Posts Tagged ‘Love’

Embrace Life –

// June 17th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // My Favorites

Words cannot describe how beautiful and impacting this video is…

Tags: Family, Love, video

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Where the Healing Begins

// May 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // My Favorites, My Life, My Thoughts

Healing Begins – Tenth Avenue North-    This song has been tackling me all day today! I am dealing with a friendship that is being pushed to the limits… mostly because of me… because I can never leave things as they are… I challenge those around me… to sacrifice… to love harder… to live harder… to be more committed… to die to themselves… Its not like I do not expect the same from myself and more… its just that the general consensus is that its not really my business…or my job… but if you read I CAN’T NOT Then you know… my friends don’t have the luxury of “status quo” living…It is a requirement of friendship that I hold the ones around me that claim the name of Jesus…  accountable for their actions… and I do this purely out of love for them… because I want what is best for them… I want God to be glorified in their lives…

So … about this song…  My wife was singing it this morning and said… “you need to look up this song online”  so I found it on youtube.com  and It just literally felt like the words had poured from my heart directly… I played it again and I was overwhelmed with the emotion of my present struggles…   I went to work… and going through my email… this song shows up as a free download  on Itickets.com I kinda shook my head… and listened to it again…  so I go on with my workday… for the past few months I have listened to pandora at work… today of all days, I decided to go to Air1.com and would you know the minute it comes on  ”Healing Begins”  starts pouring out of my speakers.   No doubt today I am hearing very clearly that God intends healing… how and when… and who that happens to is something that has yet to be seen… maybe it is you… or me… let me know… is it you?

Tags: friends, healing, Love, strong character, struggle

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When to Say

// May 2nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // My Thoughts

Do you ever struggle with saying things that need to be said? I know I do… It is the absolute hardest thing to do… to say what needs to be said…at the right time… and with the right heart… There is always the chance that you will be misunderstood or your motives will be questioned… no matter how or why you say it…

like…

  • Yes… what you are doing is stupid… sorry… but its true.
  • Yes… you are wrong and they are right… quit being so selfish.
  • I fail to understand how you think that manipulating your spouse into doing what you want will make your marriage better… you are truly an idiot.
  • No it is not OK to do whatever you want just because you are “Free in Christ”  Freedom is the ability to choose to do the right thing for the right reasons… your selfishness is what you are a slave to… that what takes away your freedom.
  • God’s will is not a needle in a haystack… if you would do something instead of standing around waiting for him to “smack you with an answer” you would actually experience his will interacting with your life on a moment by moment basis… just a hunch but you are probably missing out on a lot by waiting around until the last minute to see if God will make the choice for you.

I guess my point is actually that if you never say the things you should say… then the things that need to be said may never be spoken… so what if you suffer for it?  speak the truth in love… even if it is painful… let the people you love decide what they want to do with it.

Tags: friends, God's will, Love, truth

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Good Question (part 2) My answer

// March 25th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // My Thoughts

I got this question posed to me recently by a young… on-fire christian and I figured it would be great if you answered it… I will post my answer afterward.

I am so depressed… why does it make a difference what people think? I am sick of caring, and I am sick of everyone acting like there is so much time…and making everything funny or light hearted. Like people that take being a christian seriously are so looked down on… I am sick of it! what do I do.

so what do we say to this?

My answer:

Love them.  Take your walk with God seriously, take yourself not so
seriously and let others take resposibility for themselves. Ultimately
you cannot hold someone accountable unless they give you the ability to
do that. It is earned by just loving and caring sometimes for years…

I was answering in a text message so it is a pretty short answer… but the truth is … we cannot cannot make others take responsibility for their lives only God can… and we can make as much of a fuss as we want and it will make hardly a difference in their life…unless we have earned the right as someone that loves them.  It is tough to love people… Love hurts… it hurts more when they act like they don’t love you or they don’t love the things you love… but the sacrifice of love is the only thing that ultimately redeemed us.  Feeling sick with frustration is the sacrifice of love… Solomon said it best “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.”  Hope deferred… drawn out…seemingly forever!  love that continues to believe that there is hope… even though the time grows long…and it is over and over ignored… can you imagine how sick God is?!!!   Paul says in Romans 8:22-23 “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”  If all creation groans and labors together… and even we do… can you imagine the Love-sickness and long-suffering of God as he waits for us to “Get it”?

