(Not) Taking Care of Ourselves/Book Review pt 1

So I really thought today about how much energy I put towards other things. I keep thinking, saying, writing, and feeling I'm crazy in love with God. But the amount of energy and time I actually pursue God with is drastically different. I say that with shame. My wife and I were praying tonight and we prayed that we would be drawn near to him, for those things we put as "more important" to be put into their place. Being spiritually health is more important thing anything else. Being healthy is just being in joy in worship of our lovely Jesus Christ. I want to spend like 20 minutes every morning just celebrating him :) Raising my hands, jumping up and down, sitting and just letting him wrap his arms around me and feel his wonderful embrace. I need him so badly.

Oh God, you are my God. Early I will seek you. My soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1

I need to experience that ^ every day. I need a romance with God alive and shining and bright like the noontime sun.

On a different note, I am reading The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy by Jim Marrs. It is excellent. It is about (what will be) the one world government that will happen in the end times and how the current economic crisis is linked to it. I'm not sure if he's a Christian or not, or if he knows he's talking about the antichrist, but everything else that's currently going on he's right on the money. I'm only about ~35 pages into it, but I give it an A+ for investigative journalism. He takes basically everything from scientific reports to PBS docs and NY Times papers to discuss how America is being basically brought down from the inside by the globalists. Great book and hope to finish it soon! If you want a great in depth discussion (even if you are not a conspiracy theorist or not, you will enjoy it because it's basically so far 95% straight economic discussion on the evil committed by government-big bank collusion), definitely pick up a copy.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend with God's Spirit and joy and rest to you in Jesus!

Celebrating with God

As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you. Isaiah 62:5, NASB

I love to give my wife surprises. And she loves to give me surprises. Today is my birthday :) And last night Kayla took me to this really nice restaurant, Benvenuti's. It's this modern southern Italian place downtown. The food was incredible. And not too expensive either. It's the kind of place where you can get expensive, if you want. Or you can be comfortable at $30 a couple if it's the week to send out the bills. Well, we got expensive. I got the fillet. My steak was wonderful. Kayla got this really incredible pasta. The sauce on it was amazing. The atmosphere is fun and light, but at the same time intimate and romantic. I found out that five of my old classmates from high school worked at the restaurant (odd, huh?). And one of the guys I had in my AP Physics class my senior year in high school was our waiter. It was such a nice date. And that was pretty much all I asked for my birthday. A nice, quiet, sweet date with Kayla. When you're a parent, getting a date with your spouse is gold.

I was just thinking about celebrating. I think one of the hardest concepts for Christians is that God wants to celebrate you. And that's not him just standing up out of his throne and clapping as we enter heaven saying, "Well done! Well done!" It's not like a medieval king knighting us because of our good deeds. He wants to celebrate us personally, privately. The Spirit took the intimacy of a bride and her new husband as the image of how Jesus wants to rejoice over us. What do a bride and a bridegroom do? Well...after the reception, that's not too difficult to imagine! They go home or to a fancy hotel and give new meaning to the words "passion" and "joy" and then they run off to a Hawaiian beach or a gorgeous condo in the Rockies and continuing rewriting the fun words of the dictionary. And those are the definitions God is using in celebrating us. God is the beginner of romance (he is the Alpha and the Omega) and he wants to romance us, celebrate us. He wants to whisk us off our feet to a romantic date and delve into our eyes, knowing our every thought. He wants to have intimate conversation over a glass of wine or a cappuccino while the cute music plays in the background and the place is lit just by candle light and the sun setting in the background. He wants intimacy with us that makes the passion of newlyweds on their wedding night look like a 60 year old couple sitting on the couch watching Antiques Roadshow (which, btw, is an awesome show!).That's the desire of his heart, because it's the desire of our hearts and we are his image so then we must be imaging what he desires and feels for us. And we can have this intimacy now. Right now! Because we have the Holy Spirit inside of us. Our very bodies are his temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). That's how close he wants to be to us! I love Peter Kreeft's comments on this intimacy with Jesus:

This spiritual intercourse with God is the ecstasy hinted at in all earthly intercourse, physical or spiritual. It is the ultimate reason why sexual passion is so strong...that is why we tremble to stand outside ourselves in the other, to give ourselves, body and soul; because we are images of God the sexual being. (Is There Sex in Heaven? http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/sex-in-heaven.htm)

We have a God who is crazy in love with us, who desires to be our everything, to be our Lover. And if we just respond by making him our heart's desire, he will give us everything of him and a forever and ever romance in his arms (Psalm 37:4).

Really Needing Jesus

I've learned as this week as continued on to be more and more, that I really need Jesus. I spent most of yesterday begging him to be near him. And yet, it was soooo hard to be near to him. He wasn't near to me after I got the $161 speeding ticket on the interstate. Or when I was buried under work at the office. Or about to pass out but still felt insomnia as my wife prayed over me for me to be able to sleep. It's taken until now this week for me to really desire and long for God. It is a wonderful thing when you are broken down to just you and you want God. There is no pretense, no supposition about his love, it's a passionate longing for the Beloved.

I love this poem by John of the Cross. It's the Spiritual Canticle of the Soul. It's our love affair with Jesus' Spirit written by lover of God. Here is a short excerpt:

Reveal Your presence,

And let the vision and Your beauty kill me,

Behold the malady

of love is incurable

Except in Your presence and before Your face...

The bride has entered

The pleasant and desirable garden,

And there reposes to her heart's content;

Her neck reclining

On the sweet arms of the Beloved...

Let us rejoice, O my Beloved!

Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty,

To the mountain and the hill,

Where the pure water flows:

Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.

We shall go at once

To the deep caverns of the rock

Which are all secret,

There we shall enter in

And taste of the new wine of the pomegranate.

There you will show me

That which my soul desired;

And there You will give at once,

O You, my life!

That which You gave me the other day. Stanzas XI, XXII, XXXVI-XXXVIII

One of the best ways to stay in Jesus' love during times of busyness, is to bury ourselves completely in his love. But, when we are completely taken with little left we find ourselves bare before God and his love. A God who loves us passionately. It's a passion that one must give into to find a joy that was unexpected and perfect and incredible. God himself desires intimacy with us. As John Eldredge and Brent Curtis said, "An intimacy much more sensuous, much more exotic than sex itself." (The Sacred Romance). God is wooing us to become enthralled with him. Which is leading to one day marrying him, to the consummation of our marriage with him. How he desires us and longs for us is incredible.

Last Sunday, our pastor was talking about the Holy Spirit and said, It says it would be better for the Holy Spirit to be here in our church than for Jesus himself to be walking around in our midst. It's true. Because we now have God himself inside of us. And he wants incredible intimacy with us. We wants to be so close to us that our bodies are his temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). How rarely we look and think about ourselves in that way. Not just that we are his desire, but that he desires us so bad that he thinks our bodies are his temple where he is worshipped by us. He wants spiritual skin to spiritual skin with us. His heart pressing on our heart. He wants naked worship of him inside us, nothing between us and being completely intertwined with his Spirit. Jesus desires us. This is the love we are being pursued with by our God. Read Song of Songs and put yourself and God in the story and see how badly he wants you. One day, we are going to say, I do, to Jesus and be his for all time (Revelation 19:7). He wants to begin forever though right now with us :)

Community

Hello again to all of you blog followers,

It's Joel's wife Kayla. I wanted to share some things with all of you! Joel and I are going to try setting off a small group this Sunday. So a week from today we will {hopefully} have a home with some other Christ followers over at our house. This leaves me in a terrible dilemma. What should I prepare? Brownies? Or maybe a healthier approach... like some vegetables and dip? Of course I am just kidding. But really, if you have any ideas, let me know!

I am so excited about this group for many reasons. I am blessed to be a stay at home mom, and while it is exactly what I want & the most rewarding thing I have ever done, it can be lonely at times. I also nanny two days a week. The kids Katie & I watch are incredible 7 & 9 year old girls. While I am very blessed to have that opportunity as well, besides Joel the three people in my life are under 10 years old. My social life is pretty much zapped because we have a new baby. So my adult mind would love some adult interaction every now and then.

