What's your story

The fog of insecurity and uncertainty seems to clear for the moment as the sun rises from the east to say good morning, to kiss the earth with the reminder that we have been given another day to cherish or squander. One more day to live, love and share the gift. To be honest the word gift seems almost elementary to use when talking about salvation from a God who owns the universe, created gravity and defeated death, but that is just what it is. A gift that defies all fairness and common logic, a gift that we neither deserved nor earned, but have been offered none the less. A gift unmatched by any other, sure a man can die for another, but to die for the whole world...knowing that the majority would reject your existence and try to completely discredit your deity. Like I said it is an unmatched, untouchable gift… it’s more than just a gift of salvation, but it’s a gift of freedom and life in Christ. I wish this was my constant thought pattern and that my heart yearned for soul after soul to be won the kingdom constantly, but truthfully I find myself blurring the lines of mediocrity and complacency from time to time with a systematic type religion that keeps the boxes checked, but is devoid of passion…. And believe me I need passion to survive. I want a fire to stir in me that brings me to my knees in such reverence and respect for the glory of God. I mean, I want to feel the weight of the work on the cross and be satisfied in the fact that if He never does another thing nor says another word that that bloody cross was enough and that very vacant tomb completely sufficient to sustain me. I want you and I to live in such a sense of urgency that it is though we can smell the borders of hell when we keep company with the lost and with everything we have desire to be the wall between them and that horrible pit reserved for the devil and his angels. I am in no way hoping that you climb on board a evangelistic explosion. We have had enough of those that leave people looking for a new way to share their faith two years later. I am simply hoping and wishing that you would share “your faith” and that being what Christ has done in and through you, the reason why you worship and sing, the reason why you dance or easily overcome things that would typically be tragedy or the reason you have joy unspeakable. If you have no story, no time when God stepped in and took over your story to make it His own then you should consider the possibility that you are lost and need God to save you. The good news is that He has made a way…



Heres a good place to start
“God this is your story… I so desperately desire to be a part of it. Bend me. Break me. Do whatever it takes to let your light shine from me. Reduce me that you and only you may be seen. Save me from this world and it’s passions, save me from myself and my passions, save me from my sin and it’s consequences and let me fall more in love with you every day”

John 3
Titus 3:4-7
Ephesians 4:22-32
Galatians 2:21

Arkansas a looker

We are headed toward sixty-five. Everyone for the moment is still awake… silent, but awake. We have spent the last four days in Berryville Arkansas and to be honest I am sad to be saying goodbye to people I consider family. I want to take a minute and thank Ricky Sowell and his wife Megan for opening their home and sharing the love and hospitality of Christ with us. They are not a couple who speak Jesus with their lips, but examples by exhausting their lives for the cause of Christ. (I’m praying He sends you to China). Jp is for sure the greatest kid in Arkansas and I am blessed to know you guys.
We came for a three-day youth revival to lead worship and share the most awesome thing that has ever been given to us… the gospel. It was glorious remembering it is not about us, but completely and supremely about Him. Times of worship were pretty much beautiful with the presence of God resting like a blanket and the voice of God ringing like a trumpet. I know for me these past few days have been a reminder to not only know Christ, but to be intimately devoted to Him and His call. (The sun is coming up over the Ozarks, I wish you guys could see this). The spectacle of creation here is so much more elaborate than at home. It’s like God wanted to cram a million rolling hills and breathtaking views into one state. Well done.
I wont bore you with talk of turkey houses, horses, ice crème sandwiches and golf, but I will tell you that in all these things I could see the wonder, majesty and uniqueness of our God. I guess you could say it was like taking a step back to child-like faith and in that taking one step closer towards Him. One thing is certain and with this I will close. When you can’t He can, when you don’t He does, and when you need He is. There will be more to come on that last sentence soon, but it’s six in the morning and I had four hours sleep last night so my eyes are heavy and the sway of truck and trailer are about to do me in.
Ricky, Megan, and J.p thank you again for making me part of your family, you guys are truly a valuable part of my life.

"Let the world feel the weight of who you are, let them deal with it"

“Tj, you go overboard with Jesus”.

