Forcing God

On occasion I dream dreams, some I remember some I forget for a time. Months ago I had a dream that when I awoke I thought it was reality, but I quickly realized that those events had not yet come to pass. A week ago I boarded a chartered bus packed with excited teenagers and headed for Centrifuge at Ridgecrest, NC: The Southern Baptist Mecca. I was not looking forward to the week, not necessaraly because of the dream, but rather because of some of the other chaperones. The first few days of camp did not suprise me; they felt ever so empty, but it was wednesday evening worship that wore down on my spirit. I have never before been surrouned and so overwhelmed by such a spirit of vanity. All the while I heard God speak with clairity, "be patient, everything will be alright friday night." I had a great peace about it, but I was also afraid; I was to lead devotion friday night. After the vanity of wednesday I understood why my spirit was not at peace with the other adults I was serving with. Never before have I seen man try to persuade, coax, rather, force the Spirit of God to move in any time or place. Man's efforts to force God to do anything leads to nothing more than wounded and confused people. Praise be to God, He is bigger and can over come any false teaching and vainity filled efforts for God to preform on command at the whims of man. Despite every attempt of satan to prevent God from saving, changing, and restoring the lives a many students in our group, God moved in such power that I had never seen before. God used me in a way I had never been used before; He gave me the words to say and annointed them as they left my mouth and were recived by the forty or so present in the room. God's Spirit leaped out from me and engulfed the room and we prayed. Tears flowed like streams down hardened faces and I heard prayers of repentance of healing I so longed to hear in the kids I know and love so much. I wept in joy over the brokenness and satanic stronghold that was broken down in so many of their lives. God even suprised me with the salvation of one who had always been such a handful. The changes that occured where evident immediatley revealing God's power and glory, and may God be exhalted for His great grace... God works in His own time and is not the by product of camp, rather God can work when, where, however, and through whoever He so desires.

Merhaba and Stuff

Time goes by faster and faster it seems. Such is life I suppose, but a vapor here and then gone. My ten day adventure in Istanbul, Turkey has come in gone; a memory etched into my own mind and stills taken on a digital camera. It was an awsome experience both in the places I went and saw and the power and workings of the Lord God. For there is but one God and Muhammed is not his prophet, rather His name is Yahweh and His son is Jesus. I picked up a little bit of the turkish language in my stuides prior to leaving the country and even more so on the field which proved to be quite helpful, to the point that with an abudance of facial hair, a longer than usual head of hair, and a good tan many of the turkish people thought I was a Turk, anIranian, or even an Iraqi. The Turkish people are for the most kind extermely kind, giving, and receptive. Very few hold strickly to the teachings of Muhammed and the Quran comparable at best to back slidden Baptists or Christmas Easter christians. A city with 20,000,000 people spawns views of appartments in every direction; so many people but only an estimated 5,000 Christ followers. But God is in Istnabul and His Spirit is broody over the sea of aparments and traffic. Revival is comming to Turkey, but cease not in prayer and supplication but in all patience and ferverence praise the God of heaven. I will never be able to express everything I saw and felt in Istanbul but it was beyond my wildest dreams. A city that seems to never sleep, so big it reaches two two continents, Eurpoe and Asia, and as I see it safer than Graceville at town of maybe 5,000 where my apartment was borken into and robbed while I was six thousand miles away. So great is our God and so great is His love for Istanbul as well as my own. There will always be a piece of myself in Istanbul, how I miss it so already. By the way, merhaba means "hello" in turkish...

98,000 things to write about except church history and ethics...

