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I was reading a few months back that God spurs creativity in the faders. A lot of times, in those states where we are fading in and out of sleep, our creativity can actually be at a higher level. For me today has been one of those days. I have been awake since 4 a.m. (off and on). In the fading times since 4 a.m. I have had some big ideas and some crazy thoughts. I love these times. I strive to push myself to believe like a child that ANYTHING is possible. Think about it, as a kid you felt like anything could happen. With an old pillow case you could fly. Animals could talk. The shape of clouds had purpose. Your life had meaning and all your dreams where in vibrant color. Then you start to grow up. As you grow up you are told that certain things just can’t happen. BULL! I want to live a real life where imagination is the currency and hope is the mantra. Why can we not achieve all we dream about in the faders? For those of you who want to enhance your creativity, try this little exercise. Put a note pad, a journal, your blackberry, whatever…next to your bed or where you sleep. Pray God starts to speak to you in the faders, then when he does, document what He is saying…you will have some amazing creative ideas! Let it flow.
I often get asked about creativity. Creativity is organic. You can not turn it off and on like a switch. It comes in waves. At times you feel SUPER creative. Other times, you feel like you can not ingest oxygen. Creativity rarely comes when you expect it and is seldom something you are able to quantify.
I was talking with my friend Jay last night and we where talking about how God has created everyone so amazingly different. If the world was full of “creative people” no one would EVER be on time, ever have order, systems, or function. it would be a fun, colorful abstract world, but everyone would die. On the flip if the world was full of “analytical people” there would be no color, no spur of the moment stuff, no music…life would be like the movie, “Stranger Than Fiction” before Harold Crick starts to experience life. you get the drift. So in talking about how awesome it is that God relates to all kinds of people and he can be analytical and creative all at the same time…amazing.
then I saw this commercial and I started trippin. THIS IS EXACTLY how I feel. This is an amazing representation of how creativity works. Yes Gwen is dope. Yes Gwen is a hottie. Yes Gwen is way creative. NO i do not like HP, i am an apple guy, but props to HP for going out of the box and actually being….CRE8TIVE. With no further ado, here is a 30 second glimpse into Gwens mind, and mine.
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.
An amazing thing has happened. In allowing myself to be more real, more transparent, and more vulnerable, I have allowed God to create an atmosphere where people can grow. Understand I take NO credit for this. Vulnerability is a weakness not a strength in my life. Being real is hard for me to do. I am an introvert. I am someone who internalizes everything. In fact, I tend to allow for my issues to be worked out inside usually before I ever even alert someone there is an issue. In the past by the time someone found out I had a problem, it was already fixed. So to say that being vulnerable or authentic or real or whatever you want to call it is comfortable or easy for me would be a big joke. I had a breakthrough in my life about 2 weeks ago, and an experience a week after that that was like taking spiritual human growth hormones. When that happened I realized I had to start being completely real. This revelation has opened up a side of me that was never before accessed. A few things have happened since then:
- I have a new accountability in my life to keep it real. Jackie (who is now blogging) has really started calling me out on being real. Part of this is probably what prevented me from being real in the past. However, I have learned that an uncomfortable real is better than a comfortable plastic.
- Reality has caused me to be uncomfortable and has caused others around me to be uncomfortable. I think this is kind of good though. Growth causes you to be uncomfortable and thus may challenge your “relationships” and the comfort of people around you.
- Reality has caused me to face and confront some things in my life. A few of these things are pride, insecurity, a man pleasing spirit, the desire to be liked at any cost, etc….just to be real.
- Reality has created a buzz in my life. I have had more comments on this blog about the stuff I have written from my heart in the past few weeks than anything that I have ever written before. I get at least 1 email a day where a person is telling me God has used the mess and confusion and broken places of my life to minister to them. I have even had people walk up to me and tell me…man your blog is helping me so much. Is that not what life is about? Life is about helping people get better….right? It is so amazingly funny to me that we continue to all live a life full of masks and mirrors and do not allow for our things to be the medicine that heals a hurting world. I remember years ago talking with my friend, Jason, and he would recite story after story about how brokenness was the doorway to breakthrough in his life. How the best songs he would write would come from a broken place. How the presence of God could show up the strongest in his brokenness because when he was broken he could not be proud. AMAZING.