Also, I am so excited to go deeper. I just want some community to call me out, encourage me, and love me through this life. And I am so stinkin' excited to do that for others. I'm also glad we can open up our home & serve some other believers. But what I am the most "amped" about in Joel's words is getting my hands dirty in this city. I want to serve others, and help them, and listen to them. I want to take meals to the hungry, rescue sex slaves, and love on some children that have never been told how special they are. But what I need to remember is that I need to do these things because I want to be like Jesus. I want to be an extension of love to these people. Not for selfish feel good reasons, but because I honestly care and love these people.

So please pray for us as we try to get this thing going! We are very excited about what God will do in the coming weeks. And if you live in our area, please come. We love you so much, and would love to spend time with you. If nothing else, just to eat brownies and play games :)

Holding God's Hand

It's early Sunday morning and I thought I was going to be on Katie patrol, but she decided to go back to sleep. In the process of getting up for her though, I made a pot of coffee and woke myself up. So I'm up for the day :) We've had an interesting weekend. Friday night we had Pei Wei. Which has been my fav asian food place. But I got the Spicy Korean and it was terrible! They got my order wrong and dumped most of a chicken in the box when I just wanted veggies. No good! And then Kayla was hanging out with Kate and left her food on the coffee table right when my parents left. I left the room as well. When we came back, we found her food was gone! Completely gone. We called my parents and asked if they had taken it accidentally. They didn't. We searched for two hours for her food. Maybe someone accidentally put it up? Nope. Our black lab licked it clean and stuffed the box under the couch. Dislike! Then yesterday we drove to Katie's baby class and as we pulled into the parking lot, remembered that baby class was every Saturday a month minus the 3rd Saturday in the month. So we left. Later we went to my wife's friend Heather's house and hung out with her and her fam with Miss Katie. They have three great dogs and Katie loved them! She laughed for 45 minutes straight. It was awesome!! And then we came home and had a lazy Saturday night.

Have you ever seen Marley and Me? It's a wonderful movie about a young married couple and their dog and if you haven't seen it, rent it please! You will cry at the end, promise. But there is this seen where Luke Wilson, the lead actor, is describing what he did that month with 3 second video clips from each thing set to this great music.

-went to the office.

-got the same old paycheck

-came home. went on a walk with my wife and Marley.

-thunderstorm came that night, Marley barked all night.

-Went out to fancy restaurant. Went for a walk on the beach.

It's a short, fun narration of just life with this family. And when my wife and I first got married, she watched this movie with her friends Heather and Karen and they both said to her, "That's your life with Joel and Violet (our black lab)." And the whole thing is us and God and we're living and doing our best to live life to the fullest so we will be alive and our daughter will know what it's like to image a living God. So even after all this time with Jesus, I am still a little child before him. I am still just a heart with legs and all I can really bring to Jesus is that and nothing else. I love him and adore him. And he's so beautiful and wonderful. What will it be like when we are narrating life with him ^ and we're talking about going to the beach, going sledding, went to that nice restaurant of 45th street, went to the west side, went back to the beach to see the sunset. built a sand castle, Jesus built a better one because he's God, went home, looked at God and saw his beautiful face in the moonlight. He stole my breath away.

One of the hardest things when life is going by so fast and we are surrounded by our loves is to draw and keep Jesus in the midst of things. Even though he is, he wants to be in the midst of our hearts. We are like the bad lover who ignores her boyfriend and talks with everyone else in the room as he follows her around to just be near to her. We need to be holding his hand every moment. It is in holding his hand that we feel closest to him and actually live life in the moment. Without him, it all passes us by. And passes us by way too fast. He is our God. Which means we worship him, adore him, crave him, need him. If we don't let ourselves feel those emotions toward him though, we lose our romance with him.

Hold his hand! Be near to him. Spend a moment just cuddling with God and let him hold you. Have intimate moments with Jesus today, who adores and loves every bit of you.

Whelp!

Whelp! So, I didn't quit. I got a new, more "rugged" schedule at work. I'm going in at a brisk 5am now so we can stay on company insurance. lol. Okay, so I'm joking a little bit. God blessed us wonderfully with my job still working out. Thankfully. I'm burned out though. Dead tired. Ready to sleep. I have found myself here before though. The batteries are gone. God's grace is incredible in moments like these. My wife's grace is more than I could ever ask for. And, even though she might not know it, my daughter's love is sustaining and refreshing like a burst of sunlight.

Well, when burned out, the best three things are 1) God, 2) my family, and 3) something funny.

Here's 3) in all it's glory:

And:

Weekend!

I wanted to do an easier post before the weekend. Even after a long, hard week (or an easy, breezy one for that matter), a wonderful weekend is always welcome. I can't wait to get some rest with Jesus and my girls. I am so in love with God. He just leads us right through a time of unrest and upheaval and we only draw in closer. Closer to God and closer to each other. Kayla and I were taking a walk yesterday and we both said, almost at the same time, "I feel this has brought us even closer together." It's true, when Jesus covers us from bad weather, we develop a normal reaction inside of us to 1) draw near to God and 2) draw near to our loved ones. In John 5:39-40, Jesus said to some people who were not pursuing him, but basically only following the law to make their own holiness, 'you search and search through the Scriptures trying to find me, but you refuse to come to me to have life.'

This weekend, find life! Find love! Find joy! Pursue Jesus and all of these things will come in abundance in a beautiful, romantic relationship with God. I always take my sabbath (which is the pop Christian lingo for saying, my sunday-ie day off) on Saturdays. And Saturday, I'm resting. Hanging with my girls, swimming, maybe seeing some friends and maybe going shopping. It's going to be one relaxing day. And we're doing it all with God. We're finding life with God. And we're going to draw near to him to do that. God desires to one day actually do all those things with us, one day. But until then, he will be with us in his Spirit.

What do you desire in life? Love, happiness, joy, friendship, intimacy, fun, laughter? These things are the embodiment of a life spent with Jesus as your Love. The way God helps just dig up these emotions during the day, turns my mundane daily things into a date-night (or date-day for that matter) with God. Pursue Jesus, and find the essence of life (joy, happiness, love, intimacy, fun, laughter, and everything else good) in him!

Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 (NIV)

Storm's Comin'

I am so nervous right now. I have had an incredible job where I work. I have been given many privileges. I have been really blessed. I have been allowed work my late nights from home. Which has been a tremendous blessing. When I first started at my company, almost two years ago, I was not allowed to work from home but had to work late nights until 11pm. That killed me. I hated being away from my beautiful (then) fiance. And then, after our daughter was born, things started coming up Joel. They let me work those two late nights at home. Now, it's switching back. And I can't, will not, absolutely refuse to go through that again. I will not go to work and come home at 11:30 pm at night (unless God asked me, but I don't believe he has). My dad was always there for me when I was a boy. He always was there for play time, dinner time, bath time, getting ready for bed, and story time. I'm going to do the same with my daughter.

I know above my frayed nerves that Jesus' will is going to be done. None of this caught him off guard. And maybe this is his way of switching us to something else. I don't know. Maybe he is realigning us toward a new goal, a new job. I found a different job that is similar, pays significantly more, and is much more focused on teaching and helping very poor kids who basically do not know how to add and subtract do well in their math classes in high school. And that sounds right up my alley :) I'm applying to it today.

But God's plan endures. And even though I'm nervous, I'm scared and unsure, I know God will protect us and lead us. I love him. He's too beautiful and wonderful. I have always worked hard to provide for my family so they do not have to worry about it; the possibility of not being able to do that, or for that whole system God has built up to come crashing down is scary. As Christians, we can be scared. We can be nervous. It's having our faith rise over that fear and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that our Beloved Jesus' plan for us cannot be shaken by worldly events is what we strive for and must do to live free from worry which God has handled.

I would ask you to please keep us in your prayers today. I will be meeting with my boss most likely to sort through this. And I'll know today whether or not I will have my job for the next year while I finish OU or if I need to go pull out a copy of the want ads. Thank you. God bless you and yours.

