On love and trust

We trust someone because we love them. We do not try to trust someone so that we can love them.  It would not be very loving or trusting to do it that way.  Trust has to be risky by its very nature.  There must be some sort of leap involved or there is not real trust.  You do not trust someone because you study that person.  You trust someone BECAUSE you love them.  If you are only studying and looking for proof you are not actually trusting at all. I actually trust God BECAUSE I love him.  If I only trusted of God what was proven, I would not have trusted at all.  I do not trust SO THAT I will love God.  My love for God drives me to trust him.

Sure, I wrestle and fight with that trust all the time.  There are times in my life when that trust is tested, but I remember, then, how much I love my Father.  When I remember how much I love my Father, I can remember if I really loved I would trust Him.

I may cry out to God in hurt, pain, and misunderstanding as long as I ultimately cry out, "Abba, I give you my spirit;" as long as I can say, "Thank you" even if through clenched teeth.

An honor just to be nominated

Last week, my friend nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award, and I am thrilled just to be nominated. My insecurity assumes my only reader is mom just clicking refresh over and over and over, but I have greatly appreciated each visitor as this page has grown over the last few years. Thank you so much. My nomination and awarding requires of me a few things, and I will honor all of those right now.

Thank the person who nominated you (including a link) Sarah is a wife and mother who shares her labors of wonder and love from each day with love and creativity to keep you reading and checking in.

Nominate 15 bloggers you follow regularly (in no particular order) 1. Life to Her Years - Posts consisting of a picture and a sweet statement about fathering daughters. 2. Malisa Price - Friend who exploded with blogging momentum in only a short year. Great posts about crafting, cooking, and blogging. 3. Tattoo Lit - An interesting post of tattoos with literary inspirations. 4. Moleskinerie - Just a great blog about people's creative uses of the famous journals. 5. Barefoot on 45th - Wife and mother and writer of beautiful reflections. 6. Faith on Campus - Great resource for anyone who works with college students. 7. Aloha Hoa Aloha - Student and friend with a creative zest for what she sees in life around her each day 8. Heart of Campus Ministry - Another great resource maintained by good friends and to which I sporadically contribute. 9. Ragamuffin Soul - Well he is a blogging superstar and worship leader, but you just have to visit to see all the goodness. 10. Daily Doodle - Simple doodles this guy draws in his moleskine each day. That is all! But I love it for some reason. 11. Anthony Price - Malisa's husband and a good friend. He has recently left that tumblr nonsense to be a REAL blogger. 12. Blaine Hogan - author and creative director at Willow Creek, and I only recently tripped upon his page. Dig around to find the goods. (Hint: youtube) 13.  Ze Frank - This guys finds and shares the most incredible, creative, and inspiring things on the internet. 14. Michael Hyatt - Another blogging powerhouse who certainly does not need my petty little nomination, but I learn so much reading this blog. 15. Yours - I don't have a link, because you haven't left it in my comment section yet.

Tell 7 things about yourself 1. Yes, I love coffee. No, I do not like it dark. 2. I have a wife, a daughter, and another daughter on the way, which means I'll have to begin wearing high heels just to fit in at my own house. 3. I like my beer like a like my women: with little hops, in a cold mug, from Belgium (okay its not like women at all) 4. In order, my favorite sports teams are: Notre Dame football, Oregon Ducks football, Chicago Bears, Indianapolis Colts. (so I like football) 5. I used to listen to Counting Crows all the time. I still do, but I used to too. 6. I love cold, rain, and snow while hating hot, sunny, summers. 7. If I were not in ministry or speaking, I think I would like to be a window washer or painter.

Link to Award Site Check

Hate the church

You do not hate the churchbecause this is what church is... and you actually like us a whole lot

What you hate is that and I actually hate that too.

