J's Weekly Playlist

due to my amazing friend Kris....and watching a movie with Jer & Donna...i decided to rock a playlist for the upcoming week. 

1. with everything - hillsong live - this song totally moves my soul toward Jesus. 

2. all will be well - gabe dixon band - a recently enjoyed band

3. don't miss now - downhere - "for choosing the road less travelled..." 

4. the arms of my savior - lincoln brewster - john mayeresque groove

5. son of man (bless the lord) - tye tribbett - makes me want to dance (and be black)

6. ashes and flames - john mark mcmillan - coffee anyone? this is the perfect segue to a salted caramel hot chocolate with a solo shot.

7. your love never fails - jesusculture (chris quilala) - pretty much my anthem ever morning 

8. treasure - trevor davis - a little funkaliciousness about where your heart is...

9. sacred place - future of forestry - been learning about "creating a space" in scripture and this song reminds me of what happens when i make space for Him.

10. kiss the air - danny calvert (music of scottt alan) - love this voice and the honesty of the lyrics

hope you enjoy any or all of these...i sure am. 

- peaks out

in the beginning...

i am in the midst of fall break and although i desire to not do a solitary thing, i am in the library staring at my hebrew workbook and the twenty pages that i get to work on the next week. ugh. so instead of getting my work down, since my motivation is at a superb low, i decided to talk about the beginning...

this morning, pastor (aka mom) shared a crazy awesome message about "in the beginning..." she surveyed a few passages about things that occurred at the beginning and let me persuade you that i was blown away at the words she brought forth. as we went to genesis 1, i recalled to my mind some interesting things God taught me about the first two verses of the Bible, here's vs 2. 

"the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." 

God has and continued to reveal to me about this place of "formlessness." it is a place that we should begin our day, it is a refuge that we should cling to, it is assuredly the formation chamber in which we allow ourselves to change. 

there is so much talk about this place of formlessness being a back thing; however, i believe that a full reading of this passage reveals that in that state of formlessness, God has the potential for everything he was going to and did create. that place of not knowing, of darkness, of formless allows for a couple things to occur in our lives: 

1. it allows for us to recognize that we do not have to buy into the forms of the world, but instead we call allow God to form us daily. we do not have to be satisfied with stereotypes, facades, or predisposition, we can trust God's version of us and his plan, will, purpose and design for me and you. for if we know our state of formlessness, we are allowing him to rule our lives and not ourselves. 

2. formlessness is the place of teachableness. if we set up so much structure and adherents, we end up never allowing for God to teach or reveal to us how to live. our systems can prevent God's desires and wishes, but that teachableness will expand our opportunity to minister and to live out the kingdom of God. in this status of being without form, we truly can function in anything, not held back and not self or others limitations. 

in the beginning, God created. he did it, not me. i don't know why we think that we can form ourselves in anything but him. for if we do, we simply end up with the predicament of failing under our own laws and perspectives instead of being refreshed by the Lord. 

enough for now. i think i am going to return to formlessness this whole week. more to come.

- peaks out.

 

this morning...

i am having a great week. i am seeing God bless me all over the place. this morning i was having coffee with a friend and God just struck my heart's strings with a crazy seventh chord, which has yet to resolve to the major chord. it's so haunting me. i'd thought i would SOC (stream of consciousness) what i was thinking....

this was stream of consciousness, so I hope you can follow.

So I had this incredible discussion this morning with a brother about Love and its relation to everything. It basically touched me to my core. I’ve been crying quite a bit this morning (in a good way). Jesus drives me crazy when he does that. ; )  

Is love not to be our motivation in all that we do? Whether we are going to school or we are working in a church or rocking a career/writing center, we should be doing it out of love. What’s the point of having vision or amazing plans if that interwoven thread behind it is not love.

I guess recently, I have found myself trying to visioneer things for my life and focused a lot on success. This morning Jesus just hit me with his love as part of these things. The success and wealth of life is not measured by what I attain or what I believe is “good.” The only good thing is God, and God is love, so the only good thing would have functionality due to love. If not for love, would Jesus have died? Not to merely move and do things, but I think to bring us into relationship with the Father, causing us to move and do things with love as the backbone to our efforts.

Great Commandment. It’s about Love. It’s crazy, because if you think about it, God is inviting us to partake in his divine nature, since he is love. Wow, he is basically allowing me and granting me an opportunity to share in what his essence is. That’s insane. I have never thought about Love being such a honor to be able to partake of.

Like I have been saying of late, humans don’t have the capacity to love without the Lord’s loving them first. So then we are able to drink of the cup of covenant love and are able to share it with those around us, dispensing not ourselves, our ideas, or our philosophies, but his love. My love is always his love, if it is actually love and not some distortion of love or relationship.

This passage has been where I am in my devotions and it has this concept in and throughout it. Check it out if you get a chance. Here are a few excerpts:
 
Colossians 1:28-2:3

Vs. 29 - “for this I toil struggling with all HIS energy that HE may powerfully works within ME ( emphasis mine)”

Ch 2 Vs. 2 - “that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of the understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ.”

