..feasting

I think that Jesus is really great at answering prayers. Recently I have been seeking his face on the role that spiritual disciplines should take in my life. I feel like I have taken a vacation from Christianity over the last week or so and the change has been very refreshing in my life. I have taken a break from the expectations of it all, allowing myself to be content in the moments that I have been given with Jesus and rest in them without guilt of skipping Bible reading or prayer time. My prayers have been sporadic, passionate, and frustrated, but I think that overall they have been filled with both honesty to myself and God about the true desires of my heart. God’s answer to my prayer was one of an image. I want to experience God in all of his fullness. I want my relationship with him to be like feasting on his goodness every moment of my day. I want to radiate in his presence and have that radiate in my life. I love the imagery from Exodus where Moses goes up to the mountain and spends 40 days with God and he comes back and his face is glowing and all of the Israelites know that he has experienced the divine presence of God. I think that this redefines the phrase, “Your life is a ministry”, for me. It is no longer the lifestyle I live that should only scream God but also how much intensity and passion I have just for him. I think that it can be a visible, physical element of who I am and I want to experience that feeling. I want to bring people to Christ because of how beautiful he is in my life, not necessarily because of how many theological ducks I have in a row. I want to experience the deeply powerful beauty of God in my life always and I want to feast on his hisad (all the positive aspects of him) daily. I now have the proper thinking to have my spiritual disciplines come from a foundation of divine intimacy with God and a crazy, all consuming desire to be with him that they are no longer a burden but a humbling pleasure.

..abandon

How much of my ideals of ministry keep me from authentic love? The idea itself of ministry is derogatory to the people that you are ‘trying to reach’. The soul on soul, heart on heart, and pain on pain are a stepped removed from authentic and buffered comfortably by a title of ministry. Out of my own fear of intimacy and pain I jump into ministry, using it as a shield so I don’t get bloody on the battle field. I am beginning to find so much distaste in Christian phrases and similes and metaphors that have tainted my view on love and people and the world for so long. The books that I read are strings and knots and braids of guarded ideals and fictional attempts at describing reality. I know with all of who I am that even if I was not raised in this culture that I would seek Jesus out in my own life. I know what Jesus has done for me but the rest of Christendom makes me wonder about the legitimacy of it all at times. I stand in fear of the moments when I hear Jesus’ raw and passionate heartbeats inside of who I am but pause and rethink them [I like to console myself and say that I am praying] through a filter of American Christianity. Will I be the one that sees Jesus on judgment day, greets him with a playful high five just to have him say, “Get away from me. I don’t know you.”? Will I look back on my life and think of all of the Christianity I proudly lived out but how much of Jesus I never experienced? I want to be free of Christian over-thinking and ministerial processing of every life decision and I want to be free of the institutions of structure that I rely on so much for my life with Jesus. I feel like I have quit or most likely just fallen asleep to it all and let the system do it for me and that I need to take a vacation from Christianity and escape from all of it and discover God in the dirt and the mold and the trashed carcasses of humanity, not the plastic realities of Christianity. Honesty is beautiful and divinely humbling and I feel like it is miles away from our tainted religion. Why does the word hypocrisy color so much of what we do in this world, and how is that possible if we are not lying? Its not that I hate it all and act like an anarchist towards the church or anything but I am just tired and want to find God without any layers separating us. I don’t think I really know what Jesus looks like without the filter of American Christianity softening his demanding blows of discipline and faithfulness and abundance in my life. I want a break from Christianity to meet Jesus for who he really is, not what Christian culture has defined him as. I think that the depths of that experience could either help me never live like this again or give me enough hope in the dirt of life to endure it until heaven. Jesus promised life and anything other than him is a reality of death. Am I living a life that I would be proud to give to someone else? Does the sheer intensity, abandon, and passion of my life scream Jesus? If you where to examine me without the church I attend, the small group I’m in, or ministry I do, would my being reflect Jesus enough for you to know that I follow him? The Jesus I read about in my Bible and the Jesus that I have experienced in my life are different than the Jesus of America. In the end I will stand alone, exposed to the ridicule and misunderstanding of the religious culture of my past, and weep humbly in the grace of a Savior that I killed. In the rawness of his bloody body he calls my heart to adventure with him and I have to be willing to have my body resemble his once my time is finished on this earth. Jesus save me from Christianity so that I can love you and save me from Christian ministry so that I can love people.

