Just be Yourself

Because of the last post, I wanted to say a couple more things that didn’t really fit, so I’m posting again.

I said that the Lord is always speaking, I believe that and here’s why — here is how God speaks to me and how you can know God is speaking to you. This is not hard to grasp but it took me a long time to realize that Jesus living inside of me was the reason for a lot of things.

God made each and every one of us uniquely and carefully. Some he instilled musical talents, others with gifts of teaching and others with the ability to lead masses of people. On a smaller level though God made us with certain characteristics. We call it our personality, it’s just the way we are. But it’s not just the way we are, it’s the way the Father made us! He picked and chose all the different parts of you that make you a valued part of the Body of Christ.

Some are compassionate for the homeless,
others have a heart for reaching their peers.
Some want to help every little kitty on the side of the road,
the rest of the world sees a stranded cat as a gift from God in itself.
Sorry.

Anyway, when you feel like one of your emotions, or personality traits is kicking in and you are feeling moved to help, or say something, or hug someone, or buy something, or call someone, or leave a note, or sacrifice your time, or volunteer than that is God speaking to you through your personality. It is the personality He made you to live by. I am as guilty as the next person when it come to ignoring these feelings — running from them even, for whatever reason, you know the excuses you’ve used. That is sin, it is disobedience and a lack of faith in your Creator that he knew what he was doing when he made you in his own image, as it says in the first chapter of Genesis.

Next time, don’t talk your way out of doing God’s will. Listen to your heart, like D.H.T always said. Obey God with your emotions, that he placed within you, that lead you to action and ultimate faith in Christ.

Proverbs 27:17 / Part 2

In continuing with the theme of discovering God’s will:

Another way for us to become aware of what God’s plan is for us personally is to let other people speak wisdom into your life. All too often we are waiting on signs, or waiting on the Lord to speak when in actuality He is always speaking, reaching out, communicating with us. We just don’t see it. It is a hard thing to understand, I know because I struggle with deciding whether it’s God speaking, my mind just thinking, and even if it’s Satan lying to me. Decisions are to be made constantly and other Christians are in our lives to help us make the right, best decision. But we have to be open to help.

Fellowship is part of Christianity, we are a body of Christ, together, and with that, know it is more than appropriate for other Believers to speak into your life, as the voice of God. There will always be someone older, wiser, more experienced than you and it would be foolish not to take advantage of that. That is one of the way God speaks, but you have to be strategic in choosing who you talk to.

• Only listen to someone who loves you, and who loves God
• Choose someone who has nothing to lose by telling the truth
o Not a friend who is more concerned about the friendship than the friend, the person
• Talk to someone who is where you want to be in life
• Talk to multiple people
• Talk to people you know as well as people you don’t
• Get in a conversation with a mindset that God will speak

This is a sweet spot to be in. It is a good feeling when you know someone like that is willing to speak with you and pour more of Jesus into your life. I thank God there are men in my life that come to mind while writing this. Let god speak to you through other people. Let other people help you determine God’s will.

Undefeated

I know the showing of the Red Sox game I’m watching right now is a rerun from the 6:05 am showing this morning but I am still watching just to see the tying homer by Brandon Moss. Then the winning knock by Manny. It’s going to be a good season.

160-0? Maybe…

I Don’t Need You to Like Me

I was recently led in worship by a youth band from a church near where I live and among numerous positives I saw in the group, watching them made me go back to my high school days.

I played in a youth band and remember how I felt being on stage, personally. I thought I was so cool and so good at what I was doing. I had a girl watching me, my friends watching me, and some older people I wanted to impress in the auditorium as well. Sometimes I was playing for only those people and nothing good came from it, probably not even good tone, but that’s not what this slow rolling blog is about.

The kids in this worship team seemed to be in the right mindset. I know I would have been trying to look my coolest for the college kids watching. I would have been more impressed with myself and how good I could play and how many eyes I could have on me than how great God is and what He would be doing in people’s lives through the worship that I was a part of leading.
I am a critic at heart (forgive me) and did see some things that I could have seen as showy or kind of goofy in a high school band sort of fashion, but I was just so thankful that I had the opportunity to worship Jesus with this band who volunteered their time to lead us that night.

I say all that to say this:

I pray that I am not showy to peers just for their approval and praise. I pray that I deflect all glory to Christ who saved my life, who rose from the grave. I’m not in a youth band any more, and I’m not trying to impress any girl with my musical talents, I know better than that now. But I am living life, talking to people, and making impressions without even knowing it. I just pray that I am a reflection of Jesus in all that I do. It is more difficult and tedious than I ever thought it would be but if I take just a minute every day to remember what the Lord has done for me and the rest of the world, it is easy and a pleasure to live for Him and not for anyone and everyone I walk by and sit with in class.

Are you reflecting Jesus to the world and deflecting the glory back to him?

know your role

As I foreshadowed a couple posts ago, here’s some things to chew on from a sermon series by Andy Stanley that is having an impact on my life and I think would be beneficial for all new Christians (probably a lot of old, luke warm Christians) and most every person who feels like they aren’t glorifying God with their entire life. 

So here we go, Part 1 of 4:

There are 3 different wills of God and once the first two are understood and surrendered to, the third will of God will be much easier to distinguish and recognize.

The first two are the providential will of God and the Moral will of God. 

