The mystery that is my mind

I think we as a culture have a problem. We don't fear God, we don't fear hell, we don't read the Bible (the whole Bible), and we don't feel bad about our sin. Here's why I think that is (thanks to Mark Driscoll). First of all, because of the way we talk about grace and "the law", we truly don't believe that the law, or old testament, applies to us. If we thought it applied to us, we would read it and try to obey it. We know all the stories all too well. I wish I could take away all that I know about the Bible and read it start to end for the first time. I think I would believe and live completely differently. I don't think we can actually believe that we need a saviour until we read the old testament and the law first, and realize that is how we are required to live. Just like the people in the book of Nehemiah, we are supposed to read the books of the law as if they were written to us, and for us to follow and obey as if our lives depended on it. Because really, they do. We are supposed to see how bad we really are! The law was written so that we would see how short we have fallen of perfect, and that we would be scared for our lives that we are going to hell because of it. It's only when we see this and really believe it that we can appreciate the fact that we don't have to suffer the consequences. How can we accept a saviour and the grace He gives if we don't truly believe that we need grace, and we don't believe we are bad enough to need to be saved?

We read the Bible all backwards. We start by teaching love and grace and just be good to people because Jesus was good to people, and it's not that big a deal if we screw up because Jesus has covered it anyways. But in reality, It IS a big deal when we sin!! We are condemned to hell for it! We really don't even understand sin that well(it's all a matter of heart......). How can the "good news" really be so good if there hasn't been really bad news first?

I think if I was a pastor, I would start at te beginning of the Bible and work my way through the whole thing teaching it in order, not leaving anything out. I'm learning to appreciate that more and more lately. Because as scripture says, I believe, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness".

All of it!

We talk about the holy spirit all the time in church and in bible studies, but I'm not sure that most of us really understand or even care to understand the holy spirit. By default, the way we are raised in the church, and taught, is that it is some kind of mysterious force, or our conscience, that guides us to making the right choices and convicts us when we sin. Judging by my life, that is what I have believed also. I never really gave it a second thought until last night, when I was reading Metamorpha. Kyle Strobel refers to the Holy Spirit as “He”, and that caught me off guard. Then I thought about it. The Bible, and even Jesus, referred to the Holy Spirit as a person, not some power or force. He is a person, a counselor, a helper. I think that the reason I have such a hard time comprehending the holy spirit and a relationship with him, is that I don't see him as a person. I see Jesus as a person, and I see God as a person(not human, but God-person), but I have not looked at the spirit as a person. I guess looking at it that way, it's no wonder that I never hear or feel God, and because of that, it's no wonder that I have such a hard time pursuing him. How can I hear, feel, and pursue Him, if I don't truly understand that the PERSON He sent to walk out life with me even really exists. Jesus walked with His disciples. Physically walked and lived with them. And when He was telling them that He was going to die, He told them not to worry, because in His death, He was sending someone who would be better for us. What an amazing statement that is! We have something.....I have something, better than Jesus Christ himself, with me. And I haven't even looked at Him. I reduced Him to the idea of a conscience, when all along He is a person here with me. That is a powerful and awesome thing. I am so blown away right now by all that God is showing me through this, that I am pretty much speechless. What a great, comforting thing.

i've been having a tough time in understanding my walk with God lately. it seems like the past few months especially I have been learning a lot about who God is, and who he is not, what he wants of us, and what he doesn't. as i've been learning about all this, instead of me feeling like i'm getting closer to him and getting to know him better, i just feel like i wasn't as close as i thought, and i didn't know him like i thought. zeb thinks that's what the devil is trying to tell me, but i have a hard time seeing it differently. lately i've been realizing how lonely i've been. not because of a lack of friends or company, but because of a lack of true relationships. i know that loneliness is the worst feeling in the world, and that the reason we a here is for real/true relationships with others and with God. i'm not sure why, but for some reason I have always tried to stay away from the real thing. I can be honest and real with people, but i haven't ever done it on a consistent basis to where it would be considered a deep spiritual relationship the way we were designed for. i've been lacking the kind of relationships that God designed us all for, and in turn make life worth living for. And it's my own fault. I was sitting in church sunday morning broken down(which has been happening a lot lately) just thinking about that right there (my lack of relationship and state of loneliness) when wes, seeing that something was up, just put his arm around me and leaned over towards me. he didn't say anything, just letting me know he was there.......just letting me know God was there, waiting for the deep, spiritual, blood-deep relationship we are alive for. I couldn't stop crying almost the whole rest of the day, and am really trying to hold back the tears as i type this now. For the past two years, i have been waiting and waiting and waiting on God just to tell me what he wants me to do. I have been patient, impatient, sad, mad, and have not heard him telling me anything. But I get it now. I am a problem solver. I see something wrong, I want to get all the best information and get t done, get it fixed. So I have been waiting for what He wants me to do. Here it is: I just realized that He hasn't wanted me to do ANYTHING! I want to do something, He just wants me to be. He wants to to not do, just to live, and live deep. To live life to it's fullest(life abundantly?). He wants me to live in more than just fellowship, but relationship. So I guess the main reason for writing this is a plea for help. I am stuck in a place that I don't want to be in. I am sending this to all you who I am close with, but not close as I need to be. Not real as I need to be. I don't know how to go about this, but like chanda always says, "if what you're doing isn't working, do something else." I guess this is me trying to do something else.