Small in Front of God

Lately, I can't stop thinking about what God has done in my life. I am so preoccupied with it. Not in a proud way, at all. I'm just amazed at what God has done with me. I spent years and years alone, and then boom! One day I walked into a cafe and met my wife. And God changed my life forever. Our whole story is nothing less than a miracle, something wonderful and beautiful and perfect made by God. I'm sitting here listening to Death Cab's Grapevine Fires and thinking about the future with God. And we were talking and I thought this verse:

Even to your old age and gray hairs

I am he, I am he who will sustain you.

I have made you and I will carry you;

I will sustain you and I will rescue you. Isaiah 46:4 (NIV)

Love with God is hardly a momentary rush. It's hardly a good feeling at church or ecstasy in worship at home. It's a long term relationship. One between not only lovers, but best friends. One of my favorite books is Ecclesiastes.

I want to share a couple verses from it:

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. 1:6

How true. This is so true on so many levels. Personal, societal, cultural, spiritual.

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him. 3:14

Man, that one is true. It's like me and Kayla's love story. It endures forever. Nothing can be added or taken from it (in other words, I wouldn't change a thing about it :). It's perfect. And now, looking at our love story, I feel small before God. Small before my Beloved who gave me everything, made me out of nothing, and gave me life. I feel small because I'm apart of something so much bigger than I am. And the gravity of that is huge. I'm a husband and I'm a father. Because God wrote my life. And I'm just this small person before God and I want to love him and he must be crazy about me to give me everything I have. Because he must see things about me that I never knew were there in the first place. But then when you are in love with Someone, they always see things in you that you never knew existed. And you make them smile when doing things you never thought were important or cute. I know, because of my wife. I think God noticed me too :) And I guess I must make him smile.

We all do who are his Son's.

Grocery Store Bought Starbucks?? Flavored?!?!

So, me and Kayla were at Target getting groceries last night. And I've been out of coffee since last weekend when my bag of Starbucks Gazebo/Summer Blend ran out. Well, they had a shelf of these new blends Starbucks came out with and they are called Starbucks Natural Fusions. It's flavored coffee. Not only that, but it was pre-ground! All the things I am against.

But it's still Starbucks coffee, which makes it "brewable" in my book. Well, I was holding my daughter and said to her, Baby, should we get a bag? Should we try one? She didn't really say anything back to me. I felt this, Viva la Vida spirit in me and figured, I need to get one. I ended up picking up a bag. They had Vanilla, Caramel, and Cinnamon. We got the Caramel. I'm having my second pot of it right now since we've bought it. It's pretty good :) I mean, it probably won't win any awards, but it might!

Good stuff.

An Intimate God

We live in a world so filled with imposters, as Jesus said in Jeremiah,

They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold any water. 2:13, NIV.

I know how true that is in my own life and how I just try to fake it. Case and point: Every morning, I wake up and go to school. I have to walk several blocks to class and on the way I love to listen to music on my iPhone. And I got this almost slap in the face from Jesus to wake me up that there was something in my heart that refused to give it up, even though Jesus kept saying to me, "I love you. Be intimate with me! Be close to me! Worship me! Surrender to me!" And it took effort to actually let go of that music and surrender in worship to God's Spirit. And once I did, I rejoiced in being near to him. But there was this part of myself that was just bitter toward God's advances to me. Odd...But it's my own battle against my flesh. My rebellious part of me that refuses to be God's beloved. I love what Peter Kreeft said about this in his essay Joy:

The old self has sold itself to the devil. It's his microphone...When we're about to give ourselves to God, it instantly whispers to us:..."hold back...He is dangerous. In fact, he's a killer"... It's true, God is a killer. If you let him, he will kill your old, selfish...self. But he will do it only if you want him to; and he will do it only as much as you want him to. God is a gentleman; he will never rape your soul, only woo it.

Everything is about one thing: intimacy with Jesus or intimacy with lesser things of the world. Contrary to public belief, God is extremely concerned with intimacy. He is the most sexual being ever. So much, that he even considers political happenings in extremely explicit terms. Just read Jeremiah, or Ezekiel 16 or 23, or Revelation 17 and 18-when he looks at the city of the Antichrist and calls it the great whore who was a whore with all the kings of the earth. Harsh? Maybe these are just passages riddled with metaphor or symbolism? Hardly! God just sees things with his eyes. And so he sees things clearly and with purity and truth. God is relational. And it's not just imaged in physical intimacy, just look at the emotional intimacy he desires. How many times does he say, I am not a God who desires sacrifice and peace offerings. I want you and your heart. Give me you, leave the sacrifice at home please. That was ended after Jesus came as the ultimate sacrifice. There was no need for sacrifice after his death. And so sacrifices in the old testament take on a foreshadowing of our Savior's death. Blood must be shed for sins to be atoned.

In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Hebrews 9:22 NIV

We are in a time now where instead of sacrifices being the image of something greater, it is marriage that images what will be one day with Jesus. The cross was the culmination of Jesus first coming, our marriage to him will be the culmination of his second coming (just before he returns to take the world and establish his kingdom). So much, that we will no longer call him Lord, but Husband (Hosea 2:16). We will be one together, married to God himself. And this is what Jesus was working for on the cross: to woo us to be his beloved forever and to be free in him. For him to be the one to fulfill our every heart's desire. Romans 7:4 puts this as:

Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may become married to another-to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. (NKJV)

The easiest way to begin this intimacy with Jesus is to surrender to him. Give yourself to him as his beloved. Let him come to you as your Lover and let him have you for himself. And let him enjoy you. And as he does, as he woos you, worship him. Peter Kreeft illustrates this in Joy by saying,

In the very act of self-surrender to God there is joy. It is exactly like a woman's voluntary sexual surrender to a man...And when he does, you understand one of the reasons why sex is so different...it is an image of this, of Heaven...Even the tiny foretaste of Heaven that we can all have here on Earth by surrendering to God is as much joyful as the greatest ecstasy sex can give, just as being with your beloved is more joyful than being with her picture.

We have an incredible God, a Lover who will pursue us from one end of the universe to the other all to have our hearts and our entire selves, all to worship him in his love. He is our heart's every desire (Psalm 37:4). Worship him and surrender to him. We all have petty things in our lives that take away our attention from our Heart's Desire, Jesus Christ. Put them aside and instead worship him, surrender to him, and enjoy Jesus' lovely Spirit.

Post Its [with special guest blogger: my wife! Yay!]

Tonight, we have a very special guest writer: my wifey, Kayla! And without further ado, here is my beautiful wife:

Hello to all of my husband's blog readers! I hope you all are having a wonderful week. Joel asked me to be a "guest blogger" tonight, and I hope that I do not disappoint. I'm not quite as exciting as he is :)

Let me talk to you about the things that image God to me. I'm talking about the things, to me, that confirms all over the place that God exists.

1. My husband & our love story. I don't think that Joel has ever talked about how exactly we met, but it was completely written by God. If he wasn't involved in it, it would not have happened. PERIOD.

2. Being pregnant with a baby & raising her. It is so incredible that all of her little features and body parts are so perfect, and yet she grew inside of me! That is incredible. And when I gave birth to her and saw her for the first time, well, you know a miracle when you see it.

3. The human body. So I took Anatomy in high school, and for some reason it really showed me that God was in fact in control. I mean, I really don't think that all of this could have just come together without his hands controlling it. Our whole bodies were made by him, knit together, and we don't even understand it.

4. Money. Joel works hard so that I can stay at home. We should not be able to make the bills every month & enjoy ourselves. But, we do. God is all over that!

5. And lastly, Nature. Mountains, sand dunes, rivers, stars, wonders of the world, etc. Those are the things that make you feel so incredibly small. And also, that someone must be directing them.

Soo... why do I feel so out of Faith all of the time? Why am I so stuck in business and routine that I can't pick up my Bible and really connect? Why do I have to coach myself to really get into worship some days?

I don't really know the answer. But what I do know is that God loves me. And that I know in my heart that I am his. And at the end of the day, that is enough. I like to think, though, that these things are God's reminders to me personally that he is here & that he is in control. What are your reminders? What is it that you could sit and relish in & hunger to know more about? Hopefully, in desperate times you can remember those things & it will bring you comfort. Comfort in remembering the things that make you child-like in wonder.

