were going to see. But let's say you went one hundred yards to your left to start. It would be a completely different climb. It's still the same mountain, but there are lots of sides to it.

One thing I'm starting to see is that God isn't just big, He's infinite! There are so many aspects to Him that's there's no way we'll be able to grasp even most of them. So if ever we see a different side of God, it's easy to react by thinking, "Whoa! That's not the Jesus I know." But, just like what happened with Mary, Jesus hadn't changed, He was just revealing more of Himself. If Jesus seems unfamiliar, it might not be a different Jesus, but rather, more of Him. God's character is unchanging, but it's also infinite, so there's a lot there to get to know.

Sowing and Reaping

2009-05-21T13:16:00.004-04:00

I was really struck by John 4:35-38 this morning during my quiet time. Take a second to read it. In it, Jesus talks about sewers and reapers. I think that there's a skewed view of sowing amongst Christians. Reaping is pretty obvious. I can go to church most Sundays and see reaping taking place, but sowing is harder to see, therefore it's easy to get confused about just what it is.

As I said, when I see someone come to church on a Sunday and accept Christ, that's a very visible example of reaping, so it's easy to think that sowing was someone inviting that person to church. But rarely will someone's first step to God be coming to church. I never see the person who holds the door for someone having a rough day or the person who treats the server like an actual person at lunch, or the friend who shows Christ's love by being a comforter to someone suffering or the family member who has been sharing the Gospel and inviting the person to church for five years only to have them finally go when someone else invites them. Sowing is almost always behind the scenes and it isn't confined to just talking about the Gospel.

And Jesus, in these verses, refers to the sower and the reaper as two different people. The Lord might not allow me to lead to Christ those that I share the Gospel with. Like on my trip, I got to talk about the Gospel with a bunch of people, and not one of them seemed remotely interested at the time, but the Lord might not be done with them yet and I might just be a step in the process. That's the beauty of the Church being a body. We each have different roles and gifts for reaching people. On our own, we might not be able to make any impact, but together we can change the world.

I guess the beauty of all of this is that the Lord even allows us to take part in this process. He didn't have to choose to let us be His method for reaching the world, but He did. He has entrusted us with the most important job in the universe and that's a big deal. And it's pretty awesome to think that even if I don't feel like I'm making a big impact by bringing people into the Kingdom in droves, I'm still playing a part if I'm just being obedient and loving people and sharing the Gospel with them.

The Gospel, Salvation and Whatnot

2009-05-20T11:36:00.004-04:00

I'm back for my first domestic post. Sorry it took so long. It's weird how I can make it a point to find time to blog when I'm always on the go, but now that I don't have tons to do, I find it hard to make time for it.

I've actually had some pretty heavy stuff on my mind lately, and after a conversation with John last night, I can't keep my mind off of it. None of this is me trying to answer the questions, I'm just trying to make sense of it all, so feel free to chime in your thoughts.

I'm really trying to figure out the Gospel right now. What is the Gospel? What I always hear preached is that the Gospel is that Jesus died for my sins so that I can be with Him. And what I gather from that is that the Gospel is salvation. But is the Gospel more than salvation? Isn't there more to a life with Christ than just being "saved"?

And to be honest with you, I'm not even sure I fully get salvation? How does one become saved? I keep hearing it preached that saying a prayer doesn't make you saved, but I've never seen it done any other way. And I know that Biblically that can't be the only way to accept Christ because there are tons of Christians in the Bible and there isn't one example of any of them saying any version of "the sinner's prayer."

And really, I can't stand the sinner's prayer because, working in youth ministry, I've seen it be abused as a fail safe and students "get saved" four or five times. I guess in their mind they think, "Oh no, I feel bad for sinning. God must be mad. I'd better say this prayer to make Him happy so I can go to Heaven." Granted, that's a gross generalization, but there is some truth to it. But as much as the sinner's prayer gets on my nerves, I consistently use it when I have an opportunity to lead someone to Christ. Almost as if I feel like it won't count if I stick with Romans 10:9 and they just believe in their heart and say with their mouths that Jesus is Lord, like it's on me to make it official. It's just a lack of faith on my part.

So that's where I'm at currently. I've decided to read through John again in hopes that the Lord will start giving me some answers. I'm not having a huge crisis of faith or anything, but I am trying to figure out what I believe and why right now. And these are really only a couple of the many things I'm trying to figure out right now. Feel free to throw some of your thoughts out there. I'd love to hear them.

Final Thoughts

2009-05-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

Well, here I am at the end of my journey. Rome today and tomorrow, then a 19 hour trip home Friday (which I could use some prayer for). I've loved so much of what I've got to see and do these past five weeks. The Lord's favor has been all over me and I've seen it so much in so many little things. Things that I made sure to write down so I could share them later and brag on Him.

I'm not sure what I was expecting to get out of this trip. I went into it knowing that the Lord wanted me to go, but I'm still not sure as to why. But, He has taught me a lot. Tons about myself, and about who He is. I haven't had a huge supernatural experience or anything, I've just known that He's here. It's been pretty amazing.

And on top of the me stuff, I've got to talk about Jesus with a lot of people. For all I know, just one of those conversations could be the whole purpose in me going on this trip.

I appreciate the prayers I've gotten. I'm glad to be able to say that there's nothing that I've done on this trip that I have to keep a secret. That's a blessing straight from God because there were temptations and whatever prayer I was getting definitely kicked in. The Lord was taking care of me.

I'm so excited to see you all again. I'm excited to get back to NewSpring too! I haven't been to church in around three weeks and I can't stand it. I'm excited about American food as well. At some point, someone is going with me to Five Guys next week. Bless their hearts, they try to make hamburgers in Europe, but I'm not sure what happens between the trying and the happening, but it never comes out quite like food.

And finally, I can't wait to get back to Fuse! To be honest, I was getting pretty burned out. I was absolutely ready to quit and not look back, but God's given me a new passion and I can't wait to go full throttle when I get back with my guys.

I'll see most of you all Sunday night at 6 in Greenville, and to everyone else, just give me a call. I'm unemployed now so I have plenty of time. I can't wait to hear what's been going on in your lives this past month.

In Theory

2009-05-05T10:43:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I went to the Battistero here in Florence. Primarily because, at the time, the line was shorter than the one leading to the top of the Bodacelli dome of the Duomo. It's a really simple place. It's actually relatively small compared to some of the other places I've been, but still, I liked it.

Inside, there was this series of three statues. A Levite, a Pharisee, and John the Baptist in the middle of them. The other two were staring at John with disdain and John was sporting his camel hair sweater and vagabond look. When I first saw that, my first thought was, "I love how God works." Meaning, I love that God chose the guy in the middle to usher in His son, not the religious professionals. This messy, homeless man was called the greatest of men born of woman. That's pretty huge.

But then it hit me, I'm not sure I really love how God works. I mean, in theory I do. But practically, I don't. I love how God works in other people's lives. How God can take the most messed up people and do enormous things for His Kingdom through them, and how He can so effect a well off, comfortable person that they give up everything they have to follow Him. That all sounds awesome, as long as He doesn't ask me to do it.

The Lord's been revealing a lot of the idols in my life these past few weeks, and I know that comfort is definitely one of them. The idea that God could ask me to give up everything and live the John lifestyle terrifies me. And what's worse is that living in poverty and having people think I'm crazy scares me more than the whole head on a platter deal.

So right now my prayer is that the Lord will reveal to me all of the idols in my life and to help me destroy them. I have no idea what He has in store for me, but I do know that I have things keeping me from fully embracing whatever my purpose is. And until all of these idols are dethroned, I'm not truly free serve God with everything I have.

Parlee Engleese?

2009-05-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

So, here's an idea of where I'll be in the coming week. No funny comments as I'm tired and have only a few minutes of paid for internet left. But, needless to say, I miss you all and can't wait to see you when I return. You should probably come to NewSpring Greenville Sunday at 6 so I can see you.

May 2-3: Pisa

May 4-5: Florence

May 6-7: Rome

May 8: Greenville!

Leaving a Legacy

2009-05-01T17:34:00.003-04:00

I've talked a lot over the past year or so about leaving a legacy. But, tonight it hit me that I have no clue what that even means. I was out exploring the city tonight and stumbled upon a really old cemetary. Inside were these huge monuments, most of which where from the 1800's. Some even had touching comments on them. In particular, the one that sticks out was to a pastor from his congregation in appreciation for what he meant to them.

But, the thing that gets me is that the monuments in this place are falling apart. They aren't being taken care of. I think the newest one I saw was from 1915, maybe. Nobody visits these people because nobody knows them. Very few people are alive who were also alive when some of these people were, and in most cases, it's been 100 to 200 years since they died, let alone lived.

And, if I think about this in my own life, I have no idea who my great-grandparents where. I knew my great-grandma when I was very young, but just barely. And, if I'm being honest, I have no real desire to learn anything about them, and we're just three generations removed.

So, coming back around to the idea of leaving a legacy, I have to wonder, does leaving a legacy mean being remembered? Really, I thought it did. I had imagined thoughts fondly remembering great-grandpa David as the man who set his family on a Godly path leading to countless people entering the Kingdom of God because of the family line. But that's ridiculous. First of all, that makes it all about me and how great I was. But, more importantly, I'm going to be forgotten. Someday, I'll be gone, and later everyone who knows me will be too. And what's left won't be my name. That won't matter. What will be left, however, will be the ripples I've created with my life.

Honestly, I want to lead my future family in such a way that the Kingdom is enlarged because of it. I want to bring great men and women of God into the world and disciple them. But my legacy isn't looking back at what I did. If that were the case, my legacy would only last a couple of generations and then it would be gone. But I want a legacy that lasts. A true legacy isn't about being remembered, it's about leaving an impact. Even if no one knows what left the crater, they can't deny it's there.

And I have such a short ammount of time to make that impact. I could be 80 years, or it could be 25. Regardless, it's not long and I need to get to work.

Scotish Thoughts

2009-04-28T10:43:00.004-04:00

This has certainly been a very active week in Scotland, so I thought I'd take a minute to share just a few thoughts from my experiences thus far.

-I have always thought that the idea of the drunken Scotsman was a horrible stereotype. It appears that I was wrong. So far I've been kissed by a drunk man (on the cheek thankfully) who kept trying to usher me into a bar to let him buy me a drink, invited by a drunk man to go to church with him last Sunday (sadly, a day late) who then gave me an standing invitation to stay with him whenever I'm in Inverness.

-Scotland is a lot like the south. Everything's fried, everyone enjoys a drink, they speak with an accent that few other Britain's can understand, they have words that they always use that probably aren't really words, and everyone's a Christian.

-I've had haggis. Haggis is a sheep's stomach stuff with all kinds of goodies. It sounds gross, it looks gross, it even feels gross in your mouth, but surprisingly, it's not that bad. Though, the gas it makes you produce afterwards is something to be proud of.

-Seriously, everything's fried here. Haggis is fried, fish is fried, candy bars are fried. I'm pretty sure they have steamed vegetables, but they fry them afterwards. Scots should be a lot fatter than they really are.

Today is my last day in real Scotland. I head out to Edinburgh tomorrow, but that no more represents the whole of Scotland than New York represents all of America. These have been some of the most interesting days I've had in my 24 years so far.

I miss you all and can't wait for each of you to take me out to eat when I get back, one at a time.

Where in the world is David Fisher?

2009-04-24T20:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the extended blog absense as of late. It's been hard to find free internet and I'm not a big fan of paying £4 an hour for it. That's close to $7, which is just ridiculous. So, just in case the problem persists I thought I'd give you an idea of where I'll be in the next week.

April 25-26: Stirling
-The home of William Wallace.
-I wonder if they'll look at me strangely if I paint my face blue and keep screaming freedom everywhere I go.
-I really hope that that's the norm in this place.

April 27-28: Drumnadrochit
-A town in the Scotland Highlands.
-Just a twenty minute walk from Loch Ness.
-I'll find him. No worries.

April 29-May 2: Edinburgh
-I have one week to figure out how to pronounce the name of this city correctly.
-I've heard upwards of 7 different ways so far.
-I'm sure the cities nice too, but I'm more excited about hearing people say it's name.

A Stupid American Mindset

2009-04-24T05:58:00.003-04:00

One thing that keeps standing out to me is that no matter where I go, people are all pretty much the same. Sure, there are different customs and cultures on the whole, but if you look at the individual you'll likely always find people going about their everyday business, talking to friends and family, getting pissed off when things don't go their way, and trying to figure out why they're here on the Earth (or vehemently ignoring that question altogether).

With this in mind, one of the American mindsets that's keeps bothering me is just how much American mindsets bother me. I can see Egyptians doing nonsensical things and think, "they need to hear about Jesus." But if I see Americans around me doing stupid things, I just get annoyed; especially if that person claims to be a Christian.

The only real difference I've seen between Egyptians and Americans is that one is a lost people who think they're going to Heaven because they're Muslim and another is a lost people who think they're going to Heaven because they go to church and said a prayer or got baptised. An honestly, if your focus is going to Heaven, you've missed the point anyway. So, instead of seeing this in my own people and sharing and showing the Gospel to them, it's easy to enter into a thought pattern sounding like, "I can't wait to get out of this place so I can start loving people for Jesus."

One of my favorite people I've met on my travels so far is an Egyptian named George. He's a college student with an absolutely amazing heart. When he graduates in a few weeks, he plans to do mission work. He's not moving to another part of the world, he's getting an apartment right in Cairo. I was taken aback many times and challenged many more time by this new friend of mine and his heart for his own people. He sees the pattern of darkness in Cairo and rather than try to escape it, he wants to spend his life right there spreading light on that city.