Belated Gratitude

* journal entry on Thanksgiving Eve The morning before Thanksgiving, and I am not as grateful as I really should be. I really honor and respect those who remind themselves to make lists of things they are thankful for throughout the year and not just during one week of November each year (if that). I am not so inclined, and I really need to be.

I am thankful to have a job at all these days. Though it is a ministry job at a respectful church who is completely debt free and has all finances in the black via budge and salary cut backs, at least they have never had to cut jobs all together. I am grateful and thankful.

I have a healthy daughter and a healthy one on the way. With so many friends close to me having experienced miscarriages and even more painful loss, it hardly seems right to complain that we were not exactly "ready" for this second child-to-be. I am thankful and grateful.

I am thankful for my wife and our marriage continuing and fighting against any societal norm. Nearly every day in ministry there is reference to another church marriage coming to an end or on the rocks near an end. Conversations reveal one or both are simply unwilling to humble themselves and grow up to be adults willing to do the hard work of maintaining a loving marriage. My wife has stood by me when I have been numbed out of emotion and affection. She has not given up or walked away. We both love one another by learning to love more and better and more humbly. I am thankful for her and our marriage.

I am thankful for God's grace and mercy on me. Though my heart and soul are distant more often than not, I am always brought back to his grace and love. Though my natural heart resists the pure and holy spirit of God and pursues the lies a true enemy would want my heart to be convinced of, my cries to God have been heard. He remains close and near. I cannot help but be thankful for these things.

There is far more to be thankful for in my life, and my heart would do well to actively remember those things far more often than I do.

Quick letter to my male students

It takes courage to stand out as a man in a culture of guys. But why would you want to do that? How would you do that? How to move from simply finishing to actually winning. Reality check: Women have given up on 'guys'. That should bother you deeply. They are searching for men to be men, but have absolutely no interest in guys who want to stay guys.

DISCIPLINE: Men understand that risk is essential for victory. On the battle front you're thankful for hellish bootcamp. Women are looking for men who are prepared to BE men (goodnews: men will stick out in a guy culture).

SERVICE: Guys live for themselves. Our culture of 'guys' fights against the entire purpose for creation. Guys are selfish and have no purpose to shoot for in life. At some point, you have to ask yourself if YOU would ever want to date someone who is all about themselves (why would you become someone YOU don't even desire?)

Men live for others. Your purpose is much deeper when living for others. Men WANT to make an impact, and impact only happens outside of self. A man is not focused on what HE gets out of a relationship but on what THE RELATIONSHIP gets out of him. 

Being 'one of the guys' is not being a man. If iron sharpens iron, a guy does not sharpen a man. (Prov.27:17)

You are not intended to do this alone; so quit trying to. (Hebrews 10:24-25). Failure is less likely when other men sharpen you.

* Quick letter to my female students

Quick letter to my female students

Have you been frustrated with the no good men pursuing you? Here is a thought for you today. [good] Men do not fight for anything of no value. Are you worth fighting for?

Now of course, I assure you that you ARE worth fighting for. The question is not as if you were not possibly worthy, but whether or not you act like you are worthy. Do you act like you are valuable enough to be fought for and pursued? Further, do you believe you are valuable?

If you give yourself out to whatever and whomever, you are not believing you are worthy or valuable enough to be really fought for and pursued. You give yourself to lesser boys and 'guys' who will never fight and are looking for easy pleasure. You will not be saved and taken care of if you are not valuable. You will only be used and thrown away.

But that is the game of boys and guys!

Men will fight for and pursue value and worth. You ARE valuable and worthy, BUT act like it and believe it.

* Quick letter to my male students

the Story of Disconnected Impact

I did not know what I was going to do when the strongest influence on my faith and growth decided he wanted to sever the tie we had to one another. For years, my life had been heavily impacted by this man and his family, but now he had made the decision to disconnect the familial tie that bound us together. When things of this sort happen in our life, we can allow the hurt of the break to make us ask and say some strange things.

"Was it ever really real?" "All those years are and were a waste."

