A vision...

The flowers in the field

White, tiny, covering the ground

Blanketing the dry, cracked soil

Protecting it in beauty.

The sky, clear and blue

No trace of clouds

She dances there

In the middle

Spinning around, arms spread wide

Breathing deeply and laughing loudly

Her head is tilted back so she is facing the sky

She giggles and hums

What could she possibly be enjoying?

Is it the act of dancing?

What music does she hear?

The only sound that can be heard is her laughter.

Is it the sun?

The warming of her face?

Is it the flowers?

But she's dancing over them.

It is the song playing in her soul.

"Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;

let all the trees of the forest sing for joy."

She sings her own song

No knowledge of what words will come out next.

She sings what she feels

Singing to the Lord, praising His name

Declaring His glory, His majesty, His honor.

Everyday I get a little bit stronger

Love when lyrics explain exactly how I feel. I've been seriously working on getting over a broken heart...and it's true...every day I get a little bit stronger.

Until I get pulled back in...

Woke up late today and I still feel the sting of the pain
But I brushed my teeth anyway
I got dressed through the mess and put a smile on my face
I got a little bit stronger

Riding in the car to work and I'm trying to ignore the hurt
So I turned on the radio, stupid song made me think of you
I listened to it for minute but I changed it
I'm getting a little bit stronger, just a little bit stronger

And I'm done hoping that we could work it out
I'm done with how it feels, spinning my wheels
Letting you drag my heart around
And, oh, I'm done thinking that you could ever change

I know my heart will never be the same
But I'm telling myself I'll be okay
Even on my weakest days
I get a little bit stronger

Doesn't happen overnight but you turn around
And a month's gone by and you realize you haven't cried
I'm not giving you a hour or a second or another minute longer
I'm busy getting stronger

Can we pretend?

All this is based off of this video and song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn6-c223DUU.

I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to a song and felt like, “Wow…this is me.” Or maybe you just sing it with everything you have every time you hear it on the radio.” Music always does that to me. It gets me so often that when I was a sophomore in college, I decided I wanted to host a radio show about the effects music has on people.

Me as a radio host – not so great. The mic would be positioned above my head and somehow while on air it always would manage to smack me in the face and all that button pushing… you don’t even want to know how I did with that, but we did have the most listeners of any show at the radio station. Probably because my mom and all my relatives we’re listening.

I think it’s because our show was an interesting topic. It was called “Not Listening.” I hosted it with my friend Jes and it was all about how we aren’t listening to the music we are hearing. Now I know you must be saying … “Huh?” Well we sing words and frequently we don’t know what words we’re even singing, let alone what we are actually singing about.

For so long I used to sing the song “Miami” by Will Smith and on the chorus I thought he sang “Am me ee mo a Miami.” Well some of you may know my room mate is actually from Miami where there is a large Cuban population so a lot of times Spanish can be more common than English. Some of you also know I’m a pretty proficient Spanish speaker. One day, I was feeling a little slap happy so I walked into my roommate’s room and I bust out into this song. She looks at me like I have three heads and says “What the heck are you singing?” I say, “You know the Will Smith song.” She just goes, “Your stupid…the words are Bienvenidos a Miami.” I have an epiphany…Welcome to Miami is what they are singing. I know the Spanish translation. How often though do we not even know what we are saying when we sing along with a song?

Somehow though, music seems to come down and touch a part of our hearts…I might even be so bold to say it touches a part of our souls. Like when I hear Goo Goo Dolls song Iris or Slide, I just seems to reach into my body and pull on my heart. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. How songs affect us. In particular, we are going to talk about B.o.B. and Hailey William’s song Airplane. This song gets me every time…I’m always singing in the car and it brings up the same emotions within me that the singers are trying to express. Take a look at the first part I think is important:

You get another hand soon after you fold
And when your plans unravel
And they sayin' what would you wish for
If you had one chance

To me, this part is all about how things just don’t go the way you’d have them go. I hear this guying saying, I gave up on one crappy bunch of cards life dealt me just to get another bunch of cards that I can’t deal with. He just seems to be going through trial after trial. I can relate. When my friend committed suicide, the next month another friend confessed to me she was cutting, and then 2 weeks later I went through a really bad break-up. Yeah I get repeatedly being dealt cruddy hands and all the plans I’ve made unraveling right before my eyes. I couldn’t even catch the plans and try to manage them…everything just imploded in front of me.

So then the next emotion this guy brings up makes sense:

I could use a dream or a genie or a wish
To go back to a place much simpler than this

I could take all that messed up stuff going on in my life and really use a dream coming true. Or a magic genie to grant me one wish. Or to go back to a time where I didn’t have any drama…you know the time when I was cruising the streets on my Big Wheel. I can relate. Sometimes I do feel like that. Sometimes I do wish I could just slip out of all the drama, pain, and suffering. I wish I could just find a shooting star, make a wish, and poof my life is better.

So from there though – I think we can go two directions in life. The direction that the song suggests…or the direction that I’m going to propose.

The song suggests:

Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now

Well if we can’t really have a wish on a real shooting start (because you know those actually work NOT), then why not fake like an airplane is a shooting star and make the wish. That way I can kind of cope with the situation at hand. She’s essentially saying, “I’m going to trick myself into thinking this plane is a start, so I can at least make a wish of some sort.”

I can’t knock her. I sing the song just as loud as the next person who loves it AND I actually relate to those lyrics. I want a wish sometimes. I want to escape sometimes. But I think there’s one flaw in that, staying with that feeling of wanting to wish yourself out of a situation.

Pastor Mark talked a few months ago about having hope around Christmas time. He said it’s on thing to be hopeful for the future, but it’s another thing to have your hope attached to something stable…meaning Jesus.

