I Never Cease to Smile in the Presence of Godly Passion.

I love people with a heart and passion for others. Nehemiah 4:14 "Don't be afraid of the enemy! Remember the Lord, who is great and glorious, and fight for your friends, your families and your homes!" I realize the context that Nehemiah was speaking in is very different than the one I like to equate it to but follow me. An enemy is your opposition, we shouldn't cannot be afraid of our opposition, whether that be Satan, the world, or ourselves. We must remember the Lord who is great and glorious! It is in the sight of the Lord and through the embrace of His intimacy that we are stirred to fight for our friends, families, and homes.

This verse inspires me greatly! It literally makes me smile. It gives me hope for humanity. It's not the words though that make me tingle inside, it's you. All of you who are chasing the Lord and remembering Him in every aspect of life. All of you who are fighting for those you love, whether you know those people or not. As the body of Christ we have the ability to intercede. Through prayer we can call out to God in a fighting cry for others. Through action we can personally and physically intervene in the lives of others. I'm encouraged by those of you who have a passion for others, you are the hope of this world. I originally wanted to start a blog called "Death Cause" which would be a blog that spotlighted people who are wildly passionate about great causes in life and willing to die for those causes but then I realized the average passionate person isn't out doing things that are flashy and "noteworthy" they are just living their life loving people. There are some amazing organizations out there that I personally need to look more into and endorse but behind them all are amazing people that I need to support through prayer.

I LOVE PEOPLE! Plain and simple. I wish we could all do as my good friend Aimee says and, "love others professionally," how sweet would that be?

Raw From the Mind.

Here's what's on my mind, in the raw:

• Hold Us Together- mainly because its playing on my itunes right now but I love this song. In this present moment I feel like things are unraveling, I'm tired, and there not much I want to deal with but this song sums up the way I feel right now. Like God is holding me together.
• Friends. I've got them. Good one and average ones. Ones I see daily, rarely and almost never. Ones I talk to often and others sporadically. I think its the ones that live far away are the ones that I treasure the most. There's people I miss but don't think I'd take the chance if given the opportunity live near them... Well maybe not. If I knew be close in proximity wouldn't change the depth of our friendship than I'd want them near. I think being close physically can ware out a friendship at least that's what tends to be the case for me. I tend to say, "ya, if were friends then" and the other person gets offended by the thought of us not being friends. This happened twice last year, I'm not nearly as close of friends with either of them as I use to be. Friends come and go but ones that are far away and begin that way are never affected by your daily life or location, they stay constant. Sometimes I wish I didn't care as much about people as I do. Sometimes I wish I cared more. I wish I could really impact someone's life. I'm present in many people's life but I don't impact other the way they impact and inspire me. I desire to be .010% of what Jesus was to the people he was around and not even in a religious way.
• I'm tired but need to shower. I'm tired but need to pray. I'm tired but need to answer this text message that I can't find words for. I'm tired but I need to do better. I'm tired.
• I'm getting sick, physically and emotionally. I'm weak and vulnerable, to disease and sin. I might come down with an illness but God will fill me with the Spirit because he is good (yes, those are references to two past posts). 
• I want to punch someone square in the face. That's real, a very real desire right now. Mainly because there's so much intangible crap going on right now that punching someone in the face is seems like a good tangible act to putting it all to rest. 
• My schedule scares me because there's so much on it. It's all work things but I don't like having a filled schedule.
• It's almost midterm time! That means I'm half way to finishing my classes and getting bad grades in some of them. I can't wait! It also means that I'm closer to flying away. I love to fly, there's too much to talk about as to why for this post but maybe another. 
• I start my beans and rice fast on Thursday (tomorrow). Fasting always makes me nervous because I don't want to become obsessed with weight lost. If you know me really well then you know my weight is something I fret about for like 15% of each day. I always want to be skinnier. I'm fearful when fasting that I'll loose sight of why I'm fast and focus on the weight but over these next two months I'm gonna give it my all to stay focused in the glorifying factor of fasting. 

There's a lot on my mind and I'm not going to reread this or check it so if there's any mistakes that's alright with me. Embrace the imperfections.

The Greatest Kombucha

Seek God. Who is God though? God is the Trinity- the father, son, and holy spirit. It's become quite clear to me that although I say I seek God I've been ignorantly mistaken. I seek the father and son but tend to forget the importance of seeking the Holy Spirit and thus do not seek God in his entirety. The Spirit is often referred to as the sustainer or life-giver, how reckless it is of me neglect such an integral part of who God is. 

