Love

Love. So much meaning in one word. For a number of you, the thought of your spouse or boy/girlfriend permeates your thoughts. Maybe your kids rise up to the front of your attention. For others, it is their love for Jesus. For some, this word brings a rush of euphoric emotion. I imagine this word, love, brings a combination of all of these thoughts rushing into your mind.
Over the last couple months, I have been on the journey of love. Yes, love for my AMAZING girlfriend. But more recently, a love for others, for the least. This is a huge process for me.
I want you to slow down the speed racer pace that often comes when one reads the thoughts of others. Think about who the “least” are in your life. The truth is that the “least” in my life will look very different than the “least” in your life.
I have a buddy who loves, and I mean loves in the most tangible ways: homeless people. This friend of mine would rather sleep on the streets with homeless people then in his own bed. He’s done it! For him, the least are not homeless people. For me, if I were honest, the homeless are. It would be a very stretching measure for me to spend a night curled up next to a homeless person.
God has been showing me practical ways to love them. The least in my life. God is showing me practical ways to rest in Jesus. To love them. He is showing me every day that love is practical. It is not easy all the time, but it is stretching. I am being stretched. God is teaching me to rest in the love of Jesus so I can more fully love others. So I can more fully love the least.

Money

I just got done read a chapter out of Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller, and, yes, the chapter was on money. I wrote this responce for a class and I figured I would post it.
"I really want to get a home theater system. Not the kind with the DVD player, I already have a DVD player. I’m talking about the 1000w receiver and speakers. I found one that usually goes for $260 for $120. I got very excited. I am still stuck on the idea. There is a catch, well actually a couple. For the past 2 months I have been making and, for the most part, sticking to a budget. I save all my receipts and track my spending. I have also been working on building emergency saving account. I have about $200 right now. That’s the most I have ever had saved, ever! I really want it to stay that way, but I also have blown computer speakers, a HD TV, and DVD player, all that would sound amazing with a brand new system.
I also don’t tithe. I haven’t since summer. Over the summer I would make a point to give away up to 50% of my money. Now I give away about 7% of what I have. I also know that my church needs my money. More then that, I’m stealing from God. I’m taking the money that He has blessed me with. My heart is being moved. Again. For the second time today.
I always wish that my backpacking trips would never end. Sometimes as I fall asleep at night, I dream of making my own little house, out of scrap wood, in the back forty. The freedom of controlling my day, instead of me holding on like a bull rider. The French have a saying, “subway, work, sleep.” I don’t want to live out that saying. I want to have the freedom to sleep and play and love. I have decided that I want God to be God of all areas of my life.
Sunday, I will tithe again.

Evalution: Square 1- Biting

I have found out rather recently that I’m very detail oriented. It’s a rather shocking revelation, but in retrospect, I guess I can see it being true. So, in light of my new found trait, I want to organize my new blogs in squares. Each Square will tell about a portion of my life. If you're confused, read on and it will make sense. Oh, and if a blog is not titled as a square, then its not. Or maybe it is after all...

Square One: Biting (ouch!)
Someone, maybe another, prophesied over me that I am a trendsetter. One person said that they saw me breaking through a wall that no one had broken through before. They then told me how I went through the hole I created, and then a multitude (how much is a multitude?) of people would follow. I found that interesting, shocking, and very scary all at the same time.
When I was a little Yori I discovered biting. Don’t ask me how. I probable picked it up on TV or something. Actually, I think it was a rap song. Yes, a rap song. I think by Luda or Eminem. If any of you has seen kid bite another before, you most likely remember the rush of screams, both moms and bitten kid, and the flurry of chaos that is ensued. It’s glorious, yet horrifying all in one swoop. In the middle of it, there I was, The evil perpetrating biting kid. What’s worse (I like to think better in a semi demented way) is the other kids in the play group started biting because of me.
So when I was told the trendsetter prophesy, I remembered...
I then thought past the memories to the point, the question? Why did I continue to bite small helpless children? I think it bounces back to the human premises that we all want to be noticed. We all desire attention. We all want to be valued. Now, I was valued, if you will, though biting. Interesting concept. So, my desire to be noticed was deemed possible through biting, which intern fulfilled my desire for attention, which then gave me value and worth as a “biter” (pretty “BA” if I might say so myself). It might have not been a positive value or worth, but it was value and worth non the less.
Which shoots me forward 20 years. In what ways do I or even we as individuals get noticed, get attention, get value and worth? Is it healthy? Is its Gods heart? Have you included God in that area of your life? Have you included God in any area of your life?
Is it through your work, your family, you significant love, your sport, God even?
The more I type these words the more I examine this topic and life as a whole. I think that’s a God thing. Doesn’t he examine us?