Beginning the Week, Again/Relationship with God

Oh boy, it's Monday! Again. It's always a hard day, coming off of another wonderful weekend of just being sewn to my wife's side and hanging out with our daughter all weekend :) I got an A- on my math homework and had a ton of work to do at the office, but other than that, it was not too exciting. We took our family pictures this weekend (they turned out awesome!) and we went to our grandma's house for lunch (who is one of the greatest cooks in the world). And now we are having Monday afternoon downtime. I was talking with my cousin on Facebook, who lives in Vegas, and he told me it's hotter there than it was in Dubai. I told him, Dude, you do know it is nighttime in Dubai right now? He didn't say much after that...But northwest of Vegas is a place called Furnace Creek, California. It is inside of Death Valley National Park and the high for the week there is 121. I love the desert southwest, but that's hot! It might be kind of cool to go there. Ha!

On a completely different note. My wife and I have been talking about our relationships with God lately. And when I got to the office today I read my daily John Eldredge email and he was talking about the different types of relationships we can desire and have with God.

Clay/Potter

Servant/Master

Child/Father

Friend/Friend

Lover/Lover

And he asked the question at the end, what level would you say you put your relationship with Jesus? And why did you choose that level? And although all of these names we take on with God in some form or another in our relationship, all are also Biblical ways of having a relationship with our beautiful God. It's a good question to ask, why that level? Why that relationship? When God offers us everything, why desire what you have with God? And do you desire more? This week I'm growing in Jesus. I'm learning how to pray and be intimate with God in prayer with others. My wife and I are spending a lot of time praying together and it's incredible. John Eldredge talked about the communion of saints in his book Journey of Desire and The Sacred Romance and just how we will know each other completely and rejoice in each other's relationships with God in Heaven. The whole thing of Heaven will be a festival of love between everyone, everyone reflecting God's beauty and his heart. What do you desire with God? Whatever it is, pursue it with all you have. And then when you come together with others you will bring the beauty of that relationship and what you alone know that's special of our God and can reveal it to our family in Christ. Life with Jesus is supposed to be a life of intimacy. A life spent enjoying God's Spirit inside of us and rejoicing in him with our loved ones.

His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life. Ephesians 4:30 (The Message)

How intimate do you want your relationship with God to be though? It's a good question to ask ourselves. Even if we do say our relationship with Jesus is one that the pages of Song of Songs can barely contain, why it would take the city of Verona + Shakespeare + A 100 year old bottle of aged Merlot + burning for God that makes the concept of latin romance blush in shame + Song of Songs = relationship with God [I'm really trying to use dry wit here-btw :) ], if we don't live that out every day, or pursue him sweetly every day and remember him, it's just words. I found that out to be true in my life so many times. To my bitter despair. And it has always needed a loving nudge from Jesus' sweet Spirit to remind me, "Honey, I'm still here. Desire me! Pursue me! I love you!"

It's a good solid Monday thought, I think.

A Brother Coming Home/The First and Second Great Commandments

I got a phone call yesterday from a friend who I had not talked to in a long time. He has had many hard struggles with God, but knows that Jesus is his heart's true desire. And he's fighting hard now to come home to God. I cheered him on, prayed over him even though he is far away from me, and told him God's grace is always sufficient if we are willing. He's been the kind of Godly man who, after falling a long time ago, made me sit there in awe as if, If he can fall, who couldn't? But years later, I've lost that awe and discovered that true love with God isn't based on "strength," "knowledge," or really anything else. It's based on Jesus and his heart and love and grace. The fruits of the Spirit, the ones about love, grace, patience, joy, and everything else good, those are the fruits of life and little joys of relationships, with God, with my wife, with our daughter, and with just about everyone else I've every came into contact with. The pop terms today like "anointed" as if, he's so anointed, is just so out of context. There's only us and the Holy Spirit. Honestly, if Paul said he was the least of sinners (and remember it was the Holy Spirit who wrote the letters, not Paul but only through him), and frankly if anyone would be considered anointed it would be him, then what's the point of calling worship leaders, church leaders, or any one else "anointed" in a way that elevates someone in God above others?

Now it is God who makes both us and you firm in Christ. He anointed us. 1 Corinthians 1:21 (NIV)

That was actually our message today by a very wise man who has a family of 7 children and lives in Thailand running a house of prayer for the Thai people (Chiang Mai House of Prayer). He said don't go running to someone or some ministry, even though you will be blessed by it, go get your heart's desire. Which should be Jesus. And get him through worship and prayer. And that's following the first commandment. And through that, we let everything flow which we need to follow the second great commandment, to love our neighbors as ourselves. This man told us today that even though there are more missionaries in a city in Thailand than anywhere else in the world, only less than 0.5% of the people are believes in Jesus. And that's because all the missionaries focused on their ministry as their main project in life. The waiting list for counseling for pastors in Thailand (ie those pastors who are burned out and need Christian counseling) is 2 months long! The pastors' families are falling apart, their marriages are gone, they are broken and depressed. Why? They made their entire life about the second commandment. He said when they changed their ministry to prayer and worship, everything took off. People started falling in love with Jesus, not with some ministry project.

Now loving our neighbors, bring healing, loving on the neglected, hurt, and rejected is extremely important. So important, that it's the second great commandment from God. The only thing above it by God's commandments is to passionately love Jesus as our heart's desire.

We need to practice prayer together, worship together. Real worship and prayer from our hearts. I've always struggled with this one. It's hard for me to feel like it's not contrived when I pray with others. Today, my wife and I prayed together, out loud, at the same time. And for the first time, I felt like I was praying with someone else. As close as I've been to Jesus inside me, and as many prayers as I've been apart of in church and hymns sung, I've never felt as close and bare to God as I did today praying with my wife. It was like he was here and we were all one talking together, worshiping Jesus together. It was a taste of life with God in Heaven. I love my friend who is coming back to God, but I love him because of my love with God. And when we share that mutual love we both have for God in conversation over coffee, we became great and close friends. I invite you to learn to pray with others as you would pray to Jesus alone in your heart. If you already do, then I guess I'm finally catching up! And if not, try it! It's a taste of life with God in Heaven :)

God bless you and be near to you

Being Free!

One of the hardest things to do consistently is to live free because of Jesus. So often Satan and his angels' big goal is to make us think we are still enslaved. He wants us to think we are in bondage to the world, to ourselves, maybe to some old pain that has not been healed, and in bondage to the situations we so often get ourselves into. And yet that is anything but the truth. Jesus said,

"Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land." Song of Songs 2:10-12 (NASB)

and

"How the oppressor has ceased! How his insolence has ceased! The LORD has broken the staff of the wicked, the scepter of rulers, that struck down the peoples in wrath with unceasing blows." Isaiah 13:4-6 (NASB)

"I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron, I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who call you by your name...I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do now know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other." Isaiah 45:5-6 (NASB)

If only as God's Beloved we could live free all the time, the world would see us and know Jesus. We need to let this verse be our identity, instead of the thousand identities and emotions fallen angels throw at us daily:

"You are the light of the world...No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:14-16 (NASB)

You are the light of the world. You! That's not some universal statement applied only to the whole church, it's also applied to each beloved of God. Tell your heart, I am the light of the world and today I will let my light shine before others so they may see my good works and give glory to our Father in heaven. Be free from all the hurts, pains, and trappings of the heart as well! Remember this verse:

"In that day," declares the LORD, you will call me my Husband; you will no longer call me my Master. Hosea 2:16

That day comes when we finally arrive home to Jesus and we are forever wed to him (Revelation 19:7-9). Let that free you! Knowing that your Prince is on the way! And if the bride imagery of us with God is too much for men, remember that it takes both male and female to image Jesus and he far transcends both. Just read Song of Songs chapters 4 or 7 & 8 and see God's beauty. We are saved, we are redeemed, we are engaged to our Lover, we are children of our Father, and we have the Holy Spirit with us every moment we are here on earth. He will never leave us because he is crazy about us. So today, live free! Delight yourself in Jesus and he will give you your hearts desires (Psalm 37:4) and let others see your light and they will see God's image in you and want to draw near to the Original, Jesus. By doing this, you will fulfill the two commandments that the entire Bible hangs on.

