A Hell of a Way to Wake-up

Around a year and a half ago I began this blog.  I promised myself that I would write at least once a day and slowly that became once a week, then once a month, and finally whenever I would get the mood.  Now, blogging for me is almost non-existent.  For that fact I am sorry.  Not that I am apologizing to the millions of readers of my blog out there but more to myself.  Over the past few months I have been bothered by my inconsistency in my life.  I want to read, but I am not consistent.  I want to workout, but I am inconsistent.  I want to blog, but obviously I am inconsistent.  I want to share Christ's love daily, but I am inconsistent.   These things bother the hell out of me.  One of the greatest characteristics about my God is His consistency.  He doesn't ever fail.  Better yet, He CANNOT fail.  Praise God for that because I know for a fact that this sorry sucker will fail.


So now that I identified the problems how do I fix them?  


The answer to this question was simple.  Pain.  Struggle.  Discomfort.  Sacrifice.  Dying to oneself.  


Easy answers, difficult path of success.  But I was ready.  So I began to pray that God would humble me, break me down, kill the sin within, and bring consistency into my life.  I honestly expected minor loss, slight pain, and a little discomfort.  But what I got was no where on my radar.  Let me lay it out for you.


This morning I learned that one of my senior pitchers on the baseball team that I help coach was killed in a car wreck.  I don't know the details of the wreck and I truly do not care to know them.  He is dead.  There is nothing that will change that.  And since I heard about it there has only been one question that has been running through my mind, "Did he know God as his savior?"  And with this came a thousand "What if" questions.  


What if I would have asked him?


What if he didn't know Christ as his savior?


What if I didn't show him Christ at all through any of my actions?


One after another has been shooting through my mind.  They all bring pain to me because there answers are all uncertain.  


Sunday School never prepared me for this.  The "American Church" today never prepared me for this.  No one really could have prepared me for this.  But it isn't about being prepared for every situation because that is impossible.  God never promises that.  He promises that He will always provide us with exactly what we need at the time we need it.  


I was reading through scripture this morning (trying to be consistent) and I was drawn to Job.  And I believe Job summarizes the situation perfectly, "Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?"  God you work in amazing and mysterious ways.  I do not know how this will affect me, my school, or my players in the next couple of days and weeks but I pray that in the end we will all have the response of Job.


"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there.  The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."


You are always faithful.  Thank you my God.  

Pornography is a Catchy Title

I would like to begin this blog with a headline I just read:
"A tiny Connecticut community in Fairfield County is dealing with a football pornography scandal after it was discovered that a freshman football coach was providing code access to a pornographic website for his players."


This is what our world is coming to.


All guys struggle with it.  More girls then we think struggle with it too.  But porn is just an outflow of an inward problem.  And that problem is simple in saying yet difficult in thought - We don't believe God is God.


"Your actions speak louder than your words."  I have heard people say this over and over to me throughout my life.  I am sure you have heard the same.  People say this so often that I believe it would be safe to say that it is a true statement.  Well, if we believe this statement true then lets look at our actions...


1. Let's take the high school football coach from above giving his students access codes to porn sites.  Men today have become so weak, feeble, pretty boys, soft, childish, and womanlike (of no offense to women) that we want to stay kids our whole lives.  Men want to be given everything yet earn nothing.  That is one of the fundamental reasons men turn to porn.  We want the love of a woman but are too lazy, ignorant, and stupid to pursue a girl so we turn to the one thing that is instant and will not tell us no.  Our standards for being a man are crap.


2. Penn State coach is a child molester.  The need for fulfilling our lust is so strong that we will do anything to help that fantasy or longing be completed.  The coach molested young kids who were interested in the program and used his status to keep them quite.  He got what he wanted without any regard for the pain of those around him.  His lust was the driving force in his life.  Besides the exact act of molesting children lust drives most of our lives.


