Every Nights Another Story..

5/9/13

All that I know
Is your space is empty
It’s buried below
The stress and the envy
All the places I go
It still hasn’t left me
I hated it then
And now it consumed me

I dwell on it nightly
Tread swiftly and lightly
Make up the lost ground
And see what you don’t see
All questions aside
I asked and you lied
And now my hands are tied

All I can show
Is absence from your life
That I can’t control
It’s all that I get right
Keep paying the toll
I know that it seems like
I’m always upset
I know it seems like I’m always upset

I know it seems like I’m always upset

5/6/13

Death often frightens us. When we see another person die, we are reminded that we are also mortal, that someday death will come to us. It is a thought we try to push from our minds. We are uncomfortable when another’s death rudely intrudes into our lives and reminds us of what we will face at some unknown future date. Death reminds us that we are creatures. Yet as fearsome as death is, it is nothing compared with meeting a holy God. When we encounter Him, the totality of our creatureliness breaks upon us and shatters the myth that we have believed about ourselves, the myth that we are demigods, junior-grade deities who will try to live forever.

As mortal creatures, we are exposed to all sorts of fears. We are anxious people, given to phobias. Some people are afraid of cats, others of snakes, and still others of crowded places or lofty heights. These phobias gnaw at us and disturb our inner peace. 

There is a special kind of phobia from which we all suffer. It is called xenophobia. Xenophobia is a fear (and sometimes a hatred) of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign. God is the ultimate object of our xenophobia. He is the ultimate stranger. He is the ultimate foreigner. He is holy, and we are not.

We fear God because He is holy. Our fear is not the healthy fear that the Bible encourages us to have. Our fear is a servile fear, a fear born of dread. God is too great for us; He is too awesome. He makes difficult demands on us. He is the Mysterious Stranger who threatens our security. In His presence we quake and tremble. Meeting Him personally may be our greatest trauma. -RC Sproul (The Holiness of God)

Outpour 4/21/13 (Interview)

As many of you know my favorite verse in the Bible comes from the book of James. “Count it all Joy, my Brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces Steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.” 

I feel like this has been my go to verse for so much of my life, and it always is constantly repeated in my thoughts and in my prayers during Spring Break Mexicali Mission Week. 

This year I feel like I fully comprehend what this verse means to me, and I’ll explain it through my week in Mexicali this year. 

Being on the construction crew has it’s ups and downs. You listen to great music, you kinda joke around, you sing, you talk, but you have to work. Work when the sun rises, work till the sunsets. It especially gets stressful when you have no idea what you’re doing. 

For example, the last day of working on the house, I was completely irritated, and stressed out. Mark had me painting and re-painting so many things, that I just about had enough with everything. I wanted to be done, I wanted so badly to just be done with all of it. And I could tell from the looks of everyone else they were kinda in the same boat as me. 

But what God had in store for us at the end of the day will be a feeling I will never forget. 

We finished the house. We made it livable. But most importantly we saw a dream/miracle come true. I remember us all just being an emotional wreck, I saw so much love and passion and heart from Mark and Marcia at the realization that God paved the way for this idea of theirs to happen. It was incredible. Seeing Izzy’s family members with tears full of joy at the realization that what seemed to be impossible was possible. 

This. This moment was worth it. 4 days of hard work, suffering, exhaustion, stress, all worth it for that 30 minutes I got to feel God’s glory on us. It was all worth it. 

And to be honest as much as I hate suffering, and hardships. I love them, it’s bittersweet. I feel like hardships, and suffering, bring people to together. I find it amazing to think that we meet these people who don’t speak the same language as us, or live hundreds, or maybe thousands of miles away from us in different countries, but we can easily be united by what we go through as people. It’s pretty amazing to think that we will never truly be alone because people go through the same hardships as we do. 

And that’s what I experienced down in Mexicali. I experienced hardships, and struggles, but so did everyone else. And because of this I made a lot of great bonds with great people, I met new people, and it was an experience I will never forget. 

And to wrap things up, I realized how excited I am for these cancer patients who will be living in this home. Because when you think of it, they will either beat the cancer, or not. But when they eventually reach the Kingdom of Heaven they will be complete, perfect, lacking in nothing. And they will realize all the suffering was worth it. 

4/15/13

It really bothers me that people only tend to “pray” only when something tragic happens. People who tend to bash on God, or Religion find themselves asking for Prayer only when something bad happens to them. It’s selfish. 

Don’t get me wrong I believe we should pray for these terrible things that happen, but why don’t we just pray ALWAYS. Pray for the small things, Pray for the Good things.

Just Pray ALWAYS.