I’m back.

It’s true, I took a hiatus for quite awhile. Over a year to be exact.

The past year, I’ve gone through a lot of self-reckoning, and I look forward to sharing more about that reckoning in the coming week/months. Until then I thought I would just have fun, and share my 2012 Hopefuls with you.

• Continue schooling (Feb 6 – Indiana Wesleyan University)
• Pay off all debts by August
• Write apology letters to the people in my life I’ve wronged
• Give grace to the people who I’ve yet to do so
• Come to terms with where I want to be, compared to where God has me and is taking me
• Meet the lady who will be a part of my long-term future
• Be healthier because God has called me to be, not because I care how others view me
• Be able to run 6 miles by July
• Continue to support the local business
• Take the stairs over the elevator on a regular basis
• Drink less coffee and more natural juices
• Buy all my produce from the Farmer’s Market
• Visit my brother in New Hampshire, Aunt/Friends in Georgia, friend in California
• Don’t be such a judgmental jerk
• REALLY love others

This list could go on and on, but this is the core of what I hope to accomplish in 2012. I fully believe that the year I’ll have is dependent on my attitude and belief towards the year I’m facing. I don’t believe that for only me, but for you, my readers, as well. So with that, I wish all of you nothing but the best in 2012. As I posted on New Years Eve, “I am praying that 2012 brings you moments of learning, inspiration, brokenness, hope, sorrow, and love.”

Now tell me, what is something you’re hoping to accomplish this year?

What is LOVE to you?

I wrote back in January 2009, what I thought about love.
Read it here :: Loving With An Agenda

The tide goes in and out everyday without ceasing. Much like our Faith. Humans are weak and frail, causing them to be susceptible to letting their Faith burn out, become weak, and causing them to rely on it less to get them through their daily routines. Once “on fire”, now burnt out, exhausted, put out more for people and their approval rather than for God; looking and finding your identity in the world and people-beings as weak and broken as we are- and not in the one that created you and will love you unconditionally.

However unlike the ocean and it’s tide; we have the ability to control our “movements”, we can control what or who controls us. Whether it be acceptance by people, or the love – compassion – and grace of our Creator/Savior, we have a choice. We control our outward passion for pursuing God and wanting more of Him. The question is, are we “going in” or “going out”? Maybe for you it’s staying stagnant, content, and safe; lukewarm. Afraid that you may have to change.

So why do we experience spiritual highs and lows? Why do we continually ride the ‘spiritual roller-coaster’? It’s simple: we are human, who God created and gave the power of choice. There are ways however to prevent and change this;

• Read God’s Word – this will help immensely with staying connected with what He desires from us and for us.
• Prayer – as cliché as it may sound, it’s so true. It is such a huge step in staying intimate and close to Christ.
• Accountability/Relationships – surrounding yourself with people and influences that are inspired by and closely connected with the Holy Fire of God.

Thank you Evan for sharing your heart.
You sir, today, and for the rest of your life, are changing someone’s heart somewhere and the ‘movement’ in which it is heading.

When I’m bored, I don’t read my Bible.
When I get a second free, I don’t spend quality time in prayer.
When I first wake up, I don’t read my Bible or pray.
When I barely have time to breathe…well, you get the point.

This post is simple.
I let facebook capture my attention way too much.
I place more weight in my satisfaction on facebook then I do in trusting God with my happiness.(and it’s a wonder why I’m constantly stressed and filled with anxiety)
It’s time to step away for an extended period of time; to let go of facebook and take hold of what God has for me beyond the internet, beyond the comments, beyond the ‘likes’ and ‘pokes’, beyond all of the surface level interaction.
It’s time that I let God love me and lead me, because this is not my life to own, but it’s a life that God has leased me to use.

Who’s with me in being an idiot?
Idiots Unite!!