..lines

There are moments in my life where I feel like all things collide and the beautiful wonder of it all slips away silently and then there is a frozen state of confusion. A haitus of underlying stress because looking out there is gridlock on the streets of my brain.

The intersections of life where faith, morality, passion, living, and loving meet are filled with bloody accidents of misshapen truths and rear-end accidents of speeding thoughts. These are the moments in my life where no thought, ideal, or structured truth is found sacred. Everything is up for examination in this moment of dizzying greyness and they are the moments when I remember that I am intensely human.

I don't really know how to go into the chaotic mess of my thoughts and I think that I am going to let them rest in the land of nod tonight, sleepily inhaling life until the morning thinking begins. Watch out for me thoughts. The power of mate, weetabix, a bible and a blog is mildly unstopable.

..abundance

Today has been a definite epic God journey.

This is the list that I will be exploring...

one. conversation with Erendira
two. conversation with Ashley Cheney
three. conversation with John
four. conversation with Becky
five. conversation with Tony



Conversation with Eren. Today I got a chance to meet with Eren in a blatant attempt to try and figure out who she is and what she is all about. It was great to get to know her for the beautiful woman of God she is and breakdown all of my summised, preconceived notions. It made me incredible embarrassed about the stance I had taken so many time before when it was absolutely based on false accepting. She taught me that sometime God uses transitional passions in our live to prepare us for something greater.

Conversation with Ashley. This lunch I got the opportunity to chat with Ashley Cheney and I felt like it was a time where God was speaking through me. I was able to explain the movement of God in my own life over the course of this year and the things that he has been teaching me. I did not feel as though it was me needlessly telling her great things about me but that God was simply allowing me to share my growth process with someone who was willing to learn. I felt a deeply rested place of passion when I talked to her. I am very excited to see where God leads her for her summer.

Conversation with John. So that spine that I had been wanting to grow and that Jesus was waiting for finally calcified today. I confronted a lot of my personal apathy in our friendship which I understand comes from a root of fear and a lack of trust. I am very thankful for the example of Jesus when dealing with Peter and it has given me a great Biblical model in which to love from. I am also beginning to learn the beauty of building trust and solidarity in friendship and I am excited to explore those realities in the future. Needless to say, this conversation was the summation of 9 months of prayer and waiting and it was very sweet.

Conversation with Becky. Becky has been struggling immensely in her life over the last week. Huge, foundation shaking realizations about herself, God, and everything. My struggle through this process has been how to be Christ to her. I want her to know that I love and unconditionally accept her right where she is but I also want to share the truth with her because I love her so much. This has been the heavy burden on my soul over this last little bit. But God decided to answer that prayer tonight too. I was able to intimately and rawly share with her my relationship with Christ and I cried and it was very authentic. Her struggles have brought me to a place of sober judgment about myself and has shown me the depths of God's grace in my life. I cried on the walk home because of the intensity of love that Christ has decided to give me.

Conversation with Tony. Walking back from Becky I met a man at the 13 and offered him some cocoa which turned into lunch which turned into proposed night at the dorm which then turned into a ride to the Seattle Center. This small little adventure was a beautiful section of my day. I apologized and was embarrassed about our school and Tony said, "They just want to be heard and never seen." I agree him completely and her was such a beautiful person.

Today has been a very amazing and abundant day in my life. I have explored the richness of grace, acceptance, reconciliation, honesty, and love and I rest in divine thankfulness now. I feel that if today is a snap shot of the rest of my life, I could definitely be down with that. I am going to say a prayer of thankfulness now and rest in the presence of a Jesus who obviously love me a lot.