Awakening: continued.

Okay, I'm late. Real late.  I am currently packing for a cruise (which I may talk about in a later post) so if there seems to be a delay of posting or anything like that for the next 3 weeks, its that. Hopefully I'll post pictures and talk to you guys about it. Ah! I'm still rambling! On to the analysis!


Wait.



Before I start, I should tell you a little about myself, maybe to give you a little view from my perspective. First of, I lead worship at a local Pentecostal Church and God has done great things in my life (testimony? maybe! blog about it? possibly!). I'm always looking for new songs to add to our setlist, but every so often, I come across a song that speaks to me on a different level than just the lyrics and the chords. Yes, most worship music should be like this, but I like to believe that everybody, through certain life experiences and perspectives, has a song or songs that speak to them on a soul-level. 

This, for me, is one of those songs.


Chris Tomlin does an amazing job of putting so much meaning into his songs while making it easy for churches and other places of worship to truly use his songs as tools to bring lives closer to Christ...it's amazing. For me, the first verse really defines why I worship (publicly, at least.)

In our hearts, Lord, in this nation
Awakening
Holy Spirit, we desire
Awakening

Isn't this what we yearn for? Is this not why we pray for the world? So that we may see His Spirit poured out over the world in such a way that leaders around the world could not deny, bowing down with the rest of their countries proclaiming He is God and no one else? My dictionary defines awakening as the state of returning to conciousness. Returning to conciousness. This would mean that we have been unconscious the entire time! When you are unconscious, you are unaware of your surroundings; unresponsive to everything. You could be falling off a cliff and you wouldn't notice. Until you are woken up, that is. I guess, as a human race, we ARE unconscious. We are knee-deep in sin and most of us don't know, and the ones that know, pretend not to care. For a lot of us, our relationship with God is becoming choked up until the point where we use him like a 911 system instead of a loving father or best friend.  I interpret this to mean, "God, bring us back to the relationship we had with You, right back to the beginning, back to Adam and Eve when we could see you and talk with you freely without fear, prejudice, or anything."

The next line that stands out to me is the prechorus.

For You and You alone
Awake my soul, awake my soul and sing
For the world You love
Your will be done, let Your will be done in me

For You and You alone. Only God, our God, can shake us and break us and expose our innermost core in a way we cannot explain nor understand. 


I wouldn't have it any other way.


I like how Chris Tomlin says "Awake my soul AND sing." When you wake up from being dead you are probably not going to shrug your shoulders and give a sarcastic, "...Hurrah?" You are going to shout and sing! Possibly dance if you have rhythm! Even more if you don't! Haha, terrible joke. But my point stands. Rejoice. You're alive!


For the world you love...I think sometimes we forget how much He loves us. Like, he made us. Took dirt. From the ground. BREATHED into it (First off, how do you go about breathing into dirt?) And voila, you have the first human being. And the earth? Yeah, he made that in 7 days. He did it so well, that on the last day he took a nap. Not literally, it was a day of rest. But you get the point.


I....am feeling a bit tired, and I would like my posts to make sense for the rest reader (Freudian slip....) so I will continue my analysis tomorrow! 

God Bless!


-4:29

Awakening

In our hearts, Lord, in this nation
Awakening
Holy Spirit, we desire
Awakening

For You and You alone
Awake my soul, awake my soul and sing
For the world You love
Your will be done, let Your will be done in me

In Your presence, in Your power
Awakening
For this moment, for this hour
Awakening

For You and You alone
Awake my soul, awake my soul and sing
For the world You love
Your will be done, let Your will be done in me

For You and You alone
Awake my soul, awake my soul and sing
For the world You love
Your will be done, let Your will be done in me

Like the rising sun that shines
From the darkness comes a light
I hear Your voice and this is my
Awakening

Like the rising sun that shines
From the darkness comes a light
I hear Your voice and this is my
Awakening

Like the rising sun that shines
Awake my soul, awake my soul and sing
From the darkness comes a light
Awake my soul, awake my soul and sing

Like the rising sun that shines
Awake my soul, awake my soul and sing
Only You can raise a life
Awake my soul, awake my soul and sing

I will write about my thoughts on this (and other stuff) tomorrow morning. God Bless!

