my life…in text format

To anyone who reads this humble blog…

I am so sorry.

I am ashamed at my lack of consistency in writing. I promise, I will do better.

This coming week, starting Monday, we have our annual Safehouse teen summer camp starting. Currently we have roughly 130 students signed up to attend. So it should be a fun week.

I am going to do my best in a very non-technical campground to blog as much as possible. (There may be several blogs posted via Safari on the ‘ol iPhone).

The theme for camp is WIRED: For A Life of Worship. It’s purpose is to illustrated that our lives are created and designed for the sole purpose of bringing glory and honor to the Father. 

It should be a great week. Lots of fun activities planned. Some killer service ideas and some really great people all equal a life changing week for both the campers and the leaders.

Please pray that we will become small and that God would become big. And that our lives would be used to bring nothing but glory and honor to the Father and Savior.

Again, I promise I’ll write more often.

Thanks for reading. 

On this beautiful Monday evening, beneath the rhythms of the song playing through my iTunes playlist, I can faintly hear the quiet sounds of night as it envelopes what was a fantastic day. My room is a mess, it could really use a good cleaning, but instead, I am here on the computer, chatting with some people, listening to music and breezing through amazon.com.

As I was looking, I was thinking, “I should buy some of these books because they will help me be better at my job.” For those of you new to this blog or who may not know me, I’m a pastor. I work everyday with the sole purpose of leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. That is my job, that is my life, it is my mission. I work in an organization that reaches out to a young generation of teenagers in desperate need of hope and someone to trust them and point them to a Creator that not only knows them, exactly where they are, but loves them without a single prerequisite on our part.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had these moments where something “clicks” in you. Like something you’ve always known you’ve known, but you don’t keep in the front of your mind. Today, after our Memorial Day cookout and dessert, my sister and I heard some music plink-plunking down the street. We both immediately knew what it was, it was an ice cream truck driving around our area. We ran inside, got some cash and ran back outside to get ourselves some good ‘ol fashion ice cream treats from a truck. I remember the feeling when I was kid, looking up at what them seemed to be a massive wall of selections. All of which would make my tastebuds dance. I chose the blue-raspberry screwball today. (You know, every one has a gumball at the bottom). Somehow when something clicks, it’s like that feeling you get when you experience something you haven’t experienced in a while. It’s something old, revealed in a new way.

I had a moment like that this evening.

As I was looking at all these titles of books that I was thinking I should read that would help make me better at my job, I got this feeling. Like my Spirit was being talked to, deep in my soul.

I was being asked this question. “Why would you need those books to do your job better? Why don’t you just love people more?”

That’s pretty much how it happened too, not a lot of pomp and circumstance, not some huge “AHA!” or light shining down through my ceiling. It was pretty simple, really. “Why don’t you just love people more?”

I immediately felt like I was almost wasting my time looking at books that had to do with business tips and biographies about successful business men. How would these help me love people?

I know how to love people.

How well am I doing when it comes to loving people?

I need to do better at loving people.

One thing I absolutely need to do is see myself the way my Creator sees me, because He loves me more than I love me. And if I can see how He loves me, then I will see how I can love OTHERS better.

I’m a flawed human being. By flawed, I mean…I mess up a lot. I sin. I screw up. I fail.

Flat.

On.

My.

Face.

—–

Thank.

God.

For.

Grace.

And if a God can love me through all of my screw ups, sins, doubts, fears, failures, short comings, stupid choices and awful consequences, I really have a great example of what it means to love others.

How well do you love people? How are people loving you?

How are you doing at letting other people love you?

The Bible says that God is love.

Period. What else needs said?

For the first part of this story, check my previous post.

We left off with a woman who had back into my truck without regard to my part Ford Ranger’s bumper. Apparently, she also was more concerned with what in the world I was doing behind her than she was whether or not I was ok.

Her reaction when she got out of her van after crashing into me. “What were doing back there!?”