In moments when I am worshiping and seeking the face of God, I forget the individual parts and praise them as an entity. Other times though, often in prayer, I reach out to Jesus or the Father for help or to give thanks. Without the Spirit we lose the benefits of the father through Jesus' life and death upon the cross. In a strange way the concept of the Spirit reminds me of my Kombucha. Kombucha is a bacteria-yeast tea that originated in Russia in the 1800s. The way it works is that you brew green and flavored tea, take the bacteria-yeast patty and lay it out flat in the tea, and then place the jar in a dark place for eight days. In this time the bacteria-yeast patty asexually reproduces another patty on top of it and releases probiotics into the tea that help with your immune system, hair & nail growth/health, and gives you energy; i.e. it sustains you. However, if I take just the Kombucha baby (what they call the bacteria-yeast patty) and flaunt it around talking about the benefits but never fill my body with the tea I gain nothing. I'd have all the tools but would not be utilizing them (which is what I've been doing with my Kombucha baby until I  received the rest of the equipment to cultivate it in tonight). In the same manner if I'm not constantly seeking to drink from the Spirit I fail to utilize God as a whole, I only have the parts that produced the sustainer. 

So Good.

God is good. There's something about hearing a man who lost his five year old daughter saying such an essential truth only two days after her passing. It's a simple truth that I tend to overlook because I focus on the other characteristics of God. My favorite characteristic of God is that he's long-suffering, it's the one I choose to default to because it reminds me that He is loving and gracious and merciful and protective and kind but there is an extent to which he will take it. Long-suffering reminds me never to push my luck with God. It also in a way makes him more real, it's such a humanly characteristic, more so than the rest of them in my opinion. However, none of this is true unless God is above all things GOOD. God offers us grace and mercy and security and second and third and forth offenses because He is Good. And that, that is a good thing. I'm thankful that I've been reminded of such a vital truth. I'm thankful that God chooses to be good. I'm thankful that there are people with such strong faith, that even in the midst of their suffering they keep the ultimate truth in sight. I'm excited to mediate on such a glorious truth from now on. Yes, God is good.

My thoughts on being called a hipster...

It's strangely not uncommon for people to call me a hipster, which in my opinion is odd. Hipsters are hip. I don't think of myself as being cool enough to be hip. I don't know much about music and certainly nothing about under ground bands. I don't practice photography nor keep up on indie films. I don't get wasted on PBR and am certainly not addicted to nicotine. So maybe I grow some wicked facial hair and wear black wayfarer glasses. Maybe I rock TOMS and don't wash my hair but every four days. Maybe have a kombucha and do watch indie films. But still, I'm not hip to the standards of a hipster. However, I will accept being called a hipster because although I'm not part of the hipster counter culture I am part of the counter culture for Christ and in my opinion that's as hip as you can get. I appreciate people thinking I'm cool enough to be called a hipster (yes, I know most people don't really think hipsters are cool but to me there is an allure to their relaxed grungy waste of life attitude- I think it's because they're able to not care about anything so easily) but I hope that one day the world will think I'm cool because of who I choose to follow.

Peace&Jesus to all the greasy haired, inked up, plastic framed glasses wearing, indie rock listening counter culture hipsters. may your version of the hipster and mine one day coincide.

Baguettes & Eternity

It is past two a.m. and I'm gnawing chunks off a french baguette that I bought earlier from Panera Bread. The only thing crossing my mind in the midst of chewing is how did I get here? Where did the last nineteen years of my life go that I'm now sitting around my dorm apartment in college? It boggles me every time I think about how fast a lifetime must pass you by, in the same token though, it excites me even more. There's something about comparing eighty years to eternity that makes me smile. I enjoy realizing that I will have nothing but time to spend in heaven once I get there.
My favorite verse in the Bible is Psalm 22:26 where it reads All who seek the Lord will praise him. Their hearts will rejoice in everlasting joy. I don't know of any words that ring so true to me all of the time. During moments of praise my heart is at its fullest in joy. This is a wonderful thing, this is the picture I have of heaven. I want nothing more but to sit around and praise the Lord for all of eternity. As it stands now, in my earthly body, I tend to have a difficult time staying in constant praise. Even when I'm at church or nights of worship controlling my mind is something I've never been able to do. It wanders and bounces from one things to the next, I reign it in and concentrate on something and then one word sparks a continuous tangent all over again. No matter how much I desire to devote an entire night to praising the worthiest of all kings I seem to always take a mental break every hour or so. In heaven that won't be so. Down on my knees I will finally get to praise with no taunting of my consciousness. This is the heaven I hope for, not one of people playing cards and high fiving. Yes, I feel the same way, high fiving sounds like a weird thing to be doing in heaven but seems completely appropriate. I can't wait, nor can I truly express in words how excited the thought of eternal praise makes me but I can say it's a grand and beautiful anticipation!