For me, one of the most exciting concepts of knowing God is faith in Him. What faith means to me is trusting God in any and all times. His will and my will sometimes line up, while other times His will pulls me in a completely different direction. He always challenges me to abandon my will & follow His. Most times I do. Then comes the adventure of the unknown, and the thrill of not knowing that is going to come next.

When I was younger I always hated the thought of God because He was in control, and I had many struggles. I faced lots of abuse and neglect from my parents when I was younger. All the while, Christians would come up to me and talk about How God had the whole world in His hands. I couldn’t imagine that a God so great would let me suffer at the hands of such cruel people. I was angry and bitter because I felt that I got the short end of the stick.

Somewhere between puberty, the cigarettes, the drugs, the alcohol, the girls, the cutting and the suicide attempts, God was there. He was there comforting my soul. He was there to make sure I never cut too deep. He was there to make sure that I never got to pull the trigger. He put me in the situation for His will because He gave me the strength and protection to get out of there.

Today I read about a 7-year-old foster kid who hanged himself. It was a hard article to read because I could relate to some of the things that happened to him. It’s hard to think that these things happen in the world, and it makes me wonder where God was. Then I remember that God is watching it all; He was there trying to talk to the kid. What I forget to think about is that the devil is right there to rule over the world. “[The] devil makes me lie and do all those bad things. He is bad and he makes you do bad things,” the boy told the therapist.

That boy could have just as well have been me. But God is mighty to save. He overlooks all of my sin and covers me with His grace. I have faith in His will & I trust Him with all of my heart. He’s taken me through the deepest darkest valleys in order to reach the pastures at top of the mountains between them. At the present moment I can honestly say that I am a man, no more or less then I ought to be because of His will. As I continue to trust Him in my everyday life, I grow closer to Him, and He grows closer to me. If you want to walk on water, you have to have the faith to get out of the boat. I stepped out of the boat in January to follow to God’s will and the most exciting part is that I still don’t know what’s going to happen next.

This past summer I dove into the book by Pete Greig and Dave Roberts called Red Moon Rising: How 24-7 Prayer is Awakening a Generation. Such an incredible book – I felt myself encouraged and excited by the different ways that prayer is shaping our world. From Prague to Northern Ireland, Ibiza to California, God’s people were calling on His name expectantly. And just as He always did, He was showing up.

There’s one story in particular that has remained prominent in my memory months after putting the book back on my shelf. Greig describes one 24-7 gathering in the U.K. in which a guy named Paul shared his thoughts on what it really meant to authentically intercede for someone. Paul’s sister struggled with severe anorexia, a battle that was slowly killing her from the inside out. Day in and day out, he saw her unable to perform simple activities such as dressing herself; he watched her dejectedly as her body succumbed to diabetes and menopause 20 years too soon.

But Paul couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t pray. He couldn’t take action. Until that meeting, his heart had been calcified and resistant to delve into her pain. He realized that he couldn’t pray because true intercession meant identifying her pain as his own. And he was still unwilling to do that.

In Joel 2:12-13a, it tells us to, “Give [God our] hearts. Come with fasting, weeping, and mourning. Don’t tear… clothes in grief, but tear… hearts instead.” God commands us to tear our hearts. It’s so hard to take that pain on, to let our hearts be swept into it, especially when it’s our natural response to avoid pain at any cost. We see gutted houses in once thriving neighborhoods. We read about guerrilla warfare, hear about corporate corruption, and witness fractured relationships all around us. And we go about our daily routines. So where’s the balance? How do we allow ourselves to jump into it intentionally when it can get overwhelming?

With FORTY almost an entire year behind us now, I’ve been meditating on prayer anew, and feel like this needs to be my next step in my prayer life. I want to begin to understand and practice true intercession. I need to start praying for the relationships in my life that have hurt me and continue to hurt me. The ones that I feel are beyond redemption, beyond hope. I need to pray for the people who I’ve started to give up on, even if this means that I’ll be hurt by it in the end. I need to love free from fear.

I know the root of my fear. I know why it’s so easy to give up. What if I pray and I pray and come to God on their behalf and He still chooses not to heal them? To save them? To comfort them when they’re hurting? I don’t have definite answers to these “what ifs,” but I do trust in the God who said that He causes everything to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). So if He chooses to allow someone dear to me to feel pain, I have to believe that it is for His greater glory and a better purpose than I can fathom.

