All Who Are Weary.

2011 has been interesting thus far. I know a lot of you haven't seen much of me, which has been somewhat by design and somewhat out of my control, but both of those are somehow connected. Since coming home from CO I've been laying pretty low. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I just feel like God has been telling me over this last month that I need to be spending some solid time at rest. Reconnecting with Him, reconnecting with my heart, and letting all of the stress and busyness of life fall by the wayside. I couldn't tell you why He's having me do this, but I know that as I move forward with this year, I really want to move forward in my connection with God. Move further into the idea of walking and talking with Him on a daily basis, and moving further into the idea of giving up everything in my life to Him.

It's been both difficult and refreshing to be taking a social break. Not because I don't love my friends. I do. I love all of you more than you can imagine. But life seems to be filled with so many distractions, things keeping me from charging head first after God. Not that those distractions are bad things in and of themselves, mind you. But distractions nonetheless. For the last month or so, I've just felt a season of change coming on. I feel specifically that God has been telling me that some big changes are heading my way, and I need to be completely rested and focused on Him in preparation for those changes. I couldn't tell you for the life of me what I think that means. Despite the shortness of my time on this planet, one lesson I've learned over and over again is not to try and put the pieces together prematurely when God tells me change is coming. I have a habit of imagining best case scenarios all the time and then being absolutely crushed when my life hits the wall. The biggest example of that being the second time I was in Afghanistan in 2008.

I was having my daily quiet time with God, and I heard Him tell me, "Marcus, some big changes are coming in your life, and I need you to hold on. That's all I need you to do, is hold on." At the time I had just started playing in a new band, I was auditioning for a couple tours, and I was dating a girl. And in my infinite selfishness all I could imagine was those bands working out really well and being financially successful and having that turn me from God. What proceeded to happen was everything I knew in my life crashing into a brick wall at 100mph over the next 2 years. Everything from family to music to jobs to friendships to churches all disappeared around me. I did not deal with it well. As I've stated before, it was a period of time that I spent walking a lot closer with Jack Daniels than I was with Jesus Christ. But somehow I held on. It wasn't even until a few months ago that I remembered that God had told me that. I completely forgot about it in the midst of everything that was going on. But as I look back on it now, I'm completely amazed by it. Amazed by the fact that I was even able to hold on during that time, and just amazed by how faithful God has been in my life. So all of that is to say, that with whatever God is preparing me for now, I'm trying to remain objective. Not getting my hopes up, not getting my hopes down, just being comfortable with what God is asking me in this moment, which is to rest and center my heart on Him.

Rest is such a funny concept. Especially living in the type of society we do here in the US. It's something that is completely foreign and 100% opposite of how we're told to operate societally. I mean true rest. I don't mean taking a night off every once in a while, I mean the idea of living in a state of rest. That's the kind of life Jesus has called us to take on.

"Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.'" - Matthew 11:28-30

This is a call that is put to us that comes before anything. Take on the yoke and teachings of Christ. Before work. Before school. Before life. Before anything. If we put ourselves under the burden of Christ, then our hearts will begin to take on an attitude of rest long before anything we actually do in our lives will have the chance to spoil it. I've been meditating on those verses as often as I can. I wrote them down and hung them above my desk so I'm looking at them all day as I work.

Recently as I was spending some time with God, I felt he was pushing me to ask Him about where I am in my walk with Him. I was immediately filled with dread. The same kind of dread I get right before I check my checking account balance. Like, "Oh no, I don't think I even want to know what's going on in here. What if it's not what I think it is? What if it's not what it should be? What am I going to do?" That's how I felt about checking in with God about my walk with Him. How ridiculous. He revealed a couple pretty big things to me throughout the course of that conversation. First I asked God to reveal to me how I thought I was doing with Him. The word that came into my heart was "terrible." How awful. At my base level, that's how I think I'm doing with God, terrible. That's how afraid I am of checking in to where I even am with Him, that the first thing I can think when confronted about it is "terrible." But God is better than that. Next I asked Him where He thinks my relationship with Him is. The word that came into my heart was "refresh." I felt him telling me that I was in a time of refreshment with Him. To remember where true satisfaction in this world comes from, and to drink in as much of it as I possibly can. That's what I felt Him say to me. I have to say that I felt like I didn't agree, but I do know that I've been trying to seek Him as much as possible and reconnect my heart with Him lately.

After this I simply asked God to point me to some scripture to read. I really felt God putting Psalms 42 on my heart. I couldn't tell you the last time I read Psalms, I rarely do, and I never really think about or remember any of the things that are said in them, as good as they are. So I opened up to Psalms 42.

"As the deer longs for streams of water,
so I long for you, O God.
I thirst for God, the living God.
When can I go and stand before him?"
-Psalms 42:1-2

I absolutely lost my mind. I haven't cried like that in some time. Even when I'm at my worst, spending as much time with God as I can and still feeling like I'm doing a terrible job, He's there to reassure me that I'm right where I'm supposed to be, learning and doing exactly what He wants me to be doing in this moment.

Rest. Refreshment. Living Water. Those are the things I'm meditating on lately. How about yourself?

The Fear is What Keeps Us Here.

Sorry for the title. It's definitely my least favorite Zao record, but I've always thought of Dan Weyandt as one of the greatest lyricists of this generation, and I love that title. It holds very true to what I want to talk about with this post: fear.

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline." - 2 Timothy 1:7

God has really been hitting me with this verse lately. Hard. I think I tend to live so much of my life in fear. I think we all do. And I'm not talking about the big fears, like dying or that sort of thing. I'm talking about the little things. Just the little day to day fears. Don't talk to this person, don't tell your friends this or that, don't ask that girl out, don't talk about yourself too much, etc. Little fears that we all deal with. But I've started to realize that over time, all those little things that we never give much thought to start to add up. They start to add up a lot. And the sum is something I think we would all do well to avoid.

The way I see it, all those little things start to add up to a wasted life. And that's exactly what our enemy wants. Think about that. If God hasn't given us a spirit of fear and timidity, and those spirits aren't from God, where must they be from? If we are truly to believe that our enemy, the devil, is like a hungry lion, roaming around looking for someone to devour(1 Peter), then what would he rather see than the children of God, his enemies, wasting their lives away in a series of small, seemingly insignificant fears? Especially when the result is a nearly complete loss of everything that God desires for us. Closeness, companionship, etc.

Anyways, this is just something God has been pressing on my heart lately, so I thought I'd share it with all of you. The more conscious we are of the enemy's attacks on us, the more we will be able to recognize and resist them. We are called to a life greater than that of fear. Let's start living it.