FIRE

Charles Wesley wrote this song when he was set on FIRE by the Holy Spirit, 3 days before his brother John felt his heart strangely warmed. 9000 hymns followed. I feel fire when I watch this. “MY CHAINS FELL OFF, MY HEART WAS FREE!”

Loneliness

Well, I don’t really have anything profound to say…  But is a blog supposed to be something long, wordy, and always profound? I think a blog should just be a short blip of what is on the mind of a person. So here goes…. The mind of Cone the last few days.

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…

Pain and the Cross

Well, yesterday morning was quite eventful. My back gave out and I went tumbling to the ground. I could not stand up or move. I have never felt such excruciating pain in my life. Somehow I made my way downstairs and laid on the floor for 5 hours without moving. After taking some Ibuprofen the pain began to subside some and I was able to at least sit on the couch. Even now as I sit here, I still have a bit of pain if I turn a certain way, but its moving towards healing.

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.”

Monuments

Songs are like monuments. They soar high above everything so that when we hear them it calls us to remembrance.

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.

 

New Site!

Welcome to my new website!! It has been 3-4 years since I revamped it so I thought it was timely to do so. My goal is to blog on a more consistent basis and write more extensively about things that I’m learning from the Lord. Also, I am wanting to be a bit more interactive with daily life so I added an updated photo feature to the right sidebar. Eventually I want to add a video updates feature as well so that I can update from wherever I am through my phone etc…