So here is the deal. I am doing my best to be real and to be the best I can be. I can not promise I am going to always live up to the standard that I am trying to set in my life. I am human not divine. I need grace and mercy. I know God is doing a lot in my life right now. He is moving. It is probably going to help some people, hurt others, confuse some, including me, and ultimately force me into my purpose. As I stated a few days ago, I am addicted to God’s presence. I fall out of it sometimes and fight like heck to say in it as much as possible. I am human. I need grace and mercy. I can’t wait to see what happens next. I have a new rhythm…its an unforced rhythm of Grace.
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.
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.
I had a great day yesterday. I got to hang with some friends, my kids had their first day of school with no incidents and I had a normal dinner @ home with my family, AWESOME! On top of all this, I had a GREAT conversation through out the day with some people including my super hot wife about how perfection is killing us.
Here is the problem. “Christian culture”, if there even is such a thing it should be torn apart but that is another post, is killing people with false expectations of perfect living. People are walking around carrying wounds, issues, burdens, scares, hurts, desires, sins, etc and are afraid to allow healing to happen. This epidemic does not go just for people in the congregation. Pastors, leaders, helpers, everyone. We set this bar for expectation then when we fail to reach that mysterious and unattainable goal, we hide our faults, we beat ourselves up, we think we are the only ones who screw crap up. This pressure is built around the pretense that we are all living these wonderful lives with nothing wrong. Then when no one is around, we are living in a hell we have created or are battling and trying to hide it. We look at leaders and think they don’t deal with anything, or the crap that we deal with, because they are leaders. we look at peers and think, they have this, that, the other, they must not go through this crap I am going through. We look at those who are attempting to attain our “status” (more bull) and we think they must be dealing with something worse than we are. We slip deeper and deeper into the hole. well guess what…TODAY is your day of emancipation. NO ONE IS PERFECT.
Even the people we put on a “higher level” are screwed up. People have issues. EVERYONE does. I was reading today Billy Graham is in the hospital. He is a great man of God, he has crap in his life too. He has to because the day he does not, is the day he is perfect, which then qualifies him for deity and disqualifies him from humanity. God created us to be humans. He created us knowing we would have faults. He created us to need him. If we are fault free, we have no need for a divine being or force to rule our life.
The frustration we feel is the pressure to live up to the goodness that others are pretending to be achieving. Once we understand this, we will not be as let down when they fail…and they will fail. Failure does not mean the end of the road.
That is problem number 2 with our fake culture. Because everyone is living behind a mask we expect everyone else to meet our masked levels of “goodness”. We can not accept people when they do not meet our expectations and help them to get better. Rather than pushing into their lives and helping them create a culture of success and winning we push them away and reinforce that they are not good enough to be in our little club of fake goodness.
WHAT ARE WE DOING? we need to be helping people. we need to be teaching people that their failure is the foundation for their success. We need to alert people that God’s plan for them is not thrown out the window because they said a committed a sin. God’s plan is bigger than our weak attempts at manipulating people with fake living. God’s plan is a plan of love. God’s plan is a plan of mercy and grace. God did not create you to live under the pressure of man, but to rule over the earth!
Today is a day to be free. Today is a day to find someone who really loves you and will put up with your mistakes. Today is a day to help someone else get better. Do not waste today. Today is the beginning. Choose today to stop matching your life against other people. Start looking to Christ as your benchmark. Understand you are going to fail. Accept Gods mercy and grace over your life and embrace his love for you. His love reaches farther than your sin can take you. Do not settle for an average life. Keep pushing to be a better person, a better friend, a better follower of Christ.
It starts with you. Choose today to pull yourself out of the rat race. If people are not going to love the “real” you, then you will never have a “real” relationship with them. Finally, understand that this does not write you a free pass to sin. There are consequences to sin. But you do have a free pass to live a free life in Christ! Go be better today!
This is hot. LOVE this video. Love the song. Album review to come…
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