3.  The United States is the leading producer and provider of pornography in the WORLD.  People want it so America produces it and makes a lot of money from it.  It is funny that something that is so looked down upon, spoken about so little in the Christian Church today, and held to such a "hush hush" within households is the leading product produced in the US.  Before food, drink, clothing, houses, and anything else you could think of porn is number one.  Upon hearing this reality, it can bring two different reactions.  The first is the thought of how many people you know that have looked at and continue to look at porn.  You begin to add this figure up in your head and it overwhelms you to such a degree that you without a doubt believe the statement is true.  The second is the outright denial in it.  "America is God founded and God centered," you could be thinking in your close minded "churchy" mind.  But let's look at some facts before you go off into your Southern Baptist Church circles gossiping about how everyone looks at porn and it all stems from the fact that they weren't beat enough as a child.


Do people produce products to make money?  Yes.
Do you produce more products when more people want them?  Yes.
If the product you produced didn't make money would you be in business?  No.
Then how can you explain to me the fact that there are constantly more porn sites being created daily.  If people didn't want them then these sites wouldn't be in business.  But guess what, business is booming.


These are just a couple of examples of what our actions are pointing to.  We the people want porn, want premarital sex, want lust, and want our fantasies to be fulfilled.  We want to be led by our desires because our desires produce immediate feelings of pleasure.  We want pleasure and we want it now.  But here is where everything gets turned on its head.  God doesn't work on our time.  God's idea of pleasure is different from ours.  God wants us to be fulfilled by Him, not to be led by our desires for fulfillment.  But we don't believe these truths.  We don't believe God is God.  If we did we wouldn't be where we are now.  Again, you could have two types of reactions to this reality and if you are the reaction of quick denial answer me this.


Don't your actions speak louder than your words? 

I Am Terrified

I just recently went back and reread most of my last blog I posted on July 22 and it made me realize how terrified I am of life right now...


Terrified because I don't know where I will be in six months.  I am not sure what I will be doing, where I will be living, or who I will know.  Those simple facts terrify me.  But with that terror comes the hands of true freedom.  I have no strings.  No promises to keep.  No emotions to hurt with my leaving.  No person or persons to stick around for due to the fear of losing their friendship.  I am free to move and be where ever I need to be.


Please do not misconstrue my last statements to mean that I have no friends or no one that I will miss because that is as far from the truth as possible.  I will miss playing open mic nights with my best man Dan Breazelle, jamming on the guitar and piano with Zach Miller, driving a standard with Michael Plette, playing ultimate with Craig Turner and Andy Pendergrass, riding bikes with Dylan Jason and Stephen Mire, playing Munchkin with Dave Awalt, and living in the Brotel with my boys Emile Frey and Logan Dugard.  I love these guys.  They are my friends.  I would do anything for them and they me.   I will miss them dearly if I am to move away in six months or so, but I believe they would want me to and wouldn't have it any other way.  I hope that clears up any misunderstanding.  


I would also like to add a side-note that I am crying right now thinking back over so many fond memories with those guys.  So many laughs, tears, scares, and nights that we wish we could forget.  Memories...


I feel that they best way to describe the emotions I am feeling right now is the breath directly before a cry of pure joy.  You are overwhelmed with emotion, you feel your eyes watering, you are constantly pulling up memories of happiness, you begin to get short of breath, and then it hits you like cold water suddenly thrown on your back.  You heave one long-lasting breath in hopes to try and suppress the feelings that are taking over your entire self right now, but you are useless against it and you begin to pull in quick attempts to find your breath.  Tears begin to flow and you finally surrender to it.  You cry long and you cry hard.  You aren't worried with whats happening around you or who is watching.  You are experiencing pure joy and you don't care who knows it.


We have all had this experience so everyone can understand where I am right now.  To quote my last blog I am about to begin "breathing deep."  Because a life full of short breaths is one not worth living.  But with deep breaths comes the terrifying feeling of not knowing what is coming around the corner.  


I hope everyone has just realized the circular relationship occurring here.  It's amazing.


I would like to end this post with a passage that has been spoken true in my life over the past few months.  Paul has just finished speaking on the salvation of Christ and how glorious it is and then says this, "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love."    - 1 Peter 1:6-8.  


This is the God I praise.

