my life…in text format

Last night, I was in my room doing some praying. I was feeling distant from God and frustrated at some bad habits I can’t seem to break. They seem to break me more than I break them. I was asking God’s forgiveness and seeking that feeling of grace. You know, when the light breaks through and you feel lighter, lifted, forgiven. It didn’t come. Nor, does it have to. It’s never been about feeling anyway. But, I was looking for that feeling. Just for the confirmation, I guess.

Out of nowhere, I hear some singing coming from downstairs. I stop talking, I listen and I realized it’s my dad. I can’t really hear what he’s singing, but I know it’s him. I walk out of my room feeling frustrated at myself and I hear the words to his song. He’s listening to my iPod and singing along to a new version of a classic hymn. The song he was singing was Amazing Grace. An artist named Chris Tomlin reworked it and put it on his latest album.

Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I’m found
Was blind, but now I see

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

My chains are gone
I’ve been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood His mercy reigns
Unending love, Amazing grace

I lay down at the top of the steps in our hallway and just listen to my dad sing these words. Letting each one sink into my soul. Letting my dad cry out for me. I am in desperate need of Amazing Grace everyday. I can never get enough of it. I never want to stop chasing it, grabbing a hold of it and letting it chase me.

Today, I was faced with that lingering, nagging doubt and fear that I might have missed something. I didn’t pray long enough, I didn’t say the right things. Like it’s my words that forgive me rather than the death of Jesus and the grace of God. Then, while in my office a young boy tapped on my window and asked if he could talk to me.

He wanted to ask me something.

He wanted to know if I could pray for him.

He begins to tell me that his family had been evicted from their house without notice and they are living in a Motel 8. He even pulled out the key card to show me. I was floored. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to say whatever it was that I couldn’t figure out to say. I was completely lost.

All he wanted was for me to pray for him.

A child, coming to me to pray. He wasn’t coming to me, he physically came to me, but he was really crying out to God. He just didn’t really know how to. So, I pulled a chair next to him and I began to pray. As I prayed I realized that God sees me in a similar way. I was the one doing the talking, but God was listening to this boy. I was praying for this boy, but it was also a cry out to God myself. God used this young boy to show me how He looks at me.

I try to find the words, I can say nothing to deserve the unimaginable love of God. How can you say enough words to earn a love that would drive someome to die for you? What kind of human language has enough words to equal that?

I was reminded. I am loved. I am forgiven. I need to be broken. I need to repent and turn myself completely over to love. To God. To acceptance. Stop running behind my own words and run behind Jesus.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.

Grace speaks louder than words.

For that, I am forever surrendering to God and forever thankful His grace allows it.

I saw a Peanuts cartoon that had characters lined up on a branch and on bold letter at the top it said, “LEAD” and then below it said, “Don’t Follow.”

We all want to lead something at sometime. There are those that enjoy slipping into the background and simply following the crowd. It’s safer, it doesn’t draw attention, you’re not held repsonsible. Following has it’s upside. I recently started thinking about reasons I follow Jesus Christ.

What is it about this person that lived thousands of years ago that attracts me so strongly that I will make decision in my life based on what he said? Why is he so mysteriously simple and complex at the same time? Leading by being humble. Telling us to live by dying to ourselves and lost our lives in order to find our lives. It’s been one of the most wonderful journeys of my life, to sit back and ask, “why do I follow Jesus?” We follow lots of things and people, we follow sports, we follow celebrities (check any search engine and a celebrity’s name will undoubtedly be in the top 10 searches), we even follow other people that we may not even know. Check out this web tool called Twitter. Anyway, I digress…we all follow something.

Why Jesus?

I’ll give you a few reasons that I follow Jesus. If you follow Jesus, these may also be reasons that you follow, they don’t have to be, because we’re all different. If you don’t follow Jesus, maybe it’s because he’s been misrepresented and hopefully these reasons will strike a chord with you. These reasons aren’t in any particular order, but I will list them to keep them organized.

Reason #1: I follow Jesus because he knows my needs even more than I do. In Mark chapter 2 in the Bible, a man is brought to Jesus. He is paralyzed and his four friends bring him to Jesus through very unique means. I imagine, from reading the story, the friends went through great trouble getting their friend in front of Jesus so he can heal his sickness. And Jesus does something amazing. He looks down at the man laying on a cot, clearly in need of a miracle and says, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”

If I’m in the group of friends, I’m probably a little ticked off at Jesus at this point. “Um, Jesus? We were kinda hoping you’d go a different direction. You see, we carried him here and we were hoping he’d walk out.” But Jesus forgave the man’s sins before he took care of anything else.

He met the man’s spiritual need before his physical need. He knew the paralyzed man’s real need and dealt with that one before the superficial need. Jesus does the same with us. He worries more about what we can’t see. I follow Jesus because when I get caught up in what I can see and what I can feel, Jesus takes care of what I don’t know is going on and reveals to me the deep need for him that my soul carries.

It’s a beautiful thing, really, to be brought to a realization that what we think we need is only a superficial symbolic finger, pointing to what we really need. Jesus meets the need that is deep and spiritual.

That’s one reason I follow Jesus.

In order to keep this short enough to be readable, I will keep each post at one example. I love Jesus.

Let me put a disclaimer, I don’t always follow Jesus. I fail, alot. I follow my own ways sometimes and do what I want. I am in no way a perfect follower. I find myself asksing God to forgive me of things I do that I know are wrong. Which leads to another reason I follow Jesus, but we’ll save that for another day.

By the way, Jesus took it a step further. In order to prove to the people around that he had the ability to forgive sins, he healed the man right then and there and the paralyzed man who was no longer paralyzed got up and carried his bed out of the house. Jesus can do whatever it is you need. He will handle your spiritual need first, whether he handles your physical need, or whatever it is you think you need doesn’t change the fact that he’s capable of handling it. Just know that he will take care of your real need first, the one you may not even know is there. Just find where he is and go put yourself right in front of him.

Love. Peace. Hope.