So I'm in a weird spot right now (which is where I seem to stay). I'm loving getting to see all of these amazing places, but the more I see all of these unbelievable things, the more my heart turns to my own country and my desire to see American turn to Jesus. I have no idea what my future holds. I've given up on the idea of having a huge revelation in which the Lord tells me what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. He has always revealed things to me one step at a time and until He starts doing it a different way, I'm going to assume that's what He'll continue doing. But, for the time being, I think my calling is to my own country. When I get home, I plan to stay there. (Of course, it's a big country, so "there" could still be just about anywhere.)

Thoughts From Across the Pond

2009-04-18T16:43:00.003-04:00

Is it weird that I felt more comfortabl in the middle east than I do in Europe. I'm not sure what it is, but I think I just miss the talkative people. Even though they typically were wanting to sell me stuff, it's always a good thing to have someone want to talk to you.

It's been a weird couple of days and I think one lesson is standing out: people are more important that places. I'm getting to see these amazing things right now. Today alone I got to see inside of St. Paul's Cathedral, walk down the River Thames and Tower Bridge, and explore the Tower of London. These things were all awesome, and I enjoyed getting to see them, but none of them really matter without people. I definitely miss conversation and familiarity. Comfort is definitely nice for me.

But a few thoughts come to mind over this. First of all, I'm not alone. Jesus has proven time and again that He's right here with me. I have my Creator and Savior right here next to me and I'm not even going out of my way to lean upon Him right now.

Also, I think I'm learning that I find my worth far too much in having people around me. People are good to have, and necesary, but I can't find my value in the number of people I have around me.

And finally, the Lord has given me the money and the means to come to the other side of the world. Maybe it's my turn to do something. He might not put everything into my lap. If I want to meet people, I'm going to have to go out of my way to make it happen.

These are just a few thoughts going through my head. I'd iron them out more, but I'm paying for internet, so no time to proofread. Prayer would be appreciated.

Those Crazy Kids

2009-04-16T10:29:00.003-04:00

I think one of the coolest things I've noticed since I got into this country is the behavior of the kids. Kids are kids no matter where you go. It seems that childlikeness is intercultural. Whether I'm at Falls Park on a Sunday afternoon or in Garbage city, I see kids playing and paying very little attention to their surroundings.

That's not to say that these kids don't have issues. Some of them are playing in the streets because if they went home they'd be beaten, and others have no home to go to at all. But when they're really just being kids, there is no difference in how they act. From the American kids to the diplomat kids to the street kids, they all play the same.

I guess this is where I'm supposed to add the deep spiritual significance to this about having childlike faith and whatnot, but I'm not going to. Play with this and let it speak to you in whatever way the Lord let's it speak to you. And please, share your thoughts. But I just thought I'd share a short observation.

Egyptian Thoughts

2009-04-14T11:19:00.003-04:00

I thought I'd give a brief glimpse into the grand scheme of my past week in Egypt. If I had to describe it in one word, the first one to come to mind would be uncomfortable. I'm just a sheltered, germaphobic, middle class white boy. It's uncomfortable for me to be in a third world country.

The bathrooms aren't as clean as I'm used to. The public bathrooms form a demonic force, the likes of which I've never seen. The motel room I stayed in this past weekend was unlike anything I've ever seen as far as crampedness and dirtiness. I don't understand the local language. The drivers are insane! Some roads have lines, but no one uses them. What would be a three lane highway for most is a 6 or 7 lane over here. There are no crosswalks, and people are hit by cars very often. So yeah, uncomfortable.

But, I feel like after a week, I've hit sort of a stride and am starting to feel a little more comfortable with my surrounding. God is definitely destroying my fear of getting dirty. And I'm glad He's doing this, because, honestly, you have to get dirty to love people. The smaller my personal bubble becomes, the closer I can get to people.

But overall, this has been an amazing week. I've met some godly folks who are out here doing a great work for the Lord, and I've definitely had my eyes opened to a world that I had ignored for so long. I've gotten to see the richest and poorest parts of Egypt and it's like night and day. What's sad is that there aren't too many Egyptians in the rich part. It's mostly foreigners.

One thing that's really shining through to me is this: Jesus isn't just ours. When Jesus was dying on the cross, He wasn't just thinking about Americans. I think, whether we like it or not, we tend to monopolize Jesus, making Him just ours. I know I do. But these Egyptians were just as fresh on His mind while He was on this earth as we were. We're not the only important people. God doesn't need us to reach the world. He allows us to reach the world for Him.

So, as you can tell by this hodgepodge of thoughts, there's a lot of stuff on my mind right now. Keep praying for me. God is definitely working on me on this trip. I can't wait to see what's coming up over the next few weeks.

My Mountain Top Experience

2009-04-12T16:53:00.005-04:00

I spent this past weekend in a place called Dahab. It's sort of a beach town off of the Red Sea and was a very different and really fun experience. Dahab was on the Asian side of Egypt, so technically I've had my feet on four different continents in the past week, which is pretty crazy for a one continent guy such as myself.

Last night, my buddy Hans and I left Dahab got on a bus at 11 PM to head towards St. Catherine, which is where Mount Sinai is located. We pulled up around 1:30 and spent the next three and a half hours or so hiking to the top of the mountain. It was such a rough hike that revealed to me just how little I've been working out over the past few months. I had to take a breather more times than I'd like to admit, so I'll just say it was twice.

It was freezing and windy towards the top. There were a few moments where I almost lost it and took a tumble, but thanks to my cat-like reflexes, I was fine. Beduins live on the mountain, so we stopped at a tea huts that they run and had a couple of cups of Beduin tea to warm us up and they even gave us some Beduin bread as well, which is kind of like pita bread, only more amazing. I was actually pretty impressed with the little tea huts all over the mountain. Not one of them had a set up of Ten Commandment key chains.

We rented a couple of blankets to protect us from the wind and rain, then we set off for the top. When we got there, we found a spot that we thought we'd be able to see the sunrise from and prayed together to thank the Lord for allowing us to see this unbelievable place. We read a little bit of Exodus and then were then able to put that bread to good use as we took communion together. It was such an unbelievable experience.

And to top it all off, I got to see one of the most beautiful sunrises I've ever seen in my entire life. The clouds were just right to reflect the beauty of it all.

So I got to spend my Easter morning with the Lord and a good friend on one of the most important places on this earth in regards to the formation of my faith. It was here that the Lord revealed Himself in such a corporeal way that Moses was marked by His precense. It was here that God gave us His law. That law was the law the revealed to us our need for a Savior and set the stage for Jesus to come to us as a man, die for our sins and conquer sin and death. I'm so blessed that I got to rest in the heaviness of that. I genuinely can't believe that the Lord blessed me in this way. While I do miss getting to see my family for Easter, this is by far the most unforgettable Easter of my life. I'm so blessed. I love my Savior and Lord!

Philosophy of Mission Work

2009-04-10T08:00:00.000-04:00

I would say that the Lord is changing my view of missions, but honestly, I'm not sure I've ever had a view of missions, so I think I'll just say that the Lord is forming my view of missions. I've gotten an eye full in the past few days and a lot of things are going through my head.

I have a new friend named Jon. He lives in Garbage City, which I talked about yesterday. He doesn't have to live in Garbage City, but in order to minister to its residents, he wants to gain credibility with the people, so he lives with them.

The first question that comes to mind is would I be willing to move to a place like that if the Lord commanded me to? But more than that, it makes a point clear. People listen to those who are like them.

Who's the best person to minister to an Egyptian? Another Egyptain? Who's the best person to minister to a Kenyan? Another Kenyan? Who's the best person to minister to a New Yorker? Another New Yorker.

I'm starting to see that mission work is more than than just the Church ministering to another culture; it's also teaching another culture how to minister. If you create a system that involves you serving and loving, you're creating a system that's built around you and one that will crumble when you someday leave those people. So I think the ideal is to create a system that will eventually no longer need you.

And I think that this system is Biblical. First of all, Jesus knew that the best way to reach His children was to come to earth as one of us. He knew that it would take more than prophets and angels, it would take Himself to save us and the best way we would listen to Him would be if He were, in fact, human.

From a more practical side of things for us, Paul shows us an amazing system. During his time planting churches, Paul would go to a city, become a part of the city doing work, cultivate a body of believers, start a church, raise up leadership within the church, and then move on to another city to do it all again, all the while keeping his relationship with that church active to keep them accountable. This accountability relationship is why we have many of the New Testament epistles. Paul knew that the Lord didn't need him in order for a church to thrive. He didn't create Paul centric systems, he created Christ centric systems.

So this is what's on my mind. Let me know if you have any thoughts.

Garbage City

2009-04-09T09:18:00.006-04:00

I have lots of stuff on my mind, so it's hard to pick a topic to write about. But I'm sure I'll get to the other stuff soon, so no worries.

Yesterday I spent time in a slum called Masheyet Nasr, which in English is translated Garbage City. It was unreal. The place gets it's name from the fact that all of the garbage in the city is brought to there daily. To say that it stinks is kind of an understatement. The streets and houses are crammed full of bags of trash. Click the above picture to get a good view of the city in detail.

Many of the people in the city spend their days recycling. Each one has a certain product that they specialize in. One guy I saw, goes through every bag of trash around him searching for scrap metal. He takes what he finds, melts it down, beats it into pots and pans and sells them.

I guess what's so surreal about this place is the fact that this is their home. This absolutely disgusting place is where people live, have families, raise their kids, work, worship and do every other facet of life. It was heartbreaking. One thing in particular that continues to stick out in my head is a little girl that couldn't have been more than two years old, crawling around in the wet dirt road underneath a parked trash truck playing with her brothers. And she was happy.

It's odd because it's mostly Christians that live in this particular slum. We had a hard time getting the taxi to believe that that was actually where we wanted to go. The Muslims around here are scared of it because of all the Christians that live there, which I find kind of funny. Realistically it's because Christians are few and far between in this country, so they don't understand them. But it could also be that darkness tends to run from light. The smell might also play a part in it.

I'll have more thoughts up later on things God's put on my heart through Garbage City and how this trip is effecting my thoughts on missions in general.

The Things I Learned in Amsterdam

2009-04-07T12:10:00.003-04:00

-Everybody smokes. I think it's a law. I didn't smoke and the cops gave me shady looks all day.

-There's a certain food that everyone was eating. Fries in a paper cone with mayonnaise globbed on top. They sell it everywhere. Everyone loves it. They are wrong. It is disgusting and a sin against a holy God.

-It's never too early for a prostitute. I had always thought that one of the perks to being a prostitute was not having to work a first or second shift. It appears I was mistaken.

-You should avoid the red light district.

-If you try to avoid the red light district, it will find you. There is no escape.

-When you inevitably end up in the red light district just look up. If you look to your sides, you'll see boobs. If you look down, you'll see boobs in recessed windows. If you look forward, you will make eye contact with a guy who will offer to let you see his girl's boobs. Trust me. Just look up and pray.

-There are many coffee shops in Amsterdam. Oddly, I didn't see anyone drinking coffee in a number of them and they appeared to be decorated as green houses.

-Pot is legal. But I'm fairly confident that they disguise it to confuse the Americans. I smelled it all day but I never saw a single joint. Sneaky Amsterdamians.

-Amsterdamians is a far better label for a people than the Dutch. I'm just saying.

-Every European guy dresses like Brad Cooper.

-The streets have bikes, cars and trains on them. Bikes will swerve to miss you. Cars will usually stop. Trains NEVER stop! You will die.

Pray For Me My Peeps!

2009-04-05T12:00:00.000-04:00

I'm a huge fan of specific prayer, so I thought I might give you guys some specific things I'd love for you to be praying for me while I'm gone.

-Divine appointments: I want to meet the right people on this trip. God knew I'd be doing this before the earth was made, which is a pretty awesome thought. He already knows who I'm going to meet while I'm there and I don't think any of them will be by accident. I want to meet people who need Christ, Christians who need encouragement, and everyone else in between.

-Boldness: It's one thing to have those appointments, it's another to actually seize them. So pray that I have the boldness to seek people out and talk to them. Also that I'm sensitive to hearing God's voice and the things He wants me to say.

-A tender heart: I want to be better at loving people and I think this will be an amazing opportunity to learn more about what that means. Also, I want a tender heart to better be able to hear from my Father.

-Protection: Traveling alone isn't the safest thing in the world, but at the end of the day, if I keep to myself and play it smart, I'll be fine. Fine, but not very Christlike. So pray for protection, but also pray that I live my faith out in such was that I actually need it.

I'll be updating this blog whenever I can and you can also follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/D_Fish and you can send e-mail to me as well at dwfishe@gmail.com.

I'd love to have some encouragement sent my way as well as just hearing about what's going on with you guys. Send me some stuff I can be praying for you all about. My prayer life goes so much better when I have specifics to pray about and not just, "God, bless that person."

I love you guys and I'll miss you all. I can't wait to share all of my pictures and stories!

I Am Sent!

2009-04-04T17:23:00.004-04:00

I had a really awesome moment the other night. God definitely answered a prayer that I prayed last year. I have some friends who, in the past year or so have had pretty ridiculous encounters with God. I mean, if I weren't friends with these people, I'd straight up think they were lying. But because they are people that I trust, I ended up being a little jealous of what they got to experience, so I started to pray for it. Specifically, I prayed for an Isaiah moment where God showed me His holiness and I would be completely ruined by it. And I was frustrated because I thought that because I had a good heart behind that prayer, God should answer it. But I've yet to read a promise in the Bible that reads, "If you really mean it, you'll get what you pray for it." I can be sincere, and still be sincerely wrong.