Live

Life is changing and I feel the pull to become thinner and thinner in order to please as many people as possible.  I have work beginning soon, not college work, but real big-boy type work.  I have to move cities, I have to study for this darn Physics Praxis I am taking tomorrow, I need to train.  I need to do a lot of things over the next couple of days and weeks that sometimes it becomes overwhelming.  And frustrating.  Life is meant to be lived simply and without rush, because with rush comes the opportunity to miss something and I don't want to miss anything.  I want to live in every moment because moments are all we have.  We are not promised tomorrow, but we are constantly being blessed with this breath.  One after the other is a blessing that needs to be exploited.

I see the lives of Andy Pendergrass and Michael Plette and I am honestly jealous.  What living they are doing!  What stories they are writing!  What breaths they are exploiting!  Life is meant to be lived not completed.  Yet so often we are constantly caught up in the rat race of life only to live in hopes of the vacation week three weeks from now, so that we can get a break from the mundane blitz of life.  However, through that we end up coasting through three weeks being nothing more than an object taking up space.  

Useless is another way to say it.

But I don't want to be useless.  I would rather die then be useless.  To look back on weeks of ones life and have nothing to show for it is the lowest a life can get.  I don't want that.  I hate that thought.  Just writing about it now makes me burn with anger.  I like the feeling.  I believe Jesus has blessed me with that feeling of hate for laziness and meaninglessness.  I am thankful for that.  It is a freeing feeling.  One that makes you feel alive; its crazy how Christ can do that.

I understand that this blog is not a long one; I don't feel like it needs to be.  There is no deep thought in it,  just a passion that I hope you can see.  A passion to live.  May you too find this passion, because through this you are able to fulfill the greatest calling.  Living this passion for Him.

I would like to end this blog with some praise and encouragement for a couple of guys that I mentioned earlier.  Andy and Michael I encourage you two to continue living with the passion I see in both of you now.  Continue to strive for more than the average and the mundane, but for everything out of every moment.  Above all - die to self.  He is all, be amazed by Him today.  I love you boys.  It has been an honor to see you live life.

The Passionate

Today I will have a very short and concise blog.  There will be no drawn out stories or witty comments just   a thought that has been running through my head for a few days.

Having a passion for something.

As I sit here watching Braveheart I see a man who was passionate about the freedom of his country of Scotland.  He was passionate to such a degree that his life was made naught.  He considered the freedom of his people the most important mission of his life and he ultimately died for that mission.  What made him a person worth following?  What set him apart from any of the other Scotsman of the day?  It was his passion.

Think of the great rulers throughout time.  Adolf Hitler, Ganges Kan, Winston Churchill, Napoleon, or even Mussolini.   Whether these rulers were followers of Christ or not was irrelevant.  They all had passion; however misled, it was still there.  The ultimate picture of a passion was Christ.  He was passionate about the Father and every morsel of His body pointed toward seeing the Father glorified.

You can see this passion in one of Christ's last days, "O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done."  What passion!  What utter determination!  What a man!  This segways directly into what I want to talk about next.  The fruits of a passionate life.

A passion brings forth an utmost confidence.  This confidence brings makes leaders and these leaders make followers that are willing to do anything for that passion.  Again look at any of the leaders and you will find that this is true for all of their lives.

I want this passion for my life.  This type of passion inspires and I want to show them my inspiration.  I want to be able to say as Christ said, "...Your will be done."

May you too seek this passion because this world is lacking in passionate people.  And with passionate people comes passionate generations.  That is my desire, that a passionate generation may be sparked for the glory of the King.

Another Time Spent

"Christ" was all I could muster to speak this morning as I sat in Crescent City Coffee looking around wondering what was weighing so heavily on my heart.  It was Him.  He, the Creator God, the Almighty, the Beginning and End, the Alpha and Omega, Love, the fullness of Joy, the all surpassing Peace, and beyond all Patience, the greatest Kindness, and highest Goodness, the only One that is always Faithful, the One showing the purest gentleness, and the One never losing Self Control.  This beyond unsatisfactory list of attributes of Him is just an overflow of what He is doing in my life right now.  I call it - The Overwhelming.  Or I should just call it an answer to prayer...

