Man, life is screwy

Have you ever had that moment where you are trying to help someone with something, and they will just turn away, even if they have told you everything? This is just one example, but I have had this happen quite a few times, and I have never been able to come to a reason why it happens. Until now.

I talk a lot about Young Life stuff on here, but I think this is just too important not to get out. Some of my friends think that life on earth is just hatred. There is no such thing as love, and they will never know what love is. Maybe that live doesn't have a chance of ever existing. This is a problem. We were not created to feel this way. Part of me just wants to scream that they were created by God, to know the greatest love ever, but you can't shove things down someone's throat. How then, are we to help them see that Jesus Christ loves them deeply, and that they were made for more than the life they seem to think is it. It breaks my heart that there are friends of mine, that I talk to, who don't believe that it can happen. "I'm unlovable" "Nothing can love me" I just wish that I could physically pull Jesus back down from Heaven. I just wish.

"For all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23 We all did it. We went away. We've turned away. "We all, like sheep have gone astray. Each of us turned to our own way..." Isaiah 53:6. We went on a search, looking to find that voice we long to hear in our heads. "I love you, I love you..."  We go everywhere. Nothing we look to on Earth can possibly measure up though. Imagine the hammer and bell game you see at the fair. You must hit the center of a pad, in order to ring a bell. Imagine that the top section, when you ring the bell is God's voice, saying "I Love You!" Anything lower says "I don't love you" "I don't like you", maybe even "I Hate You!" Maybe we've tried again and again with the things of the world that we think will bring us real life. Truth is, we aren't strong enough to hit the pad hard enough. We can't, on our own strength ring that bell. After all the trying, and every failed attempt. We come to the conclusion that God can't exist. We say to ourselves, and maybe openly that "Nothing will ever love me. Love is dead" I can tell you, just because we can't ring the bell, doesn't mean it's not there.

Another example I can give is to think about a hallway ending in, say, 5 doors. Door one, sports. Door 2, relationships. Door 3 academics. Door 4, money. Door 5 God. You go to door one, and sure it opens for a while. Say you break your leg. That door closes You go into door 2. Say you start dating the hottest guy or girl in your school. Next thing you know, you find yourself on the receiving end of a break up talk. You might have loved them with your everything, and now door 2 is closed. On to door 3. You study your life away, you are going to get into that Ivy league school. You get to your senior year, and you get a rejection letter from the school you spent your life to get to. Door 3, closed. Door 4, Maybe you try to save all of the money that you can, trying to get that car, trying to get that house. When you find out that the house or car just got sold. Or maybe you buy many things with the money that you do have. When those things run out of entertainment, or use, where are you? Outside of a closed 4th door.

The fifth door, being God though, was locked when we turned to our own way. It says in Romans "For the wages of sin is death" We can not hope to get back into that door. We walked out of that very door when we turned away. We can try our hardest to open the door, but the truth is, we can't hope to unlock it. We can't break it down, because like the bell we can't ring, the door requires us to be stronger than we can be. Luckily, there is a way. God sees us outside his window. Trying to open His door. Seeing that we couldn't, He sent His son. Jesus Christ, in order to take away the very thing that makes us weak. We have a great weight on our back, that takes our energy. This weight is the reason we can't hit that bell. The reason we can't break open the door, or unlock it. God sent Jesus Christ to not only remove that weight, and destroy it. He sent Jesus Christ to become the key to the door. We no longer have to try to fight our way in. The door can be unlocked through Jesus, but like many locks, there is only one key. The key that Jesus is looks like this: Three nails, holding up Jesus on a cross, taking sin away. No other key has this shape. So no other key will open the door to God. "For the wages of sin is death....." There is another half to the story. The second half to the verse is "But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord." Using the bell, For the wages of sin is the inability to strike the bell, but the gift of God is strength enough to hit the bell so hard, it continuously rings out "I LOVE YOU!" Take the door, We will be able to open the door to God's house, and be in a relationship with him. All because of Jesus. My only question, what keeps us from doing so?

The thought that we are unlovable? Jesus was thinking about you specifically when He stretched His hands out on the cross. If there was just one person on Earth to ever live, Jesus would have still done it. He wouldn't have said no. He would have done it for JUST ONE PERSON. Even if they thought they were unlovable. Why? Because He loves you that much.  He would have done it for Megan, for Jaime. For Josh. For Chris. For Kendall, Zack, Shannon, Eric, Joe. If it were only them! All we have to do now, is walk through the door. Or hit the pad. We can hit the bell with the hammer of Jesus' crucifixion. Giving us the way to do these things. all we have to do, is let Him do so.

