No, Seriously...

Dear Readers,


This is it. I have thought about this for the last couple of months, and I think we just need to stop.



It's not you it's me. Well it is you. It's both of us.



No, seriously. I need to take a sabbatical from public writing. And here are the reasons why.



1. I am publishing a lot of stuff on my blog, which is good, but some of the stuff I am publishing needs to be written about somewhere else before it is presented to the public.



2. I can't live without my blog. Well I actually can't live without writing. I think this might be turning into a bad habit. I know some of you enjoy reading my stuff, but I think I need a break.



3. I'm tired of being so transparent. haha. I know that sounds selfish but you need to realize that a lot of the stuff that I am writing are private and personal thoughts, and most of the thoughts that I publish are not full thoughts. They are pieces of something much bigger.



4. I'm also tired of being scrutinized. I know that if I am going to be a writer I am going to have to get used to being criticized, but now is not that time. I don't think I can take one more person telling me my stuff is cliche, or boring, or badly written. If I continue to write I will just get so frustrated that my discipline and my attitude will down spiral.



So, I'm ending it. I appreciate the fact that you have been reading for a while and those who have commented thanks.



But don't worry it will only be a six to nine month thing. I am blogging somewhere else so I will still be in practice. Please don't try and find me. It will be better for both of us if we just let it go.



Shhh...please don't say anything else.


It's hard for me to.



Sincerely,



your devoted and yet tired author.

I quit....again.

Dear Readers,

I have come to the short realization that I don't actually agree with the post that I have just previously written. I then came to a greater realization that I don't actually agree with a lot that I have written on my blog, so I apologize. I guess I don't really know what I am apologizing for. I seem to be doing a lot of that latley.

I think that I am just trying to feel my life out. I don't think it has anything to do with immaturity, I think it's just the fact that I am a Junior in College.

Which means that I need to starting making some big deicsions sooner than later. Those decisions don't really scare me because I know that I have been offered some pretty Awesome opportunities when I graduate college. I guess my only concern is my huge desire to follow Jesus. I really want to be wise about how I live. I don't really like making mistakes because I equate mistakes with sin and I loathe sin.

I guess it's weird when all your close friends are/have gotten married and started having kids. Puts a lot of things in perspective.

I guess I'm tired of listening to what other people think I should do. I want to live my own life and I appreciate the concern but I would appreciate it even more if you just let me make the mistakes that I hate to make.

I know I'm not the best writer, I know I'm not the best preacher, I know I'm not the best at really anything. So just let me follow Jesus. Maybe He will create me to be good at something. Maybe He will let me follow him around for a while and learn from him.

Yes, it's been one of those days.

Yes I'm quitting again.

Sincerely,

your lost, frustrated, and mediocre author.

What do you want to do with your life? I want to be poor.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," Matthew 5:3

I have just recently been in the Beatitudes this morning. I really enjoy them even though I don't understand why Jesus said what he said. However, last spring I attended a concert and the singer was talking about being poor.

Now I must be quite honest; I am not poor. I have never been poor and by the looks of the way my life is turning out I will never be poor. I state this simply to share with you a part of who I am. Growing up being poor was a negative thing. It was not looked upon as something you strive for.

"If you are poor you should work hard to become rich. You should be ashamed of the way you live and you should be ashamed of who you are. You must not have a good work ethic if poverty is a constant companion of yours."

This is the message that I was given growing up. This is the kind of culture that I have always been a part of. Poverty is a negative thing. Being poor is a negative thing. If you are poor you must have done something wrong or you must just be lazy.

Then I graduated high school and I moved to central Illinois. Even living in this culture I have come to the short realization that I have been blessed with a wealth that many people don't have. I have also been caught up in the theological debate that wealthy people can't be Christians. If this is true than I am up a creek without a paddle.

So I have once again stumbled into this paradox of Jesus. This singer that I mentioned earlier had something to say about this verse that I had never grasped before. She was speaking of a country she had visited that was covered in poverty. And she had read this Beatitude and discovered that she is called to be poor.

Christians of all kind are called to give up everything so that they may crave and hunger the only thing they need; Christ. To be spiritually poor so that I am constantly in need to Christ. I am constantly thinking about when I can get more Christ. So I must now choose my poverty, so that I may choose my desire to be with Christ.