Just maybe this trust is one of the first steps towards true intercession. We often see examples in scripture of how God’s love exposes pain and leads people to action and intercession. As Christians, we pray to be able to have a love like that. To love as Christ loves us. To love our neighbor as we love ourselves. But to be quite honest, God’s love is impossible to wrap our minds around. It’s completely unnatural and otherworldly. But with Christ, it’s not just possible. It’s necessary.

Have you ever found yourself in this situation? Maybe you’re hanging out with friends, or at the office, or basically anywhere that you are surrounded by non-Christians. Then you get a call, or you meet a friend who IS a Christian, and they start talking to you about a God-centered topic? Have you ever tried to have that conversation without using certain words so the people around you wouldn’t hear?

I am guilty of doing this, and maybe I’m the only one, but I don’t think I am. I think sometimes we are afraid of what people might think if they hear us talking about God or church, or praying, or the Bible. We don’t want confrontation, and we don’t want people to know. It’s like we’re playing one big game of Taboo with the person we are talking to, and the word is Christian.

I just want to encourage you, and let you know that if you ever get in this situation, to fight against this temptation to hide your true self in Christ. Throw off your cares of what people might think of you. You should be proud to be in relation to the one true God, and the Saviour of all man-kind, Jesus Christ. Remember what Jesus said:

“Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.”
?Matthew 10:32-33

What does Calvary inspire you to do?

If you know me personally, you would come to the understanding that in my walk with Christ I have not yet had the courage to journey out of the Gospel. Luther was once asked at his church why, week after week, all he preached was the Gospel. Luther’s response was, ‘Well, because week after week you forget it. Until you walk in here looking like people who are truly liberated by the truth of the Gospel, I’m going to keep on preaching it to you.’

I pray you see the Gospel as the heart of the bible. Jesus is the core of everything that is scripture. He puts “God breathed” into the scriptures. To apply any of the stories, understand any of the characters or comprehend any sort of value on the principles that are spoken anywhere or in any chapter, verse, or book of the bible, WE MUST remind ourselves about Jesus or else we will not get it. Everyday we can sit and blog continuously about the Christian life, but it doesn’t mean a thing unless we walk with Christ, understanding that it was His blood that was shed for us. His blood is powerful. His blood transforms us; it lets us know that it is not on our strength that we exist but only by His Grace and Mercy. That without Him we are lost and confused. Without Him we are dirty and disgusting. This is not to tear you down, but it is so you my be lifted by God who loves you and not pride and arrogance.

We, as Christians, need to put into motion the movement Jesus began, but we can’t do it alone. We need the help of the one that comes after, The Holy Spirit. Remembering Calvary with the blood of Jesus which can be communion or just picturing the cross in your head and letting go all you think you know allows the Spirit to be exalted and glorified. I don’t know about you, but when I see my God strapped to a tree with His blood pouring out, I am ruined. This is what should inspire us. This is the life-changing Gospel: that Jesus entered the world as a man, lived a perfect sinless life, and died a disgusting sinner’s death full of pain and torture. But He rose again to conqure the grave and make a way for US.

Pause. Reflect.

Now how do you feel? Upset, right? That feeling is good. Derek Webb put it this way “You just can’t preach the gospel and not be confrontational,” he says. “The cross is both beautiful and offensive, and it must be both … There is no other gospel for us to preach.” Thank you, Derek; I couldn’t have said it better myself. The Gospel is powerful on its own and will cause things to happen, but we can not strip it of its power. We must allow it to change us and work us. So What does Calvary inspire you to do?

“And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” John 1:16. This is the stumbling block of my life. How can this be and how can I learn to do such things myself? The truth is that I can’t. I cannot give grace until I myself have accepted the grace that is given. We are truly not free until there is acceptance of the grace that Christ so freely pours out on our heads.

Do you know the story of the good Samaritan? We have come to understand that story shows us that we are to help the beaten man in the ditch and that the so-called holy men would pass up the needy. However, the truth of the matter is that I AM the man in the ditch and Jesus is the Samaritan. The Samaritan doesn’t ask what happened nor does he care, but he sees someone that is in need and and helps because that person can’t help himself. The Samaritan shows the man grace. Jesus rescued us out of the grasp of death and shows grace and generosity, mercy and kindness. He gives us a gift of grace, heals our wounds, puts us up, and anoints our heads.

John 1:16.

