What I've learned over 100,000 words.

This is the 100th blog I have written for my own site.  I am not wildly famous and millions of people do not read my blogs each time I post something new.  Still the fact I have written over 100,000 words spreading over a time frame of two years means something to me.  This is an accomplishment I can say I am proud of.  If nobody reads my posts or if everyone reads them it's still something I can look at and say "I did this."

I've been thinking for the last two weeks about what I should write.  This being my 100th post, I feel like it should be something of significance.  Maybe some wisdom I've gained over the last two years, or some divine inspiration Christ almighty released to me one night while I was fast asleep.  As I thought about the subject I realized the best topic I could write about would be Jesus.  I don't boast this blog as being strictly spiritual, although 99% of the posts have been spiritually based.  If anything I've turned this blog into a public journal of sorts.  I do my very best to write about the things circling my head and my heart.  They may be immature at times, they may be brilliant, they may be sad in some way, but the one thing I have never done is care how people would view me through my writing.  I learned in the beginning to write for myself and never change my writing to suit the reader.  When I change my thoughts or my feelings through my writing I become a fake, I become the worst sort of person there is, the sort of person that is not themselves.

Having said all that, I hope you enjoy my 100th blog post.  I hope you continue to read what I have to say and I hope that you like it on Facebook, Share it with all your friends, re-tweet my links on twitter, and quote me while you're out in bars talking with people you know.  (yes, I am that shallow).

So, without further ado, I present to you, my 100th blog.


I was watching Joseph Prince the other morning as I sat in my living room drinking coffee with my roommates(Mom and Dad).  He was talking about something, honestly I don't exactly remember what.  However, he said he didn't care about his name or the fame of his ministry.  His job through his ministry was to point people to Jesus.  Now I've read where paul says this is every ministers job in life, to preach Jesus Christ.  When I watched as Joseph Prince said this it struck a chord inside and made me think.

It's a little silly to even think about this.  Of course I'm supposed to point people to Christ.  I am a Christian and I believe the only way to The Father, the only way to be forgiven of my sins, the only way to salvation is through Jesus.  That's not something I should really need to think about, it's not a complex issue, it's rather simple and straight forward.

In my blogs I've talked about relationships, about forgiveness and letting go of my past, about moving forward in life, about becoming the person God designed me to become, and many other topics.  What's the central theme amongst all those posts?  Jesus.  Whether I specifically say "The only way to truly love is to turn to Jesus and love Him" or not, the fact remains, Jesus is the way to love because He Himself is love.  Jesus is literally everything we need to live, to love, to forgive, to forget our past, to press forward, to be set free, to be healed and whole, and to be good.  We are unable to do any of these things or become any of these things without Jesus.

When Jesus sacrificed His life on the cross at calvary, when He was buried and rose from the grave 3 days later, He defeated the power of death and the grave.  I believe death comes in many variations.  Obviously there is physical death, there is the spiritual death which could be explained as the difference between heaven and hell.  Then there is death that can overtake our lives while we're still breathing.  There is the death that can be inflicted upon our lives when tragedy strikes.  That tragedy can take many shapes and forms.  That tragedy, or death, can take hold of our lives when our parents divorce, or when one of our parents vanishes from our lives.  It can take hold when we're in a relationship and we're cheated on, when someone breaks our heart, when a friend causes pain in our lives and we hold onto that bitterness.  That death can take hold of our lives when we hold onto unforgiveness and refuse to let the hurt inflicted by those people and circumstances leave our hearts.

For example, I held onto bitterness and anger towards people in my past that had hurt me for years. Now, I didn't walk around broken and angry all the time.  I didn't get in random fights with people because I was so angry.  I simply would not forgive these people from my past and allow the bitterness to leave my heart.  Because of this inability to let go I remained in the same position in life for years.  I didn't grow or mature because I was stuck in the past of my hatred and dysfunction. Again, I didn't walk around filed with rage or obvious anger.  However, because I couldn't forgive these people and love them I, in some way, hated them.  That's the opposite of love and forgiveness, hatred.

 In the book of Matthew Jesus says "So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift." (Matthew 5:23, 24 ESV)

We are supposed to live our lives as offerings and sacrifices to the Lord, not only when we're in church but constantly through our lives in the everyday.  Which means that at any time I'm alive and awake and I am reminded of someone who is upset with me or someone I am upset with, I should stop what I am doing and go make things right.  I need to forgive them and ask them to forgive me so we can both be set free.

