Growing a beard

I am growing my beard out and I am not really sure why.  I don't even know if I really like it or not.  What I do like however is getting to trim it down.  I always feel so fresh and new.  Like I have changed something dramatic in my life and trimming the beard was a visual representaion of that.  Each time I grow my beard and then trim it down, I feel as if it grows back faster and more full.  That each time it gets refined to a five o'clock shadow it comes back stronger and more full than ever before.  I am going to be 29 in a month and nothing in my life is certain.  I do not have a back up plan.  I feel like a full grown out beard ready for my trim.  I have been very distracted lately.  This leads to doubt and stress and worry which leads me to a place where I have been for the last couple of weeks.  God has been working through this with me.  Refining me, trimming me down I would say. I have been shown that my faith is strong when everything is easy but when it is hard I don't lean on him I lean on myself.  This makes me feel uncomfortable and I don't like it and want a change.  SO I am praying a lot more.  Taking my doubt and worry and all of my failures before God.  And what am I finding out?  That even though I feel totally in the dark, His hand is still leading me.  Where do I get this encouragement from?  His word. More than any job or opportunity I have that brings me stability. What I am finding sustains and brings me more peace and comfort than I have ever known is his word. His promises. His Son.  I want my faith to be strong because he is strong.  I want to endure because he endured.  I want my will to be his will because thats what he did.  All the things I depended on are so uncertain.  God is my hope and he is showing me through this time that he is never uncertain.  He has refined me yet again. To bring to life his faithfulness inside of me.  It has been hard.  It always is, but he has trimmed this beard down and I feel fresh and new.  

Broken Crutches

I recently had the privilege to embark on a week long trip to Delhi, India.  Now that I am back state side I wake up with new thoughts overflowing from this trip and all the work God is doing there and here inside of my heart.  One of the convicting things bubbling up to the surface in this vast ocean of thoughts is...would I still know that God loved me if I didn't have anything at all.  I can tangibly look around at the things I have and for some reason, maybe this is just me, but I start to relate them to the infinite love of Jesus.  Now sure he gives us things and people and those things are good in and of themselves.  For me though, if I am honest with myself,  I use those things like a crutch everyday.  I don't use the powerful and gracious work of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to hold me up often enough.  In both the death and resurrection I should have everything I need.  All the authority of my Lord who conquered death and the inheritance of the kingdom of God through his beautifully necessary death.  Here is an example.  Now as you read this it might sound really crazy, and it probably is, but think on it for a second.  I would lose my whole mind if I lost my phone.  I almost lose my mind when I leave it at home on accident.  I use that thing everyday for work or for communicating with my friends and my family.  The phone helps me with the things I think I need everyday.  An alarm, a photo, even downtime with a game or two.  Now it doesn't have to be a phone for you.  It can be anything or anyone, but while I was in India I met a woman who only had a roof, a bed, the clothes she was wearing on her back and her family.  She was didn't even have her sight.  Much less a phone.  But when you talked with her you knew she had something more valuable than anything that this world could give or take away.  She had the hope of the world. She knew the saving power of our high priest.  She smiled when she talked about Him and cried tears of joy when she spoke of how he took her life and saved her. Have I muddled those truths down in my life with all my stuff?   My point in saying all of this is that I am praying that I will, every single day until I die, look to the death and resurrection.  That womans faith was like a match to spark this truth that I had somehow hidden away in my heart.  There is nothing and I literally mean nothing in this world that I want to be more valuable to me than Jesus.  He is my only hope, my only true comfort, and the only thing that will sustain me.  I am blessed to have really awesome people in my life and have some nice things that I call my own.  But for me, when those things are a measure of the depth of Gods' love being displayed in my life, I have strayed so far off the path.  I pray that he would take everything away from me so that my vision would be focused on Him and Him alone.  As hard as the trip to India was for me in numerous ways, I thank God because he has showed me that if I had nothing at all, no phone, car, family, friends, home, that I would indeed have everything, because I am his child and he will never forsake me.  That truth I believe has nothing to do with material things. The depth of his love was shown on the cross when he became sin and in the resurrection when he displayed his authority by conquering death. I not only want to speak of those truths, but I want to live those truths out everyday so that everyone, including me, will see the depths of our fathers love for us and he will get all of the glory.

I Need A Table.

