Healing...

It wasn't until these last three months I could finally face my past. As I did the large amount of gangrene in my heart and mind presented itself.

When I was a kid things happened that I ignored. Perhaps I cannot share everything but I will say that working through them has taken away things that I thought were deeply rooted in my personality. That in fact were not. Like being an introvert, the fear of man, my hate of phones, my fear of failure, rejection, and relationships. I'm chomping at the bit to tell people, help them heal, and like learn with them. It's been pretty awesome. I'm writing about it but I'm currently rediscovering my masculinity. I am finding I can run without growing weary, I can exercise, I can preach. It's been a pretty awesome time in my life. Alas I am merely expressing, for I cannot put it all into words until after I am done with my healing process. I can say I have a lot to apologize for but even more to not feel sorry about :)

My dearest ferret, I know how much you love the wind and air blowing through your fur. I know you even bought a bike just to join me, but where I am going. You cannot follow. I will be back soon. Until then remember to eat your twizzlers. Do not weep for me, for I will come back a changed and sweaty man. I remember when you were just a little kit. Ride hard in your own backyard, and maybe one day we will head south into the sunset together. 

Always Truly,

The ferret whisperer

Faithfulness

Faithfulness must be followed by more faithfulness, Lou Nicholes wrote about that this week, how being faithful and following God for 20 years doesn't mean you can stop... take a break... get away and stop doing good things. Rather faithfulness in and of itself must remain, continue, and grow.

I am guilty of feeling like I've arrived. Coasting from moment to moment on verses I read far too long ago, sermons I watched too long ago. "Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones." - Proverbs 3:7-8. It's funny how I never "Thought" I was wise in my own eyes. Yet I'm learning that all those days I didn't get up early to read the bible, all those times I didn't memorize scripture, all those times I didn't go to church... I was ultimately taking the first fruits of my life from God. God calls us to absolute dependance on Him. Yet I would enable my laziness by justifying "I can do my quiet time at night, because it doesn't make me any more spiritual to do it in the morning." Well, it's not true for everyone but for me...

IT DOES! I enable my laziness, I enable my selfishness, I let video games and TV cloud me in ways I never should have. I am amazed at how much I let slide. How much I rested my laurels on the past and what I had accomplished before. I'm learning that no matter where we're at. It's not about the spirituality of yesterday, the good camp experience, the job you loved, the place you loved. It's about the now and reaching out to the loving and healing arms of our redeemer Christ. That is teaching me so much.

Kari Jobe - Your my healer

VERSE:
You hold my every moment
You calm my raging seas
You walk with me through fire
and heal all my disease

PRE-CHORUS:
I trust in You
I trust in You

CHORUS:
I believe You're my healer
I believe You are all I need
I believe
I believe You're my portion
I believe You're more than enough for me
Jesus, You're all I need

VERSE:
You hold my every moment
You calm my raging seas
You walk with me through fire
and heal all my disease

PRE-CHORUS:
I trust in You
Lord, I trust in You

CHORUS:
I believe You're my healer
I believe You are all I need
I believe
I believe You're my portion
I believe You're more than enough for me
Jesus, You're all I need

BRIDGE:
Nothing is impossible for You
Nothing is impossible
Nothing is impossible for You
You hold my world in Your hands
Nothing is impossible for You
Nothing is impossible
Nothing is impossible for You
You hold my world in Your hands

CHORUS:
I believe You're my healer
I believe You are all I need
Oh yes You are, yes You are
I believe You're my portion
Lord, I believe You're more than enough for me
Jesus You're all I need
More than enough for me,
Jesus You're all I need
More than enough for me,
Jesus You're all I need

ENDING:
You're my Healer, my Healer

"If then you have been RAISED with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have DIED, and your life is hidden with Christ in God."

-Colossians 3:1-3

ROOTBEER FLOATS!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150998277942437

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1JBSQMkQEo&ob=av2e

Kutless- What Faith Can Do

Everybody falls sometimes
Gotta find the strength to rise
From the ashes
And make a new beginning

Anyone can feel the ache
You think it's more than you can take
But you're stronger
Stronger than you know

Don't you give up now
The sun will soon be shining
You gotta face the clouds
To find the silver lining

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do

It doesn't matter what you've heard
Impossible is not a word
It's just a reason
For someone not to try

Everybody's scared to death
When they decide to take that step
Out on the water
It'll be alright

Life is so much more
Than what your eyes are seeing
You will find your way
If you keep believing

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do

Overcome the odds
You don't have a chance
(That's what faith can do)
When the world says you can't
It'll tell you that you can

I've seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn't ever end
Even when the sky is falling
And I've seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That's what faith can do
That's what faith can do

Even if you fall sometimes
You will have the strength to rise

Hey Jesus, I love You. 