I get swept up in this song and sometimes I forget I actually have hope. I don’t have to make wishes on airplanes.

Where do we have hope? We have hope in:

• HOLY SPIRIT: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13

• BIBLE: For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope
Romans 15:4

• GOD: He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us...
2 Corinthians 1:10

I know that when I wish on an eyelash or a lady bug or a shooting star that nothing is going to happen. It’s not. We don’t have to waste our time making wishes to comfort our hopes and dreams, we can actually have hope in God.

So I could see you doing a few things in response.

1. You could try taking your hope in the Holy Spirit…by asking the Holy Spirit to provide you guidance.
2. You could try putting your hope in the Bible….that’s full of truth, lessons to learn from, and encouragement
3. You could put your hope in God who has done great things and works all things together for your good.

preaching can equal change

I spoke 2 weekends ago (maybe 3) at the Barn Vineyard to their youth group.

I didn't think it went particularly well, but not poorly either. I preached about how students could 'rock on' with the abundant life that we are supposed to be living as Christians.

In the last couple of weeks, two teens messaged me and the youth pastor contacted me. All of them contacted me with stories about how they (or his students) are living the abundant life that Jesus came to bring us by doing two practical things that I talked about 1) forgiving others and 2) not gossiping.

I don't think I've ever seen the impact of my sharing before, but I went to visit this group last night and they are changed. One kid worked with God to have the root of bitterness removed from his heart and he even LOOKS different. He was smiling last night...maybe even beaming. There was a little more wholeness in the group. It was awesome.

Pretty Good Thoughts

Redpoint Magazine is the online youth pastor magazine for the Vineyard.

I read it a lot.

I liked this article today. It has to do with how the Holy Spirit is restoring confidence in God among youth. Cool.

http://www.redpointmag.com/2011/05/13/how-the-holy-spirit-is-restoring-god-confidence-among-youth/

"We're not worthy."

Today we’re going to talk about worthiness. The worthiness of God versus our own unworthiness.

Sometimes I like to think I’m good at stuff. Sometimes I even like to think I’m really good at stuff. God’s gifted me with a lot. I got a brain. A special one that sometimes feeds into my gigantic ego. In high school, I didn’t study and got all A’s. I barely tried and graduated second out of 550 kids. Yeah, sometimes I think I’m the bomb. Then when it comes to my classroom, I am not half bad either. I get raving reports from the principals when they observe and for all the kicking and screaming my students do, they like me. They know they are learning a ton and that I’m good at what I do. So I’m, you know, I’m pretty worthy...

Well when I put myself up next to God though, things come out a little bit differently. Check out Psalm 145. Psalm 145 is David, this kicking king’s praises (or according to Mr. Webster, David’s warm approval) of God. The book of Psalms is unique in the way that it is God’s Word to believers and it also the believers’ words back to him. You can read the Psalms as God’s word to you and learn about him and his ways AND you can pray and worship him the way he intends by praying them back to Him. The more you read and learn about God’s character, the more you’ll find it easy to worship him.

Take a closer look at verses 3,4, and 5. David is acknowledging how great the Lord’s works are. How people (one generation) will commend Him for His great deeds. Well, I’m teaching in North Philly. That’s pretty great. People commend me all the time for what I’m doing. Then there’s David, the guy actually writing this- he stepped out in faith and courage stood up for Israel by defeating that Philistine Goliath. He was this fantastic king who led a great army to many victories. So yeah—People commended David for what he did, too. Maybe David and I aren’t half bad.

Then we move on to verses 7, 8, and 9. I’m kind of those things, but now I’m stetching it. I bet David would be too. God is slow to anger. We move on about who God is and I’m done. There is absolutely no way I match up to any of this. I am so incredibly not like God. No matter how hard I try, I am not faithful to all my promises. I just can’t do any of that stuff to the extent God does it.

Think about in Wayne's World when Wayne and Garth meet Alice Cooper. It’s because of the posture Wayne and Garth take towards Alice Cooper. Now I’m not saying Alice Cooper is worthy of praise, but if we think of this as a type of model of worthiness versus unworthiness. Wayne and Garth realize they are teeny, tiny in comparison to Alice Cooper. I mean they need back stage passes to get into his dressing room. Everyone’s dying to get backstage to talk to Alice. He’s full of incredible information. He’s like a rock god. And then there’s Wayne and Garth – nobody’s. They were lucky to get backstage passes and be permitted to enter into the presence of Alice Copper. Not only that – Alice Cooper invited them to stay and join him. Bam- Wayne and Garth drop to the floor to acknowledge their unworthiness. They’ve compared themselves to Alice Cooper and realized this is the guy to be worshipped. They even say, we are scum. They know the chasm or great divide between themselves and Alice Cooper. Now that was just an analogy, but think about Wayne and Garth’s response to their god…or we might better term him…an idol.

Now stepping aside from Alice Cooper and moving onto our God, the true God worthy of all praise. When I compare the character of me and of God in Psalm 145. Bam – It’s clear I’m not worthy of any earthly praise, but this God-dude is worthy of it all. God is totally worth worshipping. I am humbled by the fact that no one is going to remember how I taught or what I taught 20 years from now. My focus is not on being remembered or being worthy of other peoples praise. My focus is on giving credit where credit is due. To the God who created me to do His work. I am humbled by how much time I waste thinking about how I can get other people to notice me when I could be getting other people to see God…someone actually worthy of serious worship.

the gift of youth ministry

youth ministry is a frustration sometimes when you want students to understand the love and sacrifice of God and they just say, "that's nice, but i'm going to do my own thing."

the gift though...when a student comes back after going away for awhile and says, "this Jesus stuff is real. i'm sold out for it."

Kingdom wins. they are my favorite.