It's not enough

Knowing that God has a plan for you, simply is not enough. God loves you and He has a plan for you and He has not forgotten about you and He maybe working that plan out in your life, but simply knowing that God has a plan is not enough. God's plan for you is that you will seek Him with all of your heart, that even if you don't find all of the answers to your questions or solutions to your situations, that you would find Him. He simply wants you to stop playing games, quit playing the church game (stop dating the church) and commit yourself and become a person that will say, "from now on I am going to seek God with all of my heart. I am going to prioritize prayer and scripture and devotion to God through the good, the bad, and the ugly and I will seek Him." Knowledge of something is great, but until you decide to do something about it, it will remain as knowledge and nothing will change. We have to quit being Jeremiah 29:11 people saying that we know God has a plan for us and we have to become Jeremiah 29:13 people saying that while we know God has a plan for us, we want to be on board with that plan, and we want to seek Him with all of our heart. Until you submit to the Lord and say yes to His plan, simply knowing that He has a plan is not enough. "You will seek me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart." Are you searching?

Questions

Do you ever find yourself just continually asking questions and never knowing the answers? Maybe you continue to ask why, or how long, or what will happen. The simple answer (without sounding too spiritual) is Jesus. I know what you're thinking, "yea I hear that all the time, Jesus is the answer to my questions, if I just trust in Him then He will lead me." I know it's hard to completely turn your life over and trust and have faith in somebody you have never physically met and expect them to take care of you and answer your questions. It is normal to ask questions, it is normal to not know what exactly is going to happen or why something has just happened, but you must find the comfort of forgiveness in Jesus and know that if you are living according to His will then He will take care of you in every aspect of your life. As I was thinking about this today, a song came on my ipod that took the words out of my mouth and explains this better than I can. That song is "Questions" by Jon McLaughlin and the lyrics are:

Katy stands at the top of the stairs
As she’s leaving her father stares
What has she come to? Another boy she runs to tonight
Powerless he just shakes his head
Disappointed and off to bed
But he won’t be sleeping cause the hours she’s keeping are not right

She’s asking a question, how will I be
After this next one eventually leaves me
How can a man be all that they say when all that I know
Is men run away?
I think I lose just a little bit of me in every man that I see

Danny’s been out now for 7 days
Funny how he thought the price had been paid on a past he hates to talk about
Its everything wrong about him
He goes back home to a battle field and starts to drink as some kind of a shield
For the anger instilled in him and their looks are killing him now

He’s asking a question
How will I be when It comes down to the end and memories still haunt me
How can He have forgiveness that flows when no one forgives me
Yet its Jesus they know
I think I lose just a little bit of me in this family that won’t see

A crowd of confusion gathers round watching the light as he slowly goes out
After all they've talked about everything’s coming out now
Their anger turns to dead and gone
Hearts start to feel what feels so wrong and as the time starts passing by and hours turn to days in their heads they can still hear Him say

I came for your questions of what you don’t know
But you cant see the answers unless I go
So give me your hatred and give your diseased
Give me your tired and Ill take them with me
Cause I’m hanging here losing every part of me
Just to open your eyes to what you would never see
And to answer your questions there’s no place that I’d rather be

That song spoke volumes to me as I continued to listen to it and it portrays how Jesus answers our questions. Simply Jesus came for our questions and we must turn over everything to Him in order to truly find peace and comfort and rest! Do you trust that He can overcome your doubts and questions?