But I was having my quiet time the other night and God brought Isaiah 6 to mind, so I grabbed my Bible and went to read it. I read the first seven verses and remembered how much I had prayed for that, and then I went on to read verse eight and God just grabbed me.

You see, at the end of the day, if God had given me the moment I had prayed for, I know myself well enough to know that I could have gotten really self-righteous about that and started to feel holier than those around me. And even if not, I might have gotten a lot out of it, but it wouldn't have really built His Church, which is the whole point of spiritual things.

And the Lord did, in fact, give me an Isaiah moment, just not the one I was hoping for.

"Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?"
"Here am I! Send me!"

That's my mission. I'm not going on a trip. I'm being sent!

So no longer am I praying for God bring me to those who need to hear about Him on my travels. I'm being sent by my Master. I will seek them out.

I'm not going to pray that God will bring me Christian brothers or sisters to encourage me on my journey. I'm going to seek out my brothers and sisters in Christ to encourage them.

Being sent changes my entire mindset from a self seeking trip to a selfless mission. The world is not about me. It's my job to serve no matter where I am. So God has imprinted Isaiah 6:8 on my heart. I'm still going to pray for a moment with God where His holiness ruins me, but not as the expense of my assignment.

I'm not longer going on a trip. I'm sent on a mission.

The Most Important Miracle: Laziness

2009-04-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

We don't get excited about things we don't have some kind of investment in. Last Monday I got to go see my favorite band, Gomez in concert. They coheadlined with Josh Ritter. This actually led to a pretty cool environment since half the people there didn't know who Josh Ritter was and the other half didn't know who Gomez was.

My friend and I were standing between two people. One was a 19 year old girl and the other was a man in his late 30's. As Gomez took the stage the man started freaking out and screaming to the band stuff like, "thank you so much for coming back!" and "we love you!" The girl was obviously a Josh Ritter fan who was hanging around for the rest of the concert to get her money's worth. She leaned over and asked me what the names of songs were (obviously just trying to flirt with me) and ended up leaving before their set was up (which, honestly, ruined any chance she might have had).

It was pretty clear that the man had been following Gomez since they started over ten years ago. He cared about them because of the time he had put into being their fan. You couldn't have made him leave early. The girl could easily leave because she'd never even heard of Gomez before that night.

The same could be said of why it's easy so often for me and others to be apathetic to people meeting Christ. Maybe the reason we act the way we're supposed to rather than react out of an excited heart is that we're not investing into the Kingdom.

Maybe the fact that the we've grown callous to the power of the Gospel is the Holy Spirit shining a light on the fact that we've segregated ourselves from people who need it. No one would appreciate a doctor if they didn't know about illness so how can we appreciate salvation if we stay away from those who are perishing? When I surround myself with those who need Jesus, I'll be all the more grateful when He saves them. When I care about the life saved, I can't help but celebrate the victory.

The Most Important Miracle: The Curse of Familiarity

2009-04-01T20:00:00.000-04:00

Say what you want about the movie, but I love the book Watchmen. God's spoken to me so much through it and that's honestly one of my favorite parts about God because the things God has shown me have absolutely nothing to do with the author's original intent (go new criticism!).

In the second to last issue of Watchmen, Laurie is trying to convince the godlike Dr. Manhattan to come back to earth to save it from destruction. His speech about why he chooses to come back is beautiful. I'll share much of it in full:

"Thermodynamic miracles...events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive, meeting, siring this precise son, that exact daughter...to distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, is like turning air to gold. That is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle...But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget. I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away." (Emphasis mine)

I think that salvation is God's favorite miracle. That's why He does it so much. But, sadly, if we see something amazing enough, it grows dull to us and we lose interest. Like a new toy on Christmas morning that is all but forgotten when the time comes to open presents the next year.

I remember my reaction to hearing Clayton's story of 2,000 students accepting Christ, or being at Fuse in Anderson when 100 students accepted Christ, or hearing Joe Sangl tell us that nearly 6,000 people had accepted Christ in a NewSpring service since we started. I clapped and cheered, but I fear that I cheered only because that's what you're supposed to do. I know that my heart has grown hard to the miracle of salvation.

We can't afford to get used to the unusual. We should never just expect this miracle. It's a blessing every time it happens, no matter in what magnitude it may come, be it one person or a million. This apathy to the abnormal in my heart seems to come from this expectancy that God will always save souls, like He owes us that. But this just paints me as a spoiled child who feels entitled to the very things that I'm bored with.

God doesn't owe us salvation. He doesn't owe us a single one. That's the beauty, that's the miracle. That's the thing that takes the breath away that we need to view with new eyes. That a perfect and holy God would pick out even one of His enemies who willfully murdered His Son and instead of punishing that person justly, He adopts him or her as His child. And then He continues to overly bless us by doing the same thing with millions and possibly even billions of others. God's love is gorgeous.

I pray that God would renew our hearts. That he would remove the callous on our hearts and instead leave us with a tenderness there to not just act the way we're supposed to act towards Him, but to react out of a childlike heart, happy to see his Daddy work.

The Most Important Miracle: Impatience

2009-04-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

The first reason I think that we under react to salvation is our own impatience. Typically whenever someone is healed it happens immediately. There's immediate satisfaction. We like that because it fits how we do the rest of our life.

When someone accepts Christ, it's a lifelong miracle. There is a definite change in someone who accepts Christ, but really the only immediate thing you typically see is the person doing a 180 with their life. You will immediately see them change the direction they're going in. That's pretty dramatic, but it takes so much longer than that one minute to attain the Christlikeness which is the effect of salvation.

And this causes a lot of strife for a lot of believers. I know in the past I've gotten so frustrated whenever I messed up because I thought I was getting closer to "making it." I assume that all it takes is to pray to Christ, have Him zap me and I'll reach the perfection that He has planned out for me.

But I don't think that Christianity on earth is really about the destination. Once you have Christ, there's really no question about whether or not you'll reach the destination. The Bible says that we can't be snatched from the Father's hand. Once we're His, we're His and there's no changing that. I think that Christianity on earth is about the journey, as cliche' as that might sound.

God could very easily grant us perfection in a moment. We could attain the holiness that we as His followers desire. But I think that rather than just get slapped with a holiness arrow, and give it to us, the Lord would rather teach us holiness. And I think one of the main points of this journey isn't just knowing what it means to follow Christ, but experiencing what it means to follow Christ. I know that when I do fail, I appreciate the perfect life Christ lived all the more and that makes me desire to be like Him even more. And that will take time but it will come someday.

The Most Important Miracle

2009-03-31T20:30:00.003-04:00

In the past year I've been privy to a lot of talk about and experience with miracles. Honestly, it's been pretty awesome. But it tends to be a slippery slope. It's so easy to have my mind always on seeking out God's hand and completely ignoring His face. It's easy to let my worship slide away from my first love and instead simply settle for the supernatural.

And one of the most unsettling things I've seen in my own heart in all of this is that it seems to be a lot easier to get more excited about healed bodies than healed hearts. Paul describes what is supposed to be of first importance to us:

"That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance to the Scriptures."

What Paul says isn't signs and wonders, but the Gospel. Everything in our Christian life is to point to the Gospel. Healings and miracles are important only in that they point to the Gospel. But it's important to know that salvation, too, is a miracle. In fact, it's the only miracle that actually matters. What use is it for someone's legs to be healed if they're only able to walk confidently to hell? What use is it for a cancer patient to be made well if all they have to look forward to is a comfortable path to damnation?

So why on earth is it so easy for us to freak out in excitement towards healings and other miracles, but respond to salvation with excitement, but more excitement out of the fact that that's how you're supposed to react towards salvation?

I think I've come up with three reasons why we tend to under react to God's greatest miracle. Over the next few days I'll highlight these three reasons.

Baby Steps

2009-03-26T22:49:00.003-04:00

It's been a while so I thought I might give an update on where I'm at for anyone out there who cares.

Last year I was closer to God that I think I've ever been. It was amazing how intimate of a relationship I had with Him. But this year things have been different. Especially for these past few months. I've been feeling pretty distant from God lately and am nowhere near where I was last year.

Last year was crazy. God showed me sides of Himself that I didn't know existed before then. I buckled down and disciplined myself to daily pursue Him. I'd lose sleep if I had to just to have time to spend with Him. I dropped other hobbies like reading and games and time with friends just to spend time with Him. And that's the difference. An intimate relationship with God isn't self-sustaining. It requires discipline and effort.

With the mess of things that have been going on these past few months, I've allowed myself to lose my discipline. And I'd love to just jump back in to where I was, but the truth is, it doesn't work that way. I didn't get to where I was overnight. I didn't leave there overnight. So I shouldn't expect to get back there overnight either. So what the Lord is teaching me right now is the importance of baby steps.

I'm not trying to have hour and a half long quiet times. I'm not trying to take three pages of notes on one verse. I'm just taking my time. If I just read one verse a day, but the Lord speaks to me through that, then I'm blessed that He chose to speak to me that much. It's all about discipline and baby steps back to my Father.

A Call to Prayer

2009-02-25T11:38:00.003-05:00

I have a lot of things to say here, so bear with me. Dad has been in the hospital for four weeks as of today and things have been getting worse for the past couple of weeks. In fact, he's been getting a lot worse for the past year and the doctors couldn't figure out why. When they looked at his spleen after if was taken out, they found that he has lymphoma which is what is causing him to spiral downward so much right now.

It's bad. Dad might not be with us much longer. In fact, short of the Lord stepping in, there's really no chance of him surviving this. And that's my whole point of this post. I've never been in a situation like this where I've felt so powerless. I feel weak, broken, hurt and more at peace than I really should be.

The thing is, lymphoma, leukemia, breathing tubes, surgery, all of these things are God's light work. He can heal my dad with a whim if He wants to. So that's the first thing I'm asking. Pray HUGE prayers! Dad's still here and I'd like to keep it that way. The closer he gets to death and the more hopeless it looks, the more glory the Lord will receive if He heals him.

Yes, God still does "that stuff," so unashamedly pray that God would fully restore my dad. Pray with authority against the lymphoma and leukemia by name.

Also, for those closest to dad who read this, I want to say to you, it's okay to ask "why?" But just make sure you ask to right why. Don't selfishly ask God why He's taking dad away from us. The honest truth is, my dad is an amazing man and I never deserved to have any time with a good father, let alone 24 years. Instead, ask why God is doing this, wondering what greater thing He has planned. The Lord doesn't want to hurt His children, so if we're hurting, He has a good purpose behind it. I promise you, it hurts the Lord more to see what my dad is going through than it hurts any of us because He loves my dad more than we ever could. I've never died for my dad, Jesus has. So don't be afraid to pray and ask why. Just make sure you ask the right why.

Please, let's rally together and beg the Lord for the life of my dad. I have faith that He can heal him. But if He doesn't, join me in praying for clarity and figuring out what purpose there is in all of this. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose." I believe this and I pray that you do too. So search out what good God seeks to accomplish in this hour.

And I'll leave you with my verse of comfort again:

"For this light momentary affliction if preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison."

The Weight of Glory

2009-02-15T14:28:00.003-05:00

So I think it's safe to say that the stuff going on with my dad officially sucks. He got moved recently to North Greenville hospital so that he could get physical therapy while he gets weaned off of the ventilator. He's getting better, but since he doesn't really have an immune system, we seem to always be one mishap away from badness.

But God does a good job of preparing His children for the trials that He knows they'll go through. And the day before dad went in for his first surgery the Lord reminded me of a verse He'd gotten my attention with a couple of months earlier.

"For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." 2 Corinthians 4:17

That verse is very comforting and reveals so much about the nature of God. God's glory has weight. I have a hard time even comprehending that. Here's the best example I can think of. If I have never been to the gym and go to the bench press, I won't be able to do much beyond the bar. But if I were to go a few times a week, then months later, I'd be able to lift a lot more.

God's glory is heavy. We can't handle all of it, but God wants us to have it. It takes God training and preparing us to be able to handle more of it. What might seem overwhelming at first, with God's preparation, can be experienced more easily. But God doesn't want us to be satisfied with a comfortable level of Himself, so He allows us to be prepared for more of His infiniteness (to create a word), and in the case of this verse, preparation comes from trials.

The hardest times give us the chance to rely on God more. The more we rely on God, the more we're in His presence and the more we're in His presence, the more we'll be ready to handle more of Him.

We can't be content with staying at the same level in our relationship with God. If we are, that's just laziness, and laziness is sin. So in order to get closer to God and to experience more of His glory, we have to be willing to go through crap.

As bad as this stuff is, if going through it brings me and my family closer to the Lord, then it will all be worth it.

The Details

2009-02-02T19:36:00.003-05:00

In case you're wondering, here's what's been going on this past week. On Wednesday dad was supposed to go in for surgery to have his spleen removed, as the last post talked about, but things didn't go according to plan. They knew his spleen was big, but they didn't know that it would weigh 15 pounds. In fact, anything that could go wrong with the surgery went wrong.

Because of the size, his spleen had caused a lot of trauma to his other organs and there was a lot of bleeding inside of him. So after the surgery they moved him immediately to the ICU. He was put on a ventilator and had all kinds of fun machines plugged into him.

He ended up having a lot of fluid inside of him. In fact there was so much fluid in his abdomen it was cutting off his breathing. But they didn't know it was fluid and they thought it might be blood. So they told us that they'd needed to do surgery Thursday and that there was a chance he could bleed to death. By a miracle, he made it through it fine. Then on Saturday they went in to do the final surgery to close him up and take out all of the packing inside of him that they were using to stop the bleeding.

