Israel Day 1

               This land seems insignificant and treacherous. Deadly and unforgiving. The desert in the southern area surrounds everything. The population seem to be in poverty with trash strewn about. Metal housing resides on the outskirts of the cities and in the baking sun of the midday, they residents must seek reprieve. The rocks fall away under foot as you move, and one can see the gullies and areas where water must flow during the raining season. It seems so lethal and yet it is here that God brought Abraham. God did not bring him to a place flowing with abundant life. God did not take him to a place flowing with water, giving him a life of ease. He had him go to a place where water had to be dug, pulled from the earth and life had to be fought for. God’s life is not easy. Following him is not a yellow brick road leading to this path of success. Abraham was promised to be a father of all nations and yet everyday life seemed to bring the possibility of death and the breaking of God’s promise and yet Abraham continued to follow. It wasn’t soon. It wasn’t quick. There had to have been times as Abraham was traversing that he had to have wondered what he was doing and why he was following this God that was making life more difficult than it need be. And yet he carried on.

               The site of Arad seemed to rise out of the earth as a reminder of days far gone. The fortified towers stood still tall, challenging those who come upon it to imagine what the fortress may have looked like during their time. Inside the fortress resided the makeshift temple. The sinful place that was built in good faith and for good reason. The motivation was not to sin or to be sinful. It was to erect a place to worship their God and yet, despite the motivation, their worship was still sinful. Walking into the Holy of Holies one finds the place where two stones once stood, one long ago removed. These stones stood as reminders and as images for two gods that were to be worshiped. Yahweh the Lord and the wife that they perceived that He must have. The larger stone was the one directed to the Lord and yet the smaller stone was still worshiped. It may not have been before the Lord or greater than the Lord, but it was still a thing of worship. How often do I find myself doing this? I may place God and Christ in their place as #1 but I still erect the smaller statue to myself. I worship the Lord but in the same place and in the same breath I worship myself. I have no other God before my God, but I still have another god. The god of self. Just like the Israelites of old, the Lord is telling me to be rid of my idols, even the lesser ones. The commandment has transitioned from “though shalt have no other gods before me” to “though shalt have no other gods other than me.”

               My life is in such a transition point. I can either chase my desires and goals, trying to honor God in them even, and yet still worship myself in the worship of Him.

The Beauty of Scars

            So this last week the Lord has really been dealing with me on an issue that I feel many people in our society today deal with and something that I specifically have had to start noticing and working through. Last Sunday I had the opportunity to go see The Greatest Showman (If you have not seen this movie I HIGHLY recommend going) and in one particular scene a woman who has a full beard sings about the scars and issues that have been caused by her predicament and it got me thinking about the scars in my own life. I am coming to realize that we all have scars and we all have baggage that we are carrying around. The baggage can be the result of something small such as the loss of a pet, or a bad relationship all the way up to seeing the death of a loved one or dealing with the effects of war. My question though is if we all have baggage and scars why are we so afraid to show them? Why are we so afraid to let those issues out? We have become a society of people who feel as though they have to be perfect, from the way they look, to the cars they drive, and the houses we live in; all the while attempting to hide the baggage that we carry. Can I be honest with you for a second and tell you something I am coming to realize? You will never, barring a miracle, get rid of your scars and baggage. Now we can learn to hide them and cover them up as many of us have done but we can never get rid of them, not fully anyway. Here’s the kicker though: Why would you want to? Your scars make you who you are. They are a symbol and a reminder of where you have come from and the places that you have been. For me, my scars show up in the form of my ADHD stigma. As a child growing up with that label I began to believe the lies that I wasn’t good enough or that I was too crazy to ever really amount to much and so I began to push myself. I over compensated in everything from workouts to relationships, all in a crazy attempt to prove people wrong. I felt that if I could lift a certain amount of weight then I would be happy and feel worthy, or if I had a beautiful girl on my arm then I was worth something but the reality of the matter is, I was worth something to begin with and so are you. It doesn’t matter what pain and scars your past holds and it doesn’t matter that baggage you may carry, you are no less valuable and no less worthy of love. We must get to a place where we begin embracing our scars and begin loving ourselves despite of the parts that we see as inadequacies. The Bible tells us that we are each beautifully and wonderfully made and that His precious thoughts of us outnumber the grains of sand on the shores. If this is true (and I believe it is) then every time we are critical on ourselves or tell ourselves we are not good enough because of where we have come from then we are saying His thoughts are wrong and that His workmanship isn’t good enough which is NEVER the case. My challenge to you, as well as to myself, is to begin embracing the scars and embracing the unique parts about who you are because you are beautiful not just in spite of the scars but because of them. There is an old proverb that reads “Where there is love, small pox scars are as beautiful as dimples” and with that I say thank you for reading and God Bless.

