My team has "swag"

Swag: 1. Apperance, style, or the way he or she presents them selves.
2. The way in which you carry yourself. Swag is made up of your overall confidence, style, and demeanor. Swag can also be expanded to be the reputation of your overall swagger. You gain swag, or "Swag up", by performing swag worthy actions that improve this perception.

I love this!!!

So so good!!!

Acts 17:24-28

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.
25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.
26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.
27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.
28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’

This God is the only God worthy of worship!!!

Sometimes when I write I don't know where it will end up...

Even the smallest beam of light puts an end to darkness...

"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”-Matthew 5:14
“In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”-Matthew 5:16
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”-John 1:5
“I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.”-John 12:46
“For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness”-1 Thessalonians 5:5

Christians, we are called "Children of the light". We have light within us; this light is powerful, it disrupts darkness and overcomes death. This light is love, it's peace, it's hope, it's strong and it's real! I think a lot of Christians, myself included, forget that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is inside of us. We have been given the Holy Spirit, think about that for a second...we have the third member of the trinity living inside of us! Because of this amazing truth, God uses us to speak life into people and we have the privilege of watching the Kingdom of God grow.
The Kingdom of God will never be smaller than it is right now...that's incredible! We can't be stopped because Jesus couldn't be stopped! Evil's best attempt at getting rid of Jesus resulted in eternal life for those who believe in the Gospel...
The Gospel isn't rules, it isn't religion...the Gospel is beautiful and scandalous all at the same time. God came to earth and was fully man and fully God. His name was Jesus and he loved on all different kinds of people for over 30 years. He hung out with murderers, liars, hookers, religious people, rule followers, and any other kind of person you could imagine. He spoke to these people about a God most of them didn't really know about. He spoke to them about a God of love...a God whose kindness leads people to repentance and a God that pours out grace to cover ANY sin; past, present or future. Jesus was the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), he loved sinners and those far from God so much that he chose to die for them. Jesus chose to endure the most excruciating pain the world could inflict on him and that wasn't even the worst part of his crucifixion. After all of the physical and emotional torment, God absolutely obliterated him. Every single bit of wrath that God possesses was poured out all over Jesus and the bible actually says that It pleased God to crush him...why did it please God to crush his son?? Because God knew this is the only way we could be with him. It pleased God to crush Jesus for US!!! All we have to do is believe in Jesus and repent of sin and God has already done the rest! We don't have to change ourselves or try to be better...all we have to do is abide.
I pray that every Christian who reads this will own the title as "Children of the Light" and I pray that it will propel them to share the good news of Jesus with people. For anyone who isn't a Christian I pray that God would grab a hold of your heart! God loves you so freaking much and wants you to know that he has created you for a specific purpose! You were created in the image of God, your life matters!!!

Hidden Idols

Last night I was journaling and the Lord revealed sin to me that I was completely unaware of. It felt like a midget punched me right in the stomach. I'm not entirely sure how it happened but God showed me that I have an incredible desire to be important and have a status. From about the age of 10 until I graduated college I've always been known by a lot of people (I don't mean for this to come off arrogant but it's true). Growing up I played a bunch of different sports and I also sang, because of this I ended up making a name for myself where ever I went. In college it was the same story, I played softball and sang. When I became a Christian I thought that I had dealt with this but I just realized I didn't even come close.
When I started my 5th year at Western I thought I would have a hard time not playing softball for a couple reasons; one, because I loved the game; two, because I loved my teammates; and three, because my title as "college athlete" would be taken away. Since I didn't struggle with the third one at all I assumed that the only title/status I cared about was being a child of God but what I didn't realize is that I had tons of other titles that taken the place of being a college athlete. I was still around the same people and I was still at Western where I could hear people talk about my "glory days" as an athlete. I was involved with a college ministry and had the title of "Worship leader". I lived in a house that tons of girls would flock to because I was known as "fun" and I led a bible study so I was looked at as a "leader". These and other titles defined me. I was still well known and I knew a lot of people, life was good. Life was easy.
When I moved to Anderson I knew one person who lived here and that was my roommate, and I knew her because we moved here together. So weeks went by before I started making friends but my heart still longed for Western. I didn't know it at the time but my heart longed for status and comfort...two hindrances of advancing the Kingdom. Since I've been here nothing has really taken off for me. I've been giving softball instruction for a little over a year now and I give about 3 to 4 lessons a week, I have recently started to make friends but most are not deep friendships and even though I have the desire to sing nothing has really happened music wise. I remember thinking "If I was better established here" or "If people knew me at Western" then things would be different, but I honestly believe that for an entire year God has been trying to get my attention. I believe he has been patiently trying to show me just how much having a status or title had my heart. God knew that I wanted to glorify myself and not him, so for a year and a half, God, by his grace, kept me from having a title or status of any kind.
When God gets glory, we get joy...so if you're not experiencing joy I would search your heart to see if there are places that you are trying to take his glory.