They were able to close him up all the way, and they thought they had gotten all of the blood. But because of the number of sponges and other things inside of him, they did an x-ray to make sure that they got it all. They saw something in there, but they couldn't tell what it was so they went back in. There wasn't anything in there, but because they went back in they found a spot that was still bleeding that if they hadn't caught it, they would have had to went in a fourth time to clear it up. I'm chalking that up to a miracle from Jesus.

Right now he's getting weened off of the drugs and the ventilator. Hopefully he will be completely off of it by tomorrow night or Wednesday. He's waking up a little now and will look at us and shake hims head when we talk to him and he'll smile at us too. He has pneumonia now, but they caught it early, so it shouldn't be as bad as it could be.

God's been so good to us. We've seen miracle after miracle and the Lord has been by our side the entire time. God's peace is all over the ICU. I keep hearing stories of God working in people's lives.

Please keep praying for us and my dad. I know that God can heal him completely! He still has cancer, so feel free to pray against that still.

Thank you all for the support so far through this! I'm so blessed to have all of you in my life. I love you all so much and I don't know what I'd do without you.

We Need Your Prayers

2009-01-26T20:38:00.004-05:00

As some of you know, my dad was diagnosed with cancer around 6 years ago. It was primarily in his spleen and that's still where 80% of it is located now. It's swelled a lot and is pressing on his stomach, making it hard to eat and severely weakening him.

After years of chemo, this Wednesday at 3 o'clock he's going in to have his spleen removed. It's a pretty serious surgery and he really needs your prayers. Specifically he needs your prayers against infection after the surgery since his cancer has left him with a very poor immune system.

My mom, my brother, I and the rest of my family would really appreciate your prayers as well. I know I'm pretty scared at the moment. I'm holding tightly to Jesus right now, as is the rest of my family. He's brought us this far, and I know He'll continue to complete this good work that He's started in us.

"For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." -2 Corinthians 4:17

That just happened!

2009-01-26T12:33:00.003-05:00

I just can't get over all of the amazing things that I got to see take place last night at church. So I thought I would throw a recap up on here since I want you all to rejoice in what the Lord is doing, not to mention that this blog is in major need of an update.

First of all, Sayan comes from a Muslim family and has been one her whole life...until Wednesday night at Fusegroup. She was told the Gospel by her awesome small group leader, Leslie, and accepted Christ that night! Yesterday she got baptized.

Back in November, we challenged our students to start inviting people that they know need Jesus to Fuse. Joe Harwood took this to heart and starting bringing David Wilson to church. David hadn't been to church since he was three but on December 7th he accepted Christ! Now he and Joe are tag teaming all of their friends and evangelizing their school together.

David got baptized last night and was able to get his mom (who hadn't been to church in over 30 years) and sister to come watch and they both accepted Christ last night too! His sister has been to Fuse before and was invited by Jessica Harwood. I think the highlight of the night for me was seeing Jessica dancing around the atrium singing, "She stood up! She stood up!" about her friend accepting Christ.

During the part of the invitation where you're not supposed to look around, I looked around and saw one of my other students, Ashby, raising his hand in the back! I'm ran up to him after the service to hug him, and I can't wait to call him this week and talk about it with him.

All of that, plus I got to see tons of our students getting baptized. The Lord is so good and faithful! I can't believe I get to be a part of all of this!

A Man of God

2009-01-05T21:38:00.005-05:00

Sorry I've checked out on blogging for the past couple of months. I haven't been as connected at the hip with my computer lately as I've been in the past, so I'm having to remind myself to update this sucker. Anyway, on to the good stuff.

So I was reading 1 Kings 13 tonight and I got to thinking about the man of God it talks about. I'd recommend that you read 1-10 so that this stuff makes sense. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Good stuff right?

It's always been easy to envision this story going down by God appearing to this guy and telling him to go to the king of Israel and tell him that his enemy's kid is going to grow up and go all ritual sacrifice on him. Don't eat anything or drink anything until you get back and make sure you don't come back the same way.

But now I'm fairly confident that it didn't go down this way, and here's why: he actually did it. I just have a hard time believing that the above sales pitch would really make him giddy to go to the king. God knows how much we can handle and only lets us in on just so much. I think God's a bigger fan of faith than He is information.

I'm thinking the situation probably went down a little more along the lines of God telling this guy to leave town and head towards Israel. When he started to pack some food and water, God told him that he wouldn't be needing any of that. On his journey God provided for this guy who was probably getting pretty stinking hungry by the time he got to his destination and at one point told him, "make sure you come back a different way."

Once he reached his destination, God told him to head towards the palace and when he reached the doors, told him what he needed to say. After God had been providing for him for his trip to the king and having seen first hand how faithful God is, it probably wasn't as hard to say those things to the king.

Here's what pumps me up about that story (as accurate as it might or might not be): I think I'm on the same path. All I know as of right now is that I feel led to head to Europe for a month. I'm not sure why and, to be honest, I'm not even 100% sure where yet. It pumps me up to think about the fact that God might have something so huge in store for me that if He told me right now, there's no way I'd do it. He just might have something so big in front of me that He's got to take me around the world to prepare me for it or even to bring me to it. It's so exciting to think about the fact that I might be in the same position that someone who was only known as a man of God was once in.

Just a few thoughts...

2008-12-16T23:07:00.002-05:00

If my relationship with God becomes a daily routine then I'll be able to think I'm doing alright as long as I'm able to check everything off my list. This includes praying and reading my Bible every morning and having a quiet time at night. I've gotten to where I feel guilty if I don't do the things on my list. I don't want to go to God out of guilt. I want to run to God out of a complete hunger and need for Him.

So I'm going to start shaking things up a little bit. I'm going to try to change the way I pray, change the way I read my Bible and try to change what I consider to be a quiet time.

If there's one thing I've learned about God this year, it's that He's a lot bigger than I could have ever dreamed and I haven't even hit the tip of His greatness. What I have isn't enough. I want more and I will be restless until I get more.

Someone I'm thankful for

2008-11-25T19:42:00.002-05:00

I'm taking Steven Furtick's advice and taking the time to single out my buddy John Flowers. He has, by far, been the most influential person in my life this past year and I just want to take a minute to brag about him.

He has encouraged me when I needed encouragement, been a ball buster when I needed to get called out on my crap, and been an all around fun friend when I needed that too.

Earlier this year he challenged me and gave me the advice that led to my ending a relationship that I knew God didn't want me in. And if he hadn't had the guts to be a challenging friend I might still be disobediently in that relationship now.

We had a talk in the parking lot at NewSpring a couple of months ago and I was vocalizing my frustration about my job situation and overall station in life and he took time to specifically encourage me and reminded me that if I'm where I'm am then God has a reason for it and He's preparing me for something. Those words still get me through some of the rougher days.

He's been the guy who has been able to specifically point out how God has been working in my life and show me changes that He's doing in me that I might not be able to see otherwise. He's also reminded me of how far God's brought me from where I was.

He's an amazingly Godly man. Anyone can recite theology, but a person's true beliefs are communicated through actions and I can safely say that I know what John believes because I see him live it. He's so in love with Jesus and he challenges me to pursue Jesus even more. He demonstrates what a man of God is.

I'm a stronger Christian and a better man for having him as a friend. And if you end up reading this buddy, I just want to tell you thanks for being such an awesome friend and a great encouragement in my life. God's doing and will continue to do absolutely ridiculous things through you!

Take the time to tell someone that you're thankful for them in some way in the next 24 hours.

We're Evil

2008-11-22T14:11:00.003-05:00

It's been a while, I know. The internet has been scarce at my house lately. And by scarce, I mean nonexistent.

I want to start by saying that I believe that God has a specific way that He communicates with His children that is specifically designed for how He made each of us. He talks to us in other ways too, but there are ways that are unique to each of us. Mine is reading. Specifically, secular fiction.

I've been reading Watchmen for the past couple of weeks and I just finished it yesterday. In a few words, it was awesome! God showed me so much through this book, and I'm going to concentrate on one specific thing that's had me thinking a lot these past couple of days.

The premise for Watchmen is essentially a world that differs from our current one because it has people who decide that they want to put on masks and fight crime. They don't have any super powers, but, for their own motives, the try to help their city by stopping criminals, murderers and rapists. The book doesn't necessarily have a "villain" like you might think, but there's definitely an antagonist and it's his motives that I want to discuss.

After trying to stop evil one person at a time, he comes to the conclusion that none of it will make a difference in the long run. Evil and good aren't as cut and dry as we make it out to be. There isn't a group of bad guys that are evil, and the rest of us are good. He comes to the conclusion that the problem with people is people. We're all evil and trying to end evil by stopping criminals is simply treating the symptom, but ignoring the illness. To solve the problem, he decides that he has to go to the heart of it, and that's the heart of humanity.

While he goes to dark places to make this happen, I think that his observations are correct. And the average Christian in this country seems to be more in the business of treating the symptoms rather than curing the disease. I can see this in the how many people are upset that Obama won because he is pro-choice and how much we celebrated when proposition 8 passed in California. And while I do pray that God changes our future presidents heart and I am glad that one of the most influential states in our country voted to defend marriage between a man and a woman, thinking that that's doing anything for the Kingdom is like treating a cancer patient with a band aid and thinking you've done a good job.

In the same way that Roe v. Wade didn't make pro-lifers decide that maybe abortion was okay, I doubt that proposition 8 passing will change the heart of any on the other side of that argument. And that's the point: the heart is the only battleground that we should be concentrating on. How can we be upset at the idea of a pro-choice president when we've done nothing in our own life to help pregnant teens who feel like they don't have a choice but to abort their child? Are we showing them the love of God when we look upon them with judgment and think of them as sluts who should have known better?

Have we who disagree with gay marriage ever had a conversation with a gay person who wants to get married? Do we talk to those dating couples who live with each other? Do we get involved in the lives of guys who think of women as little more than objects they use to fulfill their own needs? Or does everyone we have in our lives look and think just like we do?

It's safe to want laws to pass. We can do that without getting our hands dirty. And if they don't pass, we can go the self-righteous route and talk about how bad this country is getting. It's dangerous to be like Jesus. It's dangerous to talk to those whom we consider to be worse sinners. And the reason is that the people who look just like us will view us the way they view those "sinners," and our pride can't handle that. But to be like Jesus requires us to die to ourselves and to not care about what others think more than what God thinks.

The problem isn't "sinners," it's all of us. We're not good people who do bad things. We're evil people who do evil things. The only difference between me and those that I all too often look down upon is Jesus. And I had nothing to do with Him coming to me. Mark Driscol said in his latest book, "You are more evil than you have ever feared, and more loved than you have ever hoped." And it's true! That's the Gospel message in the simplest form I've ever heard it and that's the message we have to share!

It's so hard to give up comfort in favor of being a Christian. But God hasn't called us to comfort. He's called us to love others and bring those far from Him to Himself, and no amount of picketing and protesting will get that job done. We are supposed to be like Jesus. And He didn't expect us to come to Him, He came to us. In the same way, we shouldn't expect the people who are far from God to come to our churches and into our lives. We have to go to them!

Worth checking out...

2008-10-31T13:13:00.003-04:00

I found this whilst browsing blogs this morning. Take a look at it, especially if you're in youth ministry. It kind of broke my heart in some parts and gave me some decent insight into the students we're wanting to reach.

I found the link here. It's a good site with lots of updates and tons of useful information for youth workers.

God is bigger than me

2008-10-30T22:19:00.004-04:00

How much do you believe God is in control? That's a question I've been asking myself a lot lately. The answer I want to give is "completely." But if I look at my feelings and actions in situations, the answer ends up being "not much."

My behavior tends to indicate that everything depends on me. If I have someone in my life who isn't a Christian, it's my job to lead them in the "sinner's prayer" and move on to my next assignment. But what if God's plan for me in that person's life isn't to get them "saved?" What if God merely wants me to soften their heart to His love by demonstrating it in my own life, and then put the perfect person in their life to completely lead them to accepting Christ?

This whole idea that we're in control is prevalent in Christian culture. I've been working in youth ministry for around three and a half years, and I can't tell you the number of times that I've seen a student "get saved" 3 or 4 times only to finally meet Jesus years later. And I think this happens because well meaning people in that student's life believed that they had to do whatever it took to get that student to say a prayer to keep them from going to hell. And I should know, I was both one of those students and one of those well meaning people too up until pretty recently. I felt like if that person left church without saying that prayer, it was game over.

But here's what I'm learning: Salvation is about more than just the final result. Like everything God teaches us, it's a process. And it's a process that requires many people in many different roles. As much as I might feel like I failed if I'm not the one who leads someone to Christ, that role isn't always the most important one in the process. There's a lot of grunt work that has to be done in a person's life to show them the love of God before they meet Him; whether it's people He wants them to meet or events that need to unfold. Sometimes this process takes minutes, but, I think, most of the time it takes years. And it takes faith when your purpose is done to step back and trust that God wants that person to meet Him more than you do.

I had a roommate my junior year at Clemson that I had known since I was a junior in high school. He was a pretty fun guy; really laid back and easy going. But he was a typical southern christian who didn't know Jesus. So I'd talk to him about God whenever I could and I'd always invite him to church. I invited him to church for two years and he said he'd go a bunch of times but never actually did. This had worn me down a lot, so I had pretty much given up on the guy. But I got a call from him on Tuesday. He had heard the my grandpa passed away last week and wanted to check up on me and we talked for a little while. He told me about this girl he's engaged to and how her family goes to church all the time. Then he told me that he'd been going with them a lot lately. Then he told me that I'd be proud of him, he'd gotten right with God. And the more he went on to explain all of the differences in his life and what Jesus had done for him, it hit me: this guy had accepted Christ!

