I have never been one to be able to shrug things off too much.  I don’t get really down by what other people can do to me, but I have always struggled with letting my past failings affect how I think, speak, and act.  With sin especially, I often catch myself dwelling on how I have not measured up to the life God is calling me to in the past.  This really holds me back from a full surrender to Him in my life.  This struggle in my life really made me think of a piece of Paul’s writings.  In Philippians 3:12-14, Paul writes:

¹² I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.¹³ No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Verse 13 really strikes me. I want to please God.  And many times I want to please God so badly that I overlook all the opportunities that are placed in my life to live out His Kingdom because I am stuck moping about how I messed up last time. 

To me, God can be like a GPS at times.  If you ever ride in a car with me driving, you better hope that you know where we are going or that I have a GPS in the car.  I am not the best with directions, but if my GPS knows where we are going, I know I’ll make it eventually.  Sometimes I will ignore the GPS and go the wrong way even when the thing tells me when and where to turn, but it just calmly says “Redirecting” (In an awesome Australian accent by the way) and gives me another shot to get there.  It has not once told me, “Sorry bro, you’re screwed,” or “What’s wrong with you! You might as well turn around and go home.”  God constantly is redirecting when I make wrong turns, but I would get to my destination a whole lot quicker if I would just turn the radio down and listen.

All in all, the task sounds simple enough.  Just stay focused on the destination and the voice that’s going to get me there, keep my eyes open, and quit wandering around on a bunch of backroads.  There’s an old Church of Christ hymn that came to my mind while writing this.  It’s entitled, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.”  Here are a few lines:

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

and the things of earth will grow strangely dim

in the light of His glory and grace”

Blessings!

Back in August I started my college education at Lipscomb.  Procrastination became an everyday occurrence as far as my schoolwork was concerned, but there was one major reason for my “it can wait” attitude, and that is the incredible people I got to hang out with.  The people that I have met throughout the past nine months have blessed my life in more ways than they could ever know.  I was so nervous about making friends when I started back in the fall, but God definitely placed some people in my path that have challenged me, picked me up, and made some great memories with me.  I cannot wait to see what is in store for all of these friendships that I have made, and this summer better go fast because there are some people that I really am going to miss.  For once in my life I am actually looking forward to returning to school.  Three Months!

Blessings!

^“3 Having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I also have decided to write a careful account for you, most honorable Theophilus, ⁴ so you can be certain of the truth of everything you were taught.”  – Luke 1:3-4 (NLT)

Luke addresses his account of the good news to someone named Theophilus.  Theophilus literally means “Lover of God,” or “Friend of God.”  Some scholars believe that this was a pseudonym, or fake name, for either one person or a group of people.  It would be so cool to be referred to as “Lover of God.”  How does somebody get that nickname?

Thinking about Theophilus, whoever it was, and what the name means really makes me wonder what it looks like to really love God.  Yeah, I say that I love God, and I am pretty sure that I do, but I want to love God so much that when people see me they say, “There goes that God-lover.” The question is, how do I get there?  In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a parable about a man who finds a treasure in a field.  It goes like this:

^“44 “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.”

-Matthew 13:44 (NLT)

Most preachers would make this passage into a sermon about the cost of following Christ, but now thanks to a professor of mine, Dean, I see it differently.  This guy didn’t even consider the cost of the treasure.  He knew he had found something that was worth everything. And as the New Living Translation put it, “In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.”  This guy was excited about selling all of his stuff!  Once this man encountered the treasure, he loved it so much that everything else lost value.  That is how I need to feel about God.  After encountering God, there is nothing that should ever get in the way of going back and digging up that treasure.  I need to love God to the point of complete and utter stupidity in the world’s eyes.  I feel called to love God so much that people look at me and say, “What in the world is that God-lover up to this time?”  Personally, I do not live in that mindset as much as I should, and I put God off to the side and pretend that he can’t see what’s wrong in my life.  I trip up in my faith and love for him, but God is calling me constantly to that treasure in the field, and I pray that I can give up everything for him each day because of my love for Him and what He has done.

Blessings!

Recently I have felt a great separation from God in my life.  This has caused a little introspection on my part.  When I look at the things that I have said and done it doesn’t take long to identify the issue.  I haven’t been living to please God as much as I could.  From the moment sin entered our world, there has not been complete oneness with God at any point.  Adam and Eve were walking with God daily before being booted from the garden.  They definitely noticed the difference in the way that it used to be and the way that was after the fruit eating incident.  Sin separates us from that incredible relationship that we are to have with God.  God doesn’t leave, we just walk away from Him.  God follows us into the valley and is still there regardless of whether we acknowledge Him or not.  That is what has been happening with me.  I haven’t been doing a good job of glorifying God with my actions and words, so I have felt that God hasn’t been there.  I haven’t taken hardly any time to just be in awe of the Creator of the universe.  I haven’t been real with Him about what’s going on in my life, and I have neglected doing anything to change that.  The lyrics of one of Chris Tomlin’s newer songs really strike me.  Here are a few lines from the song “Whom Shall I Fear?”:  

“The one who reigns forever,

He is a friend of mine.

The God of angel armies

is always by my side.”

How blessed I am to serve a God that knows me and that will never leave.  I’m so glad that He’s not too far away because I really need his hand of grace to pull me up.  I can’t help but be in awe at the thought that God is by my side with a hand open for me to grab onto regardless of how many times I fall flat on my face.  God never leaves.  