I can understand that this seems like an impossible task.  "Well I didn't do anything wrong."  "I was the one cheated on."  "They were wrong, not me!"  "They abandoned me!"   These are the same excuses I used for years so I can understand trying to justify staying in the place of bitterness and pain.

Jesus came to give you and me life and more abundantly.  Trust me when I say Jesus didn't sacrifice His life so you and I could wallow in our past pain for our entire lives.  Jesus came to this earth and died for you and me so we could be set free from this darkness.  Yes, He came to make a way for us to live eternity in heaven and be with Him because of His grace.  Equally as significant, He came to earth and died for us because He loves us unconditionally and wants to see you and I set free and living life to the fullest.

There is a word used in the bible "SOZO".  It means "Saved, Healed, Delivered."  This is what Jesus came for, to provide us with "SOZO".  That we may be saved from the power of sin and death, that we may be healed from our sickness and pain, and that we may be delivered from our past, from our dysfunction, and from our hurts and bitterness.

How do we take hold of everything Jesus has given us?  We ask Him.  We call out to His name and freely receive everything He already gave us when He rose from the grave.  We love Him, we follow Him.  You don't have to be a man or a woman of prayer, you don't have to say anything special, you don't even have to sound eloquent when you pray.  Just pray and ask Jesus to release His love, healing, salvation, forgiveness, and freedom into your life.  Please, ask Him, He never fails, He never gives up, He always loves, He always shows up, He always provides.

Jesus Said, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. (Matthew 7:7, 8 ESV)

All you have to do is ask and seek Him.  He loves you unconditionally and will provide your freedom and healing.

Someone who is very close to me, someone whom I love dearly, once asked me to show them how to love.  I wasn't sure how to explain love at the time.  I wasn't sure how to show them how to love except through my loving them.  Today I feel like I have a better way to show someone how to love.  That is to look to Jesus.  For Jesus, before we were created, before any of the things around us today existed, loved us so much that He freely laid down His life for ours that we could live a life of significance.  That we could live life to the fullest, that we could live life free and whole, that we could live life in love.  What greater gift could anyone receive than the ability to live their life in complete love, free from the walls that guard their heart.

I will make my last words of this post reflect possibly the greatest example of the pure love Jesus has for humanity.  Before I share this example please note that His love is just as strong, just as sincere, and just as tangible today as it was so many years ago.

While Jesus was hanging on the cross at calvary and the people gathered round began mocking Him, while the roman soldiers gambled for His cloths, while the Pharisee's walked by and spit on Him in disgust, Jesus's words, found in Luke chapter 23 were "Father, forgive these people because they don't know what they are doing."
Even on His cross, Jesus loved His enemies, the ones that were murdering Him.

"it's called the past cause I'm gettin past..."

"Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!" (2 Corinthians 5:17 MSG) "Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh  and  new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17 AMP) Not that I am trying to sound accomplished, pompous, or anything like that, but I have, for the most part, gotten over a lot of the stupid things I did wrong in my past.  There is still some emotional baggage in the back of my proverbial closest that I feel the Holy Spirit is leading me to deal with, but for the most part "I'm good."   The last few months have brought me through a myriad of emotions.  It felt like I was jumping from emotion to emotion, sometimes literally.   Some weeks, feeling confident and optimistic about my future and still others, feeling like I would be stuck in the same place forever because of the wrongs I had committed in my life.  Through what seems a process, or a relationship, I was led on the path of freedom with the help of the Holy Spirit.  Currently I feel like I can breath, like I can realistically dream without feeling like I need to dream or like I have to dream so I can impress people making them believe I am going somewhere in life.  I'm not sure how most people handle the following scenario but I know how I handle it.  I will be out doing something, getting coffee let's say, and I'll see someone I haven't seen in awhile.  I typically say "hello" with a big smile on my face and then the question comes out of their mouth, the question I think is more of a gut reaction than it is the person genuinely caring.  "So what are you doing?" or What are you up to these days?"  I usually respond with something like, "Oh, I'm thinking of moving here or moving there."  Or "I'm helping this church or that church."  "I'm leading worship here."  or "I feel the Holy Spirit is leading me here or there."  I am rarely honest with my answers to these questions.  Not because I'm not really helping those churches or I'm not considering moving to this place or that place.  I'm not being honest in those situations because I'm not being honest with myself.  Why am I not being honest with myself?  Because I'm not admitting that I need to relax and deal with my issues.  I'm trying to create these grandiose ideas about what I'm doing in my life. Life is not about what you do, it's about who you are. How does that situation tie into my thoughts with this post?  Because I was running, or trying to run, from my past.  Actually, in some ways I was trying to run back into my past hoping I could somehow change the way things went down.  I don't know why I feel focusing on the negative and driving myself crazy with regret will ever change anything.  Because I know it won't.   By trying to run from my failures and not stopping to deal with the issues, I was dreaming someone else's dreams.  Rather, I was standing in front of people with a gun shot wound in my chest while holding a sign that read "I don't need a doctor."  I couldn't admit to myself that I screwed up and that I needed to be working on fixing those areas.  I couldn't tell people "I'm not doing anything except trying to allow God to heal me from my past mistakes."     In case you haven't realized it yet, everyone screws up.  We all make wrong decisions in our lives and then we deal with the consequences.  Everyone also reaches a point when the issue is not so much what you did wrong, rather, how you handle the knowledge of your wrong doing.  If I acknowledge what I did was wrong and I don't fix the issue or repent for what I did then the issue begins to build a home inside my soul.  It begins to grow until I can take no more pain.   It's very easy to not see the devil at work in our lives.  Let's take these issues of our past for example.  I commit a sin, or, let's say I hurt a friend.  After I acknowledge what I've done is wrong, I repent to God, I apologize to that person and make restitution. My sin or wrong is done and never to be remembered again.  What usually happens is somewhere between the repenting to God and the making restitution the devil sneaks in and begins to throw jabs at me.  He says things like, "you're a terrible person, you really screwed this one up.  Don't even try to fix the relationship. You can't be forgiven for what YOU did."  What's sad is how many people believe these lies.  They spend days, weeks, months, and sometimes years agreeing with the devil and accepting these lies.  They stay confined to their offense and become depressed or fake. What really and genuinely breaks my heart is seeing people that change their entire lives and transform who they really are so they can somehow mask the mistakes of their past.  They begin to work for their entire life to manage the pain of their wounds instead of seeing the doctor so He can fix them up and make them whole. I've been noticing a lot of people, Christians especially, that are being dragged down because of their past mistakes. They carry around these lies from the devil like baggage weighing them down.  Most Christians believe they are inherently evil people and by some miracle the grace of God keeps them from walking around murdering everyone they see.  When we accepted Jesus as our Lord we were given the mind of Christ.  When we accepted the Holy Spirit He began to live on the inside of us.  If that's the case than we are not inherently evil people any longer.  We still sin, we still screw up and make mistakes, but that's not the end of our lives.  Look back at the verse above.  "when we are united with The Messiah we get a fresh start..."  Is it possible to become united from The Messiah?  Yes.  When we sin, realize our sin, repent, and make restitution we are reunited with Him and become new again.  Our past is in the past.  Alicia Keys has a song with John Mayer and in the song one of the lines says "...It's called the past cause I'm gettin past and I ain't nothin like I was before..."  That's the mindset we should have after we have dealt with our issues from the past.   We are reunited with Jesus and our past is in the past.  Do we need to make right things that we have done wrong to people?  Yes, of course we do.  Look at Luke 19:1-9.  Zacchaeus has been converted by Jesus and he goes out to restore what he stole from the poor as a tax collector.  So yes, we should make restitution when possible to the people we have wronged. My point with this post was to give some sort of hope to those, like me, that are or were struggling with their mistakes from their past.  Jesus has redeemed you from the death of sin.  When you accepted Him or when you repented of your sins you were made new!  Glory to God! Stop filling yourself with regret, with depression, and with sorrow.  Stop listening to the devil telling you that you are a horrible person.  You've been made new in Jesus.  Begin to confess positive things over your life and believe the bible when it says "...anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start..." It's not until we move passed our past that we are able to step forward into our future. I will leave you with a bible verse I came upon this morning that really ministered to my heart. "Iniquities  and  much varied guilt prevail against me; [yet] as for our transgressions, You forgive and purge them away [make atonement for them and cover them out of Your sight]!" (Psalm 65:3 AMP)

-Cheers.