God had a purpose for me in his life. But it was just one step in the process of leading my friend to Him. God knows His children, and He knows exactly what it takes to get them to trust in Him. He knows what we need to go through to find Him. And He knows the exact right people for each part of the process that leads to Him.

Everyone has a story! And none of them begins at an invitation in a church service. And for the Christians, we all have a redemption story. One that starts in the hopeless despair of our own sin and ends in being gloriously redeemed and God calling us son or daughter. And all of our stories are interconnected. For some we play very minor parts, and for others we take the lead. But every part if absolutely vital. But for the times that we play the minor role, we have to trust that God is in control and His plan is much bigger than we can possibly conceive. We have to stick to our part in the story, even if we're not the lead. Besides the true star in every story is Jesus. He's the reason for every story anyway. We should never get over how huge an honor it is to be allowed in the same story as Him.

Also check out Josh's post here. It goes along with the idea of trusting God. His comment on Jesus coming to bring life to the dead that he made to some Europeans requires more faith and letting go of control that I think I have in me.

Unplugged

2008-10-28T21:49:00.003-04:00

You know you're a sucky blogger when every blog seems to start with the phrase, "I'm sorry I haven't written anything in a while." But I am sorry I haven't written anything in a while. But hey, I know some people who haven't updated their blogs in months, so at least I'm doing better than some.

Just thought I'd talk a little about some stuff going through my head. This isn't meant for me to list off what's going on and conclude with a moral to the story. If there's a moral to this story, I've yet to see it. I'm kind of just full of questions right now. This is more of a way for me to put out there what my thoughts are currently, so if you're not into that kind of thing you might want to skip this one. I'll try to put up some more coherent stuff together this week.

I'm in a state of disconnectedness and confusion right now and I really don't like it. I do know that one thing God has taught me in the past week is that I've been finding my identity in all of the wrong things, which would be anything that's not Him. And I feel that He's been confronting me with the question of, "If this were taken away, who would you be?" And more and more I'm finding the answer to be, "I don't know."

God always seems to have a reason for the stuff He starts pointing out to me. So I'm thinking maybe the reason I'm starting to see all of this now is because of how finite these things that I've defined myself with are in my life.

I'm at a job that I could quit at a moment's notice. I live in a house that's a very temporary situation without a lease to hold me here. I'm disconnected from an area that so many of my friends are at and almost secluded to a place without too many real friends to keep me around. But one thing that's kept me here was the fact that I knew how poor my grandpa's health was and I wanted to be able to be here for my family when something happened to him. Well he passed away this weekend (and I'll have a whole other post dedicated to that later this week, hopefully).

I have absolutely nothing connecting me to my place in life right now. My heart's being pulled out of so many things that I've identified myself with for so long, almost, it seems, against its will. It's like my heart is just floating around, waiting for that one thing to be able to pour itself into. The problem seems to be that I don't know what.

I think I have what the puritans called a "holy frustration." I know that there's something more I could be doing for God than what I'm doing here. My main confusion is whether I need a big change, or I just need a new approach to what I'm already involved in.

Needless to say, there's a lot of stuff going through my head right now. Like I said earlier, there's no real resolution to what's going on, though I'd like for there to be. So for now I need a bunch of prayers from anyone who happens to stumble upon this. As for what you need to pray for? I have no idea. Maybe clarity or discernment? I definitely want to know what my heart needs to be in because right now it's just floating there with nothing to commit to.

Check this out yo!

2008-10-17T20:02:00.001-04:00

Just stopping in for a bit today. This made me laugh a lot at work today. My coworker stared and asked me what was wrong. I hope it makes your day too.

I love God more!

Ha! Priceless.

My Worst Sin

2008-10-14T20:25:00.002-04:00

God has been pointing out a lot of sins in my life lately. It's easy to get a little down when this happens, but I keep remembering that "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Jesus isn't pointing out these sins to me to condemn me. He is showing me all of these things because He has a plan for me and I can't do it if I have all of these sins bogging me down.

But, as the title suggests, I think I have one sin that far outweighs the others. And it's not my sin of pride, my anger, my inclination towards bitterness, my need to be noticed, my ability to worship anything in my life that's not Jesus...(you see how I could go on and on here?) My chief sin comes into effect when I move my mouth but not my arms.

I have a problem of being all talk. I guess after four years and two different English degree programs, I've become pretty good at having a pretty eloquent sound coming out of my mouth. I can talk about ministry all day and inspire some pretty cool thoughts, but then go and do a completely half-assed job with my own ministry. I can talk about how much purpose I want in my life and how I'm done waiting and am going to start pursuing God's purpose. Then I'll pray a little harder the next day and eventually let it fizzle out until I'm back in my rut. I've even poured out beautiful words meant to inspire love from a girl and then go off and not even put the effort into trying to lead a godly relationship with her.

(Funny side note, there's one girl in particular that every time I even try to think about blowing romantic smoke up her butt to make myself look better, God steps on my tongue and makes me sound like a comic book collector in his thirties the first time he meets his girlfriend offline.)

But why is it that I'm like this. Probably for a lot of reasons. Primarily it's laziness. But also, talk is easy, actions are hard. Actions are risky. I can't fail at talking; typically because I'm talking about something I feel someone else should be doing. If I take action there's a chance it could all blow up in my face and my pride would take a huge hit.

Here's the kicker, I've realized I've had this sin before. I would get sick of it, SAY I was going to change, then guess what happened? Nothing! The very sin that I was sick of kept control over me. So rather than just saying I'm going to change, I'll tell you one specific way I'm going to change. Then, if you're reading this, I expect you to ask me how I'm doing at it. If I'm slacking off, you can smack me in the back of the head (once per questioning!).

I'm in a leadership position with Fuse in Greenville now. I'm over a whole house of leaders. It's my job to actually lead them which I really haven't been doing. So tomorrow night I'm going to ask them the best way to encourage them and the best times to regularly meet with them one and one to see how they're doing in life and in their relationship with Jesus. Then I'm going to start regularly following up with that.

Also, I'm going to find a person to mentor. God's told me to do that for some time, so it's about time I do it! And I think I know who it will be, but we'll find out. So shoot me a text or ask me when you see me. Hit if necessary.

P.S. Sorry mom for cussing, but there's really no Christian way to say half-assed. And there never should be a reason for there to be.

The Attempt Was All

2008-10-11T21:31:00.002-04:00

I think that God likes to use non-christian authors to speak to me more than Christian authors. And I'm glad because they are typically much better writers. I got to thinking about this book by a guy named Ian McEwan I read a few years ago today called Atonement. It's incredibly highly regarded and considered by many to be one of the best books ever written. It was made into a movie recently, which I've yet to see, so this is all based off of my reading. I'm going to give away some plot details, so if you don't want to know any of that, maybe just skip to the last two paragraphs.

Anyway, I was thinking about this book this morning during my quiet time. The topic of atonement has been on my mind for the past couple of days and I got to thinking about how this book represented it. I've come to the conclusion that McEwan was dead on.

The book tells the story of Briony Tallis. A 13 year old writer in a wealthy family. Her 23 year old sister Cecilia and the housekeeper's son Robbie, who have always been tense around one another, realize that they are completely in love. While they "consummate" this finding, Briony walks in on them. This sight plus a rather explicit love letter from Robbie she has already read leads her to believe him to be a "sex maniac".

She later that same night walks in on her cousin being raped. Without seeing who was doing it, she testifies to the police that it was Robbie. This sets into motion events that leads to Cecelia becoming estranged from her whole family because no one believes in Robbie's innocence, and her never talking to Briony again. Also to Robbie going to prison for three years, then to the army in World War 2 where he dies; forever separating himself from Cecelia. This one act destroys an entire family.

Briony spends the rest of her life trying to make up for what she's done. She serves as a war nurse under a cruel boss. She stays because she believes she deserves the punishment. Her whole life is consumed with atoning for her sin. Finally we see that she has been the author of the book we've been reading. She plans to release it as soon as all of those who were involved are dead become the actual rapist is very powerful and could sue her for libel. But she knows that even releasing the truth will not atone for what she's done. But she never intended it to. On her own, she could not find atonement. She explains, "the attempt was all." Her whole point wasn't to make things right, but to try to make things right.

This is such a beautiful allegory of life without Christ. My sin is egregious. It maligns the name of my Father and destroys His perfect family. On my own, I could try to suffer enough to try to make up for my sin but that wouldn't accomplish it. I could try do enough good things to win my way back onto His good side. But God doesn't hold a set of scales for me to throw my deeds onto, hoping the good will outweigh the bad. I could even just keep the weight of my sin and hope that my Father will see how it hurts to carry the load. But none of this would remove what I've done.

Simply put, God has been wronged and He deserves blood. That's the only way to atone for what's been done against Him. And this is where we see the full beauty and depth of God's love. In Jesus, He gets His blood. There's no taking away what's been done, so God takes the wrath required to right the wrong and puts it on His son to save we who are so undeserving of such an act. No attempt at atonement will ever be more than just an attempt. Only through the blood of Christ are we truly atoned. And this is incredibly beautiful.

Building the Kingdom

2008-10-10T19:17:00.002-04:00

In 2 Corinthians 2:14 it says, "But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere."

Now upon first reading of this, I thought, "Cool, whatever God has in store for me, there's already someone there who's spreading the fragrance of God and preparing for me to get there." Which I think is true, and absolutely amazing. But here's an even better thought. Right now, I'm spreading the fragrance of God for someone else. God is using me to prepare the way for someone else's purpose.

I love how interconnected God has created us to be. I might never see the fruits of some of the things God is doing through me right now, and that's okay because I'm not supposed to. That's for someone else to reap.

This also creates a real conviction for me. I know that I don't want anyone who's preparing the way for me to do it half-heartedly. So I need to do others the same courtesy. I can't afford to be lazy with my life. The Kingdom depends on its citizens to build for one another.

In my winter He still pursues me

2008-10-06T17:44:00.004-04:00

In my winter He still pursues me.
When all is barren and death surrounds me
Still He fights for my soul.

When heavy snow freezes the soil
He draws my roots deep.
When the ground thaws
Powerfully they will hold me up.

Though cold and darkness clothe me
He blankets me in His truth.
Like a warm shower
His love pours over me.

Beneath my winter awaits spring
Cocooned.

From the coldness of death, life will break free.
Forgotten strength will be restored.
Warmth will erupt from the sun.

And in my spring, still He will pursue me.

Christmas Preparations

2008-10-02T22:17:00.004-04:00

I'm ridiculously excited about Christmas this year for some reason. I was talking to a lady at church tonight about how the cold weather got me excited about Christmas time. And she told me she was never really into Christmas too much. But then again, this will be her first year as a believer. She said, "I'll actually be able to celebrate Christmas for the first time."

Way too often I forget that there's a world out there that doesn't know Christ. I take for granted that I get to celebrate Christmas, not just go through Christmas rituals. It's so incredibly humbling to know that. And there's a world of people around me who could be just like this lady who got an invite to church and God used an awesome guy in an elf suit to get her attention and set her up to receive Christ last Christmas eve.

I hope that God puts me in the right place over the next couple of months so that people in my life who don't know Christ can celebrate Christmas this year for the first time.

God's doing something!

2008-09-30T20:45:00.002-04:00

Last Wednesday Greenville NewSpring had our first Fuse service and right at 100 students showed up. Here's my problem; I forget where God's brought me from and only see the present. I look at the fact that NewSpring runs close to 10,000 people every Sunday between two campuses now and look at the fact that Anderson Fuse have over 500 students every week. When I look at it that way, 100 doesn't seem to impressive. Then God does what He always does and reminds me.

I started working with youth at NewSpring a little over 2 years ago. We were still broken up into separate ministries; high school and middle school. I worked with Ignite which was the middle school ministry.

I remember my first night pretty well. I remember that John Allgood was the first person I talked to because I only knew one other person there. I remember having my mask of confidence up even though I was extremely uncomfortable with where I was. I remember playing four square with students (which we should bring back because I could beat the students at that a lot better than I can anything on XBox). And above all, I remember being overwhelmed by the fact that there were 100 middle schoolers in what used to be a store at the Anderson mall.

In fact, we averaged 100 students a week for most of my first year occasionally going higher or lower. And I'm pretty sure that with the high school ministry, we had about 200-250 students come through the Fusebox on a weekly basis.

Here's the thing that blows me away, though. When we were running 100 at the Fusebox, that ministry had been around in some form for a few years. NewSpring as a church has been in Greenville for 12 weeks. Only around half of the people who are attending had actually heard of the us before then. And Fuse is only 4 weeks old. We had 100 students on our fourth meeting!

And in case you're not keeping up, that's 100 students on our fourth meeting at a youth group for a church that didn't exist 13 weeks ago. It's not NewSpring's name that's drawing these students in. In fact, many of those 100 had never walked into the building before Wednesday.

Before every meeting each week I've worried about whether anybody will actually show. I'm worried about it now for tomorrow. But there's no need for it. We're not putting on a show every week, no one even knows what NewSpring is, and none of us really have a clue what we're doing. The only reason these students keep coming is because Jesus wants them there! He wants them! I hope that excites you as much as it excites me.

I can't even imagine what this ministry will look like this time next year. I can't imagine what it'll look like next month. But God is doing ridiculous things and I'm so amazed that I get to be a part of it. I don't deserve this in any way, but I am thankful for it.

Zap

2008-09-19T12:48:00.001-04:00

I don't know why, but I can't look away!
I found this thanks to Crummy Church Signs. You should probably check them out.