after the long entry yesterday, today i was reading Wild at Heart and read the most powerfull statement I have ever heard in all my life. Here it is:

"Where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be.......because the wound was given in the place of your true strength, as an effort to take you out."

Not quite sure what that means for me yet, but it hit me like a ton of bricks used as a kick in the butt.

i have been reading "Wild At Heart" by John Eldredge, and it has really got me thinking. I a little more than half way through the book and I just wanted to write down some of my thoughts. I've known for a while(before this book) that I have a "father wound". My father wound is a little different than most people I have talked to. My wife has not even known her father until very recently. Now that they have a relationship, he is trying to do all he can to make up for his absence. It's still a little weird to me as i'm sure it is to all of us. I think it has had a great affect however, on the the way that she views God. I, on the otherhand, have a much different story. When I was young, I had a great relationship with my dad. He was always my baseball and soccer coach, he took me to basesball games, got me to be the bat boy for the san francisco giants when he was their physical trainer. he took me mountainbiking with his friends, took me to spring training for a week with the Giants in Arizona, not to mention he always called me sport and tiger and all those names the dad's we look up to call us. He was my hero. I always wanted to be just like him. He was the strongest, the best at everything. I really looked up to him. My parents got divorced and I still looked at him this way. we still had a great relationship long after that and even through high school though we lived 400 miles away. we saw each other a few times a year and talked on the phone at least once a week and he never missed my birthday. It's much more recently that my wound was inflicted, and it happened so slowly i almost didn't notice it.

A lot has gone on in his life: remarriage, new businesses, and a few more terrors...... I mean kids. I'm not sure when or why, but slowly after I graduated high school, he started fading away from me. Actually, now i remember the first bullet hole of a wound. It was when he was too busy to come to my high school gradation. His firstborn son, his pride and joy(or so he told everyone he knew including me). After that we still talked and visited but a little less often. Then by huge suprise to everyone, and with less than a months notice, He came to my wedding. Drove 6 hours by himself for no other reason than to support me and sow his love. That felt so good because I didn't think he would be able to come. I think that kind of started to heal the graduation wound.

After that and since then, the communication just deteriorated. We started talking on the phone once a month and visiting twice a year. Then it got to the point of talking every 2 or 3 months and visiting once a year. now i have talked to him twice in the past year and not seen him in 2. and the last time i called him he was busy hoseing down the patio, so he said he'd call me back.....I'm still waiting. I still call him on his birthday, even though he doesn't do the same.

So that's my father wound. A wound of deteriorated communication.

I had a vision/experience with God a few years ago that helped heal that wound. I was a church retreat and I had a vision that just broke me. It was the most real thing I have ever seen or felt. I was sitting in a chair with my eyes closed, thinking a lot about my father and realizing that wound. Then all of the sudden it was like I was in a completely different place. I was in this big long room, empty. I felt broken and heavily burdened. I was crying and felt like I couldn't go on. Then I looked up, down the room. There I saw Him. I couldn't make out any detail, just a tall dark figure/silouette with light from behind. I started walking toward him. He lifts his hands to recieve me and as I get closer I notice that He is crying. I ran the rest of the way and fell into His arms. He held me tight and cried with me for what seemed like forever. That was the realization for me that God IS my real father. He is good, and perfect, and everything I have been looking for and missing in my dad.

I had a new outlook on life and a new attitude toward my dad after that. I no longer looked to my dad for the things that he wasn't giving me because I got that from God now.

