'Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country'.

Thinking

2013-03-10T23:47:00.001-07:00

Just thinking….there are so many things going on in the world today that get us riled up(myself included). What if its ok that we don’t agree with others in any number of areas of life, and others don’t agree with us? Proving somebody wrong and ourselves right only works to divide us further. Love is the only way. Does this mean we compromise our convictions and what is dear to our heart of hearts? No! Honor is celebrating somebody , not trying to be them. I have a lot of opinions and perspectives on things, but if all I care about is making others see my point of view, who’s profiting? Not God, that’s for sure. And am I helping others? Nope. I’m just building an Empire made of clay while tearing down somebody else’s potential to be who God called them to be.
I got really offended and hurt the other night by somebody whom I thought was a friend, but it turned out that their assumptions and standards mean that they interpret my values and where I stand as something that it totally is not. I do not want to ever compromise my values on sexual purity and waiting until marriage. I understand that sexual sin is one of the biggest struggles of humanity and in no way want to pass judgement on others. I have struggled off and on for years with pornography and lusting. In and of myself I can’t defeat it. However, I cannot excuse it or turn it into a slap on the wrist when God seriously wants people to be free from it. There is no life in it, and pretending there is helps nobody. That’s why I got hurt, because somebody says that any guy who does not have sex with women must be gay. Seriously? It hurt because I could tell they were serious and not simply joking like they normally do with me. To each their own I guess. They had a choice. I have a choice. Take offense or choose to love and pray for them. Pray that their values line up with God’s values and for their heart to be broken for what God sees in sexuality, not what society, culture, and human nature sees. One of the biggest ways that born again believers stand out – besides uncompromisingly loving and not judging people – is when we stand for righteousness and especially when it comes to God’s order of sexuality. God’s standard is so much deeper than human flesh’s, and only God’s conviction can free a person to repent and seek His grace and mercy to change their hearts to be like Him and not live by the ways of this fallen world. I wanted to put this person in their place with how right I am and how wicked and selfish and superficial their perspective is. What would that help? Nothing. Would probably stiffen their resolve to see things the way they do, and I’d end up putting them down and condemning them so that I’d feel better. How does that show them God’s love? That line between love and compromise sometimes is not always what we think. There is no formula that works every time. Sometimes it may take a strong rebuke, others times we need to keep our mouths shut. Only God can work in us and through us in those uncomfortable and sometimes humiliating situations when we want to be understood and the other person(s) just aren’t going to. Thank You, God, for Your mercy and patience. And Thank You for grace to love and to know when to stand and when rest.

My job

2013-02-24T22:23:00.001-08:00

Well, my job is currently frustrating the daylights out of me. There are situations that I have been in that my flesh has been screaming 'stop it people!'. What do we do with those situations such as a job where our livelihood is on the line and we are underequipped in the circumstances of the day to handle it. I came in to work with us being short of two items and we ended up running out of over five items tonight. We only had two cooks and one cashier scheduled. I had to prep some meat because we ran out of big hamburgers. I'm thankful that I learned how to do this, but it was at a time which, of course, we were busy and stretched beyond our capacity to possibly handle it. It is not very pleasant and very easy to resent the customers who are actually the reason we have a job because without them we go out of business. How do I get over my own desire to avoid those situations where I know I am vulnerable to being at the mercy of customers' attitudes when we are busy beyond our manpower to possibly handle. And then the issue of things running out of stock or not enough prepped because we can NOT always predict when it will suddenly be busier. All of this to say, I made it through this evening and did not have any major confrontation with upset customers or anything of the like. I just would prefer to business to match our preparedness, especially since it's not my fault that items were under-ordered - but even if it was my fault and I were responsible for that I still would want a break from people pointing fingers at me just like I caught myself wanting to point fingers at my store manager whose shoes I am NOT it. The point then? I can not control everything or other people, so my job is always to love people and do my best in excellence and a desire to lift others up. Attitude creates the weather in our lives, and even when we are handed a bad hand of cards that set us up for possible humiliation, we can choose to either believe we are the victim and expect the world to feel sorry for us or take the high road of humility and thankfulness. I'm not there yet - BUT GOD by His grace can get me there!

Honor

2013-02-12T21:58:00.000-08:00

I am amazed about how much has changed since I first opened this blog up I think back in 2009. Back then, my focus was on the belief that I was stuck under my parents' thumb and that God was basically asking me to leave my parents and never look back. This was only part truth, a lie from the Enemy. There are times where God may require us to undergo opposition from those we love when we breakaway from the norm, and this does include when the 'norm' is good. This was the case. Neither of us were wrong, but who was right did not matter so much as God is right. I took offense because I felt like I was expected to admit I was wrong and the other was right. It felt emasculating and I was so bitter and unforgiving and I never gave my parents a chance. I never saw their heart, I just saw how I felt. My heart was still in the old way of thinking that clings to others for my own self-benefit instead of loving them with open-hands and letting them choose to love me back. being rejected or abandoned was so scary and I did not want to face the hurt that I had been through from my mom and dad's divorce and then my mom and step dad nearly divorce my senior year in high school when I was transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. My maturity severely digressed at that point because the stability that I had was completely pulled out from under me. I lived from that moment on trying to please myself while appeasing my parents so that they wouldn't reject me, kick me out of the house, or abandon me. I loved them, but my focus was more on myself and getting what I could out of them instead of coming underneath them and honoring them from my heart while being my true self. I did not know my true self back then. i just knew a young man who did not have a clue about who he was and was so desperate for a father's affection and was broken-hearted because that had been denied him a second time by one whom he thought was his dad's replacement. Now, all these years later - years of frustration, fear, resentment, confusion, and clinging, God has replaced that fear and demand that my parents approve of me so that I don't have to face rejection with a heart of honor, unconditional love, and desire to truly honor and love my parents with open hands. this is very risky, as truly loving means that at times I may be required to say things or make choices that they do not agree with; and they could leave me. But love does not try to make someone stay. Love loves and keeps on loving even when the other person does not receive it. love builds up, it seeks to find the good in the other person, and desires that the bad be weeded out of them because it cares about them, not because that other person's bad things is making my life inconvenient. Love does not demand that the other person be us, and it does not demand that the other person be where we want them to be so that we will not have to deal with our own fear for them. that's very hard to decipher, because God certainly does not call for passivity in relationship. If there's concern, then it needs to be voice, but not so that we do not have to feel afraid for them. This is very hard in parent-child relationships, especially as the child becomes an adult and begins to establish themselves as separate and equal to their parents. Parents don't want to let go, but sometimes the child doesn't either. Parents want to keep the memories close and hold on for far too long, but so does the child at times. I wanted so bad for things to get better in the home that I grew up in that I found myself believing that I was towing the line between pleasing God and pleasing my parents. It was so confusing, but God did not abandon me. His purposes were for them as well as me. My desire now is not to prove myself right and them wrong, neither is it to 'make them see' my perspective out of desire to see them prosper spiritually. My desire is that I enjoy them for who they are and speak life and honor to them and when there is disagreement I can turn it around into thankfulness for their hearts and honor them while not necessarily doing what they think if God is not leading me that way. Love does not demand that the other agree, it does not seek for status quo so that we do not have to deal with rejection, abandonment, conflict, confrontation, etc. Love does not rejoice when evil triumphs, and it does not allow for relationships to remain unhealthy, because mis-aligned relationships hurt both parties. If my mom, dad, or step-dad ever read this, I am sorry that in years past I did not see you for your desires for good in my life. I was wrong in that, even though I may have been right about what I felt God prompting me to do. You can be completely right, but still be wrong. I am sorry that I wasted so much time trying to defend myself and protect myself from having to face rejection or abandonment and the pain that came with it when I could have been enjoying you and seeing you for your heart, even if we didn't see eye to eye. The summer that I worked at the camp in Colorado, God branded on my heart the perspective of parents who are trying the best they know how to help their children but feel powerless when their child is making decisions that are risky. It is so hard to not want to make the person make our decision, especially when we know we are right. Trying to get those kids to see that keeping their water bottles filled so that they don't dehydrate was so frustrating because they did not see from our perspective. We were responsible for them, but they were just being them. To have a heart that empowers and inspires takes time to revamp and learn to not want to make or 'convince' the other person to do what we think they should out of our own fear. I was humbled and for the first time saw how it was for you. I am grateful that you have and always will care enough to say something, and I believe that if I choose to honor you and be thankful for your involvement in my life even if I don't agree, that a huge burden will no longer be on your shoulders because you will know that your heart is heard and understood by me. that is what people need. When we honor people, especially parents and family, we acknowledge and see them for how God sees them, and we deal with the things that need to change in the relationship out of that heart, not to simply try to maintain status quo to protect ourselves.