David Update

2008-09-14T18:50:00.003-04:00

So, on top of the fact that I don't write on here nearly as much as I wish I did, I also very rarely give "David updates" on what's going on in my life. I typically learn something really cool about God, write about it, try to sound deeper than I really am, and move on with my time. So here's a (seemingly) fun, "where I'm at" post. This is definitely a post for those who know me and want some details about what's going on in my life. I'm not sure it'll be very entertaining, so feel free to skip it if you find that kind of stuff very trite.

I'm a pretty happy kid right now. I'm working in more of a leadership role in starting up the youth group at Greenville NewSpring which is taking up a little more of my time, and I'm sure will take up even more time in the near future. I'd love a new job, but I'm getting along great with the people there. And, the thing is, because I'm doing more with the youth group, it's really helpful having set hours that allow me to do all of the evening stuff I need to do. Not to mention, there's about three days in the week where I have very little to do at work, so that's going to come in handy more and more as I start contacting more people for church stuff. So, as much as it might suck, my job is actually pretty ideal for my situation.

God's blessed me with some amazing "new" friends lately. I say "new" but in reality I've known these people for a while. But in the past few months we've all sort of started hanging out and getting closer. It's pretty awesome. There are two married couples in the bunch, but thankfully John is there to be my date every time. I'm not sure what I'll do when he starts dating someone. I don't really like to think about it. So could we just move on?

My family's awesome, though we are going through some rough times. Dad's having a harder time with his treatments for his leukemia this time around. (And I spelled leukemia right on the first try!) And there's been some other illness throughout, but God's getting so much glory out of the whole situation. However, prayers are always welcome and appreciated.

When I get to see my roommates we have a blast. But that seems to be happening less and less lately. Brandon has officially picked Megan over me, and it's a little heartbreaking. But, I can't blame him, I'd have done the same. She's much prettier than me, after all.

My relationship with God has been a little weird lately. He's definitely been a lot more silent with me, which is rough because of how vocal He's been in the past few months. It's hard to adjust to and I've been wondering what I'm doing wrong, but I know that's not the case at all. This is just a time to be faithful to what He's told me in the past and be patient until He speaks again.

Favorite color: Blue

Most annoying thing: Getting crap in the little speaker holes of my computer. You just can't clean in there.

Currently reading: 1 Samuel and Harry Potter. (Saul and Snape sure are misunderstood fellas.)

Wish I had: An iPhone.

Girlfriend: No time. I'm dating Jesus. (How disturbing of a sentiment is that for a guy to say?)

Missing: Theresa. (She just doesn't love me enough to call.) And Josh. (I hope Europe doesn't turn your sense of humour too dry. (I threw in that extra u just for you buddy.))

Google Reader subscribers: 2 (And that's more than I expected. I'm not sure who the second person is and that bothers me a little.)

Dagon

2008-09-06T18:11:00.004-04:00

Around October of last year, I read the short story "Dagon" by H.P. Lovecraft. As far as I remember, it was a story about a suicidal sailor whose ship washed up on some uncharted island. While there, he looks upon a huge monster. This monster was unimaginable. It was powerful, hideous and the main character went insane just by being in its presence. That's the kind of power that I can't even imagine. I've even read that some critics believe that it's possible that, since this monster wasn't given a name in the story, it wasn't even the god Dagon, but a worshiper of Dagon. So, if one considers the power of the worshiper, it's hard to even conceive of the power of Dagon himself.

So it was with this in mind that I read 1 Samuel 5 today. Do yourself a favor and read the first five verses before you read the rest of this. Now I realize that there's a whole mythos surrounding Dagon historically that has nothing to do with Lovecraft, but this is just me reading from my own experience, and I think God's cool with that.

Imagining how powerful I view the Dagon of that story to be, it just puts me in awe of the power of my God! When the Dagon idol was placed in the presence of God, he fell on his face. Whenever he was stood up again, not only did God knock him down again, but He completely mutilated him. This is true power; that God is so good and holy that nothing unholy can stand near Him.

I've face a few things in my short time on earth so far, but I in no way believe that I've scratched the surface of all that's ugly, powerful and monstrous here. And the rulers of this world could be described in exactly that way. They do have power and on our own, we don't stand a chance against any evil in this world. But in the presence of a Holy God, evil is forced on its face.

It gives me hope that I can completely fail. That on my own, I'm really not much of a threat to any evil in this world. But I serve a God who is sovereign over everything, both good and evil. Nothing evil can prevail in His timing.

My opinion doesn't matter

2008-08-28T21:42:00.003-04:00

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

2008-08-28T21:35:00.002-04:00

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!

God's Face

2008-08-24T16:14:00.002-04:00

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.

Hunger

2008-08-18T23:12:00.002-04:00

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.

God Speaks

2008-08-12T22:39:00.004-04:00

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?

What I learned at the Gauntlet part 2

2008-08-11T08:00:00.001-04:00

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.

What I learned at the Gauntlet part 1

2008-08-04T21:42:00.002-04:00

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.

I'll be back. I promise!!!

2008-07-25T23:57:00.002-04:00

I promise I haven't forgotten about you. I thought I'd just a take a couple of days to gather my thoughts and then write about what's happened, but stuff keeps happening! But good stuff is coming, I promise!

After the Gauntlet '08

2008-07-19T10:18:00.003-04:00

Well, I'm back after a week in Panama city with hundreds of middle schoolers and I'm still wrapping my mind around all that happened there. I can't believe I got to be a part of all that God did this past week. It blows me away how mature our ministry is becoming. We're seeing high schoolers reach out to middle schoolers and teaching them and I'm seeing younger students grasp concepts that there's no reason they should be able to grasp. They're opening up about things that they wouldn't have a year ago and I contribute that greatly to the boldness of the staff to address the hard issues and give the students the platform for big confessions and complete honesty about their lives.

Overall, this year was much more spiritually heavy. The spiritual warfare was crazy. We definitely went beyond surface level Christianity and traveled to the depths of some of these kids' souls. I could see hardened hearts in these kids that were being kept shut. But I also saw these hearts start to be softened by the Spirit. Not every kid accepted Christ that I had prayed for, but I'm trusting God. He's bigger than the Gauntlet.

God taught me so much this past week and I think I'll dedicate some posts later in the week to talk about some of that, but overall, the main issue has been to just do what God wants me to do and trust Him to take care of the rest. Trusting God has definitely been my theme of the week.

In my quiet time this morning I read about the parable of the mustard seed and the leaven. And I want to talk about this for a second to encourage any youth leader that might be reading this. In this parable Jesus explains how the smallest of things can have the biggest results. So if you feel like you didn't accomplish anything with your kids this week, don't get discouraged. I know exactly how you feel. Far too often I feel like there's really no point in even working with them. But just remember that it might take a while to see it, or you might not ever see it, but some small thing you said or did this week stuck with those kids.

I got the privilege of getting to see this when I got to serve my kids on Tuesday in a way God showed me to, and then I saw it demonstrated in the lives of two of them on Thursday. And the things is, those kids didn't even realize that that's what happened. And I know that happened more than just that one time too. It has or will happen in the lives of your kids too. What you did mattered this week. And that'll be true outside of youth camp too. God uses the little things.

The Gauntlet is coming!

2008-07-09T22:16:00.003-04:00

I leave on Sunday night for the Gauntlet and I'm pretty psyched. In case you don't know, the Gauntlet is the youth camp we hold in Panama City, Florida for church. But here's the thing, last year I didn't do any prep work getting ready for it. I just showed up, left, and led a group of guys. God showed up that week, and He completely rocked me. But I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if I had prepared myself and expected God to do something.

So this year I feel burdened to take some extensive time to pray about what's going to happen and not just show up and be surprised. I'm going expecting great things. And if the crazy stuff God's been doing in my life is any indication, I doubt I can comprehend what He's going to do.

So if you're reading this, please take a couple of minutes and pray for this trip. I want every kid that comes on this trip to be changed in some way. If they don't know Jesus, I want they to meet Him. I want kids to confess sin in their life and ask God to help them conquer it. I don't want a kid to get "saved" for the fifth time, but instead to understand that actions can't break a covenant with God. And I want the Spirit to fill these kids up and have crazy Acts 2 stuff happen.

Purpose

2008-07-08T21:36:00.003-04:00

I'd share a little snippet of wisdom I feel God zapped me with the other day. You see, lately I've been praying a lot about purpose and trying to figure out why God has put me here. It was very me focussed. In the Bible we see a lot of people with great purpose; be it Moses, Joshua, Nehemiah, Peter or Paul. But the thing is about all of these people is that their purpose was focussed all on others. These men lead lives that were apart of something much bigger than they ever could be. Their purpose wasn't about them.

Now, their job within their purpose was personal. It focussed on the gifts God had given them. But the purpose was public and a collaborative effort. I've seen that that's just how God made us. He wants us to work together. If I continue to seek a purpose that puts me on a lonely road that I hope leads to success, I'll never find any purpose. Instead I need to seek out people and do the little bit I can to incorporate myself into God's greater purpose. Purpose isn't found in me, it's found in what God can do through me with others.

I could probably expand upon this more, and I might someday, but I think I've written enough long posts for now.

Judging part 3

2008-07-02T17:00:00.000-04:00

The Reason for the Process

Following God requires tons of patience. The whole time the point of this lesson Jesus teaches in Matthew 7:1-6 is, I think, how to approach those in sin. We know what the finished product is supposed to be, and that's repentance. We recognize the sin in our own lives, deal with it and then we're able to view people in sin the way God does. The whole purpose of this is to lead someone to Jesus and repentance.

So why do we have to go through this process? Verse six speaks to this. We can't throw pearls before pigs or holy things to dogs. This is pretty brutal imagery here, but it's true. The things that we're able to see as absolutely beautiful as Christians such as Christ's sacrifice on the cross are seen differently to those who don't know Him. In 1 Corinthians 1:18 Paul says that the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. We can't throw those who don't know Christ into the deep end of Christianity. We can't expect them to just come to us where we are. We have to be willing to wade over to them and teach them to swim.

The Apostles demonstrated this in their teachings. When Peter preached to Jews at Pentecost, he used the Old Testament scriptures to tell them about Jesus. He knew their background. The people had been learning the Old Testament their whole life. He knew they were close, they just needed to be shown by what they knew. But when Paul preached at Mars Hill, he knew that these people knew nothing about scripture, so he couldn't start there in teaching them about Christ. So Paul searched their culture for God's truth in their synagogues and poets to get them to Jesus.

This is why all you'll ever get at these stupid Christian protests are angry non-christians who want to trample those Christians. And who could blame them? Instead we need to be willing to approach these people with sight from God and be able to truly love them and come to them where they are to show them Christ.

Judging part 2

2008-07-01T17:00:00.001-04:00

Seeing People the Way God Does

Matthew 7:5 is what showed me the second step in the process of showing others their sin. One phrase in particular stands out: Then you will see clearly.

When we keep our own junk in our lives, and remain unrepentant, we make it hard to see clearly. From the age of around 12, until in the last year, I've had a bad problem with porn. I had years of my life where it felt like this chronic sin completely destroyed my ability to be in communion with God. All I was getting was static. This brought about fruitless ministry, fake quiet times and a lot of aggression towards people I love on top of bringing tons of problems to an already struggling relationship. This was all my fault. That's years of my life where I could have been getting closer to my savior that I lost. Years of my life completely wasted. God had even given me amazing opportunities to minister to others. But I felt that my sin was more important and having a crappy relationship with God was a better price to pay than having to fess up to my problem and face my pride head on. There's no one to blame but myself for that loss.

It took years and a lot of hurt to get that log out of my eye. God took me through some really rough and lonely time. But now my relationship with God is better than I ever knew it could be. It's funny because I've actually been having pretty crappy quiet times lately. But I still know that even in this downtime I'm still closer to God than I was in those dark times in my life. So even at my worst now, I'm better than my best in the past.

Now that that log is gone, I'm able to see more clearly in that area of my life. I'm not desensitized to that sin anymore. I'm able to see even the inklings of it in the lives of people in my life. And I'm not looking at them in judgment. I'm looking at them with love. I'm able to see them as Christ does. And I think that Christ views people in sin as slaves that He desires to rescue, not bad children He longs to punish. When I see them as Christ does, I'm able to know how to approach them in love, not in judgment. And I'm able to approach them with a mindset of rescue, not reproach.

And on a side note this is my second draft of this post. I really vagued up my past sin the first time but I just felt convicted to go all in for some reason. So if any of you who read this are struggling with porn, I'd love to talk to you about what you're going through. You can contact me anyway you already have access to me or just e-mail me at dwfishe@gmail.com. I'd love to pray for you and share with you some of the tools I've used to help me get through this stuff.

Judging part 1

2008-06-30T20:38:00.003-04:00

Paying Attention to Yourself

Matthew 7:1 is one of those verses that it seems almost every non-christian has memorized. But, it strikes me that maybe they wouldn't have to if we would apply what Jesus was trying to teach us about judging others here. I think the reason so many non-christians have this verse in their arsenal in the first place is because too often they feel more attacked by Christians who disagree with how they live their lives then loved.

Honestly, though, it's verse 6 that's thrown me off every time I've read it. I kind of always just ignore it. It just doesn't seem to fit. He's talking about judgment one minute, and suddenly He's talking about giving holy things to dogs and pearls to pigs the next. It seems like a jump that doesn't make sense.

But I think that this lesson presents an outline for approaching people who don't know Christ. And that last verse solidly gives us the answer to why, after He gives this hard teaching. So I'm going to try to tackle what I think is a three step process.