Thank You for today, another day to spend in Your word and knowing You. Sometimes I wonder about those big carpenter arms, I long to be hugged by them. I long to stop by Your shop and smell the wood shavings, laugh and joke, and embrace you my dearest friend. I think sometimes I get so caught up in my own life I forget that deep love You have for me. Thank You Jesus, I think I need You more now than ever, to be real in my life and my heart. To whisk me away in the delight of love and honesty. To be healed by Your majestic hands, to be bound up, to have my pain erased. I wonder what You were like with animals, did the butterfly rest on Your finger? Did plants rejoice when You walked past them? Did trees clap there hands and stones cry out? I guess we are all looking for something, be it miracles, hope, or change. I am so blessed to know You today, I am so blessed to have this filthy heart slowly cleansed. Blows that wound cleanse the heart, and I am now in so need of cleansing. Take me, break me, make me like You. Make me a good man. I love You Christ, I know that tomorrow seems shakier than yesterday, but You are ever beside me. I love You.

Egypt

An old man held my hand tonight. I was walking and he grabbed me, took my hand and kissed it while weeping. I could smell the stale Taiwanese beer on his breath. I saw the cigarette in his hand as he stood outside, eyes watery from too much alcohol and not enough hope. All I could do was listen, hear his story. Eventually I would pray for him, and part ways as he wept and said thank you.

Strange, this man was not Taiwanese. He was Indian, yet had lived in Brazil. I cannot say whether or not the years had been kind to him, yet the wrinkled and weathered lines upon his brow told me that he had not been pleasant to the years. I could see that he had regrets, he had moments of sorrow, and with bottle in his hand he took to white-washing away iniquity the only way some people know how too. 

Here he was, an alien, a foreigner. A stranger on the streets of Taiwan. As I spoke to him he told me no one helps him. That there is no help. Then he told me something strange to hear that night, "Nobody blesses me."

It was a strange thought, my words froze as I thought about how I've got it in with God. A direct line to the King. I am no cupbearer but I have a profound link to the throne of Grace. So I told him simply, I would bless him.

Tears streamed down his face. I could only hug him, pray for him, and tell him there is hope.

I envy not the path that Old man Sam has walked these years. Here he was, a broken, old, foreigner. A stranger in a land not his own.  

I left sad because Sam, well he was probably too liquid up to remember or have a real conversation. He was too broken in that moment for me to win him over with my words. In all my humanity only an act of God could shake away the death on him. It was here that I thought about how the only thing I can do is pray that the Lord would redeem Sam. That the Pharaoh in the life of sam, that great wicked one, Abbadon, would be rebuked and relinquish his grip upon this man.

Exodus always grabs my heart in a way that few passages of scripture do.

Perhaps that is not fair to say. The whole bible is beautiful, meticulously crafted and genuinely powerful.

Yet the last few weeks, Exodus has been prominent in my soul.

A story of strangers, foreigners in the land of Egypt. A people and culture not their own was imposed upon them. I couldn't understand it like I do now.

Other than the song "Walk like an Egyptian" and too many sand-filled Brendan Frasier movies, Egypt is a distant thought to me. Yet it is on the forefront of my mind tonight. I am not old enough to know what it is like to be a slave, a lost denizen of an oppressive culture, or freedomless and restricted. Some would say we have no freedom, some would champion heroes like Ron Paul. I know not what freedom  I have and do not have, but I do know I have never been whipped. I have never been beaten until I worked hard. I mean I really do not know the concept of "Want."

I have wanted an Xbox, I have wanted relationships, I have wanted the new Anberlin CD. I have though, not encountered true physical "Want." And sadly, I am probably worse for it. Although not to play down my life, I have felt a want that has left me thirstier than the dusty tombs of Egypt ever would. Spiritual thirst.

The Hebrews of old were in a land that was different from what they had known. A different language, style of living, and sadly view on the value of human life. Even now I can understand spiritual thirst. There is this suffocating longing for hope, for something different in life. Only in the tension and the craze of serving God do I feel that thirst lesson. Only after spending time in the bible and with other believers does this deep dry part of my heart feel the fresh renewing waves of water. All humans want.