[I am going to be blogging my experience the next forty days, here at Running Like A Vagabond. Here you will find my stretching, molding, and kicked in the ass moments that God will lead me into]

I’ve had one of the more rough past two years out of anyone I know. I’m not saying that for pitty, I’m merely being honest. I built a path for myself that lead to destruction. This destruction destroyed paths to His Kingdom. It destroyed traditions, purposes, desires, gifts. At some point within my walk with God a little over two years ago, I decided that I could do this life thing on my own, with my own ideas. I constantly told myself, and others, that these ideas were God’s and that He was the one that I was serving, and nobody else. Yet the truth be told, the only person I was serving, was myself. I took a gift that God gave and blessed me with, and destroyed it. I took the outlet that was built for me, and corrupted it. I used my knowledge to deceive, and lead in the wrong direction. I fell into the easy temptations that were set upon me, and fed those with my insecurities, to create a monster that hurt those who meant the most to me. It took a moment in the lowest of low valley’s for me to even see what I was doing. Within that valley, is where I allowed myself to meet God one on one. It was there that I found the truth. I found that my love, it was conditional, and was attached with tons of agendas. I found that my words that were being spoken, were being spoken so that they could benefit me, because I needed to be important. I needed to be loved. I needed to be recognized for what I was doing. Or so I thought. It was in the valley, that God showed me, none of that mattered. That what truly mattered was loving so deeply, that you were forgotten and God was remembered. That the less of me that was in my life, that the more my life would prosper and experience joy. That the more I blessed others, the more that I would truly KNOW Him.

Today, I am closer to being where God wants to me to be, yet I am so far that every day is a struggle. I am constantly looking for every tree root, every limb to hold on to, to lift/pull myself out of the valley into the arms of my Savior. Tonight, as I was worshiping and praying with IHOP’s Awakening service, God continued to guide me out of my valley. Tonight, He showed me another glimpse of the truth of freedom. That there is such thing as complete freedom when you trust Him with your life fully. No corners cut, no secrets hidden in the closet. Only you, as you are, with all your ugliness in your arms, ready to be handed over to the one that took the scars so we wouldn’t have to have any.

So tonight(or whenever you read this), I ask that you pray with me, and for me. That you will pray freedom and courage into the lives of all of those who deal with bondage in their life between them and whatever it is that is acting as their God in their life. Whether that be porn, video games, sex, tv, books, their friends, their job, their school work, their spouse, money, etc. Pray that they will find courage to put their faith in the only God who will satisfy and heal. The only God that can rid their guilt and shame. The only God who will fill their thirst. The only God who will never fail them. The only God, who can give complete, freedom; Abba Father

Please, share a your stories, your testimonies, and prayer requests below, so that we can grow and learn together.

Psalm 145
1 I will exalt you, my God the King;
I will praise your name for ever and ever.
2 Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever.
3 Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.
4 One generation will commend your works to another;
they will tell of your mighty acts.
5 They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and I will meditate on your wonderful works. [b]
6 They will tell of the power of your awesome works,
and I will proclaim your great deeds.
7 They will celebrate your abundant goodness
and joyfully sing of your righteousness.
8 The LORD is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and rich in love.
9 The LORD is good to all;
he has compassion on all he has made.
10 All you have made will praise you, O LORD;
your saints will extol you.
11 They will tell of the glory of your kingdom
and speak of your might,
12 so that all men may know of your mighty acts
and the glorious splendor of your kingdom.
13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and your dominion endures through all generations.
The LORD is faithful to all his promises
and loving toward all he has made. [c]
14 The LORD upholds all those who fall
and lifts up all who are bowed down.
15 The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food at the proper time.
16 You open your hand
and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.
18 The LORD is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.
19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cry and saves them.
20 The LORD watches over all who love him,
but all the wicked he will destroy.
21 My mouth will speak in praise of the LORD.
Let every creature praise his holy name
for ever and ever.

Do ever feel that you just need something in your life?

You have no clue what it is, yet your heart seeks this “thing”. The only knowledge you know is that you hurt. You find your spirit constantly in roam. You seemingly find no substantial solid ground in your faith, or in your life in general. You, as a person, are constantly searching and digging to find this thing. While as a Christian, we totally know that God is the answer, or at least we say we know due to what we’ve read or what we’ve heard. Regardless, we seek, and we seek, yet we endlessly find ourselves at the end of that search in more pain than what we were prior to. We constantly ask God, “where are You?” We become angry, we become more desperate, we become depressed. We want to give up. Our wounds are opened up for all to see. We are bleeding in every area of our lives. And truly, we know, that we…cannot…go on.

Yet we do.