When I have a log in my eye I can probably make out the speck I see in someone else, but I can't very well see it that way God does. So the first step is to look at myself and see where my own sin is. God knows me very well. When I pay attention to others, I don't have to pay attention to myself. If I see someone doing something bad, it minimizes how I view my own sin and I'm not forced to deal with it.

Tonight while I was reading these verses, it was like God tapped me on the shoulder to show me where this applies in my life even today. A lady came through the drive-thru today and gave me an attitude when I asked her for her ID. Her view was essentially that she felt she was a lot more special than she really was. She felt far too important for someone as lowly as myself to not know her. I got mad. Really mad. And it took a little time but I while reading this stuff tonight God made me see that my problem was that I suffered from the same problem. Too often I feel too important to have to deal with the people I deal with daily. I feel like I'm too good to have to hear them complain about things. I think I'm a lot more important than I am.

And it wasn't until I was able to remove the log from my eye, even if it was just for a little bit that i was able to view her and her sin the way that God does. If I'm just as prideful as she is, there's no way I can love her like God wants me to. When pride meets pride, conflict is always the result. The problem seems to be that this log will continue to plop itself back into my eye if I'm not aware of this problem and praying about it.

Creation

2008-06-27T20:31:00.004-04:00

I think one of my favorite aspects of creation is that we're made in God's image. I just find that awesome. No other creature on this planet can make the claim that God has imprinted the image of Himself on them.

Personally, I don't think I'm all that great of a person. The idea of having a kid made in my image terrifies me. I don't know if I like the idea of a little me running around. I can only hope that my wife is hot, smart, Godly and has a lot of dominant genes. But God is good. I would say He's the embodiment of love, but I'm not sure He has a body. By giving us His image He is giving us the ability to mimic Him and His goodness and love.

There are so many aspects to the image of God that show through in our actions; Christian or non-christian. But I think my favorite aspect of God's image we have is creativity. You see, God is creative. He has been at least since five days before our day one. And we have that in us. Look around at every other creature on this planet. None of them try to create anything. They survive, mate, and some even play, but none of them create. God has instilled this specifically in us. I've never seen a dog do so much as catch a frisbee and try to wear it as a hat. But humans do have that in us.

I see this in everyone. Look at the shape of the internet. It is full of places like Facebook, Myspace and countless blogs. The reason these things are so popular is because people have a desire to create something that is specifically their own. I've seen some blogs where the writing is absolutely horrible, if you're here now, you've seen that too. But that doesn't matter, what matters is that we have an innate desire within us to create, whether good or bad.

Most of the stuff we create is absolutely useless. When has a painting ever come in handy? Does a book ever provide some sort of primal survival need? Of course not, but we have them and I think the reason why is simple. They speak to our souls, which have God's image. They connect souls, which is a desire God has given us. We create so that we can connect and know that something we did matters. Whether it's fixing a house, building a car, or even something as private as keeping a journal. I'm not sure why, but when I write in my journal I always go into the mindset of writing for my daughter to read someday when I'm 70. I'm not sure why in that scenario I think I'll have a daughter, but I do. Is that a little weird?

I want to keep creating. I realize that I've never written a decent story, my drawings look like a Picasso if he had a seizure, my poems are laughable (as all amateur poetry should be) and not that many people really read my blog, but I do know that God put this desire inside of me. And I might have to create thousands of different things, but if just one thing I write speaks to just one person, I'll be okay with that. I'll know that I had to go through thousands of pieces of crap to get it right. And for some reason, I'm okay with that.

I need the clap! ...WAIT!

2008-06-25T22:37:00.007-04:00

I'm realizing more and more that my church is white. Really white. Maybe not Utah white, but white nonetheless. I realized this on Sunday when we had an amazing performer on stage. This was a guy who had toured with Little Richard for 20 years, so he knew his stuff and he was singing a Lenny Kravitz song. It was awesome. But during the performance, I look around and the best a few of us could muster was a small clap along to the beat and an occasional head nod. It was sad times.

And then there was youth tonight. I love this scene. The lights dim as the band comes on stage. A select few students rush the stage and as the guitar starts to flare up, they go crazy and...stand there. Some of them have their chins resting on their hands as if they're admiring the singer, which is weird because most of the kids doing this are guys.

I just couldn't help thinking tonight how much I need Josh back to join me in the Baptist clap. It's been too underdone since he left me and I feel that it's causing my soul to dim. We used to rock out the Baptist clap during a worship service.

In case you're wondering (and who wouldn't be?) the Baptist clap is a dance move. It is in fact, the only dance move allowed in a Baptist church; albeit a liberal Baptist church. It involve sclapping your hands with both elbows bent. The trick is this: you never actually move your elbows. You only clap using your shoulders for movement. And you must never, EVER move any other part of your body with the beat. The hands are the only things that can dance sin free. And that's only if there are no ladies present. I've included pictures to demonstrate below. Please enjoy!

I hope you've enjoyed the show. Bye!

My request

2008-06-24T21:26:00.005-04:00

I'd like to get more serious about this blog and really make it an enjoyable part of my life. I find that the more I write, the more comfortable I feel with it. And since my fiction has been known to get the much feared "awkward slow clap of pity," and I no longer have an authority figure assigning me to make up an opinion on a piece of literature (or in the case of Dr. Jacobe, reiterate his opinion back to him), this is my only outlet for prose. My most treasured form of writing.

So my request, nay, my plea for those of you who read this blog, if there is such a person, is to give me a little feedback. Leave me a comment telling me what you like and don't like about my blog. What could I do to make coming here a more enjoyable experience? If your name isn't Theresa or Mom, this would even help by letting me know that there are more than just those two coming here. And if there is no feedback, I'll just have to resort to randomly throwing the word porn into every entry just to get a little traffic from Google searches.

You have twenty-four hours!

Yay! Funtivities!!!

2008-06-23T18:05:00.003-04:00

I go to work a little early some Mondays and sit down for our weekly staff meeting. This week I found we were being lead by a woman from operational losses. She felt it would be a great idea for us to "get woken up" with a great activity. So, before we got there she had strategically hidden pieces of paper within a four foot radius of where we were sitting with questions on them. What do we get if we win? Why we get to answer more questions than anyone else!

What followed were 30 seconds of awkwardly stumbling around and grabbing the highly noticeable papers and showing even more chagrin towards the activity than was probably necessary just to get across the point that we didn't want to do this ever again.

The sad part is, this could have been done so much better. I don't see Michael Scott sending his employees on a scavenger hunt without giving them a reward, even if it's just an ice cream sandwich. Did I say "just" an ice cream sandwich? I mean, AN ICE CREAM MOTHER FLIPPIN' SANDWICH! BOOYAH!!!

So what other wake up activities could we have done that might have even transcended into the highly sought after realm of funtivities?

Musical Chairs: We all remember this childhood anxiety attack. Only now, the winner gets the loser's salary for three months! I feel this will inspire promptness to the meeting and quite frankly, a trip to the hospital. So if you win injured, extra money and half-day Monday!

Who's Epileptic? or Seizure Ball!: Okay, here's the scenario. All of the blinds are closed, there are two teams, two goals, one ball with lights all around it flashing brightly. All you see are blue, green, yellow, banker's elbow in your face! Whoever is epileptic is on the floor convulsing. You've just outed them. Now others can judge them accordingly. And best of all, whether someone seized, or the resident sexagenarian got tackled to the floor, they need someone to take them to the hospital so, again, half-day Monday!

I've come a long way baby

2008-06-22T13:54:00.003-04:00

I realize that if you read this blog you'll probably make the incorrect assumption that I only have one religion. To be exact, I have four. Of course Jesus is my first love. But my lesser three have always been of the utmost importance to me, sometimes even taking precedent over my own Christianity, sadly. The other religions include Apple, Coldplay, and Gomez worship.

These are quite possibly my three favorite things in the world. I sadly admit that in my lifetime I've converted more people to Apple and Gomez than to Christianity. Which is made even sadder if you consider the fact that it takes at least $1200 to convert to Apple. But I am narrowing the gap! And I don't feel like Coldplay needs too much evangelism anyway.

But, I feel like I'm making progress as a human being. In my eyes, these things are no longer the embodiment of perfection. Gomez is opening for Dave Matthews in July and I'm not going. In the past I would have paid the outrageous amount for the ticket, driven to Atlanta to see them (leaving before the actual concert of course, since no band is worth sitting through Dave Matthews for), and then zombied my way through the next day because of my lack of sleep.

Coldplay recently released a new album and, while I think it's amazing, I am able to point out obvious flaws in it. (Seriously, who puts six songs on three tracks? Make them six tracks. It makes the album look longer and more worth my money.) And they're coming in concert in November and I find myself unwilling to fork out $80 for a ticket.

And finally, and most amazingly, in the past few months, not only have I seen the MacBook Air and iPhone 3g, but I've understood exactly what they were and decided that despite their awesomeness, I don't need to spent my money on them.

Yay for personal growth!

Sin part 2

2008-06-17T08:00:00.000-04:00

I've been going through a lot of changes lately and I've really been growing and learning a lot in my relationship with God. For a long time I had started to view God as a force, rather than a person. This made Him feel so distant and cold. I didn't put a lot of effort into pursuing Him because a relationship didn't seem possible. But when I made that shift from force to person, it became easier to get to know God and to really love Him. You can't deeply love and know an impersonal thing.

Now, I'm starting to view sin in the same way. My view of sin is becoming much more personal. In the same way I find it hard to hate a tree blown into a house, I couldn't hate sin when it was only a force. But when I view sin as the personality and purpose behind the results of sin, I'm able to truly hate it and, I believe, view it as God does.

As I said in my last post, I've been seeing the effects of sin in the lives of people I love a lot lately. In most cases it's not even that particular person's sin, but rather someone else's sin that's having an effect on them.

I'm seeing sin as my enemy because it hurts people I care about. I truly am starting to see sin with hatefulness and I'm wanting to stay as far away as possible. I have pictures in my head now of tears flooding from the face of people I care about. I've seen the helplessness they feel towards the circumstances that sin brings. That's burned into me and I can't get over it.

I don't think I can sit on the sidelines anymore. For too long I've lacked a sense of urgency. I've been all talk and no action but that has to stop. People's lives are being ruined out there and I have the answer. I know how to help. I know who they need!

What kind of pathetic person would I be if I saw someone being beaten by a person that I knew I could kick the crap out of but still did nothing? But that's what I do every time I see sin and it's effects, yet I do nothing and just sit on my knowledge. No, I might not be able to heal the problem, but I know the answer, and if I just bring Jesus into the equation, sin doesn't have a chance.

So basically, I'm getting fired up over this stuff and a real passion is starting to build inside of me. I can't waste time worrying about how much I don't like my job or wishing my dating life were going better. Those are all secondary to my calling. Jesus didn't call us to make disciples of all nation once we get our lives together the way we want them. Why should God trust me with the blessings I want if I can't follow the simplest of instructions?

There's a dying world out there and I can't keep doing nothing!

Sin part 1

2008-06-15T21:46:00.003-04:00

I realize that lately most of my posts have been pretty heavy rather than reflecting my normal perky attitude that I have in real life, but I've just been really contemplative over things lately. I'm going through a lot of growing lately, so I'm trying to share the process whenever I get the chance to write on here. I promise I'll write more whenever I get a desk. If you'd like to contribute to my desk fund, I'll take any donations. But on to the point.

I've been thinking about sin a lot lately and how I view it. I feel like for so long I've thought of sin as an action. I never really hated it, but simply thought it was bad and tried to stay away...sometimes. But lately I've been exposed to sins real effects and my view of it has started to change.

I believe that the biggest lie people use as an excuse for their sin is that it's their sin and they'll deal with the consequences. I think that people can so easily give this excuse for their behavior because they're naive enough to believe that their actions have no bearing on those around them and only on themselves. People are all slightly masochistic, I think. We don't mind doing things that will hurt us in the end which is why we find it so easy to sin. We can deal with the eventual repercussions because of the immediate pleasures. But, I believe that if we truly believed our actions had effects on people we care about, we would be more likely to think before acting.

You see, sin isn't just a personal issue, it's very much a public issue because its effects leave the person's life that originally committed the sin and seeps into the lives of others.

Don't believe me? Then ask the children of a divorced couple. The dad might sit the kid down and tell him, "This is just between me and your mom. It has nothing to do with you." But the truth is, that sin is going to scar that kid for the rest of his or her life; effecting how they view relationships, how they trust, and their entire view of life. Or maybe ask the parents of a person who commits suicide if that sin had any effects on them. Or maybe the rape victim who committed absolutely no sin at all, but has to deal with the filth of another man's sin. Ask her husband if that sin has had any effect on him.

My point is simply this, when we start to view sin as more than a personal issue, we begin to take our first steps towards viewing sin with the hatred that God views it with. Sin is absolutely evil. It is the definition of death and nothing less. It disconnects us from our creator and Lord and curses us to hopelessness. We can't be followers of Christ and be apathetic towards sin.

If we, as the Church, could just grasp a hatred for sin, I feel that we would be much more effective. Rather than viewing those far from God with judgmental eyes, we could see them with compassion and see that they are trapped under a curse and in the grips of an evil that is keeping them from Jesus. We could approach them with thoughts of rescue rather than condemnation. And we might be able to remember that we too were once captives of death.

Unity, not conformity

2008-06-06T22:31:00.003-04:00

I feel I need to preface this blog post. I'm not sure if what I'm saying is right, but it's something I'm working on and I'm hoping that I can get a little feedback in some way to wrestle out the kinks and see if there's any credence to my claims. It's a little long, so bear with me.

