http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpVsF4W8V2Y
I included it in my last post as a link to a song I wanted to tag at the end. I finally just watched the video.
Awesome.
"What prostrate means"
Sometimes it is
wearing out. My hands, my joints
my arms, my throat,
every point, like stars
Blinking away into space, collapsing,
and I crumble,
mere wear,
and I tear up. You win
the war, and I finally am
captivated,
free.
Sometimes
it is overcome,
I throw off the towel again.
God,
and here,
like a big bright
Light. I take You, the edge
of my feet singing silently,
every muscle vibrating.
You are the
Giver. And throwing
off the towel, no longer
afraid of the Water,
no longer ashamed of the plummet,
of sinking into
Your praise. Instead,
praise rise glowing, flushed.
Here it is again in case you missed the link at the top. (:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpVsF4W8V2Y
Monday, July 5
Praise Him
Making it a habit to praise God, praise Christ, listen to the amazingness of the Gospel. When I try to find joy any other way, it fails. I will not. That sounds like a rather blunt statement. All I know is that is true in my own life. So very true.
But it is not just for my own selfish desires. I should not look to praise God so I will be happy; that is not the end of praise at all. "Pray," writes Oswald Chambers, "because you have a Father, not because it quietens you, and give Him time to answer." The same goes for praise. Praise His because He is God; praise Him because He has made you His child. Praise Him for the Cross! It is truly a wonderful thing.
I really feel like going on an Oswald Chambers tangent...so I will include a conglomeration of his quotes on prayer. Which also goes for praise.
"We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; The Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.
"Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless in the first waking moment of the day you learn to fling the door wide back and let God in, you will work on a wrong level all day; but swing the door wide open and pray to your Father in secret, and every public thing will be stamped with the presence of God.
"Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying, shut the door, and talk to God in secret.
"Prayer is not only asking, it is an attitude of heart that produces an atmosphere in which asking is perfectly natural, and Jesus says, "every one that asketh receiveth."
~~~
I have been reading David Crowder's book "Praise Habit: Finding God in Sunsets and Sushi." Thus far I have only read up to, at most, the first two chapters.
"Every second is an opportunity for praise. There is a choosing to be made. A choosing at each moment. This is the Praise Habit."
- David Crowder
Praise Him
Friday, July 2
What prostrate means.
I read a lot of verses in the Bible that talk about lying prostrate. I must be honest and tell you that I didn't know what it meant until I finally looked it up two summers ago.
pros·trate (prstrt)
tr.v. pros·trat·ed, pros·trat·ing, pros·trates
1. To put or throw flat with the face down, as in submission or adoration: "He did not simply sit and meditate, he also knelt down, sometimes even prostrated himself" (Iris Murdoch).
2. To cause to lie flat: The wind prostrated the young trees.
3. To reduce to extreme weakness or incapacitation; overcome: an illness that prostrated an entire family; a nation that was prostrated by years of civil war.
adj.
1. Lying face down, as in submission or adoration.
2. Lying flat or at full length.
3. Reduced to extreme weakness or incapacitation; overcome.
4. Botany Growing flat along the ground.
Anyways, what I got out of the big brown dictionary I used were these synonyms: to overcome, to wear down, to submit, to arrest.
I really wish I remembered the specific verses I read that prompted me to write these poems. But I don't. I'll go back and post verses on lying prostrate. For now, here are the poems:
"To Fall Prostrate"
If I am an empty cup. If I am
brittle and chipping away. If I am
lamenated by anything I touch,
I wish for You to break me.
I wish to fall, agast
with a sudden blow, or
silently cracked, by piece.
I wish for You to create me again, and fill me.
(That one was written in 2008. I specicially remember why I wrote this poem; it was after a Bible Study at a summer camp---The Masterworks Festival, aka the most awesome place ever. The Bible Study leader mentioned of those two different ways God teacheS us things in our life. One is by dramatic changes. Sometimes it's black one second and white the next. Othertimes it divulges itself in many shade of gray, and you don't realize until later you're a different color.)
"What prostrate means"
Sometimes it is
wearing out. My hands, my joints
my arms, my throat,
every point, like stars
Blinking away into space, collapsing,
and I crumble,
mere wear,
and I tear up. You win
the war, and I finally am
captivated,
free.
Sometimes
it is overcome,
I throw off the towel again.
God,
and here,
like a big bright
Light. I take You, the edge
of my feet singing silently,
every muscle vibrating.