So Lord, I confess that I want people to think I'm important, I confess that I've felt really worthless without a status and I confess that I would have tried to take all of your glory for myself. I choose to give those desires to you and I ask that you redeem them! I want you to get all the glory because you are the only one worthy of it! I can't sit under the weight of your glory, I wasn't made for it. I know that when you get glory, I get joy and that's an awesome trade off! I ask that you continue to change my heart and my desires so that it's driven by you and your love. Dad, I pray that I would have a heart like Jesus, that my light would shine bright so that people would see my good deeds and glorify YOU in Heaven. Thank you for gently taking things away from me so that I can see you better. Thank you for being a good dad that loves his kids and wants the best for them. Thank you for being so patient with me, you are so good!!!

Unlearning a couple things...

So I'm going to start off by saying that this post might make some people mad and that's fine but before you get upset and comment on my blog I just ask that you would pray and ask God to reveal why your upset.
Ok, awesome. Now I can move on. So last night I went to listen to a missionary speak in Greenville and his talk blew me away! He was speaking on my generation and how God has given us the desire and ability to start a World wide revolution for the Lord. I absolutely love this man's heart and his humility! As he was talking about the gospel and how it's the cure for everything he talked about how many of us had probably been told that when Jesus was on the cross God turned his face away from him. Since most of us agreed, there were a lot of people taken back when he said that wasn't true. Immediately, you could see all the 'bible scholars' flip to the gospels to prove him wrong, and obviously they were looking for the verse when Jesus cried out "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me". After a moment the speaker turned to Psalm 22 and read verses one through twenty-four.
I'm sure most people reading this blog will know this but Psalm 22 is about Jesus being crucified on the cross. It actually starts off with "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", this had some people confused but listening intently. When he got to verse 24 you could feel the tension in the room loosen up a bit...Psalm 22:24 says (emphasis mine):
"For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help."
God did have to break his perfect relationship with Jesus because God can't be where sin is but God never turned his face away, he saw Jesus, heard his cry and since God is love, I'm guessing it broke his heart to see his son in agony. Yes, God hates sin but God loves us! He wouldn't have sent Jesus to die for us if he didn't! God does hate but He IS love and even though it's difficult for us to make that distinction, it's not difficult for Him.
I wrote all of that to say this: Read your Bible! Don't just believe what someone says because they are older; read, study, meditate, pray and discuss the Word with other believers who will challenge you to think! This hit me real hard when I remembered leading a worship song, so many times, that had the words "the Father turned His face away" and I lost my breath for a second. I had been leading people in singing a lie about God, I'm not ok with that. I repented and because God loves me a whole stinking lot he poured out grace on me.
I wanted to write this post to challenge you to know what you sing before you sing it and understand what's truth before you repeat something someone says.

READ YOUR BIBLE, God wants to teach you a lot of really awesome things about himself!

Does God Exist?

Great Debate on whether God exists or not:
http://theresurgence.com/files/2012/01/14/20120114_the-great-debate_sd_audio.mp3