Sexual Mythology

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. 

The Power of Reality

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. 

We All Wanna Be Loved

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:

1.  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.
2. 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. 

Hosanna and how God moves

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! 

ask and you shall receive

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. 

the practical application of the lesson goes a lil’ something like this…

1. that is the longest title i have ever had.so this past week i have really felt like i have taken a crash course on life, relationships, and how your supposed to do and not do some things.  I am living a great life. I mean really. I have had some rough things go down over the past few months, but I am on a different level of living right now. Life is fun. Im discovering things again. Creativity is coming back….its a good time to be alive. So in all this talk of maximizing life and embracing  relationship and all the stuff that I have been talking about this week, I had a moment today. I was at a birthday party and i started to talk to a friend. I have never had a deep conversation with this person, just the normal stuff you say in passing. But today we ended up at a table with 5 and 6 year olds running all around us and we started to talk. My friend is the grandfather of the birthday boy. He has lived an amazing life. He has so many experiences and wisdom and stories. So he started to tell me. As I am sitting there listening to him it dawned on me…this can make your life richer. Push in. Embrace it. Don’t just talk about depth and all the stuff you have been talking about, maximize this moment and dig in. So I started. I was asking questions, pushing farther in, and I learned some great things.Life is full of nuggets. People want a great life, but they want it to happen rapidly and in giant strokes. The truth is, greatness like anything else, usually develops slow, is built little by little, and is a process. The funny thing is you may work on a great life for 10 years and then on day realize…my life is great while all the people around you are like, this guy got her over night…not knowing you have invested years! So I feel I got 2 great nuggets out of this conversation, not to mention the more important process of becoming better friends with someone:

1.  My friend was about to go into major surgery and he asked god that if God would spare his life through the surgery he would devote his life to loving kids until his time came to go to heaven. 
2. “I don’t really talk about my life very much. I would rather just let people see who I am , not have them hear me tell them who I am.” YIKES! How deep is that. My friend has done some really cool things in life. He has seen success. but his humility was amazing! 

Wisdom comes in unique packages. You may not find it in 3 piece suits or leadership books. Wisdom my come from people you see everyday and don’t know their stories or you have not taken the time to learn about. I learned a lot today, and it was awesome. I look forward to the next chance I will have to learn even more.   

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

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? 

Real Relevance

I read a lot. A lot of what I read is related to what is cool, what helps people communicate, to relevance in culture, society, life. So today it hit me in mid conversation. Relevance has ZERO to do with cool. So often people associate “cool” with “relevant”. Allow me to explain my theory.Relevant will usually be cool. Cool can be far from relevant. I listen to a lot of music…A LOT! Some of the stuff that is REALLY cool, is not very relevant to the rest of my office, let alone the rest of the world. It is cool but not relevant.

In our churches today we are striving for relevance, and we think that relevance is coolness. Relevance really has nothing to do with cool. Relevance has to do with data, outcome, change. If you are relevant to someone you are able to communicate to them. Speak their language, which may or may not be cool, and help them achieve change, a better life, something new. Billy Graham is FAR from cool, but he sure has been extremely relevant over the years. On top of that, a lot of what we think is cool, the world is laughing at us saying, “thanks guys, welcome to 4 years ago, maybe next time.”  

Relevance is fluid. Relevance is unique. Relevance is time sensitive. I am not saying we should not watch culture, trends, life, etc and see what is going on. What I am saying is this: we have to start speaking the native tongue of our culture. Start changing peoples lives in an Emmaus way.  Start pouring into relationships. Effect people at their core, not at there feeler. Feelings fade but your core is going wherever you go. The great communicators in life are relevant even if they are not very cool.

Be Relevant! 

Your Perfect Disaster Is Killing You

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!  

Change

I love when people embrace change. Change is a tough thing. We get comfortable, secure or whatever and when we do we lose site of the very things that we live for. Change stretches you. It makes you step out of your comfort zone and do something that you normally may not like. One of the funniest things about change is that it takes courage. Courage to allow people to talk about you because you are willing to change things. Courage to embrace the new or the unknown. Courage to go against the flow or the expectations that people have set on you. Change does not have to be a massive shift, it can be as simple as just breaking up your routine. Change breeds haters. Last night Jackie and I where talking about how much we have changed since we met, got married, etc. It is funny. Changing things give you a new perception. Change allows you to see who really supports you and who is just using you to make them better. change stretches you, your relationships, and your life. I love change. I love changing things just to change them sometimes. Change breeds success too. Dont be afraid of change. Try some things. Push yourself. Allow yourself to do something that you think wont work, just to see if it does. Change is hard but without some change, you may never find your real destiny.