Blogging is easier than journaling. Forgive my incomplete thoughts that are bound to happen.

What you believe to be true is going to directly affect how you act. For example, you believe getting punched in the face hurts, you try to avoid getting hit. That being said, look at the lives of all the Christians you know. Do we really believe Jesus? When Jesus says in Mark 16, "And these signs will accompany those who believe: in My Name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hut them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well." What if our daily lives are totally off track?

Separate thought. I struggled a lot lately with an area of disobedience, in which I spent a long time trying to fight the sin and hate the sin and treat the sin as what it was, when all along the Lord was really saying, "yeah, it happened, but you need to move past it." Some wisdom a friend shared with me last night- "When you focus on your past sin, it is empowered. When you focus on the old man, he is empowered. Only one thing deserves your focus: Jesus, how much He loves you, His holy and perfect will for your life, His Spirit moving within you." Jesus said in Luke 9:62 "no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom." If you're looking back at the crooked lines you've already plowed, you won't be looking forward to plow straight lines.

Where your thought life is, your heart will follow. If you don't discipline your thoughts, "take every thought captive" (2 Corinthians 10:5), your heart will not be focused on Jesus. If your heart is not focused on Jesus, being near to Him and serving Him will be a hard thing to do.

Jesus, I pray that you will put a hunger in my heart for Your Word, that my pursuit will not be half-hearted.

My friend Justin and I dabbled in making a poetry album last fall (in the style of Bradley Hathaway or Levi the Poet). This is the only poem I finished writing and never got to record.

Your face may or may not be a mystery to me,

But someday, maybe someday soon will be the day that I see it truly

And suddenly there will be only you and me and there will be joy. Unspeakable joy.

I thank God for the days we will share.

And someday the nights, too, but not until the two become one flesh.
I will mount my trusty steed and the breastplate of righteousness will gleam in the sun

As I step up to be your knight.

Not that you need saving, the King already took care of that.

He's just appointed me to be your protector.

I will ask the King for His daughter's hand, the hand of the princess,

After all, you'll love Him far more than me anyway.

And if He says, "Wait", wait I shall.

For there is no amount of hardships that could ever outweigh

the glory of the promises that we will make, and the covenant that we will keep.

Before God and man, there will be rejoicing.

We will rejoice in each other and in our King, our intertwined fingers adorned with rings.

Moving forward.

Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.

So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming. You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.

Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.

Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives. Sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts. And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.

Life needs to change. I need to change. I need to be renewed by the transforming of my mind. I need to set my sights on the realities of heaven. I need to take up my sword and destroy everything that would have me destroyed. I need to treat my sin as what it is, and not something I can afford to be patient with. I need to bible up. I need to pray without ceasing. I need to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I need to start caring. I need to start loving. I need to learn to understand what that means. I need to take up my cross daily. And I need the Holy Spirit for any of this to be effective.

I'm ecstatic, and my thoughts are uncontrollably sporadic, but they're all centered around one center: Joy. In plush, ripe tones, joy is rushing through my bones.

Bradley Hathaway - "On Being Joyful And Content."

Beloved, our God is exceedingly good. Infinitely better than anything we deserve. Exponentially more powerful and also more kind than we could ever imagine.

My day today consisted almost entirely of fantastic fellowship. From waking up to Trent and Laurin and they're awesomeness, to church with them at Glad Tidings, to the Open Bible parking lot picnic, to getting baptized again, to sitting at McDonalds for 3 hours, to sitting on a trampoline for almost 2 hours with 3 of my very best friends. And I can honestly say that in all of those things it was us and Him. And that's my favorite.

I forgot where I was going with this blog. I guess I just wanted to encourage you and remind you that our God is good, and faithful.

Update on my last blog: I can't say that I'm at 100% yet, but I'm in pursuit. And so is He. And I've noticed that as I truly seek God's face more, I think my dad is starting to understand that. Something Damien Rice spoke about kind of comes to mind, saying that when our prayer lives become a more focused part of our life, you'll see that the rent gets paid, the kids start acting better, you'll have food on your table, life in general just starts to improve. And I don't mean to say that life seeking God's face is just happy go lucky all the time and we don't have anything to worry about. It's kind of a twofold explanation. 1) As we seek God's heart and pursue a relationship with our Creator, He can guide us more easily to where He wants us, and if you follow your calling, He will provide for you. And 2) I believe that as we really press in and grow closer to God, He helps provide so we don't have to worry about how we're going to make it, so we can focus on Him. I feel like I worded that poorly, but I'm about to crash. So I guess if you need it cleared up let me know and I'll do it when I'm awake.

