100 Days of Discipline Day 3

Scripture:  Matthew 3:8-12, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.  And do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.  The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.  "I baptize you with water for repentance.  But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry.l  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will clear His threshing floor, gathering His wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

For those of you who don't know me as well as most, I like to be honest and transparent.  The more transparent I can be about my own life, my struggles, insecurities, and doubts, the more other people will be able to open up about theirs and start to process and work through them.  I like being transparent, transparency is good.  It breaks down barriers and allows people to see in me, "Hey, this is what I'm struggling with, I'm just being honest."  With that said, 10 minutes ago I was really, truly being tempted to fall into sin.  There was just that one thing, one idea that kept be planted in my mind, and like a cancer it spread throughout my entire body.  I could literally feel my heart racing and my stomach turning as I fought with my entire being to withstand the assault my spirit was taking.  Throughout the next few minutes, I kept on repeating a song over and over in my head.  Actually, more specifically, one line of a song.  "We are calling out.  Let's get back to our first love...this is a call for discernment."  And with that anthem playing in my head, I found the temptation easier to withstand, and I'm happy to say that I did not fall into temptation this morning.  Yay me.  Score one for victory!  (The song is below)

After that whole ordeal, I come to read Matthew 3 and read John the Baptist speaking to the Pharisees and Saducees (the chief religious leaders at the time) about being hypocritical and the call to produce good fruit.  If you don't, at the time of Judgment, you'll be separated like chaff from wheat, and the chaff will be burned (hell).  God doesn't joke around.  When He says something, He means it.  So if He commands us to walk in love and think with a pure mind, that's a priority that we have to make.  If we continue to live in sin, how will we look different from the chaff that is thrown away? Part of being a Christian is to not look like the rest of the world.  To stand out.  Be different.  This morning when I struggled with temptation, I could have very well fallen into it and given in, but in the end I would have ended up looking like the rest of the world.  God calls each and every one of us to be different and to walk a different path, but how can we when we live almost the exact same lives and live in the same sins?  How can a tree produce good fruit is the roots are rotten?  In the same way, how can we produce good fruit (which He commands us to do) if our own lives are just as dark? 

"This is a call for discernment," in your own lives.  Seek out, root out, destroy everything that stands in the way of God working in You.  Reminds me of another song by For Today, "Break everything in Your path.  Take Your rightful place in our lives."  It's time to take sin off of the throne that we've placed it on and put Him on it. 

--DyingAnOriginal
 

100 Days Of Discipline Day 2

Man, almost forgot to journal today. I read the chapter, Matthew 2, early today, but then never sat down and blogged. I'm actually posting this from my phone in bed. Yay for technology!

Scripture: Matthew 2
Well, there wasn't any specific verses that stood out, but throughout the whole chapter, it's very clear that God ha been planning this moment (the birth of Jesus) for a very, very long time. Multiple times throughout the passage, Century-old prophecies are fulfilled. God has a plan in everything, that's for sure.

The Betrayer

So here's some lyrics I wrote the other night around midnight while I was awake.

Here I am. Like a Phoenix in the dusk I came to steal your breath. No feeling. Numb. Cold. Alone. My own hands are wrapped around my throat forcing the breathe from my lungs. I fall victim once again. You built me to stand but I continually fall. My legs are weak and they crumple beneath the weight of the burden I carry. You made my hands to build but all mine do is destroy. The blood drips from my fingertips as I rip out the hearts from those I love. You created my mind to think and reason, but I wasted away. Like a husk in the fall I hung, bleak and dry on this gallows I built out of your bones. You gave me a chance to walk away, but I stayed. You gave me a reason to let go, but I held on. You offered me the strength to stand, but I push aside your help. Will you save me from me? Who will save me from me? You created me a man, but I'm no man. I'm weak and hopeless. Purposeless. Failing. Why is it so difficult to take a chance for you? I need to let go, rewind, restart.

100 Days of Discipline / I Want To Write More

When I was in middle school and full of teenage angst, I used to write a lot.  By write, I mean like poetry, stories, and journaling.  Basically, in my free time, that's what I'd do.  Lately, I've been receiving more and more of a passion to do more of that (thus, for those who know me very well, I'm going to try to accomplish NaNoWriMo starting in a couple days) and to start to express myself more freely through writing poetry and lyrics.  I don't know, I've always enjoyed it and it's something that I want to expound upon and become more affluent in doing.