It is important to remember in those moments that a break cannot take away an impact made.

No disappointment or failure on an important person's part can change the impact made.

It is important to honor the impact. You still have to remember, reflect on, and respect the impact made even if you can no longer honor or respect the person who made the impact.

Temptation ain't that bad

There is no shame in temptation.  That is, there should not be any shame in temptation.  We too often allow shame to strike us when we are tempted.  When we find ourselves being tempted, we will often tear ourselves down for having been tempted.  Something within us believes we should not be tempted.  I am not sure why I believe that though.  I am not sure why I forgot that even Jesus was tempted.  There is no shame in being tempted. We need to quit understanding temptation as sin.  We would do our spirit a favor by RE-understanding temptation as a choice; as an opportunity for choice.  Ultimately, temptation presents us with a choice that needs to be made each time.  We have wrongly convinced ourselves that temptation is an opportunity to sin, but we don't realize that it is just as much an opportunity for righteousness.  Temptation is a reality of life daily and even moment by moment.  Temptation always comes with a choice.  We have to begin understanding temptation as an opportunity for a choice, and temptation is an equal-opportunity choice; you may choose sin...but you may also choose righteousness.

Iconoclast

ICONOCLAST \i-ka-ne-klast\ n : one who attacks settled beliefs and institution

Novocaine

When you have dental work done on one tooth, you will usually want the novocaine.  The dentist gives you the shot to numb the area around the tooth.  But its never the one tooth, is it?  That tooth and the area surrounding it is often numbed with the one pinpointed shot.  That is the way novocaine works.  You try to dull the pain of one tooth, and in so doing, dull the feeling of the entire surrounding area. How interesting that pain is pain and numb is numb! When something happens to cause us emotional pain, we do what we can to get rid of the pain.  We don't want to hurt; to feel pain.  So we numb it out with whatever we can.  For some, its with drugs and alcohol; for others its with relationships or sex.  For me its often with denial or indifference; I can escape the pain by simply not feeling it or ignoring it.  I numb the feeling of the pain that situation brings.

But like novocaine, its never just the pain that gets numbed.  A lot of times, its not just "pain" in general that gets numbed.  Like novocaine, I pinpoint my pain, numb it, and find out that it inadvertently numbs the surrounding areas as well.  I find in my attempt to numb the PAIN of a situation, I can end up numbing other emotions.  I become incapable of FEELING much of anything. 

When you numb one thing in your life so you don't have to feel, that emotional novocaine is going to affect more than the problem.  Numb is numb! Even though I purposefully numb the pain, I also end up numbing, simply, the ability to FEEL.  Numb is numb!  Now you cannot feel joy, affection, love, anger, sadness, and other emotions in the surrounding area.

We have to feel!!!!  Even the pain!!  Pain motivates us to change something, and if we only numb the pain, we do not change; and we numb other emotions in the process.

Deeper things of wounds

We are all wounded people, and all those wounds left alone to infect will hinder our ability to know God more intimately.  They hinder our ability to relate well.  For this reason it is with each wound healed that the voice of God grows that much clearer.  That is my ultimate goal; for the voice of God to grow clearer and clearer to me each day.  I hear God's voice in my soul clearer than I did a year ago, a month ago, yesterday because I have gone into myself with God's guidance and "Unchangeable Light". That has not been easy, and is often met with some fear and some hurt, but the Unchangeable Light goes with me into the darkened and FORGOTTEN recesses of my inner self to shed some of that light upon the wounds which have affected my ability to hear the voice of God more clearly and thus to relate to Him.

But as light is shed on a wound, I am faced with a choice.  Will I continue to anesthetize it, numbing it, forgetting about it and thus hindering my ability to know God a bit more clearly?

OR...

Will I FEEL the pain so I can realize what is wrong and then go about the fearful and sometimes painful process of mending so that I may hear the voice of God a bit more clearly and know him more intimately?