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Pressure is a funny thing. It has been said, that when pressure is present, peoples TRUE character comes forth. I have experienced this over the course of the past few weeks, but that is a TOTALLY different blog for another time. How are you responding when life gets tight? Do you allow yourself to get mad, upset, distant? A friend of mine went through a very rough time a little while back. Everyone left him high and dry. I have a new empathy for him. Lonely is a hard place, it tests who is really for you. More to come on all this as the thoughts develop in my head. In closing, I will blog again later today about the book. I have left myspace like road kill on a cold morning, Facebook is my new social network. If you want to hit me up on facebook click HERE! We can be friends. TTYL.
Lets be honest, there are 2 types of guys in the world. Those who have been honest about the fact they struggle or have struggled with lust and those who lie about it. Sorry playa’s, Im outing you. It is natural. To live in the fullness of life you have to confront whatever your issues are, face them, and then move forward. It really can be that easy. But in being that easy, understand it is going to be extremely hard. This is one of the best weapons that the devil uses to discount and discredit men in life, relationships, and in our own minds.
Back into full blog swing and just finished Chapter 5 of “Going All The Way“. Here are my notes below.
- At times everyone falls victim to being weak, vulnerable, gullible or just the rebellion of lust.
- Sex without consequence does not exist. What is going to be the consequence of your action? And if you are married, usually the consequence is positive.
- Culture has created a world where the dehumanization of people allows for people to feel the ability to have sex without intimacy.
- To succeed in being faithful one must first learn to be faithful in their relationship with GOD. Faithfulness in this relationship builds the foundation for faithfulness in your marriage or dating relationships.
- God forgives, so if you have made a mistake, pick up and start over.
- If you want to have what few people do have in life, that it is going to require you to do what few people are willing to do to succeed. Your measuring stick is not others….
- It is paramount that you protect your wounds while God heals you. However, you can not conform your mind back to God’s standards, only He can.
I believe that over the course of time I have lost the revelation of the true power of prayer. Prayer is one of the most important facets of our relationship with God. He cares so much about us and wants the best for our lives, but he also desires communication with us on a level that I just am not sure how many people really strive to achieve. I have failed in this area so much, and I am now working to get balance in this area. God is a God of order. He REALLY cares about order. He wants order in our lives. Order is really the premise of why we should protect our relationships pre and post marriage.
This past March, Irish rocker, humanitarian, and sometimes preacher Paul Hewson, won the Chairmans Award from the NAACP. Below I have posted his acceptance speech. It is sometimes funny to me when we classify who can communicate to what group based on skin color, style, or perception. In his 5 minutes, Bono had the NAACP base ready to move even though he was a white, rocker, from Ireland, who may not on the surface “relate” to this demographic. What is awesome to me is that his mission, his cause, and his passion is what won him over the audience and left them standing and cheering. When God has you to deliver a message it will resonate regardless of you or your audience.Some say I may love Bono a little to much. But I get excited when I see passionate people doing something relevant and communicating their cause. Bono has an anointing and a mission. God is using him. Is he perfect? Far from, but neither am I and your reading this blog, so God can use anyone. So, set aside your preconceived notion and invest 6:22 in learning from someone who may or may not be like you. If you enjoy this clip, go and see this post from earlier of Bono’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. ONE.
So it has been a week since a very defining moment (conversation) in my life. A week later I am stronger, better, freer (is that a word) than I have been in a long time. At the same time, I can feel my heart reach out for people like never before. Reach out does not even describe what I feel, HURT, is a better word. This redefined me has caused some confusion for people. But the fact of the matter is that God is doing something amazing and I can not allow anything to get in the way of what He is doing. I have been praying for God to allow me to love people the way he does, and to break my heart for the things that break His heart. I received 2 revelations of that today that are opposite ends of the spectrum. First, if you dare to pray this prayer, you will be stretched. I am a sarcastic person. Sometimes when I see people my first instinct is to say something funny. This prayer will remove a lot of jokes out of your life. OKAY so for the ones I love who do not know I love them:
- A very successful person. This person would never think that they where not loved. The love I feel for this person is a love that goes out to them in their place of lack. There is not much lack, but the things this person lacks are not material. I want the best for this person and want this person to achieve all God has for their life. I have been consumed with a love for this person that they feel real love and real relationship. My love will extend to them through prayer.