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matthew 22:35-40

Notes from the Underground II

I actually know a couple of pastor dudes that do the exact same things as this guy does. lol! Good times.



And lastly, here's a quick Garfield Minus Garfield. I just had to post one more of these. They're hilarious. Oh, Jon. You need help friend.

(http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/555847417/try-garfield-minus-garfield-the-book-go-on-go)

Love Forever: Dating My Wife and Thoughts on Love with God

Whelp! It's 3:49 am and I'm studying for my BIG math test in about 4 hours. I'm taking Partial Differential Equations at OU and we have a test over Laplace Transforms, Fourier Transforms, and Separation of Variables to solve partial differential equations. And I think I'm ready to take it? Maybe? We'll see. But I keep thinking about the big vacation our family, along with my parents, are taking this October to New Mexico. I absolutely love the desert southwest. I think it's one of the most beautiful places God made. We stay at this Hyatt resort north of Albuquerque called the Tamaya Inn. And it's just incredible. And it's cheap too! The whole inn is designed such that you never know that you are actually just outside of a huge city. It feels like you are alone in the desert. To the east are the Sandia mountains. Which my wife and I, when we went last year, would go out to the back patio and sit on the chairs and look at while we had our breakfast. I'm excited to play with my girls in one of the two pools they have (Hopefully, the weather will still be nice enough to go swimming in early October). And also to go to this little place called The Range Cafe. It's an oddity of the surrounding city. They have a wall with about 40 signed plates of all these celebrities who have been there. From actors like Will Ferrell to politicians like Obama, it seems that this cafe is the popular place to go to if you are famous and in New Mexico. When you eat the food there, you understand. It's literally the best food we've ever eaten before. It's New Mexcian food, so it's all New Mexican cultural food. And it's just amazing. They put chili sauce on everything and it's just wonderful. I could go on about New Mexico forever, but I'll stop with a note on Santa Fe. This little town about 30 minutes north of the Inn has the third most art in the city in the entire world (behind Rome and Paris, maybe?). All of these local artists sell their works on the street. They have these street vendors there who make the best fajitas you've ever had (That's a traditional Santa-Fe style building in adobe above ^). The whole thing is just an awesome experience. (And one last thing, one of the most awesome experiences is driving in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night. No lights in any direction, 100% quiet. It's just you and God and about a billion stars overhead. It's something you can't experience anywhere else)

One of the things I can't stand about still being in school is being awake in the middle of the night to study. It's the only free time I can get to focus on my work, but it's no fun because I'm away from my wife. I am nuts about my wife. I follow her around the house and she can't get away from me. I won't let her! :) And you know, I spent years and years waiting on Jesus to bring me my wife and I mentally understood back then that marriage with her would reflect me and Jesus' relationship. But it's not until you are married that you understand that even more. Worship takes on a whole different form. Like if God lived in our house too, physically, I would follow him around too. Because I'm even more crazy about him. And that would be worship. Not so much because following someone around is worship, but just because your heart already worships them that everything you do with them, whether it's sitting on the porch having a cup of tea on a rainy day or going swimming on a hot summer day, is just worship.

The pastor at our old church said once, women want you to make them dazzle. How true! My wife and I were at Target the other week and she saw this romper that she really like and caught her eye. And so I stopped by on my way home from work later and got it for her. Needless to say, she LOVED it. It made her dazzle. And she took my breath away in it. Just like when we go out on a big date and she gets all dressed up, wearing a beautiful dress just for me. Wow, is all I can say in those moments. And it makes me all think, this is what God wants with me in Heaven. He's showing to me in my wife how he is going to look to me in my eyes. He is showing to me how he wants to be pursued and how he wants me to desire him and in a very real way, make him dazzle (not that he needs to be made to dazzle, he already does. But he does desire us to pursue him and that includes some dazzling :) 2 Thessalonians 1:10 says that Jesus will be "marveled at among all those who have believed." (NIV) God really, truly has set his image in us as women and men. I could never escape that from knowing my wife and how beautiful she is. She has God's fingerprints all over everything she is. God is a being of incredible beauty. And let's admit it, galaxies and stars and volcanoes and whatever else nature has to offer is great and all. But none of it cuts to the quick of the heart except for maybe in some transcendentalist moment when one too many pots of coffee have been drank. And men should pick up on this immediately. What really goes straight to the heart, is the beauty of our wives (speaking from the point of view as men). And God is not some natural wonder to check out; he has beauty that will keep you up at night dreaming about being in his arms. I don't think Yellowstone or my last tour at the natural history museum made me dream of passionate embraces with God. To men, I would say pursue your wives more than ever, make her dazzle, and through the process you will learn more intimate things about God than you ever thought possible. And if you not married, dream, dream, dream about God's beauty and pursue him in the waiting time! To women, I would say embrace your beauty. Completely, fully. And embrace it as you have been given the very mirror reflection of God's own beauty (one that his lovers will literally just stop and stare at when he returns). And embracing your beauty doesn't mean running to the vanity of mainstream media who say beauty is losing 10 lbs or wearing this eyeshadow, etc. It means embracing your beauty and believing you are beautiful. And you are pursued by Jesus. Our God who is crazy about us, desires us, and would do anything for us. Even die for our sins to save us. All to one day marry us.

Autumn is on the Way!

My wife and I went to Hobby Lobby the other day and they have their fall aisle all ready to peruse. So we slowly strolled down it, taking in the fall decor for this year. I LOVE fall. It is pretty much my favorite season. It's so beautiful, with the leaves changing color, the sky being crystal blue, the cool air filtering in from the north. Oklahoma is a beautiful place in the fall time. When I was a lot younger, I used to play the The Sims and anyway I found the soundtrack on Youtube and it reminds me so much of autumn. I listen to it and imagine me and my wifey and daughter all cuddling up with Jesus on the couch as the leaves fall outside and the cool air comes in. One of the things Jesus put in my heart as a reminder of eternity with him was a fall romance with himself. I want to share two of those songs and maybe you will hear what I mean, one from Jon Foreman (the lead singer of Switchfoot) and the other a song from The Sims:





One thing Jesus has really put on my heart lately is others in the church and those he is trying to reach to bring to himself. I have always felt like I have a heart towards those who feel like they are an outsider, like they are always on the outside looking in. Probably because I have felt like that myself most of my life. And something I would just like to say on that is if you are feeling like you are looking through the window out in the cold at the family inside, cuddled up around the warm fire as they laugh and converse, it's not true. And those feelings are only temporary. They are a result of living for a finite time in this world. In reality, everyone who is God's beloved and saved by Jesus will one day be lying around the fireplace sharing themselves and enjoying love with God and each other. No child of our Father is left outside in the bitter cold, but we are all going to be snuggled up closely to our Daddy and with our Beloved Jesus by the warm fireplace. Many of us have lived through times of loneliness and times of almost exile in this world, but those times are simply temporary and they are, in the most important way, an illusion. We always have our rich, inviting intimacy with Jesus. The best way to weather a lonely time like that is to snuggle up all the closer to Jesus. Our Lover God is incredible, wonderful. Being near to him is pure joy and happiness.

When Jesus returns, it will be perfect. We will not only know him fully, but each other also and we will never have to let each other go also. Every day I wake up and leave my wife to go to class, then to the office. Not in Heaven. There, I can finally wrap the arms of my very spirit around hers and never have to let go. We will always be together in Heaven. We will have incredible friendship and love with all of our brothers and sisters in God. And we will have a wonderful, passionate romance with God himself. One that will go to the very core of our hearts, bring us to tears because of the beauty he pursues us with (imagine everything with him: the late night picnics, playing in the snow, swimming in the summer heat, cuddling around the fire, telling him you love him face to face). Imagine your heart's desires fulfilled finally with Jesus as your Sweetheart, living in our Father's house with him and everyone else in this wonderful family he has given us. Psalm 37:4, Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you your heart's desires (NIV). We have an incredible forever after with Jesus.

