Tired of it...

Do you ever find it impossible to find a song that gives your feelings and emotions a way to escape your body? I mean...whenever I am leading worship in a service...or in my room...or in my car...ha...sometimes someone else's words just don't cut it. I need my own words, my own melodies, my own music, my own beats...anything that gives a voice to the cries of my heart and life at that particular moment in time. I'm not the greatest songwriter... and maybe you're not either...but when you or I get desperate enough for the things of God, it is amazing to see what can come out of us. So...keep praying...keep writing...and keep praying some more...and let the songs of OUR generation come forth...love love.

I am ready to go pro! (NOT!)

I was thinking today...as I often do...and I started thinking about all the amazing things that God is doing.  Crazy things are happening in my life, my friends lives, my church, and across our nation and the world!  I was thinking that I hope that I never become a "pro" at the things of God.  Let me explain...

I do not want to become a professional pray-er.  The SECOND I feel like I am the best at praying, my prayers will be worthless because at that moment pride will enter my life and we all know how God feels about the proud.  He will strike me down! ha.  This thought came because I have been thinking of the young adults prayer times on Fridays and and also on Sunday and they have been amazing!

Let me pause here for a quick rabbit trail...Friday night Jonathan spoke on unity and the importance of it and what could happen if we were truly unified.  Anyways...after he finished speaking we decided to pray for a few minutes...he said around 20 mins...after about 30 minutes we decided to walk over to the youth facility and pray for the youth.  On our walk over there, at least for me, I was getting pumped up.  As soon as we opened the door to the youth facility, it was on!  The spirit of prayer and intercession was all over us and boy we let the devil and his demons have it good!  We cried out to God, and prayed, and yelled against every power of darkness we could think of for around 30-45 minutes.  It was pretty intense!  When we finished there, we went over to the middle school sanctuary and prayed our hearts again.  I believe that God heard us that night and I am excited about youth service this week.

So back to what I was saying earleir, I have really been learning to pray.  I mean, not just "bless this day amen" I'm talking about serious prayer.  I am learning a lot.  I am starting to begin to feel some of the burdens of God's heart and it makes me passionate when I pray.  Don't look at this like I'm saying I'm the man...cuz I'm not.  I'm just letting God put some stuff in my heart and when He does, I can't help but get passionate about it.  Most of the time I have no idea what to say when I pray but I just start by lifting God up and open my mouth and the cries of my heart begin to come out.  I want that to always be the case.  God help me if I start to pray just to sound holy.  I don't want to just waste oxygen with empty words.  I want heaven to stop and listen to me when I pray because I am real and care about the things God cares about and I am broken for the lost and hurting and needy.  All that to say, if you want to learn to pray, ask God for your heart to break for things that break his heart and to be excited about the things that make him excited.  Believe me, if you will do that, you have no choice but to become a praying person because you will not be able to accomplish a thing if you don't pray.  Honestly, I don't know how I made it so long without a strong prayer life...I mean... for the longest time, when it came to my personal prayer time, it was pretty lame.  

So, now that I have no secrets and I just bared my soul for the entire internet world to see...hope it encouraged you or convicted you...love love

God...church...

So pretty much God has been doing some pretty amazing things in me...my friends...my family...my church...and its flippin exciting.  You know how when you go to a conference or something like that and you have a good time and get excited about God and christianity and all that stuff...and then in a week or two...you get complacent and lazy again? Maybe it's just me...but that has happened several times to me before.   But let me tell you...when God Himself touches you and puts something in you...that excitement and fire will never go away.  

We have recently started a young adult class (ya know...people in their 20's or around there) at church and from the beginning...I have said that it was going to be amazing and one of the best things we have ever done.  And I was right!  We started off with maybe 10 people or so but we were all hungry for God and we wanted Him so bad we were about to explode.  So we meet for prayer sunday mornings before church and we get together on Friday nights and we either go out and eat or something or someone will teach and preach.  Prayer has been great!  Our group keeps growing and believe me...God is hearing us when we pray and cry out to him.  He HAS to.  There is no way he can ignore 15 people worshiping Him and crying out to him...very LOUDLY.  Needless to say 45 minutes is not nearly long enough for us to pray together...but it's a start.  

