Listen...

I remember when I was about 13 or 14 years old I had attended a church summer camp. You know, it seems to be the same story that you hear about a lot of the church going folk. They first experienced God at a summer camp. But that was truly when I came to understand that God was not just some distant being. He had shown up and He was real.
It was around that time that I learned to listen...
Before that, in the back of my mind I always knew there was a God... or something. "Saved" or not, I don't think I could have made it through too many days of my childhood without Him. He was always there, I see it more now as I grow older but it was just hard to recognize or understand at that time.
There was one specific night after that summer camp, when I was lying in my bed late at night, that I had felt something so deep in my heart. I cried and begged God for this one thing that I so desperately craved in my life.
Wisdom.
I remember earlier nights laying in bed bawling my eyes out because I had learned at a young age that I was worthless.
I remember sitting on a cold porch in the middle of December almost knowing I would always be nothing.
I thought life had nothing more for me than what it had already given me.
But there was a reason God put the burden for wisdom on my heart that late night after camp.
Wisdom told me truth and helped me to hold to a promise that would never be broken.
I am what God has destined me to be and no man can stand against what God has said.
Wisdom says the same for you... but are we listening?

Just breathe...

"Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life"
I have a hard time finding the right balance with letting people in. I have had my times where I was closed off and didn't trust a soul. Other times I let my emotions run and I let some in a little too easy.
How do you be guarded enough to protect your heart without keeping everyone at a distance?
How do you trust without having a piece of you ripped from your fingers?
Im not too sure if there is anyone who has mastered this art. Everyone feels pain, and everyone has hurt another.... and we all will again.
"Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life."
"... the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
God is our ultimate source of life.
He never said close it off, just don't let anyone take Him from you.
We open our heart to give people what God has given us... life, a wellspring of it. We guard our heart by not letting anyone take Him from you.
God never said that people wouldn't try.

Dear David,

I like David... you know, the guy from the Bible? This guy killed a giant, ruled a nation, and his family line would one day birth Jesus Himself. But I think the most that I really connect with him as a person, is that he was a man that struggled and suffered a lot.
Everyone thinks of him as this great king or this huge hero... which I think he really was. He was great in many ways. God even called him "A man after His own heart". But I don't believe God called him that because he ruled or killed an extremely large guy... I think it was because He knew the feeling of suffering.
David was told a promise at a young age, an idea that I'm sure he struggled with constantly. From the time that promise was declared to the time it actually came to pass, David was hunted, hated, and abandoned.
I love Psalms for the fact that it was basically the journals of David. Countless hours he spent weeping and Im sure wondering if this promise would ever really happen. Countless times longing for connection with those he loved but he knew it was not wanted by them. Constantly struggling with if God was torturing him or not.
This man felt in its deepest sense, but he never stopped. He pursued the only thing he knew was true. The one thing he cried out to and never denied existence of. He knew God was there and He cared.
David felt deeply and was "a man after God's own heart" because he was heavily burdened by life. Wanting, waiting and craving God and the promise that God had breathed into his life.
I wonder if God feels the same way about us.
He is waiting to be our King... but until then He suffers.
This is a God that has felt in it's deepest sense.
David understood a little of what God did.... suffering.

A Sunday Morning

I woke up this morning with a lot on my mind... sitting with a cup of overly sugared coffee and my tattered lil' red Bible, I ponder my reactions to situations that have sprung up on me. There are a lot of things I miss, and a lot of things I wish could be but there have been a lot that has changed. Im no one really important, but at times I feel like I have gone through a whole lot to be where I am. And I have done it on my own.
There is partial truth to that statement.... I have made the decisions on my own, yes, but I was never on my own.
Life gives you a whole bunch of opposition, fear, and downright pain. But God gives you Himself. Its crazy how much you get from just knowing that.
I remember when I was first trying to figure out how to deal with past issues and feelings in life that I had no idea how to express. That period in life I did a ridiculous amount of yelling... mostly at God, everyone else I just rudely glared at. But that was my first big lightbulb in this Jesus thing... He was there. He was listening... and it didn't matter if I was yelling, crying, or cussing up a storm. I had someone that heard me, felt my pain, understood those tears and helped me to stand and keep moving. That's what He gave Himself for. You... and everything about you.
Its been some time that God helped me to first understand that truth and grow a bit more so I was not so emotionally unstable. But even now I have to remind myself again. Even when we feel alone in our choices and our circumstances, He hears our cry, He wipes our tears, and He helps us to stand.
Thats what He gave Himself for.