-4:29

Heart vs Mind

Okay, here's the thing. I...really like this girl. Bear with me...I'm  
debating whether I want to write this. I know I'll feel better once I  
put my feelings down, but the risk of someone finding this is....What  
happens if the girl I like reads this, she might occasionally look at  
my iPod...then again, I did tell her my notes are personal. Would that  
make her more likely to read them? Ugh, I'm just getting more and more  
confusing. I guess if it's any comfort to myself, if she got this far,  
she already knows who she is by now. My heart is literally trembling  
as I write this; my hands are shaking. I'm just going to say it.
 
I like.....I still can't say it. God, I'm pathetic. Just pathetic.

I could spend hours describing her amazing qualities (which in itself  
isn't the best thing for me to do, let me explain), but that isn't why  
I wrote this.
 
My heart is attracted to her for so many reasons (there I go again),  
but I know that I can't date her, and there's always the fact that she  
probably likes someone other than me. I'm nothing, I could almost take  
comfort in the fact that I'm nowhere near someone girls "like", then  
again, I'm not a girl...as I think about this, if she ever told me  
that she liked me I don't know what I'd do... you know what, I do know  
what I would do, and it's sad because my choice wouldn't honour the  
promise I made to God about holding off on dating until I am ready to  
pursue marriage. The more I think about it, the more I'm forced to  
acknowledge the truth of Josh Harris' statement in "I Kissed Dating  
Goodbye". He said that no matter how many rules your mind has  
proposed, none of them will work if your heart isn't behind them. I  
had so many rules about what to do in each situation; it seemed so  
clear, so cut-and-dry in my mind...but when I've found someone  
I.....love, it is much harder, near impossible to follow the rules I  
set out for myself...
 
Maybe I'm overreacting. I don't know. I may never know; I may never ask.  
Sometimes I think it'd be better if I wasn't attracted to her but to  
be honest, I kinda like "crushing" (is that the word for a guy to use..?) 

over her. That's another thing Josh said to be careful of, 

because it could turn into a spritually- 
deadly infatuation....I totally see where he is coming from.

If I look at it from the perspective Josh gives me, do I really want  
to be distracting her from what God wants to work in her life? She's  
somebody's future wife; do I really want to be intruding on that? (Who  
knows, she might be single, but you know what I mean..) Plus, she is  
almost a year younger than me (though she doesn't like to admit it)  
and we are both trying our best to live for God. What gives me the  
right to distract her?
 
Why should I distract myself from the plan God's made for me?
 
Part of me would be relieved and thankful if it turned out she liked  
some guy ( which is very, very, VERY likely), but at the same time I  
would be devastated even though I knew it was coming all along. The  
heart has a habit to just hope for something, no matter how high the  
odds are stacked against it. The heart and its love is truly a double  
edged sword.
 

Proverbs 20:9 says, "Who can say, "I have kept my heart clean; I am
pure from my sin"?

My heart not only wants her for the "right"  
reasons, it wants her for the wrong reasons, and this scares me a lot  
because it is so easy to slip and begin walking down the path of  
sexual immorality, sometimes without even knowing it (anyone read the  
story about Sodom and Gomorrah?). How can I be leading other people to  
worship if I have skeletons in my own closet? I can't let that happen,  
I gotta draw near to God and ask Him for help but that's something  
that could develop from a "simple infatuation".
 
I don't know what else to say. I'm not her, I don't know what she's  
thinking or if she even thinks about me. But I think about her, and  
God, I really need your help. I'm so confused I don't even know what  
to ask for. Thank God You know, Lord. Thank God You care so much about  
me, me who makes so many mistakes and falls so many times, Lord.
 
"Take me to that place, Lord
To that secret place, where
I can be with You
And You can make me like You
Wrap me in Your arms
Wrap me in Your arms
Wrap me in your arms...."
 
         -Michael Gungor, "Wrap me in Your Arms"

-4:29 

Welcome..

Hello.

I created this blog because I wanted somewhere I could put my ramblings about God (I am a Christian and proud of it) and I guess its a journal, of sorts. Sometimes writing my thoughts out to myself makes me feel better...and the chance that you're reading this is, well, quite slim. But it's on the internet, so...

Anyways, I'm glad you stopped by and I'll try to update this at least once every two days. But today....today with be a bit of a post mayhem because I have a bunch of thoughts I want to write out and they won't leave me alone until I get them out of my head.

Is that it? I think so. See you in the next post, God Bless.


-4:29