"Those who are well have no need of a physician,but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous,but sinners to repentance". Luke 5:31-32.  I am absolutely put in my place by this verse.  Even as I study and journal it wrecks me out.  Jesus is talking to the pharisees and their scribes about why he is eating with tax collectors and sinners.  It sounds kind of funny as I read it that they would ask why he was eating with "sinners".  I mean aren't we all sinners. The answer is yes but that is not the point I am trying to make.  I forget that I am the sick who is in need of a physician.  I often try to wrap myself up in the group of the "righteous".  I think I read enough or go to church enough or whatever the case may be so that I am no longer with those sick people.  The truth is I need a hospital visit every single day usually, multiple times a day.  I will sometimes go longer than I should without one of those visits because I don't want to be seen as sick, or broken.  I don't want to forget that I am one of those people sitting at the table with Jesus eating. I am a tax collector. I try to get up from that table everyday as if I have graduated from needing Jesus anymore.  I will say to Jesus "Look, I have read everyday and I went and served the needed, now I can stand and be called righteous." If I can be honest, I really think like that sometimes. And there I am just as blind as the pharisees and scribes were.  Just standing right in front of Jesus listening to the words he is saying to me but not hearing a single one because I am holding on to the comforts of the law so tight.  The beautiful thing about that verse is that Jesus was willing to sit with sinners and tax collectors.  Jesus wasn't afraid of the "unclean" making him sick or unclean because he was the one who could make them clean and make them new.  He called me when I was a sinner not because I was already righteous.  So I am reminded of my place at this table.  When I look around and see the "righteous" afraid to sit or talk to me because I am unclean or sick, I have a high priest who didn't see any of that at all when he looked at me. He clothed me in his righteousness and made me clean by his touch.  I don't want to stand in a group of people who just look at Jesus, I want to sit at the table with him and eat and talk and hang out and when he gets up and leaves I want go with him and stay in his company.  So, I will repent and confess that I am a sick man who is in need of a savior everyday.  I repent because my pride often times keeps me from sitting with Jesus and knowing who he really is. "Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." Luke 15:7

The work you started.

I find myself trying reconcile my own sin.  I focus in on myself and that sin and I work really, really hard on bettering myself.  If somehow I could sin one less time I could sleep better or I would then be worthy.  I write lines and lines of words to make sense of my sin and God with very few words paid the debt of my sin. I try to use my broken arms and legs to keep the countless promises I have made to you.  All of those promises broken.  Yet you pull away my self made casts and remind me of your steadfast love.  I try to sing at the top of my lungs, until my voice surrenders and all I am making is a pitiful noise.  You then, in the stillness, take your mercy and you sing this weary soul to sleep.  When I try to build my empire out of gold and silver.  You take those ashes and ruins and you build a city on hill.  A bright and shining light for your glory.  I flood myself until I drown, flailing around naked and lost.  And you pulled me to the shore and clothed me in your righteousness.  Oh, I would spend the rest of my life working out of my own strength to make myself worthy.  I would grow tired and weak and bitter.  But the work has already been done and it was done perfectly.  When I try to rest in these holes I have dug for myself you pull me out of my filth with your loving kindness.  I can rest in your perfect love, perfect forgiveness, perfect grace.  My recovery from sin cannot spring from anything inside of me but from the perfect hope that is Jesus Christ.

Maiden Voyage

This is my first blog. Ever.  And as I write it I have no idea what it will look like.  I know I don't want it to be about things I did today or what my favorite ice cream is.  I want to try and challenge myself to share my perspectives on a genuine walk with Jesus Christ. I am not saying that I will always be right or that you should take my advice or anything of the sort. Instead if you find yourself reading this blog and agree or disagree with anything that is said then I encourage you to think on those things and form your own opinions.  And after that, search the text and your heart and find the truth that comes with reading the bible.  I encourage you to dive deep into your heart and wrestle with your desires, truths, will and comforts.  And pray that God would reveal to us his desires, truths, will, and his ways.  I have one desire above all else, just as Jesus was perfectly submitted to God I want to strive for the same thing every single day.  I realize I can't do it through my own power and that most of the time I try to work so hard to conform him to my will and it just ends up being a gigantic mess.  But that is the endless beauty of an honest relationship.  I try and fail over and over.  And when I can't work anymore God rebuilds my broken, failing heart with His perfect and steadfast love.  I can take comfort because I know not only is God the author of my salvation but he is the perfecter of my faith.  And he will continue to perfect me until the day that I die and I can't thank him enough.  With all that being said I suppose that is what this blog will be about.