Sincerly, there is about 98,000 things going through my mind that I right now would like to just sit down and pour into the binary code of my computer, in fact this is one of them. In a little over a month I will step foot into not only a couple diffrent countires but in fact two diffrent continents. Istanbul, Turkey; it used to be Constantinople, how cool is that. Ten days I get to spend over there doing missions stuff, i am quite exicted, I mean james bond has been there. Originally it was to be mother russia that i was to venture to and just because of who i am i began studying and learning the russian language. Then would't you know i've just about got some great basics of russian down when, God appears as if he is changing his mind and says, no no, lets go to turkey. So the Russia trip gets postponed, which means canceled and i'm off to turkey. Oh, and it's not that God changed his mind about where He was sending me He is just forcing me to do something directly told me to do two years ago that i haven't gotten around to doing; He told me, at summer camp in Ridgecrest, NC, to start learning alot of languages; apparently He wasn't joking. So now that i am semi trilingual little Engish, poco espanol, nemnoga paruski (if you can't read in tounges it's little enlgish, little spanish, little russian (transliterated russian)) and i've just started on some wonderful Turkish, marhaba, which is transliterated for hello and all i can say in turkish at the moment and i've also got the CD's to learn french, hey if nothing else it's "romantic." So beyond the language barriers I had this slight question about how am i gonna go to russia, now turkey with my unemployed budget? It is good to remember here that when God is quaterback and says hike your job is to be the receiver and start running and he'll throw you the ball when its time for you to catch it. ( a football analogy in baseball season, eh there playing football in europe right now so it works) so i sent out some letters, and of course they all have the russia deatils and i find out the trip is canceled a couple days after i send the out, i procrastinate and still can't win. but money has already flowed in and yesterday i spent 1000 bucs on a couple of peices of paper to get me on a winged machine that pretends to be a bird. The funny part about it all is, it didn't bother me at all to drop a $1000 with a click of the mouse. Which reminds me of one thing i must complain about, when God provides money don't waste it on stuff that costs more than it should. a buddy of mine is going to austraila for the summer to work as a childrens minister and going through the people orgainizing the tirp it will cost him two grand for his round trip, out of curiousity i priced tickets for the dates, with a couple more stops one can get to austriala for $750... why waste $1250? I mean you could almost fly three people for the price of one. Why??? that makes my head hurt to think about that oh, well. Well that pulls the number down to about 97,995 or so and i still don't want ot write about john wesley or my ethics paper, hey i've got a week, plenty of time....

Father, Son, and What's His Name...

It really ought not to surprise me, but I, in all naive hope still let it. There is a beautiful hymn that is sung quite frequently: “Glorify Thy Name.” I really love this simple little hymn. It has three verses and the only difference in the lyrics the first word of each line: Father, Jesus, Spirit. We sang that hymn in chapel this morning, and as I was singing the second line a thought hit me in my spirit. We are not going to sing the verse to the Holy Spirit. Sure enough after the second line just the instruments played the entire time we would have sung the stanza on the Spirit, and I just wanted to cry. The Holy Spirit within me grieved for the rest of chapel. It really should not have shocked me I mean this is a Baptist school is it not? Truly it has been a long time since I have felt the Holy Spirit move on this little campus; oh, how I wish God would breath revival over this campus in spite of our disregard for Him and His will. I am quite hesitant to say “Thus saith the Lord,” but I feel as if God is saying now what He said to the church at Laodicea in Revelation 3:15-16: “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.” Forgive us Lord, show us your Spirit’s power once more…

Hard of Hearing

How often we feeble minded humans overlook God's work in and around our lives. If you think about it God is constantly at work; He dosen't sleep, He's omnipersent, He's omnipotent, with the exception of the 7th day about 6,000 years ago He hasn't taken to many breaks. Maybe my inability to sit still is just an overflow of God in me? But back to my main focus God is constantly working, not in vague impersonal way spwaned from Blackaby theology, but that the soverign God of the Universe is personally and working in, around, and through every aspect of your life. With that in mind it should be quite easy to understand that God is constantly speaking to us in our lives, we just are a bit hard of hearing. This has been a rather good week in my life; God's presence has filled me in a magnificent way and is continuing to grow in power. In this move of the Holy Spirit my desire was just to hear God speak to me, to hear His tender voice guide my steps. In God's great sense of humor He revealed to me why I haven't it lately: it wasn't that God wasn't speaking it was that I was not paying enough attention to hear and obey. Right now I am in the remote wilds of Georgia: Blairsville. While making the long drive I stoped at a rest area and it was there that God gently slaped me in the back of the head. Walking back to my car I saw a tall thin black man and as quiet as wind blowing through a vacant meadow I heard God somewhere in the back of my mind say "go talk to him." As quickly as I heard it I let it flutter through and out of mind in an instant, I mean I had a long way yet to go I had a destination to reach, no time to talk. But God as only He can in His loving grace used that tall thin black man who I would later learned to be Donnie Buckham, as he caught my attention as I walked past, keys in hand, and we conversed. As soon as Donnie had called out "sir" in my direction God whacked me up side the head and said "alex, you've been praying to hear me speak directly for a good while, if you don't listen when I speak what does it matter?" Needless to say that caught my attention fully, I spoke with Donnie a fellow beliver, he needed a couple bucks to buy a starter, funny enough I had stoped at a walmart earlier before and bought a dr. pepper with my new debit card cause the machines outside the stores did not sell bottles, using a pin number I really wasn't sure was right and for no real reason than why not I got cash back. All those little things God did to prepare me to talk to Donnie and I almost blew it, thank God He is full of Grace. Lord teach me to pay attention to you and your voice and continue to use me in great ways Lord.

