LET FREEDOM RING

Something I have learned:

When you worry, you are basically telling God "I don't believe you love me, and I don't trust you."  Who am I to say something like that to God--the LORD of heaven and earth who created me out of dust?  When we worry about things it is evidence to the fact that we refuse to let go of our baggage:  we might as well say that we would rather be in bondage to all our crap than believe for one second that God has control over our very lives.

Not me.  If I am going to say that I trust God then I am going to mean it.  I can already see several circumstances forming in my life where I can see that my whole attitude is so wonderfully different because I am not worrying.  For once in my life I know what true freedom can be found in Christ when I refuse to worry about things outside my control anyway.

If there is one fundamental thing I have learned is that everyone can experience freedom easily... it only requires us to think clearly and follow through on our actions as Christ-lovers.

Something I told Kellen the other day "If you can't have fun in life, when can you?"

A NEW CREATION

A miracle happened today. Because of some error on my hotmail
account I had several saved messages and drafts become marked as
"unread" which of course drew my attention to them. The messages I
read were incredibly amazing, and I thank God for the blessing of
having this moment in my life.

If anything, the messages themselves paint a poor portrait of who I
am now, but a great portrait of who I used to be. As I read the
messages, it became a sweet reminder to me of how lost and insecure I
was in my past. I used to hate who I was, and saw nothing in me that
was lovable. Reading those emails I would have sent to my girlfriend
at the time make me smile with a special kind of resentment towards
that person that I was. Reading it was equally frustrating because I
sat there thinking "wow, why did I say that!?!" I realize however
how glad I am that I wrote those things, for primarily just being
able to look back today and see a glimpse into who I was.

I am so different now that it surprises me--I am totally a new
person. I owe all my transformation and change to the power of
Christ in my life (and maybe just a little bit to growing up).
Praise God though, in all things, for using the lowest moments of my
life to shape me into the man I am today. Hallelujah.

ENOUGH.

God is all I need. All of him is sufficient for me. At times when I
feel like I have nothing I truly have everything. I need to open my
eyes and remember that God is truly all I need, my hearts desire.
God make me the man you want me to be, and let me be free. Bring on
the adventure!

MY HEART WILL TRUST

There are so many things I don't understand and so many things I find so easy to doubt.  Of all these things the easiest to doubt is myself.  I have such a hard time dealing with things that I make more difficult then they need to be.  If there is anything I have learned to cherish, it is that I have freedom from all this--for Christ's strength becomes perfect in my weakness.  I have learned that trusting God, truly trusting him with everything, is more freeing than anything I have ever experienced.

I give it up, all of it.  I kneel down and offer up all my garbage.

Life is so exciting and wonderfully adventurous.

I am so free.

TOUR DE FORCE

The phrase 'Tour de force' implies an impressive performance or achievement that has been accomplished or managed with great skill.  In French it literally means "feat of strength."

What a great phrase... one that I can only hope will be used to describe how I lived my life.  While some people have their creations of art judged, others their skills as an athlete, my earnest hope is that my performance as a human being whose belief in the motif of love conquering all will be apparent and evident to others as a tour de force.

How will that look?  A man whose life reflects a tour de force will be wise, loving, patient, truth seeking, and live for justice.

WISDOM SETS YOU FREE

If there is anything that I have learned this summer is that life is
full of opportunities to be bound, enslaved, and captured by forces
that seek to sabotage our lives... yet I have been learning that
wisdom sets us free. God's wisdom, which is far superior to the
wisdom of this world, truly sets us free.

God says that those who seek wisdom will be given wisdom abundantly.

Go and rest, and God will teach you how wisdom truly sets you free.
Free from sin, free from lies that Christians still believe today,
free from so many things.

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From now on I will not sit here and censor myself, but rather will
deeply think and consider everything I want to say before I write. I
no longer feel the need to shy away from saying some things while
giving away in others. No more!

WE WERE MEANT FOR AMAZING THINGS

As I sit here on my couch enveloped in music that excites the spirit of optimism that dwells in the innermost core of my soul I find myself engaging in the activity that my heart most often relies upon to get me through the turbulance of life's most daunting tribulations: dreaming--for this act of imagination is paramount to my survival, and for me is tantamount to oxygen. My dreams take me on great adventures through the wildest of what this world has to offer, and as my hope sparks these visions alive with that optomism of which I so often rely upon I realize that we were meant for amazing things... things greater and grander than we realize this life can provide.

There is so much beauty in this world.

In everything.

There is so much beauty in this world just waiting to be discovered. Behind every crack and crinkle of this earth there lies something so beautiful with the power and priviledge to change our lives. There is beauty in every breath we take, in every life that is lived, in everything purposeful and everything purposeless, in the meaningful and the mundane. This life is but a stretch of our infant arms as we prepare ourselves for an eternity bathed in the glorious graces of God's grandest and greatest goal for our lives: to live in glory with him.

How blessed are we? To be given such a gift as our very next breath we take is an amazing and merciful gesture from a saviour who's love is unbound to definition and description. Every second is a pleassure, every moment we forget our mortality is a moment lost to purposeless end. Yet in the midst of such dreary words the blinds over our eyes are removed and the truth is revealed: we are meant for amazing things, and we are living amazingly.

I am not advocating the glorification of humanity or our existance, but instead I boast that God has created us for amazing things... and how foolish of us to think that our lives are pointless, purposeless, and worthless. How incredibly foolish of us to forget that God created us with love and attention.

But again... what beauty. I cannot get over the fact that we live such amazing and beautiful lives, and it puts into perspective another important truth. To whom much is given, much is expected. There is a world of hurting people out there, people who want to open their eyes (note: not people who want to have them pulled open). God wants us to take care of our fellow man.

Hope all this hasn't been too random, I just wanted to share my thoughts and love!