- Otis “Artist” Crum. Otis has to be in his 50’s or 60’s. I fell in love with Otis today when he walked up to me outside a church in Jacksonville. Otis had a JC hat on that covered his head full of dreams. Otis told me he “made the music”. Otis believes he is going on tour next month with Michael Jackson AND Stevie Wonder. Otis has a lear jet for sale for $800,000.00 but was asking me for $.87. I fell in love with Otis. I do not know what will happen to him but I do know God created him and has a plan for his life. I prayed for Otis on the way home tonight. I don’t know if my interaction with Otis the Artist will impact his life, but I know Otis impacted mine. He is equally as important to God as person number 1. God cares about people and could care less about position.
I could tell you about the other people God gave me a glimpse of today, but I wont. We all really want to be loved. So often we do all we can to polish who we are so that others will love us. We think if we like what this person likes, or sound like that person, or do this thing, we can earn the love of others. Love is a gift. In it purest form it is given freely without obligation or condition. Love is a moment by moment decision to commit. Love is far from a feeling, it is often a burden, and usually is not very convenient. Love will make you do things that will stretch who you are. Love will cause you to feel for people you normally would never even notice. Love is so important to God that he said we are to “Love our neighbors as ourselves.” And as we all know, in America today, it is EASY to love yourself. I am so happy that my view of the world is changing. I have always been a “relationship guy” but God is moving me even farther in this direction. I care about my relationships. They mean the world to me. Relationships, when done properly, can be the best part of your life. So this week tell someone you love them…even if it hurts, and if it does hurt, it is probably really love.
It is finally night. I hear crickets outside the window. PEACE! Today was loud…VERY LOUD! But in the noise I heard His voice. I went to play hoops @ 5:45 this morning. On my way i had United in my CD player. I am an XM guy so listening to a cd feels SO oldskool to me!I listened to this song probably 20 times today:
Verse 1
I see the king of gloryComing down the clouds with fire
The whole earth shakes, the whole earth shakes
I see his love and mercy Washing over all our sin
The people sing, the people sing
Chorus
Hosanna, hosanna Hosanna in the highest
Verse 2
I see a generation Rising up to take the place
With selfless faith, with selfless faith
I see a new reviva lStaring as we pray and seek
We’re on our knees, we’re on our knees
Bridge
Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me
Break my heart for what is yoursEverything I am for your kingdom’s cause
As I walk from earth into eternity
Hosanna
OKAY! that song jacked me. Selfless faith. What a concept. It is not about me. It is not about you. It is not about them…its about HIM. Make it about him and the rest will work out. Open my eyes to things unseen. Show me how to love like you have loved me. Break my heart for what breaks yours. THATS WHAT I MUST HAVE. That sums up what I have been saying in my blogs since Sunday. That is what my post from yesterday was about….i want to feel what God feels. I can not settle for a few hours of God time…I need him continually and if it hurts or stretches me, or makes you uncomfortable about me, well we will all be okay.
God is moving and I want to be where he is at…doing what he is doing. During the national prayer breakfast Bono repeated a story that was told to him by “a very wise man”: So often we pray that God will bless what we are doing. If you want God’s blessing go to where he is already moving, get involved with the things God is doing, they are already blessed. God cares about the hurting, the lost, the widows, the poor. I have a new compassion for these things as I get older and take less of the attention to myself and put more of it on HIM. I want to feel how God feels.
Today I was walking with a friend and a younger boy came by. He was awkward. He had a back pack on. He was insecure, I could see in his face that he was a little shook that this big guy and me where in his path. His glasses where not on straight. His shirt was balled up under the strap of his bag. I put my hand on his shoulder and said…”whats up homey”…he stammered for a minute and said: “hi”. Then darted off into the lunch room. As we walked away I said..man I feel for that poor kid. I have been praying for him all day. Tomorrow I hope to run into him again…God cares about him and wants to see him live full of confidence and not ashamed, scared or insecure. I know how that boy feels, and if ever given the chance again…I am going to tell him all about the destiny God has for his life.
So as you can see, my mind is floating tonight. I hope this blog made sense. If not..there is always tomorrows.
In closing, the Kanye West album leaked today. IT IS HOT!