I want to write humbly… seriously out of love and compassion laying aside myself and letting the love and light of Christ to shine through. How can we, when we know the horrifying experience Jesus endured for us not go overboard with Him? I know I don’t hold the popular opinion and that I am aggressive or in your face and I say hell and sin, but it is not for fun… It’s not because I want to be offensive just for kicks.
I remember when my grandfather would talk to me about God and Jesus and how much He loved me and I remember how I loathed him for it. I went to church… spoke occasionally… played the part of Christian and was completely and altogether lost. I would despise those who talked about the bible as a thing to live by and when they spoke of holiness, I checked out… but then it happened. I was completely ruptured from my sin; I realized that I was a poser, a fake that knew about God with my head but was so far form Him with my heart. I guess that’s why I am overboard now. I sit here with tears swelling in my eyes when I think of who I was and how much I did against God. I was a lying, cheating, hateful, dirty God-hater and He picked me up, wrapped me in His arms and washed me white as snow. He forgave me for things I thought unforgivable. How could I not in the midst of all this grace be completely overboard about Him? How could I not offer my life as a vessel for Him to mold and change and break if need be? He died, I mean really bled out His blood… what is overboard? I don’t know, but I do know he deserves it… every bit of awkward silences and hateful words from people who don’t even really know us. Every bit of ridicule from your family and laughter from the world is small in comparison to His beautiful gift. Tell Steven he was overboard when he stood being stoned to death because he loved Jesus. Tell Peter while he walked on the sea towards Him then later asked to be crucified upside down because he didn’t feel worthy to be crucified the same way as Jesus. Tell Martin Luther that as he nailed his view of God to the door of the church. Tell me that I’m overboard when I’m urgent and persistent about my God who saved me and my reply will remain… Yes, yes I am and I hope I never change, ever. I hope that every chance I get to open my mouth I exhaust that opportunity for the cause of Christ, that the passion of the cross and echo of the empty tomb never ever escape my conversation.

Now you feel the weight of who I am… now you have to deal with it.

wrestle between remedy and revolution, it's painfully beautiful

“How lonely sits the city, that was full of people”, is a line from the book of lamentations that stir’s in me so many emotions about the church in America as a whole. When I say church I am not referring to the bride of Christ totally, but am incorporating the building in which we corporately gather to worship. Churches in America were once a place of honesty and integrity. They were a hospital to the broken and weary, a place for lives to be mended and for the lost to be found. Sadly, now they scarcely survive amongst a barrage of TV preachers who have turned our faith into a joke with their five-dollar prayer penny and vials of holy water. There is also the constant assault of modern philosophy and new age religion that insist that there is no absolute truth. All the while the church has laid down the fight claiming to turn the other cheek… truthfully they are filled with terrified, spineless men and women who will not take a stand or with those who believe in part that we have to change our view of God and sin as the culture changes, as if to say God has become soft in these last days and some sin has become ok, both of which are a fallacy. The sad reality for the daring believer looking for encouragement to be holy, to actually be full of integrity and live the gospel is that the pulpits of America are largely littered with men who have traded the sometimes hard to swallow truth of God for a pacifying lie. They have coaxed the bride of Christ into believing that being saved means you have money and no worries, or that it’s a ticket to instant happiness and pain free persecution, that it is a license to sin. In short, they have lowered their standard of preaching to meet the world’s standard of living. The result is dieing churches and powerless preachers.
The repercussion for such a gutless act by so-called men of God is a generation who feels no need for God or the church. There is no standard of holiness or righteous living to be respected so they see no difference, no need for a Savior. My heart breaks at the idea that we have one side of faith saying we were made to sin so just do it and God will forgive you, while the other holds a list of rules in which an angry, mean God will enforce without any patience or mercy… both have partial tainted truth, but neither contain the honest beauty of our God. Where have we lost it? I look every Sunday and see a church that is consumed with everything but pleasing the Father, rather they are fully concerned with pleasing themselves. The horrifying thing about the position the bride of Christ has taken is that she has as a whole disconnected herself from her first love. If for a moment we are concerned with numbers, our agenda, or basically anything other than obedience and exaltation of our gracious sin-atoning God then we have traded a beautiful romance between Lord and lover for a systematic process in which self-righteousness is our fruit and dry religion our reward.
My mind and heart wrestle somewhere between remedy and revolution. I mean. I know Jesus gave Himself so that we could be free, so that there could be true reconciliation, but to watch the church wallow in un-renounced self centered sin while claiming devotion to God makes me sick with indignation. Lit be understood that I don’t for a second think myself to be perfect or to have “arrived”. I simply believe that God is calling out to His bride in desperation. Can you imagine His pain? He looks down on His creation and sees them satisfying themselves on and with everything other than Him. It is a constant arrow into the heart of God and we are the archers. “You are not enough God… not today” we say that with our relentless pursuit of more things, the perfect relationship, the perfect job or even so called “godly living”. Some actually choose to carry out a list of rules rather than be romanced by their Creator. This form of church and religion has left our generation passionless and unwilling to give their lives for Christ, unwilling to be loved by God.
I yearn for those of you who were once princes and princesses in the kingdom, but now live like slaves… I would that you revolt, it’s ok to not be ok with church when it takes away from the fame and passion and beauty and glory of our God. I know if you have read this far then you too are wrestling somewhere between remedy and revolution… I believe they are the same… that it is impossible to have one and not the other. So go, those of you who really are princes and princesses, joint heirs, sons and daughters of a living God and reclaim what is yours and mine, reclaim the relationship the “church” has dumb down to a list of rules, reclaim your first love and know there will be casualties, that it will cost, but oh what a worthy price if even our lives are lost.

