(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)