Both the rich American and the poor villager. It's just a part of life, a part of this world. We've all felt that feeling, that strange sickening darkness of the soul where we are unhappy. What is strange is that feeling happens in the midst of squalor or at the height of having all we've ever wanted. It is a symbol, a sign, that there is something deeper. Something spiritual and thirsty in the heart of every human that longs for more than these mortal coils can offer.

So this story of the Exodus, God redeeming His people from the land of Egypt, His thirsty, tired, oppressed people. It resonates with me.

Pyramids, Gold, Kings, mummies. It's so easy to neglect the reality of the Egyptian culture. It worshipped death. It was a culture that memorialized eternity in the ever-shifting yet never changing landscape of sand and wind. The 2D drawings of hieroglyph and mosaic were not carved due to an elementary level craftsmanship. It is a fatal error to believe a people as powerful and wise as to build the pyramids could not draw in the right artistic perspective. No, our western mind likes to draw truth and realism, yet the Egyptians loved the eternal. The 2D picture that showed a specific side, direction, and a flat endless top view. It pointed toward the unending. It pointed toward the flat Egyptian sands were ancient things lay even in the time of Moses. Where 2000 years ago a man approaching the pyramids was not seeing something new, but something alien and unfathomable ancient. To an Egyptian, death was life. Death was everything.

It is here in the culture of death that God came to separate out His people.

Amidst that God sent Moses, a man to go and speak out against the injustice. To set his people free. Many have seen an episode of Simpsons, Rugrats, or whatnot mimicking the very Jewish tale of the ten plagues. It is in this familiar well known story I am learning and seeing the redemptive themes of Christ spread upon the pages of history.

The king of the land was Pharaoh, and he ruled this land. He was the king of death. In Egypt death was supreme. Where eternity was an unending chain of embalming and escaping, an eternal attempt to escape to a better life. A better after-life.

We all long for that, be it in our Egypt or in our daily walk. We all long to escape the "rat race" the daily grind. For a purpose deeper than flipping burgers or programming computers. A purpose deeper than what we do but rather something intrinsically different. We long for a purpose rooted in who we are. A people who worship, a chosen creation of God. The Christian knows that this land is not his own. A stranger, an ambassador. What is so strange is the severe hatred and vile hate of Pharaoh. He longs to crush the people of God. To keep them caged up and locked in. Moses was promised that God would set the Hebrews free and yet when Moses first confronted Pharaoh the work got harder for them!

How disheartening is that? To know that he was told "It'll be aight."

Yet it wasn't. It is here the powerful words of God just have caught my heart. Here were I've meditated these last few weeks.

God said that He will bring the Israelites out with a strong hand with a strong hand He will redeem them that they may know He is the Lord God. The God of Israel.  

Think about that for a moment. I've often thought about Jericho. What would happen if the people of Jericho stopped on the sixth day? Or what would have happened if God worked on the city of Jericho on the first day? If He worked too soon someone could have said "Why you fool! It was an earthquake and the Israelites made the story up as they marched."

Yet the second thought, what if the sixth they called it quits?

God is working. Yet sometimes it is at the crux of his working that we falter and walk away. It is in the most painful moments when we lower our heads to pray and things get worse that we forget God is still working even when the results are not what we expected.

I've often shared my favorite moment in the Psalms where it says "Your way lead through the sea, your footprints were in the water."

That's beautiful. So this week I was reminded once again that it's so easy to forget God is working. To be like the Israelites and cry out toward our redeemer "Why have YOU made my life harder?"

I thought about this, I thought about people in my life I long to tell about Christ. People I watch like Old man Sam, who are hurting, they are a foreigner in a land that they do not know. They long for freedom and find the slavery of vice. They live in a culture of death that worships the decaying rot of this world. I thought about how in the lives of many people we are Moses. We are the proclaimer of Christ, telling the mighty evil one, let my people go. We are vessels of righteousness praying against strongholds and destroying them through the power of prayer. I thought really, about how sometimes I stop praying because it's not working. Or it is even getting worse!

Yet, it is working. I am just on the 4th day or the 5th and impatient. It is cool when we pray for God to rescue someone and the day we pray it happens yet sometimes that is not the best time. God redeems with a strong hand. How often has someone been through the most shocking events and said "I needed that, or else I would be a different person."

So this week I'm thinking a lot about Exodus. I have so many things to share and say, so many things I've learned. I love the word of God.

And tonight I am praying, that God will save His people. That the prince of this world will let that broken man on the streets of Taichung go. And tonight, I believe, God will.