Over the past last few years I have been praying for God to overwhelm me.  To consume me like in Hebrews 12:29 - "For our God is a consuming fire."  And now He is answering that prayer.  Through pain, disbelief, anger, chastisement, and obedience He is overwhelming me and I am amazed by it.

I would like to take the time now to tell a story of how this overwhelming has taken the form in the sovereignty of God.  But to do this I will need to take it back a couple of years, around 5, and set up this amazing series of events in order for you to understand how absolutely incredible this is.  Also I would love, you the reader, to see how God had a disgusting situation work perfectly into The Overwhelming that is happening now.

We begin our story in the summer of 2007 on a church van with some 15 youth headed to Ridgecrest Conference Center in North Carolina for a Student Life Mission Camp.  Everyone in the van is excited because we get to be away from parents for a week, act crazy without anyone judging us, and hit on hot Christian girls without any regard.  At least that last one was something I was looking forward to.  We arrive to the sound of college age Student Life workers yelling at us about how excited they are to see us and how happy they are we are here.  I return the favor by saying that I am happy to be here but I am not sure if I am happy to see them because I have never met them before.  Why would I be happy to see someone I have never met or spoken of before, it just doesn't make sense.  Anyway, that night we all file in to the big auditorium and our speaker takes the stage.  He opens with this line, which on looking back at the situation may have been one of the most sovereign events to ever happen to me, "Hi my name is David Nasser, I know I am not the speaker ya'll were supposed to have but that guy had some stuff come up so he will not be with you."

Let me dissect this statement for you.  Our speaker for the camp was supposed to be another pastor that was apparently pretty ligit.  I forget his name, but that is irrelevant.  What is important was that he was caught in an extramarital affair that had his ministry ripped to shreds and needless to say all his speaking arrangements at camps throughout the summer were cancelled.  Now I was left with some guy named David Nasser whom I, nor my paster who was with us, had ever heard of, so we were apprehensive at best.  Now I return to the story.

David Nasser ended up being one of the best speakers I have ever heard in my life.  He was funny, sarcastic, blunt, and scripturally based.  He was also a writer.  A Call to Die  was the name of his book.  It was a 40 day fast from the most important thing in your life that was holding you back from Christ.  Whether that be TV, the computer, sports, nothing was out of play.  Needless to say, as a 17 year old male, the computer and TV were my two biggest distractions from Christ.  So upon leaving the camp I made a decision that has changed my life forever; I started the fast.  40 days without TV and computer were going to be tough, but I believed I could do it and I was determined to finish.  The only problem was that the day after I returned from my youth trip I would be embarking on a 30 something day baseball trip from Atlanta to Jupiter, Florida.  Which would be consisted on watching TV and looking at the computer everyday in the hotels we would be staying in.  So I couldn't have asked for a tougher time to begin this fast.

This is where everything gets crazy.  I played on a summer league baseball team called the Louisiana Allstars.  We were a group of guys from around Louisiana or the surrounding states that traveled around the nation playing in baseball tournaments.  The crazyness is there were actually two travel teams for the Allstars, the A and the B team.  During this summer, which was my senior summer, I was on the A team.  And although both teams were under the same name, we rarely ever hung out with anyone from the B team or vic-versa.  This could probably be attributed to the fact that we always played at different times during tournaments so we were always leaving as the B team was finishing a game or the other way around.  Well, one day during a tournament in Atlanta both teams were in the hotel sitting and waiting for our games later in the afternoon.  While we were waiting I was out in the hallway reading the Word and studying the book A Call to Die when a guy from the B team walked by and we began to talk about what I was reading.