I think that when we give everything, in this effort to be like Christ, we are left with only one reality ; we are here to be poor.

If this were Faith, Robert Luis Stevenson

God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And up to the buttocks in mire;
That I ask nor hope nor hire,
Nut in the husk,
Nor dawn beyond the dusk,
Nor life beyond death:
God, if this were faith?

Having felt thy wind in my face
Spit sorrow and disgrace,
Having seen thine evil doom
In Golgotha and Khartoum,
And the brutes, the work of thine hands,
Fill with injustice lands
And stain with blood the sea:
If still in my veins the glee
Of the black night and the sun
And the lost battle, run:

If, an adept,
The iniquitous lists I sill accept
With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,
And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:
God, if that were enough?

If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;
To thrill with the joy of girded men
To go on for ever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes:

With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
That somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
Lord, if that were enough?

In a theater, it happened that a fire started offstage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed----amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.-A (I love me some Kierkegaard.)

There once was a road. This road was not a grandious road, but it had seen it's days of wonder. This road had been trampled on by many different kind of people. Majestic souls and sorrowful beings.

One day a women came to stand upon this road. She was beautiful beyond comparison. She had long dark hair and fair skin. Her eyes would peirce your soul if she looked into you face and her lips where cherry blossom red. She held to her close a flask of water which she was supposed to use in later events.

She stood at the very edge of the road waiting for something. She was surpassed by many men and women who were doing there daily activities. Carrying water, delivering mail, having light conversations. No one addressed her and she addressed no one. In her heart she knew what she was waiting for. Someone told her of a very magnificant prince. She was told to go and wait for this man whom she was called to meet. She was told that the man that was this prince would ask for a drink.

She had imagined this man to be tall in stature and blessed in purple clothe. Someone worth spending time with. Many men walked by and she looked at all of them, none seemed to fit her image.

This beautiful woman stood there for days waiting for her prince. She looked into every man's eyes and even got to the point of giving her water away. She so desperatly wanted to be loved that she couldn't wait any longer.

"When will this man come and save me?" She thought this idea every day and so longed to be rescued from the turmoil of this road.

Months went by and she stood there when suddenly a man rode on a horse.

"Ma'm may I have some water?" This women was so excited that she reached for the flask that she had once held so close. She hurridly gave it to the man and he put it up to his lips, but nothing came out.

She had wasted her water on men of less importance. The man on the horse looked at her in disgust and threw the flask at her feet, he rode off without speaking a word.

She sat there and wept. She was in such disgrace. Suddenly another man came along.

"Daughter why must you weep so?" He asked, inquring about her disgraceful state.

"Wouldn't you like some of my water?"

Never Give all the Heart

Never give all the heart for love
will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certian and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that lovely is
But a breif dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

W.B. Yeats

Speelin Erors.

So I have been approached by a couple of different people, and have been told that I need to clean up my grammar.

From this point on I am going to really work on it so don't expect anything less!

Keep my on my toes, if I am slacking let me know. I won't be offended, at least not all of the time.

God has given me the opportunity to mentor a couple of different young women who live on my floor. I love spending time with these women and really investing in their lives. Yesterday, one of these women took me to her home town to meet her family. All the way she told me stories of each building we passed.

"That's the hospital where my mom used to work at and where I was born, and where my dad died."

"My aunt lives down that road,"

"This is the restaurant that my family and I always eat at when we are in town,"

"This is the yard where my dad, my uncles, and my cousins used play whiffle ball,"

"This is where I went to church my whole life,"

All these places, and memories have made this young women who she is.

We started in the cemetery where half of her family is buried, including her father. We then moved onto the first street that she got her fist accident on, and the first house she lived in. We then went to her grandparent's house and I saw all of the embarrassing pictures that you have to take when you are younger. All and all we had a great time and some great conversation.

It was a great experience and you cannot truly understand where someone comes from unless you put yourself in their shoes at one point. Atticus Finch could grasp this idea. I wonder why it's so hard for us to grasp?

Stop believing in the Church?

I went into a pet store last weekend with my friend Cindy. She was there to buy some fish and I was there to look at puppies. It's always dangerous for me to go into a pet store because I fall in love with these little guys. They are so adorable!