You are the
Giver. And throwing
off the towel, no longer
afraid of the Water,
no longer ashamed of the plummet,
of sinking into
Your praise. Instead,
praise rise glowing, flushed.
(This one I wrote a few days ago.)
pros·trate (prstrt)
tr.v. pros·trat·ed, pros·trat·ing, pros·trates
1. To put or throw flat with the face down, as in submission or adoration: "He did not simply sit and meditate, he also knelt down, sometimes even prostrated himself" (Iris Murdoch).
2. To cause to lie flat: The wind prostrated the young trees.
3. To reduce to extreme weakness or incapacitation; overcome: an illness that prostrated an entire family; a nation that was prostrated by years of civil war.
adj.
1. Lying face down, as in submission or adoration.
2. Lying flat or at full length.
3. Reduced to extreme weakness or incapacitation; overcome.
4. Botany Growing flat along the ground.
Anyways, what I got out of the big brown dictionary I used were these synonyms: to overcome, to wear down, to submit, to arrest.
I really wish I remembered the specific verses I read that prompted me to write these poems. But I don't. I'll go back and post verses on lying prostrate. For now, here are the poems:
"To Fall Prostrate"
If I am an empty cup. If I am
brittle and chipping away. If I am
lamenated by anything I touch,
I wish for You to break me.
I wish to fall, agast
with a sudden blow, or
silently cracked, by piece.
I wish for You to create me again, and fill me.
(That one was written in 2008. I specicially remember why I wrote this poem; it was after a Bible Study at a summer camp---The Masterworks Festival, aka the most awesome place ever. The Bible Study leader mentioned of those two different ways God teacheS us things in our life. One is by dramatic changes. Sometimes it's black one second and white the next. Othertimes it divulges itself in many shade of gray, and you don't realize until later you're a different color.)
"What prostrate means"
Sometimes it is
wearing out. My hands, my joints
my arms, my throat,
every point, like stars
Blinking away into space, collapsing,
and I crumble,
mere wear,
and I tear up. You win
the war, and I finally am
captivated,
free.
Sometimes
it is overcome,
I throw off the towel again.
God,
and here,
like a big bright
Light. I take You, the edge
of my feet singing silently,
every muscle vibrating.
You are the
Giver. And throwing
off the towel, no longer
afraid of the Water,
no longer ashamed of the plummet,
of sinking into
Your praise. Instead,
praise rise glowing, flushed.
(This one I wrote a few days ago.)
Thursday, July 1
1 chronicles 29 and generousity and prayer
“But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from your hand. And now I have seen with joy how willingly your people who are here have given to you. O LORD, God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Israel, keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever, ...and keep their hearts loyal to you.”
Reading these verses this week was completely spontaneous. It has been something I have been reflecting on. My deeds and my belief, and how they happen to work together (if at all). It's so easy to know in my head. Of course they both must work together. It seems, on paper, so simple. But a few weeks ago it did not. I completely lost all joy in doing deeds (deeds meaning good, godly deeds like serving and sharing the gospel). It is even hard to explain now---it is half a realization of how insufficient I am, how so many times I do not have God's interest in mind. Another half, a doubting of who God is because, feeling my insufficiency, I doubted that God could even use me, even want to use me. Right now I feel sort of silly going on about this. But it is completely true. It is good and right to know who I am, my own sin and incapability to do awesome things. It is when I lose sight of who God is that it starts looking ugly. And that is what it is. My deeds are ugly without Christ at the center. There is always a root to a plant. Christ needs to be the root of my deeds.
I like how David in 1 Chronicles 29 asks, "Who are we that we could give so generously?" It is a privilege to give, to love, to serve, to do good deeds. It is something we have to be given, in a way. "Everything comes from Your hand." Everything we could possibly give to God was and is and will always be God's. The end. It is not a burden. God gives us so that we may give, and God wants us to desire to give. Giving is so like God. He wants it to be us, too.
I heard this phrase this week:
Pray Big.
I intentionally capitalized the 'big.' I think, in reading prayers from the Bible and Jesus' own prayers, that praying big is the way to go. When you ask God for something big, when you ask God for anything at all, it is really realizing God's character. He is the Giver. He is generous, and He knows what we need.