Mom-Preneuer Sandi Krakowski Shares Secrets For Content And Writing

2012-04-30T14:13:00.001-07:00

Jacob's Dream

2012-04-27T23:46:00.002-07:00

When Jacob laid on the stone at the place that became know as Bethel, he had a dream in which he saw God standing at the top of a stairway that led from earth to heaven, or rather heaven to earth. This dream was an event that was to mark the rest of his life. He would always remember and take heed in the turbulent years ahead of God's promises for him. God chose Jacob not because he qualified based on the general first-born son tradition(which is not evil in and of itself), nor because God was a respecter of Jacob and not Esau. God chose Jacob because he chose Jacob. Plain and simple. This would have the enmity of Esau towards Jacob during these years, especially after Jacob had cheated Esau out of his birthright by his cunning. Jacob was a wrestler, not in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense. He knew how to find ways to take what was promised to him. The question is, did God endorse this? Did God agree with him cheating Esau? I think not. I seriously do not believe that God intended for Jacob to cheat his brother. After all, God's design for family was unity and love. I believe that God wanted Esau to have a part in Jacob's inheritance. That's just my opinion based on God's heart. God promised to bless Ishmael and his decendents in spite of the fact that the (P)romise was to come through the natural born son of Abraham and Sarah - Isaac. God obviously saw Ishmael, as was confirmed by Hagai's encounter with God where she called Him the God who Sees - even me!
Why did Jacob, then, who was promised the blessing, have to cheat his brother and drive a deeper wedge into his family than was already there just based on the fact that Esau wanted the birthright but was for some reason not promised it? What I am about to converse on is an overview on an inherent belief in God's people that was exemplified in the life of Jacob.
Jacob was a homely young man. He was clean-shaven and not the ruffian that his brother was. I would daresay that most would pick Esau to be the one to carry-on the family inheritance. He had the stout-hearted ability equal to the likes of Richard the Lion-Heart or Samson. Yet God chose Jacob. He said that the older would serve the younger. Kind of like the last shall be first and the first shall be last. Everything about Jacob on the outside showed a lacking of ability to carry-on the dignity to the Promise that his fathers had been given. Esau was the better man on the outside for a job. Yet Jacob, who had been given the promise, still saw the need to deceive and cheat his brother to gain what was rightfully his. Now, I am all for fighting for what is ours - especially when there are those who would seek to steal it. If we did not, then our Nation that we know and love would not be. Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union and Communism would have taken over the world. Or America would be like Canada and Australia - still distinctly tied to the identity of England's royal legacy. America could not have been what it became by continuing as an underling of Britain.
But at what cost do we fight for our inheritance? By cheating our loved ones? By stirring up an already tense situation due to jealousy and lack of understanding as to why one was chosen over the other for the job(NOT loved more - there is a difference - Jacob was chosen for the job, God loved Esau also - just despised him in comparison to the mercy He chose to extend to Jacob). Jacob left home on the run and scared to death. He went to the land where his mother originated from and immediately went to work to try to gain the love of Rachel even if it took 7 years. He went through countless cheatings and deceit from his Uncle Laban, something that was certainly not honorable - especially for the years of service and commitment that Jacob gave to Laban. But what was Jacob after, really? Was he after Rachel? Or was he after something more? Rachel certainly could not fill the void in his heart, and the Promise that God had given Him could not by itself fullfill Jacob either. Jacob came out of the womb trying to grab Esau's heel and pull him back so that HE would be first. He felt that only by being good enough could he obtain what was already his. Being first was his life-mission up to this point. If he could attain the first woman that he loved, Rachel, then he would have arrived. But he was deceived and given the second choice, one that he did not want. The years of understandable strife between the two sisters must have torn Jacob apart. He probably wanted to at least acknowledge Leah since he was stuck with her, but his heart was with Rachel. Yet Leah bore more children than Rachel. His union with Leah was more fruitful than that with Rachel, though he loved Rachel more and viewed Leah as simply a squeeky third-wheel in comparison. All these years Jacob was after one thing. He knew, alright, that God had chosen him. His encounter with God at Bethel was forever branded on his heart. Yet still, there was a part deep inside Jacob that just could not believe that the Promise was enough. I mean, after all, he did come out of Rebekah's womb last. The fact that he could not meet the general guidelines as the first-born haunted him, though he could not put it into words. His every action of striving against his brother and his uncle show a deep-seeded belief that his circumstances at birth disqualified him from God's promise. He felt that he had to fight on his own to grasp onto what was right in front of him.
When his favor with Laban began to depart and it was time to leave, he deceived Laban once again and acquired great wealth. All the way back to the land of his father and brother, Jacob still carried this cunning and craftiness to arrange things so that they would be in his favor. When he heard that Esau was drawing near with an army, he sent his maid-servants and Leah in small bands ahead of him so as to appease Esau in hopes that these actions would imply good-will towards his affronted brother. And finally, when all of his family had gone ahead of him and he was left alone, a Man came and wrestled with him until daybreak. What happened hear was more than simply a physical wrestling matching to see who could pin the other down into submission. Jacob was confronted by the One that he had truly been striving against all this time. Jacob felt that God's simple promise could not be enough to qualify him. He had to be 'good enough'. He had to arrange things so that God's promises for his inheritance would come to pass. All of his wheeling and dealing, striving and deceiving, was driven by this inherent belief that he still had to do something extra on top of God's promise to qualify. He was a victim of circumstance because of being second instead of first, and the cruel world of Esau and Laban would NEVER cooperate with God's promise. This root of unbelief could only be thwarted and confronted by God Himself. All these years Jacob had been striving and refusing to rest in God's promise because he felt that he wasn't worthy of God's best, and others' actions such as Laban appeared to confirm this inherent belief. Yet God, in His mercy, was actually saving Jacob from himself. God already knew that Jacob would struggle with insecurity over his own worth and qualifications due to his circumstances in life. Jacob's hopes to qualify for the Promise by being first instead of last would ruin the Promise that God had given Jacob. Jacob would not appreciate nor hold true endearment towards a fulfilled Promise if he had to earn it by means of self-preservation. It would ruin him. He would always have to be good enough for the next thing. So God allowed Jacob to suffer and travail under intense disappointment and anguish, with a torn family of his own and his childhood home pierced through the heart. God had to get the message across to Jacob that Jacob was fine just as he was, not because he could hit the game-winning home run. That final encounter alone at the banks of the Jabbok was the confrontation with Jacob's destiny. God came to show Jacob His love, yet still Jacob felt that he had to do something first. All God wanted was for Jacob to let go. That, after all, is what true repentance is - letting go and letting God. God finally broke Jacob's hip and forever changed Jacob's view on things. For the first time, Jacob realized that all along the promise was always his and he did not need to cheat his brother or his uncle. Jacob was for the first time at peace with himself. He had laid down, after much struggling and restistance, the need to prove himself to be somebody that he already was.
When Jacob finally encountered Esau, trying to appease or qualify for the love and forgiveness of others was no longer in the picture. Jacob was at peace with himself, and for the first time possibly ever, he realized that he loved his brother Esau, and he was truly sorry for what he had done.

What does this have to do with us, or me, you may ask? Well, we all struggle with this inherent need to be good enough. Our own conciousness of sin combined with feelings of rejections and lack of love combine to feed this monster that rears it's ugly head every time we feel threatened by others' blessings, or imperfect relationships with family and friends, or are about to take that next big step in our careers. Until we come to peace with the fact that God loves us just as we are, and that no matter what is happening in us or around us our value does not change, we will always manifest out of this some form of striving to be good enough. For me, it has been to try to appease people so that I would be on good terms with them. Instead of truly honoring people, I would give lip-service to avoid punishment but my heart would not be in it. This is a form of passive rebellion. Always trying to stay on good terms with people but sacrificing true relationship and working things out with people. We become a house divided against itself when we try to attain what God wants for us by our own crafty ways. Paul was doing this before his encounter with the Lord on the Damascus road. King Saul was doing this when he became torn between obeying God and doing what was best for his people in the long run and folding to the fickle appetites of his people who could not see past their own temporary hunger. He could not accept the fact that if he would just be himself and walk with God that what was best for his people would come forth, and he gave-in to their demands to hoard for themselves what God knew would cause massive repercussions in the years to come. We HAVE to come to that place where we realize that all we are and all of our worth is a gift from God, and we just have to trust Him that He is faithful not only to us, but to others that this effects, such as our family and friends. The Knowledge of Good and Evil is about OUR goodness, trying to be 'good enough'. We already WERE good enough because God said so!! The serpent got Adam and Eve to believe that God was holding out on them and they were on their own now to obtain the Life that God intended for them. This is the nature of sin - self-preservation and the inherent desire to set-up our own system of checks and balances by which we may somehow arrive in the Promised Land - only to find that it's not enough if we do make it by our own means. Everything that we are and are promised is wrapped in the fact that God chose us to bear His image and to cultivate this gratitude of His Sovereign Grace by loving others and fighting for the hearts of others. It is His free gift, and we can do nothing to revoke this, other than walk away from it and try it on our own.
The story of Jacob is the story of all of us. God gives a promise, we get excited, then we start to wonder why everything happening around us seems to be to the contrary. God is after our hearts. He wants us to believe without a doubt that His love is unconditional and the only thing we have to do is choose to believe it and walk in it. He will allow whatever hell on earth that He can without actually killing us to bring to death this inherent root of unbelief. This is what God has been doing with me these last four years. His Promises have seemed unattainable because of circumstances and because of limits in the natural realm such as finances, transportation, dependency on parents, oppositition from family due to their own fear and them not understanding what's going on, etc. In this, however, He has been instilling in me an inherent testimony that He is faithful and He who begun a good work in me will be faithful to complete it, even until the day of Christ Jesus. He has been teaching me that it is not my fault that others have rejected, I am not a victim of divorce, family splits, abuse, and fatherlessness(although they have effected me), and that I can trust that He has my best interest in mind, as well as those I love. A few weeks ago I asked the Lord what His dream was for my family, and His response was 'Jacob, you are my dream for them'. The picture is so much bigger than just me attaining the promise. The picture is me learning to trust that God is a good Father and that He will never leave me nor forsake me and he WILL restore my family no matter how crappy things look right now. My part is to learn to love with His love, trusting Him, forgiving others, and not compromising on His path for my life just because others may temporarily abandon me because their own fears and unbelief get hit by the Wisdom of God that is incomprehensible to mortal men. God is faithful, and He chose me. Jacob's dream, though interepretted by him as his means of arriving and finally being 'good enough', was actually God's dream to use what appeared to be a dashed and hopeless situation with the runt of the litter into the most breathtakingly beautiful story of a promise fulfilled and brothers truly reconciled. Take heart, God's people!! For what appears to be the ruination of God's plans, purposes, and promises for you and your family may actually be the Valley where the necessary heart overhaul is done and the you who God created and wants to come out will be Forged(Valley Forge is where the character that the Colonial American Army under George Washington was developed- and this was what would prepare them for ultimate victory).

Aspirations for the coming summer

2012-04-10T22:40:00.001-07:00

o I'm thinking about the possibilities of what I can do this summer. The things I want to do are travel to Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, the Black Hills, and Colorado as well as visit my dad in Washington State. I also would like to have my own time to write, camp, explore, and just 'be' in the American West(which is what I'm wanting in visiting the previously mentioned places). The logistics issues are funding and a vehicle. The vehicle I am currently driving has over 346,000 miles and is a gas guzzler. It has been faithful, however, I need a more economical one. I also am going to either be able to save up by worker extra hard in Texas for a bit before embarking or finding a unique way to get funding by means of social blogging, travel writing, or just asking for support from people I know for a trip.

The point of the summer that I'm seeing is the possibility of researching into the history of the American West and visiting historical as well as scenic sites and writing about the natural and spiritual history of the regions. I see a picture being painted of complete perspective of what God sees and what the Adversary has done to deceive and attempt to train-wreck what God wanted for the regions and peoples involved. I believe that healing of the land will come through this sort of thing. Also, I want to visit my father and spend some more time with him, letting God heal up our relationship and give me more opportunities to show him the love of God that we all need. God is serious when He says to honor our parents, and I feel His heart on this for me to honor and spend more time with my dad.

Lord, please open the right doors and bring the right connections and bring clarity on what You would have me do! I know that You are faithful and Your plans for me will clearly lay themselves out. Thank You, that I don't have to worry about getting this wrong, because You never fail me!

When it seems God doesn't care

2012-01-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

So many of the posts that I remember posting from years past really show how much unbelief and bitterness I carry. Yes, they were real and I was expressing how I felt and thought about what was going on in my life. So much of it now I realize was me trying to process things through a paradigm of hopelessness and unbelief that God is going to come through for me. How I received(and still struggle to receive things currently) was out of an offended heart and spirit that was trying to cope with a hostile world. God has allowed a lot of suffering that at the time I felt was because I was doing something wrong. The only thing 'wrong' was I need to be conformed to the image of the One who created me, not anybody else's image of me, including my own!! The tension between others'/my own developed image of me and God's image of me create a lot of uncomfortable seasons and things that at the time I am perplexed about. It's a process of that old way of doing things that is centered on self-goodness(the Knowledge of Good & Evil), and trying to be good enough, trying to earn salvation by dead works, being two-faced to gain acceptance, conjuring up spirituality, HAS to die so that HIS nature may flow unobstructed in me. Paul says the problem is not him, it's sin in him. It's about the Knowledge of God, and the journey to work that out in every fabric of our being is where the tension between the old and the new comes to a head. The time for pointing my finger at others and always worrying about the opposition I'm going to have to deal with and the confusing voices that try to come in and dissuade me from the path that is set before me has past. It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me! Lord, let it be so. And thank You for the pain and loving me enough to kill me! He knows that during it that is not the posture of my heart, but oh the sweetness when those walls finally come crashing down and the healing is finally about to seep through.
By the way, I have not arrived by any means!! I struggle with so many things!! Some of the issues that can be read about in earlier posts I still deal with difficulty and frustration, but He's changing how I view and how I carry myself through it. My dreams are going to come into fruition this year!

