 | Let Your Dreams Take You Soaring There is an ever present calling and desire of our hearts. Something calls us to belong to something deeper, something greater than ourselves. We seek to fill it with the artificial moments of this world. We seek to fulfill this longing with what we feel is comfortable in that which we can control. We seek to be a part of things greater than ourselves at work, in sports, in organizations, and yet the calling still remains. It is the calling of God to our hearts. He calls to us with a passion that is unceasing, pursuing us even in our darkest moments. It is a love that is wild and untamable and it calls us to greater levels of faith, love and life. God is ever calling out to us in the romance of our hearts. Lyrics Let Your Dreams Take You Soaring |
 | Would We Dare We live in a world of walls. We focus on the differences between each other. We live in anger against those who are different. We cry out for equality, while demanding special treatment because we are different. We see evil people doing evil things, and somehow we think not involving ourselves in the problem somehow makes us better. With such division, segregation, and separation will we ever see equality, freedom and peace? What if instead of always focusing on what makes us different, we start with the love that we share? Would we dare to seek unity through love? Lyrics Would We Dare? |
 | Wishing on a Star When you wish upon a star.... you are left with a kink in your neck and a lot of wasted time.... its your life, so live it. Let it be a blessing to others by the love that shines through it. Lyrics Wishing on a Star |
 | Together We are made for community. The human heart thrives best when it is in connection with other hearts. It is through the support of others that we find strength to carry on, hope in a harsh world, and a joy in community that could never be found in solitude. Lyrics Together |
 | Today, Today There seems to be a language that we see used in prayer that is often solemn and lofty in wordage. Perhaps there is good reason, as God is Lord. However God is also our Father, and our Friend. Would you talk to your friend with lengthy and solemn repetitions of holy verbage? Maybe what God wants from us is not the manner of our words, but rather the content of our hearts. Perhaps He wants us to truly know and understand that He is a friend to be desired. He is a friend you can dream of being with. He is the friend you want to have next to you above all other things in this life. Lyrics Today, Today |
 | I Got A Hole In My Head We each have holes in our heads. Are you taking into your head and learning? Are you giving out in love? Or are you taking in only what you want to hear, and giving out what you think others should know? What's in your head? Lyrics I Got A Hole In My Head |
 | Would You Love Me Still There is a bitter-sweet moment where an intense sorrow and deep joy intersect in true understanding of the hearts condition. If we honestly take a look at just how lost we truly are we come to realize just how intimate and personal the love of God is that he would reach down into our darkness to hold and comfort us. It is a moment when we truly understand God's love for us in the midst of who we really are. Lyrics Would You Love Me Still |
 | Seeking Truth on a Rocket Ship Are we truly seeking truth? Are we reaching for the stars? The church teaches as if it has all the answers. But in the attempt to categorize everything and everyone, we pigeon-hole people and limit our expereince of God. Is there really an answer to every question and a solution to every problem, or does our heart revel in the mystery of approaching God openly? What good is it to have the answers if those answers and traditions become the box within which we limit our experience of God? Do we allow ourselves the privilege of dreaming about life? Would we go so far as to dream about the mystery of God? If you truly want to experience God and seek His truth, your soul must be willing to be set free to reach for the stars. Lyrics Seeking Truth on a Rocket Ship |
 | Hello Lord (A morning talk with a friend) God isnt just in the experiences of the fantastic or the extraordinary. He is in the everyday experiences of our lives if we but open our eyes and our hearts. He is in the sunshine that brightens your day or even in the warmth of a good cup of coffee that reminds you that He is with you. We cannot limit the experience of God to the displays of something fantastic or the emotional-high of a few good "worship songs" on a few given hours of a Sunday morning church service. God is much bigger, much more real, and much more personal than that. Experience him in the daily matters of life. Have a simple conversation with Him. Lyrics Hello Lord |
 | Encounter A look into the soul and an encounter with Christ. Where guilt and shame are replaced with a glint of hope at the words of acceptance of a God who loves us unconditionally for who we are where we are at. Lyrics Encounter |