Let me also bring you up to date on my spiritual life as well.  Lately, I've really been struggling with reading my Bible.  By struggling I mean, "Oh, I haven't really had a personal quiet time with God in about 3 weeks."  I am beginning, well, not beginning but seeing, the lack of a personal time with God effect the rest of my life as well as my picture of the future isn't quite as clear, it's harder to fight temptation, I'm a lot more cynical and less loving, etc.  I have an app on my iPhone that lets me start Bible reading plans, and also reminds me on a daily basis about getting in The Word.  It's a tool that I've been wanting to effectively use for a while, but just never built up the self-ambition to do so. 

With all that being said, today's a new day.  I found a Bible reading plan this morning (on aforementioned app) called 100 Days of Discipline.  All it is, is going through Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts reading one chapter a day, every day, for 100 days to build up the spiritual discipline of reading the Bible.  Once you read the chapter, you journal about it.  The journal entry can be as little as, "Hey, this verse really stood out to me," or as long as, "Woah, okay, so this is what God said to me this morning..."

And that's where blogging comes in.  In the marriage of the two ideas (creative writing, or writing in general, and spiritual discipline) I have decided to make my blog here my journal.  For the next 100 days, I will be posting every day my journal.  Not only is that for me to continue to build up my writing skills, but also to make my journal public for two reasons:  1. Maybe something I say hits somebody else and speaks to them, and 2. Keep me accountable.  If there is someone out there in the wide world of cyberspace who just happens to be reading this, keep me accountable.  If you stop by one day and see that I haven't blogged yet, send me a little reminder to do it.  It's going to be a struggle, going to be hard, but it's something that I want to do. 

So yeah, without further ado, here's the journal entry for today.

Verse:  Matthew 1:25, "But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.  And he gave him the name Jesus."
This verse in context is talking about Joseph and Mary.  Once Joseph got the "okay" from God to continue his relationship with Mary, he took Mary home to be his wife.  But then this verse comes along and basically says, "They didn't have sex until Jesus was born."  What a man.  Seriously.  If you can be married  but not have sex, you are such a man in my opinion.  I don't know, that verse just shows a lot of integrity in Joseph and gives me a newfound respect for him because he had enough strength to say, "Hey, what I want isn't important."  Humility.

--DyingAnOriginal

A Sweeping Movement...

"What we (Showbread) wanted to want was to tell the world about Jesus: The miraculous story of a peasant, Jewish Rabbi in the ancient near-east that went around preaching that the Kingdom of God was near! The story of God himself stepping down into the world, in human flesh, and conquering death by dying himself and then being resurrected from the dead. And that somehow, in light of this beautiful, mesmerizing and mysterious story folks like you and me can be made right with God and enter into his presence now and forever.

That’s what we wanted to be our focus anyway. For the most part, we’ve given it our best. Sometimes more than others and heck, often we’ve outright failed. But after nine years of spending more months each year in a van than at home, you start to think. We can’t help but see, time and time again in our travels, a world in desperate need of God’s redemptive power. We see a people oppressed by selfishness, greed, listlessness, anxiety, depression, despair… We see a church co-opted by the American dream and a generation taught to settle for the feeble, plastic freedom offered by legislation rather than the outright soul-liberating freedom of the living God. We’ve concluded, time and time again, that the world does indeed need Jesus and that Jesus is indeed at work in the world. And slowly, as those nine-years unraveled, Jesus taught his followers in Showbread—with infinite patience—what it means to make the Gospel the sole focus of a touring rock band.

To me, that’s what Arrows Are Deadly was all about. A second wind. A breath of fresh air. The voice of God himself invigorating his kids, telling them “This is only the beginning, there is more work to be done!”

I saw a middle-aged woman weep in front of a crowd of tattooed young people because God had healed her long pain-ridden feet. I saw a young man baffled by the fact that even though he did not believe God could or would heal his neck of chronic pain, God did it anyway. A young woman in Florida bawled in front of us as she confessed that it was on that night she first believed that God truly loved her. A group of perfect strangers in New York huddled around one another, joining hands and crying out to God on behalf of a wayward family member none of us knew.

Almost a decade of traversing the countryside playing rock concerts and telling people about Jesus, but on this tour something unique was happening. We looked forward to our performances, we looked forward to fellowship and fun with our friends in the other bands, but we had an insatiable craving to see God move AFTER each show in the minutes and hours when we gathered in small circles to pray for one another. The focus, even after nine years, continues to be refined.