You now have a choice. You can say "I'm not ready" I don't know enough about Jesus, or God to walk in. That's fine, we still love you. You can also say "No" I don't want to walk in, I don't want anything to do with God. You can keep looking through the other doors. Keep hitting the pad with sin on your back. That's fine as well. He's still for you.  We love you just as well. You can also say "I want that" or "I am ready to give my life to Jesus" All you have to do is say "Yes" Knowing that you haven't done anything to earn it, or deserve it. It's all because of God's immense love for you.

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I hope this will help you guys.

I love you guys.
TJ

Feels Like a Lost Friend

I can remember a man I met around the middle of November my freshman year. A simple dude, who was around me at a football game when were getting ready to charge the field. He overheard me saying I needed a ride somewhere, and he offered. That's where the friendship began.

This guy would soon become one of my best friends. I saw him at Young Life, and a dramatic 3 or 4 months later. He became the man who led me to give my life to Christ. He taught me a lot, and he's always going to remain in my heart as one of my best friends from high school.

Things are different now though. I haven't gotten to hang out with him in so long. Whenever he sees me, he rarely says anything. It seems like he looks right on through. Whenever all the guys wanna hang, he opts out. I miss hanging out with him. Right now, it doesn't even feel like I know him anymore.

It hurts to see one of my best friends seem like he doesn't wanna hang out with us anymore. It sucks, because I've wanted to hang with him so much recently, but he's nowhere to be found. I just wanna say, I miss you, bro. I wanna hang with you..

Love you,
TJ

Soaring on wings like Eagles

Something happened today that I have been waiting for since the end of my Freshman year. It's something that has been on my heart for that long, and have prayed, wished, waited, and yearned for this to happen, and finally, a few years and many failed attempts later, my twin brother went to Young Life camp with me. It has to be one of the most encouraging things that has happened to me since Saranac, and I am not even close to done with this great, great story.

My brother at one point told me he was never going to go with me to a Young Life camp. We've chased after him with everything we've got, and he still had what seemed like the hardest heart in the world. My good friend, Eric made it his mission to reach out to him last year, and he definitely had an impact on Brett's decision to go to camp. When he got there, there was so much to do, he couldn't think, so we just went, played basketball, and soccer, or whatever we wanted.

Skipping to the end of the weekend. We had the last club of the weekend. We are getting talked to by Brian Griffin (Griff) from West End, Richmond. He tells us that we are going to sing a song (How Deep The Father's Love For Us) and that afterwards, we'd start what is known as the say-so. The say-so is when the new believers get their chance to publicly announce to their friends that they have begun a relationship with Christ. I look around, and only a few Roanoke kids are standing up, one of which I was very glad they were, but we almost got done, and Griff says "If you guys who have started a relationship with Christ, but haven't stood up, I invite you to stand up" I look around, and people start to sprout up like Wildfire. Next thing I know, I look over at my twin brother, and he's looking back to ask a friend to stand up with him. He gets the microphone, and says he's begun the relationship, and my heart rises, and tears form around my eyes, because I just could not help but let it out. I'm looking at my friends, who all also see him standing, and hear him speak it, and they look over at me, and they know I'm crying tears of joy, because it's been something I've waited on for years!

The hugs go to him for his acceptance of the greatest Love there is, and the hugs come to me from those guys who have been a part of this fight for my brother. Now that the Lord has won that battle, I just hope Brett learns what it's like to live in relationship with Him. It's funny, here we are, 13-14 hours later, and I'm still beside myself with joy! God is so good.

That's the story, and I'm trying not to get emotional typing it, because it's the picture of the message, and of Young Life.

I love you guys...

TJ


"One day every tongue with confess You are God. One day every knee shall bow"

Awake, my soul.

There is a Bible Study that I go to on Sunday nights with a few friends. We go there to just grow as brothers in Christ, and help us to really go deep with the Lord, and to teach us what it means to really want to chase after our friends in school, or wherever really.

We've been having this Bible study for a while, and don't get me wrong, I have learned a lot from it. There is just something that is starting to stir within me, and I think it has to do with some revelation that has been going through me.

