My Identity

Well, well, well, here we are again. Just another post by this young chap. I know lately I have been doing a whole lot of preaching on this thing about topics from God's agape love to my own personal struggles to what it means to be a man of the Lord. Today, my hope with this post is not to condemn you or hurt you, but instead to love you and to try to fill you up as much as I can with my words.

This is what my day has shown me, and what the Father has put on my heart....

This morning, I woke up and really had a heavy heart. I woke up came downstairs and felt the urge to just go back up to bed and spend my day in prayer, worship, and growing closer to the Lord through sermons/testimonies. God really has a profound and unique way of communicating with me. I mean honestly, he knows I spend a lot of time with people, and connected with people over social media and the Internet as well as in person, so you know what the Lord does. He uses that to communicate with me. When I pray I still have a conversation with him, but I usually don't have those "WOW" God moments there. That is just not who I am. I am the kind of person that experiences God through others and through serving, but that isn't what I want to talk about. Actually, that is a part of what I am talking about. Sweet! Anyway, back to the ranch here.

The Lord really showed me today during my day to be with Him what my identity is. He showed me today that all the negative thinking that I have about myself and others is non-existent because Jesus Christ died upon that hunk of tree to wash all of that clean from my mind and from all our minds. We do not have an ounce of negativity in our bones or in our bodies or in our souls because Jesus was not the only person who died on that cross. WE DIED TOO. Then three days later we also rose from the dead and became eternal. We are eternal if we accept Jesus into our hearts. If we let the Holy Spirit do as he pleases in our hearts and let him chisel away all that is unholy and all that keeps our hearts from fully basking in God's glory. That is not all that God did today. He showed me how to figure out my calling, and to then finally figure out who I am in his eyes. Let me dig into that right now.

I think the Lord has some of the greatest timing in all this by the way because I have kind of been doubting myself with the choice I made to go to La Crosse, and then even my decision to pursue ministry after I get a degree at UW-L. I thought maybe I am not called to be the guy who can teach and be a leader of faith because of just who I am. Maybe I am supposed to be a doctor or just an English teacher some where, but today the Father really did some reassuring. I saw today that God has given me an unbelievable gift of being a good speaker, a good listener, and just a person who cares. That is part one of finding your identity. Finding your strengths, and finding the things God has gifted you in. For some of you that is in music, for others it is that you are unbelievably smart, and for others it is because of your leadership skills kind of like me. It doesn't matter what it is because we all have those gifts from God that add to our calling. That is part one of finding your identity. Find your gifts. 
 
The second part of this process is to apply those gifts to a passion. A passion is something that breaks your heart to see, and you wish to apply serious effort to in order to make a difference in. For example, for me my passion is to make an impact or a difference in the youth no matter where they are from. It breaks my heart to see, and hear the types of things that happen to kids in their middle-school to high-school years. It is a struggle to say the least, but I want them all to know that they are not alone, and that God is behind them no matter what others think or say about that. Again, this really varies from person to person and it really doesn't matter what it is as long as you are glorifying God through it you are golden. So the second part is: Apply gifts to a passion.

The third and final part of this process is to glorify God through it all. This part for me really hit me because as I went through high-school I really never glorified God for all my accomplishments and all of my trials. I am just now starting to realize that even though I might be going good or bad in this world that it is all for the goodness of God.  This right here is probably the most important part of this process because a lot of people can do the previous two things and yet not be in their right calling or know their identity. To glorify him in all we do is something that really leads to your identity as well because in this part of the process you are doing all you do, and all that happens to the glory and goodness of the Lord. You are putting his will above yours and submitting what the world says your identity is to what the Lord says your identity is. God says our identity is through him. It all goes back to him people. It all goes back to our relationship with him. Jesus is our identity, and the cross is our sign of that. Whenever we look at the cross we should think of Jesus, and then think of us dying up there with him. He is our identity, and all we do should be through him. So the last part of the identity process is: Glorifying God through it all. 

That is what the Lord really has put on my heart lately just because of circumstances, and with my day of prayer today. I just hope you guys are at ease, and that you take these things to heart because I did today and I am totally ecstatic about what the Lord has in store for me in my future. I am totally a new person because of what happened today, and I am so ready to go out and live present-future instead of past-present like I was. That is my identity, and how the Lord worked through me all in one day to figure it out. I love you all reading this, and I pray tonight that you all experience answering the call as I have. God Bless.

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." - Romans 8:28

MAN UP!

Wow...it has been awhile since my last post. Since I am home now, I think I might be posting more now than I have in the past months, but we shall see. Lately though, I have really noticed the Lord working in my heart about the men in this world including myself. I mean honestly I look around seeing all the things society tells us to be.

Society tells us that we need to be masculine, and pride ourselves in the fact that we can beat the living snot out of another guy. The media depicts men as dirty, grimy, and drunken people who only look for sex and look at women as the source of that pleasure. We as men in this society are told to be prideful, that it is okay to engorge ourselves with lust and sex, no matter how we get it. From forcing our girlfriends to meeting that addiction or from sitting in front of computer screens to get our fix. You kind of get the idea right? We are starting to desensitize ourselves from these things, and we fall into the so called "norms" of this society.

I know how hard this can be. I used to do those things, and I used to be full of lust and temptation. I am not going to sit here and tell you that I do not lustfully look at women sometimes, and that I have not struggled with temptation. I have been sucked into pornography in my past, and I work daily at not looking at it. You are not going to just poof not have anymore lust and things like that. It is a daily grind, and you need to actually work at it. Honestly, I can not tell you how many times I have given in to the temptation. It is hard, but it is worth it.

We as men of God and followers of Christ are called to be more than just the average man of society. We are called to be Christ-like, to live our lives modeled by him, but also humble ourselves to the fact that we can't live like him. That we can't be perfect without Jesus there to sacrifice himself for my sin. That if we call ourselves Christians and believe that God is out there looking down upon us, then we need to put Him first in our lives. He needs to be put before our lust, our temptations to drink, our pride, our urge to be "the man," and finally above what other men think of us.

I really believe that being a man has nothing to do with your age, how many times you have had sex, the amount of weight you can bench, the amount of beer you can drink, and finally by how "good" you look with your shirt off. A man is someone who can lead, be pure, honest, loving, respectful to women, and be humble in the sight of the Lord. I just ask all you men out there. What are we doing?

A song that really speaks to this is Temptation by 116 Clique:
"Manning up is not just managing your sexual temptations
It's not just managing your sin that's not what it means to be a man
Because you can try harder and you can do better
And you can hang on longer that's not manning up
Manning up is our ability to lay down all of our effort
And all of our trying and all of our strength and say I trust in Jesus
I trust in his perfection I trust in his power I trust in his resurrection
Because he's the only one that can get me through this
And he's the only one that can make me free"

I am sick of being only the man that society thinks that I can be. I am ready to be a man according to what the Lord wants me to be in His Word. Are you?