Every day I read theologians and scholars pour over the Bible in an endless effort to unravel it’s endless layers. On paper, theology is captivating, it stirs the heart and mind and seizes the imagination. In person, theology is devastating, it shocks a man to his very core to see with his own eyes and feel in his very bones the truth that prayer changes reality and that Jesus, God of the universe, is moving in the world today.

The current of this movement is one I simply must be swept away in."

- Josh Dies of Showbread / Taken from Arrows Are Deadly (A Review)

 

--DyingAnOriginal

When I Consider The Heavens

Something that I've been thinking about recently has been the stars.  This past summer, I spent many nights sleeping out under the stars with campers, and even on the weekends I would lay out there for hours with friends just hanging out and looking up at them.  I love the stars.  There have been few times that I've been in more awe of God than when I am looking at the stars.  Especially if you're in an open field with hardly any trees or light pollution around you and basically all you can see is the stars.  It makes me feel small.  Insignificant.  Yet at the same time loved.  The God who created the heavens and the billions upon billions of stars knows MY name and knows exactly what I'M going through.  Complete and utter awe.
If you look back at the Old Testament, especially Psalms you see David praising God a lot.  One example, and what I just read this morning as I've been going through the Psalms chapter by chapter is Psalm 8.  David opens up by saying, "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!  You have set your glory in the heavens."  By the way, tidbit:  When the word "lord" is in all caps in the Bible, it literally means, "Jehovah", or "Yahweh".  So what David, the king of all Israel is saying here is, "O Yahweh, my God, our king, how majestic..."  He later repeats himself in v.9 by saying that exact same verse.  But in v.3-4 is where I am focusing.  "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is making that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?"  David is in complete awe and wonder of God by looking at the stars and seeing His handiwork.  He feels small and insignificant.  Yes, this is David we're talking about here.  David, the king of all Israel.  David, the guy who killed Goliath.  David, the guy he led armies into battle.  David, is a huge, huge figure in the Old Testament.  And great and mighty David is seeing the stars and the heavens and saying, "Wow, God, I'm humbled.  You're so awesome and you're so powerful, yet you choose to pay attention to me."
The reason that this sticks out to me so much is two words:  Light pollution.  Tonight if you were to go out and look at the stars you would see only a fraction of what David and the rest of the Old Testament figures saw.  In those times, they didn't have street lights, they didn't have porch lights or house lights or headlights or flashlights, no, it was complete and utter darkness.  The only light was possibly a campfire or the light of the moon and the stars.  So when you take that and relate it to nowadays, there is so much pollution in our world that they didn't have and they saw God so much easier than we do.  They saw STARS, we see stars.  I wish that I could go back to those days and climb to the top of a mountain on the clearest night and just look at the stars with no pollution whatsoever.  No wonder they were in awe of God. 
But how often do we have pollution in our own lives that take away from the beauty of Him?  We have these things in our lives, this temptation or distractions that try to drown out his voice much like light drowns out our visions of the stars.  I heard it said once that to get an hour of complete silence captured on video, one must take about 2,000 hours worth of footage.  I know in my personal life that is so true.  Just today as I sat down to read my Bible my phone started buzzing from a text, then my mom wanted to talk to me then my mind started wandering...
Point is, we have so many distractions and so many things that Satan uses to pry us away from Christ and drown out his still, small voice.  Just like light pollution makes it harder to see the stars, so these distractions and temptations make it harder to hear God's voice.  So I ask you, and I challenge you (and myself) what is it in your life that's clouding your vision of Christ?  What are the distractions that make it hard to hear His voice?  And how can you rid yourself of those distractions so that you can hear Him and spend time with Him?

--DyingAnOriginal

I Am The Hope, You Are The Hopeless

First off, I want to apologize.  At the beginning of this summer I had this great vision to blog each weekend about my week and some of the ways that I saw God move in the campers and in the staff and some of the awesome stories, but as it turns out, and as you can see...yeah, that didn't happen.  So my deepest regrets.  I do wish that I had had more time during the weekends to connect with each and every single one of you through my blogs and let you know how my summer was going, but alas, weekends are just about as busy as the weekdays are.  You wanna know about camp?  Talk to me.  End of story.


Moving on.