I should’ve said, “Um……let me think, DRIVING! LIKE A NORMAL PERSON! What were YOU doing??!”

But I didn’t I politely asked her if she was ok, assured her that I was fine and that we should pull off the side of the road so we could exchange insurance information. We pull off a side road, both get out of our respective vehicles to exchange info.

She comes around the passenger side of her van and proceeds to tell me that she is unsure of her insurance information.

This is not 100% accurate, but the conversation went something like this.

Me: “Do you have an insurance card with a policy number?”

Her: “No, I don’t think so. I don’t know it.”

Me: “Do you have know who you have insurance through?”

Her: “I don’t know, just give me a second, I’m really medicated, I just came from the doctor.”

At this point, I began to think, “What am I in the middle of right now?” I probably should’ve started looking for candid cameras or Ashton Kutcher to come out screaming “YOU JUST GOT PUNK’D!” But…no such luck.

She then tells me to hang on while she gets the number of her insurance company. Then she opens up her sliding passenger door to the van to reveal…..

A mattress.

Yep, you read that correctly. A mattress laying in the back of the van. No seats, just a mattress.

Surrounding the mattress…several plastic totes for storage. Inside those totes, clothes and books.

She pulls out the tote closest to her and whips out a phone book. I am now completely blown away. I am starting to think this woman has some serious issues and I want to just get away from the situation.

Because of all the craziness that’s going on, I realize it’s probably a good idea to get her license plate number, just in case. So, in my best private eye, investigator sort of way, I have my pen and a slip of paper and step back and jot down her number. I know, I know…brilliant. Thank you very much.

She opens the yellow pages to an All State page and points to an agent and says, “That’s her, that’s my agent.”

So…trying my best to handle this situation correctly  (And also not wanting to have to pay for an accident that wasn’t even CLOSE to my fault) I call the number in phone book….

(Again, not 100% accurate, but it’s close)

Me: “I was just in an accident with a woman that says she has insurance with you…”

Agent: “What’s her policy number.”

Me: “She doesn’t know.”

Agent: “Oh, what’s her name.”

Me: (i tell her)

Agent: “Ok, let me check” (takes a moment)

About this time, the woman starts to panic and tells me not to call the cops because she shouldn’t be driving!

The agent comes back:

Agent: “No one by that name carries insurance with us.”

I’ve hit the wall. I have no choice but to call the cops because I have to file a report or I am going to have to pay for everything.

The woman looks at me and says, “I have to go, I can’t stay here, I have a doctor’s appointment to get to!”

Didn’t she just come from a doctor’s appointment?

I tell her that she can do what she has to do, but I have to call the cops and file a report.

I go through the whole process: police station, ride with cop to scene, he gets statements from the gentleman in the parking lot that the woman started waving to, files report…la dee da dee da.

Thankfully, somehow, the cost of the repair is covered and I don’t have to pay a deductible and my insurance rate didn’t go up. I have no idea how that actually happened because we still have no idea what insurance she has.

The police officer keeps in touch with me over the next few days and informs the following: (you’re not gonna believe this)

Cop: “Yeah, we found out who it was…she lied about her name.”

Andy: “Oh yeah?”

Cop: “Yeah, also, I want to encourage you to stay away from her. She’s slightly crazy and has a very long rap sheet. She’s known by all the cops.”

Andy: “Oh…thank you.”

Cop: “D’you get everything figured out with your truck.”

Andy: “Yeah, thanks for everything.”

Cop: “Do me a favor and if you ever see her again, give us a call and let us know when and where.”

Andy: “Will do.”

So there you go. That’s my story. I got backed into on the main street, by a crazy woman apparently spending some time living in her van, who happens to have a rather long rap sheet and is infamous in our area with the local police officers.

Oddly enough, I saw the same blue van at a corner store about a week later…and *dun dun dun* there she was.

She didn’t recognize me. It might have been that her pupils were dilated.

