Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Aspirations
What are Dreams? And by dreams I mean aspirations in life. What are yours? What do they mean to you? Seriously, I want to know! Give me some feedback on this one if you don't mind. Leave a comment on this blog, send me a facebook message, text me, call me, email me (enyart@purdue.edu), whatever you're comfortable with.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Empty, Blank, Open, New
There's something about an empty soundtrack, an unwritten journal, an uninhabited campus, an open field, a blank campus. It's full of potential, full of hope, decisions, opportunity, and mystery! Anything and everything can happen and imagination is let loose. Memories seep into the scene and the mind just let's loose like a child in a giant playground. Especially when the weather plays along with the game, stormy, windy, rainy, overcast.
Sometimes these types of situations are idolized as something unreal and can be held onto as a replacement to reality, but we're not going to go there, we're taking this a different direction (I just wanted you to be aware there's another way of thinking of this and that is living in the future or the fantasy, but that's definitely NOT what we're discussing).
We'll take each moment and make each day like a blank canvas, an empty soundtrack, a clear campus and open field. Let's take the moment you fling off the covers and we'll hit play on the symphony, rock band, piano, or acoustic set. We'll tell the campus to clear and your brain to play. This day, these 24 hours, the ones that are here only in the minute, the second that we live through them. These blank slates, empty soundtracks, clear snow, and open fields the ones that are only so as long as we walk through them, write in them, paint on them, and play alongside them, they are the ones that we're talking about, these are the new moments, the playgrounds, the times that we need to present in. "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself." Matthew 6:34.
Tune into the moment, live your life as it comes at you, not as you reach towards it, or look back on it. We serve a God with a great plan, an amazing purpose, and an awe-inspiring Love and Devotion. What better time to partake in His Plan than the very moment that you're breathing in and out? God is the One pushing play on our soundtrack, erasing our canvas so it's new, clearing the fields so they're fresh for our sight, erasing the Words and ink spots in our journals so that we can write new words and make new impacts. He's the One who wakes us up and watches as we go. He's the One that whispers the invitation, "Live for Me today, this moment, dear Child of Mine. Partake in My Great Plan for this world, fight the good fight alongside me and find the overabundant JOY that comes with it, the ever-increasing STRENGTH that saturates my armies...live for Me, choose to draw closer to Me, fill your canvas today with Everlasting ink. You see, Child, 'The grass withers and the flowers fall, but [My] Word...stands forever" -Isaiah 40:8.
Everyday, Child, everyday, the Lord extends this offer to you. Everyday He tells us about His Great Plan: "As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is My Word that goes out from My Mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it" -Isaiah 55: 10-11. That is His Great Plan, and we are invited to partake in it, live in it, and send back His Word fruitful and growing. Wake up this next morning and hear His Invitation, choose to dwell in it, and Live in the Moment, filling your empty soundtrack, your blank canvas with Everlasting impacts.
Sometimes these types of situations are idolized as something unreal and can be held onto as a replacement to reality, but we're not going to go there, we're taking this a different direction (I just wanted you to be aware there's another way of thinking of this and that is living in the future or the fantasy, but that's definitely NOT what we're discussing).
We'll take each moment and make each day like a blank canvas, an empty soundtrack, a clear campus and open field. Let's take the moment you fling off the covers and we'll hit play on the symphony, rock band, piano, or acoustic set. We'll tell the campus to clear and your brain to play. This day, these 24 hours, the ones that are here only in the minute, the second that we live through them. These blank slates, empty soundtracks, clear snow, and open fields the ones that are only so as long as we walk through them, write in them, paint on them, and play alongside them, they are the ones that we're talking about, these are the new moments, the playgrounds, the times that we need to present in. "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself." Matthew 6:34.
Tune into the moment, live your life as it comes at you, not as you reach towards it, or look back on it. We serve a God with a great plan, an amazing purpose, and an awe-inspiring Love and Devotion. What better time to partake in His Plan than the very moment that you're breathing in and out? God is the One pushing play on our soundtrack, erasing our canvas so it's new, clearing the fields so they're fresh for our sight, erasing the Words and ink spots in our journals so that we can write new words and make new impacts. He's the One who wakes us up and watches as we go. He's the One that whispers the invitation, "Live for Me today, this moment, dear Child of Mine. Partake in My Great Plan for this world, fight the good fight alongside me and find the overabundant JOY that comes with it, the ever-increasing STRENGTH that saturates my armies...live for Me, choose to draw closer to Me, fill your canvas today with Everlasting ink. You see, Child, 'The grass withers and the flowers fall, but [My] Word...stands forever" -Isaiah 40:8.
Everyday, Child, everyday, the Lord extends this offer to you. Everyday He tells us about His Great Plan: "As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is My Word that goes out from My Mouth: it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it" -Isaiah 55: 10-11. That is His Great Plan, and we are invited to partake in it, live in it, and send back His Word fruitful and growing. Wake up this next morning and hear His Invitation, choose to dwell in it, and Live in the Moment, filling your empty soundtrack, your blank canvas with Everlasting impacts.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Holes Shown
"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." James 5:16.
