Loneliness.

This issue hits home with EVERY human on the planet. Not ‘a one of us can escape it until the day we see Jesus face to face or when He returns. We can be amongst friends we’ve known the names of for decades yet still not really know them. Even in marriage, a couple cant truly know each other to the core. The reality is, only One person can get to the deepest place on the inside.

Ok so now what? What do we do in response to this feeling/thing? THAT is what counts! And if there’s anything I have learned recently it’s that NOTHING can satisfy that ache for the restoration of the days of Eden and communion with the Creator. Oh yes, things can help numb the pain a bit… Especially here in the west where everything is literally at our fingertips.  We can numb the symptoms pretty easily, but when that wears off, there’s something deeper that needs to be addressed. But do we just keep numbing the pain with temporal things?

I want to propose….. (well, someday to a girl…  yes…. but that’s for another post sometime down the road and It will not be fore tense but past tense) I want to propose that we take a look at our hearts RIGHT NOW and search them. Are our souls drinking from fountains of death or life?  Do we run to ___________ to fill this void and ease the pain? Or do we TRULY take everything to Christ and drink from eternal life found at the Cross? Do the words of Psalm 84:2 and Psalm 63 match our lives or are they just words on our tongue? Do we truly believe the Word of God in that, Psalm 16:11 tells us where this thirst is quenched?

Just thoughts…

As all this was happening yesterday, this thought came to my mind: “I cannot even imagine trying to carry a big cross on my back right now”. After this thought, my mind was taken to the scene of the passion. I thought of the pain that Jesus endured as His back was being thrashed and torn to bits by the cat of nine tails.

Yeah, something happened to my back to where I couldn’t even do a thing without feeling pain in one spot, but this was just a glimpse of what Jesus willingly endured. His WHOLE back was torn apart, many muscles ripped out of Him, and that’s only the beginning of the pain He would feel. After being whipped, leaving Him almost completely immobile, He was then pushed around and made to carry a big thing of wood on His shoulders all by Himself until He could not go any further and needed help.

I came to find myself asking why? Why would the God of creation endure such pain even to the point of death… The answer is this: He had a PASSION to redeem all creation! This was the joy set before Him and there was no stopping Him!

There is an immeasurable passion inside of our God for those made in His image to walk again as they were created to before the fall. We see it in Genesis 3 when He tells of the promise of the seed that would come and crush the serpents head! It’s a passion that drove Him to come in the flesh as a child and live unrecognized and despised by the very ones He created and came to save. A passion that drove Him to the grave, but yet it’s a passion that not even the grave could contain! It’s a passion that will cause Him to return for His bride and rid this universe of sin and wickedness forever!

It’s this same passion that He prays for us to have in John 17:26! A passion that should drive us to never waste our lives on living for ourselves but that Christ would be glorified with every breath. And when the darkest days of the planet are upon us, that very love will be dwelling in our hearts. We will imitate Jesus as we love not our lives even unto death. We will stand upon our convictions of truth and through the passion of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit we will overcome death for the joy set before us (The resurrection, the earth being returned to the intended state God had at the beginning, and Jesus upon this earth as King forever!)

Let this be the banner of our lives through pain and even unto death for HE is the joy set before us….

“On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”

I am listening to a bunch of recordings of songs I wrote from 2005-2006 and have instantly been taken back 6 years ago to where I was and what the Lord did in that season of my life. Jesus had His eyes on me then just as much as He has them on me now. Its so easy to forget this, but we seem to live like He cares more about us now than He did before, but that is NOT the case.

So let’s just take a second here and do as the Psalms say to do: REMEMBER. EVERY song we’ve ever sung He remembers, even if we don’t. He saw us come from the womb, He saw us at age 5, 8, 15, 20…. He see’s us now, He knows where this is all going a billion years from now…. He’s the God of our yesterdays, the God of our today, and the God of our tomorrows who never changes. Just that thought makes me wanna shout Halleljuah!!!

Anyways, these songs have truly inspired me to possibly make an unplugged album with just me playing guitar and singing these songs. They are my personal Psalms that I wrote to the Lord that I feel like a lot of people could possible connect with as well.

Worship is anytime we choose to deny ourselves for the Glory of God by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8). This can be through walking in HOLINESS as seen in Romans 6, helping the orphan and widow in their distress (James 1:27), taking up our cross DAILY and denying ourselves (Luke 9:23), being diligent to see that there is no bitterness within our hearts as seen in Hebrews 12-13, honoring the authority structure He has placed over us in every season, and the list could go on and on.

When will we realize that what David said of singing in Psalm 34:1 is the effect of a deeper cause that should be continually happening in our lives. We must realize that every chance to go low in humility, every chance to deny our flesh, every time we open our hearts for the light of God to search out our darkness, etc etc is a LIFETSTYLE of living for the glory of God and not for ourselves…. (It even comes down to something so simple as when you get asked to take out the trash… Do you do it begrudgingly or because you know God is watching to see how you respond to the request of service? Make it a time of worship…. SERVE with a happy heart before the eyes of God!)

So once again, I will say that worship is anytime we choose to deny ourselves for the Glory of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is never of ourselves, but always of Him. He provides the power to follow after Him, that we would never boast in ourselves (Psalm 16:1-2). Let our singing be the branches that grow from the roots of denying ourselves, planted in the soil of the Holy Spirit.

What if God were to tell all about who we are??? As far as the east is from the west our sins have been washed away. Judge not lest you be judged.  God has enough on all of us to bury us..

• 2) You don’t let them be afraid of you.

Perfect love casts out fear.  When someone walks into a room and they are scared of you and you say “good”, thats not love…. love keeps no record of wrongs.

• 3) You don’t even let them feel guilty

Usually in our pride we want to make someone sit on a guilt trip. But quietly we must forgive them.  “Poor out your complaint to the Lord”.  Tell it to Jesus.

• 4) You let them save face

You protect them and cover for them.  Instead of rubbing their noses in it, you act as though they did nothing. God just forgives, he never brings up the past again.

• 5) You protect them from their darkest secret.

Joseph didn’t let his brothers tell jacob what they did.

• 6) Total forgiveness is a life sentence.

You gotta keep doing it.  Its like a prescription that the doctor says “you have to take this the rest of your life”. You have to do it today, tomorrow, a week from now, a year from now…. 10 years later.

When Jacob dies in Genesis 50, Joseph’s brothers panic and think he is “gonna throw the book at them”.  They make up a story and said their dad told them to tell him to forgive him… he told them he forgave them 17 years ago!

• 7) You bless them

Pray for them.   Ask God to bless them.

What are we actually doing with our Facebook time? Is what we do there significant enough that it merits the time we dedicate to it? What are we accomplishing with all of those minutes? What do you accomplish with your share of those 700 billion minutes?

The facebook growth chart below is also stunning to me. It’s beginning to resemble the tower of Babel! — Well, not literally, BUT think about it…. there are more human beings that are connected together and conversing with 1 language (computer code) through Facebook in 2010 than there were humans with one language at the time of the tower of Babel…. Makes you wonder about the times in which we live ay?? (Click the image for a better view of the numbers..)

Facebook Growth Chart

To be awakened from the American Dream is to be alive to the living reality that self denial is the only way to bringing all glory to Jesus. Maybe some of us need to block facebook completely out of our lives as a way to move towards awakening from the American Dream of self fulfillment and living totally bored. Let us now ponder this quote..

One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time. – John Piper

To read this whole article, click here (Trust me it is worth your time to read it).