I am just challenge by love in these two verses. First, in the first verse, that I would constantly see that it is his love that he works in me. Not my love that I can attempt to conjure or replicate. I must be a conduit for his love to flow through. (Circle/Arrows extended) Second, the maturity that Paul is speaking of is only brought about by the encouragement so that they can be tied in love which will allow them to begin to partake in the mystery of the Gospel, Jesus and his “love life.”

In the midst of my life right now, my prayer is Ps. 59.10 that “My God who shows me steadfast love will meet me...and then bring me victory” (Peaks Paraphrase). Let your life be met with the Love of God. So that in and through you, not only will you be changed, but everyone you come in contact will be thus impacted. Good morning and welcome to living the Great Commandments, eh?

-peaks out.

humility

yesterday i was hanging out in the beautiful weather with a group of my closest friends and we were talking about humility. this is an interesting concept to discuss for people have various opinions of what humility. as we talked this is what was said: 

humility is....

- honesty, quoted from Mother Theresa 

- banana cream pie, in comparison with million-dollar pie or cheesecake, that it looks simple and  a mess but it carries with it the wonderful experience of being the best (by a pie lover)

- openness and vulnerability 

- submission to another's will and way

- to prefer others more than yourself 

the awesome thing about this discussion is that the shades of meaning in each of these definitions really reveals the person. for instance the quote was by the leadership expert in our group who has that ability to be the pastor of the group. the banana creme pie was by our comedic genius who revels in his ability to bring humor to the most serious situations (this is aided by his thick southern accent). this guy has never ceased to make me laugh, i'm pretty sure he's going to be a youth pastor. the openness answer came from one of the most transparent individuals i have ever met. he seems like he is just a great guy, but this guy is so practical and so constantly walking out his life in an open way. i know that God has called him into the ministry, and he is going to rock at it.  the preference for others answer was our group's intellectual and Bible teacher. he totally epitomizes the professor as his quoting of scripture alludes to his prowess biblically and the "technical" right answer. i came up with submission to another. i guess more than anything, i am finding that when i love someone that i find myself submitting myself to them by realizing how much i need them, which for me is humility. it was an experience that i will remember for a long time. i wonder what you think humility is...and how it explains you as a person. 

-peaks out.

fyi, i love each of these guys incredible and i did not mean to present any of them negatively, so take everything that i said about their differences as being a strength to the group and not as one person is better than the other. each one of these guys is unbelievably amazing. 

chicken, eagles, and shovels...

so the last few days have been ridiculous. not good by any means. frustrating, angering, etc. but in the midst of me being grouchy, i found that God was teaching me some things using chickens and eagles and shovels to show me what was up. let me explain before you believe that i eat chickens and eagles for dinner after i "dwayne carson" them with a shovel (hit them over the head). 

i was in the library enjoying my day of self loathing studying intensely for hebrew, which is currently the love/hate relationship i am involved with, when my good friend darren came in. at some point, i vented partially about my current situations, and he just looked at me like i was a lunatic. i understand that i am a bit dramatic and more times than naught i am absurd in my use of verbiage to describe my life. he then says, you wanna read something? i assure you that the last thing i wanted to do was to read something from dboy (as i dubbed him), who is the biggest stud on the campus. nonetheless, after a few more admonishments, i took the bait. I began this story about an eagle living with chickens due to a lost parent. in this story, the farmer told his son that an eagle will not learn to fly like chickens, because they were different. the chickenesque eagle had totally bought into what he believed he was instead of the truth. of course this was directly relating to me being a grouch, when that is not my tendency. the story ended with the farmer throwing the chickenesque eagle off a cliff and watching that eagle realize what he was by soaring. darren was smirking about this story, and since i had already taken the bait, i stated quite boldly, i am a big chicken huh? he laughed very hard which is awesome, cause he laughs in such a way that all the blood runs to his face and he turns a little red. its that same kind of red when i tell him that every girl at the university has him on their radar. nonetheless, i appreciate darren's willingness to not let me remain in that state. immediately after that story, i got a phone call. 

phone calls are normally exciting, but as i looked down into my chicken communication device, my best friend Kevin was calling. he always says what i need to be doing so i was a little fearful in answering. simultaneously, i think that even in the toughest times, his loving but tough words have always helped me. i told him the situation of me being a chicken instead of an eagle followed by his laughter and a quick reference to my favorite moment from Scrubs, in which eagle is declared loudly. love that moment. after we discussed both my life and his, we closed our awesome conversation, which was so full of life that i was soaring before the first sentence began. the closure was a picture about shovels. have you ever seen two people use a shovel at the same time, it doesn't work. much like my life when i am using the shovel and not letting God have control. so we talked about emptying our hands to receive what God was digging for so that we could receive what he has instead of what we labor for. i'm now an empty handed, soaring eagle. the life i live is not me, but Christ in me. woo. peaks out. 

a reattempt...

it's been numerous months since i have blogged. i was definitely encouraged by a recent encounter with a dear friend while hanging with him last weekend. so i am going to attempt to try it again. there is a lot going on for sure, but i guess i'll sum up life as a start:

i am working at my dad's church as the creative arts director. 

i am a full time student at Regent University in old testament studies. 

i am learning a lot about selfishness vs. love right now. 

i am starting to love getting up at 5am. 

i am a huge fan of the tv show pushing daisies. 

i love hanging out with zie element and the gazebros (2 amazing small groups i am in). 

life is grand.