It’s time for a rest…

And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ –Acts 26:14

God’s been telling me to give up writing on this blog for a while and I’ve been resisting.  I’ve felt some sort of obligation like I need it or something.  But I don’t and in trying to keep writing posts I’m just kicking against the goads.  It hasn’t been working.  Every time I sit down to write I think I have something to say and then boom.. blockage.  And it’s not blockage from the enemy.  It’s lack of grace blockage.  It’s Jonah trying to escape from going to Nineveh blockage.  So without any further disobedience I’m giving the blog a rest to see what else the Lord has for me in this season.    I’ll be back at some point.  Maybe in a couple months or as little as a couple weeks?   Either way God is good all the time!  He loves you all the time!  And He is speaking all the time!

Much love to you all,

-Justin

“The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.”’

 

The Pursuit of Love

I am in a constant pursuit of God, and with knowing that God is love, I pursue love constantly.  I am not satisfied with having less when I know by reading scripture that there is more.  The pursuit itself makes life worth living because it’s not just a pursuit…  it involves a lot of finding as well.

As I discover new facets of His love I am overwhelmed and amazed by His glory—which is His goodness.   His love never fails me and He is always faithful.  I know that sometimes we can throw around those words in a cliché type of way…  But it’s truth.  He really has never ever failed me.  I can say this about Him because I have not only read it in scripture but I have experienced it for myself and I continue to experience it.   It is this revelation that compels me to dig deeper past the surface—which is theology and understanding of who God is through reading the scriptures—to a further realm of knowing Him and experiencing who He is in relationship.

I do however have to be careful that my pursuit itself is rooted and ground in love.  I’ve realized that in the past at times my pursuit was fueled by fear.  It was as if I tried to force Him into an encounter because I was so scared of my faith being tested.  I wanted evidence of His existence.  God did reveal Himself to me in time, although it was not so much in the ways I expected Him to.  He knows what’s best for our development.

Trust Him through this season.  Trust Him because He really is a good God.  Trust Him because His love will never fail you.   Pursue love.

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,  that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love,  may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  –Ephesians 3:14-19

What are you living for?

What are you living for? 

I like to people watch.  I’ve always done it.  I can’t help but be amazed that there are so many of us; and each one of us with our own life, our own thoughts and our own goals.  We are all so different but yet we are very similar at the same time.  We are all wired for purpose.  There is a deep desire in every one of us for our life to have meaning.  We have to feed this desire with something but what we end up feeding it with can vary extensively from one human to another.  Some live for their kids, some for their spouse, some for their jobs and some for themselves.   It’s easy to get caught up in pursuing a purpose in something and before you know it years have passed by.

I pursued music for years.  Over ten years of my life I lived for music.  I put so much time and energy towards being successful with music.   I had some good success and made it farther than many others do but the success left about as quickly as it came.  It was about that time that the Lord got my attention and I shifted my focus and began to live for God.  But what does living for God look like?

While I lived for music I did everything I could to achieve success so naturally when I started to live for God I was doing the same thing.   But as I got to know Him better I realized that it doesn’t work like that in the Kingdom of God.  Jesus doesn’t grade us by achievement.  This was a hard lesson for me to accept because after all I am an achiever.  I took my Clifton Strengths Finder test in college and there it was… “achiever” as my third top strength.   So here Jesus was saying, “It’s great that you’re an achiever.  I don’t want you to change who you are.  But my love for you has nothing to do with your achievements.”  It kinda messed with my head.  It took me quite some time to get it.  I think I’m still learning to get it.  And there’s some of you that need to learn to get it too.

God loves you regardless of what you accomplish in life.  Your purpose is not found in accomplishments.  Your purpose is not even found in ministry.  Your purpose is not found in serving others and your purpose is not found in evangelism.  Your calling is not to be a pastor, teacher, apostle or prophet.  Those things are great and I’m not saying we don’t need them.  What I’m saying is that your title and the way God decides to use you is not your purpose.  Your purpose is very, very simple…  Your purpose is simply to know Jesus.   Ministry is to be a bi-product of knowing Him.  It’s an after effect, but it blows my mind that so many make ministry their main thing so that they will minister before they will spend time with Jesus getting to know Him.

There’s a popular scripture that says, delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)

This doesn’t mean try really hard to memorize scripture, pray every day before dinner, stop using cuss words when I drop a heavy object on my foot, and put on a fake smile in front of other Christians—then my life will look delighted in the Lord.  And if I appear to be delighted in the Lord then He will give me that desire I’ve always had to [insert your dream of being successful here] and my life will finally have purpose.   No, I think what this verse really means is know the Lord and He will become your heart’s desire.

If you have truly delighted yourself in the Lord it’s because you have begun to know Him, and once you start knowing Him you cannot help but fall in love with Him.   He will become your heart’s desire.  Oh and one more thing…. He won’t relent until your whole heart is His.  His desire is to know you.  Please open your heart and let Him in.