Lately I've very slowly been reading through Romans. Paul, in chapter 14, talks about the issue of personal conscience of believers. He gives the example of two people; one who eats meat and another who only eats vegetables. The command he gives is that the one who feels free to eat meat is not to look down on the one whose conscience forbids it and the one who eats only vegetables not to judge the ones who are comfortable eating meat. His point it that there's nothing wrong with meat or anything God has created but a man should follow his own conscience. If I'm okay with drinking beer, I shouldn't look down on someone who thinks it's wrong and think that they're not as spiritual as I am and they are commanded not to look on me as a drunken sinner and condemn me on an issue of personal conscience.

I think the whole point Paul is making in this chapter is that God wants unity among believers. But, so often we misconstrued this and begin thinking that we're all supposed to believe the same things. But God is so unique and creative. As His image bearers we also hold those qualities. God doesn't want us all to look, think and act the same. And, in this vein, I don't think He reveals who He is to us all in the same way. I'm thinking that maybe the reason so many people have a hard time seeing God working in their life is because they're looking for Him to do it the same way He's done it in their pastor's or their friends' lives. God speaks to everyone in different ways.

I'm sure that Paul knew this. He knew that He couldn't approach gentiles in the same way He approached Jews with Christ. When the Apostles preached Christ to the Jews they heavily used scripture and Old Testament prophecy to show that it was Christ that the Old Testament was talking about all along. But that wouldn't work with gentiles. God would speak to them in a different way. The Bible is still necessary, but Paul has to use different methods to bring them to it. Such as in Acts 17 when he uses their own pagan gods and literature to teach them about Jesus.

And even after they understood what he was teaching them about God, there's no way they saw God in the same way that the Jews saw Him; as their deliverer that they had followed for the entirety of their existence.

God speaks to people so differently. I've talked to my friend Brandon and he's told me that God really speaks to him while he's working out. I think that's awesome, but that just never happens to me. I usually have trouble enough remember what lap I'm on to really be able to have spiritual moments. All that usually goes through my head when I'm working out is, "She's seventy-five! How did she lap me again?"

But I've found that one of the major ways that God speaks to me is through reading. I can read practically anything and God will speak to me through it. I've even found that God likes to show off by speaking through atheist authors more so that Christian ones.

But my point is this. We, as believers, don't have to agree on everything. In fact, we really only have to agree on one thing, and that is our view of who Jesus is. God wants His followers to rally around Jesus and not make gods out of stupid issues that don't warrant more of our time than telling others about Jesus. If we just seek after the way that God speaks to us, then everything else just sort of comes with that. I think that He's blessed everyone with a unique way to hear Him. We need to use that blessing to lift up and encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ, not argue over pointless things while the world goes to hell. God demands unity, not conformity.

Grace

2008-05-24T23:19:00.002-04:00

To be completely honest with you, I've been dealing with some pretty big inadequacy issues lately. There are a few things in my life right now that I don't feel like I'm good enough to handle. All of this is leading me to think that I just don't have a full handle on grace and what it actually means to me.

The thing is, I get it. If you were to ask me what grace is, I could give you a pretty good explanation of it. But I just don't feel like I have a firm grasp of it if you catch the difference.

I was reading Romans 6 the other day and some verses really popped out at me and it was like God was actually showing me how incredibly logical His grace actually is.

Paul explains later in this letter that the wages of sin are death. So if the payment I owe to sin is my own death, and I died with Christ upon His calling of me to Himself, then sin's payment has been met. It is a debt that is no longer owed. It's not that God wiped it away like I never owed anything. I completely owed it. The only difference is that He paid it for me. That's what grace is!

Yet for some reason, I'm having such a hard time feeling like I could actually be worth God's time. And when you actually look at grace, one of the things that God shows through having His Son die for me is that I'm not good enough. I can't earn anything other than hell.

But, looking at the gift God has given me, I'm reminded that there are two kinds of generosity that I've been able to partake in. There's the kind of generosity that you might show to an older lady when you hold the door for her or when you buy a homeless person a meal. When I do these kinds of things, it's because it's just a nice thing to do for someone.

But I remember a little while back, I had a friend who was having some issues in his life. He had and still has so much potential. I really believe in this guy and think that amazing things are coming and are going to come out of his life. But he had a major hindrance come his way that was impeding his ability to minister to others. I saw that need, was prompted by the Holy Spirit and met it. Not because it was the right thing to do, but because I believed in him. This wasn't something I would probably do for some random homeless person. I was willing to make a sacrifice and really invest in him.

I think that every person God calls to Him, He calls because He believes that they can be used to enlarge His Kingdom in some way. There is no mediocrity in the Kingdom. Everyone was made for greatness. Perhaps not greatness by this world's standards, but greatness nonetheless. So I think that God's gift falls under the later category. God called me because He has a use for me. And no, I'm not good enough on my own. I am inadequate. But God makes up for those inadequacies.

One more cool thing happened today. I randomly read through 2 Corinthians 12. Verses 9-10 popped out to me and I guess you can see why. I don't need strengths. I have grace. I just need to learn to let God take over and not to worry about my weaknesses. I need to learn how to believe that when I'm weak, that's when I'm really strong.

Where's the leak?

2008-05-16T21:52:00.003-04:00

I have a feeling I might have more readers if I posted more regularly, so I'm really going to work on that. If I go a while, please leave comments yelling at me for not posting. Anyway, on to the show!

I've been growing an insanely large amount lately. It's like God just opened up a whole new level of His existence to me and whenever I open His Word, it speaks to me like it never has before. But, while God is showing me this new level, I'm becoming overwhelmed.

I feel the call to mentor a few of my kids this summer and this is just one of those things that really makes me feel like I've jumped in over my head. I really don't feel ready to do this stuff, and because of this, I've been trying to grow rapidly with God; like I'm playing catch up. I've found that this is, by far, the most frustrating part of being a Christ follower. Normally, God doesn't work like that. Changes take place over time, not all at once.

I fully believe Phillipians 1:6. Nothing in me would bring me to this new level, so I know it was God. And if God brought me here, then He has every intention of bringing me to the top of it and maybe even to another level that I can't even comprehend yet. But one thing in particular He's been showing me lately is how to better reach Him. And that is by removing things in my life that separate me from Him. In other words, sin.

When I was 17 I got my very first flat tire. I had no idea what to do in this situation. I didn't have a flat tire, so I just assumed we'd have to buy a new tire. This sucked because we didn't have the money to go out buying tires all willy nilly. But my dad came to my rescue. I moved my truck over to the air pump at the gas station across the street and my dad brought some stuff to plug the hole with. The one really cool thing I remember is that once the hole was filled, he poured water over the tire. If he saw any bubbles then that meant air would get out and there was a weak spot in the tire.

Lately, I've been praying for God to do that to me. Show me where in my life I'm bubbling up so I can see where my weak spots are and get them fixed. I say "get them fixed" because there's nothing in me that could fix this stuff apart from God. And, as I said before, there's nothing in me to want to get rid of my sin. So if I'm wanting to get rid of it, then it's God working in me. And if He started this work, He's going to finish it!

BEST....THING....EVER!!!!

2008-05-08T07:31:00.002-04:00

I can't imagine anything else topping this today as my favorite thing.

Please go here and enjoy this beautiful thing!

I think the fact that they're holding hands makes me mourn for them the most.

Been a while...

2008-05-03T12:58:00.002-04:00

I've been without internet access for the past two weeks, so I apologize for my absence. Although, I do slightly like feel like I'm apologizing to the air, but I will persevere and blog anyway. I'll put up an official entry soon, but for now, I have to share this with everyone. I'm not sure anyone other than Theresa will enjoy this as much as I did, but let's hope others will as well.

I almost got in trouble at work because I laughed too hard at the Kevin Max stuff.

Stupid Christians

2008-04-24T18:56:00.002-04:00

In my head right now I have a huge rant going on about this:

I'll give you a second to take in the ignorance.

...

Done? I didn't think so, I'll give you some more time.

...

After reading the full story here, I was decidedly even more angry. The "pastor" actually says, "It's just something to try to stir people's minds. It was never intended to hurt feelings or offend anybody." How does a "pastor" like this get people to follow him? Does he really think God is so small that the idea of a non-christian in the White House terrifies Him? Does this idiot think that God doesn't work through non-christian leaders? It's not as if we've had such wonderful examples of Christian presidents anyway.

Part of me hopes this guys thirty person church dies so that they can't hurt anybody else or ruin the already bad reputation Christianity already has with non-christians. But Jesus died for every person in that church that voted to keep the sign up. They are made in His image and are to be loved. But I do hope God smacks them around and shows them their wrongs. I'm going to be praying for this church, as much as my first instinct is not to. Hopefully God will turn them around.

Where I'm coming from...

2008-04-12T23:18:00.004-04:00

Lately I've been doing a lot of working out my salvation and I've been thinking a little bit about how I first met Jesus. I grew up in a great Christian family and in church, so I don't have any crazy drunken, crack dealing stories to tell. But that doesn't make my salvation experience uninteresting. Anytime God reaches down from Heaven to save a soul, its a huge deal. So, on that note, I thought it might be kind of cool to share with whoever reads this how I met Jesus. this could be a long one, so hang in there and I'll try to make it readable.

I said the sinner's prayer for the first time when I was five years old. I knew absolutely nothing about Jesus and His grace, I'd just heard the man on stage talking about hell and heaven and I knew I didn't want to go to hell. So I was told if I prayed this prayer, I'd get Jesus and not go to hell. Why wouldn't I say this prayer? I'd burned my hand on the stove before and I knew how much that hurt and couldn't imagine that happening all over! Basically, Jesus was my oven mitt (this feels like it has t-shirt potential).

So when I was twelve and Jesus really did get a hold of me and I felt his irresistible grace tearing at my heart, I really didn't know what was going on. I was "saved" already. I'd even been baptized. I just didn't know Jesus. But I didn't want people to think I'd been lying to them for years about being a Christian. So I didn't know what to do.

Thankfully, irresistible grace is just that: irresistible. So I had very little choice but to grab my preacher after the service and tell Him I needed Jesus. I remember Him putting his arm around me and moving me down the isle. I very fondly recall, as we slid by people to a back Sunday school room, him saying in his most country preacher voice, "We've got to get this boy saved!"

He also grabbing my mom and sitting her and a twenty something guy in my church, who was my absolute hero, named Eric down with me in those way too small plastic yellow chairs in the children's Sunday school room. My mom cried the entire time. I repeated after the preacher and I just knew that it was right this time. I had Jesus and I was never going to be the same again.

I was pumped up about Jesus and ready to tell the world, so I went home put on my favorite Christian bracelet and went to school the next day expecting tons of people to ask me what all the different colored beads meant. That didn't happen, sadly, but I persevered nonetheless. That is until my pastor started asking me about being baptized.

I had been baptized already and doing so again would make it very clearly known that I'd been lying about knowing Jesus. I felt as if the whole church would have looked at me with the same disdain as that shop clerk looked at Kevin with when he stole that toothbrush.

So I did what I now absolutely hate to hear people say. I told my preacher that "I really think that that was more of a rededication of my life." It makes me sad that I'd already been trained to think that I could take my life back from Jesus after giving it to Him in the first place.

A lot of things happened between that time and now, but they equal way too many funny stories to even hint at in this already too long post. But I do believe in baptism after conversion, and so does God. So He finally grabbed me by the shirt and told me this is something I needed to do. Of course, by this time I was 21 and becoming a member at NewSpring Church. Better nine years late than never.

It was an absolutely amazing experience finally following through on what God wanted me to do. I was Baptized with around 400 other people but never felt like I was lost in the crowd, that was just more people for me to make my faith public in front of. But, I am happy I was at the front of the line. I can't imagine that water was too clean by around person 340.

So many people came out to support me that night, even some of my former youth came which was amazing. And I still remember Jake Beaty commenting to me about how loud my cheering section was, thanks to the energetic Ignite volunteers on the sidelines.

This is basically a snap shot of how I came to Christ. There's so much more to tell and that's encouraging. But one thing God's been hitting me with lately is how important it is to remember what He's done for me and where I've come from. And just seeing how immature I was compared to how...well, I'm realizing I'm still pretty immature, but I'm getting better! I promise!

Smacked around on a Saturday Morning

2008-04-05T10:48:00.003-04:00

It's never been my intention to have an all serious blog, but it seems that lately I've had a lot of serious stuff to talk about on here whenever I actually take the time to write some stuff. So I promise that the three of you reading this (two if Brandon has actually started to have things to do at work) that I will throw in some fun stuff eventually. But for now, here's some amazing stuff that God's been teaching me.

I've been reading through John recently. I really want to get serious about being like Jesus so I figure there's no better way to do that than to learn what He is actually like. And John is such an awesome Gospel. Primarily because He's just off doing his own thing. The majority of the stuff in there isn't even in the other three Gospels.

Anyway, I was reading chapter four this morning and God does what He does best with me, which is being very blunt about how dumb some of the things I do are and how most of the things that I tend to judge others on are things that I do as well.

So I get to 4:22 this morning and the first thing that pops into my head is, "This is just like those stupid Revelation enthusiasts who have charts outlining which plague hits where in which part of what used to be America before the EU decided to wipe us off the map." Then God lovingly slapped me on the back of my head and showed me that way too often I'm only interested in praying about my own future and which direction to go in.

So the question is there now; do I follow God because I want to have a loving relationship with my creator, or because I know that He can give me a future with some purpose like I want?

I've got to get over my own selfishness. I'm glad God loves me enough to smack me around on occasion.