We push on. We our held up, somehow. We make it through the constant days and weeks of pain. Our tears have dried up due to the amount that our body has already poured out. Our body’s are dehydrated, our voices tremble. We have no patience for the people we love, yet we still press forward. Still, we wonder, “God, where…are…You!” We claim His absence. We claim He has forsaken us. We become pissed at the Church, and blame those around us for not praying or loving us like we need. If only they had prayed more, we know that God would have carried us through. If only our family and friends would have loved us more, we could have found a strength through their efforts and love. But they didn’t, so now we have to claim this pain.

Yet again, here we are, still surviving long enough to claim ALL of these things.

Do you relate?

Do you ever believe that today is your last day, yet somehow tomorrow continues to come?

I know right now, if you are reading this, you are waiting for a great conclusion paragraph to tell you the answer to all of the questions. The truth is, I don’t have one. I, just like you, am seeking answers to each one of these questions.

I suck at a lot of things.

It’s true, I do. What I do offer is that I will pray for each one of you who will read this. You can leave a comment with something you need prayer for, or you can just simply be a number on the amount of hits to this blog post. Regardless, I will pray for your number or for your comment.

I will leave you with the song below, be blessed. Again, feel free to leave a comment with anything at all.

The Cure for Pain

This Wednesday September 16th Kate will have an MRI to determine if the treatment plan she is on is working or not. Needless to say, this is a HUGE day for us and the anticipation of this test weighs heavy on our hearts and minds. A multitude of questions occupy our thoughts, questions like …

Is the chemo working? Is the tumor shrinking? Are we putting out daughter through all this pain for nothing?

Throughout the Bible there are certain circumstances in life that cause for extra steps of faith, like the old adage that says ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’. Times like when Jesus says, “except by prayer and fasting”. SOOOO, here is the response that God is calling us to and we are inviting anyone who can and will to join us. Holly and I are going to seek God through fasting on behalf of Kate. We are inviting family, friends, strangers, basically anyone who trusts in Christ our Lord and believes in the power of prayer to join us.

Fasting can be skipping a meal or a day of food, in order to devote extra time and focus to prayer! However, food is not the only thing we can fast from. You could go without TV or internet, go on less sleep, give up exercise any of these activities that occupy our lives. The point is not, NOT doing something, the essence of fasting is DOING something else, namely seeking God with greater effort and intensity.

So, would you consider joining us at some point in the next few days in fasting for Kate. We are praying for things like this…

-that the MRI will reveal that the tumor is shrinking or even gone completely

-that Kate’s stomach pains will go away

-that there will be no harmful effects from any of this treatment on Kate

-that God would be glorified and many come to know Christ through this

I will post more details on fasting over the course of the next few days. If you are willing and able to join us in this then please let us know by posting a comment/prayer here or on www.prayforkate.com. Thanks to all of you who are standing with us through this…

Please take some time, and pray, and see if this is something God is calling you to take part in. I cannot imagine God leading you away from a moment to intercede and fast on behalf of someone for healing and love.

Let’s BE that community that Jesus talks about.

With that spoken, I’m certain you are wondering why have we decided to leave Dialogue. In a previous post I talked about the question, “How Do You Know What God Wants You To Do?”. That whole thought process has came into play while making this decision. (take a moment now and read that post if need be)

There were a couple reasons that lead us to this path. Firstly, one of the most important things in an individuals walk with Christ, is peer accountability. I fully believe in the power of fellowship and community. While we were experiencing community, we were both lacking that community and accountability from peers our own age. For Allison, she has a lot of friends that she works with, yet has became extremely disconnected from Christians her own age. While her friends that she works with love her, they also have different values and beliefs, which in return creates a unique type of accountability, which in some cases, is no accountability at all. What Allison needs, is an accountability from a female Christian her age, who is experiencing some of what she is experiencing, and is tempted by the things in which she is also tempted by. For me, I also need that accountability from an adult male my age, who is willing to dig deep in my life, and not be afraid to piss me off in order to get his point across.

In Allison and I’s current place in our lives, we have found that the only true accountability we have on a regular basis is from each other. While it is great to have a pure and true accountability within the relationship that we are journeying together, at this time, the accountability has been seeming to get lost by both parties, and has been perceived as more of a personal attack or an non supportive attitude. For the sake of the relationship, something had to change.