Deep calls unto deep

2011-09-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

Deep calls unto deep, at the sound of Your waterfalls. I read that verse and that chapter in the Psalms a few weeks ago, and that seems to be the crux of this season I'm in. He is taking me deeper into His love, especially His Father heart, something that I have honestly longed for but not truly trusted in my heart. I have been getting frustrated with myself and my time lately to the point that things that normally are just an irritation bring up an anger that I couldn't explain, and it only made me more frustrated because I began to think about all the things I must not have right in my life or not have been doing right to have brought this on myself. Truthfully, there are probably lots of things that I was sowing that causes these kinds of emotions. The frustration mainly comes from feeling inefficient with my time management or even with what I bring to the table to give away, whether that's interning at ministry school or at my job. It always seems like I get in situation where something gets screwed up that I didn't even mean to screw up or didn't cause at all, and I'm left to try to figure it out. At my job I am always on edge with customers, bracing for a false/unfair accusation, all the while judging them that that's their heart and setting myself up for offense. God has shown me just how much of my relating to people comes from offenses(some very justifiable in that they were blatent sins against me) from my past. I have been offended ALOT by customers who were impatient or not in the mood to have even one little thing inconvenience them, only I find that when I'm a customer I do the exact same thing!! This means that the problem is not so much what's going on in them(which there is, and I cannot endorse that) but what's going on in me. I have a strong habit of self-protection that most of the time I don't even notice it for what it really is. It's born out of fear of rejection and failure, fear that I will fail people once again or myself, fear that I will be hurt because I'm vulnerable to attack due to the fact that I don't do good enough for them.
I first had to recognize my own sin for what it was. I've noticed a pattern that the deepest changes in me have come after some form of repentance. God did not convict me and give me grace to forgive my father and be healed until after I repented of my godless self-preservation schemes and allowed access to my heart 4 years ago. It was no different this time. I had to see what was going on with me, the plank in MY eye. I had no idea that I was being just as critical(although not in open words-passive aggressive) of people as they were of me. I had opened the door to it and no matter how much rebuking my Adversary or worshipping and thanking God and trying to shift my focus in my heart towards Him, that didn't take away the fact that I had chosen in my heart in so many ways to take the bait of offense(sometimes that offense was even towards myself). Satan has had legal access to this part of me and all he has to do is find a person that's had a bad day or themselves have a hard time dealing with conflict with others and he can then pull those strings that he had attached to me and my soul of course is going to immediately react without my spirit ever gettting a chance to process it and take precedence over my reactionary soul. But how deep does the offense go? How much of it is areas that cannot be dealt with by learning to love people in the present? I began writing down people I have held offense or even may think I have held offense against them - a relatively long list, then God tells me that I've held offense against HIM! I've always known that I've not been happy with Him and the way I've felt He has allowed my relations with my family to not be what they could given His restoration capabilities. So I was a park a week ago today writing all this down, and I go back to my truck to leave and I look over to a tennis court that I'm right beside and see a teenage boy playing tennis with his parents - both of them. And I just broke down. When God shines light on something, it goes from us being aware of it but unable to move out from under it to us truly being able to let ourselves off the hook. I have been so hurt and disappointed and even disillusioned because I have not seen my father restored, I have not seen significant changes in my step father that show God working in his life. I don't know why it seems that since I forgave my father it's been my relationship with my step father and the grief over his own retreat into himself that has torn my heart apart more.
Then God has begun to show me the deeper roots of my insecurities and tendencies toward going into self-preservation that always seem to trip me up. There is always that fear underneath all of our self-centered control attempts that we will not be loved. We all have been given by God the need to be accepted and loved unconditionally because He meant for us to bask in His love for us every second of our being, so that means that we've all had probably years of believing and experiencing the exact opposite, and that's just before we came to Jesus!!! Now I still have to deal with that tendency while knowing Him. There is a deep part of me that dose not know how to trust God and His love for me because situations that leave me very vulnerable to criticism, open rebuke, and blame have been happening to me at an increasing level and I feel full-force that fear that is present with that. It's unnerving. I know that the real issue is so much of my heart has never had a place in a father's heart, or experienced it to some degree only to have that dashed at an age that I needed it most. There is a little boy in me just wanting to know if I'm going to be loved even though I don't do everything perfectly and can be messy in my procedures(which is quite often either because i'm feeling self-concious and don't know how to focus or because I need time to process things and feel like i'm expected to do something at a speed or tempo that is not me and fear of rejection for not being good enough comes up). And he wants to know if his dad is going to be okay, and if he did something to cause all the rages and temper tantrums that he witnessed, and he wants to know if his step dad will ever come out of hiding or if God even intends to go find him and rescue him.
This is what I'm going through right now, all the while going through transition during my internship from being an orphan to a son and from a son to a father. God is up to something big, and I welcome all the fire and floods of testing that are coming my way because I know they are exposing things that are hindering intimacy with Him and my ability to truly love myself and others as myself. I have asked Him to make me as vulnerable as He wants to unjust accusation or criticism, not out of a selfish desire to be seen as pious but because I know that this is the only way I will learn to let go of those things and learn to rest in Him and love others with His heart. It's easy to love the hurting and broken that are not doing anything to hurt us, but are helpless and stir compassion in us. That's good and I love that, but loving somebody who berates you because you didn't cooperate with their own flimsy self-preservation system is no easy task, especially since I have a hard time putting down boundaries and being firm with people. The truth is I can't put down boundaries or rebuke somebody if I'm not free to, and the godly, biblical way to deal with conflict that Jesus taught requires an open heart, not a self-defensive, self-justifying one!!
Father, continue saving me from myself! Undo me and break me of my own selfishness and my own lack of trust in You!

Moving on

2010-08-22T23:51:00.000-07:00

It was so good to go back and really think about my testimony. Where my heart has been. I never really sat down and just in my heart recalled all of what has taken place: the sin and iniquity, the shame and void, the disappointments and heartbreaks, the tragedies and triumphs. The human heart undergoes such excruciating circumstances. I want my heart to go through what God has, without Satan's junk that he tries to get me under by putting his spin.
I don't want to look back at what transpired 3-4 years ago, meaning focus on it. By going back over my testimony, for the first time I truly see where my heart was, how I was wrestling against a God who was calling me out of hiding into repentance and restoration. Most importantly, Salvation is both a finished work done by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ AND a process to walk into by faith all that this entails, which is our inheritance. The most significant thing I have to remember is that I am a friend of God and because of Jesus I can walk with my Father in the cool of the day and just be his friend. When I'm really honest with myself, that is still so much theory. Oh, it makes sense theologically considering that Scripture points to sin being what separates us and if the veil was torn, then that separation must have been dealt with. But in my life, I still tend to think more along the screwed-up lines of 'I must be doing something wrong', and I see unreal expectations that I have on God that breed disappointment. It's about knowing Him. What a priviledge to know that Christianity is about more than getting the foundational doctrines down, altough they are significant and heresys lead to deception and false conversions, etc., it is truly about KNOWING our Creator in a real and tangible way. I no longer get irritated about churches that are stuck in the theology or going through the motions stuff. God will deal with that and draw them back to the reality and whatever they've been clinging to will have a new savour because it will be out of Knowing Him! I believe that in the coming years, God is going to deal with the religious and pagan, the Jew and Greek, the Pharissee and the Sorcerer, the slave to sin and the slave to law, on what is really in their hearts and what they really believe about God.

My testimony

2010-08-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

This is a synopsis of how I came to know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. A long journey through despair and darkness, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

So much of my life has been lived out of fear. I don't want to be rejected. I don't want people to think ill of me. I don't want people that I'm not comfortable around to make a pre-conceived judgement. My decisions revolved around appeasing others and trying to earn a faithful, nice guy persona. I never grew in doing this, I only grew hopeless when I thought it wouldn't work out, until the cycle went back around saying if I just buckle down and try harder I will be good enough, I will arrive.

My father at first gave me a legacy to be proud of. We went to baseball games, camping, hiking, and traveled to more places in the Pacific Northwest than most people who have lived there their entire life have been to. I had a place in my father's heart, in spite of only seeing him two months out of the year. When he began taking things out on me at about the age of 9, I thought it was my fault. If I only picked up the right tool, or looked harder to find the tool that was obviously not in the place that he said it was, if I only had spoken up a split second sooner when he wasn't paying attention and hit his dog as we drove from the house to go to town. A legacy of shame, pain, and blame came in, distorting the meaning of being a part of a father's story. I associated things that required responsibility - required something noble of me - as something I could never be. So why try? After all, I was never good enough. There was always something that made him unleash his hot anger and I couldn't fix it. I couldn't fix him. It must have been my fault.

School years centered around being liked by everyone, but never feeling respected or fully valued. I had friends, mind you, but I was always the weak one, almost always the last to be picked for a playground two-below football game. I had no idea back then that a true man lays down his life for others, uses his strength for fight for the hearts of those around him, gives his all because that's who he is. That is who Jesus is! The only real example I had was my grandad, but I felt wronged during those years because I was moved two thousand miles from my father, and my grandparents could not understand why I would be depressed for a month after I would return from my summer visit. They never had to deal with divorced parents.

Warren came in the picture when I was 9, and suddenly there was someone else who saw things in me that made me feel like I had a place in a father's heart. He saw and encouraged my strengths and handled adversity so much differently that my father. He became the father that I never had. Grandad and grandma never understood me and I pointed mostly to narrow-mindedness on their part. I now see that some was just the usual benign generational differences and some was not either parties fault, just difficulty working out differences.

When I reached my junior high/high school years I was scared and felt I was a wimpy nerd. That's what people said about me, and my timidity and the way I looked fed to that image. I never participated in any sport in high school for fear of rejection and humiliation. My face would turn beat-red when my name would be called in class. I had such social anxiety, just waiting to be called out as being an nobody, that I would be in a fear-driven daze when walking down the hall between classes. Junior year was the year when things began to change. I began to forge an identity with Warren at the drag strip. I was proud to be his son, and I could possibly become a great racer myself. During this period, though, he had begun to be more critical of me, feeling that I would only become a man when I learned to take ownership and responsibility. I remind myself that I had shame and blame for an identity from my father. Learning to do so with that as a foundation is like expecting an unregenerate sinner to display God's character. They can't - the foundation is made of sand!

