Inadequate words

Inadequate

I want you to think about the most majestic and powerful words you have ever heard or concidered using to describe God, words like, well “majestic” “glorious” “awesome” “incredible” “amaizing”. The list of words like these could go on for ages and yet what strikes me most about them is that as wonderful or powerful as they may be they are all inadequte and even if we were to string them together in endless praise we would fail to capture even the essence of what God is like, or even one measure of his endless, merciful grace and love, or how powerful He is, we just can’t do it. Jesus is love a d to think we could begin to describe Him is insane and yet we persist and He in his Wondrful great love for us, who are like specs of dust compared to Him, takes joy in our inadequate praise and rejoices greatly in it. It makes me wonder about sometimes when I don’t give my all in worship to Him, if I can’t even begin to be adequate when I give my best how can I expect Him to be pleased when I am halfheartedly singing along to the praise band, who am I to think I deserve to not give my all in worship to Him not just on Sunday morning but every moment of every day, because “I don’t feel like it” or “my throat hurts” or “I’m just not in a worshipping place right now” I could go on with the excuses I have used and I’m sure you all could add plenty more on top of that, but the point is we serve such and incredible god, who loves us and chose us before we were even born, indeed “before the foundations of the earth were laid” how can we help but be so caught up in Him and His grace and beauty and love and… That we can’t help ourselves, we just worship him constantly.

“God I love you and thank you for all you have done and I ask that you would reveal new aspects of yourself to me daily, help le to continually fall in love with you, and rejoice in your beauty and strength even when I am weak and broken, and don’t know which way is up or where I am going, draw me close to You and shower me with your majesty and grace so that the world may see You in me and seek You because of me, lord use me to draw those around me close to You, to bring You glory in the highest!”

Amen hallelujah
Ethan

A lifeguard

“if God is like a lifeguard is He the lifeguard who reaches down And grabs the swimmers arm and pulls him out of the water, or is He the lifeguard who reaches his arm out and waits for the drowning swimmer to grab his arm before pulling him out?” mark driscoll said God is the former.

If a swimmer is drowning they do not have the strength to reach up and take hold of the lifeguards hand, much like us in our total depravity and spiritually dead state are before God reaches down and grabs us to pull us out of the water, so we will not drown. This is the beleif that we are saved only by Gods grace and by no act on our part, the beleif that we are totally depraved, and Jesus calls us which when He calls we cannot resist and then are redemed through our beleif by Jesus death on the cross, which we gain when God calls us and opens our eyes and hearts, and we are then drawn irresistably to God and inspired to live for His glory.

Amen, Hallelujah
Ethan

Elkannah

“He is [Elkanah] for me” Elkanah is the name God uses in Deut 6;15 when he says He is a “Jealous God” the literal translation of Elkanah is “God has purchassed” it evokes more than simple Jealousy it is more like great Anger in jealousy, God is so jealous for me He is angry.WOW!!!

Ethan

Show me a god?

Look at the trees around you look at the sky above

Turn your head to the east and see the first light

Turn your head to the west and see the expanse

He is there, his glory declared in the heavens above

His beauty shining from the earth below

The people surrounding you are living examples of his power

The fact that you live is a miracle

To see God look for Him in everything and you will find that while you used to wonder where He’s at you now can’t find where he’s not.

Ethan

Leafs (repost)

I posted this last year about this time and recently read it and thought I would repost it as it was well received and is one of my favorite things I have written, if it is ok to have a favorite among your own writings, nonetheless here it is

“Leafs

Leafs hmm

I went to the woods behind my house today to do some reading; I am currently reading Blue like Jazz by Donald Miller. As I worked my way to a place where I thought I could sit comfortably to read I heard a sound like something falling and hitting the ground all around me, I kept hearing this sound as I was reading and after a while I really do not know how long I started to think more about the sound. At first I thought it must be some kind of animal sitting in the top of the trees but I came to realize that if this were the case there must a great many of these animals and that they must be quite clever as the sound of their dropping hitting the ground as synced perfectly with the leaves that were falling around me. As Listened to the sound of the leaves I found that they played a beautiful song consisting of many soft pops and thuds all around me. at this I started looking at the leaves which covered the ground and the trees all around me and I found that their Beauty was inescapable, and that it surrounded me no matter where I went my attention was captured by the beauty of these leaves which were so beautiful even as they were dying. I began to wonder if the leaves were not unlike God in the sense that no matter where you turn as long as you remain in his light it does not matter where you are or where you look His beauty is everywhere and is Inescapable. His beauty shines all around you on the ground where you walk and stir it up even more and the colors mix creating even more beauty and the sound joins the chorus that is already being played all around you to make it even more beautiful. Leafs

ALL Misspellings Purposeful”

Ethan

High and Pushing for More!