…a blank page.

I really like to flip open my computer, open firefox, type the wordpress address into my address bar, typing in my username and password and getting ready to write something.

Today I have a story: This is a true story. And it actually happened to me.

I was driving home from the campus of Youngstown State University (back when I was a lowly college undergrad) and in front of me was a large blue van. Like one of those conversation vans you see old people driving, that have swivel chairs and tv’s and horns that when you honk them sound like a boat is pulling into your driveway. It was like that, but not fancy. It was a little beat up.

I’m behind her crusin’ along at about 35-40 miles an hour when I see the driver, a woman, wave to somebody out of her driver side window. She then looks to want to turn left, but passes the road she wants to turn onto. It’s like she saw someone she knew in a parking lot, waved and then decided to turn in and see them, but had missed the road. So what does she do?

Of course, she does what every normal driver would do, she continues to the nearest parking lot, side street and/or driveway, pulls in and turns around…..

NO! She doesn’t.

She slams on her breaks. So I stop. Thinking, ok, she needs to take the turn slower, she missed it, she may need to back up a bit to get, so I’ll just wait.

Then I see the little white lights the indicate the vehicle is now in the gear “reverse”. Which of course means, when she hits the gas, she will be going backwards.

She starts inching toward me and she keeps inching towards me, a little faster now…still faster.

I start to see this ginormous blue van begin to fill my windshield and I’m thinking, “she is not going to stop!”

So the firs thing that goes through my mind is to kick my poor little rust colored orange ford ranger into reverse and just back up out of the way…so i check my rearview mirror…all clear.

I try to get it into reverse and it’s just too late this woman is on the gas like she is purposely driving a race car in reverse. I start honking my horn…

CRASH!!!

She smashes right into the front of my truck. Had no idea I was behind her.

She puts her van in drive, pulls off to the side of the road that she intended to turn on to begin with, I’m assuming. I pull up behind her ready to hear a wave of apologies and “you oks?” I’m very merciful and ready to ask her, “are you ok?”

What do I hear when I get out of my truck?

Lady - “WHAT WERE YOU DOING BACK THERE!?”

Me - “Are you ok?”

Her answer was that she had just come from the doctor’s office and was medicated had her pupils dilated.

Um…I don’t know about you, but isn’t there something about operation heavy machinery or vehicle use…

Anyway…this story is just getting good…wait till you hear what happened next…

Which will come later.

I am a talker. If you know me at all, you know that I like to talk a lot. I also love to listen to people. To me, the most important part of communication is the part where my mouth stays closed and my ears stay open. As the saying goes, we have two ears and one mouth, we should do twice as much listening as we do talking.

This is interesting to me because I usually do more talking when I am praying. I try and pray so hard and so well that God will have to hear my prayer. At times I think God simply must be in Heaven calling on the Angels over saying, “HEY! Everybody be quiet and listen as my child prays. Listen to his brilliance as he eloquently seeks my forgiveness and asks desperately for passion. I MUST answer this prayer because I am floored by its brilliance!”

Yeah right.

I have recently been put through a learning process that I am basing God’s ability to answer my prayer on how well I pray. That sound ridiculous doesn’t it? Think about it.

I am trying to earn God’s favor by praying well. I am more worried about clearing dictating every word so that God can clearly hear what I’m saying than I am about the condition of my heart as I seek my Creator’s face.

I am praying…to prayer. I am not praying to God. I am praying to the thing that I use to communicate to God, hoping that I can reach God through powerful words.

Jesus calls people to come to Himself and get their drink from Him. Jesus tells us that what we need is found in HIM. Not in our words, not in our ability to say profound things. Jesus wants to do something in our hearts. He wants to break through the walls we’ve built up and tear down the words we’ve surrounded ourselves with and speak in our lives.

Are you listening?

How much time do you spend being quiet when you are praying?

Do you spend more time talking or more time listening?