Even after I won the Division 4 High School Championship at the beginning of my senior year, I still felt like I was never good enough. No matter how good I did or what feats I accomplished, that was wiped away by the impossibility of holding the weight of my world the next day. I could never be a man.

Then my mother and Warren became distant and almost divorced. I felt a divorce in my heart from the warm home that I had. Increasingly, I felt that I had to have everything right, yet even when I did try I never felt like it was good enough. Along with this was the guilt of my own lack of interest in being faithful to the chores and tasks of living in a home, and the shame for the constant cycle of rebellion and remorse. I had trouble balancing between friends and home, knowing that family is important, but friends just accepted me and never required any growing up in my life. Increasingly during my last two years of high school and Hill College years, I turned to friends. I had physically matured, and I no longer felt like the wimp. I could breathe into life this macho Jacob that had come out of nowhere. All the while using the excuse that I never got this chance in high school because I largely spent my time looking after my widowed grandmother, and distancing myself from my home even though I lived there. By the time of 2006, I was a popular college guy who knew lots of girls, drove his mom's truck, worked for his step dad, and finally achieved the ideal guy that I wasn't in high school....or so I thought.

Things at home between my mom and step father at least came to a terms of armistice, some reconciliation and agreement to at least tolerate their differences, but there was still a deep tension there. I worked for Warren, but I did my share of taking advantage of my privileged state and used him. I was dishonoring my mom by not being faithful toward helping out with whatever she needed help with around the house. I only did things for them when they specifically asked me to, and quite often I would put things off until they got tired of me hoo-hawing around and said this needs to be done.

By now I had become an ego-tistical young man who was not wanting to go back to the home-body that I was in high school. I had found a story to live in at community college. I still had the same habits as in high school, and the same shame/blame tugging that left me clueless as to how I could change and believing it was hopeless that I could. I was popular with the girls(a plus in the becoming a man arena) as well as gaining muscular fitness(another plus). I did not want to give that up and take up my rightful place in the home that I had - no matter how fragmented Satan had left it, I was still needed there. I saw their constant criticism for things they saw that were hindering me in growing up as them trying to destroy what I had attained and was so secure in. In truth, they saw that my priorities in life were want before need, the typical immature person's paradigm. It was godless, and as friendships that I so effortlessly built began to shake, my identity in this 'popular guy' ego was beginning to sever. This was all firmly in place in 2006.

Then I met a girl named Jennifer at a coffee shop called Java Lounge. I met her through a friend Ross, who remains one of my best friends even though we rarely communicate now. At first, I though it was just a curiosity of Ross' because she had lived in England, and it did not feed my carnivorous desire for friendship based on popularity. As we got too know each other, the Lord became an increasing topic, and I was honestly weirded out that she talked about God as if He was somebody she talked to face to face everyday. I had been comfortable with the 'believe in God and try to be a good person' scheme, so this seemed impossible to me. I began to meet other people that she was connected with such as the Rayburns, the Barnes, her brother Michael, the Giles, Rebecca Fogarty, and eventually, Jennifer's church which was then called Church at the Park. All of these people assumed by their own testimonies that God is actively involved in peoples' lives and can be known like a physical person you see everyday. The Christianity I had assumed to be normal was actually more on the lines of Deism! My mom also during this time would slip me an encouraging tract that she would find, planting seeds the only way a caring mother can, although at the time I didn't understand that I needed God.

All the while, my issues of desiring the approval of man led to an increasing double life in which I could be a genuinely nice, compassionate young man but disconnected and absent when I needed to be. My friends had become my parents and I had virtually disowned my parents in my heart. After all, they couldn't meet my needs for affirmation, and I truly never gave them a chance. I didn't want to face all of the disappointment from years past. It was a self-made attempt to save myself from my shame, sin, and brokenness by living out a hollow self(a fig leaf) in front of those that I was comfortable with while practically disowning those who also needed me and loved me the best way they knew how(including my father).

I worked for Airmasters A/C in Cleburne that summer, and spent about 80% of the time that I was not on the job working out and going out with friends, spending lavishly the money that I made and stubbornly refusing to take heed of my parents' warnings to spend wisely and with purpose. In my mind, they were trying to ruin the best thing that had happened to me. During this time, I went through a trail of infatuations with a series of girls that I felt would be the one to take away all of my problems. The feeling that I got from the attention fed the part of me that wanted to be seen as a valid grown man who could eventually be a good husband and father. My time and money revolved even more around them, as well as my desire to gain notoriety in the church circles. The second casualty in this chain of unrequited emotional attachment told me that she was not the one for me and left it at that. I was very disappointed but I at least cared enough to not let it ruin a friendship. One night shortly afterward I cried out to Jesus to help me in my disappointed, downcast shape, and He came through, taking away those strangling emotional ties that bound me to a person that I didn't know I was looking to to find redemption.

Around this time, my lavish spending caught up with me. As the summer ended and I went back to Hill College and worked only part time, the early fall that came suddenly put me out of work. I had worn out my welcome in my step dad's business the previous spring, as my disinterest in being present in my heart to my step dad and his mission led me to not show up on time to do something that I was supposed to do and went instead to an after-school student government meeting that I was not required to go to - I was only interested in what was going on, not even a member. I actually went because I wanted to be around a girl, the first in my line of casualties. So here I was jobless, going to college, and over $1000 in credit card debt. I was receiving VA benefits through my father's status as a disable vet, but that was not enough to knock any chips in my debt due to other expenses such as cell phone and vehicle upkeep and fuel. My parents enforced an ultimatum that I must cut off all leisure spending including time with friends and my gym membership. The two things that I looked to find an identity as a man were being pulled out from under me. I felt completely isolated and wronged, not seeing that they wanted me to learn to walk out of my situation and overcome. They had bailed me out of overdrafts a few times before, but continuing to do so would only cripple me in the long run. My relationship with the second girl had become a solid friendship, but panic at the thought of losing it due to distance made me cling to it with everything I had. I continued to run up my text messages, and hang out with her at the coffee shop when I needed to be studying or looking for a job.

God has often been called by His children as the Divine Thwarter, where He seems to be set against us in our attempts for find Life outside of Him. It feels like it will kill us, but the only thing it kills is that Knowledge of Good and Evil that is our carnal nature - determined to set up our world with us on the throne and trying to arrange everything in life to our favor. It's just not possible. Eventually, the weight of this burden will leaving us teetering on the edge of a knife. God indeed began to thwart my desires for this friendship that I thought would be a redemption. First through conflict with another friend who began to appear in the picture, as God put them together for a season and I began to feel abandoned. All the while an increasing feeling of hopelessness and disappointment began to take over in it, as it began to not seem to be what I had intended. Then He specifically told her that our relationship was wrong. We needed to halt our contact so that it would not be so self-absorbed. I thought that my life during this time was being compressed in a wine press, being squeezed of everything that I felt meant value to me. I learned to cope with it, and during this time began to develop friendships with godly young men, namely the brothers of the two friends involved. A good start, but I was still completely determined to salvage what little I could hold onto of the identity that was not panning out. I still did not trust my parents, and I refused to see the damage I was doing by being their son in existence but not in action.

I still held my father, and now my step father as well, accountable in my own self-justified eyes as the cause of all of my hurt and lack of meaning in life. Granted, their actions did plant more seeds of an orphan who will never live at home at rest in a father's heart. But I did not know how to loose my grip from them and let God deal with them while choosing to love them where they were. My identity of self-pity was forged on a platform of the verdicts I felt they had cursed me to. During those times of feeling hopeless and isoloated, pornography was an easy escape, offering five minutes of feeling like being 'the man' and quick fix to my need for intimacy while not even requiring the pursuit of a woman. Godless! By November 2006, I finally got a job at Cinemark Cinema 6 and was very successful there, becoming an assistant manager. My money-spending habits had been reigned it, mainly because of the debt that was staring me in the face. In early 2007 I began to develop a relationship with a younger girl who went to my church. She was the younger sister to one of my new friends that I had become close to. After a few months, our fondness developed into mutual attraction and we voiced it to each other. I thought that now, finally, I maybe had found the one. I had not been accustomed to hearing God's voice, really I didn't know how to decipher what He was trying to tell me due to insecurity in His love for me and my walk with Him and those conflicting tormentors that wrapped me up in it. I now know that He told me then that before he would allow me to marry I had to make things right with my parents. I had been exhorted by now countless people to honor and submit to my parents and lay down all of me before God and let Him hold my life together. It was still at this time only an idea to me, not a revelation. I still felt that living right with my parents meant letting go of what was life to me - my egos.

Once again, the Divine Thwarter told this girl that it wasn't right. Period. Bam! Disappointment number 3. I was completely blind-sided by this, and it left me confused about God's intentions for my life and also ashamed that I didn't 'have it together'. After all, if I had it all together, none of this would have happened. I continued to go to church with an increasing sense of God but also an increasing void that left me uncomfortable during sermons and too afraid to fully bring out into the light what was plaguing me. There were numerous times where somebody in church would sense that 'somebody' there needed to lay down unforgiveness, or thought that things in their life were right but really weren't. I was so paranoid that I would be found out as a fraud, naked and ashamed. I clung to my fig leafs with increasing stubbornness. If I had only known then that God was doing to me what He did with Adam and Eve after they fell and immediately ran and hid - crying out 'where are you'?! to them.

It had been decided that I should further my education at the University of North Texas in Denton in the Fall of 2007. I wanted to go mainly to get out of the house. I knew that God has something bigger in my life, but my refusal to come forward kept me pinned down, and my parents wanted me to move forward in my life. They felt college was the best way. No matter where you are, paralysis only feeds to the situation. I left for UNT that fall not knowing how things would go. Was still recovering from the denial that I was in that the third girl was not right for me. I was scared that my lack of spiritual transparency and boldness and weakness towards timidity would lead me to giving in to the peer pressures of the college life. I left, having been filled with the Holy Spirit, but I brought all of my issues with me.

I was resentful towards my mother for wanting me to do what she felt was best for me, and I blamed her and my father for my confusion. My feelings towards the third girl slowly dissipated with distance, and I kept my guard from being absorbed into the Vanity Fair lifestyle that so many young believers get sucked into at college. However, because I did not know for sure if UNT was the place for me, and because I was still running from issues with my parents, I neglected my studies and skipped weeks worth of class, feeling justified that once again I was doing it for my mom, not me. I would come home almost every weekend but spend most of it with friends, staying Sunday nights at a friends house and missing class on Monday. My mom had no idea that I was doing this. As my mom began to ask me how I was doing in school, I tried to play it off with the 'it's fine' white lie. I knew that it was not right, but I still was afraid to come forward and admit that I couldn't make a go at life my own way. I was only willing to be honest when the cards were stacked in my favor. The turning point came one weekend when my mom again asked me how I was doing, and I slipped up and told the partial truth that I was struggling in a math class because I could not understand his Indian accent. This was a frustrating factor, but I rarely went to class and didn't try tutoring to have a chance at passing. My mom continued what I felt was prodding me by voicing that things weren't adding up. If I couldn't understand the instructor, why didn't I get notes from a classmate, or ask to meet with a classmate to help me out. I knew alot of classmates, so I certainly could have. I just didn't care. This was the point were the mountain of a monster that I had built began to reveal itself. My mom would eventually find out that I failed the class anyway at the end of the semester, so there was no faking it saying I was simply struggling. Trying to cover it up and play it off would only serve to cause even more distrust in the long-run than if I just came clean. The following Sunday morning I had already come to a place in my heart that I knew I had to stop making life work, because it obviously wasn't. I told my mom that I probably was going to fail, and that night I went to an Ivan Tait meeting at Eastern Heights church in Cleburne. His selfless service to God gives him a powerful annointing that makes it hard for people who are ready for change in their life from not changing. A huge shift in me took place, and for the first time I began to really desire the things of God in my life like never before. I wanted to be right with Him and with others. The end of that semester, I entered what I call my 'First Love Season' in which I felt His presence and His peace like never before.