God is pursuing you…words that now have life

I have always had this dream of running from the cops. Not the dream while I’m sleeping kind, but the awkward desire while traveling the road and a cop pull’s up behind me at a red light and I just want to hit the gas and leave him in the dust, then throw a hand out the window and wave as he spins out in anger to give chase… cutting in and out of traffic, sirens blaring, engines screaming as we parade through town. I am constantly throwing things out the window to detour his pursuit. I zig and zag while dashing through mud puddles and barely missing the senseless pedestrian who should know to move … Real Smokey and the bandit kind of stuff… The cop finally retires his attempts to capture me realizing that I’m just too fast, too much of a bandit to be tamed by any law. Then the light turns green and I stop dreaming. I creep forward praying to God that the nice officer behind me doesn’t give me a ticket for the absence of a taillight. The dream has ended and the reality of his authority rest heavy on me until he passes. He turns off a side road and I breathe relief.

I want, in an attempt at being transparent to bring you a realistic version of this story. We as people have a beautiful Creator. He speaks and the stars burn at attention to His glory, mountains tremble and knees bow. This same creator saw humanity in a state of wickedness and total depravity and being moved with compassion towards us He wrapped Himself in a tabernacle of flesh, dwelt among His own creation and suffered the most gruesome death known to man. With that single act He began to pursue us with an all-satisfying, never-ending, uncontainable love. He humbled Himself and has been chasing us with love and forgiveness ever since. The crazy thing is that as people we are constantly running here and there looking for the next thrill, the next emotional or physical fill up and then we’re off again. All the while the God of all creation is pursuing us. Reminding us that to Him we are beautiful, that we are worth forgiving, worth the cross. We know all this but still choose to run our own way. We are throwing faults and failures in His path trying to detour Him. We make a million excuses why He shouldn’t love us, why he shouldn’t call us. We swerve into this relationship or that activity trying to “do our own thing” all the while He is pursing. Constant and inescapable, relentless and unconditional His love is calling to you and I, beckoning that we would surrender our will to Him. He pursues through all we have thrown in His path to say I love you…I am here.


His grace has become so much more beautiful when I saw Him not only as Savior, but also pursuer.

Hammer and nail theology

It was refreshing really, to have light shine on my depravity completely awakening me to a truth that I had almost forgotten. I was thinking yesterday about the glory of God and how you and I were created for just that, to bring God glory in everything that we do and to push everyone around us in this direction as well. Sometimes however we feel like nothing more than a tool in the hand of God… There are days when we are the hammers in the hand of God building the kingdom one blow at a time, beating things into place and being completely confident in who he has called us to be. Other days are much different, there are some days in which we play the role as the nail and are beat upon. The weight of His glory bears down on us with relentless beauty causing us to surrender the idea that any of this is about us. The hammer seems prestigious in nature compared to the nail… but really they both hold the same weight of Glory. They both hold up that which is being built. That is why today I am ok with being a nail. It seems as though the beating is worth is when all those around you who you truly care about have in some way been pushed, carried and laid at the feet of Jesus. In this you find whether you be the nail, the hammer, or whatever you rejoice in it knowing our Father is receiving all the glory.

Those hands

I finally have a moment to myself and am enjoying every moment that I sink more into this couch. It has been days on days of being surrounded by people, singing, waves and so many hours in my truck. Here in the solace of my grandmother’s living room I am almost lulled to sleep by the roar of the ac and the sound of my dad talking in the background. There are so many things that I want to share with you, so much truth. God has spoken so much. He has whispered, roared and embrace me with some of the most beautiful revelation.
He was here before beginning and will be here long after the curtain closes on this life, as we know it. He is God as Maker, Jesus as Image, and Breath as the Holy Ghost. He is the all-satisfying, unshakable God. In his hands he holds the power to create and to destroy, to build up and tear down, to heal and to strike dead. He is soul regenerating and sin pardoning… He is all you will ever need. I knew all of this a week ago but today this truth burns more violently than ever before. Why? … The hand that holds all the power, all the beauty, and all the mercy man has ever know was willingly laid on a cross and nailed there for my redemption. Those same hands picked up a cross that belonged to me. Those lips that could speak one word and silence the earth…stayed silent for my forgiveness and the redemption of all mankind. Though He was silent for the trail and crucifixion the sound of the whip still rings in my ear with a loud resounding assurance that by His stripes we are healed…the slap of the soldier still rings in the street for those of us who dare to believe that He was bruised for our transgressions and praise God that the clap of hammer and nail still ring in my soul as a reminder that there is liberty to the captive. Please hear me, quiet your soul…listen for the sound of your Savior… He may whisper or he may roar but find grace in this. He is closer than you know… so close.