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I remember when I was a kid there was this one house that my family lived in that had a huge back yard and at the back end of the the yard there was this beautiful wood that seemed to go forever. I swear you could get lost in those woods and never come out. I used to go out into those woods and spend the whole day making this fort out of downed trees and branches and scrap metal, whatever I could find. Once that was done I was off to explore the reaches of those musty, cool woods. Everyday was an adventure. During the summer I think I ws in those woods everyday, and during the school year I would rush home from school, throw my bag down on the front porch and off I went until dinner time. I loved it! I never did find the ends of those woods. That whole season was a time of adventure. Everyday would bring something new and the fact that I had never found the ends of those woods made want to go further, explore more, go a different direction. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite quotes is by a man named Andrew Peterson, he is a musician and in one of his songs he has a line that says, “I know that falling down ain’t graceful, but thank God falling’s full of grace.” You know why this is one of my favorite quotes if you have ever been in a place where you had done something that distanced yourself from the God you love and know loves you. Lets get a little real here, I am talking about sin. When we sin it separates us from God, not His love because that is impossible, (Romans 8:38-39) but rather his presence.  And if you know what it is like to be in His presence and you have tasted the goodness of it, when you loose it, it feels like you are at the bottom of the ocean and all the pressure of it weighing on you, knowing that you could come up and get away from the pressure but in the midst of it you also feel helpless.  Read the rest of this entry »

I am caught this morning. I feel as thought I have been given an opportunity to see something today that I have seen my whole life but with much more clarity. You see I hate injustice! I can’t stand it in my life or in anyone else’s life. Not to through a pity party for myself but I have experienced a fairly large dosage of injustice through the years. I don’t need to go into details. I just say that to say I can spot it a mile away. I can smell it coming like a thunderstorm rolling through the Texas plains. And when I see it I still haven’t overcome all the obstacles that stand in the way of dismantling the power of them.

Here is what I mean. When I see some sort of injustice taking place in my life, whether it is intentional or not, I have a really hard time saying anything to the person in which this encounter is taking place. Basically I get offended and hurt and the enemy of my soul sees and takes advantage of the situation and starts with an onslaught of lies about the person, myself, my life and God. It sucks to be honest and usually takes a day or so and a miraculous encounter with the grace and truth of God to get my equilibrium back. When I see it in someone else’s life I fall into insecurity about 8 out of 10 times and say nothing in defense of the person until later when the are so bound up by it they need a prayer team to help them walk through it because I might just get a little on myself. Or worse yet feel like I if I help I will be associating with someone deemed lower on the social pecking order than myself thus lowering my own position. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a problem. And the problem is that I have to fight to be wherever it is that I am. Let me explain. I have this tendency to be always looking towards the next thing. What is going on next? Where is the next happening party? Where is it that I am going to find the next round entertainment or social interaction? Or where is it that I can go to encounter God next. Can you see the problem in this kind of living?

This is not new news to me. I realized I was behaving in this kind of pattern a long time ago, but never really knew why let alone how to change it. Well then it came to me. See, God is the same yesterday, today, and forever right? (Hebrews 13:8) Well if that is the case then God is outside of our sense of time. He lives without the barrier or constriction of time. In other words, to us, He is always in our now. He comes in from with the knowledge of the past and future and interacts with us in the only time we can engage in. He is always in present time, past time and future time but interacts with us in the now or present time because that is the only time that we can be part of. We cannot go into the future or take a step back into the past as much as we wish sometimes that we could. Read the rest of this entry »