  ^"Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'”  Genesis 1:26

God wanted to make manking in the image of Him, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Part of my revelation is that in the making of the image, he made us into a trinity as well. Just as God is the soul, Jesus is the body, and The Holy Spirit is the spirit, we too have a body, a soul, and a spirit. How sick is that? There are people in the world who strive to be like God, well we have a head start over some things in that respect. There is no way to be fully like God, since there is no way that we can be perfect, but there is nothing else that God gave this trinity to. No fish, no bird, no livestock. All other things are one thing. We have this trinity, and that really shows how much God really cares about us.

Another thing that I learned that goes along with this is that when you feed any part of the trinity, the other two parts will start to become like the part you are growing. The illustration we got was like a three way venn diagram, With the labels "body" "soul" and "spirit". When you have the wants of the body as your main focus, your soul and spirit will start to become just like those of the body. Making you more about those things you are growing your body with. When the desires of your soul are your main priority, the focus of your body and spirit will become to the specifications of the soul. Like wise, when you grow your spirit, in any way, but in the sense that you spend time with the Lord in prayer, quiet times, fasting, however, you will start to notice that your body and soul will be one with the spirit.

If you feed the wants of the body, they will become the wants of your spirit and soul. If you feed the wants of your soul, the wants will be the same in your body and spirit. If you were to feed your spirit, your body and soul will also grow to have the same wants.

Hearing this taught me something from a verse my good friend taught me last year.

"Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all else will be added to you" Matthew 6:33

Learning the thing above has taught me that all else, may not be the desires of your body or spirit. This means that all else means all else that God has in store for you. I do admit, that it did make me seek the Lord, in hope that the other desires would be fulfilled, but I don't think I could go deep, cause I would not let the one desire that I had go, because I was convinced that there was no way it came from me. I'm still not totally sure, which is why I geuss discernment is always a good thing to have. Once you learn to let all your body and soul wants go, and just grow your spirit, the things that your spirit wants, even desires of relationships, and other matters will be given to you, because your spirit is God's, since you have been filled with His Holy Spirit. Which is awesome.

I just pray that I would grow my spirit, and I know that something will be given to me by God.

I hope you all have a good day!

Love y'all

TJ

Respect my authority!!!

I know that we all have those times in our lives where we just have Satan all over our backs, and all we want, is for him to go away. No matter how hard we try, if we are trying on our own power, there will be a zero percent chance that you will succeed in that battle. The biggest thing about going through those times is some people tend to think that if they pretend it's not there, they will just feel better. Then the feeling keeps on coming back. The temptations, and the other feelings that come with them. Let's just say that we do have an enemy, he will try everything he can to tear you apart from God. He will also do everything he can to make you do the things that you do not want to do. Our enemy is very powerful. Not only that, but he is very crafty, and he uses the combination of the two to make you believe a lie. We can not hope to beat him at his own game, in the sense that we use what little power we have to fight back. We however, have the authority to fight back.

Now some might think that having power can cause you to automatically gain some form of dominion over the people who you are using that power against. The thing that apparently hasn't crossed the mind of our ever crafty enemy, is that he does not have the authority to cause any of the bad things to happen to you. He has the power to tempt you, he has the power to tear you apart, but he has no authority over you. It's actually quite the opposite. Meaning you have all the authority over him! Nothing that he can do to you is strong enough to beat your authority.

Think about it this way: You may have more power than a police officer. You may be stronger quicker, faster, and just more able to do harm to him, than he is to you. That does not give you the authority to just go around beating someone. Think of yourself as the police officer, and Satan as the person who overpowers you. The police officer has the authority to take the man into jail and such if he were to try to harm him. Just like that, we have the authority to totally kick Satan's but to the curb, and not deal with the crap that he brings us.

A quote this makes me think of is "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. It is that we are powerful beyond measure" I think that many people will think that there is nothing they can do about Satan, but God intended for man to have dominion over the earth, and everything that isn't Godly. We have the authority to tell Satan to get his happy butt away from us, and our friends. Because God sent Jesus to restore the Kingdom that He was looking to build, we have been given the authority that we were supposed to have before the fall. Praise God!

This does not mean we just say to ourselves, "Be gone, Satan!" We must keep into account that we still need Jesus, and that if it weren't for Him, we would not have such authority. Jesus is first, then comes everything else.

I hope this inspires you to, as we said last night at Bible Study, "Get big" on Satan.

"If you try to meet Satan with a power encounter, we will lose! If we meet him with authority, we will surely win!"