Wrestling With God

The last 12 months have quite possibly been the hardest of my life. I have been rejected more in that time span then I ever have before (and I wasn’t very good at dealing with rejection to begin with if I’m being honest) from all different angles, whether that be friendships, relationships, or career wise. I have had to fight harder than I have ever had to fight and the person that I seemed to be fighting the most was God. In May a friend of mine came to me explaining that she had a vision about me wrestling with God just like Jacob wrestled with God in the book of Genesis. I took it as I was fighting for my blessing and fighting for the hand of God to touch my life but in all reality I was fighting and wrestling Him in an attempt to get my way. I believed that if I fought long enough and pushed hard enough then I could eventually obtain my will and still fulfill God’s call on my life… just in the image I had created and envisioned. Turns out that doesn’t work so well. I have been beaten to my knees multiple times this last year, and every time I begin to regain my strength and get back up I seem to refuse my lesson and again try to manipulate God in an attempt to gain my way and every time the rug is pulled out and I catch a haymaker to the face. My pride has been damaged and my emotional tank is running on empty. Today I came to the realization that I just don’t have any more fight in me. I don’t have the ability to stand anymore and I don’t have the strength to continue in this futile endeavor of wrestling with God. Jacob came away with a new name, yes, and yes, he may have been giving a blessing but he was also given a physical aliment that would plague him for the rest of his life. Had he just submitted would God have been gracious and granted the blessing anyway without the toil of physical altercation? I honestly don’t know the answer to that but I do know that here in this place, in this time of submission and defeat I sense God moving in ways I haven’t felt since I was in Rwanda. I get the feeling that He is beginning to work out things in me, hurts from my past, things people have said that I have held on to, even my dreams of the future, and is beginning to reshape me in His image. Does it hurt? You bet it does. You can’t have old scars opened up without going through pain. I can’t help but think of the analogy of when a bone has been broken but has healed incorrectly the doctors don’t just let it stay that way. They have to rebreak it so it can heal properly and in my life it seems that is what God is doing. I don’t know where you are at in your walk with Christ. You could be like me and be at the beginning stages of the healing process; maybe you have walked this road I am going down and can relate because you have been there or maybe you are still wrestling with God about whose will and dreams you want to shape your life: His or yours. If you are in the wrestling process I can’t tell you it’s all going to work out because honestly I don’t know how this next season is going to go. All I know is that I don’t have the strength to fight anymore and I am finally going to trust The Word and trust that His ways are better than mine and His will and dreams for my life are greater than anything I could ever dream for myself. I hope that you have found at least some encouragement in this or maybe even a challenge…. Or this could just be the ramblings of an aging man (26 seems to be older every day). Thank you for taking the time to read and God bless.

Trusting God in the Rawness of Life

                     Life has a funny way of never turning out like we plan. No matter how hard we may scheme or try to control the things around us to make them how we desire, something always seems to go wrong. An unexpected death, finances run out, even just a random drop of bad news can completely derail the plans that we devised for ourselves. It’s in these times that we will either “make it or break it” as the saying goes. I have had more moments and times like this than I would care to admit if I am being honest and many times people will come up and say “Hey, it’s ok God is in control” or “Just give it time it will get better, and you will be stronger because of it.” Now while both of these statements are true, it sure doesn’t help when you are going through it. This summer has been extremely difficult for me. Dealing with circumstances that I had no control over and dealing with a loss that I truly did not think would come. I was blindsided in a way that I was completely unprepared for and that blindside seemed to derail my entire life plan. I began to develop a deep sadness within my innermost being. People around me said what they always say when tragedy strikes but those words seemed to just go in one ear and out the other. I didn’t want to hear it and if I am being honest those words made me resentful at times. I didn’t understand why God would put this kind of pain on a person or allow this to take place. I began to have emotions and issues come up that I had laid to rest years ago. The struggle was real… it was REAL. I know I am not the only person who has felt like this and I know that there are a lot of people who feel this way now but I can promise you one thing: It will get better and there is a reason if we will only trust the Lord and remain faithful to Him. People will fail you, circumstances will fail you, but God, in His unfailing love and mercy and grace, will not. He knows the pain, He knows the hurt, He knows the situation even better than you or I do. I can look back at these last 5 months and see God’s hand at work, saving me from a life of disaster and forcing me to deal with heart issues that, if left unchecked, would have plagued my future ministry. I am finding myself praising God more every day for allowing this summer to happen. Yes, it was hard and yes there were times I thought about quitting but those are the moments where the rubber meets the road, where we are refined and made more into the image of Christ. He is faithful, He is just, He is good and worthy of our trust. I know that there are times when those attributes of God seem far off and hard to believe but just hold on and you will see that He truly does have a plan behind it all.