I am a broken, sad, sinful human being struggling with bad habits and sinful nature. I have things in my life that I can clearly see are ripping me away from God and I desperately want to rid myself of it. I am slowly realizing that if I go to Christ, instead of attempting to convince God through elaborate prayers, I will get exactly what it is I need and be able to rid myself of exactly what it is that is destroying me.

I think it’s interesting that Jesus Christ is the One person we are so afraid to run to when we have in our lives and yet He is the Only Person we can run to in order to rid ourselves of it.

Maybe God is trying to say something to you. Are you listening?

Turn down the “you” volume and turn up the “God” volume.

We are but dust and earth, yet we get our life from the very breath of God. When we breathe, we are breathing God. When we speak we are exhaling the very being of our Creator.

When He breathes, life forms. When we breathe we speak a testimony of praise to God’s awesomeness.

Keep breathing. Keep listening. Stop talking.

Start…

By no means am I a perfect person. As a matter of fact, I tell people all the time that I can’t believe I’ve been privileged to do some of the things I have the amazing opportunity to do because I am such a flawed human being. Saying you are flawed though has kind of become a cliche in some ways. It’s a pseudo-humility so people will think you are humble when in reality you are quite proud that you are so flawed, because it makes you seem so human.

That being said, I won’t belabor the fact that we are all flawed. You know it. I know it. Which is the beauty of this post.

Recently, I was talking with a friend and she was describing a trip she was getting ready to go on. A six day vacation to see some friends and I am excited for her and wanted to hear more about it. So I asked, “What are you expecting from this trip?”

That’s an important question, I think. “What are you expecting?” We’ll come back to that later.

To be honest, I was expecting to hear a long silence as she contemplated what I thought was a difficult question but she answered almost immediately with a series of things she was expecting to happen while on this trip. As she was laying out the things she wanted to happen and what she wanted to get she said these words, “Hopefully something happens spiritually.” Those words struck me. Not because she wanted something to happen spiritually, which I think is great, I hope something happens spiritually for her too. The word that struck me in that sentence was the word “hopefully.”

I think I can honestly say that one of my least favorite combinations of words in the English language are the words that form the phrase, “All Hope Is Lost.” I don’t think there is a more tragic statement a human being can utter than when they say they’ve lost all hope. It’s interesting to me because the word LOST can mean a lot of things.

When you hear the word lost, there are several different things that come to mind. Pastors talk about “lost souls” all the time, some people immediately start thinking about ABC’s hit TV show, still others hear the word and they think it’s an exact description of what they feel about themselves. But when it’s attached to the word “hope” what is really being said?

It’s certainly possible to misplace your hope. To put your hope in the wrong things and to expect one thing to give you something else entirely. That’s why people empty bottle after bottle of alcohol or jump from meaningless relationship to another. But I don’t think misplacing hope is what is really being said when the word “lost” is attached to the word “hope.” I can misplace my keys, forget about them and lose them. Searching around my house frantically trying to find what I had lost while they are sitting right where I left them. I had just misplaced them. Misplaced hope is still hope. So when we say “all hope is lost” it’s even more tragic then putting that hope in the wrong thing.

Lost hope is the thing that drives the girl to sit in her room alone, with the shades drawn and the music loud as she drags a blade across her skin in order to relieve herself of the pain that hope in the wrong thing had created. Lost hope is when a young man experiences abandonment from his father at a young age and slowly but surely sinks deep into himself, never being able to become the man that God intended Him to be. Quietly, subtly, he lives the life of a dissatisfied shell of his former self because hope was lost long ago.

What are we risking when we say, “I’ve lost hope.”?

Have you ever felt that all hope was lost?

I don’t like the phrase “All Hope Is Lost” because while hope certainly can be misplaced, it is something that belongs to people and it is one of those things that is difficult to take, but is given away by the owner. Hope can be battered and bruised and abused, absolutely. Hope can allow us to put ourselves in situations that will undoubtedly hurt is in the future. But we enter them anyway, in hope that what we are afraid will happen….won’t happen.

