This guy never gets old to me. Such a true performer. He apparently had some fans. Enjoy!
Refuel
Do people just wear you out sometime?
Don’t get me wrong, my favorite thing in the world is being with people. Laughing, talking, sharing experiences…..at the top of my list. But sometimes I just need to get away. I’m sure we all know people that kind of just wear us out (we love em’, they just make us tired).
Am I not being loving because I need to get away?? Questions and feelings of guilt start to rise in me, and I feel really selfish.
That is until I got together with a couple of my good friends for a lil Bible Study.
Niko, Brandon, and I are just (slowly) treading through the book of Mark. Mark is a gospel, or biographical account of certain parts of Jesus’ life.
In Mark 1 Jesus is a real busy guy. All throughout the chapter, He is performing miracles healing the sick and casting out demons. He is even introducing this new teaching of the Kingdom of God that no one had ever, ever heard of before.
The text says in 1:35
“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
This is the son of God, who is all powerful……and He needed to take a break to refuel. Maybe He was giving us another small example of how to live like Him.
The more I think about it, its not selfish at all to take time for yourself to refuel. When you choose to refuel, you are saying, “I value this relationship so much I want to give you my best so I need to refuel.”
Live with people. Do life with each other. Do good to and with one another. But take sometime for yourself. Jesus did.
I will wait for you, because you mean that much to me
I will wait. Even though it is painful and difficult to control myself. You are worth it.
Viva la Vida by Coldplay…..I will wait for you. Even though most of my friends and my own family members downloaded you off of Torrent. I will wait, because I know that when we actually get to be together, it will be better because I did the right thing.
June 17th is not far. It is in my sight, and I will run with perseverance to the finish line which will quite possibly be walmart at midnight.
p.s. If any government agents read my blog, arrest Collin Obremski and Brandon Lowry for downloading the leaked album. They have taken the wrong path ( even though I wish I was in their shoes)
Faith
i am by no means a theologian
Ephesians 2:8-
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
By grace, through FAITH.
All my life, I have heard messages about faith, sang songs about having faith, and had people say,” you just gotta have faith man”-
I just got to the point where it all started to make me mad. What does faith exactly mean? I don’t think it has to do with just believing that there is a big cosmic being that lives above us and created everything. That’s not the faith that Paul is writing about.
In Paul’s times there were no atheists, Roman emperor worship and nature worship reigned supreme. Everyone believed in some higher power. The faith Paul was talking about must be different than just believing in something’s existence.
I started to think, maybe faith to the original reader of Paul’s letter is much different than what we call faith today.
The first Christians were persecuted for their beliefs in Jesus. They were killed if they claimed that Christ was God. They often times went hungry because the Roman Empire set up trade guilds that only provided food that was sacrificed to the emperor or they had to claim the emperor as god before they could buy food for their families. Many times Roman tax collectors would come and take basically everything they owned, just because they were Christ-followers.
I think faith through their eyes might look a lil different then ours today in America.
The early Christians had to have faith that looked the rest of the world in the eyes and said,”No matter what you throw at me, God is good and he rescued me.”
Maybe, just maybe, the faith that Paul was talking about is a belief that God reigns in the midst of our lowest and darkest times.
Have faith my friends. Ask God to fill you up with it. Hold His words to be true.
Count me in
Do you ever get the feeling that life is so much bigger than what we make of it so often? Is it possible that we have missed the point all these years? Maybe the American dream of going from rags to riches, retiring to Florida, and leaving a fat inheritance for your children—-got it ALL wrong.
I just can’t do it. It is as simple as that.
Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like to be those first people that heard a poor carpenter’s son turned traveling sage/rabbi pose the question,”
What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet lose his soul?
or to hear him say,
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”"
How counter-cultural were these statements then?
How much more counter-cultural are they now?
I don’t know how to explain it, but something is so poetic and beautiful about these words. Something just rings true in the soul about giving your life away for something soo much bigger.
Its a movement–its love. Its this paradoxical way of life that no one can truly understand, but I thirst after it. When we lose life, we truly gain it. When we give it away–we truly find it.
I have found the riches times of my life is when I have been able to serve and give my time–life away. I encourage you to do the same. This movement, started by a humble, poor Jewish teacher still rings so true today. Believe it. Feel it. Taste it.
You were created to change the world. Yeah, I said it—sounds crazy. It is crazy, but believe it.
just cool
I love this song. I love the vocal. I love this video. I would not love the amount of time it would take to actually make this music video.
But come on, Buster (from Arrested Development) in a music video, playing guitar hero….too cool.
Sunday- May 25th
So I got to lead some worship this sunday and I had a great time doing so. I am always astonished by the high caliber of musicians that get to lead with me each time I have the oppurtunity. Morgan Young, executive pastor, gave an awesome talk on intimacy–this is always about that–and the entire service felt very cohesive, which is a nice thing we always aim for.
Prelude: Happy Day- This is a Tim Hughes number that I have lead dozens of times in the Warehouse this year for our Student Ministry. Its big, upbeat, and well…Happy. We added a very Edgish feel to the intro, which is always good to have in my book. Check out the youtube video of our version.
Set:
Let God Arise- This tomlin tune has got to be one of my faves for the last year. There is really nothing like a worship song that is sung with attitude. “Our God reigns now and forever,” “His enemies will run for sure”…o yeah
Chainbreaker: A new Charlie Hall tune that he debuted when he played at Oakbrook March 16th. The lyrics are so overall sick, and the drums…get me going….my friend derek killed this by the way….”He renovates the human heart, gives the broken brand new starts.” The visual of God renovating our messiness and such in our hearts brings a smile to my face.
Mighty to Save: Welcome to the anthem. Hillsong’s big power worship anthem, just shouts out a big truth about our Big God. The lyrics of the chorus are so psalm like, ” He can move the mountains,” “the author of salvation.”….so good. During this song, I just internally prayed over the people in our church, that they would let the mess in their lives collide with the truth that our God is bigger than their junk, and He is mighty to save.
O it was a good morning, and I hope to lead my church family again soon!
Ya, that Just happened
Ya, I wear one of my mom’s headbands when I run…..It keeps the hair out of my eyes and mouth and I look rather dashing when I do so.
In the words of Ron Burgandy, “Hey everyone, come see how good I look.”
Something for Republicans to look forward to
Maybe he is a Neo-con, but this guy is bad.