But I am still being affected by it. Because of the lack of communication, I find it hard to take time and spend quality time with God. I find it months sometimes between and good hang out session or conversation with him. I find it odd and think of it as a mostly american thing, that we can spend so much time teaching, learning about, talking about, and singing to God, that we don't actually spend any time with Him. We neglect the purpose for all this religion. We can spend 8 years studying the bible and get a Dr. Degree in Divinity, know everything there is to know about God and the bible, and have been too busy those eight years thinking about God that we didn't even stop and see Him. Not one sunrise or sunset. Not one thunderstorm or ocean or mountain. I have had a desire lately to go to seminary. I don't know yet if it is my desire or something God has put on my heart, but my fear is this. If I was to do that, would I spend all my time learning about how great he is instead of experiencing how great he really is? would that communication problem I've learned from my dad just have an excuse to get worse and even a cover-up?

That's what's on my mind right now. I haven't got any more than that. On a side note, something I read in "Through Painted Deserts" by Donald miller hit me as really cool and i've been wanting to write it down for a while.
The Bible uses the metaphor of God being light, but what if it's not really a metaphor? God created light and darkness before he created the sun. We just like God, we cannot see light itself, only it's effect on things. Light itself we cannot see until it hits the clouds at sunset, or hits the pacific ocean, or whatever. we cannot see light itself. Just like we cannot see God himself, only his effect on us.
So maybe God is not LIKE light, maybe god actually IS light, and we just have mistaken the meaning of light.

That's enough for now.

it's been a while, and once again i can't think of anything i want to write about. but that's how it always starts. so here we go. right now things ar kinda tough. getting into the house is turning out to be a much longer deal than any of us expected. the family we are living with is great and has made us feel very welcome there, and that helps so much, but at the same time, just recently it has been hitting me that it kinda sucks that we will be spending thanksgiving living in someones basement. and from the looks of it, we may not be out of there by christmas. my sons first and daughters third christmas in a basement, all living in the same room. i feel bad for feeling bad because we are so blessed that we have such awesome friends to let us live with them for free, and we have somewhere to live, and that God is giving us a house, and eveything else we have on the "thankfull tree". so that's part of my thoughts right now, and those really only hit me every once in a while. the other side is just awesome. several things have just been exciting for me lately. in no particular order: i've been wanting to really learn to play lead guitar lately (influenced by Slick Shoes, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, The Classic Crime, The Offspring......all the bands i've listened to on a daily basis for the past 5-10 years). So i looked up some excercises online that i have been practicing every night before bed for the past week and a half or so. but on wednesday i was talking to my small group about it and it just worked out that a very qualified friend in the group will be giving me and another friend lessons after church every sunday. so that is awesome. i've been wanting to be able to REALLY play guitar since around junior high, and now i am actually going to do it. next, as our church makes changes and restructures itself, i will be on the leadership team. i have been praying about how i can be involved and serve for over a year now and finally i am getting that chance. next....i have been talking to a friend lately about music and writing and stuff, and have been learning a lot. the exciting part is that there is a posibility that i may be able to lay down some of my music in the form of a full band demo, and possibly try and sell some songs. so that's what's on my mind i guess. not really any suprises to me this time. i guess i didn't dig down deep enough. but i am at work, so it's hard to do that. anyways. thanks for reading.

This morning was really good. I woke up early and left the house by 6am. It was still dark, and I took the camera hoping to catch a nice sunrise while doing my Wild at Heart "Field Guide"(journal/workbook). I knew excatly where I wanted to go wich was interesting. Usually for times like this I like to hike up a mountain or sit by a river or lake or something, but this morning for some reason, I wanted something different. I drove only 3 miles to the house that I am buying and parked there. When I first got there it was still too dark to see outside with no light, so i stayed in the truck for about 15 minutes. I picked up my book and realized that I had not brought my field guide, but rather the Wild at Heart book. But I also had in the car a copy of the book "Through Painted Deserts" that I have been wanting to read for almost a year. So I started reading that book. When it was finally light enough outside to be able to read, I walked around to the back of the house and sat on the steps to the back deck. It was so nice. I could hear roosters crowing in the background, locusts buzzing, and even cows mooing every once in a while. It started misting and drizzling just a little bit while I was reading, but it was nice. It was the perfect weather, quiet, peaceful. Just me and God, reading a book about changing seasons, with no sense of time. I guess it was a perfect morning. Thank you Lord.