I am reading a great book, Velvet Elvis. My friend, Trent, got me hooked on it the other day. I am early in this book but I got wrecked today by this concept: God is so infinite. He has no beginning and no end. We are finite creatures. We can not even comprehend his name, let alone his true nature. Our problem is we try to figure out the plans of God in our finite way. How crazy is that? How in the world would we figure out an infinite God when we can not even figure out our finite self. Thus the need for faith. Faith, hope, love…God cares about you. He loves you. He loves you where you are. So after learning this today, I started to pray that God would give me an infinite love for people like he has. I want to love people different. Not even 4 hours later I was talking with a GREAT young man who is going through some stuff. A lot of the stuff he is going through is not his fault and should have never happened to him. He is hurting and I hurt for him. As he sat talking to me telling me about all that is going on my heart broke for him. Not just because he was hurting but because I believe God has a huge plan for his life and all that God is allowing him to go through is preparation for his next level. love infinitely….
p.s. Mat Kearney is on Leno tonight.
I got a new drug. I have been broken and I am addicted to the hurt of brokenness. I hate how it feels but I love what it reveals. Im addicted to hurt. I am addicted to tears. I am addicted to that sick feeling. I never want to lose it. In that place you feel God. you feel what He feels. You see things different. God opens your eyes to what he sees. I am addicted to hurt because I can not be “me” anymore. I am addicted to hurt to be grounded in what I need. See here is the deal to really uproot things and see change you have to go through stuff. If you go through stuff, you will see you are small and HE is big. So when you embrace that fact you stay grounded in the fact that when you are not hurting, you may be rebuilding your pride.
in closing i feel i need to clear the air a little bit. if you are a regular to this little blog you understand that I have been growing over the past few weeks. I have been embracing some stuff. I am not sinning. I am not dealing with a bunch of crazy crap…I am just a regular cat who is walking it out. I appreciate the concern, the prayers, or whatever. If you know me you probably know whats up. if you dont know me, stay tuned…we are in for the ride of our lives. I am not jacked up by a bunch of things. Im not doing stuff I should not be doing. My battles lie within. They are mine and you can just watch them unfold. If you have an issue with me…come ask me. I am learning to be VERY real and because of that I will tell you what you should know about me. Im here. Holla!
The bible says ask and you shall receive. I am living proof. Over the course of the past week I have been being stretched on relationships and authenticity. I have posted some things that I have learned and said repeatedly I want to know more, learn more, be stretched. Yesterday these two subjects collided like never before in my life. Imagine what happens when you are driving down the interstate and you hit a love bug. That is what happened to me yesterday.
The relationship portion was the lead in to the authenticity aspect. I friend of mine called me on the phone and said he needed to speak with me. I met him and he sat me down and said some amazing hard things to me. He called me out on so many levels. He challenged me on so many issues in my life. He even went as far as to tell me about issues I have dealt with for YEARS that most people have NO clue about. God had to tell him about the stuff he spoke to me about because there is no other way he could have had a clue about some of the things we talked about. In addition to being amazingly hard on me, he was also very encouraging. He told me what God had told him about my future. About what God has planned for my life and about where my “Destiny Road” leads. Destiny Road will be another post for sure (thanks KiKi).
The authenticity portion of this post comes in my response. I had to choose sitting there getting kicked in the teeth if I was going to allow myself to be real and deal with these issues or if I was going to embrace the mask that would have been a MUCH easier way out. I do not write this to boast of my authentic ways. I am striving to find authenticity every day. The truth is I am a skeptical, cynical, prideful, hypocritical person who is just trying to figure it all out. I write this to encourage you to be real even when it hurts. I explained to my friend where in our conversation he was nailing me. I accepted his wisdom and guidance on some issues. I incorporated change in my life. In addition allowed myself to start confronting some things in my life that are holding me back from achieving all God has for me. Now in the oxymoron of all oxymoron’s I don’t feel it is appropriate to lay out all these issues on the freaking internet. Im just not ready to be THAT real. Thats just not how I roll. I have spoke with some people and have started the process of recovery for myself. I am blessed with some great relationship and some great people who are willing to work to help me achieve all God has for my life.
Be real. Be honest. Don’t buy into the norm. Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated. Sometimes life is going to hurt. Sometimes you will encounter emotions you have never felt, and it will suck, but it is for your betterment. Be brave. There is a road that will take you to places you could never travel on your own. The toll to travel this road is not cheap but the ride will change your life.
