War

I've been fighting a war since I was born. It's one that no matter what I do I can never get away from it. The war isn't fought with swords, guns, or any other kind of weapons. The war is fought with love. 

The war didn't start with me or even with humans. It started with a creature God created that decided it could be more powerful then its creator. It didn't turn out so well for that creature and the war that started came to earth. It became the battle field for a war that it wasn't supposed to hold. The effect of one creature as it took its hold on one human that started a ripple effect that nothing can compare to. I couldn't decide to be apart of it. I was born and thrown right into the fighting. A small soul not even grown and couldn't understand a thing. Quickly did I learn the difference between right and wrong. I still didn't know of the war or how it could effect me. Little did I know that the enemy had its hands on me and was eagerly waiting to take me away and never let me go. That's what it wants, but I learned of how to find my way back to get away from the hands of my enemy. I couldn't do it alone though. I had to be helped from a man whose power gave me love. A love that can give life to those who had been plunged in death from birth.

Life is given to the dead. I was made something new and finally knew what love was. Love, a power so strong that it can take something dead and give it life. The war however wasn't over for me. The enemy still had it's eyes on me. It may have lost me but it didn't want to let go. It wanted to take that love and make it useless. 

At times I think that it has succeeded. Its because it tries to make that love seem fake and unreal. Times when love has seemed to fail. A lie that once implanted seems hard to forget. Times when you feel alone and empty and no one really cares or loves you. Its hard for me to forget those feelings and even the smallest things can make me think those things again. I don't want nights of tears flowing while the music is so loud to drive the pain away. People's words and actions can have more of an impact then they realize. A word not said, the way a person looks at you, even an interaction with someone can say so much. I know that its a lie but its a powerful one that the enemy uses because it wants us to be so useless.


A war of love is full of hatred and makes us afraid of the one thing that we are searching for to end it, LOVE. I've felt the pain of death and because of that I looked and found love. It's odd how hard it was to accept it at first. I had looked for it because I just wanted the pain to go away but when it came to my doorstep I couldn't accept it right away. I was afraid to be honest and to say "I love you" too. It felt weird and not right. It was something unknown to me and I wanted to get away from the unknown. Slowly I learned what real love was and how it could give me life. A way to be on the winning side of the war. Love gave me something great to hope for, a life of love where others loved you for who you truly were. Love was the war I had been fighting and I finally realized that I was apart of it. I was no longer blind to love nor to what love is. 


The man who is love tells me everyday that he LOVES ME. He wants me to know that so that I can make it through the day and that I can share his love so that others can get out of their pain. 


Wars always bring pain, but one that is of love brings the pain of loneliness and feelings of being unloved. Once we find love its hard to accept it because we have become so accustomed to the pain. We create walls to deal with the pain and the love can't get through. When we find love it feels so much more painful at first because of the walls that come down and the pain that comes flooding back. I never wanted to deal with any of those things walled inside me. The thought of them ever coming out was terrifying. Learning to let down my walls was one of the hardest things I had ever done but after it was the most peaceful thing that I had ever done. It didn't happen all at once but slowly I learned how to let go of the pain and embrace love.


A war of love is full of pain but also full of life. 

Hope

This song has beautiful lyrics. It reminds me of how I once felt and still sometimes feel. 
I'll let the lyrics speak for themselves.


Find the words that make it right again
Calling birds help you make it through the night
It's just enough to find a way to open up again
and learn to taste all the beauty that's inside

Well ring the bells that lead you home
cause the only truth i've ever known
is that nothing ever hurts us more than love
so circle up your best of friends
and we'll celebrate the way it endsbut it's never gone
At least we live tonight
At least we live tonight

Scream out loud
until you feel again
and hear the sound of how to heal an aching heart
and those that know you most
can help you to live again
so keep them close
as you're making your new start