Notes from the Underground

So it was late, 1 am, and my wife couldn't sleep. We're hanging out and she thinks it would be a good time to take a solid professional picture for my resume for after I graduate college. I think it turned out pretty well (above ^). I've been wanting to do some just relaxed blogs about life in general with God, so I figured I'd throw one or two in a week. I was amped about last week when Starbucks officially stated that it would have free wi-fi at their stores! Shaweeet! We're going to give it a try a little later today after work I got a bag of their Summer Blend (which is just their usual Gazebo blend renamed) and it's been good to me. I'm planning on picking up the new Starbucks Ethiopia Limu coffee. It looks good. Hopefully it will be!

On another note, my wife and I are currently discussing what is indie. And what is not. I found a ridiculously indie house remix of Death Cab's Soul Meets Body on Youtube:

I contest that this is the most indie house music ever compiled. Most likely by a genius living in either Portland or Seattle or mixes on the side of learning Koina Greek and interpreting Romans and Corinthians by a candle light with a pot of Pike Place Special Reserve Blend on his desk. My wife said, Meh. And then said it was probably made by a 20-something guy with his Casio mixer who is still living in his parent's basement in Dallas. He has been out of work since the beginning of time and has no plans to ever get his life started. And if he drank coffee, it would probably be something like Folger's or Maxwell house. Never Starbucks.

I disagree. And so I am posting it on my blog :p

One last thing. Which is quite possibly one of the most brilliant commentaries ever devised. If you've never seen it before, check it out. It's called Garfield Minus Garfield. Which is Garfield with everything removed except for John. So here he is. John. Alone. And talking to himself.

So funny.

(http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/post/347584520/try-garfield-minus-garfield-the-book)

Finding It

In life we have these moments, where it's almost transcendent in what is going on around us. We are completely caught up in something bigger, all around us. It's happened to me only a handful of times. Several times in worship, our wedding day, when our daughter was born, listening to the right song at the right time with my wife, hearing our daughter laugh for the first time, dancing with my wife at prom, the sunset and twilight time just before night and the way the sunshine reflects off clouds in the sky, and several other moments. It's when what is going on is so close to life in heaven with God, that we just get caught in the flow and enjoy life. And I'll admit, I've spent a lot of time thinking about those times, pondering how to get them back and find them once more. How difficult that is! God set eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), but he didn't say we would actually have it for good in this world. He did bless us beyond what we can imagine, but we are images of God himself. We have an unending desire to worship God, to be caught up in the romantic ecstasy of his arms and his touch, and we need life with him in this world! Bad. It's like what Jimmy Hendrix said, "There ain't no livin left no where." The world wants to market ecstatic experiences (getting drunk, sexual promiscuousness, basic sin, etc) as life, but it's not. We need to fight back against this world and pursue Jesus in the process. There are two main things I like to do to fight back against this (because as humans, we all have the innate desire for ecstasy, for joy, for life, and we need to figure out how to get it with God right now):
1) I need a time every day alone with Jesus where we are together. Where I can surrender to him and enjoy him and worship him and let him enjoy me. And that is my daily ecstasy in worship. I have to have a connection to Jesus and life in him. Or else I am a mess. Do whatever it takes to get time with our Lover Jesus every day. Get alone with him, surrender to him, worship him, enjoy him. Tell him you want to worship him and you want him to come into you and enjoy you. He will! And it will literally be the most enjoyable, pleasurable thing you can do. You will begin to discover how vulnerability is one of the most joyful things and how letting Jesus come to you is how we let the Lover of our Souls have intimacy with us. Be intimate with him, be close to him. There's nothing more enjoyable then being bare before our Lover and feeling how much he desires us. It is enough to leave you shaking to your core.
2) We need to replace the thoughts, fantasies, and day dreams of life in this world with thoughts, fantasies, and day dreams of life with Jesus. Imagine being finally in his arms. Imagine what it will be like to hear him whisper in your ear, I love you. To hear him call you the names he dreams of calling you, my darling, my beloved, my heart's desire. Imagine the kiss and the drive home to the castle in the Prince's arms.
3) We need to celebrate with each other. We are building the memories of eternity right now. I can't stand the slogan that we should live life fully every day because we will never have this day again. I don't believe that. Because we will live forever and have our heart's every desire. I believe we should live life fully every day because we have life and that's what we are suppose to do with it. Life it to the fullest. Max it out every day. Get your friends in our family of God and love on them. Love on your family and tell them you are thankful for them. Image Jesus to the fullest to every one you know and see. Give more then you've every given. Love more than you've ever loved. For the shear reason that you are alive. And in the process and midst of all this, God gives us moments where we find it. We find life with Jesus.

Indie-ness Might Not Have Been Born Here, but it Definitely Found a Home at Our House

My wife and I have this running joke about being indie. I leave Facebook statuses about how she shops at Native Roots Market [the local all-organic, Oklahoma-produce-carrying market] and how she shops there with her own bag she made out of a bean sack that we got from the Anasazi tribe [which my uncle, a truck driver, brought home for us] from New Mexico who grow their own fresh beans and sells in these really original bean sacks on I-40 just for us [she actually has yet to sew the bag together for use at the market]. And then I posted as my status about how there's no way I could top her indieness even if I were to put on some Death Cab [an indie band] and then start watering my herb garden with recycled bath water [which I have yet to do-because it would take a long time and would, frankly, just be a waste of my time]. And then today I came home from work and told my sweetheart that at the office I was listening to the remix of one of Death Cab's songs, Soul Meets Body, that was what I classified as "the epitome of indie house music." [which it really is] And that's our thing that we do. And it's fun :) Because I married my best friend.

In a lot of ways, I feel like we're losing our grip on the simple fun and pleasures of life. Instead of enjoying a nice joke, we enjoy tv. And it has to be slightly more graphic than last weeks program, otherwise we'll have to go to DVR to get our kicks, right? Culture, mainstream music, TV, etc is so focused on getting and through the process of getting things you get power. And that leads to a lot of other things. Sex, money, a nice house, whatever. Take vulnerability for example. It is one of the pleasurable things to do. To be vulnerable. Because to be vulnerable you have to have someone you want to know you in an intimate way (emotional, spiritual, mental, physical, etc), but you also have to take a risk. It's scary, but it's enjoyable. The world has replaced vulnerability with possessing. We go possess things and it makes us stronger and better. When in reality with Jesus, the most pleasurable and enjoyable things is to be vulnerable to Jesus' Spirit. To let him enjoy us and to be one with us while we worship him. That is something that really nothing in the world can rival. Mainstream culture, in a lot of ways, has become a smokescreen to block our view from real life with God and redirect us toward ourselves. Who grows up dreaming of enjoying life with themselves? No girl ever dreams of her wedding day to herself. No man ever dreams of sitting by himself day after day and loving it. We are positioned to enjoy others and worship that One, Jesus. It's why Jesus says we are salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). And what does salt do? It makes things taste somewhat decent. And the point I think here is that as the salt of the earth, we are suppose to love life and know it, live it, and make life good for others. We should salt the culture, we should salt 3rd world nations, we should salt everything with ourselves. We need to be in pursuit of life in Jesus and with Jesus. Living life to the fullest with our hearts fully alive with our Beloved Jesus should be our main priority, our thing that we are running after. Jesus said to the Jews who were persecuting him in John 5:39-40:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (NIV)

How can we shine the image of God before others if we don't already have life and love with our God? We need to throw away the sinful things of this world (throw out the bad music, throw out the bad TV shows, the bad influences, the bad situations, and everything else bad) and pursue life with our Beloved Jesus. Because then we will be fully alive images of our Original, our God Jesus Christ.

Shhh! It's a Secret!