A few months ago I had a bit of an Epiphany if you will, I realized how great God is and started running after Him full force, and it seemed like nothing could stop it I just kept getting bombarded with His love and discovering Him in new ways, and I told people that God had me on a fast track of some sort, something I believe was true, but I don’t want to talk about that I want to talk about what happened after this, I went to my grandparents before I went to Ghana, and in that week it seemed a sense of doom settled over me and while I was still basking in the glory and beauty of what I had been experiencing, I stopped seeking Him and felt like I was at a place where God was just going to keep happening to me. Without realizing it I had just spun out of Gods fast track, and while I was in Ghana I still did not realize it or even until I this past Friday, when I was talking to Pastor Cobb and he told me it seemed like I had been making progress and drawing really close to God before I left but that since I got back it seemed like I had last some of the ground I had gained, he told me I needed to regain that ground and keep gaining after that. As we talked he mentioned a sermon he had preached in August where he told a story about a guy who got saved and went to a church and after going for a while asked the pastor, “when are we going to do the stuff?” after some confusion on the part of the pastor the man said “you know the stuff you’ve been talking about the stuff Jesus and the Disciples did” and the pastor replied “Oh, we don’t do the stuff we just talk about it” pastor Cobb used this as a catalyst to get us to start “doing the stuff” I was really excited by this sermon and it kind of was like in my fast track God stepped on the gas a little bit more. Pastor cob told me that I should maybe start revisiting the things that had been catalysts in my growth, I needed to “reawaken” the spirit within me, so I did, and through all this I started, realizing how we have a mentality about when we reach a spiritual high that it is not to last we will and should come back down, when I thought about this I was reminded of a video I watched as part of a study I did on the Book Crazy Love by Francis Chan in which he talks about a girl on a worship team where he speaks who each week seems to be experiencing God in a whole new way and it was always so fresh to her, he wondered how she did that so one day he asked her and she replied “when I have an amazing time with God and experience Him in a new fresh way I don’t come back the next week and ask Him to do it again, I never ask for God to repeat an experience,” she said” I ask Him, God show yourself to me in a totally fresh and new way, reveal a new aspect of yourself to me today. And when I thought about this I realized that our whole Idea of “coming down” from a spiritual high is wrong. When we experience God in a new way and reach a new level of intimacy with Him maybe we won’t stay in that moment forever or the sensations won’t last but our awareness of that reality should not end, we should constantly be seeking to see God in new ways, and to draw closer to Him, instead of looking at him as an emotional high we get on Sunday or at the latest conference we attended and then lose a week or day later. We are told in Thessalonians 5; 17 to “pray continually”, and when we do that we can become so close to God that we can’t help but see Him in everything, and opportunities to talk about Him and His great love are not something we need to search for they present themselves, it is then our job to have the courage to take those opportunities, and share our joy. When we think about living life in constant prayer and seeking to experience God in new ways everyday it can be hard to know how to do that, so here are some of the things I have learned that help me. Look around, when you are outside, no matter where you are, in Psalm 19 we are told “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” So look at the trees, the sky, grass, God is everywhere, look at your friends, look at yourself, you are surrounded by beautiful people, you are a beautiful person. Just the fact that you exist, shows God’s glory! Look at the paint on your walls if it’s blue what does that remind you of water, the sky. Look at your house, I mean any building, if you live in America chances are when you have to go to the bathroom, you have a room you can go to and be alone, there are places where people go on the beach if they have to poop, or if they have to pee, I was at a celebration in Ghana where there were 1500 people around and a girl standing in front of me squatted and peed right there, so be thankful you get to go to a room or stall by yourself. Think about music, there are 12 notes that bind everything together, those twelve notes are used to convey feelings of joy, sorrow, peace, and turmoil, there are hundreds of genre’s of music and they all use the same 12 notes, all to tell different stories, God made those 12 notes. You can see God in everything around you, the birds, dogs, cats, He is there, Psalm 19 goes on to say “There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. 4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” When you read, or write, those words they declare God’s glory, as you see these things thank God, pray. If you look for God everywhere, you will find Him and if every time you look for Him you pray, if every time you find Him, you pray, guess what, as long as you are always looking for Him, you are always praying. When you wake up in the morning, pray ask God to reveal Himself to you in new ways, you will never run out of new ways to look at Him, he is endless, Just think about that, God never ends. So seek Him always, pray continually, and live life pushing deeper into Him, every time you reach a new spiritual high, a new depth with God, not only cling to it, but push deeper, press in you will never get to the center much less the other side. So Push and ask for more, he will always be there revealing Himself to you. If there are times you feel distant push harder, never assume God is just going to happen to you, He woos you, but to keep getting more you have to push, read your bible, pray, talk with other Christians, just push for more God. Ethan