Well ring the bells that lead you home
cause the only truth i've ever known
is that nothing ever hurts us more than love
so circle up your best of friends
and we'll celebrate the way it ends
At least we live tonight
At least we live tonight

The day you finally turn to dust
and finally hear your name
brings colors that will never fade away
Sometimes the best all of us
can still break down and still give up on love


Ring the Bells
-Satellite

Fear

I've thought about this a lot lately and there are many parts of myself that I fear. I think many people have things that that they fear about themselves but rarely realize it. This fear of parts of ourselves causes us to create masks for ourselves and become a false us in a sense. Instead of those things being a part of who we are, they become something entirely different. We make them out to be things we don't want, things that aren't truly us because we have come to believe that the mask is real. This gives power to those things and gives them control over us.


I've let myself live in fear long enough. I've feared them because I thought I could hurt people, be hurt myself, and I thought that I would disappoint God. I made a mask so that people wouldn't find out about my real self. I had one for any situation so that it would seem that I had everything together and that everything was perfect. Yet deep down I feared the worst thing possible, myself. I didn't want people to know that I had dealt with depression, suicide, pornography and doubting God. I feared those things and because of it they began to control me. 


It was a circle that seemed to just keep propelling itself. The more I feared them the more they controlled me. My fear made me not want to do anything about them and that in turn made me go deeper into them. The fear kept growing because I was afraid of people finding out and then losing everything because of it. I certainly didn't want God to know either because how could He ever love someone who couldn't even love them self. I gave power to these things by fear and they took over my life. 


I finally hit rock bottom and that's where I learned a lot about myself. I learned that those things were apart of me. They were me and trying to get rid of them was never going to happen. I wouldn't just have to learn to just deal with them, I would have to learn to live with them. Everyday is a struggle but knowing that means that I don't have to fear them. They no longer have power over me. Its not easy and I'm still learning more about myself. Being open with people and learning to live out who I really am makes a big difference. 


Knowing your own struggles and being honest with yourself about them teaches you a lot about yourself and lets you live life freely.


"For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light."
-Luke 8:17 (ESV)

Marriage

Just being at a wedding I’ve got marriage on my mind. Its rather odd since I’m not dating anyone but my grandma was there and she kept telling me how she wanted to be at my wedding. I kept thinking to myself that is going to be a long time from now but I also kept thinking about what mine was going to be like and if I would ever even be ready to marry someone.

Even if I’m not ready to marry someone yet I still can’t wait to be. Yeah sure it’s a scary thing but it also seems like a great adventure. First you find the girl and then you date. Then you ask for her hand in marriage then you get married. Simple right? I wish!

The first part is hard enough but then you have to meet the family and then introduce her to yours. Do they like you? Will they approve of you marrying their daughter? What about your family and how they feel about her? After you make it past that then you actually are really getting to know each other. Finding out how each one goes through struggles, how they communicate, to how they even love. It’s a hardship that makes the relationship worth what it is. Without pain and struggles could you ever enjoy the love that you have for each other that comes from simply just loving? I don’t know but I hope to know someday.

After all that then you, the guy, find yourself buying a ring that says I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Then comes the wedding.

There is so much to decide for the wedding. The hardest part I would think would be who is your best man and who is in your wedding party. Is it going to be big or small? Which of your friends do you choose from and who gets paired with who? Which family members and friends are invited to the wedding? Do you have more at the reception? What about food and drinks? There’s flowers, dresses, tuxes, churches, reception halls, and where to even have the wedding. There is so much to choose for just a short time frame.

You want to make it the most joyous of celebrations because you are celebrating one of the greatest things in your life. Everything has to be perfect.

Now I’m no expert on these things and many people have written books about them but what if we decided to make things simpler. Make it just elegantly simple so that the focus is on what the purpose of the wedding actually is. A contract between God, the husband and wife. I don’t know how that would look but I think that we have strayed from it somehow. Not all but most. I’m just throwing it out there that yes it should be a celebration but that isn’t the focus of it. What should be is that it’s a contract with God that you will keep for as long as you two are alive.