| Why This Way? Why do we do church the way we do? Maybe we have it all wrong? Maybe we are too caught up in doing church a certain way because that is just the way we think we have to do it. Maybe its not even about anything we do. Maybe we need to understand that the church is God's people, and that true worship is a continuous thing we do every day with our lives in real life encounters with real people, yes, even with all our ugly imperfections that we try to hide when we put on our church faces. Lyrics Why This Way? |
| How Do I Follow You, Lord? Inspired from a vision I was called to ask myself, "What does it mean to follow Christ?" Is it really the polished shining clean faces and nice suits we make it every sunday? Or does it call for something deeper, something harder, something uncomfortable? What did Jesus have in mind when He called us to take up the cross and follow Him. Lyrics How Do I Follow You Lord? |
| Trust in My Lord We can trust the one who never fails us. Joshua 1:9 calls us to be strong, but the world is so hard without the help of a friend to walk with us. But we can trust in the greatest friend who despite our weaknesses, loves us, died for us, and even conquered death for us. In His love we find strength, and in Him we can trust. Lyrics Trust in My Lord |
The Music of Jesus Crash
In the World - But Not of the World
Many believers understand being ‘not of this world’. Yet perhaps we’ve forgotten that while we are not of this world, we are to be in this world. Too many live as if they are outside of this world. Perhaps more people would be reached, and more love would be spread if we stopped trying to live outside of this world. When was the last time you had a conversation with someone who did not look like you, did not think like you, did not hold the same convictions as you? If you have, did you judge them? Did you assault them with “truth”? Or did you seek to understand them? Did you seek to love them? Church is meant to be a lighthouse to the lost, a hospital for the sick, not a social club for a specific class of elite. So how do you portray God’s love to this world?
Comments (0)
Trust - Key to the Heart
 |
| Trust is the key to a person’s heart. We live in such an unsafe world of hurt. Negative messages attack us from every side. If you want to touch someone’s heart you must earn their trust. Before they will let down the walls they have built up, they must feel safe. You cannot make another person do anything, but you can help to create a relationship of safety, of trust. Love is about serving others. Love is others-focused. Love is about meeting the needs of others. Love someone, serve them, meet their needs, and you will create that trust. You will earn the key to their heart. |
Balancing Community and Isolation
 |
| Luke 5:16 “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray”Today we often call attention to Jesus’ habit of slipping away into the wilderness to pray alone. (Luke 5:16) This seems to have great appeal to our modern culture of individualism and isolation. Everything we do is about the individual. Marketing targets the individual consumer promising individual pleasures and fulfillment. The individual seeks to find meaning in his life, to find what he can gain, and to probe the depths of his soul. In faith we seek longer quiet times, reading the bible by our selves, and praying in solitude. Yet perhaps comparing this individualist culture to the culture represented in this passage is like comparing apples to oranges. The culture of Jesus’ day was about community. Prayer, reading, study, was done in community. For Jesus to seek alone time with God was a rare and special thing. Today Individualism and isolation is the norm of our society as we grow ever distant from community in our extreme individualism. I believe it is good to seek alone time with God to pray, study and talk to God, yet I believe we are perhaps missing something in our application of this scripture. I believe this passage shows us a balance between communal faith experience and the individual faith experience. We need both and in a faith built around communal experience Jesus sought to spend individual time with God. Yet with so much emphasis on the individual in our culture today, especially when the standard prescription for spiritual growth seems to be to dive deeper into isolation through closet prayer and study, that perhaps this scripture should inspire us to seek to balance our communal and individual experience of faith, rather than using it as a reason to dive deeper into self-focus, isolation and individualism. |
What kind of person are you?
 |
|
Are you a person who gives or takes? Do you give to those around you? Does your character overflow from your soul to touch others? What kind of person are you?
