Be On Guard

“Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong. And do everything with love.” 1 Corinthians 16:13-14.

A couple weeks ago I was at a prayer night with some of my good friends and the essence of these verses came to my head while we were praying for me. I didn’t know the reference at the time but just the idea of standing firm was repeating in my head. Now yesterday at Church I was reading along with my pastor as he was preaching on the end of 1 Corinthians. I was slightly uninterested in the fact that Paul himself was writing the last couple verses and not letting a scribe write for him, so my eyes wandered the page. It was a really cool realization for me since I had prayed that verse over myself with these guys, weeks before I knew that it was an actual verse.

The part that was resonating in my head a couple weeks ago was stand firm in the faith. Just to hold to what you believe. Recently I’ve been somewhat purposefully questioning what I believe more so in regards to church services and what that should entail but also in regards to my personal journey through life. I haven’t really come up with any conclusions yet but I really feel that God is going to take the Church somewhere that it’s never been and all the churches that follow his lead will be blessed. Not that the churches that don’t follow will be cursed, but something is going to happen and the Church needs to follow, whether it’s similar to tradition, or it’s completely different.

But more so in the past few days I’ve been thinking about the, “be on guard” part. There are so many different ways that the enemy can steer you into dead ends and off roads and where you aren’t supposed to be. Now I’m still trying to figure out where I should be. However, that really isn’t my concern, I’ll end up where God wants me to be whether I tried to get there or not. The worst is when Satan throws thoughts in your head, but when there are also pure thoughts. Which is which? I find it so hard to distinguish between pure desires and corrupt desires. Maybe sometimes I think that the corrupt desire is actually a pure desire until I’m neck deep in a situation and realize, “hey, you aren’t God.” Then on the contrary, I don’t follow pure desires sometimes because I think it will be to hard to do, or it’s easier to follow the corrupt ones. As I’m writing this I feel like Paul a little bit in Romans 7-8. He’s writing about how his sin causes him to do wrong things that he does not want to do because he wants to do the right thing. But him talking about this isn’t to complain, so don’t get that idea. The answer to his questions is Christ Jesus. Then Chapter 8 starts with “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” He isn’t complaining about his desire to do good things but his nature is to do bad things. He’s simply acknowledging this and letting the church know that it’s human to fail and fail a lot.

This is not an actual experience just a thought/story.

What does a touch mean in today’s culture? What does a simple graze of the fingers when exchanging a bag or an ipod, or a high five that lingers way longer than it should, or a one of those really long friendly hugs imply. The mind will take these completely harmless things and turn them into a multitude of questions that can drive someone crazy. Now, say this “touchy feely” attitude from a girl towards a guy continues throughout a few weeks. What’s the impression that the guy is getting? As a guy I’m getting, hey this girl likes me. Ok so now I think this girl likes me. Ok that’s cool; let’s see where it goes. I ask her out/tell her about how I’m feeling. Sweet things are good; we start to hang out more and more. Here’s where things unwind in my mind. When things are completely fine, everything’s great, she runs. Why, where are you going, why are you running, nothing bad is happening, it’s actually good for both of us and you know it. So why run. What are you running to? Oh right, nothing, because you are running from something. If you don’t have anything to run to, why are you running from something good? I could understand if things weren’t going well or there are things that we are struggling through or we don’t live near each other. You’re running from me to nothing, I didn’t do anything, but you are running. You can’t run forever. Maybe you’ll eventually start running to something but right now, you have no relational goals. Maybe in the future you’ll come back, I’ll let you go, but maybe you’ll come back. But Maybe I won’t be here when you do.

Shout outs to Anonymous

The following is a description of some important people in my life, without mentioning their real names (I used fake ones)

(in no particular order)
Hannah - you are a great female friend of mine. Even in the short ish amount of time that I’ve really known you, we’ve developed a strong bond that I hope continues to grow stronger. At first it took multiple hours of shopping and eating dinner and driving for me to even attempt to open up but since then I’ve been so encouraged by your strength given all circumstances involved in your life. And despite your troubles, you still find time to hold your friends up when they are struggling. You are truly an inspiration.

Annie – you are also a great female friend. I’ve known you longer than Hannah, but still, it hasn’t been all that long of a time, especially looking at the times we’ve actually been in the same neighborhood. In the past couple of months, our friendship has been renewed immensely and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Sometimes you care and focus too much on other people and school and work that you forget to give yourself time to relax. You are realizing this though, so it’s time to work on that!

Michael – I’ve known you all my life and we’ve been around each other for most of that time. The past few years we’ve been going our separate ways but that’s growing up I guess. Over those past few years you’ve matured a lot. I kind of don’t want you to have matured sooo much because that means less stupid fun, but it does mean more meaningful conversation and experiences, which I guess are more important. We won’t ever completely lose our idiocy, so that’s good. I am looking forward to a summer full of you.