The providential will of God happens because God is God. We don’t have anything to do with this. God will do what needs to be done, like sending Jesus. Nobody asked for that, nobody planned on it. But, God did use people to make his providential will happen. And when God does something like this, it is for our benefit. I wasn’t there, but I don’t think that anyone was thinking, ‘We sure could use the Son of God to come on down to Earth to live and be the perfect example. Then to make it possible for all men, forevermore, to be in relationship with God, let the Son of God (we’ll call him Jesus) be persecuted, charged and put to death by a cross with the weight of the world’s sin on his back.’ Yeah, I guess someone could have been thinking that, but if I had been around then, it would not have been me coming up with this master plan. I definitely would not have come with the judgement process that God will make happen one day for all of us. 

God doesn’t need me, but He most certainly will use me.

The moral will of God is most self-explanatory. The Ten Commandments and 1 Peter 2:13-15 should take care of this. (plus this)

(Let’s get to the good stuff!!!)

I have to be willing to do anything before He will trust me to follow through. God is not unwilling to speak to His people, but He will not speak direction to us until he knows we will take what he says and acknowledge and obey it completely, instantly. Proverbs 3:5-6 is a promise from God that he will guide and direct us but only when we trust Him fully and disregard all of our own understandings. 

“[God] doesn’t give out information for consideration and contemplations, He gives out direction for participation and God has an uncanny way of knowing when we’re ready to participate and when we’re just sitting back looking at our options.”

 

• Surrender and obedience to what we do know paves the way for what we don’t know.
• We don’t see and then act, we act and then see.
• In the process of discovering God’s will, God is most interested in you getting to know Him.

“I do not get to know God and then do His will, I get to know Him more deeply by doing His will.”

“We receive enlightenment in proportion only as we give ourselves more and more completely to God by humble submission and love”

God wants you to know His will and purpose for your life even more than you want to know it. This statement has been drilled into my head in the past couple weeks, recurring over and over, and I am getting it. I understand it. I am in love with God’s power and generosity and omniscience. 

The more you obey the further along God will lead you. The more faith you have the easier it will be to obey. The more you read His word and praise Him more faith will form inside of you. 

The adventure begins…

This sin won’t come off…

There are always little things, sins, you think you can get away from whenever you need to. Things that are petty and cheap, and don’t usually blatantly cause others to stumble. These are things that we are, for the most part, open with and okay with people knowing about. They are probably things that the majority of the people you hang out with do right along with you.

I’ve been dealing with some of this lately. I’ve been seeing things that I don’t like in myself. I have been challenged by the Word and in my prayer time to stop doing little things that seem harmless. I came to the point of believing that everyone sins and we’ll never be perfect so I can, and might as well, keep on doing whatever I want. As long as I’m not letting the big stuff get out of hand. As long as I’m not getting plastered every night, having sex with my girlfriend or looking at pornography. As long as I keep tithing 10%, praying and reading my Bible and going to Bible studies I should be okay. The point to my life was to be ‘good’. I saw sin as washable, not permanent. I thought I could get rid of the little things with a simple change of the mind. I had convinced myself that I could take care of my own life without the help of God. I thought I had good enough discernment to be able to tell when I was getting into something too deep. That was wrong.

My God is bigger than I let Him be.

I was convicted and shown through stories about Jesus that I am called to be a better person than that. I do not have the right to live my own life, my life is His. I should thank Him for it everyday. I am a Child of The King and I am given the opportunity to be in His blessing all day everyday. I can’t be in that sweet spot though if I am ignoring the little things. I need to give 100% of my life to the Lord in order to completely be where He wants me to be. If I don’t do this I am showing zero faith in my Savior. I want to be there, I want to know my purpose for life and I want to please the Lord. It is not an option any longer for me to hang onto little sins that don’t matter–It all matters to God. He wants us to be blessed beyond all we can ask or imagine.

Catch the little things before they become big things. Make sure you realize that sin is nothing short of permanent marker that only God can erase from your life. What little things do you need to let go of and hand over to God?

This is Saturday

Newest in the ‘Purchased’ playlist on my iTunes:
• Flo Rida
• Jordin Sparks (Featuring Chris Brown)
• Usher & Young Jeezy
• Lil Mama
• Rick Ross
• Fat Joe Featuring J. Holiday
• Shawn McDonald
• Jaymay (x2)
• Ever Stays Red
• Baumer (entire album)

Do you see a trend in these? For the most part, anyway, they are the latest hip-hop/rap jams that will get me going throughout my spring break weekend. What’s spring break without rap blaring out all four windows rolled down? Speaking of spring break, again, my good friend Blake and I have a great idea to enhance our ride to Myrtle Beach. I’ll let you in on it later this week.

Most popular podcast in my iTunes:
• Andy Stanley’s 4 part series on Discovering God’s Will
• Mosaic

The 4 part series is amazing. It’s so insightful on the subject of finding your purpose and plan that God has for you. I’ll be processing these as I listen to them and take notes and will post some thoughts on my personal journey of discovering God’s will for my life. Mosaic is always at the top of my list because Erwin McManus is one of the smartest men I’ve ever heard preach.

Favorite blogs of lately:
• Chris Elrod
• Steven Furtick
• Stuff White People Like
• Gary Lamb
• Phillip McCart
• Tony Morgan

Rarely does this list change all that much but I think I saw Chris at Unleash the other day but I was too chicken to introduce myself as a fan with not much to say but, ‘Hello. My name is Tyler. I read your blog.’ Maybe next time…Chris, if you’re reading this, Hello, I’m Tyler. I read your blog. Thanks for stopping by mine.

My wishlist:
• A new phone; mine has seriously had it.

I have a credit from Verizon for being such a loyal customer for another 2 years now, but I am waiting on something new to come out. I will brag on the VX 8300 though. It’s been good to me. I will miss it, whenever I can afford to get rid of it.