my life…in text format

This little girl sang for the first time in front of people with her dad in front a small coffehouse full of people. It was a wonderful time. A nice reflection of a daughter and father sharing a gift.

Sometimes I wonder if God looks at me the same way. Like, when I get down on my knees or I close my eyes to pray and as I get ready to speak, He leans over the edge of Heaven so He can really pay attention to exactly what you are saying. Not so much what’s coming out of your mouth as what’s coming out of your heart.

Recently, I’ve been evaluating my prayers to God and I’ve realized that I am trying to “pray right.” I am trying to say things that I think God would be happy to hear. I am trying to say things that will get me to a desired outcome instead of crying out, speaking, asking, singing or simply standing in His presence. This little girl didn’t move once she got behind the mic…she had a small voice, audible only because of the piece of technology standing inches from her mouth.

I don’t want to just say prayers to God. I want to communicate. I want to engage, I want a relationship. I don’t want a monologue, I want to dialogue with God. Where I take, He not only hears, but listens and where He talks and I not only listen and hear, but am transformed by His words.

Speak up. You don’t need a mic when talking to God. He’s closer than you think.

Items Present:

-Bible (New Living Translation)
-Notebook
-Devotional Book
-Apple MacBook Pro
-French Vanilla Caramel Coffee
-Pen

What a wonderful way to start my day. I would seriously do this everyday, but I would get food every time I went, rather than just coffee and would probably have to sell my kidney to afford it.

But nonetheless…this will happen more and more.

Life is full of choices. Sometimes I try and sit back and count how many choices I make each morning before I leave my house. I think about the choice of whether to get a shower before I eat breakfast or after. The choice of breakfast food to eat. Some things are left to habit, like which side of your teeth to start brushing first, but even in that situation a choice is made to follow habit or break the mold. We make millions of choices and we don’t even realize it until the consequences of the choice, whether good or bad, smack us in the face.

Some choices we look back on and say, “I’m so glad that was the choice I made…what an amazing turn out. I can’t imagine not making that choice. Man, my life would be so much worse had I not made THAT choice!”

Other times, the response is not so positive. You may have said or heard things like, “Looking back, that was the turning point that led me to here and I wish I could go back.” or “I’ll never understand what I was thinking!”

Or maybe it’s not even YOUR fault, but somebody else’s choices negatively effected you. While playing with his transformers, little Jeff’s parents walk in, sit him down and explain to him they are no longer going to be living together. They try to explain that it’s not Jeff’s fault that they won’t be married anymore, but Jeff can’t help but wonder if he hadn’t asked for those wretched robots maybe things could be better. It’s not little Jeff’s fault, but his life is forever changed.

The point is that a choice holds more weight then we give it credit for. A choice has the power to change a life, break a life, make a life, take a life. A choice gives us the ability to be controlled or be in control. A choice, something that can be made in seconds, has the potential to change years of our lives and the lives of others.

I can look back to 8 years ago in my life and see choices that I made that are still effecting me today. 8 years ago when I made the choice, I assure you I was not thinking, “How will this effect my life 8 years down the road??” I was only worried about that moment. We’ve all made choices.

And since we’re not perfect….we’ve all made choices we would make differently if given the chance.

Sometimes, the choices we make…or the choices made by others create in us a desire to put up defenses against the way we are effected by the consequences of those choices. Everybody does it differently.

Karen always laughs, even when she’s not happy. Melanie is so organized it’s insane. Mark can’t stop joking, he never takes anything seriously. While Alex won’t let himself have any fun and falls deeper into depression. Hope makes herself bleed because she’s lost….hope.

Do you have a defense?

If you’re answer is an immediate “no!” I want to ask yourself again and really take a second to look inside yourself.

Have you made choices that you regret and made yourself a safe place in order to get away from everything?? The problem with getting away from everything is that you’re not around anything.

There’s a great song that comes from a band that is way deeper and more profound than their image portrays. Relient K is a band from right here in Ohio and they wrote  a song called I Am Understood? I love that title.

Because it asks a question.

Really? I’m understood. Someone understands me? Someone can look into my soul and see the real me and it actually makes sense??

I don’t even make sense to myself sometimes. But…really?? I’m understood? What a relief!

The song is like a letter, sung to God, where the singer exposes himself completely to a God that already sees everything. It’s a reminder that God is big.

As the song closes, the passion is contagious as the singer belts out in a series of repetitive cries,

“Your voice has broken my defense, let me embrace salvation!”

I want my defense to be broken. I want the walls that I put up because of my bad choices to be broken down.

When I make a bad choice, I take a step away from God and another brick is added to the wall that is slowly gaining momentum as it tries to separate me from my soul’s deepest craving. But when God speaks, the walls crumble.

The same voice that breathed the world into existence and the same breath that was exhaled to bring the first man his first breath is the same voice and breath that breaks down the walls of our defense.

The next step is to embrace it.

As my fingers pound the keys on this keyboard, my speakers blare the band Paramore. Their previous album All We Know Is Falling is fantastic. If you’ve never heard them, you should check them out. Good band. I love good music. Something about it speaks into my life in a way that nothing else does.