Gary – Well, similarly to Michael, the past few years we have experienced less and less of each other. Again, thus is life. You are or maybe you were once my biggest competition in anything. Sports, music, school. You won most battles, but I relished in your defeats. I am always encouraged by your intellectual point of view and you bring me to see things from angles that I hadn’t before seen. I shall see you soon my brother, you ridiculously good looking Man.

Kelly – We’ve definitely had our ups and downs. But through it all we are still somehow friends. You’ve been there for me when I desperately needed it, and vice versa. You are a gorgeous young woman after God’s heart and you care for everyone way too much more that you care about yourself. However, you want to be successful, and to this point, I think you’ve done that. You’ve struggled through school and jobs and you are still going strong, even if you don’t feel like you are. For everything about yourself that you think is bad, there are two great qualities.

Chris – You and I basically run together, and not physically either. I’ve known you for the shortest amount of time on this list but since then it’s just been good time after great time after fantastic time. I really love playing music with you whenever. It’s just a freeing feeling because for the most part when we play it’s not about structure or routine but it’s about just having fun and really enjoying what we are doing.

Johnny – We should hang out more than we do but that’s coming hopefully. I love the randomness that ensues after we decide to chill or hangout or whatever. We’ve had some great talks while my car died and hopefully many more to come, sans the car dying part.

Jack – Dude, I miss you and late nights just because that’s what is supposed to happen. I am always encouraged by your heart for God, it’s so strong and really amazes me, but it also challenges me because awesome things are happening in your life so therefore I want great things to happen to me which in turn causes me to strive toward God more.

MMM Smoothie

I have recently felt like my life was thrown in a blender and now I’m trying to figure out all the ingredients. 1 of them is work, which I do every weekday 11-5 and Saturdays 11-9. It’s definitely worth it to be working, but sometimes I just want to be doing something else. I’ll get there eventually I guess. Ingredient 2 is youth group. I love hanging out with some of the older guys and gals at my youth group and leading all of them in worship. The Sr. High guys small group that I started is also going pretty well. They haven’t really opened up to sharing with everyone yet but they are a lot of fun to just hang out with. Ingredient 3 is Church. Being a key member of multiple worship teams for Sunday services is great, but it also means me being at the church by 7 for first service practice, running out of that service around 8:45 to get to third service practice, which needs to end around 9:40 because of Sunday school. By the time we lead for the third service I am extremely tired and don’t really enjoy being there anymore. On top of that, other worship leaders don’t have guitarists or percussionists and they want me to join, which for everyone else in the church is what I should do. (However, me playing would make the music a lot better in my opinion.), but I can’t be on every team, it’s just too much. I think ingredient 4 would have to be friendships and just hanging out. I try to spend as much time as I can with my close friends. My work schedule and their school/homework schedules don’t always work out, but I do my best to see Jake, Barry, Darren, Katie, Josh, and Jeremy every week. There are many more ingredients being mixed together but I’m still trying to figure them out and how predominant they are in the smoothie of my life. Music is in there, writing/reading is there, and video games are another flavor mixed in there. The great thing about it is that God is the one doing all the blending so he kind of fits into all of these aspects (when I decide that he’s allowed to join.)

On another note, I thoroughly enjoy being 21 and going to Annie Bailey’s to hang out with others of that age and older. On the non-busy nights, (non weekends) it is extremely relaxing and fun. I’m learning what kind of drinks I like and which ones I don’t enjoy which helps in me actually knowing what I’m doing at a bar and not fumbling over what exactly I want or am trying to order.

Death to Life

It's been a while but since you all enjoy and desire my thoughts so incredibly much, I'll offer them to you for free today.

A theme that has been resounding in my life recently is Death and all his friends, Life and all his peers and resurrection and whoever he knows. More specifically, how When you come to know Christ, you are no longer someone who is dead, you are someone who was dead, and now is no longer dead. You are resurrected from sin. I think a lot of why society doesn't get why I am a christian or why others are christians/ other than we are arrogant SOB's sometimes/ is that a large portion of the Bible is talking about not what is material, but what we need faith to believe in. It's in the heart, soul, spirit, mind. When you come to know Jesus you don't actually come out of your moms belly for the second time. You don't suddenly wake up somewhere else with a new, perfect body. What changes is your heart and spirit. Your motives change, who you are at your core, is now being perfected by God and not sin.