I am a BIG u2 fan. I made Jackie watch the vertigo tour with me and then proceeded to tell her all about the first time I heard U2, the first song (mysterious ways), how I was captivated. Now I am a massive fan. It probably has something to do with my age. It seems like my generation has a unique tie to the band.
Today I was listening to iTunes and somewhere between Bubbly (for like the 5th time today: Colbie Caillat) and You Make Me Better (Fabolous) U2 came on. I have heard this song about a zillion times…but it was like the first time. I started to ponder, what is it that I have been looking for that I still have not found? This is kind of a vulnerable blog for me so please bare with me, I am insecure right now! (haha) I realized there is more than one thing I have yet to find.
The first thing I need to find, more wisdom. I have a lot going on in my life. I need wisdom to be able to come out of this season how He would have me come out as opposed to how I would want to come out. In addition, I really feel some amazing depth coming to some relationships and I want to be able to give into these relationships (current and new). There is nothing worse in the world than a one sided relationship. So how do you attain wisdom. Well, go read Proverbs…it will give you all the directions you need. Maybe that can be a post for later.
Second. I need more peace in my life. I hate drama. A lot of times my drama is self imposed so I need to move more gracefully through situations. Peace is an amazing thing. Peace creates an atmosphere for growth and nurturing. Peace is a place where people run. Peace is a soundless noise, a place of refuge. I want to exude peace.
Grace. I need it. I desire it. I want to learn to have more of it for others. I want to feel for people the way God feels for them, not the way man does. The ironic thing is, I need more Grace than I could ever give. Grace and mercy are on heavy rotation over my life, from friends, family, and God…I hope to be able to return the favor.
Humility. Tonight Jackie told me about a line from “Final Quest” that has wrecked her and it is wrecking me. The weak translation is that the higher God places you in authority, the farther your fall will seem if you do not take hold of any pride in your life. EVERYONE deals with pride. The choice is if you remove it from the root or choose to ignore its existence which ultimately is choosing to fail at a later date. I want humility in my life. TRUE humility, not a false version that is cute for others but really is just a window front for my insecurity and manipulation.
Love. I want to love more. I want to be a better friend. I want to be someone who can be counted on. I want to love without restriction and fear of rejection. I want to figure out how to love the people I don’t like, not just the people who like me.
Finally, I want to be real. God has taught me SO much this week. So much about myself, about others, about situations, and all of it circles around the central theme of being REAL! Real is hard. It hurts. It takes authenticity. I want to be real with people. I dont want to hide behind masks and facades. I want to be real and for God to be real in me. I pray if God had the grace to use David like he did, maybe he could still take me in.
So thank you bono. Thank you for the introspection. Thank you for sining this song over my life for the thousandth time but allowing it to feel like the first. The action point for this blog is ask yourself…what is it that you still have not been able to find that you are looking for?
Life is short. The more and more I live the more I realize that life is a vapor. I love life. The best part of life is relationships. Relationships are the heartbeat of life. I am blessed to have great relationships.
This morning I was talking with some friends about some really deep stuff and Keisha (who has an awesome blog of her own) said: “Sometimes I tend to be a little bit vain.” At that moment. I said…wait, stop. That was awesome. Write that down. That is your blog for today. We all stopped. We laughed. We took a sentence out of the air, captured it, framed it, and formed a memory out of it. We will never forget the day we sat at that table and the 4 of us broke out laughing in the middle of really deep thoughts over that sentence.
How important it is to capture the moments in your life. Great things don’t always let you know they are coming, they just appear. When your not looking for your chances in your world to maximize the moments and make memories you are not living life to the fullness it was created to be lived. I have said before I have a bunch of great friends and family. It is in these relationships that I find all the moments that create the scrapbook of life that we will all look back on one day and say…wow, those are the best memories we could have.
What moments have you allowed to slip away and not make into memories? Tomorrow is today…go make some memories, even if you have to make them out of nothing! This thought makes me very emotional. Thanks for reading my blog. Thanks for being my friends. Thanks for the moments. Thanks for the memories. Here is to a lifetime more even if we never are able to see each other again, we still have that time…that morning…that look…that smell…that sound, and I am thankful for all of them…and YOU. Be Great.
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