During this whole time, the underlying rumblings of anger towards my father had never been dealt with. Everytime I felt like my mom or step dad only found wrong things with me, my immediate anger was towards my father. He had left a lasting imprint of anger, shame, self-reproach, woundedness, and confusion that I did not know how to deal with. Most importantly, it left that orphan heart even more empty and weighed down, feeling that it would never have a home. No matter how hard I tried, I could never be good enough. This contributed directly to my dysfunction in my relationship with my step father, especially after issues in his heart led to his own retreat into shame and hiding. I would totally ignore my dad when he would call, feeling justified that he was trying to exert his influence in my life. The bitterness and slavery to unforgiveness made me feel like it was the only way to deal with the hurt and protect myself from being continually being hurt again. What I did not see is that if left the issue unresolved and made me powerless to deal effectively and lovingly with any influence that he may have been trying to exert over me that would not be healthy to yield to. He actually wants to be a part of my life, but attached to it is this image of me as his own scape-goat to redeem his problems. I am still having difficulty in dealing with this in love, not wanting to crush him or make him feel rejected, but that is beyond what happened during that season. The Holy Spirit finally was able to draw me to repentance of my unforgiveness so He could forgive me. I forgave my father, and for two weeks, whenever I was taking a shower or alone in my dorm room, I grieved(in purity, not self-pity) away years of feeling rejected, never enough, and like I was my father's scape-goat. I even was able for the first time to feel his pain, and I grieved even more to think of the decades of sadness, emptiness, rejection, and orphan heart that he himself has carried. Whatever baggage that we choose to carry, they become entangled in our identity. We treat others like we treat ourselves. No matter how hard we try, that baggage will eventually be projected to those around us. He passed this on to me, not knowing that he was doing this, angry at his own father(who I recently learned lost his father when he was 9 years old, probably a major seed of anger and confusion and loneliness that he passed down to my father and his siblings, thus down to myself and my cousins). We have to choose to break away from this identity and take on our redeemed identity in our true Father, if we just let go!

Since 2007, I have had my returns to the old me, mainly from not knowing how to handle the intense opposition that I felt towards this new identity and the journey I knew God was wanting to take me on. Fear has still effected me in such a way that I have retreated into isolation and a more passive person that refuses to rock the boat by being me and instead choose the more 'safe' status quo. God, however, has proven faithful time and time again to come find me in my hiding places and draw me back out. I recently apologized to my mother and step father for the years of dishonor that I inflicted on them in those teenage/early 20's years. I thought that I should approach my step father for over a year and a half because there was this brick wall that satan came in and errected that caused me to mistrust him accepting my vulnerability. When God re-affirmed this desire to me to approach him this past May-Mother's Day actually-I tarried for a couple of months. Actually it came about when my mom pointed out that I did not need to take my truck to a shop to get the oil changed or checked out when I still had home to bring it to. I felt that I needed to break off from my dependence of my parents, but God convicted me that I was actually not going back home because I was refusing to open up and be vulnerable with my step father out of fear of being disapproved of. In doing so I wasn't even giving him a chance! I had closed off part of myself. I finally told him this past Sunday, and he accepted it and respected me for it. Healing is coming.

I recently left a job that was a trap of working to utter exhaustion, being so run down from having constant expection from more than one people constantly expecting me to do something for them, dumping everything on me. Now, I know that Jesus says that if somebody asks you to go one mile, go two. Notice the wording. He says if somebody asks. He did not say that if somebody manipulates/guilt trips/tries to intimidate you into doing something that you should yield. That creates a slave to expectation - not from God! We can't be free to serve others and meet their needs if we are slavishly being their milk cow! I know this sounds harsh and can be twisted into a selfish justification that can actually be pride, but we must have understanding and disernment. I did not know how to handle the overwhelming weight of expectations of being expected to bottle feed people so that they don't have to do anything. I lived in shame and confusion because I did not know how to turn the other cheek without running from confrontation. Notice that He does not say run from an issue, we're supposed to turn the other cheek, meaning not to try to redeem ourselves out of pride like what most violent men do. We still remain facing the issue, and certainly don't yield and compromise to their demands. This was leaving me confused as to who truly was my supervisor because several people thought that they could just get me to do something because I'm 'nice' and it left me falling behind on the specific job responsibilities that I had. I was already having to deal with having to unload every truck that came in with stock and dropping what I was doing and having more piled on me, then I was always having other people expecting me to do their stuff for them as well. I was running from my issue of timidity and not knowing how to simply say 'no'. I felt like I had to carry the entire weight of the warehouse, and alot of mistakes happened at my hand simply because I could not focus on my job. I felt ashamed for struggling with this and weak that I should want to leave the job for something different. A spirit of intimidation has plagued me for years, trying to make me feel like passivity and conformity is the only path to safety. I was afraid that if I left I wouldn't have an income and would have to move back home. I was also retreating into isolation outside of work because I didn't want to deal with anybody having expectations on me, and I skipped church for six months! That sounds more like a trap than a place where God's grace is in my life! There is no scripture that says 'He leads me to utter exhaustion'! He doesn't promise us a rose garden by any means on this Earth and there are situations that stretch us and may make us feel drained, but that is temporarily. The Enemy's stretching of us is to keep us trapped in fear and intimidation and feeling like there's no way out and we should be ashamed for wanting more out of life. We have to be honest with where our heart is. If the situation cannot be reconciled to where we return to His feet in those circumstances, then we have to walk away. And He told me that despite of the defeats and feeling emasculated and confused, I won because I walked away. I was honest with myself and accepted that this place is not where my heart is and even though it may appear from the outside to be compromise, being honest with yourself and where your heart is in reference to where it could be - where God's grace is completely covering your life - is not compromise.

I have gone through years of fatherlessness, shame, self-protection and justification, and confusion about who I am and my purpose. I don't have an answer on how to deal with confusion in any given situation. We have our pride side of the flesh that refuses self-denial and to give of ourselves, and we have the shame side that compromises and submits to godless expectations and slavish pursuits to win others' approval. I'm learning that if I'm not myself in a given situation, and choose to try to give something that I think will please others, I'm compromising who I am and who God has called me to be. I also know that God expects me to give myself away freely in selfless acts of service to display His unconditional love towards them. Jesus says that whoever seeks to save their life will lose it. I think that this means something much deeper than just trying to save our physical life, or ducking away from martyrdom and persecution. To have Life, we must repent of our fallen nature's desire to redeem ourselves(in order for a seed to be planted, it must first fall to the ground and die), and put our entire meaning and center of identity in God. This does mean denying self, if we lose our life for His sake we will gain it. I think that denying self also means putting to death the self-reproach and false piety that our flesh tends to operate in out of shame in which we get into a state of ascetism(like the old priests that used to try to discipline themselves by torturing their bodies). Die to self does not mean kill yourself. Suicide is just as much looking for a way out as dishonoring somebody to try to cover up our own problems.

Anyways, I believe with that verse, Jesus was stating what the entire human race is trying to do, to save their life- to redeem themselves and find their own way back to Eden. My testimony of how my Daddy came looking for me, asking 'where are you?!' - which is continually growing and molding and changing - is a testament to that.

Thinking

2010-05-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

About to go to sleep, so I will expound more on this at a later time. I was wrong in my perspective on my parents in many ways. They are not trying to wreck my destiny. I left home with unresolved issues, but being away from home has made me realize that the home that I thought I didn't have was there all along. I want my memories of all of my past to be good. If it's hurt, I want to see God with me thru that, as well as the root hurt in the offending party that decieved them into acting like they did. If there's sin, I want to see Gods redemptionand grace that never for a second stopped pursuing me. The only way we can regret is because we run from something and refuse to take that to God, no matter how much it hurts.

Sooooooo

2009-10-31T22:33:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to understand, with understanding, why this season has been so trying, stretching, frustrating, and sometimes angering. I've been asking God for a long time to bring testing into my life, not out of vanity, but because like every young man growing up, we need that to build our character and our confidence. There have been alot of situations mainly at work where I have felt hung out to dry, taken advantage of, used by people, etc. It doesn't help that getting up at 5 every morning and driving 45 miles gets tiring. So my rest is sporadic, and my appetite was going downhill because I had a month-long affair with dipping snuff. I liked it, and wouldn't mind trying it occasionally still, but it was killing my appetite and running me ragged.
I feel anger lots of times because I always seem to mess up at things I do. There's probably some curse on me, whether it's generational, something spoken over me, or something I myself agreed with in my younger years. It's very frustrating when it seems like I always screw things up and am clumsy and inefficient. I've got to face it. It's not about me being good enough. I've got to quit letting it get the best of me and let it go, but before I can let it go, I've got to face it. You can't let something go/put it behind you if you're trying to ignore it or numb yourself to it. There is a difference. I also feel alone quite often, and all this anger because of what I feel has been unfair treatment by my father figures makes me feel resentful towards older men as a whole. Sometimes I just want to break down and cry because this root of fatherlessness is just too much to bear. I really do feel lonely and long for a place in a father's heart. I never was aware of it in years past because I had my mechanisms that my flesh learned to deal with it to pacify the void. The Lord asked me earlier this week 'How can you help others your age who deal with fatherlessness and all that goes with it if you haven't had to walk through it and deal with it'. He's going to resurrect me from this, I just don't know when that will be, probably when I least expect it. Anyway, I'm beginning to see that God really wants me to grow up into the man I was meant to be, and part of that is developing my own strength. I talk alot about survival and how that is the flesh's natural desire. I'm not meaning that this is a survival season for me, Life is always the point. It's what we were made for, and it's what we must have. I do believe that previous generations have become stuck because they have locked their focus on survival - trudge through, suck it up, and keep going. All that is vanity if you're holding yourself up. It leaves no room for God. However, God does not want us to be leaches, vegetables. We must be totally leaning on Him and dependant on Him. That being said, we were meant to be fruitful and to do things and to live. That means there is a part for us to play, not to save ourselves. God wants us to have our part that we are the initiator in. that's one reason why He wants us to work and to sweat for our produce/provision. It's not at all about getting all our ducks lined in a row, but He would be crippling us and our ability to grow if He bottle-fed us our whole lives. that is what this is about. I must learn that I have what it takes and that my God is with me when I succeed and when I mess up. Jason said that the Lord told him that He is going to allow whatever He can to happen in our lives to show us that we are more the conquerers. that seems to me that this is what is happening. It's uncomfortable and is stirring up in me some feelings from my past that I used to feel when I was in these same situations. I'm tired now, so I'm going to go to bed.

