Bible Reading Struggles

My New Year's Resolution is to read the Bible this year. See, I really struggle with daily discipline. Such as exercise, which is why my gut exists, eating habits, personal hygiene, bad joke telling, and my daily devotions/"quiet time." So I decided that this year I would make it a point to read through the Bible. Honestly, I don't even care if I don't get anything out of it. I just want to get in the habit. This was all fine and dandy until I became unemployed and began doing nothing with life. Strangely, when I had the most time to read my Bible, I didn't read it at all - for a month and a half.

So being weeks behind and I have to catch up. This basically means reading Exodus through Numbers in just a few weeks and I've always loved reading about Moses and things he went through. This makes you just lucky enough to get to read some of the things that I think about Moses and lessons we can learn from him. So starting tomorrow will be a mini-series on Moses.

seeking you as a precious zune

If you haven't read yesterday's post make sure you scroll down and read that first so this can make a little more sense to you.

In rewriting a few of these lyrics, let me explain the significance to me anyway.

"You are my strength when I a weak"

God is my strength. In the past I have been beaten down, pushed around, trampled on, and nearly destroyed both emotionally and spiritually. My strengths were stolen and I was left with nothing but weakness. But God was always there for me to lean on. Despite all I've gone through (or what any of you have gone through) God is always there to keep us from completely collapsing. Thank you God for being my strength.

"You are the refuge that I seek"

Similar thought as above. The Bible says that God is our refuge. In the OT certain cities were even set up as refuge cities so that if you needed to get away from accusers, attackers, etc. you could flee to these cities to seek refuge and the city would protect you. God will protect. Crazy thought here - God will protect you even if you are guilty. Welcome to the grace and love that He uses to protect us.

"Seeking You as a precious Zune"

This is the good one. If you aren't familiar a Zune is an mp3 player just like an ipod. I use a Zune because I just kinda like it better. Anyway, weeks ago I lost my Zune and I went CRAZY trying to find it! I searched every inch of my car, every inch of my apartment (except the one inch where I ended up find it a month later.) A few minutes into my search the Holy Spirit "gently" nudged me and reminded of the parable Jesus tells about seeking a treasure. He would do anything to get this treasure. Well, my treasure was my Zune because I listen to music EVERYWHERE that I go. As I frantically went through everything that I own God told me I was to seek Him in the same way.

Now, my desire is to seek God with the same intensity but I'm finding that often times, He doesn't mean as much to me as my Zune did that day.

my all in all

I was just kinda hangin with God a bit when He reminded me of an old school song (at least old school for me) called All in All. Here are the verses to that song.

You are my strength when I am weak

You are the portion (treasure? I can't remember) that I seek

You are my all in all

Seeking you as a precious jewel

Lord to give up I'd be a fool

You are my all in all

Jesus, Lamb of God

Worthy is Your name

Jesus, Lamb of God

Worthy is Your name

Good song, good lyrics. But I can make em better!

You are my strength when I am weak

You are the refuge that I seek

Seeking you as a precious Zune

Lord to give up I'd be a fool.

Stop in tomorrow to read the method to my madness behind these lyric changes

Lessons to Learn from Moses pt 1

In my Bible reading I have been reading quite a bit about Moses lately. Truth is, he is one of my favorite biblical characters because of the all of the leadership dealings he had. For one to lead over a million complainers into the desert for 40 years, one is going to have to know something about leadership and certainly learn a lot about leadership. Periodically, I'm gonna go ahead and share some of the important leadership lessons that I learn from Moses. This is the first one.

Intimacy

In Exodus 34 Moses is coming down from Mount Sinai. As he descended from the summit Aaron and others noticed that his face was shining. Moses was literally radiant from his time with God. He was shining so brightly and frequently that Moses had to wear a veil over himself so others could look at him and be around him. Moses would continue to spend time with God and he would continue to send off light from his body. So what can we learn about this? An important step in leadership is intimacy with God.

If we do not spend time with God then let's not bother leading. This is when pastors/leaders/businessmen, etc. run into their first problems: they begin to rely on themselves. We must know God's will and plan and submit ourselves to him. Our thoughts, our actions, our lives, and our time must be devoted to God.

I don't know about you but more than anything, I want to be intimate with God. That starts by simply spending time with Him.

Twitter Account

About a year ago I joined Twitter and used it about 5 times. So I decided just the other day to go ahead and be more active on that account. My plan is to use that and Facebook a little more and hopefully get some more people to read this blog. And I don't do that because I want to be "popular." I do write this simply for me and if anyone else wants to read then that's great. But I really love the idea of putting my thoughts in the open to start discussion. I guess we can call it iron sharpening iron. I really do seek discussion on a lot of topics.

But one problem I'm having is that I can't get my tweets to come up on Facebook and that's important to me. For some reason whenever I try to get the app for Twitter it doesn't work. Any suggestions or fixes to the problem?

The Key to Christianity

First of all I'm not a huge fan of the term "Christianity." Not because it isn't relevant or because it doesn't have good meaning. I just think it's become so broad and so general that it has come to fit too many things. I think I'm a little more of a fan of Christ-follower, Jesus lover, Jesus stalker, Christo-imitator, etc.

All that nonsense said I think the key to Christianity is brokenness.

I've talked about this before on here and I probably am not going to say anything incredibly new or insightful but I think that without brokenness we miss an incredibly huge point of following Christ. The main reason for my thought is this: Without brokenness, Christ cannot be Lord.

Think about it. One of my fav verses in the Bible is in Matthew 16. It is about taking up our cross and following. Those who save their life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will find it. The core of Christianity is following Christ and letting Him be in control. This cannot be done without brokenness, the act of saying God you and in control and I am not. Honestly, I hope everyone following Christ is daily praying for brokenness and humility because without it we are lost.

What are you thoughts?

First Impressions

I have recently realized that I am not very good at making good first impressions. I think my second impressions are good, but not my first ones. And I've decided that those first impressions are incredibly important for someone in sales and for any pastor. So, I am trying to do all I can to figure out how to make my first impressions better.

Any thoughts? Please share any advice you have one how you personally try to make a good first impression, or if there's any tips of anyone you know. Also, if you know me, anything you can think of for me that I do wrong or something else I should try?

T-Minus 7 Days

I have a new look now which means a few different things. 1) I'm going to start blogging again. 2) I have entered a new emotional stage of my life which we will talk about later. 3) It just looks cool.

Just wanted to let anyone that's checking that a week from today I will begin blogging again. New topics, new theme. No more whining and talking about how hard my life has been. The truth is, a corner as been turned and I am extremely excited about my life right now. For a long time, it has been hard for me to live in the NOW, in the present. Today, I am happy to say that TODAY will be a great day!