Gamechanger

A Nation of Christians dependent entirely on self/God motivation
If done right, we'll be the one's known for our love
If done wrong, we'll be less then we already are
It's God's powerplay, only the truly devoted will know Him
While the one's who don't care will do what they do
And fade into loveless obscurity.

He's all in, with us to win

And all we have to do is play.

For Keeps.

I think a very beautiful thing is turning from the ways that you grew up knowing.  Growing out of your natural self is tough, and because of that, faith seems to take your everything.  Which is a blessing I believe, because that is exactly what Jesus calls us to give.  It's very simple, very hard.  Love God with all your heart, soul and mind.  I pray that I devote my all to showing the love that God asks me to show.

We travel as Equals or not at all.

I wonder if God looks at us as equals.  Us and Him I mean.  Not in the sense that we are as strong or powerful or whatever, but truly as images of Him.  Then we got stained, we started taking that image and drawing all over it: putting little curly qued moustaches all over the faces He's given us.  Yea, we have nothing to add to God- but we have the greatest chance to exhibit Him.  To be a true representation of love to others, to help others develop the way they need to.  Not into other images of us but into the image of God they are intended to be.  I wonder if God is really cool with us doing that- if He's just fine with the people who don't choose to look like Him.  He is who He is so He can develop us into who we need to be.  We need to be who we are created to be, so we can help others do the same.  Just remember, we were not created to be sinful- only to have the choice to be.

Poems

Pangs of hunger set in when you see someone smile

They rake into you when you see a couple kiss

The deepest stirring you surely know

Only comes from an empty soul

You long to wear these emotions

In the way you've seen on tv

Real but perceived

You only know you want to feel it too

I want to smile like that

I want to kiss like I mean it

I want real

Cuz I know what I have is not.

Self image

Better than the rest.  All my life, that's what I've been told. I'm better than the rest.  Only through encountering people and getting to know them do I find that it's not true- I'm not better than anyone.  I'm merely the best at being me.  Such a juvenile concept.  It's a shame, even now, I attack my most important thoughts by plugging them as something everyone else already knows.  I've heard people say it that selfish way where they leave others to fend for themselves, and I've heard people say it like it's been a part of them all of their lives.  But do they live it out? No, you can say that what is said is true, but it's not real until you make it that way.  Have I seen someone consciously able to help anyone live their life? I don't think I have.  Friends just make it more bearable.  I certainly take my load onto my own shoulders.  Leave no other burden so that it can be shared.  I do it to myself, so no one sees me as weak as I am.  I don't know if I can say I have friends- only because I don't let them share in my pain.  The people that can help me don't, and I don't want to ask-  be the one to bear my load.

Step beside me as I drag my cross
Take some of the weight on your own
I would never ask it of you

Maybe I should help you

Maybe I'm not the best, maybe I don't know what's weighing on anybody's shoulders.  All that has fallen on mine is rather fuzzy as it is.  Love is a lift, not a bandage for a situation but a journey with no end.  No exceptions, no holding back.  I'm not gonna watch you as you take your cross to your hill.  At least, in the end, I won't want to say I did.

Make it real, please God, make it real.

Best is still what I want, why else would I hate people? Oh I can see the good in them, the good I could never grasp.  Best is what I hate, because it reminds me I'm not.

I'm editing this in, I must have lost my train of thought because I was going to give my example of self image related living.

There was a time when I saw myself as God's White Knight.  Hence my Alias.  I worked at summer camp, I said whatever I felt and my heart was so filled with concern and love and God's Word that I didn't think twice.  I just did.  That was awesome, then I found a million reasons to doubt myself.  My own desires started kicking in, I got too confident.  I thought I was allowed to do whatever I wanted because God was on my side.  I'm glad I was taught I was wrong, life has a way of doing that, you know, destroying you if you're not who you need to be.  Well, I was a White Knight because I believed it- once the belief left, I couldn't maintain it. So, self image I guess is about giving yourself a reason to believe something is true.

Like working out with the belief you'll get thin.  Studying with the belief you'll be smart.  Living for God with the belief you'll find love in Him.  Belief goes beyond what you actually think, it's inspired by what you know as well.  I trust that Christ knows what is best for me.  I'm working on believing it in my heart, with my life, my actions, my future.  Self image; maybe it's about just knowing your taking steps to accomplish what you believe to be true.  Self image; knowing you were made exactly the way you need to in order to do whatever you need to do.  And that's live.

Nothing's Perfect

Whether it's my view of a past experience or whether it's my intent for the day, I plan on it being perfect. I used to feel there was no reason for it not to be.  Might I just say that it's wrong.  To hope above all hope for anything perfect is simply hoping for the impossible.  It's probably more ineffective to strive for that kind of quality in life than to accept life for what it truly is. Which is imperfect.

Gloriously imperfect :)  And this day totally proves it for me.  It's better to allow yourself to be open, to be honest, to pursue truth! than to allow one false notion to enter your mind.  Any piece of information that you do not test but simply accept enters your mind and becomes part of a false foundation.  What you build off of it will never be stable.

So allow yourself to be seen as imperfect, seek the truth knowing full well that you do not embody it but you hope to someday.  Challenge the parts of life you do not understand, and seek to know them for what they are.  It is better for life to be imperfect, imperfect is real.  Though recognize that what is imperfect in you, longs for a change.

Consumption

I've spent a lot of time in my life seeking my own comfort- a stability that I lost ever sense the world started spinning.  I'm constantly seeking it, but never finding anything that lasts the way I want it to.  I'm a sinful man, and in the end (where I've sinned and received my "reward"), I've found life is not about comfort.  Not in the temporary sense at least.  I will compare the sinful to the righteous, the wrong to the right in my life.  Sin's great promise was to bring death.  That's exactly what it did, and what it does still.  What satisfaction does stealing bring over earning?  If you've earned something, no one can ever take that away from you, but what you steal satisfies no eternal longing, only the temporary hunger.  God promises that if we focus on the eternal (Him) He will provide the temporary and He will bless us with eternity. 