It's time

2009-10-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

I've talked about this before, but it's really starting to sync in. It's time for me to move out on my own. I talked with my mom tonight, and she believes it is. My parents have done all that they can for me, and if I stay here I will only continue in my limbo of holding on to home life because it's convenient and comfortable, all the while not growing into the person that I know God is drawing out in me. I feel like I've been smothered yet neglected all at the same time. I've seen other people that I noticed this with.
I am so confused about what to do for my family. They have a heavy responsibility to offer what they can to help me grow and help me to understand the hard lessons they have learned. There are lots of good life lessons that they've learned, and I often underappreciate just their insight or their desire to at least say something. At the same time, I have always felt like they will not see my point of view, and certainly not my spiritual points of view. I've noticed that it has been ingrained in people's mind that you will succeed in life if you are honest, responsible, courteous, and hard-working. All of these are Biblical traits that God wants, but it is self-salvation if you are trying to conjure these things up out of your own strength. Performance is important, but if that is the center of your worldview, then you are trying to save yourself. This may make no sense to some people, but every choice we make we are either trying to arrange for our own version of Eden(whatever that looks like), or we die to self and choose the only Person who can save us from this vanity. I have talked before about how the verse 'Whoever seeks to save their life will lose it', and how this can be broken down into every choice we make, and it is the dividing line between the carnal, self-centered flesh, and the redeemed self, God-centered. Anyway, there has been a constant contention that I have felt since I began being drawn closer to God to 'get my &^%$ together' and grow up.
I believe that their motives are caring and they really are trying to offer what they know, but quite often my spirit-man just cringes when I hear the constant responsibility preaching. I feel the prodding almost to take matters into my own hands to avoid possibly being in an uncomfortable situation such as vehiclelessness, debt, homelessness, etc. All of these are important because they are meant to meet a need, but that cannot be the center-focus, once again. Jesus came that we may have Life, not that we may discipline ourselves more so that life may be easier.
I really am at a standstill as to what to do for some of those I love. I don't know what I can do for my father. He has been shut down, battered, shamed, angered, broken, ridiculed and then thrown that baggage onto anybody whose actions step on his cracked soul, adding even more shame. My step father, I don't know either. I've seen God in him before, but for about 6 years it has just seemed like he checked out. That was my senior year, and my heart has only over the past year recieved Healing from that. I go through cycles of hardening my heart because I'm so sick and tired of feeling ridiculed and looked down on because once again I'm never good enough for somebody(and, of course, a father figure). Then God reminds me that my heart does remember those days when I felt like I finally had a father who could pick up where my father couldn't come through. I do still care, and my heart breaks during these times because of the grief and the void that I feel from this. I don't know how to reach through to him because he is so stiff and biased in his opinions, and when my mom has tried to reach through to him he rejected her or claimed that pointing out an issue is being 'negative'. He won the NHRA Division 4 Bracket Finals last monday, and when I found out I cried. He has waited 25 years, it has been his dream since he start doing recreational drag racing. I used to go to the races with him every weekend, and I felt like I had an identity as his son there. that fizzled out right around the time that I graduated high school. I still go to the races every once in a while, i did especially when I was going to UNT and he would race at Denton. Still, it hurts to go out there sometimes because it reminds me of the days when I had a place of identity that just dropped off the face of the earth. I sometimes wonder if I got into racing because I was so longing to have an identity with which to follow into a father's footsteps. i raced for two years, and the first year I won the NHRA Division 4 High School Championship, and the next I runnered-up. I was somebody that came out of nowhere, but people knew who I was, and they knew whose son I was. I've lost my interest in it over the past several years, mainly because I find more delight in my friends, even if it's just sitting around chilling, thinking of something to talk about. I have not really felt like I've had a complete home in years - half a home. I am loved, cared for, but that caring is often presided by values of staying on top of things(performance-mindsets). I ask God constantly to work out these false and distorted mindsets that have been both ingrained and learned as part of how our carnal nature learns to deal with Paradise lost. sometimes I truthfully wonder if and when it will happen. It just seems the same ole same ole. I know that if I stay here, I will continually be in a see-saw of resenting and rebelling against them due to the contention that the Enemy tries to bring , and then being renewed to the need of honoring and submitting, while not knowing how to keep honoring them when it seems like sometimes it's compromising who I truly am. It's time for me to grow up. Period.
I must move on with my life. I want to travel the country and the world, living the adventures that I know that God has put a longing in my heart since childhood. It comes out in my love for all things Native American, Old Western, anything to do with mountains and exploring. Totally new arena, but I must move forward into this.

This past week was really trying. Work was so frustrating because we were short-handed and i felt tugged 50 different ways all at once. It's bringing up alot of anger because I feel like I'm being fed to the wolves and then if I make a mistake the world will end when we're so swamped that there's hardly any time to think about what we're doing and contributes directly to mistakes. today, though, the Lord blessed me with a break, and I got paid, which relieved me from my financial pinch that I was in the week. I am being stretched, and it does not feel good. I long to continue in my writings for my future books, but I'm so tired when I get home, and feel so withdrawn at home that I go to my room and sleep, but am still exhausted the next morning. I think that the Lord is indeed saying it's time. I want to move in November or December, whichever works out with the Lord and strategically. I am excited and I believe that things will be much better for my relationship with my parents since that pressure to try to show me what they think I need to hear and know won't be on them. I just don't want any problems to be swept under the rug that could be at least somewhat brought out to give God something to work with.
That's all I have for this time.

Thank You

2009-10-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

Five months is really not that long, but for three years I think I've gone maybe a month without seeing you. As we said goodbye tonight, I knew that everything will be ok and this will go by like it's no time at all. A big shift is coming in my life, and my life in Johnson County seems to be coming to a stagnation, as do things lots of times when it's time to go in another direction.

I have to say thank you. Thank you for being there when I would be all alone up at college and it seemed like no one else wanted to take the time to even just say hi. Oftentimes, you would be the only one who would do so. Thank you being sort of a venting source that I can go to and not have any fear of accusation, false assumption or judgement, or slander. I have to admit that this is harder on me emotionally than I thought it would be, you've been like a sister to me that I never had before. I think there is soooo much more life out there for you, and it is time for you to go live it, as it will be for me very soon.

I hope you read this soon, but whenever you do(however soon or later on), you will know that's it's for you, even though others will read this.

Change for me has not always been easy. I never liked leaving my dad at the end of every summer, and I even didn't like leaving my mom for two months out of the summer. This will take some getting used to, but I know that no matter what, we will always be like childhood friends that keep in touch no matter the distance or the time. I look forward to hearing from you and hearing about your travels and adventures. I am so happy that you get to do this, as it is something that I am patiently waiting on the Lord to release me to run on the open road as the modern-day Spiritual Frontiersman that He has put in my heart to be.

I love you like my own sister, and I wish the most abundant Blessings, Peace, and Wholeness and that you will grow into what we all long for, to be more who we were created to be.

2009-10-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

My heart is a well, full of stones, water, mud, bricks. The water flows, but seems to get stopped up right before the wonderfulness sets in. Unclog these stoppages, Lord! I'm tired of becoming hard, resentful, and shallow. I'm tired of judging based on my own selfish need for filling that happens to not be met right when I want it. I miss that season from two years ago! I long to be opened back up to those days when I sat in Your lap and cried and laughed and knew without a doubt that I was delighted in. When I knew that my Daddy cared just for me, and I didn't have to hit the ball perfectly to have Your approval.

I'm weary from feeling like I'm never enough, like I have to hold up my world to hit the mark. I feel so lonely sometimes, like nobody want to understand my sadness, like I should be ashamed for wanting more out of life. Like I should just 'suck it up' and be a man, all the while compromising the very thing that You offer - building and making me into the man that you created me to be! Self-made men are hard, critical, prideful, and performance-minded. I resent middle-aged men and generally shy away from relationships with them for this reason - because I'm afraid that I will once again be invalidated just as my fathers figures have done so before.

I want to help You in rescuing those who have this heart-cry, but before that can happen, I need rescuing myself! Experientially, I mean.

So often, out of resentment, I feel like calling out men who are posers - who hide behind fig-leafs of machoness and sexual conquering and 'get'r'done'-aholics. It's prideful to look at people only through this lens. This leads me to a conclusion - in order to see in the unregenerate what You see, I need to know what You see in me. It's not unhumble to be secure with yourself, if that's what God has validated, redeemed, renewed, rebuilt, and molded - your TRUE self, not the carnal self.

I know that I have posted blogs lately that have been farely downers, but that is what my heart-cry is, and I'm not going to withhold that out of fear that people may assume that I'm rolling around in self-pity. I withhold myself so much because I'm so used to being picked apart because I'm not doing what others think I should or what they would do. Ahhh the frustrations of trying to be what God wants while still having a servant heart towards others while all at the same time trying to not delve in the counterfeit-mode of people-pleasing.

2009-10-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

Starting to enjoy work and the people there. I'm learning to be amused by the little things, but I'm having a difficult time dealing with the constant pressure to come through for customers. I sometimes have to take calls from people who want some oddball part that I have no idea even where to order it from, AND take care of customers that walk in, AND pick up the slack when the warehouse workers are not doing their job. They are quite often swamped, though, so I don't know if I can blame them totally. It's pretty stressful trying to do customer service when you're pulled 5 different ways at once. Then there are the customers that are just plain jerks when we don't have what they want, and pride in me wants to cuss them out and ask them if they 'want some cheese with that whine' while shame makes me cower and not call their bluff(ass-kissing). I'm afraid learning how to stand up for myself and not fold is going to be messy at times for me, but it's a lot better than falling into resentment, self-loathing, and anger because I let somebody get the best of me. Man, it seems like the smallest things set me off sometime. It's busy-busy, go-go, and we certainly can't short the customer. I just don't like how a lot of people twist customer service into customer WORSHIP. It's self-righteous and just plain ridiculous. I'm tired now and through ranting.

Until next time........