God is good, all the time.  All the time, God is good.

Blessings!

I struggle with being stagnant in my faith.

I am and have always been an idealist.  This is great when I am hanging out with my friends and I can say things like “What if we…” and “Wouldn’t it be awesome if….”  Although I come up with all of these great thoughts, I so often struggle going through with my ideas.  Maybe I just don’t care enough, maybe I am scared of failure, and maybe I feel like there are better things that I can be doing, but I tend to give up on projects easily.  I don’t follow through in my spiritual life like I should most of the time, and that bugs me.  For the longest time I have wondered what to do to avoid these stagnant periods in my faith that follow periods of incredible growth.

I have been reading Donald Miller’s book, “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” and in the book, Miller constantly refers to living a better story in his life.  I really connect with what he is saying.  I consider myself a “big picture” guy, and with me not knowing what God’s “big picture” for my life is, I really have trouble going anywhere and doing anything in life.  Miller suggests giving our lives direction by setting goals or having something to strive for.  Having goals forces us to go out and actually DO things.  So what I am going to try and do is set some goals that will force me to get out and LIVE.  I will get back to you on how that goes.

Blessings!

P.S.: If you are into the whole reading thing and haven’t read any of Donald Miller’s books, I would  highly recommend giving him a shot. I would start with “Blue Like Jazz,” it’s fantastic!

Yesterday I was sitting across a table and over a cup of coffee from a friend of mine named Joseph.  I do not really know him very well yet, but we were talking and he asked me, “If someone who had never heard about God asked you to describe God, what would you say?”  I was thrown for a loop by the question because I had honestly never really thought about being asked that.  I thought about it for a moment, and tried to talk through it a little.  The word that ended up being my response was “faithfulness.” I am so lucky to worship a God who never leaves and always comes through.  Even when I have really screwed the pooch, God is still seeking me and wanting me to turn to Him.  I can’t say that thought has always been an easy one for me.  In the past and still often, I have really struggled with praying at times.  Honestly, most of the time I know what I am doing is wrong and feel terrible during and afterwards.  At these times I feel like I should come back to God for forgiveness, but I just can’t bring myself to even ask for more grace.  After I fall into sin, I just feel like I would be cheapening God’s grace if I were to ask for forgiveness immediately. I struggle with thinking that God has given up on me.  How could the creator of the entire universe love me enough to put up with all of my baggage and all of my crap?  The answer to that is amazing.  God sent His son to be treated like the worst of criminals so that I wouldn’t have to be punished for my sin.  One of my favorite stories in all of scripture is found in chapter 3 of Genesis.  It is after Adam and Eve have sinned and are guilt-ridden.  They are hiding in the Garden covered in fig leaves.  Surely they are thinking to themselves, “God must not want to be with me anymore, I am such a screw-up,” but right in the moment when they are scared, ashamed, and confused, the Lord God calls out to them, “Where are you?”  This is such a beautiful story!  The creator of the heavens and the most powerful being that has ever existed and ever will exist is walking around LOOKING FOR THEM!!!  So often I forget how I am constantly being called to live a better story than the story that I live in.  Freedom in Christ can be such a hard concept to understand, but there is one thing that I know, and that is God sent his son for us, that we might not only live, but LIVE WELL!  God is faithful and promises that He will not leave us when we are caught in sin, and God also promises incredible rewards for people who live for Him.

Blessings!

Well it has been a couple weeks since my last post, so I just thought a little update wouldn’t hurt.  I have been busy.  “Doing What???”  I have been busy doing a whole lot of mundane, non-exciting schoolwork and all that comes with that.  My brother drove in from Houston on Saturday, so I guess that is interesting.  I have got an interview to be an RA (Resident Assistant) in the dorm coming up next Wednesday.  My Spring Break trip to Dallas is in three weeks so I’m starting to get really excited about that.  The team had a meeting tonight, and I cannot wait to see what God has in store for us there.  Fundraising for my summer mission trip to Ukraine has really been at the front of my mind.  I am supposed to have $1675 in by March 1st and currently I am at $375, so you can probably understand my concern.  I am trying not to worry about it because I know that God is in control.  Knowing that is helping me not to get overwhelmed and is keeping me out of “freak out mode.”  With so many things going on, it is amazing when I just sit back and realize how richly God has blessed me.  I have got great friends, family, and a wonderful church.  I can’t wait to see what is in store for me in the very near future!

Blessings!

      Today has been an incredible day.  Some different things happened, but overall I just felt the inescapable glory of God today in so many ways.  I was reading through Philippians 4 today when I came across the often quoted verse, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (4:13 NIV).  I had heard this verse so many times before, but I had never read it in the same way that I have today.  For once I actually read what was said before that statement.  Reading it in context put it in a completely different light.  Verse 12-13: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”  So often verse 13 is used when all hope is lost or when we have some huge dream that we are trying to accomplish, but I have never heard it used in a sermon about being content.  Tim Tebow used to wear that verse on his eye black, and it is read by Christian high school sports teams before games, but have we missed what Paul was saying?  Is it possible that the “secret of being content in any and every situation” is knowing that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us?  I may be completely off, but it seems to me that Philippians 4:13, the verse about doing incredible things, is about being ok with what we have in every situation.  That’s just some food for thought and an example of the advantages of reading scripture in context instead of just pulling verses out one by one.  Blessings.