i don't really have a lot to say right now, but it's been a while so i thought i'd update anyways. right now we are living with friends in their basement a few miles from where we are buying our house. it's a nice finished basement with a full bathroom and everything, but of course it's tough because it's just not home. for months now, cayla randomly will say "I wanna go home" and start crying. that's the saddest thing in the world to me. the speed of life sucks too. it's seems like there is never enough time in the day for anything. i don't have any time to do anything that i really want to do or that makes me happy, because i am always busy doing what's necessary to "survive life". I'm reading "Wild at Heart" right now and I absolutely love it. It has opened my eyes so much and made me excited about life again. But at the same time it's kind of depressing because it seems like that just won't work in my life. Like it's a great idea, but not realistic. Don't get me wrong, I am not at all depressed right now. I'm not sure what it is, but God is definitely doing something awesome in me right now. It's like I'm no longer complacent in life. In Donald Miller's book "Through Painted Deserts", the theme of the book he says is: "Life is meant to be lived, not just survived." I haven't read that book yet, but have been wanting to for a while. Just another one of those "don't have enough time" things. I don't know how to change that. How do I rearange my life and my time so that I DO have time? I want to have time to spend with my wife. I want to have time to spend with my kids. I want to have time to play guitar and write music. I want to have time to build a hotrod. I want to have time to hike to the top of an untouched mountain alone at sunrise and photograph my journey. And I especially want to have time to spend alone with God. I know it's possible, I just don't know how. I know that God has put all these desires in my heart, I just hope he shows me soon while I'm still excited about wanting those things. I know His timing is really all that matters, so I'm learning to live with it and actually be thankful for it.

So much for nothing to say. I guess there was a lot more up there than I realized. I think that's why this journaling thing is so good for me.

there has been so much crap going around lately about the church and leaders and everything else. it seems that's all everyone is thinking about and talking about aropund here. Satan has gotta be loving it right now because our church as a whole is unproductive and in chaos this past week. spinning around in circles instead of moving forward. I know that there are definately things that need to be addressed, changed and reworked, but good lord, a little confusion in our church and everyone throws up their arms and the world stops. I know everyone has the answer and all that, i could care less about a solution, what makes me sick is that people don't realize what the church really is(or at least is supposed to be). we are a bunch of individuals who come together to worship corporately. our purposes for coming together are these (but not limited to these): 1) To worship God alone 2)to use our gifts to meet the needs of others(whether that be physical or spiritual) 3)to fellowship with other believers. coming to church to be fed is NOT a reason to come to church. our spritual lives should be fed on our own by God speaking directly to us through whatever he wants to use. Don't get me worng, teaching in church is absolutely necessary, but not any more important than meeting someone who needs their car fixed if you can help(both examples of meeting needs). The whole leadership structure is also going to be interesting. I'm sure everyone believes that PT needs help in the form of "deacons or elders", but i'm not sure that everyone understands the purpose and difference between the two. in fact up until this week when i really started studying that subject deeply, i din't either. here's my opinion (come to by scripture and wise christian writings): the pastor is to do the teaching. let me backtrack, all elders are pastors, but not all pastors are elders. a pastors job is to teach. the elders are the ones who have the wisdom and self control, and discernment to listen to God and be trusted to do His will in desicionmaking. a church needs a pastor when one person can not tend personally to all people in a body. thats what the elders do: tend personally to the whole body to keep them strong and keep all the part functional which includes a lot of prayer. it is their job to make sure the body is healthy. Thats why all elders are teachers. when the body grows to a point where the elders have to much to do physically and have not enough time to devote to prayer, that is when deacons are needed. a deacon is a servant. his purpose is to physically serve the body(sort of like kingdom builders at our church. these people do all the necessary things to keep everything functional physically so the elders can focus on the spritual leadership. deacons can also be teachers if god has gifted them that way. so there it is. i could go on for a lot longer, but that is a real short summary of what i believe a church should look like. in scripture the only time it talks about having a single leader is when one person is chosing wise elders to start a church. like i said, i could go on, but i am at work and have work that needs to be done.

What if I hold my breathe and stop breathing
Maybe I could pretend that I'm not alive
But You told me my heart will never stop beating
This is not the end, just an intermission while I gather my thoughts
And throw them out the window, while I drive over the bridge
Nothing to return to, cause this is not the end

And I know how this story ends, I give up
After all this fighting I return to my love.................

i'll be writing every once in a while just about whatever is in my head. i have a hard time talking about my thoughts and feelings because i don't usually know what i'm thinking or feeling until i write them down. that's why i've always used music for that. but lately i haven't written anything, so there's a lot up there that i don't understand, and i've been braking down a lot lately because of it. i will always continue writing music, but hopefully this will help a little bit too.