Crazy Love

Crazy Love by Francis Chan is one of the craziest books I've ever read. I just finished it and I don't think I even can say everything I've felt or thought about while reading that book. God made one thing clear to me that I don't give Him my all. Throughout the whole New Testament God constantly asks for our all and nothing less. 

As I have been reading the book I kept noticing place in my life that I just have completely left God out, I'm not living in faith at all. One in particular is what I do with the money I make. I've never been good at all at being a good stewart with my money but being a good stewart for God's money I have never even done such a thing. God has slowly been showing me that I live in MORE then enough luxury and that the people He created are starving and dying. I've been praying to God that He will help me become a better steward of the money I make and use it to glorify Him. I recently started to sponsor a child through Compassion. This is one of the first things I want to do in helping those that God created and loves and yet are shown little of that love from those who have it. 

One of the biggest things that Francis Chan writes about and I think God really convicted me of is that I am not always completely honest with myself and in turn I'm not being honest with God. I'm making a mockery of the One who created me and knows everything about me. The things I say I can't do because I'm not ready. Comparing myself to other people saying that I'm still dealing with my stuggles of porn and the pleasures of this life and that God couldn't use me at all. What a fool am I to say that God can't use me. I'm afraid that God will ask me to do something big and take me out of my comfort and reveal my true self. I don't want to honestly believe that I can trust in God and that His love is all I need to sustain myself. I let my friends and family take priority over where God's love should be. I'm more concerned of what people might think than knowing that God's plan for me is the best. God is slowly teaching me that it might be scary and there might be bumps in the road living an honest and open life is the only way God can use you. 

I've taken much from reading this book and know that it is rooted in Scripture is what made me love it even more. Nothing for me can ever take the place of Scripture but being able to read interpretations of Scripture or even just expounding on them is a very helpful way for me to learn more about them. Crazy Love was more then just a book about looking at yourself and your honesty with God. It is also about living out the Word. 

I know I talk about a lot of the things that I should be doing for God but I never live them out. The Gospels are full of what our lives are supposed to look like and how we are to live them. I know that while reading them I always think to myself "God are you really serious about that?" They always seem to be so over the top and impossible, especially in the world we live in now. The more I read the Bible and the more I pray to God I realize that they aren't and that we are supposed to follow all that God commands us. By ourselves it is impossible though but if we trust in God and allow His to work in our lives we have nothing to fear because God will provide and will make what seems impossible possible. My friend Ben is one of these people. When I first heard that he was going to Hawaii and dropping out of college to be an intern at YWAM I thought he was nuts. Who on earth would just drop out of college and have no plans for what they are going to be doing in their future. I thought that Ben was just some crazy radical that was living for God. The more and more that I have spent time with God and reading His word though I have realized that what Ben has been doing for God is what He asks of all of us. As I've talked with Ben I've seen how much he relies on God and trusts God with his whole life. Ben is a person who is completely in love with God and wants the whole world to know it. A life for God where you completely trust Him and love Him isn't the same for everyone. God created each one of us differently and gave us each unique abilities to serve Him. I ask God that He will show me how to trust and love Him with my life so that I can live a life that will glorify Him. 

In the last chapter of the book there is a quote by Annie Dillard, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Rarely do I realize that everyday effects my life, especially my eternal life. We make decisions every day that will effect us for the rest of our lives. My choices to sin against God not only effect my relationship with Him but effect my eternal life as well. God is our only judge in the end and our lives are set before Him. How we spent our days He will look at and judge. I no longer want to be kept as a slave to pornography and pleasures but to live for God and love Him in everything I do. I want my days to be filled with Him so that I can continue to love Him more and that will cause me to love others the way that He loves me.

PS If you want to know more about Ben and his journeys here is his blog.

http://benpeterson27.wordpress.com/

Honesty

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, "Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.

A.W. Tozer