If you are a hopeful person, you’ve probably been hurt. Because hope is the thing that kind of drives us beyond risk.

“I hope he won’t hurt me.”

“I hope it’s worth it.”

“I hope I don’t fail at this.”

Those are statements with huge risk attached but hope is what gives us justification to run into them anyway. It makes it seem possible. Hope.

Call me an optimist but I don’t think hope is taken from people. I think hope is given away. I think the nature of hope gives the holder of said hope the power to believe or to give up.

One of my favorite movies, Catch Me If You Can, has a story that recurs throughout the movie about two mice that felt into a bucket of cream. One mouse quickly gave up a drowned, the other mouse swam and swam so hard and so long that it eventually churned that cream into butter and crawled out. One mouse lost hope, the other mouse refused to give up or lose hope and kept fighting even though all logic pointed to the fact that it was going to die. It believed there was a different way and it struggled and fought until it had enough leverage to crawl out of it’s mess.

I love the word hope because even though we are all flawed, we can choose to hope beyond hope. We can choose to believe that something great will happen spiritually as we take a vacation away from the ordinary.

I want to sit here and type the words, “When all hope is lost, we can still hope” because that’s how powerful hope is. Of course, that doesn’t make sense grammatically but hope is kind of an anti-logic. That’s what makes it so beautiful.

If it weren’t for Jesus Christ, I would be condemned to separation from my Creator forever. But since Jesus Christ came to earth, died a death I deserved to die and was raised from the dead, I can HOPE in Jesus. I can hope that my life is bigger than the breaths I breathe each day and I am meant for more than just a short stint on this ball of dirt. I can hope.

The Bible says that it is impossible to please God without faith. It also says that faith is the substance of things we hope for and evidence, the truth, the things that point to the things we can’t see. Without hope, you can’t have faith.

Hope is one of the ingredients of faith.

I love that. Because I can choose to hope beyond hope or I can choose to stop swimming and drown.

Don’t forget that hope isn’t something stolen from you, it’s something you give away. Don’t give your hope away.

Faith. Hope. Love.

What are you expecting?

::

So, I’m sitting in my dad’s comfy recliner, watching a movie. It’s almost midnight and I’ve spent the last 40 minutes our so typing on my sister’s new computer. She recently purchased a Macbook Air and it is SLICK! Around this time of year, my family gets crazy busy. The sis is gearing up for final exams and papers and all that jazz, my folks are working their normal schedule plus working hard to get Safehouse Summer camp all worked out. It’s all very exciting!

Spring is officially here, the Indians are playing baseball again, the Cavs have clinched a playoff spot and I saw a commercial yesterday for official NFL draft hats. I love Spring time because the jackets come up, the sleeves get shorter, the light stays in the sky longer and the feeling in your heart starts to reflect the weather.

Weird how that happens, isn’t it? When I look outside and I see green, I see color, I feel warmth I feel…more alive. What it is about Spring time that does that to us? I was talking to a parent of a friend of mine just a couple of weeks ago and she was talking about how her mood is effected by the weather. When it is grey, she is grey. When it is cold and rainy, she feels down. I never thought that was something I had to worry about, until I saw the green, and the sunshine and the blue sky and I felt happier.

It’s strange that I didn’t realize the bad weather was effecting me until I saw how the good weather effected me in the opposite way.

Of course, I think this really has a lot to do with our souls. I think we all go through times of “winter” seasons in our lives, when the clouds cover the sun and the rain falls. We feel…cold and dark. But then, just as it always gets darker right before the sun starts to break over the horizon, we can hope that Spring will come.

When Spring comes, the flowers have reason to begin their push to color the world again. The sun starts to call out the leaves from their hiding places somewhere deep within the trees and the grass wins out over the snow, mud and slush from a cold, hard winter. Where is it that the flowers come from? When they begin their journey upward, they have to start somewhere and I love how God made it so they start from such a place as: the dirt. What was just weeks before cold, hard and frozen is now the place that gives birth to beauty and life.