One of the largest reasons for both us, was the spiritual burn out that we were experiencing. Allison and I both are constantly busy. She has school, work, and three crazy roommates. I have lots of work, and more work, and many more hours of work. On top of that, our schedules have made it to where we only see each other two times a week. Totaling that with the amount of time that we had chosen to put into Dialogue, we had started to experience a burn out like we have never felt before. Everything was becoming routine, and “work”. The things that were enjoyable, were no longer enjoyable. The things that used to fill our hearts with joy or brokenness, were no longer joyful, or no longer breaking. We realized that this burn out was not necessarily from Dialogue, but from the constant pouring of ourselves into Dialogue “the church plant”. While the heart of who Allison and I are, is to give and to pour and to love; we realized that the heart of what we needed was to be given to, to be poured into, and to be loved. We had to make a decision in the question of, was it going to be possible to step away from Dialogue Church and just be an attender on Sunday mornings, while we had taken such an ownership in multiple ministries within Dialogue, and called them our own. That was the toughest decision of them all.

In the end, after much discussion and prayer, Allison and I decided that to fully focus on healing our spirit, to fully focus on rekindling and retorching our relationship with Christ, that it was only going to be possible if we stepped away from Dialogue. So here we are, our spiritual lives are on the big stage for all to see. They are battered and broken. They need mending and glued and healed in areas that we do not know how to do on our own. We have realized that too often we have tried consistently to fix them in that very way, on our own, and have done nothing but rise to the surface in more pain that what we were in before.

So from you, each reader.
Each mother.
Each father.
Each brother and sister.
Each friend.
I ask that you join us in this new journey through prayer for our spirits. As we experience change and uncomfortable encounters, and a new way to worship once again, that you lift us up in peace, love, hope, faith, and courage. That we will submit to God’s desire for us, over our own. That we will experience a revival in our relationship with God and each other. Lastly, that through all of this, the drama, the pain, the confusion, the weary; He will be honored and glorified.

Will you join us in this journey?

“How do you know what God wants you to do?”

My first response was that he had little clue to how deep that question really was. After initially not really having a clue on where I was going to go with a response, God placed the following on my heart:

“I believe In the beginning we were made in God’s image and when Christ died we became a part of Him. And since we are a part of Him, I believe in the line, “what it is in us, flows through us.” I believe we learn God’s plan for us through our constant learning of life. We learn who we are, what makes us tick, our passions, the things that hurt us, the things that excite us. In this, we pray over each situation and God uses our past to speak into our current and into our future. So how do we decipher what is “us” and what is God? Carefully. Prayerfully. Faithfully. And Hopefully. Sometimes we will get it perfectly right. Other times, we will make the wrong decision. It’s in those moments that it all becomes the same. We still simply come before God, needing Him to direct us on our next decision. It’s a giving of your own complete desire…and asking Him to give you His desire in your heart, so that you can seek that, rather than your own. The truth is, I’m a selfish person. You’re selfish as well. We all are. However, you cannot afford to be selfish in these moments. Pray for that type of wisdom. The type of wisdom that creates a difference. The type that brings forth change, and most importantly, a wisdom that will deliver a beauty of who God is to our hearts so it can be delivered through us.”

The truth is, after I sent him the eight texts that were filled with this response, I had little clue to what I said.
It was as if the words came out of my mouth without my prior knowledge of any of them.
This morning I decided I was to revisit the texts that I sent.
That’s when God decided to speak in completely clarity to me.
The texts that I had sent the prior evening were not truly even directed towards the student. While the message benefited him in his seeking of God’s truth, God’s true intentions for those texts were for me.
I am the one that is having issues following God’s plan over my own.
I’m the one that sucks.
I’m the one that constantly chooses TV over the Bible.
Music over praying.
Being bitter, rather than being loving.
I’m the one that needs direction.

Those are the words that God decided were appropriate for me to slap myself in the face with.
Thoughts?

In another update in that journey, today I want to share another video with you of Kate. This video is what a day is like in the life of Kate today. While the video will surely reach beyond the surface of your heart with brokenness, I believe also that there is joy and hope that is found in the midst of the chaos and pain.

When through watching the video, I desperately ask you to go over to PrayForKate.com and share your heart with them through encouraging words or however God leads you to share.

[***UPDATE***]
Kate starts her first round of chemotherapy today. Take time and intercede on her behalf.

So thankful I serve a God who is faithful to our every need.