This morning I wanted to find a Starbucks, sit in the corner with a cup of coffee, and think, write and pray about this year and my life in total. The morning I pictured ended up being me driving around for an hour trying to find any coffee shop that wasn’t either closed or just a coffee stand in a Piggly Wiggly (a grocery store for those of you not from the south)! I finally found a Books-a-Million. That works. A place for books and reading should work just fine for praying and writing. While driving around looking for that vision of the coffee shop morning I had in mind and not finding it, I wondered if God wasn’t trying to show me something. Maybe I have this vision and dream and plan for how I see my career in music and in woodworking, but along the way coffee shops (opportunities, plans, dreams, etc.) may be closed or in places not suited to His purpose for me. In the end I may find a Books-a-Million (which was quieter), instead of the “perfect” Starbucks I had in mind. I don’t know what that looks like for me this year, but I want to grow and be able to look back next year and know I walked the paths God laid out for me.

What’s been your Books-a-Million lately?

I’ve been home from Iraq almost six months now, and wow, it feels like yesterday that I stepped back onto American soil. Most things have gone back to normal, work is picking up, I’m back in the worship rotation at church, and I’m starting to pursue my music career again, but there are times when I realize how different things look to me now. This last week I’ve really begun to notice that I have to make myself get out of the house. For those of you that know me, it may seem hard to believe. I plan to do things that i look forward to, but when it comes time to step out the door, I find that in that moment I just want to stay around the house. Now, one thing to point out is that once I’m out and about I have a great time and enjoy going places and doing things outside of the house, but I’ve come to appreciate being at home so much more. After being away for 8 months and some days not knowing if I would make it back to see my girls, it has given me a whole new appreciation for the time I have with them and come to see what little time we all have to make a difference in the lives around us, in our families, and in our communities. This year I hope to make it further down the path to our dreams as a family, but I also hope to remember the clarity of just coming home and use that vision to direct my actions and words to those around me to make a difference in the interactions and relationships God has placed in my life.

Any thoughts?

Lately I’ve been having a lot of trouble giving up my worries to God. Whether it’s getting a job finished, travel concerns for the holidays, or how to teach my daughter, I seem to hang on to the idea that I can control the outcome if I just keep worrying and thinking about them. I realize that it mainly seems just to put a damper on my day and on activities that I look forward to and enjoy.  One of my goals from now on is to remember all the times and ways God has taken care of the details of my life, and to stand on a foundation of faith in His abilities and resources instead of what little I have. The way I’ve heard it my whole life has been, “Let go, and let God”. It’s nice, catchy, and easy for us to say, but in reality it’s hard for a person like me who likes to figure it out on his own and feel in control of things. It is a powerful statement of faith and one I choose to pay more attention to, and I’m starting today.

Men are dying, struggling, fighting

Striving to press on, to continue, to live

Little do they know, these valiant warriors

That their strength is bound, their potency unfulfilled

They are the walking wounded, the casualties of the heart

Those who disguise their pain, their hurt, their suffering

And keep pressing on, the fallen lining the path

This is the narrative of masculinity in today’s world. Men who desire to be the valiant warrior, but more often than not are the walking wounded who still want to fight, but attempt to lead their families, businesses, and communities with a broken sword, and a failing heart. I want to see the men around me healed and restored to life; restored to manhood as it was intended.  God created the warrior’s heart and wants to see it come to life again. He wants to walk with us as we pick up and reforge our shattered steel so that we might rejoin the battle. It is a road fraught with dangers and trials, but one well worth the journey. Who will join me on this path? Who will walk with me through the dark and broken places? I want to be more as a man, a husband, a father, and a son. Don’t you?

God change my heart

Help me to view my life as a joyful sacrifice of service every day

Heal my heart

Heal the broken places that keep me focused on me

Enlarge my heart

Work in me to produce a love greater than I now know, for seeing others come to know you

Break my heart

Let me see the things I’ve chosen not to in my world

Move my heart

Give me the courage to act and not cower on the sidelines of your calling

Replace my heart

With your own

I read a great blog post today by Anne Jackson discussing chapter 1 of, “In Praise of Slowness”, by Carl Honoré, and realized how much I need to stop “wishing” the present away in longing for the future and how much I let time be my enemy instead of a period to be savored and lived. Of course, I know I do not need to neglect future plans and preparations, but I need to stop neglecting today and now!

I know God has called me to this place and time for His purpose, but sometimes I forget and decide to put it to my own use and completely miss the point. I’m going to remind myself to be here, in this season while it is still here, and stop trying to hurry time.

Have you found yourself hurrying through today to get to tomorrow, only to do the same thing all over again?

In 1 Corinthians 1:17 Paul says this, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel,” so far so good right, “not with clever words,” uh oh, “so that the cross of Christ will not be emptied [of it's effect].” Hold on, you mean that I don’t need to use fancy words and arguments to speak the gospel? I don’t have to have a masters of divinity to be able to hold truth in the light in the midst of arguments defending darkness? The Message, puts it this way:

¹⁷God didn’t send me out to collect a following for myself, but to preach the Message of what he has done, collecting a following for him. And he didn’t send me to do it with a lot of fancy rhetoric of my own, lest the powerful action at the center—Christ on the Cross—be trivialized into mere words.

Not only do I not have to use big words and arguments to tell others the good news, Paul is saying that using such human wisdom to translate the message of the cross can deprive it of its potency! Now that hit me like a hammer! I look back and see how many times I have tried to argue for Christ with complex theology (remember, I don’t have a masters of divinity) and debate team tactics, and I wonder how many times I have stripped the simple power of the Gospel away with my “wisdom”.

God came to earth taking on the form of a man in Christ Jesus, lived sharing our daily struggles, trials and temptations, sacrificed his life on the cross for our sins, and was raised to life three days later claiming victory over sin and death.

So simple, yet unfathomable at the same time. Why do I try to speak anything other than this simple truth into the lives around me?

What is your take on the subject?