Whenever I think about flowers breaking through the dirt, I get encouraged about my own dirt. The things that try to bury me. I feel refreshed and thrilled that even if there is dirt, I can break though. Reach out towards the Son of God and be pulled from the dirt and create a beautiful example of God’s amazing grace.

As this Spring gears into full swing, think about the stuff that the Son wants to pull you from. Be encouraged that this is a time for new life to be reborn. And that’s true for you as well.

Love. 

I’m sitting, looking at a blank page waiting for me to write something down. I’ve just written something down, it’s not blank anymore, it now has the words I continue to type and I just keep typing hoping to find a good transition into the reason of this post. This post does have a reason, this post is important to me because it has to do with some of my favorite things.

God.

Jesus.

Leadership.

I have the incredible privilege to work in environments that allow me to exercise gifts and talents that God has given me and there are moments when I sit back or breath an exhale of amazement that I actually get paid to do what I do.

Whenever I can experience something that allows me to grow, learn, live and lead better, I get excited because I can literally feel how I am getting closer and closer to God with each baby step I take. Some may call that wishful thinking, I simply call it the faithfulness of a Father that loves unconditionally.

Recently, God has decided to remind me of something that I had lost sight of. It’s a simple phrase with profound meaning and packed full of life changing power that has really caused me to evaluate how I do things.

It’s a principle that I’ve known for almost all of my life and certainly for the majority of my leadership life. Seven words. One sentence. Spoken by one of the first New Testament preachers ever.

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”

I don’t know why that has been echoing in my head so loudly over the past few days.

“He must increase, but I must decrease.”

The word that really stands out to me is that word, “must.”

I just feel such an urgency when I read that. Like it’s so absolutely necessary for me to decrease and God to increase, that’s insane to consider the possibility of it being any other way.

It’s almost like both things need to happen in order for it to work right…

Is it possible for God to increase and you NOT to decrease?

Is there room for both you and God, or does one automatically become smaller as the other one takes precedent. I can easily use the excuse that if I follow God and I increase, than more people will see that I follow God and may come to God, so maybe I can increase and than, by default God will increase because I am getting bigger.

That’s a lie.

It’s simply not true. That phrase, “He must increase, but I must decrease” comes from the New International Version and it has the second “must” in italics which just adds to the urgency.

It’s like, “He really needs to increase, but if anything is really going to happen, you just have to all-out, without-a-doubt, can’t be any other way, HAVE TO decrease.”

It’s almost like the focus isn’t even on God at that point, but more on what WE need to do. Which makes me think that God, just by being God, will fill the gap left as we get smaller and smaller.

We don’t need to worry about God being big, He’s already big. I have to remember that I have the ability to miniaturize God by allowing myself to be big.

I love the idea that as I get smaller, God automatically gets made bigger, because there is no pressure on me to do anything. I don’t have to worry about being successful, I don’t have to worry about what other people think, the only thing I have to really concern myself with when entering into any situation is simply, “How can I allow God to be increase in this situation?”

God has given human beings an amazing amount of responsibility. And what are we to do with that responsibility?

Well, the responsible thing to do is to give it right back to Him.

I’ve met a lot of people who never consider their own soul when they make a choice and it breaks my heart to see so many people with broken souls in need of a healer, a miracle, a Savior. I get in there with what I may consider good advice or wise counsel when in reality, I absolutely must decrease, so that He can increase.

There’s too much at risk for me to worry about being big.

I want to be small.

Very small.

I like being little.

iamnot. He is I AM.

There are always moments in my life where I am given a glimpse of what God might see when He looks down at me. Here on this little ball of dirt we humans call Earth, in the midst of a solar system housed in a galaxy that we will probably never fully understand, we live our lives and go through our days and never really stop to consider what God might see when He looks at us.