Today, I wasn't feeling very well.  I was feeling pretty achey, and I felt a fever coming on.  Not good.  After I ran my errands this morning, I took a little break after lunch and just sat and read all afternoon.  I had actually just finished up a conversation with one of my friends about wanting to read more, and so seeing the opportunity, I took it.  At first, I started out reading my summer reading assignment for college ("Freedom Writer's Diary") and after an hour or so of that, I switched over to a book that I've been going through again called, "Relationships", by Dr. Les and Leslie Parrott.  Such a good book about Godly, wholesome relationships.  If you're looking to pick one up, let it be that book.  I had been reading for about 2 and a half hours by now and my eyes were feeling pretty tired, but I still wanted to read the Bible and spend time with God.  So instead of reading the Bible, I whipped out my iPhone and quickly downloaded the latest podcast from Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley (Francis Chan's church, for those of you who know) and decided to listen to The Word instead of read it.  Not quite the same thing, but pretty close.

Today, Josh Walker was talking about Deuteronomy and the last things that Moses said to Israel before departing from them.  As he began retelling the story of Moses, much like a narrative, I began to think back over the stories that I had heard about Israel from going to a Christian elementary school.  The one that stuck out in my mind--and the speaker brought it to mind as well--was when the twelve men were sent out initially to scout out the Promised Land and they came back with huge, huge clusters of grapes (Nmb. 13:23; 26-31) as evidence that the land was what God had promised them.  God had promised them a land "flowing with milk and honey".  You would've thought that seeing the huge bounty of grapes brought back from Caanan would've sparked hope and excitement.  After finally reaching the Promised Land after such a long time of traveling you would've thought that the people would've completely ignored the grapes and just went barging in ahead, right?  I mean, let's translate this to a modern-day story.  I remember days of high school gym class when we had to run a mile.  Now personally, I hate running and I couldn't wait until that mile was over.  Nearing the end my spit and phlegm would be collecting in my throat and my mouth would be hanging wide open, panting and drawing in the air to replenish my burning lungs.  The best part was, though, after running I would always make a beeline for the water fountain, yearning to ease my cracked throat and dry mouth.  Coming back to the Israelites, you would've thought that after wandering around they would be so ready to settle down no matter where it was.  Much like I made a beeline to the fountain, they would be ready to make camp and start living, right?

Wrong.
Even after seeing that huge cluster of grapes and the bounty that the men of Israel came back with, they still didn't see the blessing of God hit them right in the face.  They had no hope.  They had no faith in Him.  Where was there trust?  Numbers goes on to say, "The men who had gone up with him said, 'We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are.'  And they spread among the Israelites a ad report about the land where they had explored." 
As I sat there thinking of these things, my mind wandered to an ever-familiar passage from John 15:5, "I am the vine, you are the branches."  How does this relate to the story of the Israelites?
What do grapes grow on?
Vines, excatly.
The Israelites saw fear and opposition where God wanted them to see hope.  In John, Christ beautifully paints a picture of Himself as the vine and us, his Church, the body of Christ, as the branches.  The Israelites could've looked at that vine and see God's hand at work.  They could've seen the blessings that God was going to pour out on them and the plans he had for them.  Instead, they chose to see the bad.  They saw the giants and the opposition.  They saw things that would stand in their way and got afraid.  They forgot Who they had behind them and the Strength they had within them.
He was the vine of grapes that day to the Israelites beckoning them forward to take the Promised Land as He was giving it to them, yet they were too blind to see Him.
He is our hope.  He is our salvation.  He is our strength.  Yet so often, the circumstances around us, the temptations that try to bring us down, the whispered attacks and lies of the devil himself try to drown out that hope.  They try to grab our attention and take it off of Christ and to instead focus our attention on ourselves and our own weakness.  But that's the thing, when we're focusing on ourselves and the things happening around us we lose the strength we have in Christ.  As imperfect, sinful humans we are weak.  It's when we keep our eyes solely fixated on Him that we have strength to conquer the day's challenges and to rise above our environment, to resist temptation and put it to death once and for all.
So I write this as a challenge, but also encouragement.  The next time a giant comes into your view or something rises up that wants to steal your attention away from Christ, remember the Israelites.  When they lost focus on God, instead of receiving the promises and His blessings, they were sent back out to wander in the desert for 40 years.
Keep your focus on Him, because only then will you have the strength to rise above. 


--DyingAnOriginal