But I'm gonna wrap this up. Good night, beloved!

If Christ died to erase my sin, and if He rose from the dead to give me victory of it,

then why am I still holding on to it?

I feel like I'm at an impasse, beloved. I know a lot ABOUT Jesus, I'm totally in love with who Jesus is, but I don't know Him personally. I'm not totally sold out in love with Him.

I can spend all day teaching people and witnessing about freedom and the loving God I yearn to serve, but I can't seem to truly empty myself of myself in order to be filled with Him. And I know the answer, but I can't seem to follow through.

"Then He said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be My follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow Me."

-Luke 9:23 (NLT)

I need to cast off the pieces of who I am that hold me back. I believe this is what Christ meant when He said to cut out your eye if it causes you to sin. "Take up your cross daily." I'm trying to grasp that, that every day we must die to who we were.

It was prophesied the night before I moved back to Iowa that:
1) This would be the most painful season of my life, because God would be burning away from the outside, in to remove everything that's going to hold me back, so that I could burn from the inside out and ignite the world, and

2) That the day is coming when I must choose to please either my heavenly Father or my earthly father.

Wow. I believe God revealed to me as I was typing that that in order for the first one to be fulfilled, the second needs to be resolved first.

“If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple."

Luke 14:26 (NLT)

So now is the time that I make my choice. I choose the Almighty. But how to begin this journey is beyond me. I feel like I should start with finding somewhere else to stay, being here and having to answer to my dad can't be helping matters.

Pray for me. Please. The sooner I can start this process the better.

Revival in the Cedar Valley

The last three nights, I saw about 300 middle-high schoolers set ablaze with the Holy Spirit. I saw so many people saved, delivered, healed, and empowered that I really am crazy enough to believe we are at the spearhead of a nation changing movement of kids who aren't afraid to stand up for their God.

Please pray for the students in this area. I saw a small army rise up, and I pray that they will be steadfast, and that they will not lose heart. That they will walk with boldness and band together and step up to the Revival that God has pre-ordained them to lead.

It's no secret we live in dark times. If we can see the broken people in our generation healed and delivered, we will see restoration sweep the nation, and even the world.

Let's press in and make this vision a reality.

08.24.2010

Dream time!

I had a dream last night that my stepmom had died. I don't remember the cause, but I remember it was gruesome, her body had been mangled so it was a closed casket service.

And I remember being at the funeral, kneeling beside the casket and crying out: "God, revive her! Creator, wake her up! I believe you can raise the dead, God, you created her and you can return her to who she was, wake her up, God!"

And as I was crying out, God said, "She can't get out if you don't open the casket." So I opened the casket and she was there, waiting for me to let her out, made completely whole and totally healed.

That's all I remember, but what we should take from it is this:

We can pray all day for the spiritually dead in our lives, but if we don't take the time to give them the doorway into life, nothing will change.

We can pray for the homeless and the hungry to have shelter and food, but if we don't give up some of our food or room in our houses which God has provided us to share with them, it's meaningless.

We can pray for our friends and family to come to know Christ, but if we don't introduce Him to them, if we don't show them who Christ is through our actions, they will never care enough to get to know Him themselves.

We are the body of Christ, and we are called to be His hands and feet.

Someone mentioned to me once the story of when Jesus fed the 5000 with just one boy's lunch, and how once Christ had blessed it and handed it to His disciples, they could have said "this is barely enough for us, we should eat first and they can fend for themselves." But they didn't. Because they shared their small meal with the hungry, thousands of people were satisfied.

Don't get me wrong, praying is powerful. God can move in huge ways through just prayer. But a lot of times we are called and enabled to go out and do His work that we or someone else is praying for.

I believe we are at the spearhead of a huge revival. One that will never stop, my friend had a vision that this revival has no set beginning, and will never have an end. More than ever I've seen kids who no longer care about what everyone thinks about them, as long as they're bringing heaven to earth.

It's time to step up, and step in to destiny.