This passage is amazing for two reasons, 1: it talks about community, fellowship, the Church the way it was intended and still is intended to be and 2: It validates and speaks volumes into the POWER of prayer.
Confess your sins to each other...you see, this section had not been brought to my attention until my freshman year in college (which is now, but I wanted to sound older. =] ). I had always imagined confessing my sins to God and to God only and that He was going to be the One forgiving them and then letting them go, you know like it was a checklist and once I gave them to Him He'd get rid of them in my life. Or at least, that's what I told myself and if I got stuck in the sin, then oh well, I'd just keep confessing. So, this whole confessing to others, no way, that requires too much and makes the sin too real. It forces me to need a Savior because someone in the world knows of my inadequacy and I can't keep pretending that I can earn my own salvation and be my own Savior.
Could you imagine what community would look like, what a leader-follower relationship would look like, what a Church would look like if this was practiced? Confessing our sins to each other, even the ones that we keep deep in our hearts, that we bury and hold down with shame and guilt and remorse?
Let's try something. Picture a sin, not one that you forgot to pray over a meal or that you got mad at your brother or whatnot, but one that you've struggled with over and over again. One that you feel enslaved to, one that you return to time and time again as a dog returns to their vomit. The ones like addiction to pornography, lust, hating your body, defining yourself by others, doubts about God's Existence. The ones like cutting, abusing your body, abusing someone else's, like pre-marriage sex.
Now, think about looking someone in the eye, watching them blink, crease their eyebrows, lean in attentively and tell them, tell that person your sin, the one coated in slime, the one held in so long that you don't even know how to live without. Does it make you cringe? Does it make your face flush in embarrassment? Does it make your heart curl up and tighten? That's the opposite of freedom. God, came and proclaimed a message of true FREEDOM. He gave us community so that we may drop our chains, not so that we can pick them up. God, tells us to confess our sins to each other so that we may grow and get rid of the footholds that the demons hold in the darkness.
But it doesn't end there, He says to pray over them for healing. Think about the healing that can begin when you confess your sin to someone righteous, and Godly and they place their hands on you and pray that God will come in and bind your broken heart, can release you from the enslavement this sin has over you. That my friend is freedom.
So, grab hold of your image, the false one that shows perfect skin, a perfect heart and a whole person, and peel it back, however painful it might be. Reveal to someone here on this Earth that underneath that person is one riddled with holes and rips, one enslaved by sin and desperate for a new life, for healing. Show your holes and find your freedom, just as the Lord intended it to be.
Check out the video that is posted explaining the song Healing Begins by Tenth Avenue North too, a lot of what I said I got from that video.
This passage is amazing for two reasons, 1: it talks about community, fellowship, the Church the way it was intended and still is intended to be and 2: It validates and speaks volumes into the POWER of prayer.
Confess your sins to each other...you see, this section had not been brought to my attention until my freshman year in college (which is now, but I wanted to sound older. =] ). I had always imagined confessing my sins to God and to God only and that He was going to be the One forgiving them and then letting them go, you know like it was a checklist and once I gave them to Him He'd get rid of them in my life. Or at least, that's what I told myself and if I got stuck in the sin, then oh well, I'd just keep confessing. So, this whole confessing to others, no way, that requires too much and makes the sin too real. It forces me to need a Savior because someone in the world knows of my inadequacy and I can't keep pretending that I can earn my own salvation and be my own Savior.
Could you imagine what community would look like, what a leader-follower relationship would look like, what a Church would look like if this was practiced? Confessing our sins to each other, even the ones that we keep deep in our hearts, that we bury and hold down with shame and guilt and remorse?
Let's try something. Picture a sin, not one that you forgot to pray over a meal or that you got mad at your brother or whatnot, but one that you've struggled with over and over again. One that you feel enslaved to, one that you return to time and time again as a dog returns to their vomit. The ones like addiction to pornography, lust, hating your body, defining yourself by others, doubts about God's Existence. The ones like cutting, abusing your body, abusing someone else's, like pre-marriage sex.
Now, think about looking someone in the eye, watching them blink, crease their eyebrows, lean in attentively and tell them, tell that person your sin, the one coated in slime, the one held in so long that you don't even know how to live without. Does it make you cringe? Does it make your face flush in embarrassment? Does it make your heart curl up and tighten? That's the opposite of freedom. God, came and proclaimed a message of true FREEDOM. He gave us community so that we may drop our chains, not so that we can pick them up. God, tells us to confess our sins to each other so that we may grow and get rid of the footholds that the demons hold in the darkness.
But it doesn't end there, He says to pray over them for healing. Think about the healing that can begin when you confess your sin to someone righteous, and Godly and they place their hands on you and pray that God will come in and bind your broken heart, can release you from the enslavement this sin has over you. That my friend is freedom.
So, grab hold of your image, the false one that shows perfect skin, a perfect heart and a whole person, and peel it back, however painful it might be. Reveal to someone here on this Earth that underneath that person is one riddled with holes and rips, one enslaved by sin and desperate for a new life, for healing. Show your holes and find your freedom, just as the Lord intended it to be.
Check out the video that is posted explaining the song Healing Begins by Tenth Avenue North too, a lot of what I said I got from that video.
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