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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?
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!
If you want to read one of the most real blogs on the internet, check out my man Jay. I love this guy. He is a hero.
Today I was talking to a friend about a church plant. They are in the planning stages. We talked about outreach and the power that outreach has. In the church world, your biggest most effective form of marketing, other than word of mouth, is outreach. Outreach can create buzz. But bigger and more important than that, outreach creates the opportunity to be more like Jesus. Jesus never sat in the synagogue and talked to all the christians about how the world would be changed. He went out and visited with the sick, those with nothing, the sinners. Jesus loved sinners, he lived for sinners, he surrounded himself with sinners. In our culture today we get into Christian bubbles and never find that place where we can really change culture. In his book, “On The Move”, Bono states an amazing fact. Go to where hurt is, where the poor live, and that is where you will find God. We live in such a selfish society that we become consumed with US more often than with HIM or THEM. It is sad, but this is true, and it is true in my life. I have become more aware of how I live lately. I am now looking for opportunities to share the love of God with those who have no peace. I am trying to pray more for people I don’t even know. In a song from his new album, Israel states, “God, break my heart for the things that break your heart.” As much as this hurts, I want God to do this with me. Lets go change the world, 1 life at a time.
I usually never simply refer to a post on my blog, however, this one demands a nod. My man Jay just posted a great short on his blog about Worship. Go check it out. Very powerful stuff. I have touted his praises in the past for being one of the most vulnerable and authentic people I know. I love this guy. He is real in a world full of fake. Enjoy.
So I have been having an ongoing conversation with a friend about the difference between Sauls and Fathers. My friend told me that when he or his friends usually find a church that fathers really well it is usually at the max 500 people. However, when they visit bigger churches they see more of a Saul then a father. This has aroused a ton of questions for me. Why does my generation gravitate towards Sauls? Why do we choose a Saul over a Father? Here is what we have come up with through conversation. People buy into a Saul because they lack vision of their own. Additionally, this is birthed out being lazy. We would rather assume the vision of someone else than have to fight for our own vision. Sauls love God, and they are after the things of God, most of the time, but they are about THEIR vision and less about helping to achieve the vision of those around them. Also, the bible says you have many tutors but you have not many fathers. David had only God as a father, Saul could have fathered David, but he was to worried about his kingdom, and in the process he even lost part of his own relationship and trust from his own son, Jonathan.Part of the reason for the lack of fathering is people do not want to be fathered or they do not know how to be a father. Are you looking for a spiritual father or are you falling victim to the vision of a Saul? God has created you to have vision. God has a vision for you. Vision costs. Vision hurts. Vision is difficult. But you have to find your vision. “Where there is no vision my people will parish.” Vision is birthed out of an intimate relationship with God. So much of my generation and the next generation are to lazy to get in his presence and find OUR vision. Also, our attraction to a Saul is our desire to have a less intimate relationship with people which makes it easier to skate around our issues, not have discipline in our lives, and also, honestly, is just an easy way out. Now for the disclaimer, I don’t think that all big churches are Saul driven. I am still working through what all these means and how you identify a Saul or a Father. It is a process and I am sure there are some AMAZING spiritual fathers our there that pastor churches over 500 people. This is new revelation to me and I am going to keep studying it till I get it figured out. Welcome to the journey.
More than meets the eye…and indeed it was. 2 and a half hours. Amazing special effects. A great trip down memory lane, and 3 very quotable lines that impacted me today:
- Upon being confronted by the Transformers for the first time, Sam looks at Mikhila and says: “50 years from now don’t you want to say you had the guts to get in the car?” What are you on the verge of NOT doing that 50 years from now you will wish you did? I know 3 things in my life right now that I have to make that decision regarding.
- “Is it fear or courage that compels you?” … uh, there you have it. What is the premise from which you make decisions, fear or courage? I have not been programed to react to fear, but courage, the ability to do something that can change the world or do something no one has ever done…sign me up.
- At the end of the film, Optimus Prime is sending out a call to all the undercover autobots in the world and he says regarding human life form: “I have witnessed their capacity for courage, and like us, they are more than meets the eye.” As Christians and people who strive to achieve greatness share this hidden DNA.
Are you more than meets the eye?
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