I'm not a big fan of impersonally sharing my own sins, but if you want to know, please ask, the greatest redemption story is how how every one of our own personal mistakes is used to help us grow.

Speaking of growing.

Growing a cultivated relationship.  I'm reading Matthew 13, which is the parable of the sower- Jesus talks about a sower sowing seed, and wherever the seed falls it seems, bad stuff always happens to it- except in the good soil.  So, whether it's rocks, or birds, or thorns- the seed that is the Truth is being choked out of our lives.  A cultivated relationship with God is one where we work the soil, God shows us the rocks, the thorns, the birds in our life by showing us where the seed stops growing.  This is where we need to till the soil.  Remove those problems from our own hearts.  It's a parable, not because you can take whatever you want from it, but because if you seek to know it, you will in time.  God cries out for us to seek him past the obstacles of our lives- the lies we have been told, only through treasuring what God says (His Word and the seed from the parable) can we ever find the good soil that it needs to grow in.

I felt lately like I need to organize and develop my thoughts more, so this is a product of that.  I did this for you!

Living

Life is for living- I want to live my life in a way that I actually live my life, follow my desires, interests, goals, basically my heart.  I feel like in a lot of ways, that is what life is, if you suppress yourself, to be someone else or just different, it's not really your life you are living.  I'm going to be honest, I'm interested in stories.  Not stories that are told every day; stories that are almost never told.  The story of who someone's been when they are at their worst- what they've learned, the feelings that have accompanied their own unique actions and thoughts.  How rare is it to hear the story of who someone truly is?  A lot of what I see is people only aligning themselves with the social norm, only opening up about issues that someone normal would have, only having pride in something someone normal would have- dealing with things in the "typical" way. Cliches, they've stuck because they work- but we aren't all just cliches, we are the cliche and then some- where the some is what makes us unique.

Despite the fact that we are not copies of copies, we pretend to be because that's how the world wants us to be seen.  I'm no different, this issue has been a struggle I've seen in myself over the years, I don't express individuality because it seems like it makes me too different from everyone else.  I'm afraid of showing who I truly am, because I feel no one understands, or worse, they'll tell me to be more like them.  Ah, what an awful habit I've picked up there, if someone has an issue I just tell them how to deal with it like I did. Rather then sharing how I dealt with it, I've seen that I want someone to take the steps I took to deal with pain so that I can have my own processes validated, rather than actually believe I could learn something from them.  I just want to say that we are NOT copies of copies. The whole conformist idea goes deeper, everybody conforms sometimes, either to the social norm, or to what has been deemed taboo by that norm.  Our desire for social living often hurts who we are as individuals.  It's the base we all feel comfortable being but then we also forget we are so much more.

I want to learn from other people of their success, of failures, of life and it's shame- we have the discomfort of who we are, we will always have that, but isn't that what drives us to change? Should we change? Or is that discomfort what keeps us from embracing who we are?

Life is not about reservation, it's about finding what is worth running hard after- or just running hard for it nonetheless.  People across the sands of time have frequently found things to chase, but they almost assuredly also find it's end.  At least, from what I've been told. I may talk like I know what age brings, but I haven't done the living it takes to get there.  I run many a fruitless race, but I have yet to commit to the one I know is worth running for. 

You know how when you drive sometimes, and you don't have anywhere to go- you just kind of take random turns and drive slow so you can look around.  That is what I see when I see reservations, no idea where to go so you slow down and try to find something just by looking around.  It can be fun, it can lead you places you never expected to go.  But without a destination in mind, you'll never actually get anywhere too far I feel.

I'm really not as intentional or organized as I could be.  Instead of living life managing the parts of it I do know, I live life to discover the parts of it I don't (I'm reserved for sure).  I'm often led by my feelings, (without direction) they lead me into unfamiliar territory.  Whereas the territory practical life has brought me is too familiar and painful- not to mention boring.  I figure I'd rather live following my feelings and going somewhere I've never been than settling for everything under the sun as it is.

Everything can seem so manageable in practical life, I'd rather strive after the wind.

For now, I think I've scattered the dots, I've followed paths of thought that not many people do.  I've had the intent of getting the bigger picture of my mind.  But, oddly enough, the more that I see, the more I forget the places I started in.  I find I've lost the dots I started with.  So life becomes pretty scattered, now the thoughts I have are based on the big picture, but I kind of forgot where I started.  Trying to connect the dots just leaves me confused.  I wonder if that's how people go crazy- following a trail of thoughts that lead you so far away that where you're at makes sense to you, you just have no idea how you got there.  I have backtracking to do, a real practical life that needs living, and a road that takes me farther into who I can be for God. If I forget who I was, I lose the big picture of who I am.

Sweet tea

Where there are many words, transgression is unavoidable.  It's a Bible verse, trust me.

But how much truth can be revealed!

I don't know how stupid this is, it feels like my few words always seem to have a heart of transgression.  But this transgression is only damaging to my pride, everything else could glorify God but shoot, if my pride is damaged, that's what I take away from the conversation. Albeit no more!  Wherever the center of the conversation is, that is what my thoughts should revolve around- and the center of conversation should not revolve around me (even if it's about me).  It is God who needs to be glorified.  Truth should be the intent of the conversation, truth should be the only point of conversation.  If you say something stupid, please at least let it be in pursuit of what is true.

I'm also going to add, maybe tomorrow when my emotion dries up and I can actually approach it unbiased, I'll add it. Yea.