Anyways.. that was my answer… feel free to expound further!

Tags: Christianity, depression, Love, spiritual leadership, spiritual warfare

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Good Question

// March 21st, 2010 // 10 Comments » // My Thoughts

I got this question posed to me recently by a young… on-fire christian and I figured it would be great if you answered it… I will post my answer afterward.

I am so depressed… why does it make a difference what people think? I am sick of caring, and I am sick of everyone acting like there is so much time…and making everything funny or light hearted. Like people that take being a christian seriously are so looked down on… I am sick of it! what do I do.

so what do we say to this?

Tags: Christianity, depression, Love, spiritual leadership, spiritual warfare

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What is Love?

// March 17th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // My Thoughts

Don’t be fooled… Love is pain… plain and simple…if you don’t agree then check with the creator of the universe…I am sure he can arrange some learning experiences.   There is an interesting facet of love though… the things that we love are the things that we devote our time to…the things we sacrifice for… the people we love are the people we devote our time to… and sacrifice for… so what happens when we begin to focus on other things… and other people?

A key principal of love is found in Matthew 6:24

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

so we love one and hate the other… strong stuff and a lot of people only apply this verse to money or worldliness… oh contrare!   this applies to ANY  two objects of desire that are comprised of opposing qualities. Whatever your focus… that is where your energies will be spent… plain and simple…

Couple with relationship difficulties

We give our energies to the things we choose to love

  • Dark Chocolate or White Chocolate
  • Rice or Potatoes
  • Boobs or Butt
  • Baked or Fried
  • Work or family
  • God or Money
  • Video Games or Wife
  • Wife or Girlfriend? (yep I said it!)
  • Wife or Porn?  (yep that too!!)

Do I have your attention yet?   all of these things are vying for our affections!  The sad truth is that often we trade one for the other and slowly! Its a slow fade when you give yourself away! We cannot help who we are and how we are made… we love attention and we love pleasure and our one desire is to heap as much of it onto ourselves that we can stand!  The devastating effect of love is that human love that is injured looks exactly like hate. We lash out and begin to destroy each other and cut ties and alienate each other… entire families are destroyed because relationships are allowed to break down and people begin to choose to love something else… Why would you choose that?!?   Its not that we consciously choose to destroy relationships… its just that we choose other relationships… relationships that make  us feel better and are not so much work… relationships that are more convenient… relationships that stimulate our minds… relationships that stimulate our emotions… and ultimately at some point … because we are finite beings… we choose to love the one… and hate the other…
Next Stop – Heartbreak Hotel…

The balance point has shifted… you have moved your allegiances… the things you once valued now are worth nothing! suddenly you can recognize with clarity that all of your sacrifice and hardship for the thing that you once loved are so worthless… and there is a measure of truth to that… the people that we sacrifice the most for in love… become the people we detest the most!  Once we cancel our “love contract” (I call it the “Injured Love Paradox”)  hearts are walled up and even reasonable attempts to re-ignite love are stopped at the gate.  When you decide that all of your sacrifices for the sake of love are no longer of value you are practically laying a stick of dynamite at the base of the dam… and lighting the fuse… The dam breaks and all those devalued sacrifices rush downstream and carry you away in the debris. I cannot say this strongly enough…If you decide to devalue the sacrifices you have made in the name of love -by abandoning love- you are effectively turning the keys to all of those sacrifices to satan himself!

If you decide to devalue the sacrifices you have made in the name of love -by abandoning love- you are effectively turning the keys to all of those sacrifices to satan himself!

and he will not hesitate to use each and every sacrifice to cut you deeply and painfully… his goal is for you to abandon love… to lose hope… to reject the idea of sacrificial love… because if he can convince you that the sacrifices are not worth the pain… you become self serving rather than Christ Serving… and his battle is won…

What is love???   Love is pain… love is heartbreak… love is watching everybody close up shop and go home… and holding out… hoping that someone out there still needs you to sacrifice  your needs … for them.

Tags: Love, Marriage, relationship, sacrifice

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