Late nights with God

I can't think of anything i would trade my late nights with God with. I think God has a very strange brand of wisdom. A few random insights;

to be competent is to be desperate.
to be less is to be whole.
to reserve is to shrink back.

Feeling the weight of LA tonight. But fear is a slap in face. fear is an insult to God. It's faithless, it's cowardliness, it's ridiculous.

I really think my safe zone is humility. There is so much freedom in humility. Humility is completely dependent, it's completely willing, and completely unthreatened. To place yourself in humility is to place yourself as a receiver. And God has alot to give. Anything other than humility has the i-have-arrived-and-your-still-on-your-way attitude. Now that is a dead end, but this is the Word, "but in humility consider others better than yourself". This isn't a put-down, its a reality check saying, 'hey you still have a lot of ground to cover so suck up the pride and take it all in..."

The Struggle

Today was more of a struggle than anything. Tonight my heart echo's something i wrote about a year ago. it may seem a bit depressing, but hang in there;

Things just seem clearer at 3 am. A room filled with nothing but a song too often replayed and the bittersweet sting of uncertainty. Nothing moves here. No commotion, nothing but the sound of refilling lungs and my own scattered thoughts. Nothing pushes and nothing pulls, just pure undiluted life remains; but when the sun rises it means I’ve lost a little bit more.

Everything comes back to the way it was at 3 am. It all becomes surreal, just a little too empty. But nothing is more real than this. This is where all that is left is beating hearts and dreams of everything we won’t believe in tomorrow. But this is it; this is where we were meant to live.

Everything fades at 3 am. No deadlines, no stress, no confusion. There is something significant about following one day into another. To follow an end only to find it’s just another beginning. What beauty, what joy, what emotionless serenity. Please somebody just stop the world at 3 am.

3 am I can deal with. I can not deal with choice and love. I can not deal with God and destiny. I can not deal with comprehension and I certainly cannot deal with the future. 3 am asks no questions. 3 am believes in me. 3 am requires nothing. 3 am lives and let’s live. My heart comes back to itself at 3 am. I love myself at 3 am.

Please somebody just stop the world at 3 am.


The sick thing is that to struggle is to choose to struggle. The Lord revealed that to me tonight. I was talking to God about sin and conflict when i heard Him say the wildest thing, "Something can only bind you if it is greater than what first freed you." oooooo that's deep.

A verse that all too often depicts the human condition, "As a dog returns to it's vomit, so a fool repeat his folly." That's sick. But here's the question...why do we return?? I think familiarity overrules misery. I think we prefer what we know, even if it's destroying us. That is also sick.

So that is the shitty part about our earthly struggles. Now here's the beauty...Jacob wrestled the angel and the angel was overcome. This tells me i am not fighting in vain, but i am destined for freedom. I came from perfection, and perfection is my destination.

"In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! for i have overcome the world!" John somewhere

The Overflow

"For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks" MT. 12:34

My life has to be lived out of the overflow.

In the overflow we reach beyond ourselves,
in the overflow we see what was meant to be,
in the overflow we touch the unseen,
in the overflow there is no lack,
in the overflow we meet God.

Someone once told me there are 2 kinds of Christians in this world; reservoirs and canals. Canals simply allow the stream to flow through them whenever it happens to rush through. Reservoirs have the capacity to retain. They never lack life in them. in drought and flood they always have more than enough. the overflow is all about our ability to retain. everybody wants a word from God but nobody remembers the last one.



"Above all else, guard you heart, for it is the wellspring of life" PRV. 4:23

Call you out

nice guys are nobody's friend. If being a pushover is the only i can keep the peace, then peace is not worth it. I want to start living offensively. There should be very few people who my life does not offend; maybe those who live the same life. I am realizing that truth by nature is painful rather than easy. The people who are the closest to me are the same people who can tear a strip out of me for my own good. Jesus lived offensively. He created conflict wherever he went. He brought a tension to those who lived in error because he loved them enough to show them what they were meant for.

Have you ever met someone who really lived out the Bible? it's wild, they are the craziest, most offensive people. There is no hesitation to call you out on something. If i am too busy being nice to someone to tell them there is a better life out there than i am a two-face and a traitor, and i show that all i really care about is saving face.

I am not real sure where i got this image of Jesus as a weak but loving guy who couldn't be harsh if he tried. I really couldn't be more off, even his disciples were scared to ask him things cause they knew he wouldn't hesitate to call them out.

Being a witness does not equal a smile on my face; it's truth on my lips. This realization has brought me a lot of freedom but at the same time so much more responsibility. So much for my smile-people-into-the-kingdom philosophy...

God of old, God of new

so i have been reading some good old testament lately. its pretty wild stuff. God went to great lengths to be reunited with his people. ridiculous lengths.

Some people think that the God of the old testament is hopelessly irreconcilable to the God of the new. i think those people are crazy. i think there is no better place to look for the heart of God than the stories in the OT.

been finding alot of revelation even in the really thick parts of the OT. i was reading about all God's legalistic requirements for his priests and being blow away at the lengths God went to, to show them they were glorious. he literally made them where turbans with the solid gold inscription, "HOLY TO THE LORD". i can just see God thinking to himself, "how can i show them how incredible and worthwhile they really are?".

Right from the get go He has been relentlessly pursuing his people, and the first move has never been with us. i am always the responder and always the receiver. the ball is in my court.

Jesusthoughts

so this is what blogs are like. they're not bad. i thought Jesusthoughts was appropriate, i think God is speaking through our thoughts and desires more than we know...

So my first post has to do with me struggling to comprehend God. I am a big fan of struggling with God, i believe if your not struggling with God in any aspect, you are probably at least half dead in your walk. God is glorious and beautiful, and this is the struggle of us all; to reflect that glory.

So i wrote this about a year ago, but that often still represents my misconceptions of God. I remember sitting on my porch in a perfectly peaceful moment with God smoking pipe and looking at the stars on a beautiful BC night...

December 16-06...

“all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”. Yikes. The sovereignty of God is sovereign. What about the bad days? Are they ordained? What about when my heart goes cold, when I don’t believe, when lust rears its ugly head, when I rage against God, defy God, and possibly worst of all – misrepresent God. What happens to the divine plan of God when I lose it? I’m not talking about stubbing my toe and dropping the f-bomb, I am talking about boldfaced defiance of God’s perfect will. If my call is to such and such a time and place and my heart is not found to be true enough, do I miss God’s call? Perhaps for a time. Yet I believe perfect will is an ideal, not something to ever truly and wholly achieve. But this is not discouraging; it simply takes the limits off our life with God and thrusts us toward something infinitely, overwhelmingly, progressively glorious. Nothing is lost with God. The past is nothing. Actually nothing. Failures, missed chances, even extensively damaging heartaches do more than fade; they vanish instantaneously in His presence. This is the beauty of God. Years of ignorance, indifference, suppression, aggression, depression, hate and confusion don't have enough strength to last one second in the presence of the Almighty.

I need to get to that place with God.



David said the one thing he would ask God would be to stand in his prescence all the days of his life. I think David had it right.