I leave these words on this page with these two questions: Do the ways that you get noticed, get attention, get worth or value, allow God a chance to get notice and get attention?
Do you get your worth and value from God?
-Square One: Biting

God meets us in our sin...

Life

Are lives are crazy, aren’t they? I mean, between the monotonous tasks of daily living, mixed with a hint of Gods surprises, we end up with one more day lived. For better or for worse. One of my buddy’s recently said, "I wish there where more hours in the day." I think that is the inner desire of our hearts at sometime or another. Yet, in the middle of each day, of each year, we grow. We grow for better or for worse. We can’t live life and still be the same. It forces us to move, react, and make decisions. Each day we do live is another day that we have impacted the world. Whether you sat at home watching your beautiful child today or went out and watched the people storm your establishment, we affect someone. We change the world through these lives we live. For better or worse.
My question is simply, what do you do to relax and focus on the leader and follower of your days? What do you do to relax in Gods presence, in the midst of the tornado we call life?

A New Season!!!!

So if you guys haven’t heard, I have a girl friend. (as Wendy Riddle would say, “so exciting")Its ok, if it freaks you out to see me holding a beautiful Hispanic girls hand, Brad and TJ are still freaking out. (its so fun to watch) Her name is Adriana Cervantes and she has been an absolute blessing in my life. I love the fact that our God is a God of opportunity and isn’t a God of control. After spending a season or two as a single man seeking after the whispers of God, I have now entered a season of seeking God while pursuing a woman. God has given me an amazing opportunity with an absolutely amazing woman. I don’t deserve this opportunity, but I’ am blessed through it. It may come or go (I most defiantly hope it wont go), but I have the freedom to grab it or let go of it. I have chosen to grab this opportunity loosely as to hear God in this midst of this new season. I want to honor God through this relationship and glorify him in it. (Oh, and the pic above is us in front of R.E.I. the best outdoors store ever!!!)

The pain below

This is something I wrote last night in an attempt to recover from the emotional flood that tried to make its way out. Like all of us, I am definitely not immune to past hurts and pains, but I learned from an early age that repressing and forgetting my feelings was the "best way" to deal with life. Over the last couple years God has provided safe outlets for my current feelings and problems to be shared, it’s the past feelings that need to start emerging, in time. The effects of growing up while not feeling and becoming "numb" to my pains and hurts, are that I still don’t feel much of either. God has been breaking down these walls that I had become a loyal slave to. Even though I didn’t break down into an all out, pull over the car and ball session, I did shed tears. For me, this gives me hope. Hope that I can cry and feel the pain that I ran from. More so, it gives me hope that I can feel others pain and share their pain with them.

“I cried tonight. In the midst of my past, in the middle of my hurt, in the brief moments of feeling, I cried. It wasn’t a wale or even a voice quivering, tear-repressing cry. It was a tear-by-tear, stone cold voice, cry. The kind that you have when you can’t believe your crying and don’t want to feel the pain behind the tears. The kind where the tears flow, but you are shut off to the abysmal pool of hurt. The kind that begins just as it ends. I realized something, that I am not as free as I thought I was. I realized that there is an ocean of pain and hurt that lies beneath my 22 years of existence. Of feelings too painful to even begin to feel. Of feelings that are like the dark secrets of past generations failures. The ones that no one admits to, no one talks about, and no one brings to the surface. My feelings. Tonight I told a snippet of the pain I try to forget. The pain that bares no weight, for it has never been felt. From the hurts of family, to not being there in others moments of suffering, to not feeling my own. I have become the kind of person who nods and feels nothing. I have opened myself up to numbness in order to cope with the intensity of all things hurt. I have decided to lock out, forget, and suppress the emotions that show weakness or induce pain. I have learned not to cry.”