Okay, the cookies are done baking, so now I have to go to sleep. (:
Reading these verses this week was completely spontaneous. It has been something I have been reflecting on. My deeds and my belief, and how they happen to work together (if at all). It's so easy to know in my head. Of course they both must work together. It seems, on paper, so simple. But a few weeks ago it did not. I completely lost all joy in doing deeds (deeds meaning good, godly deeds like serving and sharing the gospel). It is even hard to explain now---it is half a realization of how insufficient I am, how so many times I do not have God's interest in mind. Another half, a doubting of who God is because, feeling my insufficiency, I doubted that God could even use me, even want to use me. Right now I feel sort of silly going on about this. But it is completely true. It is good and right to know who I am, my own sin and incapability to do awesome things. It is when I lose sight of who God is that it starts looking ugly. And that is what it is. My deeds are ugly without Christ at the center. There is always a root to a plant. Christ needs to be the root of my deeds.
I like how David in 1 Chronicles 29 asks, "Who are we that we could give so generously?" It is a privilege to give, to love, to serve, to do good deeds. It is something we have to be given, in a way. "Everything comes from Your hand." Everything we could possibly give to God was and is and will always be God's. The end. It is not a burden. God gives us so that we may give, and God wants us to desire to give. Giving is so like God. He wants it to be us, too.
I heard this phrase this week:
Pray Big.
I intentionally capitalized the 'big.' I think, in reading prayers from the Bible and Jesus' own prayers, that praying big is the way to go. When you ask God for something big, when you ask God for anything at all, it is really realizing God's character. He is the Giver. He is generous, and He knows what we need.
Okay, the cookies are done baking, so now I have to go to sleep. (:
Tuesday, June 22
things, a bunch of things
I was thinking the other day about stories, specifically testimonies, about God and Jesus and how He's changed someone's life. I remember the first time I had to share my testimony, I mentioned to someone that I wasn't sure what exactly to include---and what to leave out. The reply was, "Put all of it!"
Perhaps it is just the geek in me that wants to say, "You cannot put all of it; storytelling in itself is limited to choices and limitations." But I must not get academic about it.
I recently discovered a quote from the singer Jason Gray, which goes as,
"I think the best thing that can happen to us is to be 'found out' for all that we are, our religious and human pretenses stripped away to reveal our sin, pettiness, and weakness. Then we can devote our energies to better endeavors than the constant masquerade of sufficiency. The added benefit is that people are able to see how God's grace works in a real person's life. When we come clean about our brokenness, Christ becomes the star of our testimony and not us."
What was meant by "Put all of it!" was not to censor for the sake of protecting my name or saving me embarrassment, or making me look like the hero. I really really love the Gray quote. Life really is all about Jesus.
When you grow up in a Christian household, when you've gone to church longer than you've gone to school, when you've learned the songs to memorize the books of the Bible before you knew all of your multiplication tables, if you got saved when you were young and not even aware of your own vulnerability to sin, only faintly understanding you are sinful---sharing your testimony can get pretty tricky. Not because it happened so very long ago. But because, at least I find this in my own life, I have to, in the present, remind and be reminded of the gospel and what that really means for my own life now. My testimony is continually happening.
When I wrote up my testimony for the first time, it was six pages long, single-spaced. I got saved in the second sentence.
I was reminded only recently of my way back past. I got saved when I was in 6th grade. I don't remember the date, but I remember the night and what led up to it. Before that, I had "said the prayer" and "walked down the aisle" at kid's church. I think I was six. I remember in sixth grade I didn't want to, didn't really know how, to tell someone my testimony because I thought I was quite old for just getting saved.
And I remember poems. I wrote them mostly when I was mad. I was always mad. But I also wrote them to somehow dissolve my anger. I feel like God use poetry to teach me things in a way that made sense to me.
This post is kind of all over the place. I will end with one of the earliest poems I wrote.
(note: I was really into the sonnet form then. This particular poem is not set in a consistent meter. Obviously it is a metaphor, and I'm sure you have heard this analogy before.)
Sonnet No. 3
Like a healthy ray of light You came in.
But You didn't just shine, no, You contended
to make the flowers grow, intended
to heal them when they were so thin.
I loved the sun. I loved to bask
in Strcngth exceeding the strongest strong.
But I thought You were wrong
when You made it rain. I rang my voice to ask
of Your move to send forth thunder, to
damp the brightest morning with the sending of the storm,
to drown the living, and to cool the friendly warm.
I cried out to sue, but God already knew,
"This is your trying, my child, your gain
for flowers can't grow without rain."
Perhaps it is just the geek in me that wants to say, "You cannot put all of it; storytelling in itself is limited to choices and limitations." But I must not get academic about it.
