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

Free

At American Eagle we are giving away a free smartphone when you try on a pair of jeans. Every time I tell someone that they give me this blank stare as if I'm lying to them. Then they say there must be some strings attached because you also get a free $25 money card to AE too. I tell them that all they have to do is sign up for a new 2 year contract or they just have to renew the one they have for 2 years. Thats when people go and theres the catch. I tell them that its not really a catch because when you get a phone from their carrier anyways you pretty much always sign up for a new 2 year plan. People still give me a dumbfounded stare. I just let them go on their merry way and let them decide for themselves if they want to get the free phone or not. 

Its really interesting how even though they are getting an expensive phone for FREE people can still find something to complain about. Yeah you have to pay for the minutes and the data plan but if you were planning on getting a phone you at least don't have to give up money for that. Still its too much just to get one thing for free. Its not perfect so there must be something to complain about and because of that its not worth getting.

Something free that costs us nothing just can't ever seem to exist or the deal just must be to good to be true. If someone offered you salvation from eternal damnation and thus giving you eternal life would you take it? They said it was free, a gift from someone great. All you had to do was believe that why it was a free gift was true. Would you believe such an unbelievable offer? Its so radical that it couldn't be true. No one would ever offer such a deal would they? 

The offer is more radical than a smartphone which even then seems skeptical. So would you put your faith in the death of one man so that you can have the free gift of eternal life? 

But in the end is anything ever free?

A Life Part 2

As I continue asking God everyday to let His way for my life shine through I find it difficult to listen to what God wants. I find that my mind keeps going on about all the things I have to do in one day that it almost seems that I can't stop thinking. The hardest part for me is just letting go and listening.

Prayer is a two way thing much like a conversation that you would have with your friend at coffee. Except God wants to be so much more then that with you. Its hard to imagine myself sitting down with God and having a cup of coffee with Him or just even having a conversation with Him. Most of the time I'm the one doing all the talking and keep asking for things and forget to just listen. I think I'm afraid to listen because I might not want to do what He asks me or I'm not going to want to face what He's telling me to give over to Him. However I forget that God has the best intentions for me. His love for me is greater then the person I go to get coffee with so wouldn't the things that He has to say be even more important in my life.

I had recently switched my majors and I keep wondering if it was in God's plan for me. I was at coffee with a friend talking with him and he told me that it seems like I'm in a transition spot where I don't really know where things are going but God does. I think He's right and now I'm going to have to listen to what God is saying and what He wants me to do with my life.

I'm reading a new book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan. In it was an essay written by a fourteen year old girl named Brooke Bronkowski. She listened to God and this is what she had to say about her life.

"Since I Have My Life Before Me"

I'll live my life to the fullest. I'll be happy. I'll brighten up. I will be moe joyful than I have ever been. I will be kind to others. I will loosen up. I will tell others about Christ. I will go on adventures and change the world. I will be bold and not change who I really am. I will have no troubles but instead help others with their troubles. 

You see, I'll be one of those people who live to be history makers at a young age. Oh, I'll have moments, good and bad, but I will wipe away the bad and only remember the good. In fact that's all I remember, just good moments, nothing in between, just living my life to the fullest. I'll be one of those people who go somewhere with a mission, an awesome plan, a world-changing plan, and nothing will hold me back. I'll set an example for others, I will pray for direction. 

I have my life before me. I will give others the joy I have and God will give me more job. I will do everything God tell me to do. I will follow the footsteps of God. I will do my best!!!

That's what really happened to her. She died her freshmen year of high school but the lives she touched were thousands.

Imagine if we thought like that and let ourselves be directed by God. There wouldn't be anything in this world that we couldn't do. In I Peter 1:6-7 it says that we rejoice in our struggles because it tests the genuineness of our faith. The struggle of having to let go and have faith in God to lead your life is tough, but it should be one that makes us rejoice!