New Music

If you love music and you are a person who is easily touched and moved to worship through music I have a few suggestions for you. First you must go to itunes and download the song "Glorious Day" it is on Jeff Johnson's new album and in the words of my brother in law "it doesn't suck." That song rips me apart every time I here it.
Secondly, I went down to Waco Monday night with some great friends to UBC to be a part of the David Crowder Band Cd release party and that didn't suck either, neither does their new cd remedy. You should go out and purchase this one as well. They talked about their last cd Collide and how it was all about death and the heaviness, yet victory in death and shortly after they expereined the tragic death of their pastor Kyle Lake. The new CD Remedy is the music they made coming out on the other side of that tragedy and it is amazing.

This Day- Micah Dalton

"Cruficy this day
So that I might see the way
And love your Beloved
Show your Resurection
Through the way you kill my pride
Please take control
Please take control
Let me dwell

Let your life live on through me
Let your breath breathe on through me
So that they can see in me
How you, you've loved me"

I love my job. I have the greatest job in the entire world. I get paid, quite a lot actually, to hang out with inner city kids everyday and teach whatever fun thing I can dream up. This 6 weeks that happens to be soccer (a sport I have played very little, ha) and survivor (outdoor living skills). Outdoor living skills with these kids is a trip. I gave them a mini quiz yesterday to test what they know and one question asked what the first thing you should do when you notice someone lying down injured. I gave them some options and I was listing the options one girl said (in true black girl tone) "You gotta check and see if he dead." I almost wet my pants. SO FREAKIN FUNNY! She was actually kind of right I guess if I wasn't going to be very technical. Praise God for ghetto middle schoolers.

Life can be incredibly lonley at times. I am not sure how people without the hope of Jesus survive. It is only by his light that any of this world's nonsense, begins to somewhat make sense.

funny

I read this this morning and it is definately one of those comical moments with the over zealous disciples and Jesus. I imagined Jesus rolled his eyes as he rebuked them. What were the disciples thinking....I mean picture this happening in your local church. Read and chuckle accordingly...

"When the days were coming to a close for Him to be taken up, He determined to journey to Jerusalem. He sent messangers ahead of him and on the way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make preparations for Him. But they did not welcome him, because He determined to journey to Jerusalem. When the disciples james and John saw this, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?' But He turned and rebuked them and they went to another village."
Luke 9:51-56

Today I am thankful for...
life
my sister
starbucks icecream
my professors who truly love Jesus
deep laughter with my best friend
the smell of rain
love

Have you ever had those moments where you doubt?...but not where you doubt God, you doubt yourself? You know with all of your heart that God is faithful and desires what is best for you...that is never the question. The question is, Do my desires cloud what God wants? I am seeking what God wants? I am able to discern if this is something God wants or simply something I want for myself? I think this is so hard. Of course what God wants is so good...but how do I know what He wants? And not his general will, that I would glorify him, that I would share his gospel, etc.....but his specfic will for my life.
This is no new struggle...it has been around as long as humanity has. I want so badly to walk in step with Jesus, I simply fear that my steps will get in the way of His. Jesus, lead me.

living beneath the cross

In a section on confession in the book The Celebration of Discipline, Foster quotes Detriech Bonhoeffer.
How do we learn to receive the confessions of our brothers? By living under the cross!
"Anybody who lives beneath the Cross and who has discerned inthe Cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him. Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother."

Jesus, take me to the place beneath your Cross where this kind of transformation happens!

Jesus is so good. He shows himself more and more faithful to me everyday that goes by. He shows that if you will lay down your baggage and pick up his cross, the burden (miraculously so) is easy and light. I am thankful for so many things, but above all I am thankful for the mercy and unconditional love of Jesus. When I fail, His faithful love most certianly remains. I was reading in Nehemiah for one of my classes tonight and it was talking about Israel when they held a worship service of sorts. They were in captivity in the land they were promised because they were disobedient. They were standing up and recounting the history of Israel and all the things that God had done for them and how many times He had delivered him and almost at the moment of their deliverance they again turned from him. As soon as they found relief they needed him no more. There is one passage that says, "Therefore, you handed them over to the surrounding peoples. However, in your abundant compassion you did not destroy them or abandon them." He handed them over, but he never left them. He NEVER LEFT! Unbelievable!

evolution

The foundation we build our life upon inevitably shapes the way we view our world. I read an article today about a disovery made in Kenya. They found a human skull (homo erectus) in the same layer of earth that they have found other skulls (homo habilis) of apes. The Christian hears about this and immediately sees it as further proof of the almightly Creator God. The article I read today on cnn.com indicated quite the opposite. It is their position that this finding strengthens the case of evolution.
The things of God are foolishness to those who are perishing. The heart, the soul, the evidence, existence, everything points to a sovereign Creator God and yet those whose hearts are set agianst him will use anything they can to deny His existence. If God himself came down and they were able to view Him in all His glory, might they still turn away?