He explained to me that he was a Christian too and was struggling to stay in the Word while we were on these long road trips around many guys who didn't care about Christianity at all.  This interested me because it was right where I was in my life with Christianity and baseball.  This sparked an immediate friendship between us and we began to hang out day in and day out when we could to talk about our lives, what we struggled with, and where our lives were heading.  This friendship is what I wanted to ultimately discuss today.  Had God not been perfectly sovereign then I would have never been at that Student Life camp with a speaker who wasn't supposed to be there in order to begin a fast that I could not have ever heard of in order to sit in a hallway reading, which doesn't make sense in order to meet this guy who I would have never met otherwise.  The importance of these moments is that this relationship and friendship I developed with this guy has shaped me and defined me in some of the most important decisions in my life.  He has been with me in through pain and failure and sorrow and happiness and I with him.  In less than five years he has gone from a person I played baseball against once to my dearest friend.  And the best part about it is that God's sovereignty is all over it.  Like David and Jonathan's relationship.  Now to end all of the mystery to who this is I will tell you.  It is Dan Breazeale.  And no matter how long I have known this guy I still don't know how to spell his last name.

To end this blog on something only he and I will know, "You may not have changed me for the better, but because I knew you I have been changed."

Why Can't It Just Be Easy?

On Saturday, May 21st stuff got done.  I graduated college.  Maybe not in the traditional sense by walking up and getting a diploma from Danny Reneau, but from walking to the graduation office in the back of the registrars office and asking Sheila for it.  I finished my first Ironman.  In a time of 13:19.  That was the hardest 13 hours of my life.  And I realized I needed Him again.  So let's go through these monumental moments and discuss them.


Throughout the past two weeks I have been struggling with this boring streak going on in my life right now.  Mainly through my ministry of Christ.  I have been so caught up in the school and training aspects of my life that I have almost forgotten the Word, His grace, Him.  I mean I think about Him daily, and pray, but I haven't been constantly spending quality time with the Father lately.  And that within itself has been killing me.  David describes it pretty well in Psalms.


"You do not delight in sacrifice, but in a broken and contrite heart."  Psalms 51.  I was brining Christ my "sacrifices" but He has always wanted my heart.  I was trying to bring Him the correct actions and lifestyle that a supposed "Christian" has but it was just leading to a non-fulfilling life because He was not at the center of my focus.  My actions were.  Well yesterday, I realized what needed to change.  My focus and my desire.  He must be my desire and my focus.  Again David with the awesome quote.


"My desire...that I may behold Your beauty."  Psalms 14.  David had the heart of the matter correct.  That the focus of my life, my desire, must be on Him and His beauty.  If I can get this then everything else falls into to place.  However, this is no easy task.  As John Piper says, "Make war."  Make war with my body, my mind, my desires and turn them to Him.  No where in the Psalms does David ever say that it would be easy, he just said that he would do it.  I am no different, war must ensue in order for Christ to be glorified.


Graduation.  Three hours of the most boring activity in the world only to have your name called for three seconds and to walk across the stage and be given an empty certificate holder.  That was not for me.  Like I said before, I simply walked to the Graduation Office and asked for mine.  Sheila, the secretary, got up walked to the counter, found my degree and holder, and then handed it to me.  It was a beautiful thing.  No pictures.  No yelling friends or family (not that I am saying I don't like that).  No tears from Sheila.  Just me and my diploma.  It felt good.  To hold my college career in my hand and know that all four years of my life at Tech have been completed just for this piece of paper was an interesting feeling.  And let us not look the past the fact again that it felt good as hell to know that I was done with college.  Done with those dumb tests and homework.  Just plain done.


Ironman.  If anyone does not know what an Ironman is, it is a type of triathlon.  The longest to be exact. Meaning I swim for a while, then bike for a while, then run a little ways.  The exact distances are a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run (a marathon).  Needless to say, this was one long day.  On graduation day while everyone was walking across the stage and receiving their diplomas I was on some mile of the marathon running until I couldn't feel my legs.  Now don't let this sound like it was an all together bad idea to do this.  I really enjoyed it.  Hearing the guy at the finish line yell, "Ruffus Darden you are an Ironman."  Was amazing.  And it felt good to not have to run anymore.  But to me this was definitely the way to finish college because at the end of the day I wasn't just a college graduate.  I was an Ironman college graduate.  And triggas that sounds awesome.