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What difference does it make?

I mean have you ever thought about what you truly believe? What makes you, you? What you care about, live for, would die for? What do you love? What makes your heart and mind and soul buzz with excitement? What is your true passion? What makes you feel
ALIVE?

I wish I were able to write more often because it's when I'm writing that I most often feel the most alive. This is not for a second a knock against any other portion of my life, but there is something about being able to take all of what moves around in my thick head all day and being able to finally put it somewhere, where I can read it... where other people can be witnesses to it. To some degree it's about validation, just wanting to make sure that I haven't completely gone crazy... I figure if I post something too completely out of line that someone, somewhere would say “halt! Come again?”

What is this pursuit all about? Why me? Little ole' me. I'm not all that impressive, I'm all kinds of screwed up. I have my moments just like the next guy... you know the moments where a person doesn't know what's up or down, east or west, right or wrong? Well actually let me take that last portion back... I have for whatever reason have always had a pretty good “moral compass.” I'm just lacking in so many other key areas. How could Jesus choose me? Again... little ole' me. A terrible, no good sinner. Someone who just can't get life straighten out, who has trouble fighting for even the littlest of things. That's why I'm perfect for the job, because I know I'm far from it.

I know that He loves me.

He loves you too. Even if you don't believe it.
Oh and we bring nothing to the conversation just our sin. That's it. That's all we need to bring.

I'm realizing more and more that my mouth is set to get me in trouble. A good trouble, but trouble nonetheless. There is a lot of garbage that goes on in life, and a lot of people (well most people) just understand it as the “way it is” This is the way that marriage looks, parenting looks, having a job looks, this is the way of the workplace, this is the way of the church, my health is meant to look this way... and yet if your a Christian there is more to our faith than merely lip service.

We're not just here to occupy a seat once a week and say the right words when told.

How many people really want to be well? I mean lets be honest here... what's your life like? Do you want to be well? Do you want to have success? Live a better, more fulfilling life? Live like today matters, and that you were designed with purpose, with utter brilliance and beauty?

And yet it's not just that...

There is so much more to the picture. The Christian life is not just a fanciful, happy go lucky sunny day type of lifestyle. Of course it's not, I mean all we have to do is look at the progress of Christ through the Gospels. As a man on this earth where was he ultimately heading?
The cross of course. Where then are we heading? If it's not he cross, then perhaps your not practicing the Gospel. Actually your not at all.

Are you still on board with Jesus even in the trenches? Even as the chains get slapped on? As life takes sudden twists and turns?

Are you at the foot of the cross or back at home hiding under your bed?

I have been trying for a number of years to work around the feelings that I have had on and off again within my own spiritual journey. I feel like sometimes I've been a different person the past five years... I'm awaiting some sort of normalcy... if I even know what that is anymore.

How Biblical a “dark night of the soul” of the moment is I'm not entirely sure. Yet I can't bypass the fact that I have had what feels like extreme up and down seasons in my life. This pursuit... the pursuit that God has had me on... is a lonely one and I've all but cut everyone out of my life and not intentionally but just by circumstance alone.
I wish you could see who I know I'm supposed to be but I'm not. I wish you could understand.

I was a radically different person 5 years ago... that person still surfaces in alarming ways leaving me frustrated, bewildered, exhausted and seeking reconciliation. I just can't seem to get things right, to put things in order, to understand my calling. While others pass me by, I simply can't get past me.

I'm in the way. I'm in the way of it all.

Even thinking that sounds entirely too arrogant. I mean how in the hell can I be in the way of anything that God has for me? For my family?

I'm exhausted with academia. All I do is read material that I don't want to read, write papers that I don't care to write and even upon barely caring I can do nothing less that get A's on everything. I'm in one class right now that where as I missed a quiz and a free write and yet I'm trending a 98 in the class still. That's just sad. It's all seemingly too easy and I'm wearing thin. All I feel like I'm doing is packing the cabinets (my head) with food but in the process of packing up the groceries (academia) I do not learn to prepare the food, to eat the food or to share and show others how to prepare and eat. I sit here proud and bloated, with spoiling milk and moldy bread coming out of my ears and filling up my heart.

Because you know a particular set doctrine back to front doesn't mean that you love your neighbor.

Having the genealogy of the OT memorized doesn't make you a good father, a good husband, a great lover or provider.

It doesn't even make you a fairly good Christian.

I've been told about burn out before. “watch out Lance... you'll push yourself too far and finally burn out... I've seen it before”

Then what is it when your not even in the mission field yet and all you have is a burning to teach, to preach, to love on people and to lead them and your being told to “wait”

“Wait... your not ready Lance”

That's funny because I feel burned out on waiting. So explain that for me.