It has definitely been refreshing and encouraging to finally get to be around people and friends that are for real going after God and trying to make sure another generation, OUR generation, does not miss God again.  

Friday nights have been great...chillin and eating and doing that sort of thing is always fun but when we get together to listen to some preaching and stuff...that has been great!  People have been receiving the Holy Spirit and God has really been messing us up.  Pastor Buddy prophesied over everyone that was there Friday night and he was dead on it.  Needless to say, we are stirred up and have been for several weeks now and so its just going to keep getting better and better and we are going to keep pressing in to God and hopefully we will start something in our church and and then we will go from there.  

So I'm stirred up and excited and am going places in God that I have never been before and so are my friends...we are becoming dangerous...love love...

I am MESSED up!

Have you ever thought that you knew a lot about something and after a few months of God dealing with you and teaching you new things, you find out that you know absolutely nothing?  I am pretty much in that place right now.  Which is a great place to be!...I think.  When I realize that I don't know anything God can use me and receive all the praise and glory and attention because I realize that I am nothing and had nothing to do with what God did.  

I have been studying worship in school and I have been finding out that i did not know 1/100th of what I thought I knew.  I mean come on...I have been pretty much leading worship full time since I was 13 so I must know something...right?  Wrong!  That saying that says "The more you learn, the more you find out how much you don't know" is very true!  I have just been learning so much that I can't go back to living in ignorance.  The more I learn the more responsibility I have.  As a worship leader, I need to constantly be learning what true worship is and how to lead the people in it.  It's not something I am one day going to say "Aha!  I completely understand now".  It is going to be a lifetime of learning and I hope that I can take what I learn and use it the best way I can.  Honestly though, the more I learn, the more scared i get.  Because I "know" that God is in control but it gets tough having faith and letting God have complete control of everything and I need to do my part but it is NOT up to me to create a move of God.  I just create the atmosphere where God CAN move and then my job is done.  From that point on it is all God's.  

Another thing that I have been dealing with is my dreams for my life.  I knew I was dealing with something but I didn't know exactly what it was until this past weekend.  I went to the Ramp in Hamilton and Damon Thompson talked about dreaming God's dream and not my own.  Don't get me wrong.  I had GOOD dreams for my life.  My dreams were God honoring and they were good things.  And I don't know...maybe God will let my dreams happen IF I dream His dream first.  I finally got to the place where I said the heck with the plans I have and want to do (I had it all planned out).  I am now praying that God would place a burning dream in my spirit...His dream for me and my generation.  There are all these things that I want to do...travel...lead worship...make cds...all that fun stuff.  But now I want to be a voice for my generation...the silent ones in my generation.  In whatever capacity God wants me to do it.  I would be content to work a normal job and lead worship and work wherever God leads me if thats what He wants me to do.  All that to say...not my will but YOURS be done...for real!!

So the moral of the story is...God messed me up and put me in a vulnerable place and I hope that as I go through this stuff...i learn a lot and I let God do what he wants to do so that I can grow!  Love love...

Interesting...

So I am pretty much stealing this from my friend Jonathan Barron but check this out...have you ever thought about WHY Jesus cursed the fig tree in Mark 11?  The Bible clearly states that it was NOT the season for bearing fruit BUT...Jesus cursed it for not having fruit anyway.  I have read that story before but I guess I wasn't paying too much attention to what I was reading because something like that should have sparked my curiosity.  In 2 Timothy 4:2 Paul told us to "be prepared in season and out of season".  Could it be that Jesus wanted to illustrate a point?  He cursed the fig tree for not having any fruit when Jesus WANTED it...even though it was not the "time" for the tree to have fruit.  So after thinking about this I pretty much came to the conclusion that I have to be ready to produce the fruit the God wants when he wants it.  He doesn't want any of my lame excuses as to why I wasn't ready for this or that.  When God is searching the earth for someone he can work through or flow through...someone whose life is producing fruit...I hope that I am ready and living in such a way as to attract his attention towards me.   Thats it...something to think about...Love love...