I recently discovered a quote from the singer Jason Gray, which goes as,
"I think the best thing that can happen to us is to be 'found out' for all that we are, our religious and human pretenses stripped away to reveal our sin, pettiness, and weakness. Then we can devote our energies to better endeavors than the constant masquerade of sufficiency. The added benefit is that people are able to see how God's grace works in a real person's life. When we come clean about our brokenness, Christ becomes the star of our testimony and not us."
What was meant by "Put all of it!" was not to censor for the sake of protecting my name or saving me embarrassment, or making me look like the hero. I really really love the Gray quote. Life really is all about Jesus.
When you grow up in a Christian household, when you've gone to church longer than you've gone to school, when you've learned the songs to memorize the books of the Bible before you knew all of your multiplication tables, if you got saved when you were young and not even aware of your own vulnerability to sin, only faintly understanding you are sinful---sharing your testimony can get pretty tricky. Not because it happened so very long ago. But because, at least I find this in my own life, I have to, in the present, remind and be reminded of the gospel and what that really means for my own life now. My testimony is continually happening.
When I wrote up my testimony for the first time, it was six pages long, single-spaced. I got saved in the second sentence.
I was reminded only recently of my way back past. I got saved when I was in 6th grade. I don't remember the date, but I remember the night and what led up to it. Before that, I had "said the prayer" and "walked down the aisle" at kid's church. I think I was six. I remember in sixth grade I didn't want to, didn't really know how, to tell someone my testimony because I thought I was quite old for just getting saved.
And I remember poems. I wrote them mostly when I was mad. I was always mad. But I also wrote them to somehow dissolve my anger. I feel like God use poetry to teach me things in a way that made sense to me.
This post is kind of all over the place. I will end with one of the earliest poems I wrote.
(note: I was really into the sonnet form then. This particular poem is not set in a consistent meter. Obviously it is a metaphor, and I'm sure you have heard this analogy before.)
Sonnet No. 3
Like a healthy ray of light You came in.
But You didn't just shine, no, You contended
to make the flowers grow, intended
to heal them when they were so thin.
I loved the sun. I loved to bask
in Strcngth exceeding the strongest strong.
But I thought You were wrong
when You made it rain. I rang my voice to ask
of Your move to send forth thunder, to
damp the brightest morning with the sending of the storm,
to drown the living, and to cool the friendly warm.
I cried out to sue, but God already knew,
"This is your trying, my child, your gain
for flowers can't grow without rain."
Monday, June 14
Back
And here I am. Writing another blog post. It's been quite a while, but I think that should be ok.
Galatians 5:4-6
4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Last Sunday night I went to a concert in Southern Florida. Jimmy Needham was the artist, a singer whom I had only recently discovered.
I'm not here to write a concert review, but I will mention a few things about it. Jimmy Needham is pretty well-known around the country, so I assumed there would be a lot more people than there were. It was just a tiny conference-style room. We were there 45 minutes early and had the closest seats, right behind the reserved chairs. So we got the full experience. They started out with some worship by the home church's band. It was incredible, not because they were stunnily talented (they were, but I only half noticed it), but because it had been a long time since I had been in that kind of environment, live music, in a crowd, all of us singing to Jesus. A few months back I had thought about how truly amazing it is, just to have so many people using their energy to sing to God. And there's a difference, singing to God and for God and because of God. All three happened.
And then Jimmy came and sang/spoke for an hour and a half. What particularily stayed with me was his explanation of his song "Forgiven and Loved." He explained that it started out as a journal entry. "Tell me I'm forgiven and loved." Jimmy spoke of the God of his earlier years, the God with a "disappointed" sign plastered across his face.
I have been struggling this probably my entire life. It is my flesh and my insecurities that claim God is not pleased, that God's wrath remains against my sin, that I do not deserve love and that I cannot please God.
There is a lot of Truth in those feelings. That is probably why I feel that way---there is something broken in my communion with God, there is something broken about me, something actually ISN'T right.
But Jesus makes it right. He made it right and is making it right. Romans 8:1 says, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." None. At all. Jimmy kept repeating that that is the craziest verse in the Bible. It really is. It goes against my instinct. I want to work for it, but God says I absolutely, never ever can.
See it like this:
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Isaiah 64:6
And then:
...in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us.
Romans 8:37
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
1 John 3:1
"We cannot trade empty for empty, we must go to the waterfall, for there’s a break in the cup that holds love, inside us all."
David Wilcox
"But how much more could we enjoy each other if instead of trying to get them to fill us we walked with each other toward the waterfall?"