Inside of us, we have a secret. Something magical. Something wonderful. We have this world made inside of us where we have a beautiful God who desires to be our Lover. He is not seen with our eyes, or heard with our ears, or even touched with our skin, but only felt by spiritual skin, heard with ears of our soul, and eyes of our heart. It's something so personal, so intimate to us that we have trouble talking about it with the closest of people to us in this life (I've wondered lately if maybe that's why telling others about God's love can be so hard?). This Lover is Spirit (John 4:24) and woos us to a spiritual intimacy that goes far deeper, that gets to the core of who we are for the shear purpose of the Beloved enjoying us and us enjoying him, than any other type of intimacy this world has. We derive our identity, our favorite songs, favorite movies, favorite types of sunsets, smells of trees, flowers, times of day and night, and our absolute best (and even worst) fantasies and day dreams all from this secret. And it's also one of the hardest things to talk or communicate to others about in the real world. And it's worth everything. More than all the rubies, jewels, diamonds, gold reserves of all the nations in the world, and all cash currency in every country. It's priceless (Song of Songs 8:7). That's seems to be a general current state of affairs of the romance of God in this world.

Then one day, Jesus will sweep us off our feet and into the clouds. And all of a sudden, everything that we have had as our own personal secret will become real. It will become physical. It will exist. And it will all exist in Jesus and with Jesus. We will see each others' secrets with God (1 Corinthians 13:2) and enjoy them all together. We will no longer strive to be fully alive, nor have to fight against the world to keep the candle inside of us burning in our secret room with God. We will be with Jesus, married to him, delighting in him, and receiving our hearts' every desire (Psalm 37:4).

Of course, it's not really a secret. We need to shout it from the tops of our roofs so that everyone may know and fall in love with Jesus and realize what God has set inside their own hearts that needs to be redeemed so they may live. But it still has the characteristic of something tucked away in our hearts, just for us to know. Like a note being passed under that table during class. It will be embodied in the new name Jesus will give to us that we only will know; the one that two lovers have for each other in their playful embraces (Revelation 2:17).

Enjoy Jesus and worship him in your secret place. Go into your room, shut your door, and be alone with your Beloved (Matthew 6:6). The rest...is up to you :)

Soon?

I’ve really started to wonder how close we are to Jesus returning lately. I watched a video on Youtube on how they are not letting press into the Gulf to view the oil leak. I don’t want to make predictions or anything, but I do believe we are anytime away from Jesus coming to sweep us off our feet. I definitely think the oil leak is a part of the “birth pangs” one way or another that Jesus talked about (Matthew 24:8) But how bad is it? How much control will the government take in this situation. Reporters aren’t even allowed there and the penalty is a felony if you do take illegal pictures/video within 65 feet of equipment and beaches in the Gulf. We can’t even see the wildlife anymore and how bad they are suffering (those are brown pelicans on Breton Island, Louisiana which are endangered by the oil above), and that’s according to CNN. It would seem without regard some of our liberties are being taken away in this situation. Will it last? Maybe. Maybe not. Only God knows what will happen. But Jesus is coming soon. And for us that is our wedding day soon approaching. For those who hate him, John wrote of the elders saying in heaven,

The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great- and for destroying those who destroy the earth. Revelation 11:18 (NIV)

Soon, we will be in our God’s arms. And soon Jesus will bring justice to this world and save us. Jesus badly desires for all to come to him. And that is why he has delayed justice to the world (2 Peter 3:9). But he won’t delay forever. Every single day, helpless little girls are raped by men in the sex trade, poor babies and families starve to death in Africa (especially Sudan), people everywhere are left in brokenness and pain in their hearts and many take it out on innocent people, war is rampant, child armies exist, women are forced to emotional and physical prison across the Middle East because of pagan religions, and the list goes on and on. Only Jesus can rescue and save us! And he desires us more than anyone else ever could. He is God and he soon will come back to take us away to his castle to be his forever and marry him and live happily ever after. Never to be separated from him or from our brothers and sisters in our Father’s family. Soon, oh so soon.

Who We Are

Most of us have heard that commentary about the question, "Who are you?" If you haven't it goes along the lines of someone asking someone else, "Who they are?" and then they give them a varied amount of responses, each of which gets shut down. They give him their name, not good enough, They give him their job. "That's what you do, not who you are," he responds. They tell him about their family. "That's your loved ones, not who you are." And so on. The whole thing is laughable, but brings up a good point. Who are we? Most of us would respond, I'm a child of God and beloved of Jesus Christ, covered in his blood and forgiven of my sins. Which essentially is who we are. But what does that mean? I think it's important to know us in the face of the world who demands that we derive our identity from what we consume, what we do, what we go to school for, etc. Here was what I thought about who we are as God's own:

1) We are free! And that's not just emotionally set free from sin, but we are free to have as MUCH of God as we want. Jesus dying on the cross gave us "unlimited access" to God, as many have said. But what does that mean? We can get up at 4 am and pray to him without sacrificing a lamb? That sounds off to me. It means that we can be as close and as intimate to God as we desire. Jesus came to earth to save us and to tell us he was going to marry us one day. When Jesus said in John 14:2-3, "I am gong to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." (NIV) As John Eldredge pointed out in Journey of Desire, this is what a fiance would say to the woman he intended to marry. The couple moved into the man's house and he would go back and build them a place to live on the house. Jesus desires us to be completely one with him, always. And neither sacrifices, nor making sure to read the Bible every day, nor speaking about Jesus in front of others, or keeping the entire law makes him satisfied. The only thing that does is when we draw near to him in intimacy and worship him.

"The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming-not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship." Hebrews 10:1 (NIV)

2) We are apart of God's family. As Jesus' we have the promise that one day we will walk before him and say our I do's to the Son. He desires us. He wants us to wake him in his arms, every day, for the rest of forever. He wants to be one spiritually with us, always. Just look at his intentions. He made the world originally a flourishing, gorgeous place where we walked and lived and loved him in the midst of the garden. There were no boundaries, Adam and Eve were naked with Jesus. They had no one casting shame on them for being bare with God. Satan was unknown for the moment. There was unfettered intimacy with Jesus. That is what he is trying to redeem. And will redeem, and then some, when he returns. This time it will be a city, not a garden (although I'm sure there will be quite a few parks and gardens in the New Jerusalem). The Tree of Life even makes its appearance there. God will not rest until he has us in his arms once again. As Eldredge wrote:

"There is no union on earth like the consummation of the love between a man and a woman. No other connection reaches as deeply as this one was meant to...after creating this stunning portrait of a total union...God turns the universe on its head when he tells us that this is what he is seeking with us." (Journey of Desire, p.130)

He quotes Ephesians 5:31-32 next:

"'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife; and the two will become one flesh.' This is a profound mystery-but I am talking about Christ and the church." (NIV)

Jesus wants a spiritual intimacy with us that is the original of what earthly intimacy images. He tells us, I want you and I want to marry you! And so we have the hope that one day we will walk away in our Prince's arms. But not only do we get our Lover, we get our family as well. We are free in our Father, our wonderful Heavenly Father. We are free to talk and converse with our Best Friend, the Holy Spirit. We truly are free in him.

3) We are lamps on a lampstand. After Jesus has created a world of love inside of us, he wants us to show it off to the entire world. So many people still have no idea of what God's love really means. Many Christians still do not have an idea as many live their relationships in a distant manner with him. The thought of being naked before God and being in his arms and his tender embrace as two lovers is uncomfortable and unsettling. But Jesus wants us to be near to him, to worship him, to pursue him, desire him. Everything is all about Jesus Christ when we are in love with him. And that's how it is suppose to be. He is our God, he is our everything, our heart's desire. Be free and worship him and let that light shine before others that comes out of your relationship with Jesus. People need to know God's heart and only we can show it to them right now.

Holy Embrace of Jesus in the Midst

When life gets hectic and really busy, I can tend toward a trap of falling into "friendship" with God. And by this I mean not worshiping him completely, passionately in my soul and heart. Jesus is my Best Friend, but he's my God too. Sometimes I'll replace intimacy with pedestrian conversation. Eg our conversations tend more towards banal absurdity (to employ an oxymoron) of the conversation of "Hey what's up? Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Hmm really?" than the passion and the romance of something like John of the Cross' The Dark Night, "I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased, I went out from myself." Now, I love the usual conversation and talking with God, but if we don't have intense worship and intimacy with Jesus, we are just talking. God is holy and by holy I mean reserved to be special. It is the exact same concept with my wife except taken to the nth degree. I take our time to be very special, it's set apart, it's holy. I tell her I want to pursue her and only her by setting aside our time together to make her my complete center of attention. And she loves that. So does God. It's one of the ways women embody the image of God is in the desire to be pursued. By us making God holy in our hearts, we essential set him aside above everything else to pursue him above all things.