Okay Stop.
Breathe for a second. What do you hear me saying? (if your still with me)

Perhaps this is coming across like a letter from someone who is lost, is hurting... pushing, pulling and moving away from God. Perhaps I'm coming across as depressed...
or perhaps and this is the real difficult part. Perhaps I'm just now realizing what this whole pursuit is about.

I'm dying. I've died before but not like this. I can't go back... I've gone back and forth too many times. I'm just now understanding things. I pray that I continue moving forward but I'm fairly certain that if I'm to remain human (and I'm pretty sure that I will be til the day I truly do die...) then I will fall back a step or two from time to time besides how else am I or you or the church for the matter... how are we to understand the grace of God if we never seem to need it?

This letter, this post... it's about change. It's about radical change. About waking up and realizing that all the crap, all the garbage, all the junk from this world and the next is blown out of proportion worldly bulimia.

It's time to take things back.

I'm tired of not speaking like I know I can... like how I'm supposed to.
I'm tired of not defending what I know to be true... I'm tired of balancing the delicate nature of other peoples pride and ego's while deflating my own.

I'm tired of not taking Matthew 5 serious. Because I should and so should you. Or that I'm not living out the great commission, I'm not radical enough, I'm not on board with Jesus as I'm supposed to be.

I'm tired of just filling up cabinets with food and not crafting banquets for those around me to feast upon. I'm tired of the 9 to 5, 2 to 10, 6 to 2, 4 to noon. I'm ready for all of what Jesus has for me. Are you? I will not just grow old and grey, weak and broken down by years of working and not living. I will not be just another balding old man who beckons for the good ole' days while pining for retirement.

It's about people. It's about Jesus. It's about our neighbor. It's about love.

It's about a guy but not just any guy... the very son of God nailed on cross, buried and walking as a dead man on the third day. It's about feasting, teaching, learning, leaning, walking, resting, moving forward with Him for 40 days and then waiting for the next move. It's about Holy Spirit and living as the Body. It's about being the hands, feet, arms, knuckles, knees, hair, thighs, ears, fibula, eyes, chest, ribs, toes, lips of Jesus.

It's about revolution not books.

It's about hearing out what the old and the wise have to say about life and about God and less about following up on the latest trend.

It's about being financially free, chained off from lust, secured and safely away from bitterness, jealousy, deception and malicious words and deadly acts. It's about being Godly. About being His.
About loving Him and your fellow man.

It's about marriage, about children, about work, about passion, about Jesus.

You want to know what it means to die. Look at Jesus.

You want to know what it feels like to live. Look at Jesus.

What do we have to offer the world that they world doesn't already have?
I mean what's the next gizmo the church has to pull together into their services in order to achieve a level playing field with the enemy?

How about we just love one another.
I've yet to see an I-phone give love.

What do people see when they come in contact with you?
Do they see you or Jesus?

I mean honestly what do we have to offer the world that the world doesn't already have?
Are we really all about just giving someone a nice book on Christianity and saying well “there you go enjoy!”?

Are we just about setting aside doctrine for others to learn so that all we can do is watch them fail, crash, burn, blow up?
What if it's about a transformed life. Not a perfect life but a transformed one. What if all we have for the world is a changed life.

Saul to Paul, Abram to Abraham, Denying Peter to Pentecost Preacher Peter
Broken world to living Church. Death to Life.

What if what we have is this...
“I used to be this guy and then I came in contact with Jesus”

What if we didn't have to utter a word but just had to be in the presence of God and then others would have the same opportunity.

Do we at all understand who we're called to be? We have the living God of the universe residing in us!

How is it that we've just become accustomed to it? How is it that we're not floored by even the thought of it or the lapsed human logic of it all?

Are you not enchanted? Are we at all aware that it's not a guarantee that you or I will wake up tomorrow, that are feet will touch the ground, that are eyes will open up? That we'll make it to work, that we'll have another chance to pray, that we'll have another opportunity to hug, love or be in the presence of those that matter most to us.

We are but fragile creatures, with short life spans and even shorter dreams.

We're called to be the church. We need to start acting like it. If your a Christian... then marriage matters, relationship matters, the Bible matters, the Spirit matters, Jesus matters, sex matters, love matters, joy matters, peace matters, what you think about, dream about, learn about, loathe about matters.

You matter, I matter, we matter because He mattered first.

I will not be one thing for you, and another for someone else.
I'm Lance a disciple of Jesus... and that... that penetrates and invades every area of my life.
Because I pursue Jesus first. I pursue God and by pursuing God I'll be a more Godly husband, Godly father, Godly brother, Godly friend, son, worker, dreamer.

Break the Silence. Let's go be ALIVE.