There is this song by Hillsong called and it says,
"In the middle of the world that denies it believes
It is breaking apart at the seems
There is one thing to be alive for
And it is to take up my cross and follow you Lord"

I bought a really nice laserjet printer on Saturday. Sent the rebate in so I could get half my money back. Spent two hours on Sunday trying to hook it up and when it wouldn't work called techinical support on Monday morning to see why. Turns out its not compatible with a Mac. I need the 1022, not the 1018. Come on world....CATCH UP!!!!!!! Mac is leaving you behind! I will sadly return the printer today.

a different kind of homeless

Seminary housing is not your middle/upper class suburb. In fact, it is nestled in a very rundown area of town. Less than a mile away from my apartment, at the end of our street there is a man who lives in a storage unit. Yes, you read it right, he lives there. Its not exceptionally large, one you could store your extra car in. It is actually rather small. At night he will have the door open and when you look in, it is packed high with his belongings and there is a space cleared out in the middle with a chair. He has a bike, that I assume he rides to work. Last night I drove by and he was there. He was sitting at the edge with the door open petting a stray cat, or maybe it was his cat...who knows. I was so intrigued, that as I turned down my street I looked back to take one last glance and ran my car up on the curb. Everything was fine and I felt like an idiot, but I wasn't staring that stare that made him out to be some kind of anamoly, like an odd zoo animal. I am not sure why, but I am very interested in that man's life. Where is he from? how did he get here? How long has he lived like that? Is that his preference? Where is his family? Does he have faith? He lives at the edge of seminary property and I wonder, how many, if any, believers have ever befriended him. I wonder if he knows Jesus. I wonder what he would say if we asked him over for dinner one night. My heart is burdened for him.

Desperate for all you are
I chase your heart
Find me here
Find me faithful
On my knees
Against the tide

Glorious Day

One day when heaven is filled with HIs praises
One daY when sin was as black as could be
Jesus came forth to be born of a virgin
dwelt among men my example is He

living he loved me
dieing he saved me
buried he carried my sins far way
rising he justified
freely forever
one day He's coming
what a glorious day

One day they led Him up Calvary's mountain
One day they nailed Him to die on a tree
Suffering anguish despised and rejected
bearing our sins my redeemer is He

One day the grave could conceal him no longer
one day the stone rolled away from the door
then he arose for death he had conquered
now he's ascended my Lord evermore.

Greatness

I recently dove into a must read. The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster....AMAZING!!!! The most amazing chapter so far is the one on Submission...I know, crazy....who would have thought. It really strips every preconceived notion about the word submission away and replaces all the evangelical fluff with the true radical meaning of the word. Here is an excerpt...

"When Jesus gathered his disciples for the Last Supper they were having trouble deciding who was the greatest. This was no new issue for them. "And an agrument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest" (Lk 9:46) Whenever there is trouble over who is the greatest, there is trouble over who is the least. Most of us know we will never be the greatest; just don't let us be the least.
Gathered at the Passover feast the disciples were keenly aware that someone needed to wash the others' feet. The problem was that the only people who washed feet were the least. So there they sat, feet caked with dirt. No one wanted to be considered the least. Then Jesus took a towl and a basin and redefined greatness."

INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!

I finished one of the hardest jobs I have ever done, spent two weeks at "home" and now I am back in Texas. What a whirlwind. I am relieved for a break from massive amounts of responsibility. I am relieved to be in a place where i am not starting over, I am in a familiar place, with familiar people and another chance. Who knows what could happen this year. So much happened in the last one.

So much change....so little time to adjust. You just have to pick yourself up off the floor and keep moving.

I read this today...

"Not too long ago a priest told me he cancelled his subscription to the New York Times because he felt the endless stories of war, crime, power games anad political manipulation only distrubed his mind and heart and prevented him from mediation and prayer."

"That is a sad story because it suggests that only by denying the world can you live in it, that only by surrounding yourself by an artificial, self-induced quietude can you live a spiritual life. A real spiritual life does exactly theopposite: it makes us so alert and aware of the world around us, that all that is and happens becomes part of our cotemplation and meditation and invites us to a free and fearless response."
Reaching Out- Henri Nouwen

Marriage

My sister got married this weekend. It was one of those times that was so very serile for me. So many worlds collided in one weekend and I had trouble getting my head around what was happening. I am living in Fort Worth, but working at camp in Nashville, but I drove to Clemson where my whole family and many of my friends from college were waiting to watch my baby sister get married. It almost didn't seem real. I think it was good for me and I think in many ways God surfaced a lot of fears of mine and began to confront them right on the spot. I think I have this aversion towards marriage. I am terrified of it and yet on some level, in small moments desire it. When I dwell on the idea of it it makes me feel so uncomfortable and yet a part of me desires it. I have watched Lauren and Trey and seen the miracle He did in her life through that relationship. He used Trey to teach her that love was a good thing, that marriage (good marriage) was possible as well as proper. I have such a long way to go, so many fears to overcome and put aside. I do not want to wake up one day 10 years from now and realize how much I missed out on simply because I was fearful. That seems sad to me.
I love my sister and I am so happy for her and I only hope that one day I am as lucky as she!

Lessons

Life is funny. It seems at times its all about lessons, learning life lessons. It goes with the old adage, "You live and you learn." It seems unfair that most of the time the learning is found in retrospect rather than in the preface or the process. By the time the lessons are learned, the moment has passed. At the end of it all we will have learned millions of lessons, mostly from the things we did wrong, with little time left to apply what we've learned. It seems harsh at times. Most people would say its the experience that matters, that experience is the best teacher. And though I know in my heart this is true it doesn't make the most difficult of "experiences" any easier.