Jesus most definitely desires us to want him, desire him, to crave him, and to day dream about him all day long. He wants to be the object of our affection. Exactly as a lover wants to be his beloved's always. And when I don't pursue him, it's usually due to one of two things: 1) I completely forget him or 2) I'm way too lazy to pursue. (Shame on me for both of those things, I feel terribly about them both). Jesus writes about our dilemma with him in the Song of Songs

"I slept by my heart was awake. Listen! My lover is knocking: Open to me my sister, my darling...I have taken off my robe-must I put it on again? I have washed my feet-must I soil them again? My lover thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him...I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone." 5:1,3-4,6 (NIV)

We have these minds that just don't want to be with God, think about loving on Jesus, and just want to zone out, or focus on small things, all when we are faced with the possibility of true joy and pleasure in the romantic embrace of Jesus Christ. How could we say, why should I get up and go to him? After all that we know, after all the joy and happiness and pleasure experienced in the torrid love affair with God? We truly are in a battle against ourselves! We need eyes to see and ears to hear the romance with God, always. We need time every day where we don't just have the normal conversation with God throughout the day, but we have a time of embracing with Jesus' Spirit, where we can worship him fully, bare before his eyes and enjoying Jesus' touch. We need ecstasy, we need rapture, we need it every day. And not only to make our relationship with Jesus flourish, but also as an act of spiritual warfare against our own flesh and as a protective barrier against Satan and his angels' attacks.

Servant in Love

My wife tonight made me a video slide show of pictures from our entire romance set to Colbie Caillat's Fallin for You and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever watched in my life. I mean I wept it was so sweet. I just watched it again and it's 3:30 am and I should be doing my math homework but that doesn't matter and it just made me cry again! The titles she wrote, the pictures on it, everything, it was perfect. And I was sitting there just watching how my wife came alone and Boom! My entire life changed years ago when I met her. I am not kidding, ever since the day I met her, I have had nothing else I've wanted to do each and single day since but be with her. Ever since she walked into that cafe, Plaid Cafe, that one down on campus corner that one Saturday afternoon, where we first met and had our first date, every day, every hour since that time at about 3:30 that Saturday, I have wanted nothing else but to just be with her. And you know, I knew this ever before that time I met her, but our entire romance mirrors our relationship with Jesus. Ever since that day in August almost 8 years ago when I read John Eldredge's Journey of Desire and discovered that Jesus wanted to be my Beloved and marry me one day, I have been enthralled with him. And wanted to be with him. He changed my life.

Life with God is one of the most incredible things ever. It's one of the hardest things to do in the world. Truly. As God's beloved we don't have an easy path sometimes. Peter got crucified upside down. John was sent off to a remote island and lived alone with God. And Jesus. The Father said there was no other way besides the cross and the cup could not be taken from him. We are lovers of our Father in a dark world and in many instances what is required of us is a lot. And it usually is simply by his grace that we are able to complete the task. I spent 6 1/2 years alone before I met my wife. I remember wondering if God would ever bring her to me. I remember being so lonely and feeling like no one cared about me or knew my name and if I died tomorrow how no one would care except my parents. And I felt like a traveler in the desert. It was by his grace, by his love, by his immense beauty, by the promise of his good heart that I had only to trust in and knowing that one day I would finally hold our Beloved in my arms for good. And now I'm home with my wife and waiting for us all to go home to Jesus. One of my favorites on faith in Jesus is Hebrews 11. I love it because it encapsulates all of our heroes from God's word and how they only did it because they had faith in God. It begins with this verse:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. 11:1 (NIV)

I am sure of Jesus' love and that one day we will marry him and be with him forever. Worshiping him in oneness and intimacy forever. This romance is worth everything. I promise you that. The romance with Jesus, with each other, winning the world for our Beloved and our Father through the Holy Spirit, it's everything. It's perfect. It's wonderful. It gives us hope, faith, and it lets us give every bit of love we have until there's nothing left and then we discover that we still have love left in us even then. It makes us want to be simple servants. I just want to serve my wife. I'm going to do those dishes for her and then clean her car, all before she wakes up! I just want to serve Jesus and love him forever. He is so beautiful. So wonderful. And I can't wait to be with my wife and Jesus and us watch this slide show and then another one of all three of us together. God is perfect because he is love. Why wouldn't we sacrifice everything we have for him when his heart is this beautiful?

Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty....Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day." John6:34,54 (NIV)

For We Are Travelers in a Foreign Land

Whew, we just came off our 3 day weekend. It was great. We had all of our daughter's grandmas over for dinner, homemade ice cream, and fireworks for the 4th. It was fun. My Granny and my wife's Grandma have opposite personalities. Mine is quiet and reserved, "country quiet." My wife's is talkative and excited about life. But they both love Jesus and are the sweetest women. We shot off something called "The Big One"? I think. It shot up into the air and then exploded and made really pretty lights. Everyone was shooting off fireworks and so it sounded ominous when we walked around in the dark outside. It rained earlier in the day and it would have rained out the fireworks had it not stopped. That would have been the second 4th in a row that would have gotten rained out.

My wife and I keep talking about the sex trade going on. Especially right here in OKC. It's just shocking something that terrible happens right here. I want to see restoration of those girls in their Father. We need our Father so bad. Only he can provide healing for sins like that. We've been talking about how we need our Father's wisdom. I read through parts of Ecclesiastes this weekend and I have these moments in life where I get it with that book. More so than usual. I love Ecclesiastes. A lot of people don't like it, or interpret it to their own fancy, but they miss the point of the book when they do. My wife and I are an interesting bunch. We both have incredible relationships with God, but we relate to Jesus very differently. God is my Lover. And God is my wife's Father. In reality he's both of those things to us in relationship of course because the Father and the Son are one. But primarily when we relate to Jesus, we relate to him on two different relational planes. So I asked our Father a couple days ago, make me need you. Boy did he. What happened was I started to have a lack of rest in me. I couldn't rest! I couldn't look at my weekly work at the office or school and say, I did good. Now, I'll rest. Fail. One of the greatest joys I have is to sit down and talk about life with God. I needed it with the Father. He is so wise, he is the beginning of wisdom. And so we talked about Ecclesiastes. And I realized how badly I needed my Father because I need to know how to live life here. I need to know how to be like his Son. And I need my Daddy to teach me that. I need to know my Father is a Warrior and will save those little girls and bring them to his house one day where the former things will not be remembered (Is 65). Where they will play and have fun not be afraid of anything. Who has anything to be afraid of when God is our Father? Like Gandalf screaming as he charges down into the valley in Lord of the Rings leading the armies of Gondor as they obliterate the evil orcs, so I need to know my wise Father will fight for me, for us, for freedom, for liberating the world into the kingdom of his Son, and obliterating Satan and his angels. I need to hear him tell me, I want you to marry my Son. And have him throw us our wedding party. I need to sit over coffee with him on a porch and just talk and listen to him for hours and hours. I need my Father. We all need our Father. And by being covered in Jesus Christ's blood, we have relationship with our Father. And no longer have to be afraid of intimacy with the Son, with the Father, and with the Holy Spirit.

I wonder what kind of engagement party our Father will throw for us in preparing for our wedding to Jesus? Will it be outdoors? With candles and music and dancing and great food? Will the beach be just over our shoulders and the stars overhead? Our Father is crazy about us and no one wants us to marry his Son more than he. What will his expression be when we finally kiss the son? What will his face look like when he is about to leave with us to go fight and make war on evil earth? What words will he say to us when we sit on the back porch at nighttime with the fireflies and stars everywhere and we have nothing to do but just be with him?

We have a perfect Father in our Lord Jesus Christ. I can't wait until he returns and we are with him and our Beloved Jesus.