But by the Grace of God

isn't it funny when God softly speaks thoughts into your head? the last couple years of my life have felt like a slow lonely walk through the valley. At times it's been a desprate struggle to just get a glimplse of the joy experienced on the mountian top of faith. Mark Rutland once said about trying to do ourselves what only God can do: "this year i'll be holy if it kills me, the only problem is it'll kill you if you don't wind up in a religious looney bin first, wearing a strait jacket in the fetal postion rocking back and forth humming Jesus loves me." I was almost there; there is nothing more that I wanted in life than to be holy, to be in God's perfect will, to love him and give my all to him. but through fear, sin, and eventually a bit of lonely depression I wanted so bad to just go home. Praise God He dosen't give up on us when we want to so badly. One day in half hearted prayer God removed my depression in what felt like an instant, it was just gone. My passion though was missing. I once had a furnace of passion buring within me and I miss it and more than that I know why I lost it. Don't ever, no matter what, ever, ever, ever ( oh Lord i'm sounding like Joel Osteen) give satan a challenge, turns out he is good at what he does, go figure. During the valley time I never quit having quiet times, it was very routine for me and sometimes I had sparks of passion within them but they quickly burn out. One saturuday in utter turmoil I prayed and had a sudden urge to read my Bible, somthing that I hadn't had in a long time, so I open and began to read, and read, and read and as I read through some of Pauls letters joy returned to my spirit, the furnace which had gone cold was re lit and the Holy Spirit moved in me as I had craved for what felt like ages. I was back where I needed to be, but once again I proposed a challenge to satan; he couldn't touch me I was on high, but as soon as I let the ignorance slip from my mouth I realized oh dummy why did you do that your in trouble now. That night as I praised God I wrecked my car, hit a deer and pretty much totalled the car. My faith shrivled and God took care of the situation, He put me in a new car and blessed me emensely beyond my imagination, but the damage was done in my spirit my faith was worn and once again the furnace had but a pilot light of life. It's been a few weeks since then and It's been a constant nag to find the peace I just had, but walking back after a day of class to my dorm God put a thought into my mind. I was trying to understand how it was that I was even still alive in life, and as clear as ever I thought, "I am who I am but by the grace of God" the only reason is God, hello? God loves me, God is taking care of me, God provides for me, Jehova Jireh. Truly He had never left me but carried me through the struggles and pain in my life. I wrote that on my mirror. Tonight God gave me just a bit more insight into what He told me a couple days ago. The thought that God had put in my head, He had some 2000 years prior placed it in the mind of the apostle Paul for a letter he wrote to the church at Corinth. 1 Corinthians 15:10 "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me." Lord, let everything remind me of your grace, this furnace is willing let me burn like never before with you Spirit. I am who I am but by the grace of God...

Leadership

Honestly, I am not exactly quite sure as of to how I arrived at this place in my life. Last semester I had two classes on Leadership from which I don't think I learned anything what so ever. Maybe i just didn't like those classes I made B's in both which is slightly uncommon (an 89 in one, which by far is the absolute worst grade one can recieve, I mean if your going to make a B put forth an effort worth an 80 not an 89) but really if I am not learning I get less than acomplishable grades, but thats neither here nor there for the matter at hand. I need my spirit is a deep dispise or poor leadership. Lord why can't those in leadership postions actually lead for your glory and not to appease the world around us? God has put within me this driving desire to lead, to be a leader. Am I just a typical Baptist; full of strong willed opinions? Maybe, maybe thats it; from the outside looking in maybe I just am blined from the harsh reality of the difficult task the administration at BCF faces. My spirit disagrees: God is not pleased, and the students, faculty, and surrounding community are suffering because of it. Why did BCF spend over a million dollars to remodel a builiding, on the outside mind you, that is used roughly 3 hours a week? "But, it's the chapel, we need a place to worship and have chapel." This said by the same people who could not wait to get out of the gym so they could worship God again. God is a spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and God does not dwell in buildings made with man's hands. The sad part is that it dosen't stop there. Student services exists to serve the students? Of course not, it does all of nothing. And it's a wonder why the school failed University status...