“For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.” (Gal 5:13 NLT) |
Uncontainable
 |
| May “Your roots … grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” Ephesians 3:17-18
God is truly uncontainable. He cannot be contained by the boxes we try to set around Him. We try to limit God according to rules and systems by which we think He should work. However God is beyond our ability to limit him, nor can anyone constrain His love or presence from us. If we truly knew how deep His love is for us, would we really try to contain Him, and would we really regulate who we think is deserving of His love? If we were to truly see how much we are all in need of His love, and that His uncontainable love is more than sufficient to touch each and every soul in this world, how would this impact how we love? Shouldn’t our love for others be a reflection of his uncontainable love? |
Take up Your Cross
 |
| Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” Mark 8:34
Take a look at your life. How much of your life is an excess? How much of what we do or have is a choice of indulgence and preference? Are you truly denying yourself and taking up the cross? Or are you selectively choosing inconveniences that you can endure for brief moments for the sake of ministry? What does it truly mean to take up the cross and follow Jesus? Perhaps our culture has confused sacrifice for discomfort. |
From Out of the Heart
By Josh in Art
Jan
29
 |
|
“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Proverbs 4:20-23
“But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart” Matthew 15:18 What springs from your heart? |
Break Through
By Josh in Art
Nov
10
 |
| We live in an unsafe world. As a result we set up walls to protect our hearts. However, real connection occurs at the heart level. Unless we break down those walls, we will only continue to survive when we were truly meant to thrive. A Heart that is surviving, fights against the world, protecting itself from getting hurt again. A heart that thrives is one that joins with others, and through such connection is built up, grows, helps others to grow, and experiences life that can only occur in true heart-level community. Break through the walls to your heart and truly live. |
Mending a Broken Heart
By Josh in Art
Oct
11
 |
| Mending a broken heart takes two. Its is not something that can be done in solitude. When a heart attempts to mend itself without the love of another it merely attempts to cover over and hide the scars, or to replace hurt with bitterness, anger, pride, or any other self-deception. A heart cannot mend itself without the love of another because where a heart has been hurt only love can heal. Whether it is by the love of another person, the love of God, or both, a heart can only be mended within the context of another because love is about the giving of oneself to another person. God offers himself to each of us, and when we love others we give of ourselves to them. Godly love occurs when we take the love God has poured into our hearts and we pour the overflow of that love into others. This is when true community, healing in community and service occur, and it is through the hearts of people that God desires his love to manifest. Mending a broken heart takes two. |
Breaking Out of the Bubble
By Josh in Art
Sep
7
 |
| As Christians do we really love the people who go about their daily lives around us? We’ve dichotomized the world into the Christian Church and the World. But are we not all in the same world? We might have a calling to follow Christ, but that does not call us to withdraw from the world into little church bubbles of Christian sub-culture that exist as alien worlds within the greater world. The Church exists to be a dangerous force of love, ready to impact the world through service and caring, and yet perhaps we have turned it into a sanctuary for ourselves where we feel comfortable and safe. Within this bubble we lose touch with those around us, and we become strangers to them. We speak with our own language (Christianese), we have our own customs, and we have very little in common with those we seek to love. What we offer seems very foreign indeed because we have come to show God’s love in the context of our own cultural bubble, rather than a deeply powerful love that impacts the cultures of the world around us. |
Climbing Life with God
By Josh in Thoughts
Aug
5
In July I climbed to the summit of Mount Shasta at 14,179 feet. I came down with altitude sickness that made the climb grueling. Fighting nausea and fatigue, and on the verge of passing out on many occasions, the climb was made so much harder by the lack of snow which made bare the volcanic skree on which we slid and slipped our way to the summit. I must admit that I was very close to quitting, as nothing I could do from recalling scripture to determined brute anger could carry me past the physical limitations of altitude sickness.
Yet as hard as the climb was, it was an amazing experience that reflects life. The higher I got, the more I found that I could not rely on my own self or my own strength. The further I climbed, I realized I had to rely less on myself, and more on God. I also saw that while my body ached and life seemed unbearable that God was always around me. His beauty, His glory, His presence was around me in the sheer awesomeness and beauty of the mountain. I also saw that God’s love for me was present through the encouragement and support of the friends he had placed in my life on that climb. Sometimes when you want or hope for a great miracle, all you really need to do is open your eyes to see God’s glory and majesty that is already around you in love and support of friends that he has placed in your life to take the climb with you.
Sacred-Heart Cross
By Josh in Art
May
18
 |
| Not much to say about this piece. It was inspired from a bit of South-American art. I love to see religious art of other cultures and it reminds me of the incredible diversity of cultures and peoples that God touches. Some people get on my case for having a crucifix, or a latin sacred-heart, but I wonder why we come to see the elements of our own culture as the only correct way to worship. There is something unique about viewing the cross from the perspective of other cultures. We see things we often forget in our own cultural bubbles. We might enjoy the victory of Christ’s resurrection, but we should also remember His suffering on our behalf in the crucifix or in the crown of thorns that wreaths the sacred-heart. Maybe it is just this one artist’s perspective, but shouldn’t the Art of Worship be as diverse and wonderful as the cultures and peoples God has created? |