Have you ever noticed this?

Sometimes an artist, a song, a style of music can literally express EXACTLY how you are feeling but you couldn’t have ever expressed it yourself. It’s like, when someone asks you how you are feeling, sometimes it almost better to let them listen to a song so that way they can FEEL the same way you feel and that’s the best explanation.

Why does this happen?

Why is music so powerful, what it is about the driving guitars, pounding bass lines, drum rhythms, and everything else that makes those little goosebumps rise on our flesh and make us want to turn up the volume in our cars until we cross the line into completely outrageous-looking as we pound our fists on the steering wheel?

When I drive and I hear a good song, it doesn’t matter if I’ve heard it before. I’m just gonna jam. How do you jam? Do you throw up a “rawkfist”? Do you contemplate each word and how it applies to your life? Do you pick out the melodies and harmonies and find the pacing of the rhythm? Do you separate each instrument and listen to what each musician is doing?

Do you have any CD’s that won’t play in your CD player anymore because you’ve simply worn them out?

What is it about music, exactly?

I think it’s more than just driving beats and amazing vocals. I think it’s just another fingerprint of God. You see, in the Bible, music was a key component to life. They even used it in their military as a way to keep the soldiers ready, in step and encouraged. It’s almost like it was something to keep them reminded of why they do what they do.

Music as a reminder.

Maybe music is so moving to us because it reveals something about our souls. That part inside that no ones sees and we really just don’t fully understand. Maybe when you start tapping your toes to that sweet beat, your really letting your soul express itself in a way it can’t do otherwise.

When you go to a foreign country and you don’t know the language, you need a translator to make your stay effective and fun. You need to know what’s going on. If you don’t have a translator, even if you know where you are in the world, you would be….lost.

Maybe music is a translator. The language of our souls is so complex and sometimes foreign that we need to translate it so we are not…lost.

You can learn a lot about a person by the music they listen to.

It’s an extension of yourself, an expression of the person’s soul. We can get closer to God through music. We can find out about ourselves through music. Since God created us, if we find out more about ourselves, don’t we find out more about God?

Music is beautiful. You are beautiful. God is beautiful. God created music. Just another fact that points to His absolute creativity and undeniable imagination.

Enjoy the music…

  On a hot Spring day, I think it might have been Memorial Day, my dad wanted me to help him in the yard with some landscaping. I was tired, I had prepared myself for a relaxing day, school was pretty hectic and I was working as well, so in my young mind I thought I had a good excuse for doing nothing. Dad had other plans. He wanted both my sister and myself to help him outside. Needless to say, I was frustrated, I didn’t want to be out there, it was hotter than I was bargaining for and, I just wasn’t in the mood. He assured me it wouldn’t take that long, but of course, things like that always stretch out. Begrudgingly I got my work shoes on and headed outside.One of the things he wanted me to do later in the day was edge around the mulch beds so we can lay new mulch. By this time I was actually in a much better mood, ready to do whatever he needed. I edged and I edged, I was very proud of my work. You know, working with dirt and earth and the ground is oddly rewarding and satisfying. I finished what I considered to be a wonderful piece of work and was really happy about my addition to the history of landscaping mastery. Dad walked over and I was waiting on a, “wow, that looks great. good job.” Instead what I got was a, “hand me the shovel, let me show you what it’s supposed to look like.” Not in a degrading way, mind you, but in a Fatherly, teaching kind of way.What does this have to do with why I follow Jesus?You see, I was finished with my work, I was satisfied with what I had done. If it were up to me, I would have put the shovel down, washed the dirt off my hands and had a nice glass of iced tea. But my dad, knowing what it should look like completed the job.Which brings me to another reason I follow Jesus.When Jesus does something He does it completely. He doesn’t leave the work half-done and walk away satisfied that He showed some effort. When He was on the cross and He sucked in one of those last waning breaths and cried out, “It is finished,” He wasn’t saying that He was finished the way I was finished with my edging.No, He was saying, the deed has been completely done. No longer do you have to come to God the way you’ve come to Him all these years. You can now come through me, you can now follow me to God. When Jesus does something He does it completely.My dad spent two minutes on what I thought was an amazing piece of handy work. When He was done, it looked nothing like what I had created. Through the mastery of his expert hand and the beauty of what he created, it was revealed to me how short I had come of what could be.We are the same way with God.We do things ourselves, we work hard to get things right, we do what we are supposed to do…or what we think we are supposed to do. But through the mastery of His expert hand we are shown what really can be and are reminded of how short we come apart from Him. I love Jesus for that, among many other things.That’s just another reason I follow Jesus.More to come. 

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.

This new CD by the David Crowder*Band is fantastic. I just finished it and it’s the David Crowder Band doing what they do, and doing it well. It is said that worship is a lifestyle, these guys live that out and you can tell. I want to jump, shout, kneel, cry, laugh, sing, think, and pray all at the same time when I hear this album. It’s great.

Just go by it. You’ll know what I mean pretty much right away.

David Crowder and the Band…well done. Once again, you lead us into the presence of God. Thanks. I like it here.

Available on iTunes or at davidcrowderband.com