Seen

2009-09-30T19:51:00.000-07:00

I long to be seen. Last December as I hid in my room after getting the cold shoulder from someone close I cried out 'Doesn't anybody see me?!'. So much of my actions flow out of that longing. I'm either hiding in shame because I don't want to come out and feel that I'm not good enough again, or I feed on anything that is comfortable and 'safe' until I develop a comfort zone that causes me to become lax and complacent. Why do I so often feel like I have to prove something, like I'm always being tested to see if I'm up to par? The anger that sometimes comes when I feel a weight of biased expectations - people 'shoulding' on me. No matter where it is - work, home, with friends. The shame that cuts me when I see people react to me funny and perceive that they are already making a 'thumbs-down' verdict on me. The self-loathing that usually gets stirred up as I once again feel like I'm in the way or never going to be of any value. This is not God's story of my life, I know, but it has been a constant assault. The seeds that the Enemy has planted are deep-rooted and hard to weed-out. I want to be restored now! But, I know that God is on a different timetable than what I demand. I must trust Him first, and walk forward no matter what I feel. Keep moving, living(not going into survival mode), breathing, eating, sleeping, praising, thanking, honoring, Worshipping, battling, resting, laboring, laughing, grieving, sowing, loving. 'As a man thinks in his heart, so is he' or, 'so he becomes'. I want to believe in my heart of hearts what I know factually! You can think something all day long in your head, but what you are going to live out of is what's in your heart. You can believe God loves you all day thinking about it, and never believe it in your heart! I need that Truth in my inmost being to overtake me. I have had doses, but so much of it is drowned out by the Matrix of trying to live in a hostile world that is completely enslaved to striving(really, almost killing oneself) to get ahead and then indulging to attempt to quench that thirst and vainly starting it all over because it never works - he who seeks to save his life will lose it.

I guess the truth is, I don't think of myself as very valuable most of the time(and that is NOT humility-it's a counterfeit- I cannot stand the religious view on humility that interprets it as what is actually self-loathing).

Behind Bars of Iron and Bronze

2009-09-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

This is Chapter 1 of a story that I've been working on. Hope you enjoy :)

There had never been a time in his life that he was so scared. Running so many years on the open road had left him hard and indifferent towards others. Now this came along - a girl he had met at a bar two months before in Albequerque was pregnant with what she claimed was his child. Always being able to take care of his own immediate want was easy. The anger mixed with fear of what felt like an entirely unfair expectation was slowly boiling within him. Drifters learned to be hard and tough, to show no honest feelings. He had no idea why he was shaking, but as Tracy said goodbye the first thing that came to his mind was what he had always done - run. After all, how can he trust this woman? What if she is just trying to pawn off her need for extra support onto him? He assumed that there had to be other possible candidates for the father of the child. She had insisted, though, that he had been the only man she was in intimate contact with in over a year. Still, until there was proof she had no grounds to put the responsibility on him, he justified in his mind.

Being a traveling man, he could get as far away as possible and find a quiet place to rest his weary soul until that town had had enough of him. He remembered stories about his father, who had done the same thing that he was now doing - run from everything that was plaguing him. How he wished he would randomly meet him, he would give him an earful - and perhaps a fist-full too. His mother's passing right before he took to drifting only made his hatred that much more toxic. Whatever happened, he did not want to be reminded of his abandonment, and he did not want to accept that he was doing the same thing now that his father had done. He would go through cycles of depression and deadness, constantly hearing voices in his head, saying things like 'The apple never falls far from the tree', or 'Everybody's left because they don't want you', or 'You're alone in this world, so you've gotta stiffen up and scrap for what you can get'. Always, the angered simmered down inside from some deep void, and he didn't know how to get rid of it except by alchohol and loose women. The only thing about that was he would wake up in the morning dizzy and still in a bowl of sullenness. This is why he didn't understand his emotional reaction to the news. With all the fights and scrapes he had taken, he thought that his days of being weak and never feeling again were over. As he pulled into a Motel 6 in Cheyenne, he tried to settle himself before going to the front desk. The key he received was to room number 77, so he got his things out of the old Ford that his mother had left him and went into his room exhausted. As he lay down that night, the front desk called him to tell him that somebody from Albequerque had called, but it was not a woman. He returned the call five minutes later. The man on the other line sounded strangely familiar, but Michael wouldn't believe it could be him. The man was the young woman's boss, and he called him to say that it was wrong of him to not face up to the consequences of his actions. After 10 minutes of arguing back and forth, the man on the phone finally tried to settle the issue by saying that he personally knew the boy and his mother when he was younger and would not think that his mother would be proud of a son who followed in his father's footsteps. The young man dropped the phone on the ground, screaming 'Why can't somebody just give me a break?!'. After kicking the TV off of the counter, he picked the phone back up to hear the man on the other line sobbing. He asked why he was so concerned about his own problem. The man, hesitating to get the words out, finally blurted 'Because, I am your father!'

Change

2009-09-21T20:51:00.001-07:00

It seems like everybody that I know that walks with God is going through drastic changes. God is calling me out of the familiar and the comfortable, and He is weaning me off of things that I tend to depend on to quench my thirst. It's a difficult and oftentimes miserable-feeling process, but things almost always get worse before the release and then things get better. Probably going to move into an apartment within the next month, which is a drastic change that I am soooooo ready for. I feel that it's time for me to move out and leave the comfort of having myself provided for by people that are right there.

I've also been a little sad because I have a friend who will be leaving for a while, but what I am more attuned to now is that I am so blessed to have them as a friend and honored to watch them move forward in their Walk. I expect unbelievable reports! I've been sad too that my relationship with my parents is not as deep as I long for it to be, but once again I am grateful that they do care - even if that care is sometimes mixed with fear and reason instead of Faith and Trust.

Jennifer posted a status this morning on Facebook about gratitude, and it really was prophetic in a way because at APEX tonight we talked about thanksgiving and gratitude in the face of these rough seasons which proceed a big change. It really hit the spot, and I wanted to commend you on that!

Anyway, that's all I have this time. Brief but to the point. Latuh

I've heard the Call of the Wild

2009-09-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

Storm clouds a building above the timber line
Lightning flashing across the mountain side
Thunder rolling down the canyons of his mind
Somewhere beyond the Great Divide.

The bugle of the Bull Elk echoes thru the pines
The North wind moans her lonesome lullaby
He hungers for the freedom of an eagle as she glides
Somewhere beyond the Great Divide.

He's heard the call of the wild
He's heard the call of the wild
The mountains callin' to him
Like a mother calls her child
He's heard the call of the wild.

Living in the city, oh it gets to be a grind
Putting in his hours working overtime
Waiting for the day he can leave it all behind
To go somewhere beyond the Great Divide.

He's got to get away from the city for a while
He's got to answer
The call of the wild.

He's heard the call of the wild
He's heard the call of the wild

Courtesy of the late, great Chris LeDoux :)

Abandonment

2009-09-05T20:57:00.001-07:00

So often I get this feeling over very subtle things that I'm not important to anybody, or that I'm not worth their investment of time and honor. I'm not writing this to whine or belly-ache and make excuses like a little kid, I'm just describing what I've been going through. So much of my life I've felt like I'm expected to figure everything out on my own. Since men are made to come through in the clutch, it is natural for humanity to expect that of us. It is a design that even unregenerate people can sense, just like that women were made to be captivating and inviting and nurturing. However, we were not made to do this alone. Like the Scripture 'Less men should boast', we were not designed at all to blaze our trails on our own. It is a part of us to want to make a way for ourselves and blaze our own trails because we were each created with our own individual identity that was intended to reflect God's glory in it's own way. It is unique, and if it doesn't come out, then a part of God's creation is not complete. So much opposition comes against us through shame with this area. However, like the phrase 'Turtle on a fencepost', it was not at all in our makeup to conjure up our own identity by ourselves. In the Old Testament the fathers always gave the name and the inheritance and passed down their blessings. This is a double-edged sword that Satan can obviously use to cripple people if their parents are not whole in their own identity, but nonetheless it shows that God intended for others to play a part in our growth and identity. One defintion of the word father is 'The one who gives meaning'. Fatherlessness creates a disease of lack of identity and direction, so naturally people will rely on their own survival instincts(i.e. their strengths which are chemically driven) to try to stay afloat. One of the reasons why teenagers are sexually maturing so much faster nowadays can be linked to this, because broken families mean less affectionate love being given, so the body starts looking for other ways to get that need met, and sexual oneness is the first place where that feeling of intimacy and adoration can be FELT.
Anyway, at my job I have felt often fed to the wolves to figure things out that I have no clue, and customers of course expect the employees to do so. It makes me feel hung out to dry and expected to somehow conjure something up that's just not there. Like somebody who has never read the Bible and is expected to recite John 3:16(outside of God inspiring that, because I know that that is always possible). I feel just this weight of isolation and loneliness, really orphanage. It brings up alot of anger and frustration because it doesn't seem fair for me to be expected to offer something that's just not there. On the other side, it brings healing because alot of underlying hardness and brokenness finally comes out of hiding so that it can be dealt with. I also have noticed that most of the customers and people in general that I'm dealing with are middle-aged men who put on a bravado of 'self-made man' toughness as their identity. I do not all condone wimpiness in men, because that is what has castrated this country, but posing I do not like either. You can't solve the problem of violent, over-bearing, self-righteous, bigoted men by trying to turn them into geldings! But alot of times people use their strengths as a crutch to barge their way through life, and it is an exalted form of pride, often combined with shame because they feel if they don't, then they will never win the approval of other men, and at a deeper level, their father. It's the difference between William Wallace and Edward the Longshanks in the movie Braveheart. Posing aggressive men are not moving out of a center of knowing who they are, and therefore they will fall on their strength that is driven by testosterone to try to make it through life. This is one reason why many men go through what psychologists call a 'Mid-life crisis'. The physical strength and bravado starts to wane with their testosterone drop, and their is no grounded strength in their soul and spirit because they were relying on outward things for their identity(remember, whoever seeks to save their life will lose it). They were not founded on a Rock, but on sand, just as church bodies that are founded on knowledge and doctrine alone quickly fizzle out because the real need of Intimacy and Relationship with God is not there, and they fall into Phariseeism and worship of the Law instead of the God of the Law.
Oh how I need to be aggressive about pursuing father-figures in my life. It's one of my greatest desires, but also one of my greatest fears, because I have been rejected and downgraded so much by men who still look at life through the lense of outward performance instead of performance flowing out of Truth and realness(if that is a word). Six years ago my mother and step-father almost divorced, and problems began to come up in my step-father's life. He was the person that I looked to to be what my father cannot, and it never came through. In a way it was good because for so long I thought he could do no wrong, but the deep wound from that I still feel to this day. Last fall God orchestrated through a situation where I felt alone and abandoned and left to face the onslaught of this heartless world alone to bring to the surface this gash. A part of me died back then, and I remember after that that I quit caring and started to increasingly turn to comfort and gratification and pleasure. I never slept with any girls or got into drugs or stealing or contraband trading, but my desires and dreams to live my life to it's fullest were shot right through. God has done so much over the past few years, alot dealing with the way my father has treated me and He has helped me to release him from my grip. I just feel right now once more that deep void of loneliness and abandonment that I felt back then. It was almost like in my heart that the other person died, even though they are still here. I so much wish that God would restore in my loved ones' lives the rifts that have taken place in them. It really stands out to me how those rifts drive us to follow our flesh into sin to try to meet those unmet needs. I'm not trying to excuse sin, because God is not mocked and there are consequences, but God is patient, merciful, and certainly understanding of all of our deep cuts. He wants to heal us and bring those places back to life.
I know that God is going to continue to Father me and He will never abandon me, even though in situations it does feel like it. I just have to be honest that for so long I have just wanted to be accepted for who I am through all of my faults and vices. Not to be flattered and excused for wrong living, but to know that I do not have to do something in order to be who God says that I am. Our 'doing' is supposed to flow out of our 'being'. Religion reverses that.
Also, I have a friend who is going to be going off to war very soon, and I have to say that although I have had some pet-peeves about the way he has previously acted towards another friend, I know that his true heart that God sees is good. I pray that God will keep him and bless him and make His Face shine upon him, and that he will grow into the mighty warrior that he was created to be.
I have another friend that is going to be going to England sometime in the not-so-distant future. I really feel like this is the change that she needs, and that if she stays where she is she will not be fulfilled. God has done so much for her and has so much in store. I have always had good friends that are girls, but this one is very dear to me and will always have a special place in my heart :). I don't want to get too mushy, but I can't help but say that. Oh, and to be fair to the previous friend I described, I have had pet-peeves before about her as well, hehe ;). I know that so much of the life that she has longed to live, free of any obligation and binding to be somebody that she's not, is going to come. At the end of next week my contact with her will be severely cut due to phone issues, and although I'm going to miss it and probably will have to deal with withdrawal and readustment, life is going to go on and God's going to bring other people in the coming seasons, so unlike 3 years ago(she knows what I'm talking about) I'm not at all upset about it.
Anyways, that is what I had on my heart to talk about this time. So much more I could expound upon, but so little time.