On Saturday I was at a conference. Yes Lecrae was performing a concert that night there, but that's not what I want to talk about (even though it was sick. Especially Reilly. If you don't know, look em up. Violin Rock. ok moving on). It's called Vision Conference, and apparently it's pretty big, I hadn't heard of it before. Sponsored by a bunch of missions organizations, the big one being compassion, the conference is about Missions and how students (geared toward youth groups) can help out in the world. (Similar to YoWAW which is PCA sponsored) Bob Lenz was the speaker (really popular speaker to youth) The first session is the one that stood out to me the most although it was kind of the least missional. He went back to basics with Grace and Faith which has been hitting me in the face again and again. Colossians tells us to do everything for God's Glory, 24/7 365. I don't know about you, but that's a long time to be focusing everything that I have or that i'm doing on God. Is it possible, well Jesus did it but that's about it... but the idea that it is possible is not the reason for doing it. The reason for attempting is because God wants us to attempt, he is our desire and our desire as christians is to honor him in everything. At least it should be. Maybe sometimes we don't want to or are too tired to. We are human we can't help that, but we need to try to help that. We can't get into heaven by being good enough, or walking the righteous road, or being a know it all. The only way we can enter heaven is By Grace Through Faith... Eph 2:8-9.

Now, Grace is a gift, given by Christ because he bled and died for us then rose again to show that death has indeed been defeated. Ok so we take this gift, now i'm saved. I can do whatever I want. WRONG the exact opposite, Now i'm saved I can do whatever God wants. The point of Grace is not to allow us to just accept it and move on and live for whatever again. The point of it is that It doesn't matter how we live, It's never going to be enough, Never. There is nothing in our earthly power that can help us achieve heaven or God. Only through God can we find God. (confusing?)

The rest of the conference was really focused on going out and spreading the Gospel which is right above here, to those who don't know. Now that you are Following God as best as you can, He can send you into the world, making disciples. God gave this gift of grace free to us. Why don't we then give freely to others?

I'm back working again, which is a nice change of pace and has been helping me get into a good routine with working out and playing music and life is just moving quite well in my opinion right now. Which is why I found myself able to sponsor this little guy from Ethiopia. His name is Abebe Kuma and he's 4 years old. He looks pretty fly in his picture on the sponsor card that I have, which is one of the reasons that I picked him. Another is that he was the youngest that I could find. I want to be able to sponsor him until he is out of the program. Maybe one day visit him and see how he's doing over there.

oh and Lecrae was awesome.

p.s. I might be in South Africa next January through March teaching members of the local churches in Cape Town how to play music and more specifically worship music. I'd be going with good friend of mine who is a great worship leader.

this is awesome


and this song is on my heart along with the one way above


B.James

Emotion

First off, I would like to marry Imogen Heap.

Secondly, I've recently been going through a lot of my music and finding a lot of great stuff such as Imogen Heap, Ingrid Michaelson, The Civil Wars, Alexi Murdoch, Adele, Fleet Foxes, Ben Rector, Elenowen, Snowden, etc. There is a lot. I had become so obsessed recently with making music sound good or be fun and catchy that I had forgotten that there is a ton of emotion put in to these songs. It is a form of art, which makes it a place full of expression.

More on Emotion. A lot can be felt through a simple face expression or text or word. I'm not saying that this is just now hitting me for the first time, but I'm just noticing it more recently, probably because I put too much meaning into anything. "Could that girl that sent me a text the other day mean something more than what she said or should I take it literally." We've all been there. Is there a deeper meaning behind those words, that expression, those pixels. Then once it takes hold of you, emotions just flow and take you farther away than what you ever wanted to go.

Emotionally recently, I've been reminiscing through high school. I read through my senior play, Robin Hood today, I had other reasons to read through it, but I got slightly emotional because I remember playing that part of Little John with those people and being at this part of the stage during this line and it was really fun. I can't let my emotions live there. I wouldn't make any progress in the present if I let myself dwell on what has been. I've got to be myself, and sure, that means reading between the lines that are between the lines at times and assuming things in my head(similarly to Kurt in Glee if you watch Glee (except not Gay)). I'll just keep living, letting my emotions out on here and into the ears of some fantastic friends that are out there.

Funny, Imogen Heap's album which that song is taken from is called Speak for Yourself.

B.James

Quick Rebuttal.

So this song completely entices how I feel/have felt. It's like, so true that it almost has to be false.

Now, what I wanted to reemphasize was the part about God's love and how that's all you or I really need. I recognize that God's love is better than any other love I can find, and I do strive to live in his love. However, often times, I find myself not wanting to because I want worldly love, human love, love that won't last but a lifetime. It has really started to eat away at me, this desire for a girlfriend. I'm not "desperate" because I'm not going to settle for just anyone, but I definitely want someone to enter the picture in this role. I feel as though I have been close to that role with a couple different people in the past year or two, but as I said in the last post, due to circumstances and such, they didn't happen. I don't want that ending, it feels, unfinished, incomplete, open. Back to the song, it has a lot of feeling in it, but in a sadish pop melody, which is why I love it, because to teens, it's so tragic and I like tragic, even though, my feelings would definitely be more of a death metal were they to be turned into a song. I'm tired of waiting for a happy ending.