Mike Donehey
I need the waterfall.
Galatians 5:4-6
4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
Last Sunday night I went to a concert in Southern Florida. Jimmy Needham was the artist, a singer whom I had only recently discovered.
I'm not here to write a concert review, but I will mention a few things about it. Jimmy Needham is pretty well-known around the country, so I assumed there would be a lot more people than there were. It was just a tiny conference-style room. We were there 45 minutes early and had the closest seats, right behind the reserved chairs. So we got the full experience. They started out with some worship by the home church's band. It was incredible, not because they were stunnily talented (they were, but I only half noticed it), but because it had been a long time since I had been in that kind of environment, live music, in a crowd, all of us singing to Jesus. A few months back I had thought about how truly amazing it is, just to have so many people using their energy to sing to God. And there's a difference, singing to God and for God and because of God. All three happened.
And then Jimmy came and sang/spoke for an hour and a half. What particularily stayed with me was his explanation of his song "Forgiven and Loved." He explained that it started out as a journal entry. "Tell me I'm forgiven and loved." Jimmy spoke of the God of his earlier years, the God with a "disappointed" sign plastered across his face.
I have been struggling this probably my entire life. It is my flesh and my insecurities that claim God is not pleased, that God's wrath remains against my sin, that I do not deserve love and that I cannot please God.
There is a lot of Truth in those feelings. That is probably why I feel that way---there is something broken in my communion with God, there is something broken about me, something actually ISN'T right.
But Jesus makes it right. He made it right and is making it right. Romans 8:1 says, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." None. At all. Jimmy kept repeating that that is the craziest verse in the Bible. It really is. It goes against my instinct. I want to work for it, but God says I absolutely, never ever can.
See it like this:
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Isaiah 64:6
And then:
...in all these things we are more than conquerers through him who loved us.
Romans 8:37
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
1 John 3:1
"We cannot trade empty for empty, we must go to the waterfall, for there’s a break in the cup that holds love, inside us all."
David Wilcox
"But how much more could we enjoy each other if instead of trying to get them to fill us we walked with each other toward the waterfall?"
Mike Donehey
I need the waterfall.
Friday, April 9
Instead of Looking for You
I wrote this poem in March.
I really dislike explaining writing. I hope it can speak for itself. Mostly I do not want to tear it apart, or try to fit it into anything.
This is just a poem I wrote when I felt like my back was turned to God---when I knew I needed Him most but could feel Him least. I don't pretend like I understand everything. I had His Truth but it wasn't the life, in my mind, as it had been. I had not realized how hard to it I had become, how it also became monotonous. It never should be like this. His Word should break me down, should melt me, should satisfy. Instead of myself looking for God, He sought me.
Instead of Looking for You
I take to wondering about a light bulb. Again I see this, my eyes shifting
across like a doll’s; instead of looking for you, I position myself constantly staring
backwards into a drilled-out forest as it always disappears, dips
into fading snapshots. Grabbing
for a salty leaf or tearing branch,
or an arm. Sometimes I brood over a knot I could not solve
years before, instead of looking for you. I do whatever I can.
And after I’m done ripping paper or canning out messages,
the flames of a month ago tapping my shoulders still,
I remember.
I wonder how I could have fled from something full, something
real, someone
severed on a cross, still beating. When you find me
I am just a wilting fist of defense,
hardly human.
I really dislike explaining writing. I hope it can speak for itself. Mostly I do not want to tear it apart, or try to fit it into anything.
This is just a poem I wrote when I felt like my back was turned to God---when I knew I needed Him most but could feel Him least. I don't pretend like I understand everything. I had His Truth but it wasn't the life, in my mind, as it had been. I had not realized how hard to it I had become, how it also became monotonous. It never should be like this. His Word should break me down, should melt me, should satisfy. Instead of myself looking for God, He sought me.
Instead of Looking for You
I take to wondering about a light bulb. Again I see this, my eyes shifting
across like a doll’s; instead of looking for you, I position myself constantly staring
backwards into a drilled-out forest as it always disappears, dips
into fading snapshots. Grabbing
for a salty leaf or tearing branch,
or an arm. Sometimes I brood over a knot I could not solve
years before, instead of looking for you. I do whatever I can.
And after I’m done ripping paper or canning out messages,
the flames of a month ago tapping my shoulders still,
I remember.
I wonder how I could have fled from something full, something
real, someone
severed on a cross, still beating. When you find me
I am just a wilting fist of defense,
hardly human.
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