Holy Writers Block

Earlier this week I asked to lead discussion at youth group on sunday night as I thought about it I decided what I would talk about but after I started trying to write it I got the worst case of writers block I can remember having. I eventually just decided to write about the subject which kept weighing on my mind. Once I started writing the words just kept flowing and I read and was quite pleased though I was surprised at how far it was from what I thought I was writing about at first, and even after I abandoned my first idea I found I was far from my original topic, but I found it had a great cohesiveness for where I am and after asking my friend to read it and hearing his reaction which included “it is exactly what I have been going through in the past few months!” it was then that I recognized how God had caused me to have writers block in order to have me write something totally different. I am reminded in this of something I read last night in Donald Miller’s book A million Years in a Thousand Years, Miller said that he had been writing a novel and as he was writing his characters kept doing things he did not want them to do, and he then put that in context of our lives as Characters in a story being written by God and how sometimes we run around doing our own thing ignoring God, and then how he thought perhaps we are reluctant to accept that we are characters in a story because that would mean we would be responsible to live a good story, a story with meaning and that our lives are not focused around our wants and desires.

I am calling this Holy writers block, because God prevented me from writing about what I wanted to so that I could write about what he wanted. This is an example of how sometimes we need to stop living our lives doing what we want, in order to do what God wants, and sometimes we find that GOd has give us “writers block” in order to get us to do what He wants us to, and I think we can all agree that what God wants is definantly better than what we want.

I will Post my writing on monday so you can see what God had me write.

Ethan

John Piper on Adonirahm Judson

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/MediaPlayer/1528/Audio/

 

PLease listen

GOING TO GHANA!!!

I am getting ready to go to Ghana you can join my group on facebook, to get updates, on my trip

“God found me, have you any idea how inconvenient that is?”

“I have 10 thousand engagements of state today, but I would prefer to spend the day out here getting a wet ass, studying Dandelions and marveling at bloody spiders webs. … God found me, have you any idea how inconvenient that is?”

I just finished watching Amazing Grace, A movie outlining the life of William Wilberforce and his battle to end the slave trade, I was impacted in this by how through his whole life Wilberforce was subjected to an ongoing sickness which never seemed to flee or if it did it always returned, he was also haunted by dreams which showed him how he should have handled situations differently. Wilberforce is a great example of a man who lived his life to the glory of God and was dedicated to a specific cause which he fought for till he died, to make the world a better place(something we should all strive for). It is not my intention however to write about that aspect much less to speak any more about Wilberforce’s life, but rather to turn to my own life where over the past year I have witnessed myself being torn down and while sometimes I seemed to gain victory, or to rise to a level I never knew before my ailments always seem to return. What I have learned recently, having watched End of the Spear, which is the story Jim Elliot and his family’s love for the Waodoni people after his death at their hands, and then gone to a church retreat where I was greatly blessed with many things including relationships finding healing and growing closer than ever. At bluestone I was also challenged as I found myself being told by the spirit to say something, I could feel what it was I needed to say inside me ready to come out, I was practically bursting to say it and yet I found that my fear of not knowing what to say, or how to say it won. This I know was also a victory for the devil as he was able to deprive people of something I was supposed to say, and for that I apologize to those people, and while I still do not what I was to say or who it was for I know that as this process continues I will be broken even more and will find myself seeking God.

It is so interesting how at times I feel my desire for Him so strongly inside myself I can hardly contain it, and I just want to share him and it seems I could bare all to anyone willing to listen knowing God would use it and draw them closer to Him, and then I contrast that with times when I find that I know God wants me to bare all, or not even that, just take the tiniest step forward in faith, and I find my fear is too great. It is those times that grieve me the most, like Wilberforce’s dreams they haunt me, and then I remember it is all part of a grander plan, and I am reminded that Jesus takes all that away, and gives me strength and courage to step forward in faith and bare all if necessary, yet I find when those times come my faith or is it my strength, or my will, or even my desire to serve God falters and I fail. I know the day will come when I step forward and I know it will be a mighty and glorious day for God. I look forward to that day and as I write this can only think of a recent conversation where I was told a funny story which included the phrase “Make someday today” and I want to “Make someday today” but so often I seem to be unwilling or unable.

This brings me to think about the movie Evan Almighty which I watched upon my return from retreat, and how Evan having been chosen by God to build an ark fights it seems every step of the way, if you have seen the movie you know it leads to great embarrassment on Evan’s part he ends up dressed like Noah in the halls of congress, and many other comedic displays of how God recruits him. This all serves as a reminder of how even when we fight it, if we have been chosen by God for a task He will break us down, and build us up so that we may be equipped to do his will, as far as knowing God’s will that is another post all together, and if I find anything better to say than to quote Erwin McManus and Say that, as long as you are passionately, actively pursuing God and seeking His will, your passions, and desires will come to line up with his more and more, so if you can honestly say you are actively, passionately pursuing God you can and should “Go unless you get a no”. and remember that if you seek God and draw close to Him you will never be bored, and as you try to serve Him don’t forget to share what you learn along the way, if I find something better to say I will, for now farewell.

Ethan