I am a very visual person, if I see it I can comprehend it better. I can understand something that is shown to me much more quickly than if it were explained. Just two nights ago, I was sitting in a living room with two wonderful friends of mine just chatting, laughing, talking, about nothing and everything at the same.

You ever that experience? Where you aren’t working, you aren’t trying to do anything really, just engaging in the company of another human being. Laughing, living. Doing life…together. It’s a beautiful thing.

At one point, a guitar was brought out and my friend starting playing a song she had written. I’ve heard the song several times before on a recording and when she started to play it there in the kitchen, somehow it was new. I was sitting there, having just finished my microwavable buffalo hot wings (which, by the way, are actually way more delicious than I anticipated) and she started playing and singing this song that she had written and it was like the first time I had heard the song. That may sound cheesy and a little dramatic, but as I’ve written in previous posts, there is something about music that speaks a language no other art form can speak. So I have no problem saying that when she started singing, I was blown away.

Later on that same night, she still had the guitar, and the conversation between myself and the other person in the room had faded into a steady, quite comfortable silence. I think it was comfortable because as our voices faded, the sounds of guitar strings being picked took precedence over all other sound in the room. We both looked at our guitar playing friend and I noticed something small yet exciting. Her eyes were closed.

Which could mean one of two things…she was either too exhausted to keep them open, or she was so engaged in the music that she closed her eyes to engage even further. It could’ve been that plus exhaustion, but either way…the point is the two of us in the room stopped and looked at her and listened.

What do you think God does when you say His name?

What do you think happens when you whisper a cry out to God when you’re in need?

Or a word of thanks or worship when you are reminded of His character?

What do you think happens when you even attempt to communicate with God?

I think it’s a lot like what happened just two nights ago sitting in a living room.

He notices. He listens. He looks.

He is proud.

There are a lot of things I’ve done in the past that, if given the chance, I would not do again. Because it was so wrong, so sinful, so selfish that I don’t even like to think about it. But when I think about what happens when I cry out to God and when I seek after God….

I can’t help but close my eyes and concentrate on HIS music. The story of my soul.

Over the past month or so, I’ve met some absolutely amazing people and have made some lifelong friends in the process and I can’t help but think that this is just a glimpse of God. Just another thing that He’s allowed me to experience to point ultimately to His unfailing love and amazing sacrifice on my behalf.

It’s Easter time. We celebrate the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Celebrate loud.

Celebrate well.

Celebrate with friends.

Shake the walls of hell with your celebration.

Today is one of those days when I woke up, I rolled over, and was so happy to be alive. I know that’s a little cheesy sounding. But it’s true nonetheless. I have a stack of books in my room and in that stack of books is a book by John Maxwell called Today Matters. In it, John (I like to think we’re on a first name basis) talks about how we over-exaggerate yesterday, calling it “the good ‘ol days” and we over-estimate tomorrow, thinking that something will happen later to take us where we want to go, and that we under-estimate today, not realizing the potential we have at this very moment to do something great.

It’s a great read, very practical, easily one of those change your life without even realizing it kind of books.

I don’t want to waste today. I’m so happy to be alive. God is so amazing in my life. I’ve had the distinct and amazing privilege of meeting some truly wonderful people over the last few weeks and I’ve had the opportunity to begin sharing my life with them, telling stories, laughing, experiencing life and one thing keeps coming back to my mind.

God has truly given me a great life.

I certainly don’t deserve it and I want nothing more than to honor Him and thank Him every minute of everyday by living this life today, for Him.

We’ve all heard this before, it’s a very “Christian” thing to say. But to be honest, I’m saying it as true as I can.

This life is not my own. If I were to paint a picture of my life as laid out by MY plans, the painting would be horrific compared to the masterpiece that is God’s brush strokes on the canvas of my life.

Enjoy your day today, everybody. Really.

I know I will.