I dare you to move

In the past I have written a couple things discussing the intentions and motives behind what we do, and this is going to somewhat play off of that. We have begun a Bible study for college guys that go to Summit and we have named it Recovering Biblical Manhood. We are doing this study in hopes that we, boys, will grow closer to God and become the men and the leaders that he has made us to be, because let's face it, men today have been sitting around playing video games, watching ESPN, or just sleeping while the women are off doing what God has called. That's my little rant about that. Anyways, the heading on each one of our handouts, which has become our motto/theme, is :We don't just study how to be a man God uses just to say we're Godly men, rather we must apply it in our lives. Basically we are not just waking up at 7am on a Monday morning to boast to people and say hey look at me I'm being a godly man, rather we are making a sacrifice so that we can better understand what it means to be a godly man and be able to provide for our future wives! What this brings me to is the warning that I was given and in turn gave to the other guys that thought about coming: do not come if this is just going to be another thing on your 'checklist.' By this we simply mean don't bother showing up if you are just doing this to mark it off of your list of things to do because what this will lead to is a false understanding of salvation. If you are going to a Bible study, church service, BCM service, or what have you, just to 'mark it off your list' then you have the understanding that one these things are really not important to your life and that by doing all of these things you can mark them off your list and God will "love you more." Reality check: these things are provided so that you are able to grow together with a community that can hold you accountable, they are not present so that they can spoon feed you the Word and provide you with salvation. Salvation is from grace through faith and that alone! Therefore, do not let these other activities, that can be very beneficial, become just another thing to do. You must devote yourself to your own study of the Word and spend time with God so that you can gain an understanding of salvation and what living a Christ-like life truly means, and dedicate yourself to a community that can and will hold you accountable to those things and help you to grow even more! Could you imagine what would happen if we all did these things, especially on a college campus? One word: revival. If guys actually got some guts, confessed and repented of being a bunch of wimps and became the leaders of the church that we are supposed to be then our campus would be revolutionized! Imagine if we were actually training each other and building each other up in the word so that we could go out into our community (dorm, apartment, class, etc.) and gather those around us, being unashamed of the Gospel and actually living out the faith that we have. I am ready to see thousands of young people finally devote themselves to the God they say they believe in and get off their butts and make an impact for His kingdom! Are you ready? I dare you to move...

Confessions

I have recently finished a couple of Mark Driscoll's books and the latest one that I read was Confessions of a Reformission Reverend. Throughout this book he goes through many of the mistakes that he and inevitably his church made during their first several years in Seattle. After reading through this book I began to think about my own journey to where I am in my life right now and realize that there have been many many huge mistakes that I have made over the past several years. Some of these mistakes have ruined friendships and relationships and others have been so bad that those effected have never spoken or listened to me since. After going through many of these events that have led to where I am in my life right now I can narrow down the major factor of most of these things as a problem with my source. By source, I simply mean where/what I rely on to provide my joy and to feed me spiritually. Over the years I have relied on my friendships and relationships to provide the joy, happiness, and fulfillment that only comes from Christ, and inevitably this has led to heartbreak, broken friendships, sadness, anger, bitterness, lust, etc. I relied so much on those other things, that I completely forgot about the joy and the fulfillment of my soul that only Christ provides. The problem with relying on these things is that they will let you down. No matter what promises are made, your friendships and relationships will always disappoint you, but you have to look beyond those and find the true source which is God. By completely devoting myself to my friendships and relationships I left God out of the picture and thought that other people would suffice for something that only God can fulfill, and these things became idols to me.

In terms of being fed spiritually I have realized that I relied on other people again to provide this for me. For instance, recently I have relied on the church and my discipleship to feed me. While these things are great and definitely help to provide for part of that, they cannot be the sole thing that is feeding you spiritually. If you are going into the church or into discipleship hoping that you are going to "get something out of it" then you are relying too much on those things to feed you. You must look beyond them and find the ultimate Source. You should be mature in your faith enough to be able to feed yourself. Stop looking to the church and to discipleship to spoon feed you spiritually! Grow up and realize that you are going to have to do some work on your own in order to grow closer to God. Nobody else can strengthen your relationship other than YOU! You are going to have to get your hands dirty, get on your knees and pray to God to provide for all of your needs and to instill in you a passion for His word and a desire to grow in Him so that others may also find Him, read the Bible so that you will be able to rely on His word in times of struggle, and simply spend time with Him.

The previous two things have been a couple of the biggest struggles of mine over the past couple years and even over the past months and weeks. My confessions are simple, I am a sinner, I have relied on other things/idols to provide for things that only God can provide and I have relied on other people to build up my spiritual life when in reality that has to begin with me. The words that I have written are written to myself, they are things that I have been convicted of. Hopefully others will be able to avoid the traps of Satan that I fell into and will be able to grow up take their lives (physically, spiritually, and eternally) and give it to God and rely on Him to be the one and only Source of all things. Do you need to confess?