My life right now

2009-08-12T20:16:00.000-07:00

So much has been and will be happening for me. I can say that about alot of my friends it seems. This is a season of growth and expansion, and being intentional about getting out there and doing what's necessary to get things done. I'm looking as hard as I can to find a job and have so far had two duds. One was a sales job that starts out paying ONLY commission, and the other was going to require me to use my gas-guzzling truck for work - neither are gonna happen! I need a job, but not by trying to hold up my world to do it. I'm feeling stressed about the uncertainty of the situation, not knowing for sure what I'm supposed to do, but I know that I can't get a job by sitting on my butt! You can't grow crops if you don't till the fields and plant the seeds, that's just how things work. I have a peace about the uncertainty though, and what I'm really liking is that God has been very adament on me this season to do difficult things even when I don't feel like it because that's the only way you grow. He's teaching me to both rest and labor. I've conciously made decisions that meant dying to self and sacrificing temporary comfort and gratification, which is an area that I usually give in to. I'm learning how important it is to set my face like flint with an inner resolve to live with intention, purpose, depth, and most of all connection to God.
This weekend I graduate from college! My father is coming down from Washington and we are going to be having a crazy time in Cowtown! lol. I'm having a party this Sunday at my house for my friends. I'm fighting feeling a little disappointed because I'm finding out that alot of my friends can't go to it. Not all, but some. Alot will try to at least make an appearance, but alot of the people that I've sent messages to I haven't even heard from. Most of the excuses I've gotten are good, so I'm not trying to whine because people's worlds don't revolve around me. I'm just somewhat disappointed that not as many people are going to be able to be there as I thought. Otherwise, I think it will be fun and I'm going to be optimistic and appreciate those that can make it.
I hope to get a position at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. There is a possibility this fall, but I'll just have to wait and see.
I really want to get fully connected into what God wants for my life, I just get hasty and antzy about it and have a hard time waiting on the Lord to bring Life. Survival vs. Life. All of our choices can be broken down into the goal being one of those. Survival is the fleshes desire to arrange for it's own counterfeit Eden here and now. It wants to be in control. Life means that you have to die to that - which is what repentance is. Let go, let God. It doesn't mean that you be a sluggard or leach and expect God to drop everything in your lap. We were meant to have an active role in our lives, we just have to choose which path to take - World-control(or our feeble attempts at making life work our own way) or self-control.
Anyway, God has been with me this whole time, and He is ever-gracious to gently correct me or just give me His reassuring peace that the worlds not going to fall apart if I make a mistake. I have a feeling that there's going to come an explosion in my life and things will really start to click, but I don't think it's just yet. And I'm fine with it.
Anyway, I'm not going to deny that I need prayer support and just encouragment and up-lifting in this shifting season. God's calling me to rise up and become the man that I was born to be, leaving behind the image I have of myself through my father and the messages that the Enemy has constantly bombarded my heart through other often well-meaning people in the past. Satan is so heartless, because he uses the ones that we love the best to inflict the deepest wounds(and like I said, often having good meaning), but apparently it works pretty well, because I don't see alot of people out there who are willing to let go and just be real with God. I have a hard time explaining and expressing what I want to say to people(except on paper), and it gets frustrating because I have to turn the other cheek rather than react out of pride when I feel like I'm not understood. It's like trying to get something out that you know is so important to life, but when it comes down to it, you can't put it into words. I feel sometimes like people are never going to understand or even care what is most important to me, so saying anything is just a waste of time. Alot of my problem used to be pride and frustration in the flesh, a control issue that expects the world to be perfect and for nothing to ever be tipped off balance or upset. Another part of the problem is that I never was taught how to stand up for myself. I learned passivity from my father, and the only time that I do anything is when I've had enough but then it's just an explosion. Either way, it's the flesh. I can't blame my father for it, and I don't feel any resentment towards him, but it is a fact that that is what I have picked up both generationally and through observance. It's something I'm going to have to overcome with the Lord's direction. It is so important that men start being men soulfully as well as physically! Being able to bench press 200 pounds means nothing if you can't at least stand up during varying circumstances. Family's, churches, businesses, governments need men who know who they are and are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and take a hit for the sake of others. Alot of young men in my generation are angry and without direction because their fathers either were never there are were only physically there. This leaves them being either lazy, passive men who only do what's easy because anything difficult will expose how incomplete they are, or wrecklessly ambitious men who are always vainly looking for that next badge to attain or fight to win or girl's phone number to get. The only solution to that is obviously God, but He intended for fathers as well as mothers to have an active role in the home. How a father values and gives meaning to his children(both sons and daughters) will affect the way they view God, any other authority figures that they come underneath, and themselves. Our nation's sense of identity has been torn in two mainly because people are growing up with split families, which gets passed down the line, and what's left now is a society that is putting instant-gratification and functionality before values. It's becoming all quantity without any quality. Anyways, that is about all that I have for tonight. Every time I get on here I start thinking of so much to talk about, but alot is too much.

2009-07-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to Michigan in two days to be the best man in my best friend Jake's wedding! It's gonna be awesome. I've never been to that part of the country, so this is a chance to add to the places that I've been to in America. This season is a big transition. I'm finished with college officially and I graduate August 15! I'm thinking about looking into the Museum field because it utilizes so much History. I'm looking to move out of the house soon and to start taking care of myself. It's kinda scary because I've never done this before, but it's exciting! It's going to open wide a door for me to draw closer into the heart of my Father and depend solely on Him as my Daddy and Provider. I'm thinking that there's probably going to be some things I'm going to be doing that make absolutely no sense to human intuition, but that's part of walking with God. He says that if you don't work, you don't eat, but He also says that it's useless to worry about food, shelter, and clothing when he provides meager birds with this! It's a totally new arena that I've never fully felt and it's going to be uncomfortable and probably feel shaky, but it's going to allow me to walk more in His Spirit and less in reasoning my way through everything. It's going to be an adventure of the first order, and I believe that there are probably going to be times where I feel like everything that is me is crumbling and falling apart, but that's just when God comes in a rebuilds and shows me who I truly am! I have a hard time believing what God says about me, it's part of a lens that I've looked at myself through of almost self-loathing that started when I was in grade school. It's ridiculous how much stuff that we accept as a normal part of life, but it's not! It's seeds of wrong thinking about God, ourselves, the condition of the world around us, and the meaning of life that have been constantly planted by the Deceiver to attempt to separate us from Who we were made for and the Life that we were intended for. Survival of the fittest is a picture of this world after the Fall, it was never meant to be that way! That's why it's so crucial to get God's perspective on things, otherwise you're either going to lean towards being a leach on God and not being the person He calls you to be and doing what He calls you to do, or you're going to be like the people at the Tower of Babel and think it's all up to you and vainly try to make things happen. Neither is good. We were meant to play a part in God's plan - just because we are imperfect and erronous does not mean that He has removed that mandate that He gave Adam and Eve. However, we were meant to do things out of resting in Him - that is the whole point of Sabbath-resting in Him(which I believe is a spiritual posture in the New Covenant and has nothing to do with Sunday or Saturday, although resting 1 in 7 days is a good principal to follow). So, there are huge things in store for me! I'm still feeling that I'm going to be writing more and I really want to publish my stuff - not so much for fame and fortune(although that would be really cool), but because I want to show a perspective of the Gospel that shows God's intention redeem our past and restore our identity and draw us into the Adventure and Purpose that He created us for. I always seem to write stories about young men and their typical struggles, and I think that it is so crucial for young men in this time of rampant fatherlessness and masculine identity that is increasingly narrowing into macho-tough guy and sexual conquest, that they begin to understand themselves and the Story they were meant for. Regurgitating a bunch of Bible verses and memorizing stories out of the Bible is not going to cut it - that's trying to each Salvation through works! It's not selfish to want to know who you are and want to be caught up in the life that you were meant for, what's selfish is when people follow after their flesh by putting that as an idol by which they find redemption. The flesh wants to redeem itself it's own way, it wants to be the savior! Well, anyway, I could go on and on about this subject. It's deep and broad and too much to just write a short post about.
This is what is going on in my life right now. I'm connecting more and more with my friends, both old and new, and I've met some new friends who I hope to grow closer to.

Robin Hood

2009-06-20T22:09:00.000-07:00

If there was ever a TV show/series that I would recommend people to watch, it would be BBC's Robin Hood. It is in the third season, and the last episode is next week. I am stoked about the final episode, but after this I don't know where the series can go on. It currently is not showing on BBC America(punks) so you have to find in on the net(i found it on Youtube). The series has sort of a flashy modern dialogue that I like very much, and although it's accuracy to the legend may be a little off, the story is awesome. I don't want to spoil the series to those interested in joining my interest in the show, but the third series started out looking like the screenwriters were trying to figure something out to keep the series moving. This is because they killed off a key person at the end of Series 2(I will go no further in those details), and most fans that I know of have doubted how there could be a series after that. Anyway, I just wanted to say that this is one of the hidden gems of television(except maybe in Britain itself), and I hope that the BBC America will get its act together and start airing season 3. That's enough for this time.
Shalom

Introduction to my blogging

2009-06-16T20:04:00.001-07:00

Well, this is just my first blog, so I'm not going to do anything fancy or share my heart's deepest secrets or vent on some frustration I've had. You can probably expect random, ridiculous stuff starting out, because I'm going to be sporadic on taking time to write stuff. I like to write short stories with an allegorical twang on the characters' struggles and brokenness before the shock of their life comes riding in(I wonder Who that may be). I may also share some of the things that are going on in my life and even in my heart, but there are just some things that belong to my own personal journal that I actually write in, and they are between God and I. This is probably going to be a little messy at first as are all things starting out, but I'm looking forward to diving into blogging!