Anyways I wanted to play with a beagle and I was told by the fish man to go wait by the wall of encased dogs for someone to come and help me. I was standing there for a least ten minutes and was purposley making eye contact with the PetLand people. I'm sure they thought that I was a weirdo as I intentionally tried getting their attention. I even asked someone to help and he rushed by and said, "Yea one second..." Five minutes later I was standing at the same spot eyeing people down.

All I wanted to was be apart of the culture. I was searching for someone to help me out but everyone was just to busy. They were all caught up in their own situations. Now ovbiously this was a place of business and they were busy at the time so I am sure if I waited around long enough I would have been helped but I didn't have time. I have my own life I can't just wait thirty minutes for these people to help me.

I have reflected on that situation and I have realized that as pastors, small group leaders, coaches we tend to live in this busyness. Someone will try to get our attention by leaving us intentional clues but we are so busy meeting needs, or thinking about the next weekend that we miss them. A lot of people that I grew up were interested in Jesus but weren't really into the church because no one had time for anyone else. I even notice this here at Bible College. I have tried to invest and encourage multiple people and when they are done with me they try to cut me out of their life. They have used me for what they want and they are done with me. I am just a hassle that asks to many questions. The problem is that I am so stubborn that I will hold on for dear life I have to.

There are so many people that want to be connected to Jesus, but they feel like the church is asking them to be Christians before they come on Sunday. People want to be apart of the culture of the church the problem is that the culture of the church is either twenty years behind or is to obsessed with the latest fads to realize that they are missing people.

We need to stop expecting people to walk through the doors of the church and we need to start bringing Jesus EVERYWHERE we go. We need to stop thinking of church as a Sunday morning, Wednesday night event and we need to go and bring church to people.

What would happen if we didn't meet every Sunday and only met once a month for public worship? What would happen if on those Sundays that we didn't meet, we were connecting with people who would never walk into any kind of church? What would happen if we actually lived our lives hidden in Christ and actually trusted Him to change things. What would happen if we stopped spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing and used that money to help families in the community and to invest it in a more effective way of doing ministry? What would happen if we weren't so concerned with bringing people into the church building because the discipline of disciplining was so ingrained in us that the church building was just ineffective?

This summer I was told I was to idealistic about the church. I was told by two people that I loved the church to much. Maybe I am to idealistic about it. Maybe I should just give up on it. I mean it's not being very effective as it is. I see the church as being so obssessed with itself. The small town churches are only concerened with their own communities and the big churches are obssessed with the other big churches that are doing "cool" stuff. I mean what are we really accomplishing in America? People are coming here to be missionaries! Has the church lost the fervor of Christ in such a way?

Or maybe I should believe in the church? My friend Nick blogged about when you believe in someone you invest everything you have in that person. You do it in such a way that you replace yourself. What if I believed in the church so much that I committed my life to believing in it. To believing in the people that make it up?

I wonder what would happen if we believed in the church?

A Cry for Mercy, Henri J.M. Nouwen

"O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I am impressed by my own spiritual insights. I probably know more about prayer, meditation, and contemplation than most Christians do. I have read many books about the Christian life, and have even written a few myself. Still, as impressed as I am, I am more impressed by the enormous abyss between my insights and my life.

It seems as if I am standing on one side of a huge canyon and see how I should grow toward you, live in your presence and serve you, but cannot reach the other side of the canyon where you are. I can speak and write, and preach, and argue about the beauty and goodness of the life I see on the other side, but how, O LORD, can I get there? Sometimes I even have the painful feeling that the clearer the vision, the more aware I am of the depth of the canyon.

Am I doomed to die on the wrong side of the abyss? Am I destined to excite others to reach the promise land while remaining unable to enter there myself? Sometimes I feel imprisoned by my own insights and "spiritual competence." You alone, Lord, can reach out to me and save me. You alone.

I can only keep trying to be faithful, even though I feel faithless most of the time. What else can I do but keep praying to you, even when I feel dark; keep writing about you, even when I feel numb; to keep speaking in your name, even when I feel alone. Come, Lord Jesus, come. Have mercy on me, a sinner. Amen"

I read this morning and I felt like he was speaking out of my heart. I just wanted to share it with the rest of you.

I'm tired of writing.

I quit.

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer and the Reality that I am a Hypocrit.

"Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Vitim die and not be in the least affected by what it sees. It can fight for the faith of the reformers and preach eloquently the creed of salvation by grace and gain strength by its efforts. To tell the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxy and is more at home in a Bible conference that in a tavern. Our very state of longing after God may afford it an excellent condition under which to thrive and grow." pg. 43

"Let us remember that when we talk of the rendering of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant, but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free." pg. 44

The first time I read these words I was 15 years old. I was sitting in one of our church conference rooms on the floor and I broke down. I realized that my life was consistently about me. Everything I did, I did for my own gratification. I was selfish and I had a three inch thick veil that was covering my heart. The short realization that I came to do on that day has impacted my life ever since.

But I still come to this reality that I am marked by sin. My nature is sinful and corrupts everything I do. I am completely flawed. The only reason that I am 'good' is because God is good and his love allows me to be good. Without Christ and without the cross I am worthless.

I truly feel the concept of Romans who discusses the idea of so desperately wanting to be good but can never be good enough. I so desperately want to be purely involved in God but my sinful nature wants to be better than God. My sinful nature wants to be 'good' enough to be loved by God. My brain knows that I have been given the free gift of grace. My heart knows that I certainly don't deserve this free gift and so I work. I try to be the best, the smartest, and the hardest working. I am so constantly falling short of the Glory of God because I can never be good enough. I am good because God loves me.

The first time my veil was absolutely ripped out of my being was when I was fifteen years old. And every day I have to ask God to do it again. My sinful nature wants but my created nature that has been blessed by God just is.

Brennan Manning coined the term, "God loves me as I am, not as I should be."

God loves me and so I am good.

God loves me and so I can preach and teach.

God loves me and so I can serve.

God loves me and so then I can love and be loved.

God loves me enough to let me die.

However, I am still a self-contradictory being waiting to be fully redeemed.

"Thus I chose Jesus as my heaven, though at that time I saw him only in pain. I was satisfied by no heaven but Jesus, who will be my bliss when I am there. And it has always been a comfort to me that I chose Jesus for my heaven in all this time of suffering and sorrow. And that has been a lesson to me, that I should do so for evermore, choosing him alone for my heaven in good and bad times." Revelations of Dinice Love-Julian of Norwich.

I read this idea in words before I actually read it from Julian. I was reading my friend Nick's sermon for junior high camp and he had this idea.

I will decide now, while I am in this moment, who I will cling to when I am famished and lost. I will decide now, while I am in this moment, who I will cling to when I have no hope. I will decide now, while I am in this moment, how I will treat other people when I am immersed in sorrow and shame.

Do not ask me to lead or to preach or to teach without my Christ. I cling to the cross that he hung on as a testament to the death I must die everyday and I yearn to live a new life with Him. I have been lost in time and space seeking a new fad to wear when I have been called to be clothed in "compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience..."Colossians 3:12

I get so lost in the violence of my heart that it verbalizes itself as fire from my mouth. I so long for Jesus. I so long for His touch, His voice and His presence.

I have decided that He is my Heaven. That I will see Him in the good and in the bad. My eyes will not be adverted to the falsities around me but to the truth that is captured in the eyes of my Saviour.

The decision has been made. The death has been taken. The life has been gifted, and I have stood in the place where I am marked and will not be shaken. By earth, by air, or by sea my allegiance lies with the King of the World.

What's a picture worth?

So I have heard that a picture is worth a thousand words. I have always wondered if that is true. Jamie Cullum seems to think so. He wrote and sung a song called photograph. It's a great song but is it a true reality? For the past three weeks my roommate and I have been constructing a wall length collage. It started with our dream for what our room could look like last semester and has evolved into a grand art piece. People come into our room to look at all the pictures. They seem entrapped by the sight of different aspects of life captured in a moment.

When I look up at these photo's I see something caught in action. A life caught by light. That's what a picture is. Look at some of the wall that I posted and tell me what you see. This is as far as we have gotten. Tell us what you think. I don't think there is a wrong answer to this one.

Dear readers,

I want to apologize for my lack of posting in the last week. I have had the flu and now I have a cold and I have been detained to do mundane things like sleeping.

I hopefully will have some thoughts sooner than later.

Thanks for keeping up with me.

Sincerely,
the author.