So why do I have such a problem accepting this gift? I mean I was a former drug addict, a former cult leader. It is all too easy to see God’s grace in my life. It was the fullness of God’s grace that allowed me to even exist.

Pride is a weapon that wages war on God’s grace. God hates pride, and in fact, pride hates God. If the God of the universe can come down in a human form and live a poor and humble life, who are we to think that we are exempt from humility? We have more than Jesus had physically, but yet we are poor in spirit. That grace in which I spoke of earlier is a gift from God, but we have to understand that it is nothing that we could have earned or stolen. It is a gift and that is where I have trouble; it is accepting that God gave me something I did not deserve or earn. Because of His mercy we are anointed by His Grace. I know that this may even sound easy to receive, but for me it is a burden. It is this debt in which I can never pay back. I want to say I earned it, that I did something worthy, but there is nothing to do except accept it.

So because this grace is a gift from God, the best thing to do is to just relax. Let go and let God use you with his own strength. Let Him be glorified in you. Forget everything the world tells you about making it on your own, trying to make lots of money and being the best at something. The truth is that you are the best at being you, and that is all God wants from you.

Money can burn, and fade.

Houses crumble.

Material goods rust, and decay

Bodies grow old, and pass..

I know a savior, who set refining fire to my soul.

He gave away all material possession..

broke his very body and passed, only to transcend death itself…

A savior is building a home for me in eternity.

Own faith, and express it with love.

Faith expressing itself through love…

we could not ask for more.

He walked on water, I walk by Faith,

By the precious blood of Jesus, we live now by Grace.

Our souls grow thirsty, our hearts become numb,

At Calvary’s Cross, He poured out His Mercy and Love.

Let our hearts sing, “O’ fountains of freedom, O’ valleys of victory,”

To the Lord God on High, the beautiful mystery.

You painted the skies; You sculpted the stars and the Sun,

My sin held me captive, but Your Heavenly Hands broke these chains undone,

When I listen closely, I hear the resounding echoes of Angels sweetly sing,

And a melodious harmony of heavenly harps and strings,

“Majesty, Majesty to the Marvelous and Mighty King”

Oh Lord, Your love is contagious; teach me all of Your ways,

Forevermore, let every breath that I take bring You praise.

Paint Your canvas with out lives
Forgive us for our wicked lies
Mold us into something new
Let us see ourselves in You

Teach us now, oh Lord we pray,
To want to serve You every day
Help us fight our earthly lusts
In You, Lord Jesus, may we place our trust.

You are God over everything. You have created the heavens and the earth and everything in it. You have my life ordained from beginning to end. Everything is in Your plan.

So why am I not always focused on You - the King of the universe? Why am I focused instead on petty things?

I want to see the bigger picture. I want to know how I can be used. I want my heart to be broken and repentant every morning. I want my heart to be pure and blameless before You. I want my heart to be completely for You, and You alone.

Please God, take my heart out of earthly things.

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:1-3

Keep me focused on things above. We can’t even begin to comprehend Your glory and holiness. I want to be someone who is constantly learning from You. I earnestly want this. I want to reflect You in my life.

Have you ever looked at an ant and wondered “Am I so big that the ant has no hope of possibly of even perceiving me?”. What if I was the ant and the ant was me? How could I identify with something so large and magnificent?

So when we as Christians identify with God as a father, brother, friend, or lover, is that stranger than how we perceive ants? We as human beings have a size. We can say things like “I am 100x smaller than such and such” or “ I am two feet taller than what’s her face”. But God is never-ending and infinite. How much more is that from the ant versus us. Now scripture says in James 4;14, “What is your life?…For you are a mist that appears for a little time then vanishes.” Psalm 103 speaks of human life disappearing like smoke.

God is this super amazing Man that in His holiness and endlessness gives up His life for the ant. Not just an ant but a defying and sinning ant. If we are the blink of an eye, the mist and smoke of the Earth, then how glorious, crazy and messed up is it that Jesus (God the Son) would let us spit on, whip, mock, beat, pluck, and crucify in front of His own Father, Spirit and all of the host heaven can boast.

The ant that I could lay down my life for?
That I would elevate and call friend?

Who am I God that you hear me?
Who am I God that you would shed your blood?

Oh God, have mercy on my mind as I try and contemplate this. You could have crushed us like we crush ants but you have loved, Lord. Forget me, Lord and let me die in my filthiness. I do not deserve you. I am ruined, but because of Your grace, You love me anyway.