Songs of my life

"To label me a prodigal would be only scratching the surface of who I've been known to be" - Rush of Fools

"I made a mess of me I wanna get back the rest of me
I made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive
I made a mess of me I wanna reverse this tragedy
I made a mess of me I wanna spend the rest of my life alive" - Switchfoot

"There's a girl in the corner With tear stains on her eyes From the places she's wandered And the shame she can't hide She says, "How did I get here? I'm not who I once was. And I'm crippled by the fear That I've fallen too far to love" But don't you know who you are, What's been done for you? Yeah don't you know who you are? You are more than the choices that you've made, You are more than the sum of your past mistakes, You are more than the problems you create, You've been remade. 'Cause this is not about what you've done, But what's been done for you. This is not about where you've been, But where your brokenness brings you to." -Tenth Avenue North

I want to go to a Real Church

- A real church longs to know every book of the Bible, to know the One who wrote it, to hear the story the books are telling and to communicate the story of spiritual theology to its people.

-A real church pleads with God's Spirit, the Spirit of holiness, to keep spiritually forming its people until they see Jesus as their supreme treasure no matter how they feel or how others treat them or how their lives are going.

-A real church aims toward spiritual community, where souls connect, where shame weakens, where sin surfaces, where failure meets grace, where irritattions soften, where holy desire grows.

- A real church knows that doing good in this world has little redemptive power unless the do-gooders know Jesus, resemble Jesus, and are relating like Jesus in the energy of Jesus, in their homes and churches first, and then in the culture around them.

Hope

Somewhere over the past few weeks I read a definition of hope that has been pretty life changing for me. I think it was from Beth Moore's Patriarchs study so I'll give her the credit: "Hope is the present enjoyment of a future promise."
Real Church has played a pretty huge role in rearranging my thoughts about this life and how I expect God to be working in it. I've come to realize that a lot of time the trials we go through are not just about us. We can't see the bigger picture of what God is trying to accomplish in our families, at our jobs, in the lives of our friends, etc. So being able to trust that God knows what he's up to even when we have no idea is pretty huge.
I've come to agree with Larry Crabb when he says "spiritual formation will increase not our experience of God but our thrist for God." I'm thirsty, and there are so many things close at hand that I could use to quench that thirst, #1 easiest for me- food. But the more I thirst for God the more I realize that God is shaping me into something different and new. And this is where the hope comes in. I can sit around and be depressed that I'm 24, unemployed, living in my parent's house, and don't have a church to call my own. OR I can change my thought patterns to enjoy the promise that one day this thirst will be quenched, everything will be perfect and I'll get to party it up in perfect joy and peace in the presence of GOD himself!
Life is hard. God is good.

And we're off

I went on my first star-light run this morning. It was really peaceful. It reminded me a lot of Sombrerette, Mexico. Man I can't wait to get out of the country again!

I guess I'm training for a marathon? I didn't really plan on it, but I needed a training schedule just so I'd have something to do to get in shape. And, it just turned out that this training schedule ends up getting me ready for a marathon next October. So, here we go, let the adventure begin.