overflowing

I was thinking about God earlier today and I had this overwhelming thought that I am lacking passion for God in my life. I thought of someone who is passionate about something and I thought about when I am passionate about something. It is like a bubbling spring that comes out whether you want it to or not. I want God to be like that in my life. I want the goodness of God to be the overflow of my heart. I do not want to be like everyone else, I want to be ablaze for God. I want Him to consume every moment of my life. I don’t want to be a half-hearted Christian. I want to be ablaze! "If you seek me with all your heart, then you will find me."
With a heavy heart,
Joshua

Forgotten Memories

Sometimes i forget that people really are hurting. sometimes i forget that they really are hurting even in the context of ministry or preparation for ministry. Sometimes they are forgotten memories. I want to remember, i want to feel.
joshua

A City of our God

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
Psalm 46:4
I have recently been impressed upon by the Lord to look into my life introspectively. Those who have ever had introspective moments understand that this can be an unsettling time in ones life. Jesus said in Mark 11:17 that "My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves."
i looked at that verse and realized a profound spiritual truth in my life, that i am the that house of prayer. i am to be the dwelling place of the most high. Brennen Manning said that the hour we spend before the Lord is not prayer, it is preperation for the other 23 hours we do spend in prayer. my life is to be constant upward flow, living forever before the throne of grace in unbridled passion and dialogue. Isaiah says that we are watchemen on the wall before the Lord day and night. the other thing that struck me about Christ's words was that i am to be a house of prayer for all nations. jesus has called us to live that lifestyle of prayer before the nations of the world. i am called to live the presence of God in the vein of unnceasing prayer to the world around me. Jesus called us to live before the nations; the social ramifications of that is living before the socially outcast. when Jesus said that to the people of Isreal, the phrase the nations meant something terrible. why would God have us to live before the "unclean"? the same is today. how many times do i walk past someone who needs the flow of God that i am carrying?
so all that leads me to the introspection, if i am to be the very tabernacle of God, the very vessel for His presence, how dirty am i? are there spiritual idols in my temple, things that i have set up that do not resemble the living God? i began to see that my tabernacle was not where it would have to be to be a pure filter for this presence that i am carrying. i needed to do the very thing that i am, pray. i needed to ask God to cleanse my streams and make me glad. i need to trade the pride of my life, the self-centerdness of my life to become the praying/activist that God has called all of Christendom to be. a weeping warrior, a tender fighter, a praying man who fights for justice for the oppressed both spiritually and physically. it is hard thing to clean the stream of ones life that has become muddied by the dung of religion and the world. Prayer, mission and justice.
joshua
"the world as we know it isnt worth living, but the call is worth dying for"

searching

i am despretely in need of God to move

ONETHING 2007

the increase of decrease

"John answered, A man can receive nothing except as it has been granted to him from heaven.
You yourselves are my witnesses that I stated, I am not the Christ , but I have been sent before Him
He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the groomsman who stands by and listens to him rejoices greatly and heartily on account of the bridegroom's voice. This then is my pleasure and joy, and it is now complete.
He must increase, but I must decrease.

the plight of the weak

the plight of the weak is something that all go through. it is when you sell who you are to get something you want. it is as old as time. when cain sold his birthright for soup, to the puranical pictures of the man walking in the woods with the devil bardering for his soul, the great miller play of accusation, betrayal and death, to the modern day man who would sell his very soul for a taste of the unknown. why is that? why will man sell his very identity to have what he should not want? i am that man. i know what i need, yet i sell my soul for that which i do not have. i, like goodman brown, cry "With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!"